When I started Kindling, I had an overwhelming desire to connect with writers and readers. I would spend hours on YouTube listening to authors talk about writing—how they do it, what their lives are like. Stephen King, Paul Tremblay, Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Ketchum, Mary Karr, Joyce Carol Oates. I needed to hear what they had to say.
I also wanted to share what I love with other people. Binge, the section of Kindling where I review various dark fiction, was born out of that spirit. In the beginning, I called it horror, because Stephen King makes up a big part of my reading life and that’s what the publishers have called his books. But in the year since then, I’ve come to realize that, just as it applies to King’s writing, horror is too big a simplification.
I do like horror. For whatever reason, be it a hard childhood or early exposure, I have a high threshold for the macabre and sinister. What leads one reader to throw a book away or give it a one-star review on Amazon will often lead me to turn the page, ask what this could be about or why it happened.
But I also like a lot of other books. They tend to be dark, bleak, gritty, and real, but often don’t fall strictly into that horror definition. The Bluest Eye for example. Difficult, confronting, right up my alley, and not at all horror, a book that some friends of mine have been unable to finish. Or Child of God, a more recent read that I swept through in three hours.
They don’t have to have hope for me to like the story, though I’m happiest when they do. I like the feeling of a book that is so close I can feel its breath. I like stories about life after loss. It seems like something we all should know about. I want to sit with people who suffer, or have suffered. A novel allows me to do it every week.
Why am I telling you all this?
I wanted to shed some insight into what you can expect from my curated reading lists and recommendations, to provide some relief for some readers who may really hate novels that explore such dark subjects, and to give insight to some others as to why this is a dark fiction newsletter, rather than a horror newsletter.
The first stories, indeed the birth of the novel, has dark origins. Witches, spirits, monsters, those are the shadows of early writings and storytelling. They exist to teach us something about our world, give us insight into what can happen if we indulge the darkest parts of our nature. They’re also used as forms of control, to keep society in line, make people afraid of the foreigner and the stranger among us. To make sure we stay in the boxes outlined for us and go no further.
This power has been overtaken and utilized by media and liars, politicians and agendas. Look at our cable news today. The only way to challenge the narratives that overwhelm us is to venture outside of our own comfort zones and belief systems, to see things from a different perspective.
How can we do that?
Can a utopian dreamworld offer us that rational view of humanity and society? I would argue absolutely not. In recent history, the obsession with Utopia has probably led to more death than any other besides religion (itself a utopian construct, only typically delayed until the afterlife).
I think we need to see both sides of our nature reflected, and I see the dark fiction space as the place to explore, to warn, to set off an alarm. To expose those inner demons and the tricks that they play on our minds. To explore taboo subjects and ask why they are off limits, and whether they should be.
In my journey out of fundamentalism and into whatever this stage is, I’ve become fiercely individual. I don’t know if I’ve ever valued finding things out for myself more than now. I refuse to go along with one group ideology, especially ones I feel pulled toward, and see danger in every system that does.
Of course that’s no way to run a country, a business, a church. That’s the luxury given someone like me as opposed to a leader of anything. For every example of corruption, there are probably ten more that argue for cooperation and community. But within those greater webs of connection, there must be room for the dissenter, the canary in the coal mine, warning of collapse if extreme care is not taken. A light to shine on the dark places. For me, these dark stories are the kindling that lights the fire that lights my way.
What about you? Do you read dark fiction? Why do you like it? If not, why not? How do you push yourself to see the world from a different angle?
For me, the darker side of things has always been a way to help me deal with grief. Losing several family members early on in life left an impact on me, and in some ways I never really came back from it. Dark fiction, and a healthy interest in the macabre in general, kind of lets me make peace with it.
Living as an expat, scouring bookstores in Mexico, opened up my reading world. Thrift store books, mostly discarded for being in English—I gobbled up on the cheap. It’s like having an English speaking friend when there aren’t many around.
What I appreciate about dark fiction writers are the occasional non-fiction offerings, including blogs, and newsletters. ‘On Writing’ by Stephen King is brilliant. Reveals multi-dimensionality, and a look into the creative process. Much like you mentioned with your YouTube viewing—it opens up a lot of unexplored corridors as a reader.
Cheers!
-William