Horror Aficionados discussion

This is the thread for the July 2024 Group Read with Guest Author, Andrew Van Wey. This month we’ll be reading his fantastic cosmic horror offering, By the Light of Dead Stars. Grab your copy by clicking on the link below and please help me welcome to HA…. Andrew Van Wey!

https://www.amazon.com/Light-Dead-Sta...

Awesome! Welcome, Andrew!

Hi folks! Huge honor to be here. I've been lurking on and off in this group for over a decade, and your great recommendations have done quite the number to my wallet. I'm delighted to share By the Light of Dead Stars with you.

If you like supernatural & cosmic horror in the vein of "It" and "Stranger Things" I think you'll enjoy visiting the town of Greywood Bay. Just be careful when you look up, something might start looking back. ✨🐙👻

Throughout the read I'll stop by with some behind the scenes tidbits, inspiration, and more. Maybe even a giveaway or two if that's allowed? If you have any questions along the way please don't hesitate to let me know.

Thanks for spending your time with my words and visiting the Lost Coast.

Welcome Andrew! I've been hoping to read this one soon!

By the Light of Dead Stars was a seriously brilliant read.

Started today! Didn't want to put it down, which is a very good sign.

This is great! I’ll be here later this month when I’m back in town!

This is such a great book. Love the characters. Looking forward to Tides.

Ooo I was gonna reread this soon so I can read Tides of Darkness back to back so now I’ll have to do it here! Excited that you’re here! I know ow you form BoH on fb and it’s always a pleasure to spend time with your words. :)

Only about 50 pages in but I like the little hints of something creepy about to happen, something not quite right.
And I like the way the first page of each chapter is drawn. Adds to the overall feel of something not right.

Thankyou for making time for us Andrew. I bought your book.

Zoë wrote: "Ooo I was gonna reread this soon so I can read Tides of Darkness back to back so now I’ll have to do it here! Excited that you’re here! I know ow you form BoH on fb and it’s always a pleasure to sp..."

Thanks Zoë! I believe we've chatted a fair bit on BoH. I spend too much time (and money) there 😬 but it's a great group.

Pisces51 wrote: "Thankyou for making time for us Andrew. I bought your book."

Cheers Pisces51. Thanks for you spending your time with my words, and welcome to Greywood bay. ✨🐙👻

WendyB wrote: "Only about 50 pages in but I like the little hints of something creepy about to happen, something not quite right.
And I like the way the first page of each chapter is drawn. Adds to the overall fe..."

Thank you WendyB. I do my best to ensure the print editions are gorgeous and on par with anything else found on the bookstore shelves (or even nicer). It takes a while, but I think most readers enjoy it.

This is awesome!

I'm curious about the sound of crickets being played through a speaker. Is this a nod to Crouch's Wayward Pines? A coincidence maybe? Or maybe I just need to keep reading and the answer is in the story? :)

WendyB wrote: "I'm curious about the sound of crickets being played through a speaker. Is this a nod to Crouch's Wayward Pines? A coincidence maybe? Or maybe I just need to keep reading and the answer is in the s..."

Great catch! Yes, it's definitely a nod to Crouch. He's one of my favorites and I wanted Raven's Valley to evoke a sense of the uncanny.

It's also a real "feature" in a modern planned condo community I once toured, although it wasn't crickets but frogs and recorded music that played at different times of day. They also did community announcements through it. It was one of those "nice modern ambiance features" that creeped me out and stuck in my head.

Just a note. I will not be starting the read till next Monday, but
I am looking forward to it and do plan to join in the discussions.The novel sounds like it is right up our alley. The Group Read Author Invites are my favorite feature of the club.

Andrew, can you tell us a little of how By The Light Of Dead Stars came about?

Kenneth wrote: "Andrew, can you tell us a little of how By The Light Of Dead Stars came about?".

Growing up reading "It" and loving shows like "Stranger Things" I've long wanted to write a "kids on bicycles" book. I've also long been obsessed with a region of California known as the "Lost Coast". In fact, my first novel, Forsaken, visited a fictional small town in that region called Greywood Bay, where a certain blind psychic painted an impossible image that haunted a family. So, that town has been percolating in my mind for years. What evil has been lurking there along the Lost Coast, at the western edge of the continent... and at the edge of our world. I knew that it was cosmic and terrible and had come by many names. I knew that the fabric of reality had frayed, and this entity had long coveted our world. Here was its gateway to worm its way back in and feast on suffering. Like many ideas, it percolated through my subconscious.

