Steve Thomas: Becky, welcome back to Circulating Ideas.
Becky Spratford: Thank you, Steve. It’s always fun to be on this podcast.
Steve Thomas: I went back to prepare for this interview, and if I’m counting correctly, this is your ninth appearance on the podcast over the past 13, 14 years. I think that number 10, I think I have to give you like steak knives or something. A toaster. I’m not sure.
Becky Spratford: A toaster sounds appropriate. Yeah. There used to be a website at like the Worst Ways to Die or the Weirdest Ways to Die in a Mystery Novel, and there was the one, it was called like Toaster in the Tub.
Steve Thomas: So you are obviously, you wrote a book about it, you’re deeply immersed in the horror genre. You’ve been, this is the part where I embarrass you by telling you all the great things that you do. You’ve been writing your RA for All, and RA for All’s little sister Horror, blogs for more than 15 years. You write a horror column for Library Journal. You served on the jury for the Shirley Jackson Awards. You’re the first ever Librarian Guest of Honor at the Horror Writers Association, you help organize Librarians Day at their conference. You’re the current secretary to the Horror Writers Association. You’re the founder of the Summer Scares Program.
And of course, I could probably go on and on, but mostly we wanna talk about this book. When I was thinking about it, you know the first question that I’m sure every interviewer was is, “Oh, why do you love horror, Becky?” ‘Cause it’s called Why I Love Horror. But I’m not gonna ask that because go read all the other interviews or listen to them with you because I’m sure most of them asked you that because it’s a natural question to ask. But I was wondering if I can flip it around and what are the parts of the horror genre that you don’t love? Just personally even? Not even like the genre itself has problems, but like, what do you not like about it? Or there are tropes that are overused or whatever.
Becky Spratford: Oh, you’re flipping the script here, Steve. I love it. Well, first of all, the main thing, and I’m gonna flip it back on you, the main thing I don’t love about horror is the reputation it has the larger literary world. And I really wanna talk about that for a minute because one of the things, and this is like the fourth or fifth podcast on my tour here, so the book’s already out and I have time to actually have talked to readers.
I love the love the book is getting in the horror community. That’s great. I’m excited. People who love the authors in the book are running out to buy it. People who love the genre are saying things to me like, “This is the book. Now I can give to all my family who think there’s something wrong with me because I like horror and I can show them.” And all that’s been great and I’m so thankful for that support.
But here’s the thing I’m starting to get feedback on. “Oh my gosh, I don’t like horror. I read this book because I saw it on a table at Barnes & Noble or somebody who was actually a family friend of ours. These are really good writers. I am learning so much. I had no idea this was out there.” I love those comments, but I hate that that is the first instinct. But good news, that was the entire reason I wrote the book to showcase the genre through its current voices, right? Because I got a lot of, “You don’t have Stephen King in this book!” I’m like, “No, it’s on purpose!” I’m trying to showcase what horror is right now. It starts with Brian Keene, who’s the beginning of the genre of this generation, and he is friends with Stephen King. He has the book out right now that’s on the bestseller list, the End of the World as We Know It: Stories from The Stand with Christopher Golden. And then it’s Stephen Graham Jones at the bottom.
We have other bestsellers in between, like Grady Hendrix and Paul Tremblay people, everyone knows people on the bestseller list. Rachel Harrison, I like to call it Brian Keene and Stephen Graham Jones are the bread and everyone else is the sandwich. I still get that though all the time. “Oh, well it’s horror, but it’s really good.” The Reformatory by Tananarive Due is a great book. It happens to be horror. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is an amazing masterpiece. It happens to also be horror. Those things are not exclusive. So what I hate most about horror right now is not about the genre, it’s about the way the world looks at it, which is still mind-boggling ’cause movies like Sinners are considered a masterpiece of all movies and it’s a horror movie.
But to really answer your question, this is the thing we talk about all the time, and we’re talking about appeal of horror. Everybody who likes horror and even those who don’t a lot like you, Steve, but you still read it every year, which I love has the things they like and don’t like. There’s nothing wrong with that. What scares people and what they find chilling and unsettling is different for every person, and for some people something is too much. One of the biggest things we see in a great example is Sadie Hartmann, who’s known as Mother Horror, who wrote the introduction to my book, she is not the biggest fan, she always says, of human monsters because it’s too chilling to her. It’s too real. She prefers the supernatural. And a lot of people say that, the supernatural, because then there’s this level of fantasy there that separates it from real world horrors. So that’s something to be said.
So extreme horror like that Eric LaRocca writes, which I find awesome, it’s unsettling, it’s chilling, it reveals truths. It is in your face intensely. Serious. Some people cannot read it. It’s gross. It’s disgusting. I have no problem with that. I just think everybody has to set their own limits. So for me, I am not a huge fan, here’s the thing, I don’t like bad endings. I talk about this all the time. Like Hailey Piper, I always tell her, you have the best endings. And she’s like, “I am so appreciative that you appreciate that” – she’s also in the book – “because I work so hard on the ending.” So what I don’t like about horror is an author who just writes a great book and then at the ending runs out of ideas. That really bothers me.
