The Haunting of Hill House - Opinion: The Only Good TV Horror Show Ever?

Yeah, I said it.

So, it's Halloween, and there's this series that's been released on Netflix (handily in time for the season), and everyone's talking about it, and I want to chip in.

When I was young, and pretty much all through my life really, I would get pretty excited about the announcement of a new horror series, thinking that this would be the one to meet my expectations. It would be exciting, it would be intriguing, and most importantly, it would consistently scare the life out of me. It never ever happened. All horror tv has, to some extent, been a let-down. Let's make our way to Hill House, then, see what it has in store for us.

Ultra quick recap: Shirley Jackson's original novel is a masterpiece (if you write horror, then you better read it if you haven't already - it's an excellent lesson in how to create creeping dread). The 1963 film version freaked me out when I was 11, and all because of great acting, excellent camerawork, and knock-out sound design. The 1999 version was a disgrace.

Now we've got Mike Flanagan bringing us a ten episode limited series. The feller's got good form. 'Absentia' was the first of his films I saw, and while the pace was a bit too slow for me, some parts were genuinely creepy, and showed him to be a writer/director to watch. 'Oculus' was great, and then he pulled a real surprise out of the bag: he directed the sequel to 'Ouija' which was a terrible movie. His sequel was great. No kidding. Towards the end it really ramps up the crazy. 2017 saw him film the unfilmable 'Gerald's Game' and somehow made it great (and with a gruesome scene that even I found hard to watch). So, hopes were high.

I won't say a lot about the storyline. You should discover it for yourself. If you've read the original novel, expect large amounts of significant changes. This is a remix on a grand scale. You will recognise many of the elements, but there's been a lot of expansion. You get to know every member of the family. The story spans twenty years or so, we move around a lot on the timeline, and you will eventually get all the pieces of the puzzle, just not necessarily in the right order. It's great fun tracking the timelines.

The acting almost across the board is excellent - didn't really dig the guy playing Steve (a shame as it's a smashing name) as he seemed to be trying too hard and couldn't keep up with the rest. Luke and Theodora are stand-outs. This is due in large part to the writing. It really is a cut above pretty much anything else out there, whatever the genre.

There's a particularly stunning episode halfway through which is basically made up of about three or four long-running shots. It's so well-done, I really don't think I'll forget it for quite some time. So much happens in the background as the camera roams around a funeral parlour and then in the house itself. It really adds to the variety displayed across all ten episodes, where you never quite know where the story will go next or how it will be presented.

Unfortunately, the final extended episode was a scare-free zone for me, which was a disappointment. It's still a good ending, however - the story is wrapped up effectively, the characters reach the ends of their arcs as they should, I can't fault the writing there. There was simply a lack of frightening elements, a let-down given how much had come before it.

Look at this place. I mean, would you ever

go in there? Ever?

Here it is, then: Hill House works. I never would have believed that a near-ten hour haunted house movie (which is what this basically is) could work, but it does. And there are a LOT of spooks to mess with your head. (At the time of writing, I heard that there are even two dozen ghosts hidden in the background of the episodes, so there's plenty here for easter egg hunters to enjoy.)

The Haunting of Hill House is the only REAL horror series out there.

To back up my claim (which is only an opinion (but it's the right one)), let me restate my key point: a horror show, a really good horror show, should be scary. It should be frightening. It should instill a sensation of dread. I mean that at some point (and fairly regularly) I should feel fear. I went through a few lists of 'best horror tv series ever', so let's take a few of these examples and rip them to bits (kidding, most of these shows are good, but not good at what I'm looking for in this blog).

The Walking Dead. Many would claim this to be the biggest and best horror series ever made. I would not. It's a gory drama show. Also, a lot of time (far, far too much of the time) it's a boring gory drama show. And I mean dull. The first season, the short one, was great. Enjoyed it. However, it got dull real quick. Season 4 (or 5, can't remember), the one after they leave the prison behind (that was dull as well), is possibly the worst of all. Episode after episode, the characters found a safe place, then the place wasn't safe, then they ran away. It happened again and again. There's just not enough in the world they've created for the writers to explore.
Thing is, and this is the main issue here, zombies aren't scary. I have yet to see a scary zombie movie. They're gross and horrible, but it's really only a case of waiting for the next gore scene. How many ways can we tear someone apart and gobble them up? This is coming from someone who was a real champion of gruesome special effects, by the way.

