So doing a horror harem is actually kinda difficult.
For those who have been following along, I’ve made references to wanting to do a horror harem story for years now. The urge to do something with a darker, harder edge has been there for a long time. Maybe even since the beginning.
Although I’ve done a little bit of work here or there in the background, I really didn’t begin seriously working on a horror harem project until this year.
I’ve run into a lot of problems, from just about every angle.
Here’s probably the most immediate, practical problem I’m facing: What should be my first project? I’ve decided to launch a new pen name, since I want some level of division between the cozy comfort I tend to aim for, even in more action-survival stories, and a horror project, but mostly I just want to see what exactly happens when I launch a new name. Supposedly, Amazon favors new names.
But the question becomes, what should be my first impression? Because the first story I write will absolutely be my first impression, and that will, as the saying goes, ‘leave an impression’, whether people realize it or not.
I was hit hard by an idea that was very grim, very miserable. The story basically opens with a suicide, to give you an idea of the tone, and although I still intend on having the comforting parts in between the grimmer parts, (it can’t be all misery all the time), I ultimately backed away from the story because I felt it was too much for a first impression and, more significantly, misrepresentative of the content coming after. Because although future stories under this pen will be horror, this story would probably be as dark as it gets. So if people turned off by this level of misery, but who are still looking for horror harem, get turned away by my initial effort, then they likely won’t give any future efforts a chance, thinking it’ll be more of the same. It goes the other way, too. The people who like it? They’ll probably be let down by the more ‘tame’ series that follow.
That’s just one problem.
What about the cover art? Sexy or scary? Both? How far in either direction? The readership of harem has let me know cover art is EVERYTHING. It’s obvious that some authors absolutely thrive largely because they’re able to drop 2,000$ per cover. I’ve legitimately seen people say “WTF? Why was the story so bad, the cover was so good!” As if the quality of the cover has LITERALLY ANYTHING to do with the ability of the writer.
And then there’s the narrative difficulty. Harem is ultimately a power fantasy. Horror is literally the opposite, a dis-empowerment fantasy. In harem, harem members are never allowed to die or have irreparable harm done to them. In horror, almost everyone dies, usually extremely painfully. Now, I know there’s a way to balance that first problem (a horror harem would be closer to Doom 3 ((yes I finally played it)) than Alien - Isolation or Amnesia - The Dark Descent), and I’m willing to just not kill or torture harem members, but it makes telling the story overall more difficult.
To complicate things even further, it’s become obvious that I’ve been somewhat trying to write my idea of horror harem for a long time now. Some of the ideas I’m coming up with closely resemble Haven or A Warm Place. Basically grim survival in a grim environment. Was Haven horror? Was A Warm Place? Honestly, I can’t say they were. Really, they were more tense than scary. But that’s the kind of story I want to tell: a guy and a group of women fucking, surviving, and fighting monsters. I once joked that if I were going to do a sequel series to A Warm Place, I’d only do it if I got to introduce monsters. Some of the ideas I have closely resemble that, and it’s honestly tempting.
I’d say one of my biggest concerns is people will either say ‘this isn’t really harem’ or ‘this isn’t really horror’. Mostly I’m worried about that second one.
There’s the additional difficulty of trying to find time to do this while also keeping up my works as Misty Vixen, which is already difficult, but that isn’t a new problem.
So…yeah. It’s difficult. That’s the word of the day: difficult.
The first problem I truly need to get past is settling on which one to write. I’ve at least got it narrowed down…sort of.
I’m really tempted to do an idea that would almost go like a video game. To be clear, NOT LitRPG, but almost like a survival-horror or FPS-horror. Something like, a guy deep in a top secret research facility survives an experiment gone wrong and finds survivors (see: hot babes) and tries to escape and survive. So basically like Doom 3 or Half-Life but with a harem.
Another idea that hit me is, how best to explain this…basically a spiritual successor to The Pale Redhead, but as a small harem, in a world that’s a combination of Haven and A Warm Place. That one is also tempting.
I’m also really tempted by a fantasy horror harem. Basically, a lone warrior trying to protect a small refugee camp in the midst of an undead invasion.
And of course there’s my modern day survival-horror harem. Basically, suddenly there’s monsters everywhere and one guy and some hot chicks he finds have to survive in a small, overrun town.
Maybe ‘narrowed down’ isn’t the right phrase.
I have other ideas, as I’ve said I’ve put aside the big space survival-horror thing for now, but those are the contenders.
So yeah, that’s basically the state of things.