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Women in Horror Fiction: Barbie Wilde

Image of Barbie WildeThe horror genre actually has the capability of being a welcoming place for women, because it offers opportunities for participation in a variety of approaches to the genre. Barbie Wilde is an example of a woman who has successfully transitioned from acting to writing, with her role as the Female Cenobite in Hellbound: Hellraiser II leading to the publication of her short story “Sister Cilice” in Hellbound Hearts, an anthology themed around the Hellraiser mythology created by Clive Barker, on which the movie franchise is based. Barbie has since published short stories in a variety of anthologies and recently came out with a book, The Venus Complex, which we reviewed here. It’s great to see the horror genre lifting up women in the horror community so that they can take advantage of all it has to offer, and I can only hope that not only continues, but becomes much more common.

 

1. Can you give our readers a brief introduction?

My name is Barbie Wilde. As an actress, I’m best known for playing the Female Cenobite in Clive Barker’s cult horror movie, Hellbound: Hellraiser II. I’ve also appeared in Death Wish 3, Grizzly II: The Concert (along with then unknowns George Clooney, Charlie Sheen and Laura Dern) and numerous TV shows in the UK as either an actress, a mime artist or a host-presenter.

So far, I’ve written eight short horror stories published in eight different anthologies, as well as my debut dark crime-real life horror novel,The Venus Complex. Fangoria magazine has called me “one of the finest purveyors of erotically charged horror around.” (My mother would’ve been so proud, I’m sure!)

 

2. Why do you write horror?  What draws you to the genre?

I didn’t actually start out as a horror writer. I was always more interested in crime, particularly the psychology of the scariest monster on the planet: man.

Then Paul Kane (who interviewed me for his book, The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy) asked me to contribute to an anthology that he was editing with Marie O’Regan called Hellbound Hearts. All the stories in the antho had to be based on Clive Barker’s mythology that he created for his novel, The Hellbound Heart, which the Hellraiser film franchise is based on.

When Paul contacted me about writing a horror story, I was initially reluctant, as I didn’t think I could write horror. However, two weeks later, I finished my first horror story, “Sister Cilice”, about the making of a female cenobite. I’m actually planning a Cilicium Trilogy and the second part, “The Cilicium Pandoric”, is appearing in Fangoria’s Gorezone #30.

So quite a few horror stories down the line, why am I drawn to the genre? I think that there is a great leeway for your imagination to take flight in horror. You can use all sorts of mythological, literary and historical research and then turn these sources into something (hopefully) unique. Also, I was very influenced and disturbed by horror and science fiction movies when I was a kid and they made their mark on me, fueling all sorts of uneasy and paranoid fantasies. Movies like The Thing From Another World (1951), Invaders from Mars (1953), Psycho (1960), The Innocents (1961) and The Haunting (1963) made a big impression on me. And of course, TV shows like The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, One Step Beyond, Dark Shadows and Night Gallery were also very influential.

 

3. Can you describe your writing style or the tone you prefer to set for your stories?

I like to keep things as simple as possible– I love spare and muscular writing. [See influences below.] There is a strong erotic thread through my stories, which I’d like to think is more sensual than romantic. Also, even when I’m writing about the most horrific crimes and events, there is always a sense of humour in there somewhere.

 

4. Who are some of your influences?  Are there any women authors who have particularly inspired you to write?

Influences: Rod Serling, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Hemingway, Clive Barker, Colin Wilson (for his crime non-fiction, like The Criminal History of Mankind and The Order of the Assassins).
Influential women authors: Patricia Highsmith, Shirley Jackson and Margaret Atwood. I’m also inspired by writer-directors such as The Soska Twins, Jovanka Vuckovic, Mary Harron, Kathryn Bigelow and Ida Lupino.

