Neighborhood Reads
In recent months, romance bookstores have been popping up in the Seattle area and beyond, with more on the way. But only one local horror-themed bookshop has opened this year. While Seattle’s bookstore scene is bright pink and decorated like a high school prom right now, Haunted Burrow Books is the charismatic goth kid holding court over in the corner.
Roxanne Guiney has been writing and reading horror fiction for just about as long as she can remember. “I really enjoy the depth that you can bring about through horror,” she explains, “because you’re seeing people at their most intimate and vulnerable emotional states as they’re pulled through the wringer.”
Guiney believes that horror fiction is on the cusp of the same kind of renaissance that romance fiction is enjoying. “Something the horror and romance genres can do better than the others,” she says, is that both genres “actually make their readers feel something when they’re done right.”
Earlier this year, Guiney started curating and selling a selection of horror titles at swap meets and book fairs. She heard about a storefront opening up on 15th Avenue East on Capitol Hill in a block that’s set for major redevelopment, and on June 20, the brick-and-mortar incarnation of Haunted Burrow opened for the first time.
Haunted Burrow provides all the features you’d expect from a bookstore celebrating the horror genre. Horror authors come through multiple times a month for readings. In addition to the most thorough collection of used and new horror novels in the Seattle area, the shop also sells tarot cards and other divination tools for those ready to personally investigate the supernatural.
Guiney hosts a monthly horror book club (on Oct. 12, the club will gather to discuss Lucy A. Snyder’s post-apocalyptic body horror epic “Sister, Maiden, Monster”) and another book club exclusively devoted to the works of horror master Stephen King (on Oct. 5, the club tackles King’s masterpiece of a short story collection, “Skeleton Crew”).
But Haunted Burrow Books is more than just a space devoted to the scarier and mysterious end of the literary spectrum. “I get people coming in all the time saying ‘I’m a wimp, I don’t read horror,’” Guiney laughs, “and I tell them, ‘That’s ok. I promise I’ll try to find something that works for you.’” She’s built up the store’s stock of new and used nonfiction and non-horror fiction titles over the last few months.
“What makes me happy is seeing people reading in general,” Guiney says. Even if they’re not horror fans, “I want to make sure that people can walk out of my store with a book that they’ll enjoy.”
She’s also started a local author section for self-published and small-press Seattle authors. “It can be extremely difficult to get your book into stores and into people’s hands when you’re an indie or when you’re published through a small press” that doesn’t have the marketing budget of the Big Five corporate publishing houses, Guiney says.
Guiney has published short stories in magazines and worked as a freelance editor, and her store’s mission is to support all aspects of books, writing and literature. Haunted Burrow Books hosts a number of readings, writing groups, storytelling events, “silent-ish write-ins” and local book clubs in the space. Guiney offers the shop’s large table to anyone “in the writing and reading and editing communities” who needs a place to gather.
The shop has also hosted role-playing groups and meditation workshops. “As long as the hosts don’t charge their attendees for the event, it’s during store hours and there are no conflicts, I love to have people use the space,” Guiney explains.
Attending community events, she says, “helps with dealing with the feelings of isolation that comes from being a writer, editor or even a reader — they keep people motivated to work on their projects.”
Although Guiney is working hard to welcome everyone in to Haunted Burrow’s community, she’s well aware that people expect a horror-themed bookstore to put on a show during October in the run-up to Halloween. The shop’s spooky season planning is still evolving, with the latest details posted on the shop’s online event calendar, but Guiney’s already booked a few seasonal events, including a Halloween party and costume contest.
On Oct. 24, Haunted Burrow is hosting up-and-coming author Caitlin Starling for the launch of her latest novel, “The Graceview Patient.” Set in an experimental medical hospital that offers a woman with a rare autoimmune disease an unconventional and untested healing therapy, “The Graceview Patient” blends together a medical thriller, slow-burn gothic terror and body horror into one of the year’s most anticipated horror releases.
Guiney has signed a lease for Haunted Burrow Books through the end of the year, and after that, the store moves to a month-to-month rental situation. She’s happy to stay in the current location for as long as the space is available, but Guiney knows that the building will eventually be torn down. She’s hoping to keep the shop running in a new space when that happens.
For someone who had no bookselling experience until this year, Guiney has already learned a lot about the business. “Bookselling takes a lot of institutional knowledge that I had to learn very quickly,” she says, and she’s made quick work of it. In just one summer, she’s built a fairly large space into a fully stocked bookstore with a burgeoning events calendar. And the best part is that with each new customer request she fields and literary event that she hosts, Guiney says, “I’m still learning.”
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What are Haunted Burrow Books customers reading?
“I loved vampires since before the ‘Twilight’ craze, which means that I’m not big on sparkly romantic vampires,” says Guiney. “I like creepy monstrous vampires,” she explains, and luckily, the horror genre has been turning back to more traditional representations of vampirism. She cites Joanna Van Veen’s “Blood on Her Tongue” as a good example of the classic vampiric reclamation movement.
Novels about demonic possession, like “The Exorcist,” have long fascinated Guiney. She likes that the narratives are “all about losing control to the hands of a creature who has their own agenda, and the person taken over takes all the responsibility” for the demon’s actions, raising questions of free will and influence. Seattle author Isabel Cañas’ historical fiction “The Possession of Alba Díaz” is a claustrophobic exploration of those themes.
Guiney also raves about T. Kingfisher’s “Sworn Soldier” trilogy of novels, which begins with a retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” set in a world where a fungal infection seems driven by an otherworldly consciousness.
And for non-horror books, Guiney adores “Katabasis,” the latest academic satire novel written by R.F. Kuang, and the cozy fantasy “The Crescent Moon Tearoom,” featuring a warm and loving narrative about a trio of witches who open a teahouse that is about the furthest thing from a gory vampire novel that you can imagine.
Haunted Borrow Books
430 15th Ave. E., Seattle; hauntedburrowbooks.com
Paul Constant: thisispaulconstant@gmail.com. Paul Constant is a Seattle-based writer and the co-founder of The Seattle Review of Books. His Neighborhood Reads series appears monthly in The Seattle Times.