![]() I might be misattributing this, but I believe it was the creator / artist / podcaster / paranormalist Sapphire Sandolo who at one point essentially made a case for believing in people even if you don’t believe in ghosts, and when it comes to other people’s stories, that’s generally the stance I try to take. Having said that, I’ve met and spoken with people who’ve told me stories so convincing that I’m left thinking that they either missed their calling and should be novelists (if they made the stories up), or that they, at minimum, genuinely believe in what they saw. That said, I tend to think my mind sort of malfunctioned more than I believe I actually saw a ghost. I even started to speak to them before they disappeared, and since I talk with my hands, I can still see myself gesturing toward them (I thought they were my mother) and then kind of freezing in place the instant they vanished. Probably a copout, but I have seen a person who wasn’t there before, when I was a teenager still living in my parent’s house. Do you believe in ghosts? Have you ever had an encounter with something paranormal? Robert Marasco’s Burnt Offerings also had an influence on the novel, as did the film Poltergeist. Tananarive Due’s The Good House, Michael McDowell’s The Elementals, and of course Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House immediately come to mind. Oh, I have too many favorites to narrow it down. But I also realize it might be so bad that it could be fun to answer.)? Do you have a favorite ghost or haunted house story (novel or short story), television show or movie? A least favorite? (I realize that you may not want to address this one and if that is the case, please don’t. There are background stories, particularly with Frederick, that I kept in notes but never really planned to place in the novel, but might explore down the road. Nothing was left out of the book that I wish had made it. One of my favorite moments in the book-the passage I use for most of the public readings I’ve been fortunate enough to do-comes from one of her chapters. After finally recognizing that (after continued encouragement from readers), I leaned harder into her villainy and she became an even more interesting and fun character to write. Eunice in particular started off as a bit more sympathetic, at least in my eyes, but even my earliest beta readers prior to submission to agents found her even more villainous than I initially believed her to be. Probably the biggest changes that came about centered on Eric’s great-grandfather (Frederick) and the antagonist, Eunice. ![]() How did the novel evolve and change as you wrote and revised it? Are there any characters or scenes that were lost in the process that you wish had made it to the published version? Aside from her, no one else was based on anyone in particular, although certain events in the novel and even the name of the town (Degener) are drawn from Texas history. One of the important side characters, Emily "Millie" Steen is inspired, at a very high level, by famed Texas journalist Molly Ivins. Are Eric, Dess, Stacy, Eunice, or any of the other characters in the novel inspired by or based on specific individuals? The story idea I had easily meshed with spite houses as a concept, and the novel developed from there. As the name suggests, a spite house is a house constructed or decorated in some manner purely to spite someone or something, be they family member, neighbor, or government entity.Īfter reading about a variety of spite houses I did some basic research to see if a haunted house story had ever been set in one, and was pleasantly surprised to find spite houses entirely unoccupied even by ghostlore, much less published fiction. I encourage anyone who isn’t familiar with the term to look it up. I’d had a general haunted house story in mind for some time, but the spark of inspiration came from an article I read about spite houses. ![]() What was your inspiration for The Spite House? ![]() The Spite House is his debut novel and he recently talked about it with Daryl Maxwell for the LAPL Blog. He is an HWA member and creator and host of the podcast Healthy Fears. Johnny Compton’s (he/him) short stories have appeared in Pseudopod, Strange Horizons, The No Sleep Podcast and many other markets.
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