| Foreword : the Horror Writers Association : a shockingly brief and informal history of the HWA | |
| The madness of art | p. 4 |
| Acceptance speech : the 2003 National Book Award for distinguished contribution to American letters | p. 7 |
| Why we write horror | p. 13 |
| What you are meant to know : twenty-one horror classics | p. 17 |
| Avoiding what's been done to death | p. 23 |
| Workshops of horror (and seminars and conferences) | p. 26 |
| Degrees of dread : horror in higher education | p. 32 |
| A world of dark and disturbing ideas | p. 40 |
| Mirror, mirror | p. 48 |
| Going there : strategies for writing the things that scare you | p. 53 |
| Honest lies and darker truths : history and horror fiction | p. 58 |
| Such horrible people | p. 65 |
| A hand on the shoulder | p. 73 |
| Eerie events and horrible happenings : plotting short horror fiction | p. 77 |
| Reality and the waking nightmare : setting and character in horror fiction | p. 82 |
| "He said?" : she asked : some thoughts about dialogue | p. 88 |
| Keep it moving, maniacs : writing action scenes in horror fiction | p. 95 |
| The dark enchantment of style | p. 102 |
| Innovation in horror | p. 108 |
| Depth of field : horror and literary fiction | p. 113 |
| Splat goes the hero : visceral horror | p. 118 |
| Darkness absolute : the standards of excellence in horror fiction | p. 124 |
| On horror : a conversation with Harlan Ellison | p. 132 |
| No more silver mirrors : the monster in our times | p. 137 |
| Fresh blood from old wounds : the alchemist meets the biochemist | p. 141 |
| More simply human | p. 146 |
| The possibility of the impossible | p. 152 |
| Take a scalpel to those tropes | p. 156 |
| That spectred isle : tradition, sensibility, and delivery or ghosts? : what ghosts? | p. 159 |
| New horrors : a roundtable discussion of horror today and tomorrow | p. 163 |
| Archetypes and fearful allure : writing erotic horror | p. 171 |
| Writing for the new pulps : horror-themed anthologies | p. 176 |
| Freaks and fiddles, banjos and beasts : writing redneck horror | p. 179 |
| Youth gone wild | p. 184 |
| Writing horror comic books - and graphic novels | p. 188 |
| Acts of madness : writing horror for the stage | p. 194 |
| Fear spins off : the tie-in novel comes into its own | p. 199 |
| The play's the thing on the doorstep : writing video and role-playing games | p. 203 |
| Now fear this : writing horror for audio theater | p. 209 |
| Good characters and cool kills : writing the horror screenplay | p. 213 |
| Dark fluidity : online research and marketing resources | p. 219 |
| The small press : filling shelves with rare books | p. 223 |
| Sharing the creeps : marketing short horror fiction, version 2.0 | p. 231 |
| For love or money : six marketing myths | p. 235 |
| One reader at a time : promoting your horror novel | p. 238 |
| Afterword : quiet lies the locust tells | p. 243 |
| The HWA members who contributed to this book | p. 248 |
| Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved. |