No, the real question is, what do you, as a reader, want to be?

Where do you want to be transported? We all want to be immersed in a story, grabbed by the collar with that story, yanked out of our present reality by that story, and thrown into another place, with different people, in maybe another time, by that story. If we didn't want that, we wouldn't pick the book up and read in the first place.

So where do you, as a reader, want a book to take you?

Personally, I don't normally writer horror, so sometimes I think about having an honest-to-goodness horror story (because we know how rare they really are) yank me out of my own reality and show me just how non-horrific my life really is.

Wouldn't that be nice?

What if I opened my eyes and see my front door in front of me? Do I open it? After all, this is supposed to be a horror story. But then, my front door is so...non-horrific. I mean, I have a neighbor's door right in front of me when I walk out. I turn left and there's a stair way going down the three floors that I'm off the ground. As I take the first step, I can see another door in front of me that's really situated between the third and second floors. It's benign. It's a storage unit.

But what if I could open that storage unit and see my worst fears realized? What if, behind that one door, my entire family is gone? What if my parents, wife, and kids were all killed in some supernatural Act of God? What if, through that door, there is one task or one key that I would need to accomplish in order to set everything right with my world? And what if I only had one hour to finish this task...having no idea what the task is or if I even have the tools needed to complete such a task?

Would I be resourceful enough to pull out all the stops? Would my drive be enough to push me to find the missing pieces and rescue my family from total and eternal destruction? In one single hour?

What horror would I see that awaits my family through that door if I don't succeed? Would they be ripped apart, one limb at a time? Would I be made to witness the tissue of their skin being pealed from their bodies? Would I be made to endure their screams while they are being tortured, wishing they were dead, instead?

Or...maybe I'd enter a fantasy world through this door. Maybe the six foot depth of space that appears to the naked eye really holds a whole other world, like the Chronicles of Narnia? What kind of mission would I be on then?

Where do you want to be transported to when you crack open the pages of a book or click on the screen of an ebook to read that first page?