Horror Is For Everyone
A Coffee Chat with Sadie Hartmann, aka mother horror
“I first want to say that your page has impacted my perspective on horror in the most positive way. For most of my life, I didn’t consider myself a fan of the genre, but following along with your content revealed my ignorance and has made me excited about exploring it more! I avoided the label for a long time, because I carried the negative connotation that horror always meant super scary. I’ve always had a palette for spookier, darker things, but my vivid, and traitorous imagination and sensitivity make it hard to ingest utterly disturbing and frightening things. I can only go so far, but I’m working on pushing my limits.”
“Hey, me too!” Sadie chimed in.
“When my sister sent me your Instagram account, she thought I could not only benefit from your book lists, but that I would also enjoy your organic content, due to my artistic eye and marketing background. She was right! Full transparency– for a long time, I wasn’t reading any of the books you were suggesting. I followed along because I’m obsessed with your content. It is beautiful. I just devour it. Your use of collage, fonts, and colors in your graphic design are capturing and fun to engage with. And you post so consistently! Plus, the way social media works these days, to be able to post without ever showing your face and still get the engagement you do speaks to the quality of your material. The longer I followed you, the more intrigued I became to try some of your featured books. The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister was one of them. That book really opened my eyes to how encompassing the horror genre is."
"That makes my heart happy."
“I would love to know more about the origins of Mother Horror.”
“My horror journey started when I was young. I gravitated toward spooky books for kids. There was an author named John Bellairs who wrote books such as The House with a Clock in It’s Walls, illustrated by Edward Gorey. His books leaned real dark and spooky and were written specifically for kids. I’m Gen X, and YA lit wasn’t a thing when I was a kid– it was small chapter books and then straight into adult books. My mom opened me up to Agatha Christie and some other mysteries, but from there I started to crave more gruesome and grisly details.
“My mom encouraged my horror journey and allowed me access to her adult horror bookcase as a young teen, around thirteen years old. For my first choice, I plucked the least scary-looking book off her shelf, Salem’s Lot, by Stephen King, and it scared the crap out of me. I literally read this book and then would sleep on the floor between my two little sister’s twin beds! As a thirteen year old! Once I started reading King’s books, I worked my way through his entire catalog, using my mom’s library.”
“So you would credit your mom as the proponent to your horror journey?”
“Yes. She is my own Mother Horror."
“Have you always preferred horror?”
“My mom encouraged me and my sisters’ reading habits with trips to the library, or local bookstore, and I was always drawn toward the spooky stuff. But I like all kinds of books and read a little bit of everything, especially classics.”
“When did you start creating content dedicated to horror fiction and the reading audience? When did @mother.horror begin?”
“In about 2016, I started noticing a community online of people who would share their libraries and share their wealth of literature. The community was more YA centered at the time, but I thought I could join in and share the kinds of books I was reading. My handle at the time was @sadiereadsthemall because I really was reading everything– all genres. Murder mysteries, thrillers, historical fiction…and I do still read a lot, but I am more genre focused. I tried some of the YA stuff that I was seeing, but it was mainly in the fantasy realm. Throne of Glass, by Sarah J Maas was popular and so I tried it, but it just wasn’t for me. I noticed as I explored #bookstagram that there were other people in that space closer to my age or reading the kinds of books I was naturally reading. I found myself in the horror section of #bookstagram and people were sharing books I had never heard of before. From 2016 - 2020, I discovered Indie Horror Fiction for the first time, and I read a shit ton of it.”
In a short three years, Sadie’s account and content began to catch the eye of various publications. In 2019, Sadie was approached by two different magazines asking if she wanted to write book reviews for them. Scream Magazine, from the UK, and the online publication, Cemetery Dance. They wanted a women’s perspective on the genre. The arrangement was a little more exposure based, with little pay. Simultaneously, the online community was growing and she was meeting a lot of interesting people. At that time, authors and publishers were beginning to recognize the influence of bookstagramers.
