I’ve been thinking a lot lately about independent horror, not just books but also movies and television. As many of you know, I’ve been filling my brain to the brim with horror for most of my life. I started with TV: The Night Stalker, The Car, Killdozer, The Horror at 37,000 Feet, as well as Tobe Hooper’s amazing version of Salem’s Lot. My reading binge began with DC Comics’ House of Mystery and The Witching Hour, and, of course, my brother’s ratty but well-read EC Comics. As I moved through time, I began to read thousands of horror and sci-fi novels as a teenager and young adult (and later as an older adult), and then on to thousands upon thousands of movies since the advent of home video in the ’80s.
What fascinates me these days is how much the landscape has changed in both publishing and motion pictures. YouTube has democratised filmmaking in much the same way Amazon democratised self-publishing. After all, horror can come from anywhere. It doesn’t have to originate with one of the major film studios or one of the select authors traditional publishing has chosen to put in front of readers. The traditional gates are still there, of course, but creators don’t necessarily have to stand outside waiting for someone to let them through anymore. Sometimes you can simply walk around them, as I have done, and as many other independent creators also do. Make something you believe in, put it in front of the right people, and let them decide.
I mentioned the French horror film MadS in my last newsletter, and I’m still fascinated by the sheer nerve it took to make. The entire eighty-nine-minute movie was filmed in a single continuous take. They performed and filmed the whole thing five times, and the fifth run is the movie we see. Think about that for a moment. Everyone involved, actors, camera crew, sound, effects, makeup, drivers, and everybody else, had to keep that machine running from beginning to end. There was no editor waiting to rescue a scene later. On top of all that, the acting is terrific. The characters initially seem like fairly ordinary young people out for a wild party night, and then the drugs, infection, and madness begin taking hold, and everything goes completely off the rails. By the final section, the performance is absolutely ferocious. It’s that kind of commitment that I love about independent horror. Nobody looked at the idea and said it was too audacious or ambitious. They just went and did it.
Curry Barker is another terrific example. His movie, Obsession, was made independently before being picked up by Hollywood. But to get to that point, he’d been working for years on his YouTube channel. Kane Parsons is a slightly different example, but an equally fascinating one. He created a series of Backrooms videos on his computer and released them on YouTube as a teenager. After building an enormous audience around it, the traditional film industry eventually came looking for him. Sometimes you don’t need to walk around the gates because the people behind them eventually come looking for you.
I suppose that’s why this subject resonates with me personally. I walked around the gates too. I put my books directly in front of readers like you and let them decide whether they wanted them. More than 125,000 books later, I think they’ve made their feelings fairly clear. It’s why I still like the thought: if you write it, they shall come. I believed in my stories enough to put them into the world without waiting for somebody else to tell me I was allowed. Longtime readers also know I’ve been trying for years to get CLAW onto a screen somewhere, especially with that close call I had with Hollywood a couple of years back. With all that said, there is something else I would like to tell you right now, but I am not able to speak about it quite yet, so I will hold off until next month. In the meantime, keep your fingers crossed, just like me.
This brings me to BESIEGED. No finger crossing required here. It has taken me eight months to get this far, and I know some of you have been waiting patiently. The last few years have made my writing time feel more precious than ever, but I work on moving things forward each and every day. I’m now dangerously close to 105,000 words and even closer to the end of the novel. If things keep moving the way they are, by the time I write to you again in October, I should either be finished with the first draft or somewhere near writing the epilogue. To keep you somewhat in the loop, Lively has discovered that things aren’t quite as bad as he thought—they’re actually much, much worse. Meanwhile, Minerva has been having revelation upon revelation deep within the Slaughtered Sheep. Both storylines are now reaching the apex of their arcs as the novel moves toward what I hope will be a suitably tumultuous, noisy, and terrifying conclusion.
I know I recently said my emails would be a little bit shorter, but it depends on how many words I have in my brain at the moment, I suppose. Spoiler alert: I have a lot. But no matter how many words, there’s always room for a Nibbler and Fry poster to end things on a humorous note. This month, Nibbler shares some of his life with you, and it’s quite a show. Fry is also in the poster, but you have to look very closely.
With everything else out of the way, it’s time for our audiobook draws. This month, our two lucky winners are bonnie_s_davis@XXXXXX.net and beaulieu1@XXXXXX.ca. Congratulations to you both, and I hope you enjoy your awesome audiobooks narrated by the one and only Alex Knox. You can check the list to see if you won in the past but missed the email right here: https://katieberry.ca/audiobook-winners/. Not a subscriber? Not a problem! You can join the newsletter for your chance to win one of two monthly audiobooks right here: https://katieberry.ca/become-a-katie-berry-books-insider-and-win/
Well, this is where I will leave you until next month. As I mentioned, I hope to have some more substantial news. Until then, keep those fingers crossed, and your horror independent.
Good health and great reads,
-Katie B