Editorials
A Personal Response To Robin Williams’ Suicide
The passing of comedian/actor Robin Williams shocked and stunned people around the world. For many, it wasn’t only the loss of Williams, it was the loss of a magic genie, a never aging boy, a cross-dressing nanny, a gay club owner, an alien, and more. Williams was a larger than life persona who also always seemed so warm and friendly, never letting the fame and fortune inflate his ego.
The fact that his death was the result of a suicide left many wondering, “How could someone who brings so much joy and laughter be plagued by such darkness?” Many felt that such an act was “cowardly” and “selfish” while others stated that there needed to be empathy to understand precisely what he was going through.
I’m not here to comment on either one of those thoughts. Instead, I’m here to share a personal response to how Robin Williams’ suicide affected and even resonated with me.
I had it rough.
I’m not going to sit here and try to tell you that I was left wanting as a child because that would be a flat out lie. But I did have a rough childhood. Read my editorial on Why I Love Horror to get a basic idea. But family sickness that resulted in me growing up knowing the ins and outs of the local hospital wasn’t all that I had to deal with. There was more. However, in the interest of respecting privacy, I won’t go into details.
But what happened was that I grew up a very different way than most children. I grew up way too fast. I became an adult before I was taking driving lessons. I was understanding psychology and how people worked in ways that still boggle me and others who ask, “How did you know how to handle that situation?”
This all came at a cost, however. I never felt like I could show my emotions. I never felt like I could feel, as awkward as that sounds. I chose to bottle everything up because to show what was happening with me would take away from the pain of others close to me, which in turn would make me feel endless waves of guilt. This was all the start of my path on depression.
I was bullied.
Until I got to high school, I was pretty much hated. I had a very small group of friends but the rest of the school took whatever opportunity they had to mock, shame, and belittle me. And as many of you know the powers that be at school are pretty much wildly inefficient at solving a problem like that.
It was in sixth grade that, due to all the berating and hatred I faced, I began writing down dark, self-harming thoughts. I was 12 years old and I was fantasizing about hurting myself, even wishing to die. And it felt like no one could help me.
I cut.
Dark thoughts turned to physical action when I was in high school. I mentioned earlier that it was up until high school that I was bullied but by the time I reached 9th grade the damage had already been done. I felt worthless, ugly, useless, unappealing, etc… Pretty much anything negative and I felt like that.
My cutting started with a few small slashes and never went deep into the tissue. For me, it wasn’t the single slice that brought relief. It was letting go of one emotional pain after another by having each cut take its place, giving it a portal to exit my body.
It took me a few years to stop that habit but that didn’t end the mental pain.
I was hospitalized.
I reached a point in my life where I was so deep into my pain that I began attending an out-patient mental facility. I wasn’t there for a few days. It was a few months of daily attendance where I had group meetings, one-on-one appointments, medications, and more.
It helped. But only for a while.
I swallowed a bottle of pills.
May 11th, 2012 will always be a dark anniversary for me. I thought I had known what rock bottom felt like but it was on that night that I crashed through the bottom and fell further than I had ever fell before. After weeping uncontrollably for hours, curled up in a fetal position on the floor, I drank a bottle of wine and then emptied a bottle of pills into my hand and swallowed them.
Clearly I survived, and I have my friends and family to thank for that. But I will never forget that moment, that time when everything seemed so empty and pointless that ending everything seemed like the only light at the end of the tunnel, the only way to find peace.
It took me several days to fully recover physically and many months to recover enough mentally that I trusted myself around alcohol or pills. Even today, I don’t allow myself to get drunk and I’m loathe to take medication for any reason. It’s affected my way of life entirely and still shapes how I live.
I still fight.
There are days where I still struggle. There are days when I falter and the darkness tries to push itself back into my mind. To say that it’s not an easy fight is an understatement. There are days when it feels like giving into that darkness and letting it wash over me would be the simplest thing on the planet.
And that’s the horror and reality of depression. It’s not a switch that once turned off will stay off. It is an ongoing problem, a battle that I will be waging my entire life. And I know that it affects more people than are willing to admit.
I continue living.
Through all of that, as simplistically as I’ve phrased it all, I still found strength to keep on living. I found passions and focused on them, such as collecting vinyl or continuing to write for BD. I work hard and try to enjoy what life has to offer because there is so much out there.
Hearing that Robin Williams chose to commit suicide stuck a very deep chord within me, one that is still resonating. I can make people laugh even when I’m feeling nothing but anguish inside. I can put a smile on someone’s face even when I am using all of my power to not burst into tears. Because knowing that I helped someone, even if just for a little while, means the world to me, no matter the cost.
Those who know me personally say that I’m a very funny person, that I’m loyal, and that I am trustworthy. I give a great deal of myself for others, putting their needs well before my own. I’m the type of person who would give you my coat when it’s freezing outside because you need it more than I do.
That’s why I’m writing this piece and opening myself up entirely to you. If my words can help even a single person, then I will never regret baring myself in such a way.
You are loved.
You are wanted.
You are needed.
If you or someone you know needs help, please, I’m begging you, don’t hesitate to reach out to the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255. If you are not in the United States, please utilize whatever resource you have available to you.
Never feel like you are alone, because you aren’t. There is always someone who needs you and will be utterly devastated if you were suddenly gone.
