Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how horror movies were better when I was a kid than they are now–where real horror was lauded, not douchey vampires and zombies–the exception being slasher films. But the latter, while sort of being horror shooting itself in the head, still interest me. Have you ever noticed that the pot-smoking kids engaging in underage beer guzzling and pre-marital sex are the ones that get axed? I have. And that’s exciting to me, in that the slashers become the cruel messengers sent after the wicked promised in the book of Proverbs (17:11). But that’s just how the King James Version puts it. Check out the NIV: “Evildoers foster rebellion against God; the messenger of death will be sent against them.” Man, “messenger of death”! That’s brutal, and it’s got my wheels turning.

Or should I worry about too many morals seeping into fiction?

Then I ponder A Nightmare on Elm Street, where the children pay for the “sins of the fathers,” as spoken of in the Old Testament (Exodus 34: 7, Numbers 14:18, Deuteronomy 5:9). This makes me muse over how we horror authors might be getting preachy while not consciously trying to do so.  Also, in terror, I realize that not only is my dad divorced, but also so am I! We both found rocky times our first marriages.

You know what? I think I’ll pass on going to the bar tonight.

Then I think about the man who killed Jeffrey Dahmer in prison. Jesse Scarver said that God told him to do it. Wow, now it’s creeping into real life! Could the eerie subject dealt with in the movie Frailty, where a man claims God is telling him to murder people who are really “demons,” be a real-life thing? I know the “sins of the fathers” thing is real, for I’m paying for my dad’s sin of divorce by being divorced myself.

After considering all this diligently, my personal decision is not to worry about being preachy in my stories, but to let the tale be the boss, and write the piece in the most entertaining manner possible. That’s my no. 1 goal, to pen a great read…

…and stay away from pot and pre-marital sex. Ha-ha!