Toot's Book Reviews: November Spotlight & Giveaway : Author Wade Le Fevre (Horror Genre)

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Horror Author

~Wade Joseph Le Fevre~

Author Info

Wade is a life-long lover of horror, whether it be in movie or book form. An avid reader and cinephile, Wade spends most of his time either reading, writing or catching up on his backlog of movies. He can usually be found sitting outside reading his Kindle, waiting for his movie to start, depending on how good the book is.

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Author Spotlight

Horror is not a very well regarded genre. When most people hear the word horror they instantly picture any number of hack and slash movies like the endless Freddy Kruger, Jason or Michael Myers movies. They think buckets of blood and gratuitously exposed breasts. They think a group of teenagers who fit into any number of lame stereotypes such as the funny guy doing dumb things and smoking too much weed to the egotistical jock who meets his end in the bloodiest way possible to thunderous applause from the crowd to the air headed blonde who shows us “the goods” just seconds before meeting hers. In a word, they think stupid.

There are a million and one reasons on the market not to like horror. I’ll be the first to admit that. But there are also a million and one reasons to love it. Ira Levin, Richard Matheson, Shirley Jackson and Stephen King are all masters of the genre, writing books that have been well regarded as both novels and movies. Each of them has at least one work that has been turned into a movie multiple times! But people forget about them. Is it because these books aren’t any good? Is it because their movies aren’t? Or is it because the blood and boobie extravaganza has become so heralded in the last few decades?

Take for example Ira Levin’s works The Stepford Wives and Rosemary’s Baby. Both have been turned into movies and both are classic horror stories. The first deals with a woman who moves into a perfect society only to find that the men have been replacing their wives with animatronic copies that are more “perfect” and the second deals with a woman whose husband makes a deal with the devil, to her detriment. Both of these are classic stories, but they’re slow. The books and the movies have very little in the way of special effects or outright scares. They take their time, building the story and the characters, littering their narratives with unsettling clues that lead to horrifying revelations. But modern audiences want the bang for their buck. They don’t want to find out what is in the house next door, they want to see a topless girl get her head chopped off.

As a boy I loved horror movies. My favorites were always Halloween, Alien and The Shining. I used to love Halloween time when the stores would put out their scary movies. From those wonderful times I found other classics like The Thing, Candyman, Rosemary’s Baby and The Fly. If you were to watch these movies you would find lots of blood, gore, special effects, and yes, gratuitous nudity. But these movies took their time. They told a story. In some cases very creepy stories. But they were all the more creepy because of the build-up, because I cared about the characters and their problems. Horror works far better and is infinitely more thrilling when I’m worried about the characters finding a way out and surviving than when I just want to see some cool gore.

When I got older I found the desire to read. Too late in life in my opinion. I wish to this day I would have started sooner. But from this new found desire I discovered Richard Laymon, whose books I devoured one after another. His tales were gory and full of sex, but he knew how to draw you in. I would read his books, with the characters getting themselves into these ludicrous situations one small step at a time until they found themselves in way over their heads. Best of all Richard had no compunction about building up characters and their relationships, getting you to love them, and then killing them brutally and quickly, sometimes even taking out more than one at a time. I remember one story in particular, Darkness, Tell Us where he had seven or eight characters and in one moment five of them were dead. No preamble or warning, just gone! That’s good writing.

When I sat down to become a horror writer, even back in the more naïve days where I wanted to be a horror screenwriter, my goal always has been to write something with the power and impact of Ira Levin and Shirley Jackson. To write character driven horror like my hero, the late great Richard Matheson. And, maybe, if I’m really very lucky, to be as prolific and have as big of a readership as Stephen King. I want people to read my work and be just as interested as they are scared. I want people to talk about my books and pass them onto friends. I want people to bitch about how bad the movie was!

