Did your genre choose you?

After doing some modest driving this holiday, I realized that I was quite the goofy child.  My mind drifted as it does while driving and remembered what “Road Games” me and my sisters or parents would play while in the backseat being driven to a location.  Most families would sing songs or count odd color cars or even cows.  Me, I would count “Haunted Houses,” or more specifically, old abandoned, dilapidated structures being held together by rusty nails from the turn of the century. 

I was enthralled at the idea of ghosts or monsters living just on the other side of the highway or anywhere for that matter.  I grew up spellbound by anything supernatural from movies to action figures.  The rest of my family tolerated my enthusiasm.

So, I will indulge myself once again by revisiting Holidays past and gifts that made my heart go pitter patter!

Exhibit A

Motorized Monster Making Kit.

The tag line: “They do Things, you make them,” is a classic.  I don’t remember these working so great but I have a faint memory of burning gears and melting rubber. 

Exhibit B

Barnabas Collins Game

Never played the game but had hours of fun burying and excavation Barnabas’s raggedy bones again and again.

Exhibit C

Shrunken Head Making Kit

Turning an apple into a shrunken heads was just far, fucking out!   Nuff said.

So, it comes to no surprise that when I finally decided to become an author that I gravitated towards the dark side. The worlds of the paranormal are close at hand along with all their metaphysical fun.

To you authors out there, was your choice of genre something you simply decided on or was it more like my situation; a fascination with certain elements, whether they be romance, crime, etc, that kept tugging away at you year after year?  Did your genre choose you?

I know my little demons won’t let me rest.