Author: terribleminds (page 12 of 454)

Reviews matter for books and their authors.

Let’s unpack why, a little bit. Though some of this (maybe even all of this) will be blisteringly obvious, I feel it all needs restating because sometimes we just need to be reminded about things. I certainly do. The only reason I wear pants is my wife is always like, “hey, you, pants” before I leave the house in the morning. Admittedly the embarrassment I’d have suffered upon leaving said house would’ve been minor, since I work in a shed in the yard, so the most I’d have done would be to flash my underdrawers at various noisy robins and probably a squirrel or three. But still: it’s a helpful reminder.

And so I remind you:

Reviews matter for, say it with me, books and their authors.

Here, then, is why:

First, they’re a more generalized variant of “word-of-mouth.” It’s not you telling a single friend about a book (which is also very good and you should do that), but rather, telling the world about a book. Our online circle of trust is larger than our in-person one, these days — though fractured social media has crumbled that cookie, I fear, thus breaking the circle — and reviews can reach that circle of trust. Which allows the book to echo out like a song or a sound that others can hear. It’s nice. It helps.

Second, and please understand that this slicks my tongue with foulness just to say buuuut, THE ALMIGHTY ALGORITHM. Unfortunately, online visibility is subject to the whims of deranged digital robots, and one way to goose an algorithm is through leaving reviews for the books you love. That means leaving reviews on your choice of social media (though some are blessedly ungoverned by Algorithms), or even better, on sites like Goodreads or Amazon. (You can leave a review at Amazon even if you didn’t buy the book there!) Also true for B&N and Apple and Kobo and so forth.

Third, sometimes those reviews have other side benefits as well. Goodreads will do their Goodreads Choice Awards and also sometimes sum up some of the best reviewed books of XYZ genre — The Book of Accidents made a horror list of theirs (Readers’ Top 66 Horror Novels of the Past Three Years, which is admittedly sort of arbitrary but hey whatever) exactly because it has the aggregate review score and number to be included. Sometimes outlets will use the number of reviews to determine whether or not a book is going to get coverage or not. It’s not a great system and I don’t love it, to be clear, but it’s how shit works and we are sadly subject to its callous whims.

Third, and okay, this isn’t the most vital reason but — it’s nice! It’s nice to get positive reviews. I mean, it’s less nice to get bad reviews, and I don’t read those. (And please get shut of the notion that we should read them or that we should view them as instructive. I even hear some authors say this sometimes, “Well, I like to read my bad reviews in case they contain something useful.” They don’t. I don’t mean they’re a bad phenomenon or that people shouldn’t write negative reviews! I only mean, they’re not for us. They’re for other readers. Reviews are readers talking to readers.)

Again, I don’t believe readers owe us authors anything at all. You are not obligated morally or spiritually to leave a review if you read a book of ours, though not leaving a review does damn you to a purgatory where you never get to read a book again and instead have to watch endless Life Hack TikToks except they’re the kind of life hacks where they’re not life hacks at all but just people discovering how a product is actually already supposed to be used? Or like, basic-ass life hacks like the kind your mother would’ve told you had you listened to her years ago about how to open a pickle jar or stop pasta water from fizzing over? Beyond that, you’re not obligated at all. BUT it is nice and we appreciate it and you get a gold star in our hearts if you do.

So, if you’ve read Black River Orchard — or really any book by any author — and loved it, it’s great to talk about it, and also amazing if “talking about it” includes leaving a review somewhere out in the world.

We love you. If you love us. OUR LOVE IS CONDITIONAL I AM SORRY okay not really we love you anyway. Even if you don’t leave a review.