And the second thing, which is sort of related to that is details. One of the things I love about Stephen Graham Jones is his books have a lot of details, but he has this cadence. Once you start reading his books, it takes a little to get into, but once you get into his writing cadence, and if you want an example and you haven’t tried em yet, you read his essay in my book, he does that cadence. You can feel him telling you the story. Every detail, even in my essay, every detail in his books matter, but you don’t have to remember them because he finds a way to bring them back, make them part of the story. You’re like, “That’s why you did that!” I think the perfect example, if you wanna experience this in his most accessible recent book, I Was a Teenage Slasher. There’s a peanut allergy, which is mentioned at the beginning and becomes extremely important throughout the entire book, and it is brilliant. But authors who put in tons of details. In their horror books and they put in all this setting or all these little things, and then they never come back to them. Ugh. That’s a pet peeve to me too.
Among all those accolades you listed, someone told me recently, I am the number one professional reviewer of horror in the country. I get paid. So like people who don’t get paid, I think might do more, but I counted, last year I did 67 books between Booklist and Library Journal. I think I’m on track to do more this year, even with my two month break I’m in right now from reviewing. You wouldn’t know it though ’cause the October issue of book list has like five or six reviews, but those were written two months ago. So I read a lot of books and it takes a lot to get a star for me. There are my friends of mine who I love who I don’t give a star because the book doesn’t live up to what I think. But those are two things that I’m very strict about as a iterate critic, the ending and the details coming together to make it a good reading experience.
Steve Thomas: So you’ve written three other books or three editions of the same book, A Reader’s Advisory Guide to Horror, which is basically a textbook for librarians, but this book, why I Love Horror is not that. So before we get too deep into it, tell me what this book is.
Becky Spratford: Yeah, thank you. And I talk about that in my essay in the book, which is called “Why Ask? Why I Do Not Answer, ‘Why I Love Horror,'” because that’s important. But yes, you’re right. I’ve been talking about it on lots and lots of podcasts, and you can put the link to my tour, which will have a link to this podcast and others.
But this book is meant to show the world why the most popular horror writers love horror. But it started as an exercise for librarians. So on my blog, the evil’s twin sister blog RA for All: Horror every October, which will be starting like right after this podcast comes out, every October I do 31 Days of Horror, as well as the regular RA training blog RA for All. I go every single day for 31 days on RA for All: Horror, and for some reason I’m still doing it this year, even though I’ll be on book tour. One of the features that grew out of that as I was writing the second edition of my book, Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror, which was almost a complete rewrite of the first edition, I realized I needed to start sharing more with librarians about horror to provide updates to the book. And so somewhere between that and the third edition, I started “Why I Love Horror” on the blog and what it was and is ’cause I still have people coming on this year, including a bunch of people who are readalike authors in Why I Love Horror, I ask authors to give me 1500 words or less on “why I love horror.” I tell them, your audience are library workers because library workers still, even though horror is more popular, it’s still counted among one of the genres they’re most scared of. Romance is one too. Even if they like it, they’re worried about helping readers.
And I think it’s because for both of those, those books are about emotions. They’re about how they make you feel, and it’s really hard to match emotions. So I started this to give people an example. So I told the authors, you are writing to library workers. Most of them don’t like horror. They use this essay both to see an example patron who likes horror because these are people who write it, see an example of someone who loves horror and why they love it. Also, you’re writing this to the library workers so they can learn about you. So please promote yourself. It’s invite only. You can’t just email me and be like, “I wanna have a “Why I Love Horror.” I have a reason for it. This year I’m featuring Creature Publications, which is a growing woman-owned small press. I have people I invited, including the person who won the Bram Stoker for novel this year, Gwendolyn Kiste, and the person who won poetry. So I have a reason and a message behind it, and they’ve been super popular. Every year I get so much good feedback from the authors, from the readers.
So I had the idea, and it was 2023 around like November, December, and I was like, “I really should make this a book. This needs to be a book. How do I do this?” And so I actually reached out to Sadie Hartmann, who’s written a few books about horror that are great. One, she won the Bram Stoker Award for 101 Horror Books to Read Before You’re Murdered, and it’s fantastic. I said, “Do I need an agent?” And she’s like, “Becky, it is a lot to do a book. You totally need an agent.” So I reached out to Cynthia Pelayo, who’s in the book, who is a friend of mine and her agent, Lane Heymont. I called him and he was adorable. He’s like, “Becky, I’ve wanted you to call me for years. I’m not allowed to call people,” which is great to know that he is totally trustworthy. I told him what the idea was.
But ahead of time before I even had an agent, I talked to a bunch of these authors. I’m gonna give them credit forever for this. All 18 of these people in this book said yes before I even had a book deal. I said, “Would you wanna do this?” Now in this case, it was 2,000-4,000 words. I wanted it to be more, but once we sold the book to Saga, to Joe Monti, to Simon & Schuster, he suggested that range and only two people went over by a couple words, John Langan and Grady Hendrix. Everyone else really hit the targets easily. I didn’t want too much, and I wanted them to focus. Again, no guardrails. Do what you want however you want. A lot of these show how they write as well. I specifically think Nuzo Onoh and John Langan are really great examples of reading them. It’s exactly how they write. And I would say Rachel Harrison as well. If you wanna try those authors out, this is how they write.
Steve Thomas: And this is different from the one on your blog, right? Because the blog one, you said “target librarians,” this one is not.
