Hailey Piper

“One Is the Only Number” in Back 2 OmniPark

Posted on 2023-12-17 by Hailey Piper short story

December surprise time: I have one more short story out this year! I truly thought everything was finished with last month’s tale, but Back 2 OmniPark is out this weekend.

Follow-up to the Bram Stoker Award-nominated original anthology, Back 2 OmniPark gathers stories of OmniPark’s origins, from its construction to how its strange sections came to be.

My story “One Is the Only Number” opens on the construction site, where a worker is digging a hole only to find another man looking up from inside. He says they’re building a park on his side, too. Wouldn’t you like to see it?

That should certainly do it for short stories this year. It’s been a wild one. Eager to share what’s coming in 2024!

Cover reveal: Cranberry Cove

Posted on 2023-12-07 by Hailey Piper cranberry cove novella

It’s cover reveal day! Excited to let loose the cover of Cranberry Cove, my upcoming supernatural crime novella, out from Bad Hand Books on April 2, 2024. So I guess it’s also a release date reveal.

The art comes from legendary artist Lynne Hansen, who I’ve wanted to work with for the longest time, and she’s truly captured the book’s eerie uncertainty and sense of being watched.

Ebook pre-orders are already up on Amazon, along with a brief plot summary:

What’s been happening at Cranberry Cove? It’s unspeakable. It’s unspoken.

Emberly Hale is about to take a dark journey inside the derelict hotel—and inside her own past—to find out the horrible truth.

A Light Most Hateful in Library Journal Best Horror of 2023

Posted on 2023-12-05 by Hailey Piper a light most hateful novel

So jazzed to share that my recent Titan Books novel A Light Most Hateful landed on Library Journal’s Best Horror of 2023 list!

” If Neil Gaiman, Mary Shelley, and Shirley Jackson could collaborate, this stunning novel would be the result.”

It’s an honor to see my cosmic horror tale appear alongside brilliant work by Tananarive Due, Grady Hendrix, Stephen Graham Jones, Cassandra Khaw, Victor LaValle, Josh Malerman, Cynthia Pelayo, Jade Song, and Chuck Tingle.

This year was another incredible time to be a horror fan, and I can already tell 2024 is shaping up to be another beautiful storm.

“The Ruins of Elfland,” Even the Worm Will Turn audiobook

Posted on 2023-11-07 by Hailey Piper audiobook even the worm will turn flash fiction novella short story

My final (I’m pretty sure) short story of 2023 released today in The Seventh Terrace’s new anthology, Solstice in Purgatory, a flash fic snowstorm of winter holiday horror. My tale, “The Ruins of Elfland,” shows the secret cost of Christmas in a world going cold for the sake of toys.

Also, on Halloween the audiobook for Even the Worm Will Turn released from Tantor! Allyson Voller reprises her role as narrator from The Worm and His Kings to bring this sequel to audio, and she’ll be returning for the final book next year, Song of the Tyrant Worm.

Audio at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, LibroFM

“Midnight Bang” and “Wolfen Divine”

Posted on 2023-10-24 by Hailey Piper short story

I have two more stories out this lovely Halloween season!

The first is “Midnight Bang,” which shows up in Literally Dead: Tales of Holiday Hauntings, which explores stories taking place throughout the winter holidays. My story picks up on New Year’s Eve, when a drug trip at a nightclub turns sour at the haunting of a girl who died one year before.

Second, Cullen Bunn’s new anthology Swords in the Shadows offers a battlecry of sword-and-sorcery horror, the perfect place to unleash a new story from the world of No Gods for Drowning. “Wolfen Divine” takes place during the Holy War and tells of Mero, a half-wolf, half-god, who pretends he’s a war refugee, but in secret, he has a blood promise to keep.

I think I have one new story left this year, but for all I know I’ve forgotten something. Keep an eye out. Next week, Even the Worm Will Turn releases in audiobook!

Release day: A Light Most Hateful + 100th short story

Posted on 2023-10-10 by Hailey Piper a light most hateful New release novel short story

Hear that thunder crash and boom—A Light Most Hateful is here!

Released today by Titan Books, with cover art by Julia Lloyd, my new novel is also my tenth book, a twisting story of small-town survival horror set against a summer storm of monsters, madness, and the breaking of reality and friendship.

“An ambitious, genre-shredding novel that takes big swings and, improbably, lands every one.”

– Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A stunning novel that purposefully plays with genre conventions and centers love, even as it actively terrifies readers to their core.”

– Library Journal (starred review)

Available from Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Amazon, Penguin Random House, LibroFM

Mona Awad’s Bunny meets Stranger Things in this mind-bending and terrifying examination of female friendship and the lengths we’ll go to protect the ones we love, from the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth.

Three years after running away from home, Olivia is stuck with a dead-end job in nowhere town Chapel Hill, Pennsylvania. At least she has her best friend, Sunflower.