“I want to note that #bookstagram back then was not what it is now,” Sadie continued. “Publishers are doing influencer programs, specifically for Instagram and Tik Tok. It looks like free books or elaborate street teams and none of that existed when I first started, because publishing didn’t fully understand the capacity yet. Instagram has changed so much in the last decade and you just have to adapt if you want your account to stay relevant. But it's important to do that while staying true to yourself. As an example, Instagram really pushed reels and rewarded content creators who film themselves (like TikTok). I tried to film myself and make reels like that, but it's just not me and it felt uncomfortable. I would never push myself to do something I don't enjoy just to satisfy the algorithm. Instagram rolled out carousel posts and those also get good engagement, so I hit those pretty hard and have had a fair amount of success leaning into making those kinds of posts.”
“What is a major thing you have learned about yourself while running this reader-focused, dedicated bookish account?”
"I learned that being passionate about books and reading can manifest itself as many different hobbies. The content creation, the book research, the reading, the book buying, curating my Free Little Library, listening to audiobooks, writing reviews, leading book clubs– they're all separate hobbies and satisfy multiple cravings."
I didn’t realize my Apple Maps had directed me down an unfamiliar route, until it was too late. I was so enraptured by the audiobook of The Witch of Willow Sound, I hadn’t registered that the exit was not the one I typically took to Tacoma, WA.
I’m not complaining. How could one complain about an October drive through winding backroads dense with trees and vegetation donning autumn colors? Fog floating like a specter and clinging to hidden neighborhoods of beautiful homes decorated for the Halloween season? All the while relishing prose describing the secrets of night, the crackle of wood and the smell of burning flesh? It was a vibe– especially considering I was on my way to sit down and interview horror enthusiast and Bram Stoker Award winner, Sadie Hartmann, aka, Mother Horror.
Sadie Hartmann is the co-owner of the horror subscription service, Night Worms, horror fiction content creator and reviewer, and captain of the Instagram page @mother.horror. She is the author of the delicious and comprehensive reading guides, 101 Horror Books to Read Before You Are Murdered (Bram Stoker Award winner) and Feral and Hysterical: The Ultimate Reading Guide to Dark and Disturbing Fiction by Women. Sadie can be found on several book-centered platforms, but Instagram is her mothership. She also hosts in-person book club meetings in Tacoma, WA and opened a horror themed Free Little Library this year.
My first introduction to Sadie was at one of her Tacoma Horror Book Clubs this summer. I had been following her Instagram page for almost a year and when I saw her announcement post for a book club event covering Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman. I leapt–literally– at the opportunity to not only participate in an organized discussion with new people and other keen readers, but also the opportunity to meet Sadie in-person and check out her new Little Library. I have a huge thing for Free Little Libraries.
I brought along my younger sister, who had been the one to introduce me to Mother Horror’s Instagram page several months before. Both of my younger sisters read horror and are Stephen King fanatics. They have encouraged my slow submersion into the waters of the genre. The event was welcoming, educational, and so much fun. It was a successful gathering of community and an atmosphere I would definitely enter again.
Sadie was just as lovely and vibrant during our recent chat over a cup of Bluebeard coffee, as she was when I first met her at the book club event where I took a shot and was thrilled when she agreed to sit down and talk with me about her work. I couldn’t wait to express my gratitude and to find out more details on the how and why she became such a voice for the horror genre and an influence for hungry readers, like myself.
MOTHER HORROR
NIGHT WORMS
“You currently run a book subscription service called Night Worms. How did that begin?”
“I met my current business partner, Ashley, back in 2019 and we started a book club called Night Worms.
“The club essentially operated as us approaching an indie author in their DMs, such as Johnathan Janz, one of our first. We pitched him the offer of his sending our small group some books and in return we would review the book and put it on the Night Worms blog. He was all for it.
"We ran this model for years and carried it through our transition into turning Night Worms into a subscription service. The thought was to expand past the limits of our book club and reach horror readers everywhere.”
“And how did it transition into a subscription service?”
“Ashley and I were already repping for a different horror subscription service, Nocturnal Reader Box. That service is notorious, because they ended up screwing over their customers. They made empty promises, took the money, and high-tailed it to Vietnam.”
“Stop.”
“Serious. After that happened, people were looking to fill that space and they looked to me and Ashley, since we had been reps.”
“So their scandal didn’t tarnish your reputation? Having been affiliated with them?”
