1--What is the title of your latest release?
HAUNT SWEET HOME
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
“Don’t talk today about what we do at night.” Mara Billings gets hired as the production assistant on the night crew of reality TV’s Haunt Sweet Home, which bills itself as a combination fixer-upper and paranormal show. Her job is to haunt the houses, but maybe she’s the haunted one.
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
It needed to take place in an area with a lot of very old (for the US, anyway) and idiosyncratic houses, where there are still woods. I figured I’d be better able to nail the character of the woods and the old houses in New England, since I’ve stayed in a fair number of motels up there, and hiked around in the woods, and played in a fair number of grand old houses. And New England has all those great stone walls to stumble across. Haunt Sweet Home the show, as I envision it, spends each season in a different area, but this particular season that I focus on for the book takes place in small town western Massachusetts. I found sale ads for real houses that inspired each of the houses I depict, though I changed them where the plot demanded it. I never found one with a library as cool as the library in the book.
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
I would hang out with Mara. I might feel the need to give her advice, and she might find that annoying, but I’d be interested to hear more of her stories from behind the scenes at the show. Also, maybe she could teach me something about woodworking.
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Wandering. Trying. Searching.
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
I had to do a bunch of research on woodcarving, which is not a thing I would ever try my own hand at, since I'm terrible with knives. I learned which types of wood were better for carving. I watched a bunch of paranormal and home improvement shows, and read a bunch of firsthand accounts by people who have been on home-related reality shows—both the shows where people decide on a house to buy, and the shows where they renovate. Oh, and I guess I spent a fair bit of time reading about various apples before I settled on Gravensteins in the orchard.
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
On a first draft, I mostly try to move forward as I go. I’m not a big outliner, which sometimes means I have to go back and fix something if I realize I’ve painted myself into a corner. I think about what I’ve written that day on my evening dog walk, so sometimes I’ll write notes to myself about things that I should have done differently, and I’ll tweak those things as I go. (Evening dog walks are for reflection and morning dog walks are for planning what I’m going to write; everything I write I owe to my dogs.)
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
I am an ice cream connoisseur. In any city I want to taste the best and/or the most unusual ice creams. This is an indulgence I couldn’t allow myself when touring as a musician, since I wouldn’t be able to sing if I had that much dairy. I'm writing this on a plane back from Scotland, where I had an amazing single malt whiskey ice cream yesterday.
9--Describe your writing space/office!
In the before times, I did a lot of drafting in coffeeshops, and that’s still my instinct when I have a big deadline: go someplace where I can perform the role of Serious Writer, and never ever ask for the wi-fi password. In nice weather you’ll often find me writing on my porch surrounded by dogs. And the rest of the time, I have a great office with a great desk. My wife built me a library, and I find it very inspiring to work in the company of books I love. There’s a comfortable upholstered chair that is usually occupied by dogs, which is okay because I alternate between sitting on a gaming chair and an exercise ball; I’ve learned that when I’m at a desk I need to make sure everything is ergonomic or my back and my shoulder send me nasty messages. The most important item in my office is a beautiful hourglass from the Corning glass museum. When I flip that sucker over, it means business.
10--Who is an author you admire?
Ursula K. Le Guin. She wrote so thoughtfully in so many genres: science fiction, fantasy, realist, poetry, non-fiction; adult, young adult, children’s books. She carried herself with dignity through a field that wasn’t always the most friendly professional space for women and she didn’t suffer fools. I love the way she went back to look at her own older fiction, and when she found that she had new thoughts on a subject, she wrote new stories or essays course-correcting her own work. Her book Changing Planes boggles my mind. It posits that airports are liminal spaces, and that you can travel to other worlds when you’re in an airport. Then it dashes off a series of other-world travelogues that are an absolute education in worldbuilding, one per chapter, any one of which could have been the setting for an entire novel or series, just because she can. What a writer, what an imagination, what a good citizen of the world.
