Horror

What is horror?  There is no single definition that makes a story horror.  Sometimes horror stories are supernatural, sometimes they are psychological, and sometimes they are portraits of nightmarish scenarios similar to scenarios we can relate to our own lives.  People who are unkind.  Circumstances that turn casually horrific.  The faceless creatures that children believe are watching them when they sleep.  All of it is horror.

Robert Fleming has compiled a collection of horror short stories that readers will not soon forget.  His characters are men, women and children, both black and white.  Fleming draws on experiences as different as the Nazi Holocaust to the plight of black children charged as adults in the criminal justice system, subjecting them to curses, rage and terror, all part of the recipe that makes horror what it is. Fleming's stories amplify the real-life horrors from history and daily headlines.  Many of these stories are angry, bearing the wounds of racism.  The villains in Fleming's stories are larger-than-life, the stuff of nightmares, depicting a world meaner than our own and yet one that we can clearly recognize. 

Why do readers like horror?  Maybe, just maybe, it's because these stories demonstrate to us that we would rather live in the world we know than in Fleming's world. 

But don't worry, it's a nice place to visit.  You just wouldn't want to live here. 

Tananarive Due,  Author of The Living Blood and My Soul to Keep