*side-eye*

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LET’S SEE WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON

Well! I am back from my second leg of the Black River Orchard tour — this one, out west! — and it was pretty gosh dang spectacular. The events were all stellar and so many great readers came out to these wonderful bookstores and I felt bathed in booklove and and probably also apple sweat. I do think a special shout-out must go to Montana Book Company, in Helena, MT, not just because Charlie and Chelsia are an absolute delight, and not just because they’re a great bookstore fighting the good fight in honestly a pretty red-red-red state, but, selfishly, because they fucking brought it. Like, real-talk, I went there expecting a good event but maybe not a huge one? Something fun, intimate, easy, chill. Well, I was wrong — er, not about the fun or chill part, but about the size of the event. It was huge. They put out all these empty chairs and in my heart I was like, yeah no they’re not filling these seats, and then they pretty much filled those seats? It was wild. Such a cool crowd and the two of them also showed me around their town and — it was the best.

Also shout-out to Sadie Hartmann, YE MONSTROUS MOTHER HORROR, who has been a pal for a long time (and who long time readers of this site should know) — Sadie was my conversation partner in Seattle and is unsurprisingly so thoughtful with her questions and I hope to have more events with her in the future. (And please, if you’ve not checked out 101 Horror Books to Read Before You’re Murdered, uhh, hello, do so immediately? Do not wait! Horror doesn’t stay trapped by Halloween, you’re gonna need this book every day of the year, it’s that good. The coolest thing is that the authors recommended in that book will then sign the book, and I tend to sign it like it’s a yearbook. It’s slick and cool and go get it.)

And a final shout-out goes to Natalie Metzger, who came to the Portland event at Powell’s and handed me a whole container (which I erm stole) of amazingly creepily delightful EVIL APPLE stickers, which some of you will receive in your prize packs from the pre-order contest. Natalie also did the wallpaper at the fore of this post. Natalie’s art is ever-delightful and I remind you that she was the artist on our book, You Can Do Anything, Magic Skeleton, which ahem ahem ahem is a good gift for people who need a weird pick-me-up in their lives. Ahem ahem ahem, holidays, ahem.

(Thanks also to all who brought me apples and books and other treats along the way, including those intrepid readers who realized I was travel-weary from traveling all day into Denver and they procured for me a LIFE-GIVING container of Panera’s mac and cheese which honestly is RILL GOOD?)

Also I’m literally just noticing right now, while Googling the book for some reviews, that, uhh, Black River Orchard was a USA Today bestseller last week?? It came in at #59??? I had no idea. I am not lying to you when I am saying I am truly just seeing this now as I type this paragraph. You can check the list yourself — I am stunned. Am I hallucinating? Huh. Wow. Whoa.

*clears throat*

*stares at the wall for a bit*

*shakes it off*

Anyway here are more nice things people said about the book!

Also at USA Today, Brian Truitt included the book in a horror Halloween roundup, saying:

“Pour yourself some cider when sitting down with this huge (609 pp.) tome, set in small-town Pennsylvania. After several painstaking years, Dan Paxson’s apple trees have finally fostered a fruit his teen daughter has named the Ruby Slipper. Local residents become ravenous for its delicious taste – and the apple’s powerful aftereffects – but there’s something much more evil at root in this story of social status and rural terror.”

Den of Geek included it in their best horror of the year so far, saying:

“Chuck Wendig will make you think twice about autumnal apple picking in this contemporary fairy tale with a spooky bite. When Calla’s dad Dan plants an unusual orchard in their town of Harrow, it initially bears uniquely delicious fruit that makes everyone’s lives better, brighter, stronger. But the townspeople aren’t just consuming apples; they’re inviting madness into their hearts, turning more violent and inhuman, as a dark force waits over a century to reap its own harvest.”

Janelle Janson reviewed it for Cemetery Dance in a whoa-dang review, where she says some very nice things like:

“Chuck Wendig masterfully explores the irresistible allure of the Ruby Slipper apple, the darkness it awakens within the human psyche, and the powerful forces that seek to exploit its supernatural abilities. In the midst of this tantalizing mystery, the characters are forced to confront their deepest desires and confront the repercussions of their actions, in a thrilling narrative that leaves readers both enthralled and haunted until the very last page. One of the finest works from Mr. Wendig to date.”