Becky Spratford: That’s a great point, Steve. Thank you for keeping me on track.
The whole point of this book then was to take “Why I Love Horror” out of the library sphere and bring it to the people because horror is getting so popular. And Joe Monti from Saga and I have been doing this like parallel rise through the genre of uplifting it together and he was so excited to buy the book. They don’t do nonfiction. This is their first nonfiction in this imprint. To push this same agenda that we’ve been doing together, really this big push since 2019, 2020 of work.
I start in my essay talking about what reader’s advisory is, why these people should care, that I’m the one that edited this book. Just the fact that these authors did this for me is enough. I mean, they were paid, but it was wonderful that they all said yes and trusted me with some really raw emotions. The idea is that I’m presenting this now to the world, sort of library approved, and I talk about how like you need to really appreciate the work your library’s doing. It’s a place where you can go. There’s a lot of us who do this. We ask why people like books all the time, you know? And I explained what reader’s advisory is very quickly ’cause I don’t wanna bore them. We could talk about it forever, but I don’t wanna bore them.
And then for each essay I was like, I’m not giving up the chance to librarian this thing. For each essay I give a introduction. Who the person is, talk about who they are, why you should care. And then I do second paragraph in this essay. I talk about what they do, give it like a little tagline. So for example, in this essay, “Due continues the theme of the last two entries as she contemplates her experiences as a Black woman and child of parents who fought in the Civil rights movement and how she came to understand that all her work is not only inextricably linked to the Black experience, but also how it is responsible for her success, a realization that came with the help of Jordan Peele, yes, but also an important in conversation with Anne Rice.” And so that gives you a little reason why you wanna read it. And then I always end with, “Readers new to Tananarive Due,” or whatever the author is, “should start with…” us librarians know about this, “The Reformatory. For those who want to try similar authors,” in this case, “I suggest N. K. Jemisin,” and I do that for every author. So I place them in the world of horror. I place them within the book, and then I tell you where to go.
So there are 18 authors, there are 18 “start with” titles, and there are 18 readalikes. So I am exploding your to-be-read pile by 36 authors, which is why, again, it’s for the general public, but it’s also for you at the library. You just put the book out. It has a cover that says Why I Love Horror. Get two copies, one to be your display copy for all of your horror displays, and one for people to check out. You can use this for anyone who likes horror. If you ask them, “Well, who’s somebody you like?” And if they mention one of the authors in this book, great, but if they don’t, you can easily find an author they like, who’s a readalike for one of these authors. And you can then send them with other books using just the opening paragraphs to help you. So I’m trying to make sure I help everybody find their place in the genre.
Steve Thomas: And that’s good too, because sometimes, like if somebody came up to you and said, “I love Stephen King” as librarians, that doesn’t end the conversation because saying you like Stephen King, like, “Well, which part of Stephen King do you like? You like the big fat books. Do you like the supernatural part?”
Becky Spratford: My current go-to read alike for Stephen King right now is Chuck Wendig, who is not in the book but blurbed it. And I do have to say something about that. I really went out of my way to make sure I not only represented a breadth of how people write but also made sure that it was diverse in every way. So it’s 50% women, 50% men. I have people of all identities in the book.
So just tell a fun story, Daniel Kraus, who gave me an amazing blurb on the back of the book, it’s like a huge long blurb and it’s so kind. And to be fair, I used to work with him at Booklist. He actually was one of the first people to do “Why I Love Horror” in a version that wasn’t called “Why I Love Horror.” But when I was doing the book, I was like, “Dan, I’m writing this book. I just need you to know now. I’m not gonna ask you. For two reasons: one, you are sort of bigger than horror. You write other things, you’re not just in horror. And two, I have too many white dudes” and he was like, “Fine with me.” And same with Chuck Wendig, New York Times bestselling author. I thought for libraries, Josh Malerman was a better choice because although he is a New York Times bestseller as well, he writes about horror as well. So I had him come in.
Steve Thomas: I read Whalefall that Daniel Kraus wrote.
Becky Spratford: Which is kind of science fiction, that’s gonna be a huge movie too.
Steve Thomas: Yeah. So you’ve listed a bunch of those authors that you have in the book and like Stephen Graham Jones, Alma Katsu, Grady Hendrix, Cynthia Pelayo. Those are the ones in the books that you have recommended to me before, and I read their books. I haven’t read anything by any of the other authors before. You mentioned briefly you had the bread and then you have the middle. So how did you decide that narrative flow, because a book of essays like this, you want it to be like an album or you’re following it and the order makes sense. So how did you decide that order?
Becky Spratford: Yeah, it’s a mix tape. And when I was talking to Joe Monti, my editor before, as they were coming in, he’s like, now are you gonna need help making the order? I said, I don’t think so. I’ll let you know. And he said, I wanna defer to you sometimes with these things I help a lot. But I couldn’t make a decision till they came in.
I was hoping Brian Keene would be first. And, and Joe and I had discussed that, that he’s the foundation that this entire book stands on. And I was hoping Stephen would be last. Good news, Stephen turned in his essay second. He turned it in like a week after we got the book deal, which happens to be with his editor, and it was perfect because he does “Why Horror?” And it’s because, because, because little paragraphs and I call it sort of the final argument to the jury about why you should love horror. So that was easy. I got that and Brian turned his in pretty early, but I know Brian really well. He’s like my big brother figure in my life, and I knew he was gonna do that. So when Stephen’s came in, I just felt it as like a sigh of relief.
