As you heard in class, I live in a tiny town just above Birmingham called Pinson. It is currently frozen solid. I have lived there since I was three and before I was here in Tuscaloosa.
I have always been a quiet person, especially in school. I came out of my shell in high school, but before that I mostly stuck to books and my small circle of friends. Fantasy is my favorite genre and definitely got me through the horrible eight years I spent in the Pinson school system before going on to JCIB. I have always been easily scared, so I tend to avoid scary movies. To me, the scariest movie/story I have ever heard is "The Shining". No matter how many times I watch it, I am still terrified. I do appreciate the horror genre though and am slowly moving farther into it (I recently watched "Nightmare on Elm Street", woo!)
I absolutely love the Harry Potter books, mostly because I have grown up with them. I have always been the same age as Harry when reading the books. I think that made them just a little more special to me. Growing up I read from J.R.R. Tolkien (I was the LOTR geek in middle school...) to Garth Nix (his Abhorsen series is amazing!) to anything to do with Merlin. I have read the Twilight books and enjoy them when I want to completely shut down my brain. The simplicity of them is a great escape from school work.
At the moment my favorite author is Neil Gaiman. I saw him read last year and could have died happy that day. His books are awesomely weird. I have read everything of his that I can get a hold on.
As far as ghost stories go, only one silly one comes to mind. When I was about six, the older girls in the neighborhood told me that when the sky turned red, a monster would come out and eat little girls...obviously to get me inside. I also used something similar to beat my younger sister for the top bunk.
I was raised on the books "13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey." Kathryn Tucker travelled all over Alabama and compiled a list of popular ghost stories such as Crybaby bridge and the Montevallo ghost. They are creepy, but fun to read. It was recently turned into a musical.
I am very excited to learn more about the darker side of fantasy. It is definitely an area which I have neglected.
6 comments:
It's funny that we're reading Gaiman in this class because from what I'd read before I never thought he wrote stories that were necessarily "dark" or really "scary." But when you mentioned the reading, I remembered the story he wrote about the statue--do you remember? It was about a person who dresses up like a statue, who also turns out to be a stalker. For weeks I couldn't go to bed before checking everywhere to make sure no one was hiding in my room.
Also, I've heard about the Alabama Ghosts book and have been meaning to read it for some time now. Maybe now I'll remember that I want to find it. ^^;
That was my favorite thing he read and I wish he would publish it! You should look into his short story collections, they are super creepy and "American Gods" is pretty dark.
Yeah, I've read American Gods. I enjoyed that. Never read the short stories, though.
By JCIB, Kirstin, you mean Jefferson County International Baccalaureate in Irondale, right? Did you know you're mentioned in the school's Wikipedia entry?
If by Gaiman's living-statue story you mean "Feminine Endings," he has published it, though it's not in one of his collections yet. Probably easiest to find it in Stephen Jones' anthology Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 20 (2009).
That would be the JCIB I went to. That's actually my sister who is mentioned, she got all the creative genes in the family. And now I'll have to go buy that collection because that story is my favorite of his so far!
Kirstin, have you read Stephen King's novel The Shining, or only seen Stanley Kubrick's movie The Shining? I agree that Kubrick's movie is a landmark, but so is King's novel.
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