The Los Angeled Review of Books took a deeeeeep crunchy bite of the book in a rigorous, thoughtful (and more academic) review, which I love, in a review called “Masculine Frailty and Ambition: On Chuck Wendig’s Black River Orchard.” Excerpt:

“Wendig’s skill in weaving together the small and large, local and universal, personal and political, so it’s clear that they are so enmeshed that the one is informed by and influenced by the other and cannot be extricated without great effort—in fact, cannot be extricated without delusion—renders this novel a cautionary tale well worth reading in our current sociopolitical climate. His ability to tell a compelling story with lush description, humor, and empathy amid the horror renders it just plain fun to read.”

Books Bones & Buffy included it in the best horror of the year thus far.

Culturefly included it on a list of horror novels to get you in the Halloweeny er okay that sounds weird HalloweenISH? mood:

“Black River Orchard is a big book, but boy does Wendig make the most of the daunting page count. With elements of folk horror and psychological suspense, this multi POV, character-driven novel is atmospheric, unique and downright weird in the best of ways. You’ll never look at an apple the same way again.“

A nice review from the Library Ladies, too — excerpt:

“So yes, this is a big book, like many of Wendig’s books are, but like his previous novels Black River Orchard is paced so well and is so addictive that it reads very, very fast. This nearly 700 page books took me maybe four days to finish because if I wasn’t dealing with the day to day responsibilities of my life, I was reading.”

Then, a coupla podcasts —

I got to be on the Nerdette podcast to talk about the book!

And I’m sure I already mentioned it but I got to do another round with Neil at Talking Scared, a true favorite.

ANYWAY.

If you still haven’t checked out the book and you want a signed, personalized copy, the very nice people at Doylestown Bookshop can furnish you with one.

And again, please leave a review somewhere if you’re able!

I LOVE YOU ALL

EXCEPT YOU OVER THERE

THE ONE WHO ATE ALL MY APPLES

YOU’RE ON MY LIST, YOU MONSTER

*vanishes in a splash of caustic apple juice*

Say hello to Mike Lucifer, Spiritual Consultant. He’s back in town to take care of business. Unfortunately, when business is good, things must be very, very bad. After two years trying to run away from his past, Mike Lucifer’s back in his office less than ten minutes when a persistent young woman shows up asking for help: her boyfriend’s been possessed by a demon.

That’s exactly the kind of mess that drove him from his hometown of Boston to a sunny beach—and the bottom of a bottle—in the first place. But there are some problems that even booze can’t drown, and while Lucifer may be no hero, his dwindling bank account provides a thousand reasons to take the case.

No sooner is he back in the game then the complications and corpses start to add up. The boyfriend’s not possessed—he’s dead. The tech company where he worked is looking shadier by the second. And Lucifer’s client definitely knows more than she should…about everything. The deeper Lucifer digs, the more he wonders if whatever sinister entity lurks behind this case wants him to be the last to die…

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In the immortal words of Whitesnake, here I go again. You might think that I, having already published a handful of books, have nothing left to learn, but I’m here to tell you that—surprise!—the world is just chock-a-block full of things that I haven’t learned yet. Or things I have learned but forgot because my brain has got a real unhelpful “last in first out” system going on.

Anyway, let’s learn some stuff. Together.

First things first

After four books written in third-person narration that jumps between protagonists, All Souls Lost is the first time I’ve written a novel focusing on a single protagonist, written entirely in first person. (Well, one that saw the light of day, anyway.)

What I learned from that is that I absolutely love it. So much so that I’m writing in first person RIGHT NOW.

Being inside a character’s head, finding their own unique voice, is a blast. And it gives me the freedom to do all sorts of things that I at times struggled do in even a close third-person narration, leveraging an almost stream-of-consciousness style. It doesn’t hurt that my protagonist, Mike Lucifer, is a bit of a smart-ass, and yes, before you ask, writing that does come rather naturally to me.

I also learned that first-person narration has its challenges: for example, your character can only ever know what your character knows. It’s like going from a big blockbuster to shooting an indie movie with a handheld camera. Plus every sentence, every paragraph, has to be infused with the character’s sensibility—you can’t really take a page off. Still, it’s the good type of challenge to have.

