Something Ken Hite was writing about here got me thinking.

While I think there's something to be said for grounding a story in an actual location, so you can get the feel of a real place, he referred to the "no-place" of Poe–and that struck a chord with me.

Reason being is that I've always had it as part of my setup that the location the story was taking place was not really something to be considered much. It's obvious that Mystics takes place in the southern United States. Overkill is set in the same community (which fewer people have caught on to that I would have suspected–there's a bunch of links between various stories that people haven't caught yet).

None of my other stories jump out at me about being distinct about their location. This is by design. If you pay attention to the clues I give about the geographical location of Macomber County, it becomes patently clear that if you're looking at a map of the United States, there's no place where Macomber County could be that would match up with all the clues. I think there's three or four specific things, mentioned in passing, and I picked them specifically to make that happen.

The reason it's important to me, I think, that the location remain ambiguous is that I don't want it to be important. While some of the subject matter of Mystics makes it relevant specifically to the southern U.S., I want it to be relevant everywhere as well. So I try to keep it being grounded some place and instead want it to be potentially next door to you, wherever you are.

I have a problem with most horror stories, movies, novels, what have you. I'm wondering if I'm the only one. The problem is this: most movies that you might think of, at first glance, as a "horror"movie, simply aren't of that genre. Most are thrillers, or, if you're lucky, thrillers with horror elements.

Let me tell you where I'm coming from with this. When I first saw 28 Days Later, I found myself feeling horror for the first time in the cinema in a long while. Specifically, I'm thinking of the brief shot of the community message board that this structure had turned into, where people were leaving things like "Have you seen my daughter?" and "I'm infected, I'm so sorry…" and so forth. The entire thing was covered with these messages, and you only got the briefest of shots, but it was enough to let you know that the situation was truly horrific. That was a testament to the lives, in that film, that had been devastated by the outbreak. Horrifying.

When dude goes to seek out his parents and what he finds…that's horror.

That, and other moments within that film, reminded me what it was to get horrified at a horror movie. I realized that what I'd been mistaking for true horror was simply terror. Horror movies should horrify, thrillers thrill and terrify. There's a subtle difference.

Let's get down to brass tacks for a minute. I looked up "horrify" and got "To cause feelings of horror." Great, thanks. But for horror, I got this:

• An intense, painful feeling of repugnance and fear.
• Intense dislike; abhorrence.

Painful repugnance. Abhorrence. That works. Now, if I watch a Friday the 13th flick, I really don't feel that. Why? Because most slasher flicks are simply thrillers. There's seldom anything horrific–at least in a movie–about people being stalked and killed one at a time. But compare the feelings you get from watching a slasher flick to the feeling of watching John Hurt "hatch" in the middle of Alien. I can't imagine anybody who didn't twist and turn when they watched that scene unfold.

You can even make the comparison inside a movie–let's take the recent House of Wax remake as an example. The movie was better than it had any right to be, frankly. And it had a lunatic final sequence which deserved a better film to be stitched on. But there's three things here.

First, I don't count what are essentially torture sequences as horror. The heroine having to rip her lips open after they've been super glued together or losing part of a finger–to me, that's just the gross-out. Anybody can go for that. Sure, if you want to be technical, that's horrific. But there's nothing artful about that.

But second, there are some truly horrific moments in the film. When dude smacks at the wax "dummy" of his friend and knocks part of the skin away, only to reveal the jaw underneath–when you think about being paralyzed, encased in wax, and you're still alive–that's messed up. That's horror, folks.

However, most of the rest of the film is just "being chased by/avoiding the bad guys," which is just straight-up thriller stuff. The new spin on the serial killer is that they're brothers and one's disfigured. Whoopee.

And that's the problem: a cheap "boo" has taken the place of real horror. A cat jumping out at the right moment is not horror, nor is the "turn around and be shocked by somebody standing there" schtick.

We need more moments of horror in fiction and film. And it's hard to do. I was thinking Something Else #51 would be horrific in nature, though it wound up simply sad. Something Else #50 is probably the closest thing to what I'm talking about I was able to pull off–the idea that such a terrible ritual could be compared to the Christian ideal of communion I would think would be fairly horrific to any self-aware Christian.

I honestly haven't written too many pure horror stories. Dark fantasy is where most of them fall, which I think is a convenient bucket for anything that simply doesn't want to be taken that far. For that matter, I honestly don't go into writing aiming for a genre of any sort…the things just sort of happen like they want to.

Anybody else feel like this? Or should the shmoe shut up and sit down?

I'm very pleased to see that so many folks banged out a short story over the weekend. Turnout was frankly better than I expected for a first time thing. I'm hoping to run another one in a few weeks. You can see all of that glorious mess here.

And Episode 51 of Something Else was my contribution.

Plus, a new chapter of Overkill has gone live.

New music I dig this time around is "Turnstile Blues" by Autolux. Thanks to Communications Major, English Minor for the headsup.

Write something to spec this weekend and join the virtual 48-hour anthology.

This will either be brilliant or it will explode in our faces or it will simply float in the liminal void between. Regardless, join us in our madness. We've got so much time on our hands after all…

Goose over at Veritas Lux Mea added me to his sidebar. Which is quite cool. I consistently get great music from his site, as I've mentioned before. I need to redo all of my sidebars, honestly. I'm thinking of adding a music one, and at that point I'll slap Goose and VLM in there as well as the other ones that are all in a conspiracy together to make my hard drive explode. Not to mention make me spend more money on music. Sneaky bastards, the lot of them.

On the newness front, I've got two more pages of Next Wave #4 up, as well as the latest chapter of Overkill.

I've got to get some infrastructure bits done on Needcoffee, so I'll be taking a few days to put full focus over there. No need to fear. Speaking of fear, Bloggie voting ends today. So head over and do that thing. It would be much appreciated.

What else? Oh, I've got a bit I want to write about the horror genre. And that will lead straight out of Episode 51 of Something Else, which is already about ready to pop. No rest for the wicked.

Well, it was a crazy damn week. Barely kept my head above water with everything going on, so I apologize for the lack of posts and new content. Here's what I did manage to get up:

Something Else's 50th episode is now online. I'm jazzed as hell. Thanks for everybody who's supported it, both in its original home and now here. Many thanks.

The latest chapter of Overkill is up here.

The third page of Next Wave #4 is up here.

Tee's latest segment of his DBM "Ginger" story is online here.

And here's the new music that helped fuel this stuff:

• Polloxniner tipped me off to Okkervil River's "For Real."
• Gorilla vs. Bear has a sweet track by Gnarls Barkley
• Between Thought and Expression pointed out a nice Ludacris/White Stripes mashup…and you know how I am about mashups…
• The ever helpful Aurgasm provided Hanne Hukkelberg's "Ease" and (in a separate post) Lhasa De Sela. Very nice.

It's funny…I find out after Monday's over that Monday, January 23rd, is supposed to be the most depressing day of the year. I'd vote for April 15th, myself, but regardless, my most depressing day of the year started off with finding out Needcoffee's been nominated for a Bloggie for Best-Kept-Secret Weblog. So that's incredible. Our readers are amazingly wonderful people, no matter what the rest of my staff thinks about them. I kid. Mostly.

So if you like our stuff, since NC is our biggest One Tusk hydra-head, please give us a vote.

In other news, I'm working on a new short story, independent of Something Else, that has a working title of "The Invasion at Nick's Place." Don't ask.

Lastly, latest amusing song I recommend to you is "Plea From a Cat Named Virtute" by the Weakerthans. Found yet again thanks to Goose at Veritas Lux Mea. Get the info there.