But a shout out to Clay McLeod Chapman, who sent me his essay before we had a book deal. So he wins for first essay. And so I got his and I was like, “Oh, I don’t know what’s gonna happen. Like what are people gonna write about?” And so as they started to come in, I was seeing some trends, but I read them and I sent back any quick thoughts to the authors immediately. But then I had to really sit after they were all in and I had done quick thoughts and they sent back, like I asked Alma to make the ending a little more political, which she did, and I asked Tananarive to strengthen up that conversation with Anne Rice part and a few other things. And then I had to really sit with them so I had to read them again. It’s funny ’cause I don’t think I’ve read them all the essays through since like last January. I’ve reread some of them and sections for edits, but not in order.
So I have a poster. I’m at my desk now talking to you. I know there’s no visual, but I have a poster of the original cover of the Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. It’s like a canvas that I can see when I’m working and on it. I had post-it notes basically. So I had Brian at the beginning and I had everyone’s names and I had like one or two words to remind myself about the essay, and I was moving them around in pieces. So it really was like a puzzle I was putting together because in the beginning there’s a lot of essays where people write a lot about their childhood, and then we switched to people that are really bringing in current events or history, like real things.
Josh Malerman wrote a great story. I call it a story ’cause I don’t think it happened exactly. It’s an essay about a conversation he had on a train with someone sort of arguing why horror matters. I don’t disagree that he is had this conversation before. I have not asked him. But like it’s perfect because trains are so great in horror. They’re liminal space, they’re used all the time because they’re somewhere and nowhere all at once. And so I put that in the middle. And then Paul Trembley had his daughter draw a picture, so I put that in the middle.
And then we start the trauma section, which I give a little trigger warning for with Grady Hendrix’s essay. When I received Grady’s essay, which was fairly early also in the process, I literally stopped the presses, like, you all have to read Grady’s essay. It is amazing. It’s not horror, but it’s horrifying. And I will not ever ask him if it is true or not. I’m gonna tell you that everyone wants me to. You can ask him. I refuse to. I know most of it is true. I don’t know if the ending is true or his conclusions at the ending, but he knew that had to be in the middle. And so then there were people with some trauma, some funnier trauma, and some serious trauma. Grady’s is a little more, you know, it has a little bit of dark humor.
Then we went to the people who really had to come to terms with the fact that they were horror writers. Victor LaValle’s essay is one that I hope people don’t skip. It is called “Horror Saved My Life.” Literally, how it saved him, how he wouldn’t be who he is as a human without coming to terms with the fact that yes, I am a writer who cares about words, I see myself as literary, but it is horror where I’m gonna write. And the books we have gotten because of his realization that have just changed so many people’s lives in the horror genre and outside of the horror genre. The students he’s teaching at Columbia right now to be writers, I’m just so thankful for it. But there’s some real trauma there.
And then we end with David Demchuk, who shares a story from folklore of why he loves horror and then Stephen’s, but it took a lot of moving around like who’s gonna go where, what order? I don’t want people to get bored. Nothing’s boring, but if you have too much of the same in a row, people will skip. The good news is nobody wrote much more than 4,000 words, so you can dip in and out as well.
Steve Thomas: I really should read it in order ’cause I did not, I was skipping around just kind of reading. I started with the authors that I’ve read before just to kind of get that, and then I was kind of jumping around and I don’t think I’ve read all of them, but I was just jumping around and reading various ones and I know like music nerds are like, “You have to listen to an album in order, man,” maybe I just wanna hear “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” whatever.
Becky Spratford: So I will say, my husband’s one of those music nerds. I’m a music nerd as well, but I am of the ilk, and I love music, is that the order you need in your life at that moment is the order you should do, because it’s just like books. Whatever you need, whatever you want, whatever’s good for you. Artists create things and I feel this way with my book. I did take lots of time putting it in order, but I have no problem if you just wanna pick and choose whatever works for you. Once I’ve written it, once someone’s made an album, whatever it is, it’s not theirs anymore. Go forth and read.
Steve Thomas: Was there any common thread that you noticed in all of the essays, or did it vary enough that there’s not like one thread there?
Becky Spratford: One common thread is definitely, and it’s not in every single essay, but it’s in a bunch, it’s in or implied in all, is anxiety. These all are people with anxiety and horror helped them for various reasons, helped them calm the fears in their real world, which I know is true as well. For me, I love reading horror because it’s worse than whatever my brain is doing or whatever’s out there.
If you talk to horror authors, it’s a very common theme because horror at its essence, yes, it wants to make you feel real emotions of, like, disgust, but it’s also all about empathy. In my training class I do about horror for libraries, I have a link to an article that is about how horror is one of the most empathetic genres. It’s a great place to read to learn empathy, but anxiety, anxiety is a huge thing, and all of them write about it in one way or another. It’s like I said, some explicitly, some a little less explicitly. So, like, explicitly, Clay McLeod Chapman talks about growing up and his mother and her different boyfriends and how the horror brought him calm. Jennifer McMahon has a short essay about how she was growing up with her mom being mentally ill and an alcoholic, and her grandmother raising her, but also realizing she didn’t have a word for gay, but she realized she was different than the other little girls and the monsters around her brought her so much happiness and calm and just soothed a lot of her own fears, to the funny, when Stephen Graham Jones talks about, “Hey, horror is because we were all chicken nuggets of the savannah at one time.” So that’s the theme. Totally the theme. It did not surprise me, but I hope people can see that I purposely didn’t pull it out. I think I do implicitly when I talk about what their essays are about, but it’s there.