 

5. What authors do you like to read?  Any recommendations?

All of the above authors, as well as Paul Kane. I just finished his latest compelling novella Rainbow Man and really enjoyed it. Other Kane books that I can recommend are The Gemini Factor and Red. All of Paul’s books are written so beautifully and so descriptively that you can just imagine movies been adapted from them. I also love the work of John Skipp and Craig Spector. Their novel, Light at the End, was a very cool and unusual take on the vampire genre.

My top pick of 2013 was the evocative and brilliant written Whitstable by Stephen Volk. The main character of the novella is Peter Cushing and it’s almost spooky how Stephen has channeled Cushing as a character in the story.

 

6. Where can readers find your work?

You can buy The Venus Complex as a paperback and Kindle on all the Amazons, as well as Barnes & Noble (online only). All the short stories that I’ve written are available in the following anthologies on Amazon. Most are published as both paperback and Kindle:
“Sister Cilice” (Hellbound Hearts)
“Uranophophia” (Phobophobia)
“American Mutant: Hands of Dominion” (Mutation Nation)
“Polyp” (The Mammoth Book of Body Horror and as a reprint for The Unspoken)
“A is for Alpdruck” (Demonologia Biblica)
“Z is for Zulu Zombies” (Bestiarum Vocabulum and as a reprint for Gorezone #29)
The following stories will be available soon:
“The Cilicium Pandoric” (Gorezone #30)
“Botophobia” (Phobophobias)

 

7. Is there anything else you’d like to share with librarians and readers?

If your readers would like to read more news, reviews and interviews, then please go to:
www.barbiewilde.com
Follow me on Twitter at: @barbiewilde
Facebook: www.facebook.com/barbie.wilde
Facebook Author-Actress Page: www.facebook.com/BarbieWildeAuthorActress

I’ve got some interesting writing projects and appearances coming up in the future, so please keep an eye out for news on either Facebook or my website.

 

Interested in learning more? Visit Barbie Wilde’s Amazon page, her website, her Facebook page, or her Author-Actress Facebook page, or follow her on Twitter at @barbiewilde.

Posted on February 24, 2014 by , Reply

Women in Horror Fiction: What Would Mary Shelley Think?

Miniature of Mary Shelley Frankenstein author by Reginald Easton

 

Any time the topic of women in horror fiction comes up, someone almost immediately mentions Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. It’s a little frustrating to me because usually she’s the only one, or one of a very select few, whose names are repeated over and over, even though there are a wide variety of women writing horror. But I can certainly understand it. She wrote a novel that has resonated with countless individuals on many levels,  reimagined in a variety of media, with varying interpretations. Even people who don’t know who Mary Shelley is and have never read the book are familiar, in some way, with the Frankenstein story. It is that ingrained into our culture. It is an incredible accomplishment that a teenage girl not only had a terrifying vision– we all have nightmares at some point– but that she penned her story with such passion and horror that, if you can get past the clunky beginning, it stirs the reader’s emotions and twists at the heart. In her own words:

When I placed my head on my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bound of reverie. I saw – with shut eyes, but acute mental vision – I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together; I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out; and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion.

Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the creator of the world. His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handiwork, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade – that this thing, which had received such imperfect animation, would subside into dead matter, and he might sleep in the belief that the silence of the grave would quench for ever the transient existence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps, but he is awakened; he opens his eyes, behold the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains, and looking on him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes! I opened mine in terror.

The idea so possessed my mind that a thrill of terror ran through me…

I returned to my ghost story – my tiresome unlucky ghost story! O! if I could only contrive one which would frighten my reader as I myself had been frightened that night! Swift as light and as cheering was the idea that broke in upon me. “I have found it! What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.”

