Genre of the Month Overview #4

Book-shaped presents, that is.

Finally we come to Horror and Writing Craft books.

Horror wasn't my favourite, but I did love thinking about the different ways of scaring a reader: there's the fear of monsters and death, sure (Salem's Lot and I Am Not a Serial Killer), but the stories that really engaged me were when you saw a human reduced to something 'other', aka kind of a sociopath (see I Am Not a Serial Killer and The Reapers Are the Angels). When you have two people -- interestingly both teens, which makes it worse since there's the whole loss of innocence theme -- who seem to be completely emotionally unattached, it's frankly disturbing. While I loved that the MC of Reapers asserted herself sexually without going through a moral sermon (more girls in control of their sexuality/body, please, Young Adult genre), the fact that emotions played no part was also a little sad, because it was the same way she approached *everything*. And of course the teen sociopath in Serial Killer was scary because he could accidentally dehumanise someone. Other people, especially ones we don't understand, will always be scarier than vampires and demons, because we know how to deal with those monsters: we either don't believe in them and call ourselves childish, or we cling to our stakes and holy water. What do you do when you're faced with people who don't have the emotions necessary to empathise with you, or to allow you to empathise with them?

And Writing Craft was basically a fun summary of all the books I've read and loved that have helped me become a better writer, and will hopefully do the same for you. Truth time, I got a bunch of books for Christmas -- Hooked, Fire in Fiction, Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook, The Elements of Style (illustrated by Maira Kalman, yes!) -- so that list might be up for review in a month or two. But some are such staples (Writing Down the Bones and Save the Cat) that I doubt I'd remove them completely. My top five would just become a top ten, that's all!

So I hope you enjoyed reading my Genre of the Month series. On Wednesday I'll be posting a round-up of Young Adult books I read and loved this year, with some help from the YA Superlatives Blogfest questions. No pressure, but you guys have to read them all.