To readers, it’s a great word –full of dark promise and wicked delights. To the largest of the mainstream publishers and most chain bookstores, “horror” is a bad, bad word. Horror books don’t sell. You hear that all the time. Horror is just gore and exploitation. You hear that, too.

Often it’s true. Except when it’s not.

Here’s the thing. Once upon a time “horror” was a nice word that was used to embrace a broad genre of spooky tales ranging from classic ghost stories to vampires to all sorts of creatures that go bump in the nighttime of our imagination. Horror tales didn’t have to be supernatural; of course, Edgar Allan Poe proved that with his psychological thrillers that gouged barbs into our paranoia and private fears. Horror could overlap with other genre–science fiction (you want to tell me Alien wasn’t a horror flick?) , speculative fiction (Richard Matheson’s 1954 classic novel I Am Legend, nicely bridged the gap between “what if?” and “what the hell’s that!”), mystery (Robert Bloch nailed that one with Psycho) , fantasy (Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos), Fantastique Populaire (Alexandre Dumas brought werewolves into the modern age of fiction with his 1848 story Le Meneur de Loups (The Leader Of Wolves), comedy (start with Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, keep going through Young Frankenstein and put the pedal all the way down with Shaun of the Dead ), and even social commentary ( Night, Dawn and Day of the Dead ).

Horror has been the framework and vehicle for centuries of great storytelling. Millennia, if you factor in the ancient myths of dragons, Cyclops, revenants, ghouls, mummies, and other beasts going all the way back to The Epic of Gilgamesh –the oldest surviving piece of writing, which is rife with monsters.

So why is it a bad word?

The short answer is “marketing.” In 1978 Halloween hit movie houses like a bloody tsunami. Eerie, unnerving, horrific, terrifying. Halloween was everything good horror should be. And it was a horror film. Michael Myers was an unkillable embodiment of evil. Good job John Carpenter. If there had been no sequels and if a lot of folks hadn’t taken an incidental aspect of the movie and build an entire genre on it, the word ‘horror’ might still be safe for polite conversation within the publishing world. But a lot of folks in Hollywood who are not and never have been aficionados of horror or even readers of horror, went on to focus on the big fricking knife that Michael Myers carried and the plot device of his killing several people in inventive ways. The weapon and the method are not core to the story. The unstoppable nature of evil and the struggle between overwhelming threat and the natural impulse to survive are what the movie was all about. Those are tropes of the horror genre. But Hollywood can never be accused grasping the subtleties of theme and structure; hence the Slasher movie genre was born.

Most of the Slasher flicks–and the natural off-shoots, the Slasher novels—were, as I said, not written by horror writers. They are pre-packaged tripe whose purpose is to tantalize with young flesh and then indulge in ultraviolence that has no thematic value and no artistic flair. They’re mind candy of the least nutritious kind.

The Slasher films collided with another horror sub-genre –the Serial Killer film. There are good and even great novels and movies about serial killers. Bloch’s Psycho, Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs , Jack Ketchum’s Off Season are examples for the sub-genre in print; the film versions of most of these are terrific, and there are horrifying entries like Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer. But the genre was truly born out of films like Last House on the Left and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre , and despite their huge fan followings, neither is a horror film. Chainsaw is probably the more debatable of the two since there are real moments of tension; but it’s been spoiled by sequels and remakes that are so overtly exploitive that many viewers have stepped back from the genre in disgust.

In the late 90s and early 21 ^stCentury, we saw the rise of yet another genre that polluted the word horror: torture porn. Films like Hostel, Saw and their many imitators are shock cinema. They’re disturbing to be sure, but perspective makes true horror aficionados wonder at just what is attracting the audiences. The films are sexist and misogynistic in the extreme. The torture seems to be the point of the film rather than an element of a larger and more genuinely frightening tale. The technique appears to be shock rather than suspense.

Good horror is built on suspense. Shock has it moments, but it isn’t, and should never be, the defining characteristic of the genre.

Here’s the bottom line. Slasher, Serial Killer and Torture flicks have all been marketed as “horror.” Go to Blockbuster or check Netflix…that’s where they are.

Discerning audiences, those who enjoy the suspense and subtlety of true horror storytelling were repelled, and they also moved away from all horror because to modern audiences horror equals graphic and relentless violence.

Horror took it in the back.

It doesn’t help that many of the most popular authors of horror novels–folks like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Robert McCammon, Peter Straub—don’t consider themselves to be horror authors. They prefer to be known as authors of “suspense” or “thrillers” or other more marketable genre labels,

I can’t blame them. My own horror novels, the Pine Deep Trilogy (Ghost Road Blues, Dead Man’s Song and Bad Moon Rising) were released as “supernatural thrillers.” One of my best friends, L. A. Banks sees her vampire and werewolf novels published as “paranormal romances.” The list goes on.

So, is horror dead?

Nope.

The book you’re holding is proof of that.

Some writers have managed to hold the line against the propagandized war against “horror.” Scott Nicholson’s been at the forefront of that phalanx for years. He writes horror novels. He writes horror short stories. He writes horror. Make no mistake.

Sure, Scott can spin a mystery or a thriller with the best of them. He’s a true writer and true writers can write in any damn genre they pick. But what sets Scott’s horror fiction apart–or, perhaps, raises it as an example—is that it is horror. It’s subtle, layered, textured, suspenseful and pretty goddamn scary. There are shocks, sure; but you won’t find one cheap shot in this whole collection. There’s blood, too–Scott’s not afraid of getting his hands dirty when it comes to violence. But those are elements he selects with care from a large toolbox of delicate instruments. Like all true horror writers, Scott is a craftsman who knows how to build a story on character and plot nuance, and then tweak this and twist that so that the story begins to quietly sink its claws into the reader.

Ashes is a wonderfully creepy, powerful and inventive collection of horror tales that will open doors in your mind–to let things out, and to let things in.

This is a book of horror tales from someone who understands–and loves—the genre. A lot of folks joke about having to leave the lights on when they read horror. Go ahead, try it. It won’t help. This is a different kind of darkness: older, more devious, and if you’re reading this then the darkness was already there inside you, waiting for a nightmare wizard to set it free.

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