American Horror Story. Not scary at all. Ever. It's a freakshow. It's only interested in trying to be shocking. Sorry, but I really can't stand this series. It always strikes me as being written by a bunch of teenagers too busy dreaming up rude and disgusting things to put on camera without actually considering the important things like story and character. I've made it through two seasons - Coven, and... actually, no, that's the only one I got to the end of. I always have to give up after a few episodes. The latest season, got to halfway through episode two. Can't be bothered to waste my life on crap.

Stranger Things. Not horror, no scares. Move along.

Tales From the Crypt. Too tame to be remotely scary. And in all honesty, a lot of the episodes now are barely watchable. Even at the time the production value on this series was pretty low. Age has given this a battering.

The Terror. An okay series with great production values, but the scares just don't work for me. It's another one that relies on a bit of gore to get a reaction. The book is better, but not particularly scary. It's depressing, and involving, and atmospheric, and you feel bad for the characters, but that's not the same thing as frightening.

Castle Rock. Now, I've only watched four episodes of this, and I'm curious to see how it turns out, so I don't want to be overly judgemental yet. However, again there's no scares. It's just odd. It seems to be going for a Twin Peaks vibe which doesn't really gel with the notion that this is meant to be a series encompassing all things Stephen King. King does not write in a Twin Peaks style. And it might just be me, but I find the characters hard to connect with. I'm simply not that bothered about what happens to any of them.

To clarify, I'm not saying all of the series above are bad. Not at all. Apart from American Horror Story. I'd rather bash nails into my elbows than watch that again. But none of them are the horror series I was hoping for when young. I wanted something to scare me, to rattle my bones, to quake my boots. Gore is not horror. It's just gross. The writer, the director, they need to do real work in order to make the horror effective. We have to care about the characters, and we have to believe they are in genuine danger, because if we believe in the characters we will feel the danger as our own. The Haunting of Hill House nails it.

Laters.

Ghosts and Ghoulies and Trunks, Oh My!

Hey.

Gonna wheel out an old classic blog for one more Halloween haunt.

I wrote this horror book a couple of years before A Graveyard Visible, see. It's called Macadamian Pliers. Haunted house, a man of strange angles, trouble in a new town.  It's got everything you need for Halloween. (Hint, hint. So does 'A Graveyard Visible'. Graveyards, revenants, abandoned mansions, what more do you want?) And one of the kids in it, Jack, he's crazy-mad about ghosts and ghoulies and stuff. He's got a mondo-huge collection of mad spooky stories, new stuff and his own takes on the classics, and he sticks them all up on this website he shares with Cherry and Frank Raine - ihatemacadamianpliers.weebly.com So, to get into the mood for that most creepy time of the year, I'm going to let him take over my blog.

Okay, I'm handing over to Jack now. The kid tells a mean story. Strap in, and good luck.

The Trunk

I'll start with this bad ass story that messed my skull up for days. I got a trunk full of comics and couldn't go near them, which was a real pain.

'There was this old house that was abandoned and up for sale and these college kids were always messing around in there, having parties and stuff. There was usually about seven or eight of them, and they decided to play hide and seek. The game went on for a total age, and the college kids got bored before they finished they game, and did off. It wasn't until the next day that they realised one of them, a girl, was missing. They phoned her and called round her house and she never turned up. She was totally gone.
So it's five months after all this happened, and this family bought the house and moved in. They had a ton of stuff so it took an age, and there was a bunch of old furniture and stuff there already, but the mom wanted to keep it because she thought it was cool, the weird way oldies do. In the kid's bedroom was this properly old trunk, and that was where he wanted to stick his toys, but the lock on it was stuck. The dad sorted that out with a hammer, and they opened the trunk, and in there was the rotted body of the missing girl, all stinking and putrid, and her mouth was open in a big wide O, and her nails were all broken where she'd tried to get out.
Sick!
That ain't all of it.
The police took the body, and the family threw the trunk out. The kid was a total sycolo.. psykol... mental mess, but eventually he had to sleep in his room on his own. He was there in the dark, on his own, and BOOM! There was a loud thud, like something real heavy landing on the floor. He was so scared he couldn't shout for his mom. He could hardly bring himself to turn on the light... but when he did, it was there! The trunk had come back. He was actually kinda glad to see it coz he could stick all his toys and junk in there, so he got out of bed and went to the trunk and opened it up, and a rotting corpse leapt out and dragged him in!
When the trunk was eventually searched it was completely empty. Years later another family moved in and got rid of the trunk, but the next night when their little girl went to bed it reappeared, and do you know why? Because the thing in the trunk was hungry again, and it was time for another meal...'