Steve Thomas: Well, is there anything that did surprise you? Did you expect to get the kind of essays that you got in? Did you get like, “Oh wow, I didn’t expect this level of vulnerability?”
Becky Spratford: Yes, the level of vulnerability some people gave me. I think Grady’s is the most important one to mention for this. He never writes about his dad. He always writes about his mom. He writes about his sisters. He has lots of strong women in his books. It’s interesting, and I know him personally, but strong men are absent from all his books. And there’s a reason because his father really wasn’t part of his life the entire time. Most people just like kind of left me alone and just said, “I’ll get you the essay.” He kept checking in like, “I think I’m gonna write about this. Is that okay?” And they were all very detached. Like, “I’m gonna write about such-and-such movies and what they meant to me. I’m gonna write about these books and what they meant to me.” I’m like, “Grady, whatever you wanna do, you literally have a Bram Stoker award for nonfiction. You are fine.” and then didn’t say anything for a while and turned in this essay I literally wrote him back. I was like, “Grady, I can never thank you enough for doing this.” Like, he’s a person that really does not, which is for his own good, his true self on online. I happen to know him. I never betray the trust of that, but he gave something of himself.
Cynthia Pelayo is soon after him and she writes about the severe trauma that her mother put her through, but how they’ve grown now and learned and looking back and understanding why her mother beat her and all these things. She read from that at my book release and it was making me cry actually. Yeah, so that didn’t surprise me ’cause I knew that about her. But Grady’s, I was very honored that he shared that, and a lot of people did that. A lot of people shared things that they haven’t shared anywhere before, and I am very thankful for that and very glad that I gave them a chance to do that.
Steve Thomas: I know with Grady in particular, you introduced me to him at one of the conferences, and I talked to him on the podcast briefly, and I could, I feel this a lot with authors. You could feel that, lovely conversation, lovely guy, but you could feel there’s like, it’s like you said, online, he’s a different person. He’s got that shield around him. “I’m being Public Grady right now,” and you know, again, Public Grady is a lovely person, but you can tell there’s like, “I’m not gonna give everything to you,” and so the fact that he would give something this deep is a testament to you, I think, the trust in you that he would do that.
Becky Spratford: And I do know that and I really appreciate it, and you’re absolutely right. But remember Grady Hendrix was number two on the best seller list this year, only beaten by Rebecca Yarros, so he has a level of fame that I forget about. But even me, Steve, I mean, I know we’re friends outside of this, but I joke, I’m like, “I’m gonna go be Becky now.” I have done this for years as well. I give presentations when I’m at conferences. I can never let my guard down because I don’t really know who’s there, and that’s fine. And I understand that by putting myself out there. So I feel that for all of them as well.
And that is also why I only asked people I knew personally, so that I could make sure I wasn’t asking too much of them because this was a big ask and I didn’t wanna get surface essays. And I really didn’t. I really didn’t. No one gave me something surface. I was worried I’d get a few, not any specific person, but I didn’t, and I was so thankful.
Steve Thomas: On that blurb on the back of the book from Daniel Kraus, he calls you the horror genre’s Van Helsing, “the truest of all monster hunters, but one who wants to share her monsters and not destroy them,” and I think that’s how you were talking earlier about how you wanna share the genre with the community, with the library community in particular because that’s where you live. But now with this book, obviously expanding it out to everybody.
Early on, like, was there a book that clicked like, “Oh, I love this. Or a movie where like, oh yeah, this is like my thing!”
Becky Spratford: Because I’m a reader’s advisor, I analyze my own personal reading taste like I get other library workers to do. So you go back and you see signs. I’ve been talking a lot about podcasts and you can go listen to ’em about Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein, and how I was obsessed with that and how going back, I actually went through it on another podcast where we went through and we’re like, this is dark. You could see how horror begins. But that was because I went back and assessed, okay.
Let’s talk about my first memory. My dad read Stephen King and I just like tried it and I was like, this is kind of boring. I mean, I’m a girl in the late eighties. It’s not really for me, like there’s not a lot for girls in those books. I’m like right in the center of Gen X, but I did go to the bookstore at the mall in New Jersey because I’m a book nerd in New Jersey. This is what we do. In the Flemington Mall, I would go and I know I moved there before I was in high school, so I was like 11 or 12. This is very important. My family did not limit what we read. They did not care. You’re reading a book. Awesome. I hope that for everyone out there, but I know it’s not true. So I found the occult section ’cause people go to the mall ’cause it’s New Jersey and you just go. And I did not get to buy a book every time I went to the library all the time. Shout out to the Hunterdon County Library.
So one day I was like in the occult section and I saw Flowers in the Attic by VC Andrews and go look it up. If you dunno what Flowers in the Attic is, it’s not appropriate technically, probably for a 11 or 12-year-old.
