Laura Bickle – Author of “Embers” – Tells SNS what brought her to the “Dark Side”
Hello Ghouls and Boils,
This week we have a Guest Blog from Author Laura Bickle. Laura tells us all about what brought her to the “darkside”. Be sure to keep an eye out for our review of “Embers” — coming soon. Enjoy, my fiends!
Abstrusely,
Sarah L. Covert
There’s something luminous about the dark side.Some fiction focuses on the light, on things that can be seen in broad daylight. Dark fiction shines a more subtle light on things that are hidden. Some of these things are ugly actions by others that are difficult to process in the sunshine. Others are dark parts of our personalities that don’t come out in the light of day.In that sense, I think that dark fiction is quite honest in its understanding of the human condition. Dark fiction, quite rightly, assumes that flawed humans inhabit an imperfect world. Those imperfections may be exaggerated, magnified into supernatural horrors, but dark fiction does not shy away from analyzing those ideas.The thing that appeals to me about dark fiction is that it does not shrink from asking “What if?” What if humans are not at the top of the food chain? What if we aren’t masters of all we survey? What happens after death? What if true love doesn’t conquer all? What if there really is a monster under my bed?It’s inspiring to imagine, among all those “What if’s,” that there’s a hidden world. Dark fantasy assumes that there’s something below the surface, nearly invisible, that seduces the imagination. Whether that hidden world takes the form of an old goddess awakening within the skin of a mortal woman, a fire salamander waddling down a burning city street, or the ghost of a flapper inhabiting a Prohibition-era bar…I am fascinated by the idea that there’s something more to the world that surface appearances.Dark fantasy allows me to ask uncomfortable questions. It allows me to answer them in a way that assumes that our world is more multidimensional that originally thought. To me, the adventure is in the asking and answering.
Laura Bickle