Bloody Mary

I'm gonna tell this one the way my sister tells it, because her version kicks ass.

'It was, like, a century ago, before most of these houses were here. There was a woman who lived by the lake, the one past where the school is, and she lived there alone with her little daughter. The kid ended up drowning in the lake and this woman, Mary, she couldn’t cope with the grief. Eventually it drove her nuts, properly insane. People stopped going anywhere near the place. She could be heard screaming and wailing at all hours of the day, and would be seen beating herself with stones. The madness made Mary blame herself for her daughter’s death. Then the townsfolk’s children started going missing, but only the girls. It didn’t take long for the blame to land on Mary. The mob went out to her home, not to challenge her with their accusations, but to exact their revenge. They had already decided she was guilty.
Another girl disappeared after Mary was dead. She was spotted being carried away in the arms of a man headed for the lake. He was a labourer who’d moved into the area a few months earlier, and he admitted responsibility for all the disappearances. Mary’s daughter was his first victim.
And that’s what makes for a restless spirit. She waits for any opportunity to take her revenge on this town for what they did to her. It’s said that she can be summoned by chanting in the mirror…
You have to say Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, who killed your daughter Bloody Mary? They say she doesn’t just appear, though. They say she tries to smash her way through.'

Skinned Tom

This one is awesome.

'Every town has a lover's lane, one of those places where guys and chicks drive to and then sit there with soppy-ass music playing while they get it on, wasting their time. There's one town, though, where you should totally avoid the lover's lane, and I'll tell you why. Tom took this married chick there every friday night, been doing it for months. This one night they were there, kissing and whatever, when the car door was pulled open, and the chick's husband was right there and he had a knife and he was properly angry! He stabbed his wife, then dragged Tom out of the car, and said to Tom 'I told you before, didn't I? I told you if I caught you again I'd skin you alive!'
The married chick didn't die, and while she was in hospital she told the police what had gone down. As it turns out, the husband handed himself over to the police, owning up to his crimes. But Tom wasn't found. They searched and searched, but the only thing they found was a few splashes of blood near the car.
People started going missing after that. Couples would go up to lover's lane and never return. Their car would be found abandoned, and covered in bloody hand-prints. There's only ever been one survivor of these attacks, and she wound up in the loony bin, but before she got locked up she told a doctor what she saw. It was a bloody skeleton, and it was holding a knife, and it told her it needed her skin because it didn't have any of it's own.
Nobody goes up there anymore.'

Massive thanks to my man Jack for all the entertainment. We might have to invite him back again before the big night itself, Halloween...
If you liked Jack's tall tales, you might just get a kick out of the horror story he finds himself a part of. Macadamian Pliers

myBook.to/AGraveyardVisible

Laters.

Getting bad reviews? I've got the answer.

Myself and my novel, 'A Graveyard Visible', had... well, we had a falling out. We've been on an extended break. I couldn't take it any longer. The abuse, the emotional turmoil. I had to get away. Somehow it had all turned so sour.

But now I'm back. And I've got some things to say...
(This is an update to an earlier post regarding reviews. Take it as proof that I haven't thrown myself off a bridge.)

This damn book!

Are you like me?

Have you written a book? Perhaps it's just come out or is coming soon. Either way, you've got your reviews trickling in, and all of a sudden a couple of absolute howlers land. It's bad. Real bad. The world has caved in. It's the end of the road for your precious novel. You worked so hard. So many hours. So many words. So many edits.

What do you do?

You want to give up, that's the first and most overwhelming sensation that hits you. It's beyond hope. There's no point. Why bother promoting the bloody thing when everyone will see the terrible things being said by actual readers?

But wait. I've got the answer.

Be brave.

Seriously. Chin up, chest out, deep breath, and smile.

