My kind of scary

When I tell people that I write horror, instead of doing some real job like working in a cubicle or doing stuff in a lab, they always give me this odd look. Then they probably start wondering if I have a secret room in my place where I carve up dinner guests and serve them to chipmunks and hungry college kids. I don't, in case you were wondering (there's no room for one of those in my apartment).

When we think of horror fiction (or horror writers), we generally think of blood and guts, socially inept geeks who collect porn and comic books, and stressed-out individuals who are one step away from taking a power saw to someone they don't like. The first two are seldom true of horror writers, while the third applies to more people in the general population than you might realize.

No, horror writers aren't much different from you or the crazy people we distance ourselves from. Maybe we just think about it more.

Blood and guts. No, that isn't what horror writers are obsessed with. At least I'm not. Speaking for myself (and this is may be true of most horror writers), I do have a tendency to think about scary stuff a lot. Not stuff like ghosts and axe murderers, but things that could go wrong at any moment. Things like job security, freak accidents, and what we'd do if the people you once trusted turned out to be hiding something really sinister.

Or what about stuff that you're supposed to believe is good? Like hybrid cars, for instance. Yeah, they get great mileage, but has anyone thought about what to do with the highly toxic (and environmentally unfriendly) battery that powers that thing when it comes time to junk the Prius for a new one? You can't just toss it in the garbage can and let the city handle it, you know.

Hey, I'm all about green energy. But let's think it through before we jump on every green bandwagon that comes along. Remember, zombies are green too. And maybe there's a good reason why...