Laurel Hightower is a bourbon-loving native of Lexington, Kentucky. She is the Bram Stoker-nominated author of Whispers In The Dark, Crossroads, Below, Every Woman Knows This, Silent Key, Spirit Coven, The Day Of The Door, and The Long Low Whistle, and has more than a dozen short fiction stories in print.
Hightower sat down with Cemetery Dance to talk about cryptid horror, powerful and flawed female characters, horror films, The Long Low Whistle, and Shortwave Publishing’s Killer VHS Series. Continue Reading
The seventh installment in Shortwave Publishing’s Killer VHS Series is gory, claustrophobic, and probably the most terrifying book you’ll read all year. Laurel Hightower’s The Long Low Whistle swells with an aching grief that throbs through the pages from start to finish and will thrill fans of cryptid and survival horror. Not only would this be a great introduction for readers new to Hightower’s work but it will make fans of the Bram Stoker-nominated author absolutely giddy because, like most of Hightower’s books, The Long Low Whistle is packed with creative, but brutal body horror you won’t be able to shake for days. Continue Reading
Viggy Parr Hampton, MPH is an epidemiologist, host of the podcast “Horror Humor Hunger,” and the author of A Cold Night for Alligators, Much Too Vulgar, The Rotting Room, and A Veritable Household Pet. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. She is also a member of the Purgatory Media team, producing the popular YouTube segment “Tag Team Tales of Terror,” where she challenges fellow horror authors to create a progressive story with her.
Hampton sat down with Cemetery Dance to talk about feminist horror, lobotomies, and A Veritable Household Pet. Continue Reading
Viggy Parr Hampton is a force to be reckoned with in her medical-body horror novel, A Veritable Household Pet. It’s a blistering indictment of patriarchal power and a tragic story of the nightmare that is the theft of autonomy and identity, a quiet and constant terror women know all too well.Continue Reading
Erika T. Wurth is an urban native of Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee descent. She is the author of the New York Times editor’s pick, White Horse. She is both a Kenyon and Sewanee fellow. She’s published in Buzzfeed and The Writer’s Chronicle, and is a native artist for the Meow Wolf Denver installation. Her most recent release, The Haunting of Room 904, has garnered national attention and received praise from some of the biggest names in horror, including Paul Trembly, S.A. Cosby, and Phillip Fracassi. She also has a short story in the recently published and highly anticipated Howl: An Anthology of Werewolves from Women-In-Horror alongside Gwendolyn Kiste, Christina Henry, Ai Jiang, Katrina Monroe, and so many other incredible women from the genre.
Wurth sat down with Cemetery Dance to discuss The Haunting of Room 904, religion and lore in horror, Howl, and more. You can find Erika T. Wurth on Instagram @erikatwurth or on her website. Continue Reading
What is it that horror readers love about a haunted hotel?
Is it the haunted house feel but with more witnesses? The hauntings that vary from floor to floor as though specters and entities take the elevator themselves? The idea of a place that has seen such tragedy, death after death, that it shines like a ghoulish beacon for spirits and curses? It’s really all the above. The isolation, the secrets and hidden history, the absorption and spiritual/paranormal preservation of human suffering have popularized stories like Stephen King’s The Shining, Psycho by Robert Bloch, and The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James. Continue Reading
“The world will drive a woman insane, then point and laugh.”
In Rachel Harrison’s new gothic and paranormal horror novel, Play Nice, a stylist and influencer named Clio returns home following her mother’s sudden death. Alex left the house to Clio and her sisters who immediately wish to sell it. After all, it’s where their mother lost her mind. Continue Reading
The Dead Husband Cookbook by Danielle Valentine is a worthy follow-up to the author’s motherhood-horror and debut novel, Delicate Condition. Delicate Condition inspired season twelve of Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story: Delicate, starring Emma Roberts and Kim Kardashian.
The Dead Husband Cookbook is another exploration of the daily horror of the female experience. However, it’s less body horror than you might expect. It’s a gritty mystery, each reveal more twisted than the last. I had a really tough time putting this one down.Continue Reading
Jenny Kiefer is an award-winning author of spine-tingling, fierce, and cathartic horror. Her debut novel, This Wretched Valley, was a 2024 Bram Stoker Award Nominee and named a Library Journal Best Horror Book of the year. Readers have been anxiously awaiting her second release, Crafting for Sinners, a survival horror story about a queer woman trapped in a craft store run by religious fanatics. It is all over BookTok and Bookstagram as one of the most anticipated horror book releases of 2025.