I wanted to give it all up. I looked at those reviews, then looked at my book and considered playing a game of Can I Throw This Pile of Crap Out Of My Bedroom Window and Over the Roof Opposite? No one will blame you for feeling like that. But... think of all those hours, and words, and edits. All that effort. All that belief. You have written a book! And - this is especially true if you have a publisher or some kind of external backing - you don't give up on belief.

I spent days wondering - Why bother? Then one day I finally got myself bothered. The book was out, no matter what.
So, chin up, chest out, deep breath, and type. I got to work. By the end of the day I had another 8 reviewers lined up. It seemed scary, it seemed risky, it seemed totally worth it.
It's been a real mixed bag, and it's so easy to focus on the bad reviews, on the negatives (really, really, really easy!!!). But there's good stuff in there as well, and when I give those positives the attention I've been giving to the negatives, I start to see my book in a different light. Here's some quotes - and I'll paste an equal amount of good and bad here, for the sake of balance (if not my sanity).
All review quotes taken from the fantastic Netgalley.

Way back at the beginning, all those years ago...

I really struggled to get through this book. The premise was good and similar in many ways to Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children which I loved, but I just couldn't follow parts of the story. I found the plot confusing and it was just missing something for me.

(This is fair enough, can't win 'em all.)

First of all: it was clear that this is not a happy story from the cover and blurb, and I was certainly not expecting sunshine and rainbows. But the level of constant hate, self-hate, bullying and just negative emotion was incredibly frustrating to read.

(Another one that's fair enough, it's down to personal taste. I didn't think it was that much about constant hate in the novel. But you know, I'm taking this stuff way, way better than I did a few months ago. Personal growth! Go me.)

Of course, we can’t all be Neil Gaiman, 

(Ouch. Just give it to me real and raw.)

An odd duck of a book. Every time I thought I knew where it was headed it changed directions on me.

(Ha ha! Odd duck. This pleases me.)

(Next snippet is one of those that gives me a real boost. Can't thank the reviewer enough.)

What looks like an odd, quirky mystical read on the surface unfolds into that and far more, like a dismantled creeping skeleton reassembling as it reanimates. Claustrophobic with much left to the reader's imagination and assumptions, Steve Conoboy's book pairs a steady dry-mouth dread of the supernatural with all too universal themes of childhood pains and fears.

(The next one was actually a three out of five star review, but I still really appreciate that they got this out of the novel.)

They were some supernatural and creepy things about this book and I loved that part of it. The story was a little sad, but I know all about losing a parent. I think this story was a little about dealing with the sadness that comes with that.

Whatever else I say about 'A Graveyard Visible', it definitely has it's own personality. It's incredibly individual. Some parts drag my reading and viewing history with them, but as a whole it is unique. I can look at the novel now and, from that angle at least, be happy with it. I honestly believe it would be difficult to find anything quite like it. That feels like quite the achievement, that after hundreds of hours of work, I've created something that is recognisable as mine.

Your book has its own voice too. It will sound like you. Friends and family who read it, they'll recognise you, it will have imprints of your personality all over it.

Reviews (real ones from real readers) can be bruising, but take heart from them! Don't focus on one single review, because there isn't only one view in the world. Everyone has their own. Take all the reviews as a whole. Give the positive as much attention as the negative - this is so very important! If you've got a lot of reviews and only one says a particular aspect is bad, then that can be ignored. Most reviews will be constructive. Take on board what they say, reflect on it, apply it as you see necessary. After all it's your writing.
And move on! Write the next thing. Learn from the constructive criticism, but make sure you keep your voice.

But you must write. Do it for the reason you did it in the first place: the love of it.

Laters.

A Graveyard Visible is out RIGHT NOW and RIGHT HERE

Is it okay to write two novels at once?

Back to writery stuff about writering.

I've gone back and forth about this question over the years. A long time ago I used to write two novels (unrelated) in parallel, but as none of those have ever seen the light of day, it seemed safe to assume that this was not the world's greatest writing technique. I enjoyed it and got plenty done... but you've never heard of Dog Dinner, have you? No. And yes, that is a bad title. What of it?

We all have our different writing styles, favourite places to be, our preferences regarding paper or word processor, which underpants we should have on. But, should you ever take on two projects at once?

For clarification, I'm not talking about the writing of a series of books all in one go. If you plan from the outset to do a trilogy or whatever, bang 'em all out from the outset, don't pause. I wrote a sequel to Macadamian Pliers, but only after writing a couple of other books first, and man was that a task, so difficult to pick the threads up (and if people think A Graveyard Visible is dark, I'd love to dish them up a slice of Mac 2). What I'm discussing here is two completely separate stories with no characters or settings in common.

The closest I've ever come in the last 5 or 6 years to writing two stories at once would be during the creation of my latest novel A Graveyard Visible, which is currently undergoing an incredibly interesting pre-release process of review gathering - that's code for 'the reviews I'm getting are all over the place'. Halfway through, I stopped writing it. Couldn't go any further. It was dead. Tens of thousands of words in, I buried it (only ever happened once before, with a pirate story called Shanty for the Soulless which I'm currently considering for revival). So, after a period of glumness (we writers a miserable bunch of bastards) I got stuck into a new novel. I was most of the way through that when A Graveyard Visible dug itself back out of its admittedly shallow grave (one of those big light-bulb moments came out of nowhere - you gotta love 'em) and I hammered on until the end.

This is what you want - 

a bloody big idea

Since all of those shenanigans, I've finished another novel called Ten Doors Down (about a girl who breaks her phone and has to take on an incredibly strange job in order to save for another), and started my current project, Polka. It's about pigs. Oh yeah, a city of them. A whole society of pigs, a complete world, and everything a world is made of. It's become way bigger than I expected. I'm usually pretty good at getting a novel wrapped up in 80k or under, but with Polka and his personal journey I'm sailing towards eighty thousand words pretty rapidly and the middle is nowhere in sight. Now, I think the realisation of that fact freaked me out. There's a lot of work to do, and everything has to remain consistent. Polka, the titular pig, has led a small life in the walled (and guarded) city when we meet him in the first chapter, but when there's a dramatic change at the library where he works and a rebellious friend returns, his whole world flips and he starts to see what's on the other side. It's far more political than anything else I've written. It's about the disconnect between politicians and the people they govern. It's about loss, how large the pain can feel and yet how small it can seem to the world around you. It's about personal empowerment. It's about what a drop can do to an ocean. In some respects, 'Polka' is almost a playground for me to grab hold of a lot of the issues that affect me, to turn them round and hold them up in new lights.

Two months ago, it slowed to a near-stop. Not a complete halt, mind you. There were still a few words trickling onto the page. This was not a catastrophe of A Graveyard Visible proportions. The story was still there, and I knew where I was heading (or at least a had a piece of the map). But the weight of it...

We writers are always looking 

for that ray of hope.

The usual stuff - a change of activity, leaving it alone for a day or two, going for a walk, trying a chapter from a new angle - wasn't really giving me the bump start I needed. The only thing for it was a holiday. Not merely a real-life trip away for me (although by all the known gods I love getting away somewhere new). I had to get myself off to a new world.

The sneakiest and peakiest sneak-peak

of Flip.

The new one's called Flip (this flipping is a lot more literal than Polka's series of revelations), and for now I won't say much more, other than there's humans, and magic, and monsters. Starting a new story is always brilliant, and even though I'd had a false start with this one back in NaNoWriMo, a second attempt at the start of February went very quickly indeed, and I got a lot done (for me, anyway) in a short space of time. Now, I had a bit of a concern here. Writing lots is great, but what if I just kept writing Flip, and Polka died? What if I couldn't go back? The thing is, I was writing again, the energy was back, and as soon as I returned to Polka, the pages started flowing again.

Now, if they were both set in similar human fantasy worlds, and both had magic, and both had horror elements, and both were from the same point of view, then I don't think this would be feasible. There would be bleed between the two pieces. There would be forgetfulness, there would be a stylistic blur, and it would simply become too difficult. However, the fact that Polka and Flip are so very different actually helps me bounce from one to the other. Flip may never be finished. But if it's only reason to exist is to help me get to the end of Polka, then I will be forever grateful.

To conclude, I think it's possible to pull off this two novels at once thing... but only if both stories are very different. There can be little-to-no cross-over in regards of character type, theme or, if possible, style. Otherwise, everything could blend together and you'll end up with two indistinct piles of mess.

The moral here? Go on holiday, real or imagined. It's good for you.

Laters.

P.S. A Graveyard Visible is out soon - April 27th 2018. The horror novel that reviewers love to love, or love to hate. Go pre-order it now. The dead won't wait much longer...