{Guest Post} Horror Defies Me by Pixie Lynn Whitfield

Title: Darkness Comes This Way
Author: Pixie Lynn Whitfield
Publisher: Self
Release Date: May 15, 2012

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Blurb:

Zarah Duncan is a Guardian. It’s an elite job that protects humans and the untainted vampires from the real monsters: those lost to the bloodlust. Rogues infest the city. Missing humans, unsolved cases…Zarah knows what the real cause is and she’s been trained since childhood to destroy them.

But she has a haunting past that catches up one day. Zarah was Rogue once, and until her, no one else has ever cured from the poisoned state of mind before. She’s been labeled a miracle, and the mystery only builds. She gets the awful feeling there’s more to it than just a lucky magical come-back. There are deep, dark secrets being kept. Maybe her boss Nathanial knows something? When she gets paired with a partner, Draven Kinsley, it only adds more difficulty. He hates her and swears that with a single look, she’ll poison him. To make matters worse, her Rogue brother has to show up, and he brings with him a shocking announcement. What Zarah learns from him rocks her entire world upside down. She not only begins to question who and what she is anymore, but it can possibly change the Vampire race forever.

The scary part: someone else knows too…and they’ll do anything to get her special blood, spelling disaster for the humans that Guardians have secretly been protecting for decades.

Vampires, fallen angels, war, betrayal, and romance fill this Paranormal/Urban Fantasy debut, the first book to a high-action trilogy

Horror Defines Me 

By Pixie Lynn Whitfield

I wasn’t a normal kid. I’ve probably said this a few times, and it’s true. Sure, I loved cartoons and dolls and my middle grade books when I was younger, but I had a secret passion underneath all of that. I loved the dark things. I loved scary stories and movies that made me jump. I love my brother for telling me about the “Bogey Man”. I loved the quirky and strange. And I loved all things vampires and the supernatural. I liked watching human horror, too. You know, the kind of horror where you just go “damn, humans can be the worst kind of monsters” and forget the mythical ones.

The first time I watched a horror film was probably around the age of seven or eight. It was Nightmare on Elm Street. Hey, if I was going to start, I was going to start big was what I’d figured. It’s still one of my favorite series. I started reading Stephen King and Anne Rice around the age of ten or shortly thereafter. It gave me nightmares. I still hate clowns to this day. Do not put me near a clown. I’m serious.

This is what I love about horror though. The impact it makes. The fear it can strike. My favorite kind of horror would be the more realistic style, though it tends to not affect me as much as it seems to with everyone else around me. Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity are two I can name that scared the pants off everyone I knew, while I sat there completely unfazed (and mostly bored by PA).

As a child, did any of you ever read Goosebumps or any of R.L. Stine’s work? That was perhaps my first “foray” into the young horror genre when I was in elementary school. After devouring those books non-stop for weeks in first and second grade, I wanted more. I craved more of the mystery they gave me, the adrenaline of connecting with a character and feeling their fear during the action. My reading level was advanced, and that’s when a teacher suggested I move up to older books (if my mother didn’t care, and she didn’t) because when I was that age, there weren’t many teen books. Usually it went from middle-school level (ages 8-11) right into adult. Harry Potter did come out when I was around fourteen or so, though, and I believe that’s what sparked the YA genre to finally grow (I read HP when it was out, too, but I didn’t really read much YA until after I was twenty years old). I’ll always attribute the start of my love of horror to R.L. Stine and Stephen King. Others that I admire and adore came later, but they’re still inspiring as well: Richard Matheson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Anne Rice.

As an adult, I don’t watch or read much in the horror genre anymore. It seemed to be something I went through a lot more as a kid and a teen. On occasion, I write horror short stories, but I feel like I’m losing my desire in that area the older I get. I do have a current project in the works that is a stand-alone YA Dystopian Horror, and slowly, but surely, I think I may be finding my place again--at least long enough to write this one novel.

The thing about horror that I’m thankful for though is that it’s taught me a lot as far as world-building and character development, no matter the genre I’m writing in. Paranormal isn’t far off from having some horror elements, and sometimes I have to take what I learned from that. It’s the emotion that really drives me.

Last touches:

Favorite horror(related) movies: Saw, Sleepy Hollow, Nightmare on Elm Street (the original!), I Am Legend, Zombieland, and Resident Evil.

Recommended horror(related) books: Let Me In (Jon Lindqvuist), The Immortal Rules (Julie Kagawa--and I’d count this as a Dystopian Horror I think), It (Stephen King), Bedbugs (Ben H. Winters), and Dead of Night (Jonathan Maberry)

Thanks so much for having me on your blog, Kristin!


***No, thank you Pixie for including me in your book tour. I'll have a review posted soon, I promise. I, however, am knee deep in the writing process at the moment and have been horrible about getting reviews done. I do apologize! Pixie...I absolutely love Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Edgar Allen Poe. They are some amazing horror authors. (I used to read Stephen King when I was 10 or 11, I don't remember exactly, but I share your nightmare horrors.)