But I’ve been talking about this for probably like seven or eight years. Like that was my beginning to realize I liked these illicit dark things and they were so intriguing. But it was those beautiful covers, speaking of Paperbacks from Hell, right? And that occult section. So one time, and they were like $3.99 back then. One time we were there, my dad’s like, “I’m gonna get a book. Do you wanna get a book today? As long as it’s paperback.” And I grabbed it. He’s like, great. I got that and then I went to the library and got the other ones and I got tired of ’em fairly quickly.
But I found that a cult section, which wasn’t at the library. So when I was at the mall, as I got older, I got left at the mall. I would go to the occult section and write down names of authors, and then I would go look for them in the library. So I started to feel that around the same time I was starting, like most kids in the late eighties and early nineties, watching horror VHS tapes on the weekends, especially in the summertime. We lived in a vacation community in the Poconos. So, talk about feral kids on bikes like in a Stephen King novel. We were literally like, that happened. For those of you who don’t know, that actually happened in the late eighties.
The dads, yes, it was very gendered. The dads did not come to the weekends. The moms had all these kids, and I was the oldest. She dropped me off with my bike at swim team in the morning and she said, “Come home by eight o’clock.” So I was feral kid on a bike and then we would spend our nights during the week at different kids’ houses, watching movies. Again, the moms were like, “Let’s just get them all together and not worry about them ’cause we have enough going on without our husbands around to help.” And we would watch a lot of horror movies. We had a VHS store nearby a store that it actually, there was the local market that had videotapes because it was a small town. We watched all of them, but Nightmare on Elm Street that just captivated me in a way that Halloween didn’t, that Hellraiser didn’t. We watched all of those and then going back and looking at it, it’s because it’s the most supernatural of all of them because Freddy is in your nightmares. He’s not real. He’s from the dream world. I watched Nightmare in Elm Street over and over again. I could not get enough of it, and then it just sort of grew from there. I went to high school and then college. I didn’t have a lot of time to read for fun, but a book that a lot of people now consider a modern horror classic is Beloved by Toni Morrison, and I got to experience that book in both high school and college. Books like that always intrigued me. I loved Edgar Allan Poe, I loved Nathaniel Hawthorne. All the things that were just dark and atmospheric and slightly out of the ordinary were things I loved. It just kept growing.
And as I got into libraries and I was going through library school, then I got asked to guest teach at Dominican University, the science fiction and fantasy horror class, a couple semesters in a row, which then turned into “ALA is doing a book, would you do it?” I said, “Oh, just on horror? I guess.” So then it turned into me teaching the reader’s advisory course with Joyce Sarricks, and then I wrote one edition with someone, then I did a second edition alone. I started reviewing. It was just a natural progression that. I should have seen coming that day when I was like 12 at the B Dalton or Waldenbooks with that copy of Flowers in the Attic. But of course, like most things you don’t know when something major happens in your life till you look back.
While we’re recording this, I just got a text from Paul Tremblay, “WBUR in Boston, just ran local horror author Paul Tremblay and his daughter Emma, on what horror means to them.” This is one of the things I love about this book as well, because Paul and his daughter share a love of four. She drew pictures. That was a funny story too about him. It’s just capturing so many people in their emotions. He said to me, I would like my daughter to draw pictures to go along with mine. Do we need to ask permission? I said, no, just do it. You’re Paul Tremblay. And so then he did it and he is like, are you sure? I’m like, I’m sure. And then I asked, and they’re like, he’s Paul Tremblay. Yes, it’s fine. But what he loved was he got contacted immediately right before the book came out. They were like, we want you and your daughter to talk about it. So thinking about me and like my story, this is bringing together families as well. Maybe not with Flowers in the Attic, but you know, I turned out fine.
Steve Thomas: Well, hey, that book brings families together in a very disturbing way.
Becky Spratford: Oh my gosh. You’re right, Steve. But you know what? I turned out just fine.
Steve Thomas: So we talked about your various roles and you’re juggling all this stuff. You’ve got this tour now, so you’re even busier than usual, and you’re an officer in the Horror Writers Association. Do those roles influence each other?
Becky Spratford: Sure. Yeah. So I’m laughing because I’m the secretary of the Horror Writers Association, which means I’m like the most organized author really, because they’re always like “Becky, you’re so organized!” I’m like, “Stop, writers. I literally have a master’s degree in it. You’re okay.” But one of the things with the secretary is all my years managing patrons and managing a staff at the library of helped. I’m in charge of members. I oversee membership, which means I oversee bad member behavior and police it in a way. There’s a lot into that. I’m not gonna go into all of it, but that’s one of my jobs. And so I have to be sort of like the bad cop for all of the people that just are doing anti-harassment violations and all these other things, and all my years in the library have really helped with that. I’ll just put it that way. So that is hard. But also I’m being a manager as well, and working at the library, I’m very good at telling people, “Hey, knock it off. You can’t do this. If you keep doing it, we’re gonna have more serious consequences.” And they’re like, “Okay, sorry.”
