Over at The Broke and The Bookish Kelly posted her Top Ten Favorite Historical Fiction and Fantasy Authors because this week’s theme “lets you choose your favorite authors in a specific genre, be it sci-fi, romance, nonfiction….anything that strikes your fancy! This should be VERY easy!”
Since it is October and the theme this week is top ten genre writers I thought that I would pick horror since the blog has been really devoid of any spookiness so far this month. So from most recently youngest to oldest, here are my picks.
Steven King – Honestly, it is his early stuff which creeps me out. Back when he still wrote effective short stories and knew how to end a book, the man could tear me up. “Boogeyman” is one of my all time all-the-lights-in-the-house-on stories and It and Insomnia still have two of the most wigged out monsters ever.
Peter Straub – Two words: Ghost Story
Anne Rice – Back before all her personal crap got in the way, she wrote great horror. She wrote vampires who would have torn out Edward’s throat, maybe. They might have turned Bella and watched as she did it, while drinking wine and looking fabulous. They were glamour and danger and truly horrible.
Richard Matheson – I read this wonderful novel/novella once called “I Am Legend.” It was pitch perfect. If you have only seen the movie with Will Smith, please pretend that was something else that happened to have the same title. Then go read this. Really, go do it now.
Robert Bloch – Even better, one word: Psycho
Shirley Jackson – Yes, she wrote “The Lottery” which you read in Middle School, but she also wrote The Haunting of Hill House which you might have read but probably only saw a bad movie adaption.* But have you read We Have Always Lived in the Castle which is a novel about true evil?
H.P. Lovecraft – Stephen King called Lovecraft “the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.” What can I add?
Edgar Allan Poe – Honestly, he’s my favorite. Screwed up and weird and an odd death mystery and stories and poems full of creep and obsession and murders and longing and horror. Yup, by far my favorite.
Bram Stoker – An Irishman who wrote Gothic horror novels, including The Lair of the White Worm? Yes! An Irishman who wrote possible the best Gothic horror novel ever? Yes, please!
Mary Shelley – She was a political radical who wrote an apocalyptic novel “The Last Man” and was married to Percy Bysshe Shelley. She spent a summer with her husband and Lord Byron, John Polidori, and Claire Clairmont in Switzerland, where she began her novel Frankenstein. Frankenstein which is one of the most famous monsters to this day. And if you have never read the book, I bet you still think the only monster in the book is the one that Victor created.
*Unless it was the 1963 version “The Haunting” which scared the holy crap out of me
, by Elizabeth Kostova, published in 2005, is a fantastic book; however, it is not for the faint of heart or really small of brain. It is not a young adult novel full of vampiric love. The monsters here do not sparkle in the sun or have rings which let them prance around a small town where no one is suspicious of doppelgangers. 