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
I could tell you a handful of books that made me want to be a writer, or a better writer, or a specific kind of writer, but for a true life change, I have to answer with Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable Miracle, which is the book that turned a lifelong tomato hater into someone who grows tomatoes and eats them straight out of the garden and makes her own sauce. The way she wrote about tomatoes was so luscious it made me realize I didn’t need to hold on to silly childhood aversions.
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I hope it doesn’t make me sound like a jerk if I say I don’t remember? I remember my first professional story acceptance. I had just gotten back from my critique group meeting, and I checked my email as I got out of the car, and I read the acceptance about five times. My father was visiting at the time, and my love of science fiction comes from him, so we went out for ice cream to celebrate. It was lovely to be able to share that with him. First book acceptance is a little blurrier, but I remember the call with my editor, where I could tell she was the right person to help bring the best out in that novel, and my excitement at being able to work with somebody who really got what I was doing. I still get that feeling every time I find out I get to work with editors who get my weird stories; I think it’s the musician in me that loves a good creative collaboration.
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
I love reading single author short story collections, particularly speculative ones—I don’t care if it is science fiction or fantasy or weird or dancing along the edge of genre. When I need a palate cleanser I like reading mysteries. Lately I find myself gravitating toward dark fantasy/horror novels as well. If I look at my reading of the last couple of years, there’s a lot more horror than there used to be.
14--What’s your favorite movie?
I'm so bad at favorite anything. I'm changeable, and I don't re-watch things very often. I have a soft spot for Velvet Goldmine, and I'd willingly re-watch that anytime. I love the music, the costumes, the weird revisionist history.
15--What is your favorite season?
I’ve always been a fan of autumn: hot drinks, leaf shows, crisp air, winter squash, apples, but since I started trying to grow things in a garden I’ve developed a fondness for spring as well, most specifically the weeks where the ancient lilac blooms and every time I open the front door I catch the scent of it.
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
A good coffee, a good dog walk, ice cream or a fancy pastry, a nice dinner with my wife. In years where I think ahead enough to do it, I love to have people over in stages: a group to play a board game, a group to play music, cake as the bridge between the two. I had a “waffle it” party one year where we made various savory and sweet waffles and everyone brought toppings to mix and match.
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
On the book front, I was blown away by Victor LaValle’s Lone Women. Meticulously researched, genuinely creepy, full of heart.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Thai, maybe? If you told me I could only eat Thai food for the rest of my life I would be okay with that. Indian would be great, too.
19--What do you do when you have free time?
Explore with my dogs, ride friends’ horses, read, play Tears of the Kingdom and escape puzzles, hang out on the porch with friends and dogs and sometimes guitars…
20--What can readers expect from you next?
I’ve got a bunch of short stories at various points of completion, and a new novelette that came out this summer in Uncanny Magazine. I’m working on another novel, which is taking a while. It’s a little research heavy, so I’m taking my time and writing other stuff in the meantime. Keep an eye out!
On the set of a kitschy reality TV show, staged scares transform into unnerving reality in this spooky ghost story from multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Sarah Pinsker.
“Don’t talk to day about what we do at night.”
When aimless twenty-something Mara lands a job as the night-shift production assistant on her cousin’s ghost hunting/home makeover reality TV show Haunt Sweet Home, she quickly determines her new role will require a healthy attitude toward duplicity. But as she hides fog machines in the woods and improvises scares to spook new homeowners, a series of unnerving incidents on set and a creepy new coworker force Mara to confront whether the person she's truly been deceiving and hiding from all along—is herself.
Eerie and empathetic, Haunt Sweet Home is a multifaceted, supernatural exploration of finding your own way into adulthood, and into yourself.
Fantasy Dark | Fiction Media Tie-In [Tordotcom, On Sale: September 3, 2024, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781250330260 / eISBN: 9781250330277]
Sarah Pinsker’s Nebula and Sturgeon Award-winning short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, F&SF, as well as numerous other magazines, anthologies, and translation markets. She is a singer/songwriter who has toured behind three albums on various independent labels. Her first collection, Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea, was released in early 2019 by Small Beer Press. This is her first novel. She lives with her wife in Baltimore, Maryland.
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