Well, I thought that I’d talk about how your shouldn’t ignore yourself for the sake of online “content.” And, yes, most of this article is the story of why my next book review won’t be of an infamous 1980s horror novel which would literally have been perfect for reviewing around Halloween.
Whilst browsing Goodreads the day before I prepared this article in early-mid April, I was reminded about Shaun Hutson’s legendarily rare and notorious 1984 splatterpunk horror novel – written under the pen name of Nick Blake – “Chainsaw Terror”. And I was astonished to learn that everything I previously knew about this “holy grail” of 1980s horror fiction was totally wrong!
For context: The traditional legend of this horror novel, the one I learnt online during the 2000s, was that it was so edgy and horrific that the popular British newsagent W.H. Smith banned it from sale in their shops, forcing the publisher to put out a censored version in 1985 titled “Come The Night”. For quite a few years, this was the commonly-repeated history of this novel.
But, to my astonishment, it was totally wrong. Not only did at least one of the reviews on Goodreads point out that both books were absolutely identical in terms of content, but I later found a very extensively-researched “Nocturnal Revelries” article (Warning – Gory paintings, edgy/violent subject matter) from about five years ago which fully described the history of these two identical books.
In short, the novel was originally supposed to be a novelisation of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974), but the publisher – Star Books – couldn’t get the rights, so they asked Hutson to write an original chainsaw-themed story instead. Before publication, something like 20-30 pages of this extremely grisly novel were apparently cut out of the manuscript by the publisher for censorship reasons (eg: both books are the same pre-cut version). Another large bookseller of the time – Bookwise – refused to stock copies of “Chainsaw Terror” (1984) because it had the word “chainsaw” in the title.
For context, given the moral panic about “video nasties” at the time, some people in 1980s Britain – including the film censors – had this weird aversion to allowing the word “chainsaw” in film and book titles. This, by the way, is one reason why censorship boards are inherently bad. They often have all sorts of utterly random and weird sensitivities which most ordinary people don’t (See also the thing about PEGI giving the 2024 indie game “Balatro” an “18+” rating, since revised down to “12+” on appeal, due to gambling-related imagery). Anyway, in order to sell more books, Star apparently just released the same novel under a different title – “Come The Night” – in 1985.
Technically, thanks to an old late 1990s omnibus I found in a second-hand shop aeons ago, I actually own a copy of “Come The Night” (1985).
Yes, it has been here all along. Ironically, I reviewed one of the other stories in this book years ago.
I hadn’t read it before because I’d incorrectly dismissed it as a “censored version” but, now, I flicked through it and then started reading the opening chapter. This would be the PERFECT novel to review for an article I’ll post around Halloween. But, to my dismay, I suddenly realised that I really wasn’t in the mood for reading it at the time. Maybe it was because I was tired and mildly stressed out about other things, but the idea of actually reading a grimly depressing, and deeply disturbing, “shock value” novel just didn’t appeal to me that afternoon.
Yes, I hope to read it at some point but – ever since I got back into reading novels about four months earlier – I’ve been trying to avoid “forcing myself to read” or “being productive” with reading. I’ve been slowing down my reading, not setting deadlines for finishing novels, not taking extensive notes, not setting myself “rules” about what I read etc…- because reading is supposed to be FUN and I wanted to avoid the “book burn-out” I suffered after almost two years of frequent binge-reading in 2018-20.
That afternoon, I was in the mood for something thrilling – so I started reading Lee Child’s “Blue Moon” (2019) instead. And it’s really fun 🙂 Although I was a bit annoyed that I’d passed over a horror novel which would have been perfect for reviewing during the Halloween season, I’m also mature enough to understand my own emotions and sensibilities. There are certainly times when I’m in the mood for ridiculously edgy horror fiction – like a couple of months earlier – but this wasn’t one of them.
Anyway, the point of this article is that you shouldn’t ignore yourself for the sake of online “content”. Yes, it would have been cool if I’d posted a review of Shaun Hutson’s “Come The Night” (1985) shortly before Halloween. But forcing myself to read it when I wasn’t in the mood would have not only run the risk of putting me off of reading again, but it would have probably also resulted in a lower-quality review too.
If you post stuff online regularly, there can be this constant feeling that everything has to be about online “content”, but this can often mean that you start to lose sight of why you post stuff online or ignoring your own moods and sensibilities.
Unless you’re a professional critic or a professional “influencer”, the stuff you post online is often just a byproduct of things that you enjoy or are interested in. But if you’re more focused on the “content”, then you might end up focusing on things that “get the most views” or will “impress your audience” more than your actual enjoyment of whatever you are writing or making videos about. You might focus on being “on brand” rather than actually being yourself. And all of this will ruin your enjoyment
In other words, don’t ignore yourself just for the sake of online content. I was more in the mood for a thriller novel than a horror novel, so I started reading a thriller novel…
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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
