True Blood | Musings of the Monster Librarian

I know we just visited the topic of “where did all the boys as protagonists go” not that long ago but a piece I just read in The Mary Sue made me want to come back and look at it from another angle. The article, which is totally not about YA horror fiction, talks about three female protagonists of vampire media franchises from the 2000s, all of which are grounded in horror fiction tropes: Elena Gilbert of The Vampire Diaries (based on the YA series by L.J. Smith), Sookie Stackhouse of True Blood (based in the Southern Vampire Series by Charlaine Harris), and Bella Swan (from the YA series Twilight)

So you don’t have to read the entire thing, the essence of the article was that the author saw in all three of these characters that they were defined by their romantic relationships– that their stories wouldn’t have existed without their love interests. All three of these characters are caught up in (straight) romantic triangles (which I guess makes them more of romantic V’s)– and their role in triangles end up, for the most part, erasing the rest of their character, even though they are supposedly the protagonists,

The 2000s and early 2010s were a pretty good time for YA horror with boys as protagonists, though. Cirque du Freak by Darren Shan was very popular, and I know that here at Monster Librarian we read a lot of books where boys were, at the very least, point of view characters. Harry Potter drew a lot of those kids into a darker fantasy as well– the last book came out in 2007, just before my cousin turned eighteen. And in Harry Potter, there is a spark for change, because smart girls and passionate women save the day over and over, waiting for doofus teenage boys to get a clue about saving the world. And girls who grew up with Harry Potter noticed, and wanted the girls in their books to be the heroes (and villains) of their own stories. And thus we get Jane McKeene from Dread Nation, who is strong, smart, and commonsensical; murderous Nita from Only Ashes Remain; the troubled girls of Sawkill Girls who alternate between being victims, villains, and survivors.

I don’t know why so many men turned away from writing books with boys as protagonists. But what we’re seeing now is, I think, the product of women seeing themselves erased from the types of stories they grew up loving, and wanting to see not just themselves but also a growing diversity in the kinds of protagonists we see in YA novels (or any novels, or any writing). They are hashtagging #WeNeedDiverseBooks and #OwnVoices because additional voices, their voices, need to be heard. Fear is just part of girls and women’s daily lives, and I don’t think enough people realize quite how scary it can be.

But there’s a lot of fear to face in today’s world that is not exclusive to women and girls (hello, climate change, genocidal dictators, twisted social media policies, hate crimes, cyberbullying, school shootings). Who is writing the stories that resonate with boys today? Somebody needs to open their eyes past what they’ve seen of themselves so far. Yes, male characters have taken center stage for many years, but do we really want stories written in the past that make us cringe today to be the models we give those kids?

Let’s move forward with authors coming up with great stories that will showcase original characters and engage all kinds of readers. That’s our goal in libraries, right? It’s my goal, anyway. There are so many good books coming up, and I can’t wait to see what kids of vibrant writing lies ahead.

Well, we’ve reached the end of Monster Movie Month. If you’ve been following along, you have a lot of background information, resources, and recommendations for both movies and books at your fingertips, on topics from Asian ghosts to killer rats. So how do you use all this to get horror movies and fiction into the hands of likely readers? We asked Becky Spratford, author of The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Horror, Second Edition (reviewed here), which includes an entire chapter on marketing horror, to share her expertise, and she wrote us this guest post.

Marketing Horror All the Year Through

By Becky Spratford

One of the biggest questions I get from my fellow librarians is how they can best market their horror offerings throughout the year. Of course it is easy to get patrons to notice horror in October. Every other marketer in the world is priming the public for all things scary, so when people walk in the library, they are horror hungry zombies, looking for their next meal. We have to do little more than place the horror books within their line of sight, and patrons snatch up the books by the handful.

Ah, but the rest of the year we do not have the entirety of mass media working for us; we have to try just a little bit harder. But as daunting a task as it may seem, marketing horror to your patrons during the other 11 months of the year, is not as difficult as you might think. I have 2 easy ways you can seamlessly incorporate horror into your general work marketing books at your library.

First, let’s talk about traditional library displays. Most of you out there probably put up a big horror display in October. But why aren’t you doing it other times of the year? The most common answer is that you think your patrons aren’t thinking about horror outside of October. But in the last few years this is not necessarily true.

Let’s take the first 6 months of 2012 as an example. In April, we saw the release of The Cabin in the Woods, a terrific and popular haunted house movie. In May, there was the Johnny Depp vampire soap opera Dark Shadows and in June, the king of mash-ups, Seth Grahame-Smith helped to bring his bloody, smart, and amusing novel, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter to the screen. Each of those movie releases had their own marketing campaigns that resulted in buzz about them among the general public. For each, a small display could have easily been created.