In The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein, Thomas and Dorothy Hoobler describe Mary’s life in great detail. At eighteen, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, not yet married to Shelley, was intimately familiar with the creation and destruction of life. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft died eleven days after she was born, an event which shaped the rest of her life.When her father remarried, she was displaced by a stepbrother. At sixteen, she had already run off with Percy Shelley, who was already married (although estranged from his pregnant wife). Before the summer of 1816, she had borne two children, the first of whom died before she had even been named. By the age of eighteen, Mary was very familiar with how easily life can slip away. Percy Shelley, unstable but brilliant, was fascinated with the supernatural and Gothic and also with science, interests that he did not seem to find at odds. Their companions during the “Haunted Summer” of 1816, Lord Byron and John Polidori, were similarly fascinated with both: Polidori, a medical doctor, also began the story that became the classic horror novel The Vampyre that summer. The idea that science, when bent to the manipulation of creating and animating (or, particularly, re-animating) life, could be as destructive and frightening as any supernatural force, was her nightmare, and she made it ours.

I, Frankenstein, yet another interpretation of the Frankenstein story, comes out in movie theaters this Friday. The reviews I’ve seen haven’t been great. Honestly, some of the other versions of the Frankenstein story that have appeared over the years have moved far away from the waking vision Mary Shelley had on a dark and stormy night. Whatever her other tragedies, and there were many in her life, her creation, and her Creature, has changed and grown, and whatever else it has become, there is no doubt that with her novel, she brought them to life. Would she look upon the many incarnations today the way that Victor Frankenstein did when he first saw his creation come to life? Would she be amazed by the tremendous impact a little novel she had to publish anonymously has had on the world?  What would Mary Shelley think of the way so many people have co-opted her “midnight spectre?”

Posted on February 18, 2014 by , Reply

The Compulsive Power of Reading: Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews


V.C. Andrews’  1979 novel Flowers in the Attic has been adapted into a Lifetime movie with Ellen Burstyn and Heather Graham, which will premiere later this month (see the trailer here). This movie promises to stay much closer to the book than the 1987 adaptation, which left out some important parts of the book. She also has a  new book coming out soon, The Unwelcomed Child (Andrews died in 1986, after writing just seven novels, and now has over 80 published books– making her possibly the most prolific dead writer ever).

If you were a girl growing up in the 1970s or 1980s you’ve probably at least heard of Flowers in the Attic. It’s been a long time since I read it, but I have a strong memory of reading it. You wouldn’t think that a story about four kids locked in an attic for years would be a compelling read– how much action can there really be? Maybe as a 12 year old the plot didn’t feel as telegraphed to me as it does now. The language feels like it comes straight from “old-skool” romance,  but the setting is gothic and the tone is disturbing. I wasn’t a critical reader at that age, I was just caught up in the story, as told by a grown Cathy Dollanganger about her 12 year old self.  Flowers in the Attic was a compulsive read and I read it cover to cover, and the other books in the Dollanganger saga, although my favorite Andrews book is the stand alone My Sweet Audrina.

At the same time that I am tempted to go back to it, though, I haven’t quite been able to bring myself to do it. It’s like being a moth attracted to bright light– I’m not sure I want to get close enough to go back to the awfulness of the grandmother, the monstrosity of the mother, the incest, rape, physical abuse, and abandonment. It probably doesn’t bother an uncritical teenage reader dealing with unfamiliar (or maybe familiar, but under the surface) emotions and physical changes, but do I want to go there again? Andrews’ books have been compared to the Twilight books because they’re such compulsive reads, across generations–once you start, resistance is futile. Do I really want to lose my weekend to the Dollangangers?

What makes Flowers in the Attic so compelling? Lots of people have tried to come up with an answer to why girls and women would read a story this full of crazysauce (a term I picked up from Sarah Wendell that fits this book so very well) and I’m not sure any of them got it quite right. And unlike Twilight, it doesn’t seem like there will be an entire shelf of knockoff crossover YA creepy family horror stories  in the bookstore anytime soon. Her books, with their distinctive covers, still seem to me like the kind you read under the covers.

