Sarah Jules Writing

I’m genuinely curious.

The summer I turned fourteen, I stumbled across a list of the top 100 horror movies of all time, and set myself a challenge to watch every single one. It sounds idyllic, but it essentially culminated in me holed up in my bedroom streaming movies from some pretty dicey websites.

Until then, my only real experience of ‘horror’ was watching scary movies at sleepovers, or going on the ghost train at Skegness fair. Something about horror made me feel edgy, cool, there’s a kind of bravado that comes with being able to watch scary movies – especially when you’re fourteen, nerdy, and relatively unpopular.

That summer, I fell in love with horror.

I fell in love with the feeling of being scared: the heart pounding, keep the light on at the top of the stairs, nightmares for days, kind of scared.

As I got older, I’d go and watch horror films in the cinemas with my friends and try not to obviously flinch at jump scares. The films I loved were the ones with the biggest jump scares – the unexpected, the gratuitous, over the top, kind of jump scares. I’ll never forget seeing Paranormal Activity in a full-to-the-brim cinema.

I didn’t actually start reading horror books until I was older – other than Stephen King, Jeffery Deaver, etc. I knew very little about horror books/authors, despite being obsessed with horror movies. Until my early twenties, I leaned more towards fantasy, thriller, lit fic. I’m not sure when the change came. There isn’t a single moment I remember, but instead of picking up my usual reads, I found myself picking up (almost exclusively) horror.

When I left teaching, suffering from burnout and a nervous breakdown (although the doctor didn’t refer to it as that), I stumbled into ghostwriting. I found that the stories I loved working on were the dark, the macabre, and the twisty. I always used to joke that I was happy being a ghostwriter because I didn’t have any of my own ideas, but got to play at being a writer anyway. That wasn’t the whole truth. The stories that I wanted to write, the plots I had percolating in my mind, I didn’t think were marketable.

When I finally got up the nerve to write my first book, FOUND YOU, I leaned heavily into the thriller genre (with some elements of psychological horror) because I thought it would be more marketable. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE thrillers too. Who doesn’t? But I was so worried about writing a book that I thought other people would want to read, that I forgot to write the book that I wanted to write. You only have to visit your local bookstore to see that the horror genre isn’t well represented (I’m looking at YOU Waterstones). Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of FOUND YOU. I still think it’s a solid book.

Each book I wrote subsequently became darker, more ‘horror’.

DON’T LIE is a fun YA slasher.

YOU INVITED IT IN & YOU NEED TO LEAVE are dark paranormal horror novels.

I didn’t see any huge growth in readership until YOU INVITED IT IN came out. This was THE BOOK. It was everything I wanted to read in a horror novel, and because of that, I think the YOU INVITED IT IN duology is my best work to date. It’s not perfect by any means, and there are some things that I’d change in hindsight, but I think this shows the power of writing the books you really want to write, the way you really want to write them.

I’m not a big author by any means – duh! – but with each release, as I experiment with finding my own style and become more confident and creative, I can see my growth as a writer.

So while horror may have started as an attempt to be an edge-lord, I ended up finding my thing. I don’t write horror because others think it’s cool (although it objectively is cool). I write horror because I love horror. If I loved lit fic, I’d write that. If I loved chick lit (I hate that phrase), I’d write that.

I think a lot of it comes down to authenticity and self-worth. For people (like me) who struggle with self-esteem, being an author is like stepping out in front of a moving train (the moving train being ‘bad’ reviews). As with any book – trad published or self published – people will love or hate it. I used to take bad reviews to heart, at least with my first two books. Now, I don’t. Why? Because I’ve written the books I wanted to write. I’m proud of them. If a reader doesn’t like them, they’re not the right reader.

Repeat after me, ‘bad’ reviews help books find the right readers.

As a side note, one of my favourite things to do if I’m having a bit of an imposter syndrome-y day, is to read ‘bad’ reviews of my favourite books. And, boy, are some of those reviews ruthless. Like, if people can hate Wuthering Heights, then I don’t feel too bad about people hating one of my books.

The TLDR* of this, I suppose, is that I write horror because I love horror. Authentically. Wholly. I may have taken a roundabout way to get here, but I’m beyond glad I did.

Brene Brown said, “Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are. Choosing authenticity means cultivating the courage to be imperfect, to set boundaries, and to allow ourselves to be vulnerable…”

What is publishing a book if not the ultimate act of vulnerability?

*Internet speak for ‘too long didn’t read’.