“No. We had no idea what the organization was up to, and as far as a business model, we were just using our own platforms to show what they had available. People reached out to us and said that we should start our own service and connect it to Night Worms. We did and launched at the end of 2019 on Halloween. We capped the orders at 100, not to be overwhelmed, but we sold out really quickly. We chose to grow at a sustainable rate, offering more subscriptions each month– 200, then 300, etc. I was working at the Tacoma Children’s Museum and I remember having my phone in my pocket and my notifications for preorders was turned on. The register sound was just going off– cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching, and my co-workers were like, You’re going to quit the museum pretty soon, huh? And within a year the subscription service was successful enough it was paying more than my part-time job. I’ve been doing this solely since 2020. Six years.”
“I’m curious, with Night Worms current model, do you still maintain a relationship with authors in the same way?”
“We work with reps now. We will get approached by indie publishers who want to work with us, and at first we did utilize established relationships that we made through reviews on our blog. Once we reached a certain threshold, they couldn’t accommodate a really large order. We found that out the hard way. As we’ve scaled, we’ve learned about quality control, shipping situations, and other things that fall apart when you’re not working through larger publishers. It doesn’t keep us from indie companies though– many do distribution through the “big five” publishing companies. You would get a kick seeing how this works.”
She proceeded to paint me a picture of a giant semi-truck driving through the suburbs of Tacoma and unloading palettes of books on a steep driveway and having to trek them into her home. “We have access to a big catalog of up-and-coming indie authors and we still love to platform debut authors.”
“You currently run a book subscription service called Night Worms. How did that begin?”
“I met my current business partner, Ashley, back in 2019 and we started a book club called Night Worms.
“The club essentially operated as us approaching an indie author in their DMs, such as Johnathan Janz,
one of our first. We pitched him the offer of his sending our small group some books and in return we
would review the book and put it on the Night Worms blog. He was all for it. We ran this model for years
and carried it through our transition into turning Night Worms into a subscription service. The thought
was to expand past the limits of our book club and reach horror readers everywhere.”
“And how did it transition into a subscription service?”
“Ashley and I were already repping for a different horror subscription service, Nocturnal Reader Box.
That service is notorious, because they ended up screwing over their customers. They made empty promises,
took the money, and high-tailed it to Vietnam.”
“Stop.”
“Serious. After that happened, people were looking to fill that space and they looked to me and Ashley, since we had been reps.”
“So their scandal didn’t tarnish your reputation? Having been affiliated with them?”
“No. We had no idea what the organization was up to, and as far as a business model, we were just using our own platforms to show what they had available. People reached out to us and said that we should start our own service and connect it to Night Worms. We did and launched at the end of 2019 on Halloween. We capped the orders at 100, not to be overwhelmed, but we sold out really quickly. We chose to grow at a sustainable rate, offering more subscriptions each month– 200, then 300, etc. I was working at the Tacoma Children’s Museum and I remember having my phone in my pocket and my notifications for preorders was turned on. The register sound was just going off– cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching, and my co-workers were like, You’re going to quit the museum pretty soon, huh? And within a year the subscription service was successful enough it was paying more than my part-time job. I’ve been doing this solely since 2020. Six years.”
“I ’m curious, with Night Worms current model, do you still maintain a relationship with authors in the same way?”
“We work with reps now. We will get approached by indie publishers who want to work with us, and at first we did utilize established relationships that we made through reviews on our blog. Once we reached a certain threshold, they couldn’t accommodate a really large order. We found that out the hard way. As we’ve scaled, we’ve learned about quality control, shipping situations, and other things that fall apart when you’re not working through larger publishers. It doesn’t keep us from indie companies though– many do distribution through the “big five” publishing companies. You would get a kick seeing how this works.”
She proceeded to paint me a picture of a giant semi-truck driving through the suburbs of Tacoma and unloading palettes of books on a steep driveway and having to trek them into her home. “We have access to a big catalog of up-and-coming indie authors and we still love to platform debut authors.”