In researching V.C. Andrews I discovered that people who asked about books similar to Flowers in the Attic were mostly given lists of Andrews’ books, and more than once someone said that her books are their own genre. In an article on Andrews, Sara Gran and Megan Abbott note:

Though there’s an obvious debt to the Brontë sisters, nineteenth-century sensation novels like Lady Audley’s Secret, and Daphne du Maurier’s Gothic fiction, at heart Andrews’s novels have little in common with the genres where they ought to fit. They’re too offbeat for romance, too slow to qualify as thrillers, too explicit for Gothic, and far too dark and complex for young adult.

Young adult books have gotten pretty dark and complex, if you ask me, but with an audience including 12 year olds and 60 year olds, it does make it difficult to know where to shelve the book.

Curiously, for someone who makes a living duplicating Andrews’ style, Andrew Neiderman, who ghostwrites her books, said in an interview:

The wonder of V.C. Andrews, which makes it hard for people to duplicate, is that it’s not just one genre. It’s not just horror stories or love stories—it’s a recipe, a mixture of these genres in the books that makes it work, that people have not been able to emulate, because a lot of people have tried.

I’d love to know what authors or books he’s referring to, because even if they’re not totally successful, it would be interesting to see what other people have come up with in their attempts to emulate her work. Do people graduate from her books? What do they read next?

Will I go back and read Flowers in the Attic in honor of the new movie? I haven’t decided. But just learning more about Andrews and her books (an interesting challenge) was compelling enough on its own to make me really, really tempted.

 

For some perspectives on the books (and occasionally, some drinking games) here are some links you might check out.

 

“”I May Look Like Her, But Inside I Am Honorable”! Flowers in the Attic, Daughters, and Moms”  by Tammy Oler at Slate.com

 

The Complete V.C. Andrews. This unofficial website links to a variety of articles on V.C. Andrews, her books, and related topics.

 

“Interview with Ann Patty, Editor of Flowers in the Attic“ by Robin Wasserman at The Toast.net

 

“V.C. Andrews and Disability Horror” by Madeleine Lloyd-Davies at The Toast.net. I loved this. I have been thinking about disability horror a lot lately.

 

“Dark Family: V.C. Andrews and the Secret Life of Girls” by Sara Gran and Megan Abbott, in the September 2009 issue of Believer Magazine. This is as close to serious analysis as I found, and I think the authors did a pretty good job of nailing why the books appeal to girls. Although I’m middle-aged, so you would probably be wise to check it against the experience of teen girls of your acquaintance.

 

“Twilight vs. Flowers in the Attic: Sick Sex Smackdown, Eighties Style” by Alyx Dellamonica at Tor.com. Another informal look, this one with some more critical thought put into it. I like Dellamonica’s idea that the book falls into a stretch of development between  “unreal” childhood fears like the monster under the bed and the ability to deal with realistic threats in the wider world. I wasn’t a fan of her conclusion, though.

 

“Lurid: Flowers in the Attic” by Karina Wilson at LitReactor.com. A rather gleeful look back and critical once-over of the author’s personal favorite “Bad Book”.

 

“Flowers in the Attic: Ain’t Sexy, He’s My Brother”. Lizzie Skurnick’s  original column at Jezebel on Flowers in the Attic, which appears in a more polished form in her book Shelf Discovery.

 

“Flower Scowler” by Erin Callahan at Forever  Young Adult. The first post in a series where Callahan reads and dissects each chapter in Flowers in the Attic, which includes the Flowers in the Attic drinking game. This is a very informal, funny examination of the book.

 

“Revisiting My Sixth Grade Bookshelf: Flowers in the Attic” by Ashley Perks at xoJane.com. An informal look back at the book.

 

“In The Attic: Whips, Witches, and a Peculiar Princess” by Gillian Flynn at NPR.org.  The author of Gone Girl writes about her infatuation with the book as a teen and how it inspired her interest in “wicked women”.

 

“Flowers (And Family Dysfunction) in the Attic” by Heidi W. Durrow at NPR.org. Durrow writes about her personal love of the book, no analysis involved.

 

 

 

Posted on January 14, 2014 by , Reply
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