Spooky Wine & Words Interview with Hailey Piper!🎃

How old are you and where are you from? What's a fun fact about your hometown?

I’m 39, excited to start my 40s next year, and I’m from the Catskills in New York. I’m not sure there are any fun facts about my hometown, but I think John Langan is stalking the woods of the same region, and that’s pretty fun.

What draws you to the horror genre? How long have you been writing?

I’ve always loved horror. When I was little, it was the thrills and the monsters, but as I got older, I came to love its infinite possibilities, its heavy exploration of emotions, and how it immerses me like nothing else. For me, horror is healing. I’ve been writing off and on since I was a kid, learning a little here and there over the decades, and now doing it more constantly the past six years. It’s been a wild adventure.

You have a new book releasing October 15th, “All the Hearts You Eat.” Tell us about it!

"All the Hearts You Eat" follows Ivory Sloan from the morning she finds a teenage girl’s body on the shore of Cape Morning and the ghostly sightings that result. The girl’s friends, Rex and Xi, have also seen her ghost, and the search for answers about her death opens an invitation for something much older and more cunning to enter the town and work its will. This is my vampire novel, which I had no idea people were waiting for me to do, but apparently they were. It’s also about how a lack of acceptance can isolate people to the point that they become desperate for connection, even with something terrible.

According to your IG bio, your mission as a writer is to “Make horror gay AF.” why do you think queer representation in horror is essential?

Weirdly it didn’t start as a mission statement so much as saying what I wanted to see in horror. I think representation for everyone in every genre is essential, and so queer characters in horror is part of that. I also think horror has an innate queerness at its core.

You're also a short story writer who has had work featured in many anthologies. Tell us about your new September stories!

September was pretty busy! Let’s see, my earliest was “Unkindly Girls” appearing in Fears, an anthology of psychological horror, about a teenager who always takes vacations with her overprotective father and what happens when she meets the kind of girls he warns her about the summer after she discovers a horrible secret. The anthology Fear of Clowns opens with my story “The Hollow Ones Weep Greasepaint,” about societal ostracization in a world where clowns seem to haunt towns and cities, and what people will do to those they see as outsiders. Lastly was “The Vermin Moon” in The Darkest Night, in which a year after losing her daughter, a woman has to bury that daughter’s pet rats at their passing, opening a new grief wound inside her, but also possibly a window to seeing her daughter again.

If you could have one of your horror novels turned into a film, which one would it be? And who would you cast as your characters?

A couple years ago Lone Tree Entertainment picked up the rights to A Light Most Hateful, so I would love to see that come to be. I’m not good at dream casting, there are so many brilliant actors, but Cate Blanchett would make an interesting Hazibel.

What are your favorite and least favorite subgenres of horror and why?

My favorite is probably cosmic horror. I love the vast, complex concepts, the grandiose treatment toward the span of time and space, and the way it marries fear with wonder. My least favorite is probably home invasion horror. Its simplicity doesn’t do much for me imagination-wise, and I feel like it often exists to gratify a suburban fear-fantasy of having someone come to the house uninvited so they have an excuse for long-desired violence.

I follow a few horror writers who have also been Bram Stoker award winners or nominees. What was it like to win that award?

Scarier than any horror fiction, seriously. I was trembling from the moment I sat down, through being called forward (I was all the way in the back), through receiving it, and afterward too. I was nominated for another award that night too, and I whispered to Karmen Wells “Please don’t let them call me up there again.” I’m happy about it now, but I spent that time terrified. I’m lucky to have had so many people happy for me though.

Besides your new book, do you have any upcoming events or projects?

In August 2025, Saga will release my erotic cosmic horror novel A Game in Yellow, and I have another book out after that, but it hasn’t been announced yet. I’ll also have a story in The End of the World As We Know It: Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand. And I’ll be at StokerCon that June and AuthorCon’s Killer Pride that September.

What writing advice would you give someone trying to break out into the horror genre?

Don’t write what you think other people want or what you think they’re afraid of. Horror, like romance, is one of the most emotional genres, and you have to engage with the horror yourself in order to express it best. It has to be personal, it has to let your readers feel what you feel.

Where can readers keep up with you?

I’m on Insta and TikTok as @haileypiperfights and I keep my website updated pretty readily at www.haileypiper.com. Thank you for having me!

You can order her new book "All the Hearts You Eat" here!

Subscribe to COFFEE WINE AND WORDS to keep up with all things literary & arts!