No Casualties

Wherethejourneytakesme - I may have a look at that, as I like following the weather. But I don't even speak Dutch! DH has friends over there, so I don't know if the algorithms have got confused. To be honest, I enjoy a random selection. Thank you for saying it's good for bear. It's so important.

Fifitr - I am a fail with scary movies. I used to watch football or documentaries with father. I think the original Nosferatu was utterly terrifying! Have you seen the version with Eddie Izzard? That is worth watching, just for the creeping inevitability. btw BritBox has a whole section of Hammer Horror movies and we plan to work our way through them.

Warning - wittering about writing.

I write sort of horror. It's not very horror horror. I am too much of a scaredy pants to do that. But I agree, the best horror isn't about buckets of blood or gruesome effects. I think the best horror (at least, that I've had the nerve to watch) is about making the viewer's imagination do the work. 

I always feel that horror is about a lack of knowledge, and a lack of choices. I know that there are a gazillion books on it, but sometimes I think it's about not knowing what you are fighting (like most of the characters in The Devil Rides Out) and not being able to escape whatever the menace is. I think of Alien, and being trapped with something unknown and frightening, as a great horror movie (which I don't have the nerve to watch again. I feel that there has to be something claustrophobic about it, or undefined. To be honest, I think that buckets of blood and gore can take away from the horror. The scariest monster is the one that you can't see, and can't understand or predict, and can't escape.

For the last few years I've taken part in the October Frights Blog Hop, and always felt a little inadequate. I have stories about vampires and werewolves, but I don't really think of them as horror. I think that they are nearer an adventure story. My novella Dinner at Dark is sort of horror as the characters are trapped by floods with something awful, but it's short on deaths. For those interested, this flash fiction, Walk in the Park, talks about monsters, but I think of it more as action. However I think that Wanderer in the Mist has much scarier implications and would consider it nearer horror, even though no monsters are mentioned. For me, the older stories were much better at the subtle chills, and it made for a much better story to my mind. 

I should be clear - I'm not saying that I'm a good horror writer. I'm just a writer that attempts horror, or, at least, mildly chilling.

As for the heading of this post, I drove to the tip, then out to the park where I went once around the duck pond (which still has some frozen water even though it is much warmer now) and then home. The drive was awful. I didn't feel confident at all, and I seemed to be scraping through gaps and slowing just in time for the cars pulling out in front of me and then pulling right in so that the car coming the other way wide around a blind corner didn't clip me. There were also lots and lots of horses out and about - some on very main roads, and a couple of tractors. I was a bag of nerves by the time I got home. I didn't come near to causing any accidents, but by the time I staggered in to the house, I was impressed that I had avoided them.

Writing stuff - as for today's flash fiction, I'm still knee deep in other writing, so I thought I would re-post a previous post, a poem that's here.

Hugs and good vibes to all.