4/27/26
Accidentally stabbed myself in the thumb with my favorite knife yesterday. It is currently difficult to type for any length of time, so let’s just jump right into today’s Women In Horror Year spotlight. Before we do, however, if you look up there at the top of the screen, you’ll see there’s now a tab for Women in Horror Year, which takes you to an index for this feature, so you can see what we’ve talked about already and a direct link to the discussion.
(You’ll also see a tab for THE HORROR SHOW WITH BRIAN KEENE which is slowly under construction as I move everything in-house again and continue to migrate my IP away from social media platforms and tech companies).
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Women In Horror Year: Day 23
The Hollower by Mary SanGiovanni
Something alien is stalking residents of Lakehaven, New Jersey. It can't see them, hear them, or touch them, but it knows them - their fears, insecurities, and secrets. It knows how to destroy them from the inside out. And it won't stop until each of them is dead.
Dave Kohlar has never felt like he was good for anything. But when his sanity, his life, and the safety of his only family and friends is in danger, he has to look inside himself for a strength that his otherwordly enemy can't touch - strength that can hopefully save them all.
J.F. Gonzalez’s Survivor. Tim Lebbon’s White. Tom Piccirilli’s A Choir of Ill Children. Sarah Langan’s Audrey’s Door. Joe Hill’s Horns. Christopher Golden’s The Ferryman. Sarah Pinborough’s Breeding Ground. Wrath James White’s The Resurrectionist. Weston Ochse’s Scarecrow Gods. Any good, well-thought list of my generation’s iconic, seminal contributions to the horror fiction canon will include these and many others, particularly The Hollower, by my wife, Mary SanGiovanni. Part one of a trilogy (followed by Found You and The Triumvirate) it’s the novel that put her on the map, that introduced her to a wider audience, and put cosmic horror’s tropes into a blender, producing something fresh and original. A spiritual predecessor to today’s literary works like Hailey Piper’s Worm and His Kings trilogy and the films of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, this novel is easily Mary’s most influential work, and she’s tickled beyond belief every time a new writer cites it to her at a convention or signing. It is also 90% likely at least the partial inspiration for the Slenderman urban myth. Indeed, in the early days of Slenderman, before the meme got turned into an IP and a franchise and began to make $$$, you would sometimes see The Hollower referenced by some in the creepypasta community. And the novel predates the character’s online appearance. If you’re a younger or newer reader, still discovering the genre, then this is an essential and seminal part of the canon, written by one of the women who fought so that women today can win. The Hollower is available in paperback, eBook, and audiobook from Crossroad Press and Macabre Ink.