There’s a lot of reading left to do in 2026, between the glut of summer releases and the approach of fall, when horror titles get a special push from publishers, but this has already been an incredible year for horror literature.
Some of the biggest names in the genre have turned in outstanding work, rising stars have made their mark, and we’re only halfway through the year.
To celebrate the midway point of 2026, with plenty of horror books still to come, we’re taking a look back at the best horror books we’ve read this year so far, listed alphabetically by author.
If you missed any of these books earlier in the year, consider this your reminder to catch up.
Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker
A student running from a crime he may or may not have committed escapes to his father’s country home in Japan, only to find himself haunted by strange apparitions, while in the past, a young samurai tries to find salvation for her family and finds a door to the future instead. Kylie Lee Baker’s Japanese Gothic begins with this dialogue between past and present, and then blossoms into so much more, a cross-time ghost story about old wounds and what it really takes to finally heal them. I got so happily lost in this one that I would have read at least 200 more pages.
Persona by Aoife Josie Clements
In this tale of shut-ins, sex workers, artists, and the horrors they both summon and recoil from, Aoife Josie Clements weaves something that feels less like a story to be experienced and more like a psychic wound to be endured, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. Evocative in its prose and nightmarish in its imagery, Persona is a story of the masks we wear, and the understanding that not all of our masks are particularly pretty or even easy to breathe through. It’s a dense, literary, unnervingly vicious book, and while it’s already attracted an audience, it deserves a much bigger one.
Dead First by Johnny Compton
Johnny Compton’s latest novel opens with a throwing down of the gauntlet, a sequence that made me instantly think “How on Earth is he going to top this?” It’s a story that begins with a billionaire hiring a private investigator to determine why, despite trying in many brutal ways, he cannot die. That premise, and the scene which sets it all off, is so alluring and delightfully gruesome that you almost can’t believe it’s the way a book begins, and then Compton just keeps going, delivering a supernatural mystery that I could not put down.
Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey
A woman grieving for the life she wanted visits a mysterious island renowned for the healing salt its residents harvest and sell, seeking renewal and relief. What she finds instead is a strange cult with a twisted history with surprising resonance in her own life, and a people who are more than willing to grant the relief she wants, for a price. Laced with beautiful prose and moments of profound realization alongside folk and even cosmic horror, this is vintage Sarah Gailey.
Partially Devoured by Daniel Kraus
If you love horror film history and analysis, Partially Devoured is an essential. Written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Daniel Kraus, the book is a deep dive into his favorite movie of all time, George A. Romero‘s Night of the Living Dead, complete with exhaustive research into the making of the film and passages of deeply moving memoir woven in. If you’ve ever wanted to know what the eerie music that opens the film is called while also bursting into tears at how horror movies can save your life, this is a must-read.
Wretch by Eric LaRocca
Our reigning King of Extreme Horror, Eric LaRocca weaves books of uncommon beauty out of the most nightmarish parts of humanity, and Wretch is no exception. The story of a grieving man who longs for relief and searches for it amid a strange support group that might be a cult, Wretch is a brutal journey into the darkest part of us all, and explores what salvation we might find when we get to the rotten core of the world and peel back its layers. LaRocca’s on a tear of great work right now that few other genre writers can match.
Headlights by CJ Leede
A mystery, a serial killer horror show, a tribute to Stephen King‘s The Shining. All of these things describe CJ Leede’s Headlights, and yet they don’t begin to cover the full breadth of horror awaiting you in this novel. The story of a former FBI agent drawn back into the cold case that haunts him most, it’s a shocker brimming over with vivid moments that’ll live behind your eyes. CJ Leede has now published three novels, and they’re all bangers, so it’s time to get on board if you haven’t already.
It Came From Neverland by Cynthia Pelayo
Cynthia Pelayo has been one of our finest genre writers for years now, but It Came From Neverland is my favorite thing she’s written, and it’s not even close. A dark take on Peter Pan from the perspective of an adult Wendy Darling living in World War I-era London, Pelayo’s book works as both a satisfying horror narrative and a rich exploration of what it really means to never grow up. The horror never loses its potency, but it’s the search for the meaning behind the Peter Pan phenomenon in our own lives, and what we can do about it, that sticks with me most.
Filth Eaters by Ito Romo
Ito Romo’s Filth Eaters is a slim volume, one you can read in just a couple of hours if you’ve got the inclination, but it has the feel of a generation-spanning epic. The story of a breed of vampires born in Central America, the European vampires who encounter them, and the offspring they eventually produced, it spans centuries and packs loads of juicy lore into its pages while never losing its grip on character and narrative drive. I would read hundreds more pages of this world, but I’ll settle for this uncommonly grand-scale novella for now.
Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay
A former pro gamer gets a job at a tech company to pilot a brain-dead human body across the country, and so Paul Tremblay’s sci-fi-horror juggernaut begins. Indebted to Philip K. Dick, the primal snarl of Harlan Ellison, and the quirky comedy of The Big Lebowski, and yet wholly original, this is a towering and ambitious novel by one of horror’s most respected voices. What starts as a high-concept tech thriller soon becomes a startling meditation on the value of stories, who gets to tell them, and what happens when we cede too much control to machines we don’t understand. It’s a stunner.
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