DARK HART BOOKS IS NEVERMORE
If you google Sadie Hartmann, or listen to any past podcast interviews with her as the featured guest, you might catch mention of Dark Hart Books, an imprint of Dark Matter INK that Sadie managed some years ago and has since let go of. When I asked her why she took on the imprint and then decided to set it down, she had this to say:
“When you get really involved in the book industry and all the different facets of it, you start to wonder, How can I bring to the table and the genre what I feel readers really want? Because a lot of the big publishing companies are not really bringing all the diversity that readers desire.”
“Amen.”
“I wanted to take what I was learning and bring it to a larger audience and showcase diverse voices. So when Dark Matter INK reached out, the opportunity seemed amazing. I published five or six books with the imprint and then realized that side of the business was not for me. I love finding new talent and loved some of the process, but…deadlines? The marketing side? There was so much that wasn’t a good fit. As an acquiring editor, it was difficult bringing in a submission but having no control over things like the book cover, the release date, how it’s marketed, etc. I had an amazing working relationship with Rob Carroll, [the Editor-In-Chief], but it was starting to put a strain on us. There were certain things that I wanted to do with these books that I felt could bring them the most success, but Dark Matter just wasn’t at the stage where he could make those things happen. There isn’t a lot of money in indie presses. People need to understand that. I took Dark Hart on because I wanted to experience the industry and the genre from that view point, and truly understand everything that goes into producing a product. But ultimately, I knew that I wanted to spend more time reading and less time doing the work on the back end. My forte is reading and cheerleading as a mouthpiece for books that are already published. And please, everyone read Dark Matter INK books!”
“I want all of us to understand that together, we’re in this genre with all of our preferences, knowledge bases, and biases, and that we're also enjoying this together. It’s so wide and so vast, we’ll never in our lifetime read everything that is out in the world, let alone all the books that are in our own homes. I came up with my title 101 Horror Books to Read Before You’re Murdered, because that’s really the fear of every book nerd– one can not possibly, humanly read all of the books that are available right now. And it is scary to think about.”
-quote from Sadie on podcast Talking Scared
.png)
“Let’s talk about your books 101 Horror Books to Read Before You’re Murdered, and Feral and Hysterical: The Ultimate Reading Guide to Dark and Disturbing Fiction by Women.
“A quick note– I think your objective with the books is clear, but I want to say that I think they are genius. The more research I’ve done, the more I realize that I’ve technically engaged with horror throughout my entire life. I read things like The Girl With a Green Ribbon, Scary Stories In the Dark (read as a little girl under a blanket with my cousins) The Yellow Wallpaper (a favorite from high school), Frankenstein and other Gothic novels, which you’ve reminded your audience is horror.
“When I was younger, I didn’t feel the need to mentally register the genres of the books I read, aside from noting the categories of fiction, non-fiction, etc. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I carried that bad habit into college, even though I earned a creative writing degree.
“My point is that I had this misconception that horror equated scary, as I mentioned before, and some horror-labeled books I’ve read recently, such as The Bog Wife, are not scary– at least from my point of view, and I have a low threshold. They just contain mildly disturbing, thrilling, or psychological elements. I’ve been making a Natalie is horror-intolerant proclamation for years and it was false. I simply have limitations to the levels I can consume. For folks, like myself, who are still learning and branching into the genre, I believe your books could prove helpful. Especially because the delivery of these catalogs are so beautifully and efficiently structured.
“How did 101 Horror Books to Read Before You’re Murdered come to exist?”
“It was an invitation from the acquiring editor at Page Street Publishing. She had been following me on social media for a long time and told me she liked the way I talked about horror. She asked if I would be interested in writing a book about horror– making a list of what people could read. She had a strong vision for what she wanted. At first I said no, but thanks. People could just find me on social media. She gently urged and I told her that if she babysat me through the entire process I would do it. Reflecting on it, I had already established a writing voice by writing for various articles and listacles, and so I channeled that voice into different parts of the book. I took everything I had read over several years and compiled a list of books I thought people should read. It was really that simple. Especially books that wow’d me when I was going on my journey through horror.
“Feral and Hystrerical was a follow up to 101. My editor said I could make the book a follow up, or try something completely different. But I make lists– that’s how I recommend books to people. I talk to them, I find out what is moving them, I find out what books they like and what other genres they read, and then I build a bridge to horror from what they already are engaging with. So, I just wanted to write a book that was a curated list of niche interests and that's what Feral is.”
