Christian Horror - Where is it?

I'm not kidding. Where is it? I went to input information for my E-Book version of Never Ceese. Went to select three subjects it fit under and WoW! no subject for Christian Horror. What's that about? Never Ceese was approved for distribution to the Christian market. Spring Arbor had to know Never Ceese was horror. It's right there on the cover, short-listed for a Bram Stoker award. Bram Stoker . . . Dracula . . . horror . . . sort of figured they wouldn't approve a book they didn't have a subject category for, right?

Wrong.

Same at Amazon. No category for Christian Horror.

Want to know why?

Of course you do. ;) Even though Spring Arbor is no longer run by the Christian Booksellers Association (technically anyway) Spring Arbor seems not to humor much more than what CBA will tolerate. The Christian Booksellers Association never had plans of putting out horror as such (because their core market readers think it's evil for the most part) and so there has never been a Christian horror category added. This is in spite of there being general market horror books out there already that appeal and deal with very Christian material (non-overtly of course. Just part of the story.)

That should change soon though because CBA and ECPA are now publishing HORROR or so they claim. It's actually CBA/ECPA highly targeted, and standardly overt fiction. Rest assured though, as soon as a Christian Horror category is created (of course because I won't shut up about it,) CBA will push their non-horror titles right in there. Even though, by their own admission, they don't plan on publishing horror stories--as such and never have planned on it.

So for now you get to dig through the Horror section, there're certainly some fine books there, instead of going directly to ones that would most likely not offend your Christian sensibilities.

It's actually the result of a much larger problem in the publishing industry IMO. There are no "publishing police" out there to direct who actually qualifies to go into a particular slot. It's up to each publisher period. That's why we have the young adult section cluttered with literature that might best go into adult erotica and also the reason why anything labeled Christian will only ever point to work put out by an affiliation that is exclusive and only represents what some Christians want to read.