S.H. Roddey

Our very first victim… this morning, Rie Sheridan Rose, otherwise known as The Barbadee Poet, has stopped by to give us a bit of insight into her feelings about Valentine’s Day.

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I’ve always been a fan of Valentine’s Day. After all, I met my current husband on a blind date that still isn’t over after more than ten years. But I can understand the anti-Valentine sentiment as well—there were a few years between husbands where I was FIRMLY in that camp.

Horror can have its true love too, though, as I try to show in my humorous horror stories starring Bruce Vincent and Roxanne Rogers as a pair of clueless paranormal fighters trying to maintain a relationship in between monster hunts. In a series of stories contained in two chapbooks—Tales from the Home for Wayward Spirits and Bar-b-que Grill and Bruce and Roxanne Save the World…Again! available from YardDog Press—their relationship grows from employer/employee to marriage.  Bruce and Roxanne are incredibly fun to write, as Bruce is an egotistical idiot, and Roxanne is a practical ass-kicker with one blind spot—Bruce. Their stories are definitely the silly side of horror, and I think that is why their relationship works.

I tend to be less “happily ever after” in most of my other horror. A waitress with car trouble who takes home a man she meets in “Met By Moonlight” doesn’t have so happy an ending. “Bloody Rain” (available from Mocha Memoirs) might have a satisfying conclusion, but it certainly isn’t happy. And my in-progress novel Skellyman has a relationship that looks like it might end well, but there is still a hint that everything is not as it seems.

Serious horror, by its very nature, tends to preclude happiness. There is evil abroad in the night, how can it turn out well? If you study the masters, this is borne out. Even the most optimistic of Stephen King’s endings is guarded at best. Poe stories rarely end well. But inject a bit of humor, and life doesn’t have to be as bleak.

More on The Barbadee Poet

Website: http://www.riewriter.com
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Rie-Sheridan-Rose/e/B002QW9NB2
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rie-Sheridan-Rose/38814481714