Alex Hunter sits down with Ginger Nuts of Horror to talk about The House That Screamed, his meta horror take on the haunted house novel. He explains why minds now frighten him more than monsters, how Peter Straub gave him permission to break the rules, and why he trusts readers to decide what the real horror is.
Kailee Pedersen’s The Minimalist is a gruelling, unflinching psychological horror novel about a composer’s descent into madness. Published by St. Martin’s Press, it follows Mia Voss as she returns to her mentor’s Santa Fe mansion to complete his unfinished masterpiece, only to find the manuscript exerting a disturbing hold over her. Drawing from Pedersen’s own experiences as an adoptee and classical musician, this is body horror at its most intelligent—a meditation on artistic obsession, adoption trauma, and the sacrifices we make in pursuit of creative perfection.
Zac Crook builds horror like a musician, one scene at a time. In this interview he opens up Strikethrough, his psychological horror novel about Harlem Ward, a man who thinks he understands himself and probably doesn’t. We talk demons, Shirley Jackson, and why he prints his own face onto a book cover.
