Rapid-Fire Reviews for April/May, 2026
Plus, Some Writing Updates and a Sneak Peek at a Work-in-Progress
Books
How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix
This was my first time reading fiction by Hendrix. I’ve gotta admit, I went into it with some biases. While I mostly enjoyed Paperbacks from Hell (his retrospective on the 1980s horror boom), his chapter on splatterpunk hurls some undeserved insults, which, several years later, still leave a bad taste in my mouth when I think about it. Because of that, I didn’t plan on reading any of his fiction, but when I joined a neighborhood horror book club early last year, I knew one of his titles would inevitably end up in the shuffle. He is, after all, one of the most popular horror authors working today.
For the first half of this book, I smugly noted how one-dimensional the characters seemed and how little “horror” takes place. Sure, I snickered at the Nativity scene made up entirely of taxidermy squirrels, and despite my misgivings, I couldn’t quite bring myself to DNF (that’s book reviewer vernacular that stands for Did Not Finish which isn’t proper grammar when used like this, but I digress).
About forty percent into the book, I asked trusty Google if I was the only person on the planet who didn’t like Grady Hendrix. It turned out that, no, I wasn’t. Google elaborated by saying most people criticize his reliance on “adult Goosebumps” tropes.
Okay, hold the phone. Adult Goosebumps? Yeah, if I’d detected any of that in the first half of the book, I wouldn’t be asking Google why I hated this author everyone else seems to like. From the pulp of Bryan Smith to the twists and turns of Riley Sager, I’d already read perfect examples of adult Goosebumps, and this wasn’t it.
But then something happened halfway through the book that changed everything.
[SKIP THE NEXT TWO PARAGRAPHS TO AVOID SPOILERS.]
We learned something more about a character who I considered insufferable for the previous two hundred pages. They became someone worth rooting for, someone I really felt charitably towards.
After that, we get a spider dog (like from The Croods: A New Age minus the ice, though I doubt Hendrix would admit if that were his inspiration), a twist toward the end that made my heart sink, and a group of possessed puppets doing some Voltron shit.
[END SPOILERS.]
All in all, How to Sell a Haunted House is an ambitious, infuriating, ultimately entertaining meditation on grief remixed with, yes, adult Goosebumps energy (my God, how is that a negative? do you hate fun??).
Does the second half make up for the first? I think it does. It’s so effective because of the biases and judgments the book’s first half forces us to hold. The charm of the book is that by the end, it invites you to empathize with characters you were so ready to hate. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that accomplishes such a feat, and for that I gotta tip my hat to Grady Hendrix.
I still disagree with his take on splatterpunk, but opinions on literary subgenres are not mathematical. They are subjective, and I’d do well to remember that when I’m prepared to write off an author for holding one I dislike.
Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn
Speaking of grief, Mary Downing Hahn has a serious knack for heavy-hitting ghost stories that can still be read by younger readers. I didn’t read this when I was a kid, but I remember the cover. It’s one of those that I’d forgotten, but when I saw it, the nostalgia plowed into me like a train.
I read her book Stepping on the Cracks when I was in fifth grade and remember being taken by its heavy themes of life during wartime, abuse, and growing up. I was already watching more mature films by then, but my reading habits were more geared toward my age (Goosebumps and comic books). This book felt like it was on the same level as the movies and shows I was consuming, and it might have been the first time I really internalized the grayness around war, patriotism, and how outsiders are often treated.
I was immediately taken by the atmosphere in Wait Till Helen comes, helped in a big part by its setting: a house that used to be an old church, complete with a neighboring graveyard and a nearby pond where a girl named Helen drowned.
Interestingly, the story does a lot of the same things the Hendrix book does. Our narrator has some preconceived notions about her stepsister and stepfather. The book is about grief and how it operates within family dynamics. It’s for kids, but the more children’s literature I revisit or read for the first time, the more I realize that thematic heaviness isn’t absent from these stories. Sure, there’s no gore, profanity beyond the occasional “damn” or “hell,” and no sexual content, but otherwise, they often deal with grown-up issues. Only the condensed structure of these stories makes them “juvenile.” It makes me think I could take a crack at some kids’ horror stories myself. It’d be cool to do some before my own children are teenagers and think I’m lame.
Final Girls by Riley Sager
Having previously read Home Before Dark, I thought I knew what to expect going into this other book by Sager. I mentioned him earlier when bringing up books with adult Goosebumps energy because Home Before Dark embodies this. Final Girls falls more into the category of gritty thriller, but it isn’t without its pulp horror charms.
I probably don’t need to tell anyone reading this newsletter that the book’s title refers to the trope of the girl or young woman who survives until the end of a slasher movie. Sager flash forwards his story from the original massacres to tell the story of two women who endured such bloody ordeals and what their lives now look like.
Sort of. This book is heavy on twists, so that’s all I’ll say there.
This was fun, and its ending was more satisfying than Home Before Dark’s. It got a comparison to Gone Girl from Stephen King himself, but I don’t know. I guess both books are about women with dark secrets, but they don’t read the same. Love me some Gillian Flynn, though.
I was worried, going in, that FGs would try to be iconoclastic and spend half its pages tearing into the subgenre I love, but it does not do that. It is a loving tribute to films like Friday the 13th, Halloween, Prom Night, and Terror Train, while still being very much its own thing with its own place in genre history.