Olivia figures she’ll die in Chapel Hill, if not from boredom, then the summer night storm which crashes into town with a mind-bending monster in tow.

If Olivia’s going to escape Chapel Hill and someday reconcile with her parents, she’ll need to dodge residents enslaved by the storm’s otherworldly powers and find Sunflower.

But as the night strains friendships and reality itself, Olivia suspects the storm, and its monster, may have its eyes on Sunflower and everything she loves.

Including Olivia.

ALSO out today, my 100th published short story, “Scratch-Off Universe,” appears in Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weird, a beautiful anthology celebrating the 100th anniversary of Weird Tales, featuring essays, poetry, stories from magazine issues of yesteryear, as well as new work.

I’m honored to be part of this piece of weird horror history, especially with my milestone tale about a group desperate to change the world in the parking lot outside a small-town baseball field and what they discover in scratching away layers of the known to find the unknown.

Out now: La Reina Dentada

Posted on 2023-10-02 by Hailey Piper New release novel queen of teeth translation

It’s release day for La Reina Dentada, the Spanish edition of my Bram Stoker Award-winning novel Queen of Teeth!

Dilatando Mentes Editorial has done another amazing job both in translating the tale of Yaya, Doc, and the vagina monster Magenta, and in the presentation, with a beautiful cover by Raúl Ruiz, as well as lots of tentacled sweetness inside the book.

Imagina que, un buen día, te levantas y haces un descubrimiento sobre tu cuerpo, uno tan sorprendente, que provocaría que tu vida cambiase drásticamente; imagina descubrir que tienes dientes en partes de tu cuerpo donde no deberían estar. Eso es lo que le sucede a Yaya Betancourt, una mujer que padece una rara afección genética causada por unos experimentos llevados a cabo hace décadas por la Farmacéutica AlfaBeta, cuando ella, y miles de personas más, a las que se les denomina quimeras, aún estaban en el útero de sus respectivas madres. Lo que no puede imaginar Yaya, es el alcance y las repercusiones que tendrá su descubrimiento y la metamorfosis que este acarrea, no solo en su vida, sino en la del resto de la humanidad.

«Una historia de terror tan poderosa como hermosa». (Kirkus Reviews)

Cruel Angels Past Sundown, now in audio!

Posted on 2023-09-22 by Hailey Piper audiobook cruel angels past sundown novel

It’s release day for the audiobook of Cruel Angels Past Sundown!

A couple months ago, paperback and ebook readers met Annette Klein in 1880s New Mexico in this queer Biblical horror Splatter Western, and now audiobook fans can sink into this night from hell too. Jenn Lee’s voice will be familiar to anyone who’s listened to Queen of Teeth, and she’s just as stellar here, delivering a gripping read of Annette, Gloria, Balthazar, and everyone involved in the bloody clash at Low’s Bend.

Available on LibroFM, Audible, Barnes & Noble, and everywhere else audiobooks are sold!

Cover reveal: La Reina Dentada

Posted on 2023-09-09 by Hailey Piper novel queen of teeth translation

I’m so pleased to share the cover to La Reina Dentada, the Spanish edition of Bram Stoker Award-winning novel Queen of Teeth, coming from Dilatando Mentes Editorial this fall!

Dilatando Mentes also published the Spanish edition of The Worm and His Kings last year, El Gusano y Sus Reyes. It’s a beautiful book through and through, and having seen their edition of Queen of Teeth, it’s just as gorgeous inside (and full of tentacles). The cover art is by Raúl Ruiz is so beautiful and striking (and also full of tentacles).

2024 title reveals: Worm 3, new TPONG

Posted on 2023-09-02 by Hailey Piper Announcement collection novella song of the tyrant worm the ghostlands of natalie glasgow the possession of natalie glasgow the worm and his kings

Two pieces of exciting news!

First, the title reveal for the final book in The Worm and His Kings trilogy from Off Limits Press: Song of the Tyrant Worm is coming in spring 2024, concluding the queer cosmic horror trilogy with a mind-bending bang!

Next, my debut novella The Possession of Natalie Glasgow has been out of print for a bit, but it’s at last coming back next summer when Rooster Republic Press (publisher of Queen of Teeth) unleashes my new collection, The Ghostlands of Natalie Glasgow. Check out that beautiful cover art by Nicholas Day!

This is a little different than your usual collection. It includes the original TPONG novella, along with six new interconnected stories (one of them a novelette) involving the characters of TPONG in years-spanning encounters with hauntings, possessions, and the unexplained.

Also exciting, pre-orders are up for the hardcover, which comes in the standard hardcover (can be ordered until April 30th, 2024) and the deluxe edition, of which there will only be 30 copies. There won’t be more of these later, and they’ll ship ahead of the wider paperback and ebook releases in summer 2024. Check it out here!