Johanna van Veen, author of My Darling Dreadful Thing

Goodreads: Please summarize your new novel in a couple of sentences.

Johanna van Veen: My Darling Dreadful Thing is a sapphic gothic horror novel set in the Netherlands in the 1950s that revolves around Roos, a young woman with a spirit companion. Ruth looks like a bog body, has a thirst for blood, and is fiercely possessive of Roos, but she’s also the only good thing in Roos’ life, which is filled with sordid backroom séances, starvation, and other abuse at the hands of her mother. When young and wealthy widow Agnes attends one of these séances, she is so impressed by Roos that she asks her to come live with her at the dilapidated estate she inherited upon the death of her husband. From the case notes of Doctor Montague, a psychiatrist tasked with determining whether Roos is mentally fit to stand trial, we know that something awful will happen there, but what? And, more importantly, who—or what—is to blame?

GR: What sparked the idea for this book?

JvV: I have a confession to make: I think corpses are terrifying.

I also think it’s utterly lame that I’m scared of corpses. After all, real life is no horror movie; it’s not as if a corpse is going to come after me to gobble me up or marry me and then drag me into its cool, dark grave where I shall slowly suffocate in its moldering embrace (as far as we know). There is also a lot to be said about this fear being decidedly modern; not too long ago, you’d encounter corpses at least fairly regularly, and unless they’d been left in the gutter to rot, people didn’t think them dirty or scary. It’s also a fear that seems to be pretty exclusive to the U.S. and certain European countries. There are still groups of people—the Torajan people in Indonesia come to mind—who actually live with the corpses of their deceased relatives, and they love these corpses and tend to them carefully.

Anyway, all of that got me thinking about fear being relative, and how our lived experiences influence what we think is scary and what isn’t. This made me want to write a horror story in the vein of Guillermo del Toro, that champion of the sympathetic monster, in which the conventional horror element—a rotting corpse that only you can see, for example, and that follows you around—is not what makes the story actually scary.

Of course, a lot more went into My Darling Dreadful Thing, but this is definitely one of the main sparks! 

GR: What is something that you find scary that other people would not?

JvV: I don’t think I have any fears that are completely unique to me, but something silly that always gives me the creeps somehow is loose hairs, especially if they’re long. It’s more disgust than genuine fear, I think, but I just can’t stand long loose hairs lying on the floor or the table or anywhere else; they should be attached to a living head, thank you very much! It may therefore come as no surprise that horror scenes in which people get hair in their mouths or shoved down their throats are a surefire way to creep and gross me out completely.

GR: Please share four recommended reads from your favorite horror authors.

Johanna van Veen's picks: 


GR: And then, what are four recommended reads from new and upcoming horror authors you think your readers would love?

Johanna van Veen's picks: 

 

Paul Tremblay, author of Horror Movie

Goodreads: Please summarize your new novel in a couple of sentences.

Paul Tremblay: In 1993, a group of 20-somethings made an indie, pretentious, disturbing horror movie. (My favorite kind!) Something happened on set toward the end of filming that prevented it from making it to screen. Thirty years later, the movie has taken on an almost mythic lore within pop culture, and the actor who played a character called ‘the Thin Kid’ is working on the big-budget Hollywood reboot. All kinds of horrors—both past and present—ensue.

GR: What sparked the idea for this book?

PT: Stephen Graham Jones recommended I watch a bunch of hour-long film discussions hosted by the brilliant writer and critic Walter Chaw. I do what Stephen tells me to do. The first video I watched featured Walter discussing The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with John Darnielle. It was such a fun, warm, and smart talk that it led to me rewatching the film and then to reading Chainsaw Confidential written by Gunnar Hansen on audiobook. Hearing Gunnar’s retelling of how often the cast and crew took terrible, unsafe chances on set got me to asking a whole host of what-ifs that became Horror Movie.
 
Worth noting that my experience, and the experience of other writers, with the Hollywood machine informed/inspired the goings-on in the book as well.

GR: What is something that you find scary that other people would not?

PT: A floating dresser, apparently. Judging by some reader reaction to my novel The Pallbearers Club, I might be the only one who finds that scary.
 
In the summer of 2019, my family and I rented a house on a pond in Maine, having not heeded the warnings in my book The Cabin at the End of the World. Around midnight of our first night in the place, my two kids called out to me to come see something weird in their room. I didn’t want to see something weird in their room. We were in an unfamiliar, creaky, dank, old shadowy place, so my scaredy-cat radar was already pinging. But, dutifully, I went into their bedroom. They asked me to look at the dresser against the wall. Again, I didn’t want to look, but I did. They asked if I noticed anything odd. Eventually, I did. All four legs of the dresser were dangling in the air, about three inches off the carpet. Someone had bolted the thing into the wall. I mean, I assume it was bolted and not free-floating. Anyway, yeah, at that time and that place, it creeped me out.
 
GR: Please share four recommended reads from your favorite horror authors.

Paul Tremblay's picks:


GR: And then, what are four recommended reads from new and upcoming horror authors you think your readers would love?

Paul Tremblay's picks:

 

Gretchen Felker-Martin, author of Cuckoo

Goodreads: Please summarize your new novel in a couple of sentences.