Terminate with extreme prejudice

Okay, I admit it: I have a tendency to the tangential. A predilection for digression. A whim for wandering. Basically, I like putting extra shit in my books. I’m not going to say that’s unequivocally bad; sometimes a little detail that seems unimportant adds color, or sometimes it’s just fun (never underestimate the value of fun). But when I set out to write a taut 80,000 word novel, all those extra bits can add up and detract from that nice, tight story.

The “good” thing about working on a book for many, many years is that you spend a lot of time revising. I mean, I hate revising (don’t believe any writer who tells you they like revising, they’re damn liars—we all prefer to write it correctly the first time), but all that time and repeated exposure does help you get some distance from a piece. You stop looking at it as your adorable little baby, cooing and gurgling in soft focus, and start seeing it as the toddler it is, screaming as it throws a bowl full of spaghetti onto the floor for the third time today.

Let me tell you, it gets a whole lot easier to start paring words, sentences, and even whole chapters out of your draft after you’ve read it six or seven times. Here’s the thing, though: I’m an inveterate hoarder when it comes to writing. I don’t delete things; I just shunt them off into a separate file because you never know when you might want to drop something back in. Or use it somewhere else. But I can honestly say this book got more trims than any I’ve written before: the novel ended up around 77,000 words while my file of cuts and trims clocked in at 69,000. That’s where you’ve got to be brutal: If it doesn’t fit, lose it. If only I could bring myself to apply the same principle to my sock drawer.

Write what you know

It may surprise readers of my space espionage novels to know that I have neither been to space nor ever been an intelligence operative. (That you can prove.) Did that make readers thrown down my books in disgust as the fabricated work of a charlatan? I don’t know, maybe! People are weird like that.

But one big thread in All Souls Lost involves some shady goings-on at a big tech company and, as it happens, that’s something I do know a thing or two about: I’ve covered the tech industry as a journalist for the better part of two decades. Might Paradigm, said company in the book, bear a surprising resemblance to a noted big tech company in our own world? I’ll never tell! (Unless you ask me.) Does that help infuse it with a real sense of vraisemblance, as the French say? Look, I don’t know what that means, but those folks invented the croissant, so they’re clearly onto something: let’s say yes.

I also chose to set this book in my own backyard of Somerville, Massachusetts. As a result, a lot of the locations are lifted directly from real life, which helps add both a bit of realism and some local flavor. Though I do have to cop to the fact that I idealized some elements of life in this city—specifically how fast you can get between any two places.

Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know

You can’t know everything. Believe me, I’ve tried.

But that’s okay. Every writer, sooner or later, is going to run into something that they don’t know. I’m here to tell you that not only is it okay not to know something, but it’s okay to make it up. I’m not talking “I don’t know what the capital of Oklahoma is”—if you can look it up, by all means, do so—but it’s okay if you don’t know exactly what thek interior of a 1983 Volkswagen Rabbit smelled like after baking in the sun all day, or exactly how many steps are at the entrance of the Boston Public Library. It’s cool, I’m giving you permission to fudge it. Because unless it’s absolutely critical to the story, you can just make it whatever you want—that is, hands down, the best part of being a fiction writer.

Besides, readers love to tell you when you got something wrong, so just look at it as giving them something to look forward to.

I just want to celebrate

This book’s path to publication didn’t go the way I expected. I started writing it nine years ago, and when it debuts next week it will be primarily as an ebook (though audiobook and print-on-demand versions will be available as well). I’d had dreams of a big publisher deal with a huge publicity campaign, maybe even my first hardcover release, but that simply wasn’t to be. While the book got close to acquisition several times, it never could quite make it over that last hurdle.

But my agent, Joshua Bilmes, believed in the book, and proposed that rather than simply shelving it on the island of misfit stories, the agency itself publish it as part of its ebook program. The support and enthusiasm for All Souls Lost from everyone at the agency who’s been involved in the process has been a bulwark against the sometimes unforgiving world of publishing, and given that writing is usually a pretty solitary occupation, it’s always nice to feel like you’ve got people in your corner.