The second ingredient was a drive along highway 50 in California. It’s a beautiful (and scary) drive, and I saw an image of a young, 13-year-old girl waking up in overturned car. She struggled to get out and help her parents, but the rocky embankment collapsed. She watched them slide down into the canyon. I knew this young woman would have many scars. She skateboarded into my life that day, and I saw her an image of her standing on a sea cliff looking out into the Pacific sunset where the sky split open, and a thousand dark eyes stared back from a fissure, covetous and seething. This young girl, who was in many ways so terribly broken, she was—impossibly—standing up to this ancient horror. Zelda Ruiz arrived pretty much fully formed, skateboard and all.


The third ingredient was her Uncle Mark, who I met one night in Madrid. My wife and I were there attending a writing conference, and as I sat on the balcony of our AirBnb, I saw a man walking back at midnight, a happy glow about him. He stopped at the door to his apartment, looked up at me, and I saw Mark Fitzsimmons—Zelda’s uncle. I knew him at once. He was coming home from another night out, a man in his 40s enjoying a cozy life of bachelorhood, and when he arrived in his apartment he would see something that shouldn’t be there: his sister, smoldering, sitting in the ashy waters of his bathtub. She would say something and then descend under the water. The tub would drain to nothing. The phone would ring: a number from the United States, and in that instant Mark knew that something terrible had happened to his sister and his life would be changed forever.

It’s rare that characters walk into my life, but both Mark and Zelda did just that. I’ve been less a writer than a documentarian with these books, and it has been an absolute joy. So, we’ve got the town, the characters, and the evil. From there, I knew it would be both intimate and episodic. We’d be watching characters go about their life, doing the “boring stuff” that makes us human as well as battling cosmic evil. I wanted to see the toll this would take on their everyday lives. This grief-stricken girl who’s starting to understand she can see *more* than the superficial layers of our reality, how would she balance this with just being a teenager? How would Uncle Mark—who uprooted his cozy life in Spain because of his dead sister’s warning—balance being a parental figure with his own flaws and demons?

I didn’t know all the answers, but I just sensed to trust them and let the story show me. It's worked out so far. It brought these people I care about together and sent them to the haunted town of Greywood Bay. And there, it put them all on a collision course. I’ve been listening to them ever since.



1️⃣ The Lost Coast, where it all started.



2️⃣ Highway 50, where Zelda's life was changed forever.



3️⃣ Madrid, Spain. Where Mark became the guardian he never intended to be.



4️⃣ Greywood Bay. A clash of old and new, where this bucolic community holds terrible evil within the very soil and the sky.

So very cool Andrew, how your books are inspired.

Lori wrote: "So very cool Andrew, how your books are inspired."

Thanks Lori! It might look like inspiration in hindsight, but I promise it's chaos in the thick of it.

Andrew wrote: "Kenneth wrote: "Andrew, can you tell us a little of how By The Light Of Dead Stars came about?".

Growing up reading "It" and loving shows like "Stranger Things" I've long wanted to write a "kids o..."

I love to hear this fleshed-out version of the way Greywood Bay, Zelda, and Mark showed up for you! This makes me want to go to The Lost Coast on vacation and hang out with the big trees and see the water!

Loved it. Great characters that felt like real people. Enjoyed how the little bits of horror slowly became bigger and bigger until all hell broke loose.

Thanks for a great read, Andrew. I'll be reading the next book.

Life intervened and I am just now getting into the book. I will try to make haste. It sounds really good. Right now, I am just getting the characters straight.

I have this book and I am going to try to get to this soon.

WendyB wrote: "Loved it. Great characters that felt like real people. Enjoyed how the little bits of horror slowly became bigger and bigger until all hell broke loose.

Thanks for a great read, Andrew. I'll be r..."

Cheers WendyB. Thank you for spending your time with my words and visiting Greywood Bay. I'm delighted you enjoyed your stay.
✨🐙👻

I am still early in the book (page 100) and the story is beginning to intensify.

I finished the final third of the novel today and it all came together for me. Loved it!!!

Pisces51 wrote: "I finished the final third of the novel today and it all came together for me. Loved it!!!"

Thanks Pisces51! I appreciate you spending your time with my words and visiting the Lost Coast. "Come together" is a good way to put it, I think, since I tend to write multi-POV books that usually have a big final act. Maybe it was all the horror doorstoppers I read as a kid, but I just enjoy a story where you see the pieces moving, follow a few separate threads, get to know the characters in their "normal" world, but by the end you get a batshit insane convergence where it does "come together."

I know for some modern readers that can be a challenge, but hey, I'm delighted you enjoyed it. Thanks for visiting Greywood Bay.

🐙✨👻

Howdy spooksters! I forgot the group read ended, but I just wanted to swing by one last time and thank everyone for reading. Have a great fall and keep sharing the love of horror.

Happy hauntings!

Thanks again for joining us Andrew!

My husband is currently reading this and is enjoying it. He likes the characters and thinks they're very believable.

Thanks for being here with us this summer, Andrew. I hope we'll see you here again.