All Hallows' Read discussion

Hello ! :) Welcome to All Hallow's Read. Introduce yourself over here.

Welcome to the group Jonathan ! Hope to see you around here :)

I'm Rayne Hall. I like horror fiction, mostly the non-gory kind. My favourite horror is psychological (Edgar Allan Poe's short horror stories are marvels of psychological intensity) or creepy with strong atmosphere (Robert Aickman, Amelia Edwards) or dark and twisted (Tanith Lee). I enjoy the occasional Stephen King and Dean Koontz, too.

Hi. I'm Michael Litzky. I enjoy a scary story if it has some other purpose for existing too. One of my favorite frightening scenes, eg., is in a non-horror book, Lord of the Rings: the attack of the Black Riders at Weathertop (~~shiver~~). I love Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Joss Whedon, Charles deLint. I like Stephen King's early work, up to, oooh, Pet Sematary. My current novel, Safe as Houses, is a people story that happens to involve vampires.

All in all, I read/watch less horror than I used to -- and my dreams are a lot more beautiful.

Hi! I'm Jan. I love dark fantasy, and I'm interested in dipping my toes into some horror novels. Looking forward to getting some great recommendations!

Welcome to the group everyone !

Michael wrote:"One of my favorite frightening scenes, eg., is in a non-horror book, Lord of the Rings: the attack of the Black Riders at Weathertop (~~shiver~~)...."

Soo true. That scene still gives me shivers, just remembering it. Some sort of a visceral primitive horror. And the background music complemented it so much.

Hi Michael,

What do you mean by "All in all, I read/watch less horror than I used to -- and my dreams are a lot more beautiful."

Did horror fiction use to give you nightmares?

Jan wrote: "Hi! I'm Jan. I love dark fantasy, and I'm interested in dipping my toes into some horror novels. Looking forward to getting some great recommendations!"

Hi Jan,
Who are your favourite dark fantasy authors?

@Rayne: Did horror fiction give me nightmares? Not directly. I think I only once or twice had a bad dream directly out of a book or a movie.

I’m like a statistician here: I notice a correlation but can't infer causation. I used to do a lot of things which caused me pain and one of them was reading about frightening and/or cruel things far past the point where my stomach was in icy knots and my skin crawling and my eyes numb from tears that wouldn’t come. My dreams would reflect the pain, loneliness and fear that was in my life AND that I read about.

But images from books and films would directly leap into the half-dreaming state as I fell asleep, what they call the hypnogogic state. As I’d drift on a sweet river toward sleep, a hungry face or a shadowy form would leap into view reaching for me and I’d snap awake with my heart pounding. That rarely happens anymore and I think that’s partly because when I do read horror, I know when to stop. But I’m also just plain more comfortable in the world than I used to be, so it's hard to be sure what caused what.

Hello!

I'm Sarah. I'm an author, so you'll probably see more of me in the promotions folder. I just discovered Neil Gaiman's All Hallow's Read, which sounds awesome!

I love old fashioned Victorian Gothics like Dracula and Wuthering Heights. Ghost stories give me the heebie-jeebies whether I'm reading or writing them!

Me too Sarah! Love gothic creepiness.

Rayne - Lilith Saintcrow is my absolute fave. Her work is probably best described as urban fantasy, but she can be very dark. I've loved George R R Martin since way before Game of Thrones became a TV show. I also really enjoy Colleen Gleason. Her Victorian vampire series is excellent. I've been reading a lot of YA lately. Anna Dressed in Blood and Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake are very good.

Hi I'm John
I enjoy reading horror, fantasy, science fiction, and comics. But what I really enjoy is Halloween. There isn't many good Halloween books out there..

Hi John, welcome to the group ! :) Enjoyed the about me rhyme on your page :)