Gretchen Felker-Martin: Cuckoo is the story of seven queer teens forced into a conversion therapy camp in the early 1990s. They soon discover that something in the camp is replacing other kids with compliant, perfect copies, and they must fight for their lives to escape the same fate. Fifteen years later, the survivors are forced to return and confront the ancient evil buried beneath the camp's façade of folksy bigotry. The fate of the world depends on it.

GR: What sparked the idea for this book?

GFM: I've always loved body-snatcher stories. The Thing is a huge influence. But what really sits at the root of Cuckoo is anger and frustration at the way America treats queer children and youth. The pointless, stupid cruelty with which we terrorize young people because we don't like who they are. It's a sick, sadistic tragedy, and I wanted to voice it.
 
GR: What is something that you find scary that other people would not?

GFM: I find lack of curiosity very frightening. When someone is uninterested in thinking through their beliefs, their place in the world, I find that existentially frightening. I've just never been able to get past it and live with it.

GR: Share four recommended reads from your favorite horror authors.

Gretchen Felker-Martin's picks:


GR: Share four recommended reads from new and upcoming horror authors you think your readers would love.

Gretchen Felker-Martin's picks:

 
   

Ananda Lima, author of Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil

Goodreads: Please summarize your new book in a couple of sentences.

Ananda Lima: A writer sleeps with the devil at a Halloween party in her 20s. After that, she meets him again and again throughout her life, and writes stories for him. It is weird, wild, surreal, playful, and full of heart.

GR: What sparked the idea for this book?

AL: Many things came together in fun and often unexpected ways: the experience of going through a writing program, talking heads spewing anti-immigrant propaganda on TV, anxiety about the state of the world, Brazilian art movements (including a 1920s manifesto called “The Cannibalist Manifesto”), Gremlins 2, The Fly, the devil, all combined with hope and awe (with writing and art and life).

GR: What is something that you find scary that other people would not?

AL: Geese, which are plentiful near water in Chicago. I am constantly terrified. I also often get scared of birds if they look at me too much. I think this is because I was often attacked by aggressive magpies when I spent some time in Australia, which was terrifying but also hilarious.

GR: Share four recommended reads from your favorite horror authors.

Ananda Lima's picks:


GR: Share four recommended reads from new and upcoming horror authors you think your readers would love.

Ananda Lima's picks:

 

Monika Kim, author of The Eyes Are the Best Part

Goodreads: Please summarize your new novel in a couple of sentences.

Monika Kim: The Eyes Are the Best Part follows Ji-won, a college freshman who is struggling to keep her life and her family from falling apart after her father’s affair and subsequent departure. After being convinced by her mother to eat a fish eye for luck, Ji-won develops an obsession with human eyes—specifically, the blue eyes of her mother’s new white boyfriend—and decides she must do the one thing that will end her cravings once and for all. 

GR: What sparked the idea for this book?

MK: The book was inspired by childhood experiences with my mother. Like the mother in the book, she would cook up an entire fish, pop out its eye, and eat it as my brothers and I watched in horror. She would tell us what her parents told her when she was young: that the eye of the fish was the best part, and that eating it would bring good luck. 
 
Even before I started writing, I had been feeling increasingly angry about the portrayal and stereotypes of Asian people both in media and popular culture. I was especially frustrated with the stereotypes about Asian women as submissive, docile, and weak, and at the same time, hypersexualized. 
 
During the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-Asian sentiment reached a boiling point. We saw women being followed home and stabbed or pushed onto subway tracks, and our elders being attacked in broad daylight. But it all came to a head for me with the spa shootings in Atlanta, Georgia, on March 16, 2021, when six Asian women were brutally murdered. The killer was a white man who claimed to have a sex addiction and later said he was trying to “eliminate any temptations.” 
 
I thought about the women whose lives had been cut short by racial and sexual violence, and about how stereotypes regarding the character and sexuality of Asian women go unchallenged, allowing tragedies like that to happen. I wanted this book to fight against these insidious stereotypes, to attack the white male gaze, and, most of all, to empower women to be whatever we want to be.

GR: What is something that you find scary that other people would not?

MK: Don’t laugh, but I’ve always been scared of air-conditioning vents. They’re so dark and mysterious. Who knows where they lead and what (or who) may be inside? When I’m home alone, I sometimes scare myself into thinking that there’s a creepy man hiding in the vent, watching me.

GR: Please share four recommended reads from your favorite horror authors.

Monika Kim's picks:


GR: And then, what are four recommended reads from new and upcoming horror authors you think your readers would love?

Monika Kim's picks:

    

Josh Malerman, author of Incidents Around the House

Goodreads: Please summarize your new novel in a couple of sentences.

Josh Malerman: Eight-year-old Bela lives with Daddo, Mommy, and…a terrifying entity she calls Other Mommy. Every day, Other Mommy asks Bela, “Can I go into your heart?”, and the longer it takes Bela to answer, the more impatient, the bolder, the meaner Other Mommy gets. Incidents Around the House is a stark examination of an entity’s attempt to possess.

GR: What sparked the idea for this book?

