Visions of a Dark Horizon

I love all kinds of horror, but for the longest time one of my favorite sub-genres has been circus horror. From ‘Killer Klowns from Outer Space’ to ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’ to the old show ‘Carnivale’, there is so much potential for horror under the big top. Most recently Ben Farthing wrote ‘I Found a Circus Tent in the Woods Behind my House’ which I absolutely loved. That’s why editing this new anthology is such a dream project for me.

Wicked Shadow Press has asked me to be guest editor on ‘Circus of the Dead’, an anthology of circus themed horror, and of course I jumped at the chance. It is the first time I’ve been invited to be an editor and I’ll admit, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was getting myself into, but it has been a fun and educational journey so far.

The process right now is that authors are submitting their stories to Wicked Shadow Press via their Call for Submissions page, and I am going through and reading each one. I use a good screen reader to read each story to me, because it’s easy for us to skim over sections, miss words, etc… when reading, and I want to be sure I’m catching everything. Our brains have a way of glossing over issues or filling in the blanks as we read, but when it’s being read to me I find myself being able to focus a lot more. Plus I think it reduces eye strain – I’m going to have to do a lot of screen reading for this project, after all.

So what am I looking for? What do I want to see?

I’m looking for stories set in and around a circus, the ‘big top’, a traveling carnival, things like that. Especially if it’s transient, with tents that go up overnight and are gone just as quickly – there’s a special kind of fear around that. Pull me into the rich lives of the carnival folk, their happiness and their horror. Shine a light on the darker corners of the freak show, tell the tale of the trapeze family with a terrifying past.

Make it original – everyone has read a story of the killer clown, but I want writers to put their own spin on it, get into the mind of the clown, or the lion tamer, or the fortune teller who is not what she seems to be… And most importantly, make it dark, make it scary, make it tragic. The book is called ‘Circus of the Dead’ so I’m looking for blood and fear on top of great writing and unique ideas. It doesn’t have to be gory – atmosphere means a lot. I’ve read a submission that had me grinding my teeth with anxiety without a drop of blood spilled – that one’s on the top of my list.

What do I NOT want to see?

I don’t want a story that has nothing to do with a circus, or a story that had a tacked-on paragraph like ‘On the day after Michelle went to the circus, tragedy struck…’ because it’s really obvious when writers do that. I want to smell the sawdust and grease paint in these stories, not just a passing notion or brief mention. And as I said above, I’m looking for scary so I’m not really interested in the tragic love story or circus drama unless it really pulls off a twist, the ill fated love of the lion tamer and the clown who trains the poodles, because he’s a cat person and she’s a werewolf.

I’ll be on this part of the process for probably the whole month of March, but I’ll update here on the progress for the anthology. From what I’m seeing with the submissions coming in, I’m going to have a hard time thinning it down to the required word count for the book, I know I’m going to hate having to cut some of these stories, but that’s the job of the editor so I may have to make some difficult choices. We’ll see hot it goes.