So even though it’s not exactly the scenario I had expected and dreamed of, I’ve learned to be okay with that. I dearly love this book—I’m not afraid to say it, and my straight-shooting wife says it’s her favorite too, so take that for what it’s worth. But the important thing is that you get to read it. No matter how it sells, no matter how it’s received, I wrote a story that I love and put it out into the world; everything besides that is gravy.

But, uh, I would really appreciate if you’d buy it.

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Dan Moren: Website

All Souls Lost: Books2Read

AHOY. I am back from tour, and I am reminded from said tour that bookstores and bookstore workers are the absolute best —

And so, while on tour, I was contacted by some very fine people at Half Price Books, which is the largest family-owned bookstore chain in America. These workers went to the bargaining table and were told that the company could afford to pay them better — but won’t.

The company says that a one percent yearly raise is sufficient, and it is plainly, obviously not. (Anybody heard of inflation? Cost of living?) Everybody deserves to make a living wage, and that ‘everybody’ means ‘everybody’ — including bookstore workers like those at Half Price Books. Bookstore workers are bibliowizards who share the love of books routinely, and who help our bookish ecosystem not merely survive, but thrive.

Half Price Books: you need to pay your workers what they’re worth, please and thank you. The workers will thank you. Authors will thank you.

You can read more about this struggle:

HPBWorkersUnite on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

And for an overall call to action where you can email / call /tweet at the company — click here.

I received an email from, erm, a reader —

I’m quoting the email in its entirety but stripping out a few identifying bits.

Be warned: this email is a real journey.

“And now you’re – you’re like any other piece-of-shit god-complex dickhead who got too full of himself to see the people around him as people.”

That is exactly how I thought of you when I finished Black River Orchard. Similar to Hillary calling people deplorables and suggesting they need to be deprogrammed as if they are cult members. The constant berating of people who don’t think like you was nauseating. I don’t think you could make your feelings about anyone outside of your political beliefs any more clear. You don’t see them as people, just your political enemy.

I was looking forward to reading this book as I love horror, but the only horror was how elitist you came across. Good for you, you’re sooooo progressive because you mentioned trans, ENBY, a lesbian couple, sex dungeon, BDSM, bigots, stolen land, religious nuts, and non-vaxers? My daughter and I have books that come with trigger warnings about monster cocks, so you’re not special.

Although I’m not a Trump-thumping Republican, I feel you would look down on me and not see me as a person because I’m rural and not educated enough to be impressed with all your keywords. My husband works in [REDACTED] and I work for a [REDACTED]. On a positive note, I also work in a fabulous [REDACTED] where I can find other works that are truly horror. I did enjoy the history lesson about apples. I happen to like Honeycrisp apples, especially from a semi-local orchard.

email from, obviously, a huge fan

I have not responded to this person, as yet, and likely won’t. I’m not sure what she hoped to achieve by writing this email, though I almost wish she’d write it as an actual review because, wow. Yeah.

The email did come in through the contact form on this website, so if the person who wrote this email is here, well, hi. Sorry I didn’t include more monster cocks in my book? I guess? I hope you and your daughter find all the wonderful apolitical monster cock books your hearts desire, but I come from a world where everyone gets their very own Sex Dungeon.

Or something.

Anyway, this is your reminder that all art is political and who gets to write the art and who is included in the art and who gets mad at the art — that’s all part of the politics of a piece. Like it or not. Thinking you can keep politics out of art is like thinking you can keep a fish alive out of water. It has to swim there even when it doesn’t realize it’s swimming there. Just because the fish doesn’t know what water is doesn’t mean the water doesn’t exist.

ANYWAY.

I casually appear in your mind to whisper, “Hey, I’m going out on the second leg of my book tour this week,” which means I’m gonna be at the following places on the following dates:

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Friday, October 13th, 6:00 PM

Denver, CO

Tattered Cover Bookstore

Details here! Order from the store.

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Sunday, October 15th, 4:00 PM

Helena, MT

Montana Book Company

Details here! Order from the store.

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Monday, October 16th, 7:00PM

Portland, OR

Powells Bookstore, Cedar Crossing location

Event details here! Preorder from the store.