You begin by putting up a graphic of the movie poster on regular 8 ½ by 11 paper (just do a Google image search for the movie) next to a handful of books. Then you grab some books that are connected with the movie. So for Cabin in the Woods, you could pull out some haunted house books, vampire books for Dark Shadows, and some comic horror novels for Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter. Displays do not need special shelving. Just put books out anyplace where you have space. For example, at the Berwyn Public Library, we put these small, current event displays up on our desk, on a top shelf that we keep clear to rotate with impromptu displays, and even on small side tables in our seating areas.

These current event displays not only show your patrons that you understand their interests, but they also make a trip to the library easier for them. Patrons are daunted by the large number of books on our shelves, so anything we can do to pull out good books for them, makes them less intimidated and more willing to browse. And, displays linked to current media darlings are a sure fire crowd pleaser.

But how do you choose the books? Here is where I can help. In my new book and on its companion website, I have a lot of lists that would help you to identify titles that you could highlight. I am even fine with you using my annotations, as long as you cite where they are from. In the book I have entire chapters on haunted houses, vampires, and comic horror that include long annotated lists of popular titles available at most public libraries. On the website, RA for All: Horror, I use tags on each post. You just need to choose a tag, like vampires, and all of the relevant posts come up. There are literally hundreds of options at your fingertips.

Another way you can work horror into your displays throughout the year is to simply include a few horror titles in the mix in your larger, more planned displays. For example, we have done displays featuring coming-of-age stories at our library. Since this is such a popular theme in novels, on the display we included books from every genre. There was literary fiction, science fiction, fantasy, suspense, and horror, just to name a few. As I argue in my new book, a coming-of-age theme is huge in all horror. In most horror novels, the protagonist has to overcome his own shortcomings, face his inner demons, and grow up before he can defeat the physical monster in front of him. So what horror books can be included on a “Coming-of-Age” display? Any you want.

What about a display on gardening? I have lots of “plants of terror” titles to suggest to you in my book or on the blog, but here are two of my favorites– The Ruins by Scott Smith and The Caretaker of Lorne Field by Dave Zeltersman.

This plan works with just about any theme. If you just make an effort to incorporate horror into all of your displays, I am sure you will find a tale of terror to fit most displays. The moral here is to consciously mix all genres into your displays. You will have more fun, and you will make a wider range of patrons happier.

My second tip for marketing horror all year also plays off of the media. I mentioned a marketing strategy for one-time movie releases, but what about the excitement we are seeing for popular horror television series throughout the year? Again, let’s stick with just the first 6 months of 2012 and talk about two of the most popular series on television, period– AMC’s The Walking Dead and HBO’s True Blood (okay, technically True Blood is paranormal, not pure horror, but trust me, I will address that in a moment).

The Walking Dead ran on TV in the winter and spring, while True Blood is currently running this summer. For each series I took a different marketing approach at the library. For The Walking Dead, I focused on a web campaign of all things zombie. On my blog, I ran many Walking Dead inspired posts and worked hard to incorporate book suggestions in these posts. I did this throughout the run of the show, culminating with a display of zombie books in the library during the week leading up to the finale.

True Blood was a little more difficult, since its fans are mostly those who like paranormal stories. In paranormal, the main thrust of the story is NOT to invoke fear, as it is in horror. The scares come, but they are not the overall point of the work. As a result, some horror fans do not like paranormal and vice versa. But, that doesn’t mean NO horror fans like True Blood. To address the wide range of appeal in the TV series and the book series, a few years ago, I created this list of Sookie Stackhouse read alikes broken up by appeal. I considered all of the reasons you may like the series and included plenty of horror options on the list. This list is available online and in the library and is one of most popular lists.

I hope I have inspired you to consider marketing horror throughout the year. The popularity of horror TV series and movies today proves horror’s staying power. And if huge production companies think it is okay to push horror during the other 11 months of the year, why shouldn’t you? We have way less to lose than they do.

And don’t be scared of helping your horror patrons. They are not monsters, they just like to read about them.

Becky Spratford is a busy Readers’ Advisor. Between manning a desk at the Berwyn (IL) Public Library and corrupting the minds of library school students at Dominican University, she runs two popular and critically acclaimed RA blogs: RA for All and RA for All: Horror. Her new book The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror, 2^nd edition (ALA Editions, 2012) is available now. She also writes content for EBSCO’s NoveList database and is a proud member of The Horror Writers’ Association. She can be reached at bspratford[at]hotmail[dot]com.