7/1/26

If you’re in Central PA and want to beat the heat tonight, WD Miller and his band are laying down some old-school country, roots, and folk at North Mountain Inn in Carlisle. Free admission, no cover charge, and you can support an artist who is one of you and whose work I enjoy.

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Seeing a lot of discourse online about how women are being treated in Horror (as an industry). I’m not sure what spurred the latest discussion (because I am very much only on social media for maybe ten minutes per day). Maybe it’s just a continuing discussion from earlier this year. Anyway, I was reminded of what I wrote here on this Blog back on April 1st, and I thought it worth repeating again today:

Yesterday was the last day of Women In Horror Month, which means that from now until next March 1st, most people will stop spotlighting the women who make up part of Horror Fiction's rich history and legacy.

In an ideal world, we wouldn't need a Women In Horror Month, because people would talk about and celebrate women in horror throughout the year. And to be fair, many folks do just that. I say this as someone who has been in this business long enough to remember the very first Women In Horror Month. Fans, readers, critics, and other authors spotlight books and stories by women far more now throughout the year than they ever have in our genre's past.

But as far as the actual Women In Horror Month goes? Well... for one month, your social media feed is positively full of such accolades and recommendations, and then, if the vagaries of the algorithms hold sway (and if you've been reading this Blog then you know that they will) such content will vanish from your feed fairly quickly, replaced by whatever terrible outrage is taking place today or perhaps a more palatable video of a cute kitten that may or may not be generated via AI.

This year, I didn't specifically set out to focus on Women In Horror Month, for a couple of reasons. One, I was busy with DEAD FORMAT and getting things ready for my youngest's upcoming graduation and acceptance into college, and I just really haven't been very active online. Two, I felt that it might come off as performative (which people will accuse you of regarding anything you do when you reach a certain level of professional fame or notoriety. Stub your toe and cringe in pain? There are nuts who will say you're being performative and your privilege allows you to do so. And knowing myself and my current frustration with the state of the world, if somebody mouthed off like that I was going to have a go at them, and then it would become 'Brian Keene Ruins Women In Horror Month By Nuking Half Of Social Media', and that's not good for anybody). And thirdly, (and I'm aware some people will call this self-serving or tooting my own horn, and those people can go jump in front of a gas truck) I think I've got a pretty good thirty year track record of supporting and recommending the women in our field. I do it year round. I don't need a month on a calendar to remind me to do it.

But I was, in fact, mulling over why Women in Horror month felt... off ... to me this year. And I was talking with authors Gemma Amor and Sarah Read last week on Threads, and learned they felt something similar. Sarah said (in part): "It feels different this year. Less like a celebration, More like a plea. This year it feels like we lost ground and are pushing forward from well behind where we’ve been before. At least, that’s how it feels to me."

She's not wrong.

It's a tough time to be an American right now. Hell, it's a tough time to be a citizen of Earth. But it is a particularly tough time to be a woman. Women's rights are being rolled back or revoked in countries around the world, including some right here in the good ol' U.S. of A. There are many who want to help but they feel powerless to actually do anything. Protesting feels futile. Voting seems laughable at this point. All of the other options lead to just more terribleness on top of what is already terrible.

And Sarah's words keep coming back to me.

I decided last week that I'm going to celebrate Women in Horror Year. It's not performative, but it is absolutely me throwing my privilege up onto the table. Every day for the next year, I'm going to spotlight a horror novel by a woman here on Algorithm Zero, and then offer a weekly recap in Letters From the Labyrinth. And I'm not going to talk about the fact that they are women, because you're an idiot if you don't understand that. Them being women shouldn't matter. What matters are the books. So I'm going to talk about the books. Each of them will be a book I have personally read and enjoyed over the years.

It's one way to help. It's one way to jump in behind that metaphorical boulder that Sarah eludes to and shove it well past where we've been before. I'm aware of just how much of an audience I command, and while I have always used that space to point you not only at my stuff but at the works of my peers and at things of importance that impact our genre, I'm going to focus on books and stories by the women of this genre, past and present, for the next 365 days.

And as a reminder, each book I’ve covered here in this series can be easily found via the Women In Horror Year Index.

Which brings us to…

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Women In Horror Year: Day 70

Play Nice by Rachel Harrison

Hardcover - Paperback - eBook - Audiobook

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A woman must confront the demons of her past when she attempts to fix up her childhood home in this devilishly clever take on the haunted house novel from the author of Black Sheep and So Thirsty.

Clio Louise Barnes leads a picture-perfect life as a stylist and influencer, but beneath the glossy veneer she harbors a not-so glamorous secret: she grew up in a haunted house. Well, not haunted. Possessed. After Clio’s parents' messy divorce, her mother, Alex, moved Clio and her sisters into a house occupied by a demon. Or so Alex claimed. That’s not what Clio’s sisters remember or what the courts determined when they stripped her of custody after she went off the deep end. But Alex was insistent; she even wrote a book about her experience in the house.

After Alex’s sudden death, the supposedly possessed house passes to Clio and her sisters. Where her sisters see childhood trauma, Clio sees an opportunity for house flipping content. Only, as the home makeover process begins, Clio discovers there might be some truth to her mother’s claims. As memories resurface and Clio finally reads her mother’s book, a sinister presence in the house manifests, revealing ugly truths that threaten to shake Clio’s beautiful life to its very foundation.

The thing I like most about Rachel Harrison’s writing is her voice. Her prose can be witty, charming, and casual — a conversational style that’s perhaps described as being akin to part Sarah Langan and part Grady Hendrix. Rachel has a talent for lulling and disarming the reader so that when the scares kick in, they’re devastatingly effective, and she delivers that with an expertise that writers who’ve been doing this for three times as long are still trying to master.

That same effectiveness is found in her characterization. Horror as a genre works best when a reader (or viewer) cares about the character. We don’t necessarily have to like them, but we do need to be emotionally invested in them. There needs to be a symbiotic empathy. It’s the difference between Laurie Strode in Halloween and the endless supply of nameless, surplus, cardboard teenagers who Jason Voorhees carves his way through in the Friday the 13th franchise. Rachel is great portraying the human condition — of imbuing her characters with traits or quirks or motivations that we can all empathize with. I’m a hillbilly closing in on age 60. You would think that I, as a reader, could find nothing to empathize with in the character of Clio — a twenty-something influencer. And you would be wrong. And that’s what makes the terror so much more real when it kicks in.

Bottom line — if you’re looking for a fresh take on haunted houses (that is, in my opinion, some undercover grief horror), with some excellent wordplay by a writer in full command of her voice, Play Nice should be moved to the top of your TBR pile immediately. Available in hardcover, paperback, eBook and audiobook from Berkley.