I was thinking today about when I first fell in love with horror and I realized it wasn't when my mum made a seven year old me watch American Werewolf in London (telling me it was a comedy). It wasn't when my dad rented Critters on VHS for our family movie night. Those just gave an already frightened young boy night terrors. What really influenced me was my big brother. Just like it was his Fighting Fantasy collection that got me into role playing and his bookshelf that got me into fantasy and sci-fi (over the years I borrowed Lord of the Rings, Discworld books, Dragonlance books, so many things I came to love) it was his love of trashy horror that got me hooked.

I remember being 8 or so and I wasn't allowed to watch horror (because of the previously mentioned night terrors) so when my brother (who was 16 at the time) would bring home horror movies to watch I would have to go to my room or go play in the yard (the only tv in our house that had a VCR was the one in e living room). So I'd be a good kid and go play. Then I'd sneak up the stairs, under the window and sit just outside the door, watching these forbidden movies through the screen door, hoping I wouldn't get caught.

In that way I watched so many bad movies I can't even remember them all, Q the Winged Serpent, Terror Vision, Return of the Living Dead, Childs Play. I would love sitting there, often in the bright sunlight, and being scared out of my wits by what I was watching. I was only ever caught once and by god did I jump. I never did get to see the end of Terror Vision.

My sneaky love of horror continued over the next few years. Most of my family were big readers and loved Stephen King, Dean Koontz and others. I soon discovered as long as I kept their place marked and returned it exactly as I found it I could read a few pages here and there when the books were left in the lounge or on the bench in the dining room.

When I was twelve I managed to convince my mum to let me go see A Nightmare on Elm St 6 at the movies with some friends. It was in 3D! Or at least the final 30 minutes were. Soon after that I got my own library card for the local library and it seemed sneaking around to watch and read horror was over, I'd seen a horror movie, with permission and I could borrow as much horror as I wanted from the library. The fact that I didn't have to sneak around any more didn't change my love of horror, it stayed with me and leaked through into my writing more and more as my teachers at school let us explore more adult themes as we went along.

I still have a special place in my heart for many of those old trashy horror movies and I own a good chunk of them on DVD now. Maybe I'd have found my way to horror on my own eventually anyway but I think that my big brother helped my mind find a place where anything was possible and there were reasons to always be afraid of the dark. A place where the fears I'd had weren't just mine, everyone knew that the boogeyman hid under the bed, monsters would use the shower curtains to conceal themselves and sewer grates were doorways to a hellish dimension. A place my imagination was weirdly at home.