What are you working on now?
Authors get asked this all the time. And I knew this question was coming when I signed up to be a panelist at a recent writers’ conference. Much to my surprise, though, after stumbling through my pre-written mini synopsis of The Late-Night Witches (a heart-warming tale of a mom/witch slaying vampires to save her island) I tagged on, “So, it’s basically a cozy horror.”
After an embarrassingly long pause, one brave audience member asked what everybody else was thinking. “What exactly is cozy horror?”
Good question.
If you follow trends in publishing, you’ve probably noticed the rise of the cozy genre. These low-stakes novels come in different forms—mystery, fantasy, romance—but they all promise the same thing: the literary experience of a warm hug.
Given this, it’s not hard to understand why books like The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, Legends & Lattes, and The House in the Cerulean Sea have shot up bestseller lists. In a world as chaotic, divisive, and disheartening as ours, who doesn’t want a hug? (Well, a fair number of people actually. They tend dismiss these books as fluff. But more on that later.)
So, sub-genres of the cozy are well-established, but what about the idea of a cozy horror? Can you really mash-up a hug with a scream?
While struggling to think of an example of this kind of contradictory mix, the movie Home Alone came to my mind.
How would you describe this classic flick? A Christmas movie? A comedy? A heartwarming story of a boy reunited with his family after a series of charming mishaps? Or maybe it’s a terrifying tale about an abandoned child fighting off home invaders who just might kill him.
(If you follow any social media, you’ve probably seen Macaulay Culkin reprise his role as Kevin McCallister in a video short depicting his PTSD as an adult. Funny stuff.)
It’s easy to dismiss Home Alone as simple fun, but maybe there’s more to it. Being a child is terrifying. Dangers lurk everywhere.
If you’re a parent, you know a big part of your job is to teach your precious babies all the ways they can die. You really have to drive home the point that at any given moment they are one-fork-in-a-toaster away from death…you know, so they don’t stick a fork in the toaster. Or accept candy from strangers. Or cross the street without looking side to side and then maybe side to side again.
Given the terror of childhood, part of the enjoyment of watching a movie like Home Alone may be that it provides kids a space to explore some of their fears without the experience becoming intolerable. A nifty trick that.
Of course, life doesn’t become any less terrifying as we grow up. Sure, there may be a sense of invincibility that comes with being in your twenties, maybe even thirties, but that fades under the constant onslaught of reality if you’re lucky to live long enough.
And I’m not talking about issues like climate change, war, or random acts of violence. I’m talking about the quiet, mundane horrors that seep into even the most fortunate of lives. Like when your aging mom or dad faces an uncertain diagnosis. Or an old high school friend gets sick then dies way too young.
Or maybe it’s when your spouse’s annual bloodwork comes back off. Really off. That can’t be right. They work out. Or maybe it’s you. Maybe you’re the one who gets the call after a routine scan. I got that call at the age of forty-seven. Breast cancer. Talk about scary.
If you’ve been through one or more of these experiences, you know how horrifying and painful they can be. They are often unbearable, and yet—here’s the kicker—you have to bear them. You may be a state of shock, but the days continue to pass, and as they do, strange contradictions come to the fore.
The biggest? Here’s life staring you down with its most indifferent, brutal, terrifying face…and yet you’ve never loved it more. There’s no escaping this mind-blowing dichotomy, and, believe me, in that exhausting, surreal—or maybe hyper-real—place, comfort is priceless.
(Shout out to you Only Murders in the Building. I’m not sure how I would have survived waiting for those pathology results without all your delightful homicides.)
Now back to the cozy naysayers. The argument goes that these types of stories have little value because of their inherent sweetness, good humor and lack of realism. After all, guaranteed happy endings don’t build character.
I disagree. Vehemently.
Believe me, spending day, after miserable February day, lying on a board in a dark room, under a radiation machine with a sticker that reads, So you fight until you can’t fight anymore, can really skew your perception.
Embracing hope—even if it’s for the ability to face the worst with grace—is often much harder than wallowing in pessimism. In these times, it’s nearly impossible to remember the parts of life that are affirming.
But they still exist. They are also real.
It’s here that cozy horror—if we can agree to call it that—finds purpose. In my mind, it exists in a safe, beautiful, oftentimes funny world where yes, monsters exist.
You don’t have to be Freud to see that my writing about a mom slaying vampires was a way for me to consolidate my cancer experiences without having to violently tear open my scars. It was also a way for me to share some of the things I learned without falling into a pit of despair and taking others with me.
There is no shame in facing horror gently.
All this to say, I don’t know if cozy horror is really a thing, and I have no interest in arguing it. I’m also not going to claim that this kind of novel is a perfect fit for every situation. I believe in different stories for different times. The thing I’m most interested in defending when it comes to cozies is the value of their warm hugs.
The thing I’m most interested in defending when it comes to cozies is the value of their warm hugs.On that topic, do you have a hug that sticks out in your memory? I do. It was given to me by an oncologist. We were standing in the hallway outside of the hospital room where my mom lay dying. (Cancer is without a doubt my vampire.)
Anyway, this doctor must have seen that I was drowning because she asked if she could give me a hug. As she held me in her arms, my horror didn’t magically disappear—in fact, in some ways it grew—but so did my understanding of kindness. Magnificent, awe-inspiring, life-is-good kindness.
And guess what? It didn’t feel the least bit fluffy.
***
