A Sip of Claret News
3rd February 2025
A Case for Horror
Happy February dear readers! I hope you've had a chance to settle into the new year.
There are things I wish I didn’t know. The horror of them is such that I don’t – cannot – engage. One of those ugly facts was rubbed in my face a few years ago.
I had a rare paying gig in Cambodia on behalf of an international charity to share research concerning its young people. Before I left, I read up on the place. Cambodia, I learned, is one of the few countries in the world where child trafficking is on the increase. It’s almost exclusively for sex.
There are monsters in this world, people who look like you and me but are not like us at all. These monsters traffic in children, sell them as sex slaves. I know they exist. You and me, we all know that this is true and that it is happening right now, as I write this and as you read it. It so appals me, and the scale of it so overwhelms me with its evilness, that I am paralysed.
I turn my head from it and look instead to problems that I can engage with.
Call me lacking in moral fibre and you wouldn’t be wrong.
I thought of Cambodia while reading the submission from Douglas Kruger, House of the Judas Goat. Its plot revolves around the trafficking of children, selling them as sex slaves. Yet, I can read it. Indeed, I am publishing it. How is that possible?
Answer that and you’ve answered why an entire genre of stories exists: horror.
I have already called child sex traffickers “monsters” and indeed, the supernatural is a common tool to describe these people. We are so lacking a vocabulary for these evil acts that we have to invent beasts. Vampires were diseased and murderous. Elves, dwarfs, pixies, and fairies were cruelly unpredictable. Witches were agents of bad luck.
There is no culture on the planet that doesn’t have a supernatural bad guy that teaches and terrifies, fascinates and repels in equal measure. We call them fairy tales.
While not all fairy tales end happily, enough do. As Neil Gaiman said, “Fairy tales are more than true – not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.” And he’d know, given that he is a larger-than-life literary superstar being brought down by alleged sexual assaults. Besides that ugliness, Gaiman nicked the approximate wording from his pal, Terry Pratchett, who nicked it from GK Chesterton.
Which brings us to the banality of evil. Who needs monsters when there's the neighbour next door.
Shirley Jackson, after whom the premier prize for horror writer has been named, encapsulated the McCarthy era with her short story, The Lottery, which is about a suburban mother chosen at random to be stoned to death by her neighbours and children. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is considered a 19th century horror classic. We would now call it a sensitive insight about post-partum psychosis. My favourite Stephen King novel, Misery, is about a famous author who suffers a horrible car crash and was cared for by an obsessive fan, which happened to the author himself.
Horror stories expose us to the worst of humanity. We need these stories because they’re a safe way to explore an ugly reality. We understand issues better. We understand humanity itself better. They allow us to engage.
To top it all off, horror stories are page turners that keep us reading late in the night but which end happily. You can finally turn off the light, and sleep secure in the knowledge that the monsters – at least temporarily – have been contained.
Claret Press is publishing House of the Judas Goat because it shines a light on child trafficking and the role globalisation and technology play in it. But equally, it’s a great read, a page turner, a horror-thriller that’ll keep you up too late.
Coming soon.
Douglas Kruger is a multiple award-winning international speaker and best-selling author of eight business books. His thought-leadership ideas have been featured on CNBC Africa and he has been published in Forbes and Entrepreneur magazines.
We're excited to publish his latest book, The House of Judas Goat, a horror-thriller where trust is a tricky game.
Join us on a 10-day journey in Musanda, Kenya, that's all about storytelling, meaningful interactions, and making a difference on Women's Day!
Led by our publisher, Dr. Katie Isbester, the workshops will be focused on the art of storytelling through engaging sessions, in which you will learn how to tell a story, and how to craft your own original ones.
For those interested, you will also have the opportunity to connect with the local community by visiting and aiding Nasio Trust's empowerment projects.
For more information, visit the link below:
As LA fires burn and as the newly inaugurated president of the United States Donald Trump promises to 'drill, baby, drill', we are excited to announce we are publishing an eco-thriller, White Road by Harry Whitehead.
When an oil rig explodes in the Canadian High Arctic just as winter’s setting in, an environmental disaster unfolds. Only one person knows the truth, only one can reveal it, and only one can save them all.
From the Arctic wastes to the corporate backrooms of shady Big Oil, White Road is an authentic and gripping eco-thriller of survival, battled out at the edge of everything.
We were so delighted when Jill Culiner, author of A Contrary Journey (2021) and Those Absent on the Great Hungarian Plain (2024) won an internationally renowned award for historical memoirs.
In honour of National Holocaust week, our next livestream of Ask the Author is with Jill. We have scheduled a conversation for you to ask questions about the Jewish Renaissance in the 19th and early 20th C, the great Hungarian plain, and the pogrom that followed. Jill will be sharing photos of that region.
Join the conversation on Tuesday 4th February 2025, 7pm-8pm, on the Claret Press YouTube Live channel.
The link to watch the livestream on YouTube is below:
We're excited to present the next episode in our online series Adaptations and Conversations, in which Katie Isbester (Publisher) and her friend Michelle discuss the book Mr Loverman by multi-award-winning author Bernadine Evaristo, and its recent BBC adaptation.
Set in South London, this book sparked controversy because of its topic matter. Although the BBC series is a lascivious version of the book, its story has had a tremendous impact on the Afro-Caribbean community.
Join the conversation and tell us what you think on Tuesday 11th February 2025, 7:30pm. It's a free participatory event on the Claret Press YouTube Live channel.
The link to the YouTube livestream is below:
''We are the first generation to feel the effect of climate change and the last generation who can do something about it.''
- Barack Obama, Former President of the United States
''Drill, baby, drill.''
- Donald Trump, President of the United States
