Interview: Johanna Van Veen on Bone of My Bone and the Convergence of Religious, Historical, and Folk Horror

Johanna Van Veen’s debut Gothic horror novel, My Darling Dreadful Thing, was a Bram Stoker Award nominee, and her sophomore novel, Blood on Her Tongue, became an instant USA Today Bestseller. Both journey into historical settings, as does her latest release, Bone of My Bone, set in Germany during the ruthless Thirty Years’ War. It explores the convergence of three horror subgenres: folk, historical, and religious. As well as the effects of war on everyday people.

Author Johanna Van Veen
Johanna Van Veen

Johanna Van Veen sat down with Cemetery Dance to discuss her new release, Bone of My Bone.

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Review: Bone of My Bone by Johanna Van Veen

Bone of My Bone by Johanna Van Veen 
Poisoned Pen Press (May 26, 2026) 
Reviewed by Haley Newlin Bone of My Bone by Johanna Van Veen

One saint. One sinner. One skull

Horror readers, rejoice. Bram Stoker Award-nominee and USA Today bestseller Johanna Van Veen is back with another haunting, sapphic, and terrifically terrifying tale of wickedry in Bone of My Bone. For fans of Robert Eggers’ The Witch and Cassandra Khaw’s The Salt Grows Heavy, Bone of My Bone unveils the brutality of the Thirty Years’ War and the demented depravity of man. Sister Ursula, a young nun fleeing the ruins of her convent, and Elsebeth, a headstrong and scrappy farmhand, form an alliance and move through the Bavarian forest in hopes of appeasing the spirit of a saint contained within a fragile holy relic they carry—a skull. A dying man tells the women of its secret: reunite the skull with the saint’s body, and a wish will be granted. 

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Review: Blood On Her Tongue by Johanna Van Veen

Poison Pen Press (March 2025)

Reviewed by Haley Newlin

Blood On Her Tongue is a vividly violent and sapphic, good-for-her horror story with a strong appetite and ferocious bite. Johanna Van Veen has repeated her success; Blood On Her Tongue is every bit as unputdownable and shocking as her 2024 novel, My Darling Dreadful Thing.

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Review: My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna Van Veen

cover of My Darling Dreadful ThingMy Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna Van Veen
Poisoned Pen Press (May 2024)
384 pages
Reviewed by Haley Newlin

My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna Van Veen exceptionally invokes gothic tropes such as unearthing buried secrets at a dire cost, and relics of her predecessors to craft a chilling, sapphic love story that is possessive, haunting, and beautiful.Continue Reading