I also am the co-chair of the Library Committee. Now that’s very helpful because with the structure of the Horror Writers Association, think about it like your local state library association. It’s the same idea or ALA, it’s a membership organization. People can join. Anyone listening to this can join. There is a level for librarians. I am at the professional level, the active level as a professional writer because with my second book, I qualified, but I qualified every year because of the amount I write for Booklist and Library Journal for money, so I can be on the board. Anyone can join the Horror Writers Association at different levels. We even let fans join. But we always have the board members, whoever the board members are, are a liaison to our committees as well, just like I’ve been on the Illinois Library Association Board, just so there’s someone they can check in with. As the co-chair with Conrad Stump of the Library Committee, we have to turn in a monthly report where we have all our people that are doing things for us, and then the board sees all the monthly reports. It’s normally that they’re not on those committees or like chairing those communities, but they might be a liaison. In this case, I can do double duty that way by both being a liaison and doing it, so that overlaps a little.
It does make it easier for things like Summer Scares. Summer scares is something that we do with the Horror Writers Association, and it actually was started by me and Grady Hendrix and an author named JG Faherty. It’s now run by myself and Conrad Stump. We have a committee, committee consists of some of our sponsors, so it’s the Horror Writers, Booklist, iRead, which is a national reading program run by the Illinois Library Association, NoveList, and Book Riot, yeah. So on the committee, every year we have a group of horror loving librarians and specialists. So Kelly Jensen from Book Riot is our YA specialist. Julie Smith from Booklist is our middle grade specialist. And then there’s a few other of us, Yaika Sabat from Novelist and Carolyn Ciesla, who’s a academic librarian and who loves horror and reviews for Booklist. So anyway, we have all these people and we pick books.
But every year we have a celebrity spokesperson, and that celebrity spokesperson helps keep things fresh. Our celebrity spokesperson for 2026 is already working with us to pick books, but it will be announced on Halloween. It is a New York Times bestselling author, and it is someone in my book, I will leave it at that. But we’ve had Stephen Graham Jones, Clay McLeod Chapman as spokespeople, Sylvia Moreno-Garcia, like, all these people. Many of the authors in my book have been Summer Scares authors, as well as lesser known authors.
What happens is we pick and we announce it in February, librarian-vetted titles, three adult books, three a books, and three middle grade books. We do a series of webinars to introduce the authors with book list for free. So this is the idea then that we promote these authors and they will show up at your library virtually for free all summer that they’re active. And as we say, once a Summer Scares author, always a Summer Scares author. They pop up all the time and do things for us. It’s wonderful. We provide this service for free because the horror writers are a 501(c)(3), the Horror Writers Association, and part of our mission is to promote horror in schools and libraries.
We’ve had amazing feedback from libraries. We’ve had amazing work from our authors, but this is why we’re working with the board. I have to vet the authors with the board. We have to make sure that they’re okay to represent the Horror Writers Association without us there. So we do have a list of authors that we probably can’t trust or that we’re wary about.
We also don’t pick anyone who’s won the Stoker Award. Now, some of them have won it after, like we had Daniel Kraus as a spokesperson, and then that year he won for middle grade. So if you win the Stoker Award, we’re not gonna put you on, ’cause you already have had sort of the spotlight. So it’s been good.
We were adding books this year that lost, and all those titles are from two to ten years old. So you have them on your shelves. We check libraries to make sure they’re there, or if they’re not, are they easy to get are we try to make sure all the books in each category are not only inclusive, but also that they represent the breadth of the genre. So like we have Eric LaRocca, but we also had Caitlin Starling and we had James Han Mattson. So they were like a range. That’s for the adult ones and for kids. We always have a funny goofy book, a little bit scarier book, and we tend to try to have graphic novels somewhere as well.
People love to read horror all year long. And summertime is great because people have more reading time and it’s also a great way because we include adults, it’s a great way to get you reading along with your kid. And because we’re part of iRead, which is one of the two large national reading programs, we’re able to get our titles out ’cause they conclude our titles with their promotion out to everyone, and it makes us international because iRead is also the official reading program of the Department of Defense. They have not cut it, and so every base across the world, this is their reading program. So we’ve had authors virtually call in with people in other countries who are serving our country and their families, and it’s been really rewarding to bring it to international.
We’re starting next year, we’re gonna be doing official things with the New York Public Library. We’ve already done official things with Chicago Public Library, Philadelphia’s done stuff, but New York Public Library is gonna become next year like an official partner, which we’re really excited about.
Steve Thomas: That’s very cool. Do you see opportunities for, not for you to put together necessarily, but for other genres to do this type of thing? Why I Love Romance? Why I Love Science Fiction? Or is it sort of uniquely suited because of the emotional nature of the genre?
Becky Spratford: Yeah, that’s a great question. When I talk about genres of the emotion in my training, I talk about romance and horror back to back, and I say, you’ll understand why I group them together when you hear me talk about it. I think romance could do it. It wouldn’t work so well for science fiction because it’s already considered an elevated genre. It’s considered a thinking genre. I think you need this, as I said at the beginning, for genres that people see as lower which is stupid, right? Because romance, oh my goodness, romance is so popular. More people read romance, the people buy the books, they are the best book talkers, by the way. And people go, “Why do people love romance? They know what’s gonna happen at the end.” I’m like, “And that’s why they read it!” But that’s why they’re amazing authors because they have to work harder than most authors because you know how it’s gonna end. So if you know how it’s gonna end, they better do a good job to keep you reading.
Steve Thomas: It’s about the journey, not the end.
