Why Read and Write Horror?

Most people don’t like horror. I get it. Even as a kid walking through the friendlier sections of Blockbuster, I could feel the yellow eyes of Victor Pascow watching me from the Pet Sematary cover. I hated that feeling. Now people react with surprise when they find out that I write twisted books under the name T.J. Payne, and since they don’t want to ask why such a nice guy plays in such a nasty genre, they instead ask a simple question. Why the name T.J. Payne?

(How and When Should Writers Use a Pen Name?)

Simple answer: Because I was scared.

I’ve spent most of my life in a state of low-grade fear, not that I was ever bullied, but it felt inevitable that one day someone would target me. I tended to hover at the edge of the playground, enjoying being alone. It wasn’t until high school that I started opening up to horror, and that was because something horrific happened a thousand miles away that rattled my perception of good and evil: Two kids who were roughly my age, my size, and my social status, went into their high school and started shooting.

My hometown of Beaverton, Oregon, bears striking similarities to Columbine, and the descriptions of the shooters—the music they listened to (Marilyn Manson), the games they played (Doom), even the clothes they wore (size L T-shirts on a size S frame)—were eerily familiar. Like the rest of the country, I wanted to know why they did what they did because as far as I could tell, there was no perceptible difference between them and my friends. The media never found a good answer, and so I came to the unsettling conclusion that I was searching for a distinction that perhaps didn’t exist. Under the right circumstances, anyone could do something as horrible.

My mind became fixated on that idea. As I started writing fiction, part of me wanted to explore it but I was scared to. Who wants to ruminate on the minds of serial killers and school shooters? Instead, I turned toward sunnier projects.

I always dreamed of writing movies, and so I moved to Los Angeles as soon as I could. My entry level job found me working with Castle Rock Entertainment and Rob Reiner, a sweet man who, despite me being the biggest nobody in the building, said hi to me every morning by name. Rob even encouraged me to keep writing, saying that it was one of his favorite parts of the process. Because I was with the teams behind The Bucket List and Flipped, I told myself I was a rom-com writer. But even as I taught myself story structure through cute meets, betrayals, and grand climatic gestures of love, my mind kept veering toward the macabre.

I finally took a step away from screenwriting to get my thoughts and feelings about human cruelty out of my head and onto the page. That’s when I turned to self-publishing. I didn’t know if my takes on hatred and revenge would find an appreciative audience, and the first book I wrote, In My Father’s Basement, was a particularly mean story about a guy learning the horrible things his dad did to innocent people. It scared me that it might not be received well, and so before hitting “publish” I chickened out and threw on a penname.

The name I chose didn’t require any deep thought or workshopping. I used my initials (Thomas Jon) and my mom’s maiden name (Payne). The fact that “pain” aptly describes what I put my characters through was a happy coincidence. For me, the kid who liked to slink around the edges of the playground at school, hiding behind a new identity was creatively freeing. I’m an intensely private person and, as a result, my books often incorporate fears of observation—the paranoia that eyes are always watching you and issuing judgment. As a result, my characters often hide their true intentions and selves. T.J. Payne became my own mask.

The first book did well enough, but my second book, Intercepts (being re-released in May 2026), was the one that really connected with readers. I had found the perfect cross-section between the heartwarming relationship stories I started my writing journey with (in this case, a father/daughter story) and the questions of the nature of human cruelty that had festered in my mind since high school (the father supervises a torture facility).

And then an interesting thing happened. Around the time I launched my third book (The Venue, a joyful blood-drenched romp), my screenwriting career under my real name (Tom Hanada) gained traction. Admittedly, the two were related. Writing books as T.J. Payne allowed me to find and refine my take on humanity, and once I did, Hollywood responded.  Producers began bringing me onto projects that fit my voice, some of which, including Little House on the Prairie, were nowhere near horror, but with their exploration of human relationships amidst challenging times, they were undeniably me. I now have two writing tracks, both of which I’m equally proud of: A screenwriting career under the Hanada family name, and a novelist career under the Payne family name.

In the 20 years I’ve been writing, my outlook has changed from the kid I was at the end of high school. I’m still cynical of human nature, yet I have no choice but to also be hopeful. Cruelty exists, yes. Anyone is capable of it, absolutely. But I’ve learned that horror is about the search for small wins in a cruel world. At least that’s what it means to me. And even if the win doesn’t come at the end of the story, hopefully the character put up a good fight.

I understand why people avoid horror. But it is a necessary genre, now more than ever. It is a safe space to experience fear and uncertainty, and to explore the evils that have, unfortunately, come to define the human experience as much as our love and kindness defines it.

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