Together with her mother, Kiefer owns and manages Butcher Cabin Books, an all-horror bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky.
Kiefer sat down with Cemetery Dance to discuss her debut novel, This Wretched Valley, her new release, Crafting for Sinners, survival horror, her favorite reads of the year, and of course, crafts.
In Jenny Kiefer’s latest release, Crafting for Sinners, Ruth walks the aisles of a craft store in Kill Devil, Kentucky. There’s fall decor from floor to ceiling, but no sign of ghosts, witches, or black cats for Halloween, the holiday omitted entirely. Emblazoned glass jars read: Be Pure, for those who give themselves to immortality will suffer the punishment of eternal fire. A placard with two vintage handguns forming an X, barrels overlapping, declares: Righteous judgment will be revealed on the day of His wrath – Romans 2:5. Continue Reading
Isabel Cañas is a gothic horror revivalist who would appease and astonish the founding mothers of the genre and excite the readers they continue to lure in today. What makes Cañas stand out is her use of classic Gothic tropes — such as isolation, family turmoil, claustrophobic settings, and hauntings —but she re-centers them in Mexico. She symbolizes historical trauma, evangelization, colonization, generational violence, and misogyny throughout her work in a way that’s accessible and impactful.
In her latest genre-defying release, The Possession of Alba Díaz, Cañas conjures an unforgettable, wicked tale so compelling and cinematically evocative that readers will talk about it for years to come. It’s haunting and gory. Fierce and uncanny.Continue Reading
Nick Medina is a member of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana, and he drew on his heritage and stories passed down by his paternal grandmother, along with research into the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) epidemic, as inspiration for his novels including Sisters of the Lost Nation, which earned a Junior Library Guild Standard Selection Award, and Indian Burial Ground. He has degrees in organizational and multicultural communication, and has worked as a college instructor. He also enjoys playing guitar, listening to classic rock, and exploring haunted cemeteries and all sorts of spooky stuff.
Medina’s new release, The Whistler, takes readers back to the reservation for a thrilling blend of Native folklore, mythology, and horror. Much like the paranormal investigators the author writes about, Medina has gone in search of Resurrection Mary, the “Italian Bride,” and the “Devil Baby,” and other spirits of Chicago’s ghost lore.
Medina sat down with Cemetery Dance to discuss his new release, The Whistler, Native lore, and his favorite reads of the year. Continue Reading
For fear of summoning evil spirits, Native superstition says you should never, ever whistle at night.
Henry Hotard was about to hit the big time. He’d gained a huge online following with his ghost-hunting videos. But things changed one day, a day he wishes he could forget, and now he’s navigating a new reality — life in a wheelchair and back on the reservation where he grew up, and relying on his grandparents’ care.
Growing up on the reservation, one hears all sorts of stories, cautionary tales with wicked creatures and anecdotes. Myths. But some superstitions shouldn’t be ignored. Continue Reading
Brian McAuley is a WGA screenwriter and HWA author. His debut novel, Curse of the Reaper, was named one of Esquire’s Best Horror Books of 2022. His novellas, Candy Cain Kills and Candy Cain Kills Again: The Second Slaying, are essential holiday horror reads and dubbed “A masterclass in slasher fiction” by FanFiAddict. This fall, McAuley returns with a bloody-good slasher called Breathe In, Bleed Out.
McAuley’s upcoming novel has already garnered praise from some of the biggest names in Horror. Upon reading Breathe In, Bleed Out, Nat Cassidy, author of When The Wolf Comes Home and Mary: An Awakening of Terror, said McAuley is “the crown prince of slasher literature.” Continue Reading
Brian McAuley’s slasher novel Breathe In, Bleed Out is an absolute scream and an instant classic.
In this fast-paced and shocking horror novel, Hannah, a woman haunted by the ghosts of grief, and her friends are invited to a secluded healing retreat in the desert. With constant nightmares and a drug dependency, Hannah thinks this trip could be just what she needs: a chance to heal.Continue Reading