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Wednesday, October 18th, 7:00PM

Seattle, WA

Elliott Bay Books

* In conversation with Sadie Hartmann

Event details here! Preorder from the store.

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Also, there are some new Black River Orchard reviews out there:

Paste Magazine: “As with his previous horror novel, the towering Book of Accidents, Wendig lays out a beautifully structured narrative web of multiple points-of-view, time periods, and story threads, weaving a tapestry through inviting prose and memorable characters in which readers will get happily lost. In a narrative that spans 600 pages, Wendig builds a series of deeply personal stakes for a lineup of people who are all caught in the strange shadows of Harrow’s past, then shows us how they intertwine, like a tree with branches that are all feeding each other, all reaching for the same goal. And, like The Book of Accidents, Wendig shows patience in cultivating this tree, letting it evolve and shift with the seasons, pruning it just so, always making sure it’s primed for maximum beauty and maximum emotional punch.”

FanFiAddict: “Nothing short of a horrific saga, Black River Orchard is a story that embraces its terrifying weirdness with open arms. With a comprehensive backstory interwoven with the present narrative, Chuck Wendig has gifted us a gritty look into small-town persuasion and the horrors of falling to the masses. We are given many loveable (and hate-able) characters to empathize with and shake our fists at throughout the course of the plot without losing out on the action. A true example of balancing characterization and plot development, Black River Orchard will have me skipping the farmer’s market for the foreseeable future.”

Books Bones & Buffy: “Wendig’s story is complex and multilayered. In addition to the story playing out in the present, he delves into the past and shows the origins of the apple–at one time called the Harrowblack—and how it originally had ties to the indigenous Lenape. Over the years, the apple was lost, but Dan Paxton was able to revive it, which turned out to be a terrible idea. I also loved Wendig’s passion for his subject matter and his vivid descriptions of apples and their taste, texture and smell. I’ve always loved his writing, and it really shines in Black River Orchard.”

Nightmare Magazine, Adam-Troy Castro: “The story has plenty of ooga to float its booga. It’s all about a town beset by cursed apples, instantly addictive, that, as they become a delicacy, accentuate everything negative in the personalities of their consumers, rendering them selfish, evil, and ultimately murderous.”

The Southern Bookseller Review: “Black River Orchard hit me like a combination of Stephen King and really good Magnus Archives episode, in the best of ways. For my fellow booksellers, this book is a mix of Stephen King’s IT and Faust — like if Faust was an apple farmer, and then mix up layers of horror–there’s psychological horror of domestic abuse and being trapped, of seeing people change for the worse. There’s body horror. Hooo boy, there’s body horror. And on top of all of that, I learned about apples!”

Random Email: “I was looking forward to reading this book as I love horror, but the only horror was how elitist you came across. Good for you, you’re sooooo progressive because you mentioned trans, ENBY, a lesbian couple, sex dungeon, BDSM, bigots, stolen land, religious nuts, and non-vaxers? My daughter and I have books that come with trigger warnings about monster cocks, so you’re not special.” haha oh wait I already posted that one, sorry

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As always, I politely note that me writing books is how I fund this here website, so if you dig that and dig my presence in this universe, checking out Black River Orchard from a bookstore or library is a good way to keep my soul tethered to the vacation resort that is my flesh. And if you have checked out the book, leaving a review at the usual receptacles (Amazon, Goodreads, Storygraph, TikTok) is a great way to keep the party going, too.

I note that for the next couple days, Bookshop.org is doing free shipping. You can buy Black River Orchard there, as a matter of fact. Or you can get a signed copy from Doylestown Bookshop or the four stores I’m visiting above.

I also note that the hardcovers for both Wayward and Book of Accidents appear to be on sale at AMZ, if you’re so inclined.

OKAY BYE

The city of San Siroco is sinking. The basement of Dr. Tamsin Rivers, the arrogant, selfish head of the research team assigned to find the source of the subsidence, is sinking faster.