Fear Street Seniors, Book 10: Wicked by R.L. Stine
It’s R.L. Stine. Of course I loved it. Reading the previous nine books isn’t totally necessary to enjoy this one. If you need a little help, though, the first part of the book features a “yearbook” with DECEASED stamped across the photographs of characters who died in earlier entries. Hilarious.
My only complaint is I wish the book was a little more fleshed out. Stine can write these types of stories in his sleep, so would it have hurt him to divert from the formula a little bit here? Of course, he’s one of the bestselling authors of all time, and I’m just a dork with a Substack, so I’m not gonna tell him how to write a story, especially not for a book that came out almost thirty years ago.
Movies/TV
Possession (1981, Directed by Andrzej Żuławski)
There are movies you love, movies you like, movies you loathe, and movies you forget after watching them. Then there are movies that change you.
Possession is one such movie.
While over my buddy Shane McKenzie’s house, our writing session went off the rails, so we decided to drink White Claws and watch a movie. He suggested Possession because he’d never seen it before. I perked up because the last time I saw it was 2012, on the big screen with my then-new wife, Jean. Snapshots from the film flashed through my head, but I also remembered how after getting home that night, Jean and I spent the next few hours looking up theories and analyses about what the brain-melting visuals and soundtrack of incessant screams could possibly mean.
Here is a movie that’s both portrait of a fractured marriage and a political drama. A body horror movie and a psychological thriller. A creature feature and a cinematic nightmare that’s all too human.
When I first saw it, I was a new writer, completely in awe of how the filmmakers and actors put all these things into one text and made it all feel cohesive. Flash-forward fourteen years, and these memories led me to enthusiastically agree with Shane’s pick, and we set about watching Possession on Shudder.
A lot has changed since that first watch. I've got more than a few books under my belt, including one that has the distinction of being a Splatterpunk Award winner. I'm a father. Jean and I have been married fifteen years. I've held a variety of jobs. Like many of you, I've witnessed the chaos and anxiety that's swept up the world for the past decade. I don't see myself as old, more like seasoned (though not quite mature).
Despite how I’ve grown, Possession is still a movie that mesmerizes me. Not everyone is going to want to come along for the ride. It is an abrasive movie, and on the surface, it doesn’t make much sense. There are still some choices that I'm unsure how to interpret, but the film is a ride. You won't be bored, and you won't feel the same after watching it. Shane even said as much, and he tends to balk at texts that are difficult to follow. It's the type of movie every genre fan should watch at least once. You may not love it, but you won’t forget it, nor will you feel the same once it’s over.
My only regret from that night is that I filmed Shane's reaction to the infamous “subway” scene but am unable to post it (some family photos can be seen in the background, and I want to protect his privacy).
Something Very Bad is Going to Happen (2026, directed by various)
This show shines the brightest casts the most compelling shadows when it’s building dread. Jean, who isn’t a horror fan, needed to check spoilers after the first episode to make sure she really wanted to keep watching. The buildup is that good, and it feels very much like a horror show. It comes together decently enough, but the best stuff is in the setup.
I don't know. Netflix shows are weird. People have told me they're designed to be live tweeted and half-watched. I could see that, but they're good for watching with Jean. Horror adjacent enough for me to appreciate, but not too trashy or upsetting for her.
Writing Updates
Remember last week how I said I was working on two books? Well, I finished the first draft of one of them. It's the one that I can't talk about yet, so for the purpose of this newsletter, let's call it Project Cryptid. It's about 40,000 words but will probably grow to 50,000 in subsequent drafts. More news on that to come.
On the other book—the one that scares me—I'm still about halfway through. The second half seems nebulous, despite me outlining it, which makes me think the first half might be missing something. Gonna noodle on that for a while. That Bradbury quote about how “ninety percent of writing is thinking about writing” rings true, and on some projects, it feels closer to ninety-five or ninety-nine percent.
To help me out, I may make some handwritten notes. Someone told me you use more brainpower doing that than while typing. Dunno how true that is, but I'll try anything when I'm stuck. Provided the weekend isn't too crazy, I may have cracked this nut by the time you’re reading this newsletter (I work on these throughout the week to ensure I make that Monday morning deadline).
The first half plants a lot of seeds, but I'm convinced it needs more plot development for the second half to properly blossom. A few more beats here and there, maybe a guide-type character, ought to do the trick. Tropes aren't my enemy, as long as I use them in an interesting way and the story calls for them. I will say that it feels strange applying tropes to such a personal project, but even the most true-to-life stories need to feel like a story.
I'm thinking out loud. I hope you don't mind.
By the way, thank you for everyone's likes, comments, and messages after last week's newsletter. They mean a lot. Keep them coming. I respond when I'm able, and I always appreciate them.
Next week, I'll have an essay up on “The Horror of Blending In.” The essay will be free, but premium subscribers will receive some additional notes and a list of books and movies related to the subject.
Speaking of premium subscribers, I have something for you today. In this excerpt from my work in progress, the main character gets stuck in the scroll and finds something that tempts him more than anything he finds in the usual places—something familiar but sad and a little spooky. I don’t think I mentioned it in the last newsletter, but the book is called Always Almost Home. It’s a work of cosmic horror that embraces vaporwave aesthetics. You’ll see what I mean beyond the break.
