The other week, I was a presenter at Horrible Saturday at the York (PA) Emporium. (Go to www.theyorkemporium.com, and you'll find it has acres of stuff you'll love, both in its building and online.) This came about after our mutual friend, the legendary horror publisher Chuck Miller, introduced Jim Lewin, York Emporium proprietor along with his wife Pam, and myself, at a recent convention.

I wasn't sure what Jim had in mind for me to do, so I prepared a short talk. But when I saw him using an interview format with one of my fellow presenters, the fine horror writer J. F. Gonzalez, and saw what a great interviewer he is, I went for an interview myself instead. P.S. All of Horrible Saturday was taped for York TV, and I'm sure you'll find it online eventually. There was even a screaming contest!

Practically all of my talk wound up getting into the interview. But since I did type it out (writers don't like to "waste" anything!), and since I think it does contain some of my best reflections as a horror writer and publisher over 25 years, I thought you might like to read it:

I'm John Maclay. Thanks for coming to Horrible Saturday, and special thanks to the Lewins for sponsoring it.

As you may know, I've been a horror writer since 1984, with my more than 100 published short stories having appeared both in specialty press and in 24 mass-market anthologies, alongside stories by Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Dean Koontz, and Stephen King.

And from 1984 to 1995, as Maclay & Associates with my wife Joyce, I was a horror publisher, of anthologies such as the Masques series, Borderlands I, After the Darkness, and Voices from the Night (which I also edited). As such, it was my privilege to publish practically everyone in the field at that time, including Bradbury and King.

But enough about my credits, and okay, enough name-dropping. Because what I really want to talk about, and which I think will be of more interest to you, is what horror fiction means to me, where it's been, where it is now, and where it may be going.

It's been said that there are two main subjects for fiction: love and death. (F. Scott Fitzgerald may have added a third: money.) And horror fiction, of course, treats of death. (Though there's a sub-genre, erotic horror, that handles both!)

And when I broke into the field in 1984, at the advanced age of forty, I had plenty of death-thoughts in my history. Such as deaths in the family, a near-fatal auto accident of mine, and almost going to Vietnam in the Army.

But why was I so ready to deal with these in fiction? Shouldn't I have just repressed them? (And by the way, most of my horror fiction is reality-based, not some fantasy I've dreamed up.)

No. Because I discovered that horror fiction, at its best, provides what's called catharsis. In other words, engage the terror, deal with it, and beat it. That way, you'll emerge a better person. And not just if you write it out as I do, but if you read my words and those of others.

Incidentally, when some people tell me that by writing horror I'm spreading horror and evil in the world - and I'm sure you've heard them saying the same about you for reading it - I have to laugh. Because horror fiction is the exact reverse, as above - it's really a morality play, like in the Middle Ages, in which good is implicit over evil.

And by the way, why are some religious folks so against horror? When The Book of Revelation is, at least to me, the best horror ever written, and with its redemption in the end?

So that's what horror means to me, and why I'm a writer, and former publisher, of it.

But now let's get less heavy, and move on to more practical matters.

History. Up to the advent of Mr. King, horror fiction was a genre indeed, something that a limited number of dedicated people (or "weirdos"!) experienced in a way not unlike a teenager sneaking a look at a Playboy in the drugstore. Sure, there were even blockbuster movies in the genre, but I'm talking about the written word here.

Then the 1980s hit, and everybody was writing and publishing horror. (My editor of the Masques series, J. N. Williamson, whom I eternally thank for breaking me into the field, sold most of his three dozen novels then.)

But after that came the bust. (It was sort of like the sports trading card bust, with just too much of a good thing.) Horror sections in bookstores vanished, the midlist - those writers who are just below the top - died, and practically only King and Rice were on the shelves.

So horror fiction went back to being a genre, except in the case of a chosen few. (My friend Darrell Schweitzer, and others, have also observed this.) For example, none of the recent Bram Stoker Awards of the Horror Writers Association were for anything that wasn't published in specialty press, except for two for Mr. King. And while I am glad I worked in horror when it was mass-market - I feel bad for those whose fiction, probably better than mine, is now reaching just hundreds rather than many thousands - I do have to ask, is that bad?

An emphatic, No! Because a myriad of specialty presses have now taken over (again), making the genre, if that's what it's been and is to be, more healthy than ever before. And by the way, I seriously urge you to Google all over the place and find them, their authors, and their books. Don't just go into a bookstore anymore (except those like Jim's and Pam's!), because that just isn't where it's at.

And for Godsake, don't waste your time dwelling on the past - retro is fun, but, well, it's dead. Don't go for past greats, as in tribute publications - that is, unless they're giving you something new, now. Go instead for the likes of J. F. Gonzalez, who's here with me today. There's a world of new, exciting horror stuff out there, if you'll only take the trouble to find it.

Because in the end, isn't that what's it all about, my brothers and sisters in the horror field? Aren't we, at our best, outsiders (Lovecraft), going for what the safe (and boring?) folks won't?

In short, always go find those who are breaking new ground in the pursuit of our guilty, secret - but ultimately deep and fulfilling - thing.