JM: My brother and his wife were tucking their kid into bed when Elliott said “goodnight” twice. Alissa asked why Elliott had repeated it, and Elliott said, “I was saying goodnight to other Mommy.” This story rattled in my head, chilled me, for a long time, until one surprise evening the characters of Bela, Daddo, and Mommy came to me, ready to roll, ready for their story to be told.

GR: What is something that you find scary that other people would not?

JM: ’60s pop music can be kinda awesomely unsettling. From the Beatles' “Strawberry Fields” to Led Zeppelin, there’s something otherworldly in that era, even the early ’60s. It’s like ghosts were caught on tape along with the bands. I don’t think most people would find the Beach Boys scary, but heard at a slightly different angle, there’s something haunting, or haunted, going on. I love it.

GR: Share four recommended reads from your favorite horror authors.

Josh Malerman's picks:


GR: Share four recommended reads from new and upcoming horror authors you think your readers would love.

Josh Malerman's picks:

 

Chuck Tingle, author of Bury Your Gays

Goodreads: Please summarize your new book in a couple of sentences.

Chuck Tingle: BURY YOUR GAYS is a love letter to fandom. it is the story of MISHA BYRNE, a screenwriter who is asked to kill off his queer characters. misha refuses, then finds himself stalked by the monsters from his own films and television shows. at the core, BURY YOUR GAYS is about the cycle of creation, how love begets love, and greed begets greed, and how we all have the power to do something about this by creating something beautiful for ourselves

GR: What sparked the idea for this book?

CT: as you can see from reading these dang answers i have an unusual way of speaking AND WRITING. this is part of my unique trot as an artist, but it does not carry over into the literary voice of my books. there is a speration between my EXPRESSION in this world, and my EXPRESSION in that world, and i think BURY YOUR GAYS is a way of grappling with this seperation. there were a lot of IDEAS that inspired the book, but i think the HEART that actually brought it into reality was me wrestling with question of ‘HOW MUCH of myself do i owe my art?’

GR: What is something that you find scary that other people would not?

CT: i find worms and most invertebrates to be terrifying. snails are pretty dang cute though

GR: Please share four recommended reads from your favorite horror authors.

Chuck Tingle's picks:


GR: And then, what are four recommended reads from new and upcoming horror authors you think your readers would love?

Chuck Tingle's picks:

 

Stephen Graham Jones, author of I Was a Teenage Slasher

Goodreads: Summarize your new book in a couple of sentences.

Stephen Graham Jones: I Was a Teenage Slasher is 17-year-old Tolly Driver recounting the summer of 1989, when he reluctantly had to carve a revenge path through his hometown of Lamesa, Texas. All he has to guide him are his life experience (none), his wit (very limited), and his best friend in the whole world (Amber Big Plume Dennison), who knows this genre they're being pulled into.

GR: What sparked the idea for this book?

SGJ: A combination of teaching the 1941 The Wolf Man, watching and thinking a lot about A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, and the fact that I left West Texas 16 years ago, but it's still blowing around inside me. Also, as these things go, I was 17 in 1989—quite suspicious, I know.

GR: What is something that you find scary that other people would not?

SGJ: Bags of chips. I need them poured out—on the table, in an ideally clear bowl, on flattened-out sandwich-wrapping paper. Getting kind of shaky just even writing this. I mean, you reach your hand into the darkness of that bag, and…how do you know what's in there, right? It's stultifyingly terrifying. And I see people—brave, brave people in sandwich shops, in airports, or just right out in the street—doing it every day and not showing any fear on their faces at all.

GR: Please share four recommended reads from your favorite horror authors.

Stephen Graham Jones' picks:


GR: And then, what are four recommended reads from new and upcoming horror authors you think your readers would love?

Stephen Graham Jones' picks:

   

Gabino Iglesias, author of House of Bone and Rain

Goodreads: Please summarize your new novel in a couple of sentences.

Gabino Iglesias: When a young man's mother is killed in a drive-by outside a club, he and his friends set out to avenge her murder, but the man responsible turns out to be a powerful drug kingpin. After a hurricane devastates the island, the friends take advantage of the ensuing chaos and dark, lawless nights to get the revenge they desperately crave, but they soon learn they must face much more than bad men with guns.

GR: What sparked the idea for this book?

GI: When I was about to graduate from high school, the mother of one of my best friends was murdered while working at a club. We wanted to avenge her death, but real life isn't like a movie—or one of my novels—so we never did. I started writing this novel back then. I wanted to give our story a different ending, with plenty of supernatural mayhem and while paying tribute to the Lovecraftian literature I was reading back then, but, you know, bringing it home to the Caribbean. 

GR: What is something that you find scary that other people would not?

GI: Two things I don't hear a lot of people talking about that scare me are getting very sick while uninsured and Chagas disease. I see kissing bugs a few times every year, and knowing one of those could bite you while you're sleeping and then kill you a few decades later is pretty creepy. 

GR: Please share four recommended reads from your favorite horror authors.

Gabino Iglesias' picks:


GR: And then, what are four recommended reads from new and upcoming horror authors you think your readers would love?

Gabino Iglesias' picks: