One thing I love about horror is that it can slip into just about any other genre and sit comfortably there. Romance? Sci-fi? Fantasy? There’s horror romance, sci-fi horror, and dark fantasy galore. Historical fiction, too, has been infiltrated by horror to powerful effect, bringing us Alma Katsu’s The Hunger, The Deep, and The Fervor; Dan Simmons’ The Terror; Victor LaValle’s Lone Women; Christopher Buehlman’s Between Two Fires; and so many more. Horror is not just for the modern world, and it feels like historical horror is really having its heyday—beyond just the predictable 80s nostalgia, taking us instead hundreds or even thousands of years into the past.
After all, there is so much to mine from history, when the world was less traveled, when the wilderness was much vaster and more impenetrable, when it was so easy to become lost.
This month’s book pick takes us back in time and into the woods, to discover the strange and fantastical things within. Grab a blanket to ward off the winter air rattling through the trees and let’s get a drink to keep us warm while we read.
Cheers!
In the House in the Dark of the Woods
In the House in the Dark of the Woods by Laird Hunt is a dark, atmospheric, eerie fairy tale of a colonial-era housewife who gets lost in the woods, and the curious characters she encounters there—from Eliza, a woman with unearthly powers who offers shelter, to Captain Jane who ferries lost souls through the trees. It’s a strange, creeping tale that demands your attention and crawls under the skin as it slowly unravels the dark secrets of the women who inhabit this surreal land, and the potentially malevolent force that binds them there. Gorgeously written and hypnotic, this is the perfect read for those who want to sink into a mysterious world two steps from our own.
I wish I had read this book sooner, as it’s been on my TBR for a while. Laird Hunt was kind enough to provide a beautiful blurb for my novel It Will Just Be Us a few years ago: “Marvelously atmospheric, emphatically suspenseful and beautifully written, Jo Kaplan’s It Will Just Be Us had my full attention from its deliciously creepy first page and kept frightening me straight through to the end.” I’m especially grateful for these words after reading Laird’s stunning novel, which is both emotive and cerebral, and one of the most intriguing books I’ve read of late.
Once upon a time there was and there wasn’t a woman who went to the woods.
Pairs best with…
Rattle Skull
For this month’s cocktail, I dug back into what early colonists would have been drinking around the time the novel is set. As it turns out, they were a boozy bunch, drinking an average of seven shots a day.
There was a lot of cider and beer fermented from locally grown fruits and grain, and while the word “cocktail” was not yet the parlance of the time, there were plenty mixed beverages to be found, particularly including—you guessed it—beer or cider. The Rattle Skull is a 300+-year-old beer cocktail blending the richness of porter or brown ale and aged rum with the brightness of lime and the sweetness of brown sugar, a drink that goes down so easily it promises a rattling skull the next day.
The mixture of elements is surprisingly delicious and very drinkable, taking an already good porter and elevating it in both taste and alcohol content. It turned out refreshing and bright, with a hint of sweet spice.
I used a vanilla porter, Bacardi Gold, and homemade brown sugar syrup (made from a ratio of 1:1 sugar and water). Alternative recipes suggest nut brown ale and brandy. The recipes I found also called for 1-2 or 3/4 oz lime juice, but I decided to just juice a whole lime, which amounts to about 1 oz, and it wasn’t too much citrus for me.
Ingredients
12 oz porter
1 1/2 oz gold rum
juice from one lime (about 3/4 - 1 oz)
1/2 oz brown sugar syrup
nutmeg
Directions
Add all ingredients in a beer mug.
Garnish with a dash of nutmeg.
Tips from a Writing Professor
When I teach creative writing, I stress the difference between realism and authenticity.
Books do not necessarily need to be realistic. Realism is a genre of fiction that focuses exclusively on events could happen in our reality, sticking close to realistic details. But not all genres aim to be realistic. Consider surrealism, fabulism, fantasy… the list goes on. We can’t judge such works of fiction based on how “realistic” they are.
But we can judge their authenticity.
Authenticity seems even more important in genres of fiction that stray from realism, because it’s that much more important for the reader to buy into the characters’ reactions, behavior, and dialogue as they grapple with something that may be impossible for us to experience in real life.
Something that has often frustrated me about historical movies (especially in the horror genre) is how inauthentic the voices often sound. Speaking modern-day British English isn’t the same thing as speaking like a Puritan from the 1600s. This inauthenticity takes me out of the story and makes it that much harder for me to suspend my disbelief.
When it comes to film, Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse) is a quintessential voice in historical horror. What I so admire about Eggers’ The Witch is how much research he conducted in order to get the voices right. Taking place in the 1600s, the characters live a rough life on the edge of the woods—where within lives a witch who may snatch up their children. Initially, it can be a bit difficult to fully get into the cadence and language used in the film, but once you sink into it, the authenticity makes the situation seem that much more terrifying because it really feels like we’re getting a glimpse into the actual lives of these people.
It’s hard to capture historically accurate voices in a way that both feels authentic and doesn’t alienate the reader/viewer, and this was something I thought about a lot when writing When the Night Bells Ring.
As I worked my way into Lavinia Cain’s voice for the novel, I focused my research not just on the basics of the time period—what would people have been eating or wearing, what chores would she have done, what could be found in a town at the time—but also, and maybe more importantly, on the voices of women. In particular, the style with which a woman might have written in a diary, since Lavinia’s story is conveyed to us through her diary entries. So, while it was interesting learning details that helped me to fill out the world, it was especially interesting to read actual diaries of frontierswomen and get a feel for how they were writing, and then try to capture this kind of voice in Lavinia’s diary as she tries to survive life in a mining town in the late 1800s out in the Nevada desert.
Writing always requires some kind of research, whether people realize it or not. Going out into the world and observing things around you is research. Scrolling through a neighborhood in Google Street View is research. Listening to conversations while waiting for the train is research. Reading historical documents, or scientific information, or other texts is research. And while all of this can help get the facts right, we should remember that research can also help us achieve a sense of authenticity in our work that allows readers to fully immerse themselves in the world we’ve created.
Happy writing!
Writing Update
Not much has been happening with the holidays, but an imprint of a big 5 publisher told me my manuscript was too graphic for them so… thanks for the compliment, I guess?
About Me
Jo Kaplan is the author of the horror novels It Will Just Be Us and When the Night Bells Ring. Her short stories have appeared in Fireside Quarterly, Black Static, Nightmare Magazine, Vastarien, Horror Library, Nightscript, and a variety of award-nominated anthologies (sometimes as Joanna Parypinski). Find her at jo-kaplan.com.