FERAL AND HYSTERICAL- A FEMALE FOCUS IN HORROR
“I'd like to talk more about the female focus in horror," I said. "In an older She Wore Black podcast episode with Agatha Andrews, the two of you were discussing the dismissal of Gothic literature in the horror genre and especially Gothic or horror written by women. Agatha said:
On my show, we talk a lot about why women in particular, or the queer community are very drawn to the Gothic genre. And I think we are living in an era where Britney Spears is writing about living as the woman in the attic. Things that [women] are drawn to in our fiction because they are very real threats happening in our lives. We don’t have the agency that we should have in 2023… So many horror writers are women, but there is still this lingering masculinity associated with [horror], which is why I think so many readers that read Gothic still don’t really know or realize or accept that they’re reading horror.
"That quote by Agatha really hit me because I also had the epiphany while reading horror that so many elements of the horror I was reading were feelings or incidents I have witnessed or experienced myself. It’s a mutual understanding that humanity endures trauma and horrific things, but when it’s your own story, it's easier to brush them off, or tuck them into liminal spaces where you don’t have to define them. It’s harder to accept that these things that happened to you are indeed horrific. In a way, knowing I have faced horror and come out the other side, it has made approaching horror-related material easier for me. So on that note, you had later responded to Agatha in that same She Wore Black episode saying, Victorian Gothic and certain strains of Gothic tend to be female writers, which is so fine with me because there is something going on with me where because I’ve read so much male-centered, male gaze horror in the last decade, I am ready to focus on women telling me horror stories right now. We have plenty.
“And I agree with that quote. Personally, I’m tired of hearing a man's perspective on everything, especially horror stories that happen to women. I’m over it.”
“Yeah we are all over it.” Sadie emphasized.
“So is that part of what Feral and Hysterical is? A female focus for that sake?”
“Yeah. I didn’t want to waste any more time talking about male authors that get talked about all the time. There is this kind of old boys club [in the literary industry] where they only blurb each other’s books and they promote each other. Stephen King goes on podcasts and other platforms and he recommends the same three dudes every time, and I’m like, Friend, you’ve given these guys so much lip service already. Share. The. wealth. Throw a bone. He is trying to expand his recommendations now, which is good, because he is a career maker for other writers.”
“Playing devil’s advocate– maybe it’s a matter of laziness on his part?”
“We don’t have to hang our hats on his recommendations, but there should be some kind of counterbalance to how much white dude horror is already out there. And I’m not suggesting that we stop reading it, but I am suggesting that we stop centering it as the end all, beat all of what's available. Tananarive Due is one of my favorite authors and many people that I’ve mentioned her name to have never read her work. And I think it’s because we center a certain demographic.”
WITH GREAT POWER (AND LOTS OF INSTAGRAM FOLLOWERS)
COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY
“I’ve noticed that book enthusiasts and reviewers on social media tend to talk about the same books again and again, and the same way publishers focus on what will sell, I think social media influencers might be doing the same thing," I suggested. "They talk about a particular book because it’s already trending. They bank on that to bring them exposure and that’s part of why the diversity gets lost.”
“I do think another part of it is when some reviewers encounter something that isn’t from their own culture, or from a perspective they recognize right away, they tend to dismiss it right out of hand, saying things like, I couldn’t relate to these characters or this writing style wasn’t appealing to me, or whatever, because it wasn’t centering whiteness. Yes, [that material] is unfamiliar and you do have to put yourself in a backseat and engage in a way that keeps the audience it was intended for in mind. Sometimes it's not for you," Sadie pressed. "I like to remind people of that fact. If you are reading YA as an adult, it’s not for you. Immediately you're not the audience, so if you are going to review it negatively, you should try to read it from the perspective of who that book was intended for.”
“Good point. At the end of the day, read what you want to read, say what you want to say, it’s called free will. I would be lying if I said that there were months where I didn’t want to do the emotional work of wearing shoes other than my Cinderella slippers. Sometimes I simply want to feel cozy. Reading is whatever you want it to be, however, once it becomes a career and you have a louder voice, I do think there is an obligation to stretch a bit. And why wouldn’t you want to take the opportunity to learn and share?”