Becky Spratford: Exactly. But people who aren’t readers don’t understand that. Readers who really read everything and anything. It’s like saying like, the Thursday Murder Club, “Well, we know they’re gonna solve it at the end.” Well, you’re reading for those characters and their development over time.
So anyway, I think for romance it would work really well. And it’s funny: Why I Love Romance. I don’t think, people could try it, but I don’t think it would work as well. It wouldn’t be such a touchstone. Going back to what I said earlier, that’s the best part about this book, it’s that connection between the genre diehards and the genre curious. And that’s what I was trying to do. I wanted to hook the people who love horror, and then I thought about the whole idea of them giving it to their family who don’t like horror, to let them see why they like it, and then introduce it to people who are like, “Oh. I’ve heard about this. I heard about Stephen Graham Jones. I’ve heard about Grady Hendrix. I saw one of the movies from Paul Tremblay’s book, Tananarive Due, oh, she does stuff with Jordan Peele.” All these things to get people in and oh my gosh, they’re gonna learn that Alma Katsu was an NSA and CIA agent. Yes, she was. They’re gonna learn about John Langan is your favorite horror author’s favorite horror author. “Who’s that? Oh my gosh. Look at his amazing story. He’s totally afraid of getting caught in quicksand!” And other things, all the Gen X people are like, I love that essay.
Steve Thomas: Yeah, I was gonna say, everybody who’s in Gen X is afraid of getting caught in quicksand.
Becky Spratford: I know.
Steve Thomas: It’s everywhere!
Becky Spratford: I know! It’s everywhere! And he wrote about it and it was great. So, yes, I think it would be great, but I also think it needs, unfortunately, a genre that the mainstream looks down on, that the people who love it understand that it is great place to have stories. And by the way, I’m gonna say it out loud: reading anything is great. There is nothing that is lower. Read whatever you want, however you want. Audio, graphic novel, it’s all reading and anything you read is awesome. End of discussion.
Steve Thomas: You mentioned Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Yeah. Go find that book in a horror section in any bookstore or library. No, it’s in either fiction, maybe literary fiction or something, but it never, ever will be that.
Becky Spratford: I’m worried that Stephen Graham Jones is gonna be moving too. You already see The Reformatory by Tananarive Due not in the horror sections. It’s a hundred percent a horror story. And just like the Buffalo Hunter Hunter, they’re both horror stories that are real horror. For her, it’s the Jim Crow South and these reformatory schools for boys and for him, it’s manifest destiny. When you are native, that is a horror story. And they’re more complicated than that. That’s my short version. But I’m afraid as they win more awards and they get on more best lists that they’re gonna leave. Now both of them will fight to the death, pun intended, to stay in horror. I hate that you get elevated out.
Steve Thomas: So to wrap up, I didn’t mention earlier when I was talking about all the other stuff that you did, but you gave the keynote speech at StokerCon and I wanted to ask about that theory that you brought up there, which is basically, how do horror authors get involved in the fight for intellectual freedom, and do you think there’s anything in particular about horror authors that they can help in that fight?
Becky Spratford: I’m gonna tell you two things. One, yes, but two, I’ve actually given a version of that speech now in other places to shame everyone who thinks they loves books and reading. But specifically for that horror writer’s keynote, and I’m sure you’ll link to it, I talked to ‘them about, “Look, you consider yourself horror authors. You know what scares people. The scariest thing out there is book banning and the assault on our free speech and intellectual freedom.” I gave this speech in June and I was doom and gloom, and I was not wrong, but I said, “How many of you have gone to your library board and spoken out in your community as a writer and then specifically as a horror writer?” And I gave them the talking points like, “This is horrific. Go to your libraries and your schools before there’s a problem.”
I gave them links to United for Libraries, and this podcast is coming out right before Banned Books week starts. I gave them the resources and I said, “Go and speak out as someone who writes, as someone who uses the library, as somebody who believes in reading and as someone who understands the real monsters out there.”
Steve Thomas: All right. Well, Becky, thank you so much for coming on for a ninth time. And again, the book is Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Literature, and you can find it at wherever you get books. And Becky won’t care if you just check it out from the library.
Becky Spratford: And Libby now too! Audio and ebook!
Steve Thomas: Is it on Libby? Oh, well, there you go. Do you have an audio book version?
Becky Spratford: I do. They gave me all these. Narrators. People always ask, did you pick them? I had like a right to say no. But these people were very talented. They give you like all the awards they’ve won, all the training they’ve had, and you can listen to them. I haven’t heard it yet. I have a link. I just haven’t downloaded it.
But it’s six authors. One woman reads everything I wrote, so my essay and all my introductions, and then the other two women do the women authors, and then there’s three men split up to the men so that they’re never back to back, which I think is great. I’m gonna listen. My library has it on both, but I think it’s checked out right now.
Steve Thomas: That’s great. Well check that out too if you’re more of an audiobook person. But thanks again for coming on Becky, and we will figure out the next time to come on for number 10, I guess.
Becky Spratford: Oh boy. I think I have to send you a present for that one.
I love this podcast and I talk about it all the time on my blog as well. Steve is doing great work for the library world to give us so many different ideas and things that are happening. I cannot keep up with every type of library and every type of issue, so thank you for doing that, and thanks for having me on again.
Steve Thomas: You’re welcome. Have a great day.
Circulating Ideas 