As Tamsin grows obsessed with the distorting dimensions of the room at the bottom of the stairs, she finds a door that didn’t exist before – and one night, it opens to reveal an exact physical copy of her. This doppelgänger is sweet and biddable where Tamsin is calculating and cruel. It appears fully, terribly human, passing every test Tamsin can devise. But the longer the double exists, the more Tamsin begins to forget pieces of her life, to lose track of time, to grow terrified of the outside world.

With her employer becoming increasingly suspicious, Tamsin must try to hold herself together long enough to figure out what her double wants from her, and just where the mysterious door leads…

1. I don’t understand physics.

Here’s the hook for Last to Leave the Room: the city of San Siroco is sinking, and Dr. Tamsin River’s basement is sinking faster. It’s mysterious, it’s visceral, it’s unnerving – and, it turns out, it was wildly effective at showing me just how much I don’t understand physics.

An actually-sinking city would likely be caused by something like a gigantic sink hole. Sink holes, well, sink – the ground underneath a building collapses in on itself, and the building goes down with it. But for my mysterious, creepy vibes, I wanted the buildings to stay put. It’s the subway tunnels that are getting lower. The pipes and fiberoptics running below the city streets.

The floor of Tamsin’s basement.

At first, I tried to figure out a way it could work. But finding a plausible scientific explanation for the situation, while satisfying my newfound anxiety about my understanding of physics, would have actually run counter to the whole point of the book. Instead, I had to lean in; I had to make the problem I was facing the characters’ problem. It isn’t just that the city is sinking.

It’s stretching, and there’s no explanation for how. And that means there’s something much worse afoot.

2. Soylent gives you bad GI issues.

Tamsin is employed by a company called Myrica Dynamics, an ambiguous tech corporation that’s a little bit Amazon, a little bit Google, and a whole lot “companies you didn’t realize were all actually owned by the same shadowy conglomerate.” Tamsin herself works in a shady R&D department with a very roomy budget, and she lives a very tech-industry lifestyle; fancy ride-ordering app, fancy smart home, fancy meal-kit subscription… and a penchant for drinking meal replacement shakes anyway, because who has time for cooking? Especially when you’re trying to figure out why an exact physical copy of yourself has just walked out of a door in your basement that wasn’t there last week?

It turns out, though, that if you drink most of your meals, your intestines might take up arms against you. Soylent very notoriously gave a whole lot of people a whole lot of GI issues. Apparently, humans aren’t actually perfect inventors, and our convenient replacements for things like food don’t always behave the way we expect them to.

Hey, wait a minute. That sounds thematically relevant.

3. Prosthetic limb tech is super cool!

I don’t want to spoil anything, but there’s a character with a prosthetic limb or two (and there aren’t many characters, so I bet you can figure it out inside three guesses). Last to Leave the Room is set five minutes into the future, and with Myrica Dynamics backing the characters, I decided to press fast-forward on prosthesis technology a little. But I didn’t have to push too far! Researchers and specialty companies are already building arms that can be controlled via nerve impulses, and microprocessor knees that do the fancy work of figuring out how to help balance the load of a body.

But while all that’s nice, it’s a lot for every day. So I also looked into day to day life: modifications that character could make to their apartment for accessibility, how much they’d actually wear their prosthetic limb(s) around the house, what other options they’d have. I did a lot of reading first hand accounts and lurking on forums, and I hope that the life I’ve constructed for this character reads true.

And the overall upshot? Adaptive tech, which I first got a taste for while writing The Luminous Dead, continues to be incredibly neat. 

4. Situs inversus is also super cool… and creepy.

Bodies, human and otherwise, follow general patterns and layouts. But within those layouts, there’s a surprising amount of room for variation. The farther from your core they get, the more your veins and arteries get creative with their organization (to the point where there’s been some work on identifying suspects by the vein patterns in their hands and forearms). People can have extra “accessory” bones, or variants of musculature. In fact, part of the benefit of cadaver dissection in medical school is exposure to a real body, as opposed to the theoretical “average” body.

