My first short story of the year is out!
It actually came out last week, but for various reasons I haven’t been able to update about it until now. “Modern Art Curse, Mixed Media” appears in the new anthology Scissor Sisters, a book of villainous sapphic stories, a theme both salacious and delightful. My story tells of a murder, an unfinished painting, and the answer that lies within the art.
Happy New Year! We’re into 2024, which is going to be a big year for horror. I have four titles releasing this year, and the fourth had the good fortune to appear in Paste Magazine’s article, “The Most Anticipated Horror Books of 2024.”
Alongside exciting upcoming titles by Stephen King, Stephen Graham Jones, Rachel Harrison, Johnny Compton, Josh Malerman (you don’t need me to list everyone, check the article!) comes All the Hearts You Eat, coming October 15th from Titan Books. From the article:
“Why We’re Excited: Hailey Piper will deliver several new books in 2024, but All the Hearts You Eat is the one that intrigues me most. Apart from the title, which might be the best Piper’s delivered so far (and that’s really saying something), there’s the promise of another tale of a small town full of mysteries and darkness, and the young woman at the center of it all who must dig for the truth. Throw in the Gothic touch of a ghost girl trying to point the way, and you’ve got a book I need in my hands right this second.”
Right now it can only be pre-ordered from UK retailers Waterstones & Forbidden Planet, but hopefully Titan will be expanding on that soon! And also soon, a cover reveal. Can’t wait!
Also, Queen of Teeth got a lovely mention in BookRiot’s “9 Horror Books with Romance at Heart.” I’ve said it before, so remember: horror and romance are lovers!
A Light Most Hateful also got a shout-out on The Line-Up’s “From the Haunted Stacks: 2023 Horror Book Highlights,” saying “If Neil Gaiman, Mary Shelley, and Shirley Jackson could birth a book baby, this stunning novel would be the outcome.”
I keep thinking I’ve hit my last site update for the year, and then another thing will happen and I’m jumping back in here.
Paste Magazine today published their article “The Best Horror Books of 2023,” and among such recent titans as Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory and Don’t Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones is the storm of my most recent novel, A Light Most Hateful!
“One of the most imaginative horror authors in the game right now, Hailey Piper outdid even herself with A Light Most Hateful (link to Paste’s review), the story of a small Northeastern town transformed into a nightmarish dreamscape over the course of one fateful night.
The horror starts in the opening pages and never lets up, as Piper spools out fascinating image after fascinating image, weaving them all into an unforgettable tapestry of fear, beauty, and humanity.”
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!
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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)