Gentle Horror

Just as I was sitting down and going over my list of potential blog topics, @paul_e_cooley asked an interesting question over on Twitter and graciously gave me permission to reprint it here.

The Dragon Moon Press guidelines specify fantasy, science fiction, and ‘gentle horror’, so the question, “What’s gentle horror?” was probably inevitable.

While I have a soft spot for the phrase, I didn’t invent it. I wish I could say that I did, but it was already in the guidelines as I inherited them. What it means to me is something that I’ve adopted and adapted as I’ve worked at Dragon Moon and become more familiar with the “feel” of our somewhat eclectic catalog.

Sometimes requirements are vague on purpose. Instead of narrowing things down to a rigid box, phrases are open to interpretation specifically to invite you to bring your own personal definitions of them, and to invite you to be creative and push the boundaries.

Publishers, and this probably won’t surprise you, do like for authors to be creative!

By gentle horror, I don’t mean “Attack of the Killer Zombie Cottonballs”. It has nothing to do with Satin [sic] devouring your soul.

To me, what distinguishes gentle horror is the proportion of plot elements to horror elements. I’m open to manuscripts which have scary and suspenseful elements to them, not all-out frightfests or bloodbaths. I’m looking for horror within the contexts of sci-fi and fantasy, not mainstream thrillers.

I’d consider Weaveworld by Clive Barker (one of my favorite books) to be gentle horror. Contrast it with The Hellbound Heart (the book on which the movie Hellraiser was based). There are still plot elements, to be sure, but horror takes much more of a front seat.

Not that Weaveworld is for the weak of heart, either. Gentle horror doesn’t have to be gentle. Phil Rossi’s Crescent, for example, I consider gentle horror, even though it’s a gritty, harsh story with some explicit adult content and nastyness, and there’s very little that’s gentle about it. But contrast it with Jack Kilborn’s Afraid, which will have you covering your eyes with your own intestines before you even realize you’ve ripped them out.

The point is more that Crescent is a science fiction story with a horror element, not straight horror, not a straight psychological thriller, just like Weaveworld is a dark fantasy story with a strong horror element. Gentle horror doesn’t have to be gentle. It doesn’t have to be safe for children; it doesn’t even have to be safe for work. It just has to have horror as a spice, not as the (mystery)meat of the dish.

Tagged as: genre, submission guidelines