And did you know that about 1 in 10,000 people have their internal organs partially or entirely mirrored compared to standard human anatomy? Most of the time, it doesn’t cause any issues, and you wouldn’t even know you had it unless you had thoracic or abdominal surgery. (Occasionally it comes with some heart defects; you find out relatively quickly in that case.) I’d heard of situs inversus at some point in my past, probably around when I learned about fibrodysplasia ossifcans progressiva, which wormed its way into my last book. The idea stuck around, hovering in the background of my brain, until I started writing Last to Leave the Room and realized that a scientifically-minded person would, of course, want to know exactly how identical her doppelganger was to herself.

So give that bitch an ultrasound machine! She just might not like what she finds out about herself…

5. Sometimes you just have to give your main character’s hair its own arc.

Tamsin carefully controls everything in her life to create a certain effect. Her relationships, her reputation, her appearance. When we first meet her, she’s dressed exquisitely, her curly red hair is perfectly maintained, and she wears full-face make up and heels every day. This being a horror novel, she gets more than a little scuffed up before the final pages.

In the last phase of edits, my editor focused in on one specific detail: Tamsin’s hair. I’d made passing references to it getting a bit gross and tangled over the course of the plot, and my editor suggested I amp it up. Really track it, and, essentially, give Tamsin’s hair its own plot arc that moved in lockstep with Tamsin’s mental health (or lack thereof). What starts as distraction devolves into neglect and finally into chaos.

It’s a small detail, but tracking the state of Tamsin’s hair made me pay closer attention to Tamsin’s mind, and all the other little details of her environment. Her forgetting to take showers snowballing into forgetting salon appointments reinforced the less tangible aspects of her decline. Sometimes, it’s the small things that make the horror more real–and more terrible.

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Caitlin Starling is the nationally bestselling author of The Death of Jane Lawrence (2021), Last to Leave the Room (2023), and the award-winning The Luminous Dead (2019). Her other works of genre-hopping horror and speculative fiction include Yellow Jessamine and a novella in the Vampire: The Masquerade collection, Walk Among Us. Her nonfiction has appeared in Nightmare, Uncanny, and Nightfire. Caitlin also works in narrative design, and has been paid to invent body parts. She’s always on the lookout for new ways to inflict insomnia.

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Caitlin Starling: Website | Instagram

I am home from the first leg of the Black River Orchard tour — the Northeastern leg, to be clear — and hot damn, it was a delight to meet so many of you. Thanks, all, for coming out, and to the bookstores — Doylestown Bookshop! PRINT! Porter Square! Books on the Square! Gibson’s! Northshire! Oblong! The End! — who hosted me and this weird little (not so little) apple-flavored horror book. Extra thanks to my conversation partners like Liberty Hardy, Aaron Mahnke, Clay McLeod Chapman, Owen King, and Delilah S. Dawson. And finally, shout-out to the orchards who provided apples for the events: North Star Orchard, Sweetster’s Apple Barrel, Orchard Ridge Farm, Shelburne, Steere, Gould Hill Farm, Sunset Orchard, and of course, Rose Hill Farm and Cidery.

It was honestly fucking awesome and you can find ongoing photos from the trip at my Instagram — including new heirloom apple reviews (gasp), which I’ll keep posting because as it turns out, I’ve got a shitload of new weird amazing apples to review. I ate an apple called “Nail Biter,” for fuck’s sake. I ate one with bloody-looking flesh. I ate an apple that tasted like Campari. It was a good time and I’ll be continuing those updates.

Also, a reminder that I’m going back out on tour next week — this time, to Denver, CO; Helena, MT; Portland, OR; and Seattle, WA. (Details on Appearances page.)

If you picked up the book, the best thing you can do is read it, yell about it, shake it at your friends foes and family members, and best of all, review it at one of the appropriate review receptacles like Amazon, Goodreads, TikTok, wherever your heart guides you.

If you’re still not sure, I think Alex Brown’s review might convince you.

And you can listen to me on the always wonderful Talking Scared.

Also, I saw a staircase in the woods!

Finally, CHANT THE CRABAPPLES CHANT, YOU FOOLS

OK BYE