“For me it feels like a responsibility. I have a responsibility with my platform to use it in an ethical way. I am listening to Our Cut of Salt and it is written by Deena Helm, a Palestinian author, and I am finding that the way for me to engage with the book most authentically is to listen to the audio book and read the printed pages at the same time. There are a lot of words and phrases that are being said in the native language. I need to listen and see and pay attention to understand, because it’s Gothic and it’s a haunted house from a lens I am unfamiliar with. It is challenging, but so refreshing, because every trope has been examined from every angle, by every other person and to get a Palestinian take from an author that is unfamiliar to me is great.”
“I think people forget how much you can grow from simply witnessing somebody else’s story. You're right, there is a responsibility to expand one’s horizons.”
“And if horror is for every person and there's a book for every audience, then reading the same type of thing over and over again and presenting that as a narrative, you will eventually lose your effectiveness as a tastemaker in the industry because you're being limiting and exclusive. People catch on to the repetitiveness, ignorance and exclusion of certain groups in high reviews.”
“Limited showcasing is evidence of a limited POV. There is also a comparison trend happening in social media content right now, where people have to put down another interest or another way or life to promote their own interests and it’s obnoxious. I feel it’s a lack of creative tact to rely on comparisons, or to use put-downs to push your content.”
“That's a good point. Pitting people against each other is my pet peeve. One creator presented her book recommendation as, If you want a gothic set in Mexico, don’t read Mexican Gothic, read this one by Isabel Cañas. Are we really at this stage where we need to pit one woman against another one?
“It’s ok to have a negative take on a book, but I appreciate influencers that approach it in a way that doesn’t have to dis the author or the readers that actually like it. Explain why it wasn’t for you, but there isn’t a need to discredit the work in a cheap way.”
“There is so much importance in that. Book influencing has become a business and some influencers can feel afraid to rate a book, or say if they did or did not like it, because they are afraid of losing a partnership or upsetting authors. Don’t get me wrong, I love authors and I have several author relationships, but sorry, I am going to prioritize the reader experience and authors are going to have to get over it a little bit. That’s part of the industry. As a writer, you babysit your book and hold its hand to the threshold, and then on release date, you have to let go and say goodbye. Now it's for the reader. The book is going to take on its own life.”
HORROR IS FOR EVERYONE
“You made the comment that horror is for everyone, and I agree, but can you expand on that?”
“We are all different people with our own world view and our own context, our own upbringings that are varied and nuanced, we all have something different to bring to the table. I feel like reading horror exercises your heart's capacity to empathize with people who are not like you and who are going through trauma. Horror explores trauma and pain and hardships– so as your reader's heart invests in the protagonists, you see yourself aligning with their cause, their plight...their right to endure and find safety and comfort again...you're right there with them hoping you see them make it through this difficult time. And the world needs more of that right now. We need to walk in each other's shoes and find that emotional connection so that we can love each other enough to fight for each other's right to love and live and thrive.
"So, in that sense, horror is for everyone. I can make anyone read a horror book. If you told me your favorite five books and none of them were horror, I could still find a horror book that I feel would appeal to you based on those five random books, and I think you would like it!”
“I’ve addressed my own misconception about horror during this chat, would you say addressing misconceptions or stereotypes about horror is part of the method to your madness?”
“For example, a person might define horror as the movie Hellraiser, but they really like the movie Hereditary. I am here to remind that person that Hereditary is also horror. And then I will build them a bridge to book recommendations that are similar to Hereditary. Some people like the softer side of horror, like The Others with Nicole Kidman, that features the spooky atmosphere and slightly creepy kids. I can offer Gothic recommendations that are exactly like The Others. That’s what I do.
Or take The Bog Wife– it is interesting to see that the threads found in that story can be found in a hundred other novels. The folk horror, the bog setting, the family dynamic, the relationships between the siblings…There are so many Appalachian stories that are similar.”
“On a podcast episode of Talking Scared, you spoke of a particular story that featured a level of violence and you said, In order for the violence to be something that I value, it has to have meaning, reason, and purpose, otherwise it feels exploitative. Otherwise it isn’t fun for me, as far as entertainment.
