I Madman

     This is no fantasy.  This is no fallacious delusion of a sick, twisted

 mind.  This is the honest-to-God truth.  I love horror novels.  Stephen King

 and Edgar Allen Poe are my idols.  Perhaps having these two, demented madmen

 as my personal mentors sounds sick, but I tend to think as they do.  Most of

 my writings are short stories of horror (usually about the length of Poe's

 "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Masque of the Red Death").  My friends often

 ask me four questions: "Why do you not publish some of your work?" and "Where

 do you get your ideas from?" and "What is it like writing this horror stuff?"

 and "Why do you like writing horror stories?"

    First, I do not publish my work (although some writers at the Virginian

 Pilot newspaper feel I should) because it's mine.  I know this sounds

 selfish, but I'm being honest.  A part of my personality goes into my work

 and I feel if people read enough of my work, they will discover certain

 personal feelings I would prefer to keep private.

     -- Honesty Check...I also think my work sucks. --

     As to where I get my ideas from for my sick excursions, I sincerely do

 not know.  Like Stephen King (who got the idea to write IT when looking off

 of a bridge) I seem to receive my mad phantasms out of thin air.  For

 example, when I first began writing the first draft of this essay, I started

 out writing about writing horror stories and ended up writing a short story 

 about a vampire in London.  It is safe to say I get ideas out of thin air.

     When I do capture the intangible, I literally feel a rushing sensation in

 my head!  I feel like a kid on a roller coaster.  I feel astonished, excited,

 and hyper.   Quite often my mother will stick her head into my room because

 she wants to find out what I'm giggling about.  I usually tell her I'm

 thinking about a joke I heard on T.V. -- how can I tell my mother I'm

 laughing about a clever killing scene I've just visualized, or the thought of

 some damsel being chased by the bogeyman?

     After giving my mother further reason to worry about my sanity, I sit

 down and begin to type on my computer, usually until the first draft is

 finished --editing and revising along the way.  I take great care when

 writing my pieces of dementia -- as a cook would take care to consistently

 baste a turkey, less it becomes dry and unwanted.  I usually have only two

 drafts per piece of work: the one and only, thus I usually have to create a

 draft for my composition classes, which require at least one draft before the

 final is done.  After my short story of madness is done, I will usually read

 it about 20 times.

     If you are anything like me, you like to be scared.  I love being in a

 arm, toasty bed with only the 15-watt, reading lamp on with a good horror

 novel in hand.  I love the thrill generated by the expectations of something

 sinister happening on the next page.  I love being on the edge of screaming.

 The funny thing is, when I do get to the juicy parts of a Stephen King novel,

 after I'm shivering from the emotional overload, I laugh as if it was the

 funniest thing on earth!  Horror is my personal drug of choice. 

    Since I love being scared, it is only natural that I love to scare

 others -- I guess misery really does like company.  I love the thought of

 being able to plant a little seed of fear into my audience's mind and feed it

 little by little, until it burst -- sort of like the bean Jack planted to

 grow that big beanstalk.  I want to take the readers past the point of mere

 fright to the point of hysteria.  I want my readers to wake up in the middle

 of the night with the shivers and in a cold sweat.  In a nutshell, I want to

 scare the living daylights out of people.

     The world of horror is not for the weak-of-heart.  It is only for those

 few, brave souls who are willing to plummet head-first into the abyss of

 fear.  There is an old japanese belief:

    "Only the warrior who is willing to die can overcome death...The warrior

 who clings onto life, not accepting death as a possibility, will surely die."

     -- Paraphrased:  Unless you are willing to face your fear, you will never

                      master it. --

     Now that you know what horror is, the challenge it offers, and my

 personal feelings about horror, hopefully you can see why I love horror

 novels, and why I love to write horror.