Horror is more than boobs and blood to me. If done right, horror can be transcendent. It can show you the darker side of people that exists just beneath the surface but they don’t show. It can be used as a metaphor for the current political and social climate and give you a glimpse through that window into how to better improve your life, or at least make you more aware of the horrific problems occurring in your peripheral vision. Horror can also be a release. An escape into a world crazier than your own, where ghouls and goblins are the villains, and are far easier to vanquish than your credit card debt. Horror isn’t the bad word it’s made out to be. If you read it right it can be so much more than what most people think. It’s a genre I truly love and adore and most of all believe in. I hope more people in the future will give it a chance.

Books & Excerpts

Jude is terrified. She lives in a constant state of fear of being home alone. She is so afraid that it is starting to affect her marriage. To overcome her fear she decides to spend a perilous two days alone in her apartment while her husband is at work. Her mind plays endless tricks on her from phantom sneezes to the television turning itself on. But is it all her imagination? Or is there really something to be afraid of? Something as close as her coat closet?

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~Terrorizing Jude Excerpts~

1. The plopping sound of dripping water reverberated through the room, bouncing off the tiled walls. There was a four second delay between drips, as the water slowly collected at the edge of the tap, eventually falling out of the faucet and landing in the water that filled the tub. The momentary collision of the two bodies of water as they became one caused a gentle ripple and a slight echo that would quickly die away.

2. On his next trip he spent only five minutes inside. He hung a toy rat from a string at eye level in the closet and left. He spent a few weeks watching and tracking another girl and her life and then returned a little over a month later to find the rat still hanging from the string. Nobody had found it. If they had they would have pulled it down and maybe even called the police to report a break in. Even if they didn’t call the authorities and assumed it was just a practical joke, after all, nothing was taken, there’s no way Jude would have reacted with anything less than mortal fear of having had a stranger enter their home without their foreknowledge. And just from the little bit he knew of Brian, he did not seem like the kind of guy who possessed a sense of humor. Either way, he doubted very much that they would have allowed the rat to remain hanging in their closet.

3. Jude tried to think. There must be some way out of all this. Some way both of them could escape intact or at least without losing any further extremities. There was the gun, sitting on the kitchen counter, unprotected. But how to get to it and what to do with it once she had it? She tried not to worry about the second part of the question at the moment. Better to figure that out when she had the gun in her grasp.

Carpenter, California is not Los Angeles. It is a much smaller city more inland, with less crime and a smaller population. That doesn't mean it hasn't seen it's share of violence. In his time as a homicide detective there, Arthur Nelms has seen things that have caused many sleepless nights. But nothing like the string of animal attacks that begin cropping up just before he is due to retire. Like every other murder he has investigated they have a simple, rational explanation. Until he begins finding evidence that the killer may be all too human...

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~Snipe Hunt Excerpts~

1) There was also a secondary wound on the victim’s left heel, an incision that severed her Achilles tendon, making it impossible to run away. The cut was made with one half of a rusty pair of scissors, probably dug out of a dumpster. The weapon had already been fingerprinted and bagged as evidence, but the damage was done. The killer was getting better at this.

2) While he lay there he tried to figure out what had made this kill so much more special than the rest. It wasn’t fear, he knew. He had tasted fear. The others had all been afraid, but this last one had tasted different. He wrongfully presumed it was some long scientific explanation that he didn’t understand about endorphins or adrenaline rushing through her body because of the fight she was putting up. He didn’t realize it until the next day while riding the bus that it wasn’t because her heart was pumping, it was because his was.

3) The key to his plan was stealth. He had to go completely unnoticed by the victim until he struck and he’d done a good job at first, hiding in the darkness between the bushes and the concrete wall in front of her car. But he’d blown it when he stood up, his knee catching a branch and shaking the whole bush.

She looked in his direction. She peered into the darkness and stepped closer. She saw him, his outline pressed against the wall. Maybe she didn’t know what she was looking at exactly, but she obviously knew something wasn’t right. If she’d gone about her business and not given him a second glance he would have aborted the mission and tried again the next night. But she stood there, trying to make him out. He needed to attack while she was still confused. It was now or never.

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