I Want You, I Want You So Bad AKA Books I Want To Read (or want to read more of)

The amount of variety in horror right now is absolutely staggering, and I personally think it's the best time to be a horror fan. However, there are a few things I want to read so badly that I haven't found, or don't think there's nearly enough of.

1. Cosmic Horror on the Prairie

Generally when I think of the landscape of Cosmic Horror I think of cold and gloomy seashores, and it makes sense considering tentacles are also a key feature. But what I really want is some prairie style cosmic horror. I've spent most of my life on the high desert/prairie and it feels like there's more sky than land making you feel tiny and insignificant. Couple that with crazy high winds and the constant feeling of being exposed, and it's the perfect setting for some creepy shit to go down.

2. Non Eurocentric Folk Horror

I love me some pagan cults and their creepy deities as much as anyone else--folk horror is one of my favorite subgenres--but...it does seem overwhelmingly white. I'd love to see more folk horror featuring other cultures. There's literally an entire planet full of cool, and often creepy, folk tales to draw inspiration from. I would love to see folk horror be a bit less....pale, ya know?

3. Trailer Park Haunting

 I get it, beautiful old Victorian mansions are creepy and likely have a dark secret or two, but doesn't that just feel too easy? Maybe someone will mix it up and toss some ghosts into an old farmhouse or something, but the protagonists are almost always a white, middle class family. Have you ever lived in a trailer park? Shit gets weird, things go down, and I've never lived in one that didn't have its fair share of kooks. What I'm saying is a trailer park would be an amazing location for a good ol' haunting. It wouldn't be haunted by some bourgeois ghost, and the ghost wouldn't be terrorizing the same bland family. Poor people have to be resourceful, and for many they're fighting to survive almost everyday so let's give that ghost a run for it's money! (10/10 would also gladly take a trailer park slasher--basically just show me more working class horror in general please!)

4. Theater/Dance Horror

There are theater and dance focused movies and books out there, and really great ones, but I want more. It's full of possibilities and gorgeous imagery yet it feels like such a sparse niche and I don't understand?? I do feel like this lends itself better to film than literature, but still, all the different approaches one could take gets my nerves buzzing and fingertips itching and I want it all!

5. POC Centered Westerns

Whether they're classic westerns, weird westerns, or horror westerns I want more of them, and I want them centered around the people that actually dominated the wild west as we think of it--and it's nowhere near as white as most media portrays it. Most of the real cowboys were black or from Central and South America, Chinese immigrants played a huge part in building the American West, and it's believed that the Lone Ranger was inspired by an African-American lawman named Bass Reeves, so give me a little less John Wayne and a little more Michael B. Jordan please and thank you.

6. Low Tech Scifi/Horror

This craving is 100% because of AETHERCHRIST by Kirk Jones. Most of the time when genre fiction decides to get techy, it's usually something more advanced, and the horror comes from it having some unexpected effect because we are getting ToO aDvAnCeD. I get it, and it weirds me out too, but Jones' creepy take on what is now essentially obsolete technology was amazing and I want more of those vibes.

7. Mommy Cult

I was never that girl that was into babies, they freaked me out. I never changed a diaper in my life until my son was born. So when I got pregnant I found myself browsing parenting message boards and joining mommy Facebook groups to try and prepare myself, and dear god, there is a weird culty subculture there that I can't believe hasn't been tapped into yet (that I know of). I mean eating placentas, a loud pro-disease faction, and out of control entitlement and harsh judgement? It's fucking weird and scary and a goddamn cult.

8. Female Focused Coming of Age Horror

It's out there, but we need more. First of all, just being a (cis or trans) female is a horror story on it's own, second of all, why do so many horror authors seem to think female friendship is either catty backstabbing or talking about boys and clothes? Girl friendship is an intense and complex thing, but at the same time, girls are just as weird, goofy, and gross as boys so stop making girls so fucking boring. THE RUST MAIDENS by Gwendolyn Kite and THE WORSE IS YET TO COME by S.P. Miskowski are both great examples of young girls coming of age and their friendships, so now I just need it to become a full blown trend that will hopefully lead to at least one 800 page epic about a girl gang coming of age and fighting evil.

These are just a few of the things my brain frequently circle back to and screams "I WANT"! Do you have any recommendations for more books and movies that would satisfy the cravings? What stories do you want to see? Let me know!