“Midnight Bang” and “Wolfen Divine”

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

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

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!

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

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

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!

New articles in CrimeReads and Writer’s Digest

I have a new article up on CrimeReads! With my new novel Cruel Angels Past Sundown having recently released and being a mix of religion and horror, my new article includes seven recommendations for other books/stories on the subject. Check it out here!

And for writers, I also have a new article up on Writer’s Digest: “5 Tips for Adding Otherworldly Elements Into Your Novel.” I use Cruel Angels Past Sundown as an example in a few steps for addressing and incorporating speculative elements. Remember, the weirder, the better!

Starred PW review for A Light Most Hateful

I’m still jittery with this exciting news, but I’m bravely typing anyway! My upcoming small-town survival horror novel A Light Most Hateful has received a STARRED REVIEW from Publishers Weekly!

I could not be more thrilled right now.

“Piper’s prose crackles with energy and wit as it ties the novel’s wilder excesses together into a story at once comfortingly familiar in its themes and cosmically alien in its execution. The story twists reader expectations into knots, flipping genre conventions and connecting unlikely elements to make something truly singular.”

A Light Most Hateful releases October 10th from Titan Books!

“A Soliloquy of Tongues” in Shakespeare Unleashed; Dragon Award finalist

I’m a little behind on updating, but I have a couple of cool entries to post!

Shakespeare Unleashed came out near the end of July, an anthology of horror stories and sonnets inspired by works by William Shakespeare. My Hamlet-inspired story, “A Soliloquy of Tongues,” focuses on Queen Gertrude of Denmark and the lengths she’ll go for a little peace and quiet.

Also, in news of last year’s work, No Gods for Drowning is up for a Dragon Award for Best Horror Novel! I’m honored and excited to see it up there with such brilliant work. Winners will be announced in a few weeks at this year’s DragonCon!

Cruel Angels Past Sundown release day

It’s release day!

Overjoyed that my new novel Cruel Angels Past Sundown is out at last from Death’s Head Press and flashing that amazing Justin T. Coons cover art like its Splatter Western fellows.

It’s out in paperback and ebook today, which can be ordered at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, and soon enough the audiobook will be out, narrated by Jenn Lee, whom you might have heard on the audiobook for Queen of Teeth.

New Mexico Territory, 1882: She comes to the Klein ranch at sunset, a strange naked pregnant woman dragging a cavalry saber. Annette Klein and her husband have built peace between their marriage and secret relations beyond, but their serenity dies in bloodshed tonight through a cannibalistic demon and a mad preacher.

Annette barely escapes the bloodbath to the nearby town of Low’s Bend. where she might find safety with a shotgun-toting barkeep, two no-nonsense boarding house ladies, and the gunslinging bounty hunter who’s captured Annette’s heart.

But hell is at her heels. If she’s going to survive until dawn, she’ll have to forget everything she knows about peace and mercy, and face a hollow malevolence more ancient and ruthless than she’s ever imagined.

One of Paste Magazine’s “15 Horror Books We Can’t Wait to Read in Summer 2023

Cruel Angels Past Sundown is a gorgeous, bloody, surreal nightmare with a palpable, pulsing heart. Piper’s innovative prose is tactile and immersive. It binds you to Annette’s soul and the people of Low’s Bend and makes you want to fight for them. Long live queer horror in the face of those who would call us blasphemous. Thank you, Hailey, for this battle cry in the darkness. This book is a treasure.”

– Suzan Palumbo, Nebula Finalist, author of Skin Thief

“From its unforgettable opening image through to its furious, apocalyptic-in-the-original-meaning-of-the-word climax, Cruel Angels Past Sundown moves with the implacable dread of a nightmare. But the slashes it leaves in your gut, and the hardpan dust it rubs in the wounds, are all too real.”

– Nat Cassidy, author of Mary: An Awakening in Terror