I also have some thoughts on shock factors for the simple sake of entertainment. When it comes to disturbing elements, if I must be uncomfortable and disturbed, I want it to teach me something, or give me something I can evaluate and integrate into my growth.
So coming back to The Bog Wife, while there weren’t major graphic scenes of violence, there were so many important and emotional messages concerning the consequences of Matriarchal dismissal and negative effects of the Patriarchy when it comes to the Earth. So, with The Bog Wife as an example, if those themes speak to someone, you could also use that reasoning to convince that person to give horror a chance. Horror definitely contains messages worth receiving.”
“Oh yeah. The emotional investment has to be there for me. I did read a lot of extreme horror during COVID because I felt like I needed that shock value, but typically I reach for horror that has an emotional component. I feel horror is the most effective when you care about the characters. With The Bog Wife, I felt like the kids were engaging with this old family tradition of growing the bog wife, and they questioned the value of the tradition and questioned if it was worth carrying on for the rest of their lives. A big theme of the book was, Do we need to carry on the traditions of our family? I think everyone can relate to that. Our parents did things a certain way and at some point we become adults and have the choice to do things our own way. This book stirs up those feelings and then you can relate to the characters.
That's effective horror. It helps a reader engage with certain feelings and possibilities in a safe way. Some people don’t have a safe relationship with their parents where they can talk frankly about upbringing, or the way things are done and that reader can practice questioning their life in The Bog Wife.”
“You girls watch out for the weirdos.”
“We are the weirdos, Mister.”
“What is another major misconception about horror?”
"Misconceptions about the audience. A lot of people assume a certain demographic is reading horror– that we are all weirdos, or goths."
“I’m not sure what I expected when I met you at the book club meeting for Between Two Fires,
but admittedly, I was pleasantly surprised by your friendliness and sweetness.”
Sadie laughed. “I think sometimes people think I'm going to show up to events and be dark,
brooding, and mysterious, but I feel like I am more of a Mother Goose figure. My early
childhood education background peeks through– I like to tend and care for the hearts of
people who are reading horror and find them something that they will like and be comfortable
with. So to reiterate, a misconception is that horror readers drift only toward gruesome things,
or just like to applaud the villain and it’s not like that at all.”
“This is a great segway into the topic of community. You have your online platforms,
your subscription service, you’ve started your in-person Tacoma book clubs, but you also
recently created your Free Little Library! Which was so cool to see in person.
How did the library come about?”
“I turned 50 this year and my husband asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I told
him that I wanted to go to California to visit my parents, but also mentioned that I wanted to
build a Free Little Library, so if he wanted to build one at any point in the year, I would love that.
When I came back from California he had built the house.”
We love a handyman.
“I like to use a garden as a metaphor for the creative community. So if you think of your community as a garden, then how do you help your garden grow?”
“I’ve gotten to the point where I have done all the [literary] and in-person author events and I've done the author interviews– I am ready to transition into forming relationships with readers, especially in-person and in my own community. I love my local community here [in Tacoma]. Tacoma is so artistic, so diverse, and this in-person horror book club is my new favorite thing. Meeting and talking to people in-person changes the whole tone of an experience. It is not just me anymore, and I genuinely want to know how everyone else feels about the books we are reading.
“You have to have a spirit of not always being the main character and taking a back seat to allow other people to thrive. Try to honor their experience and their needs above your own. I feel like there are too many influencers who enjoy the main character syndrome and they hate when people are in their DMs asking questions. They dismiss the direct interaction and say, Just look at my content, it's all there! But, personally, I love having conversations in DMs and learning more about [my followers]. I have a Patreon where I make custom lists for people and I stalk their Goodreads and their StoryGraph and I make a list of things they haven't read yet. I love researching people and seeing what they enjoy and what makes them tick and I like to find those niche opportunities to recommend books. The key to community is about centering yourself less and everyone else more."
I loved the way Kay Chronister tended to different personalities with the different family members. After the dust settles from losing the Patriarch, the kids get to decide what they are doing with their lives, moving forward. I love how the author showcased each response to this family crisis from each individual child. It felt intentional.
I felt Chronister really wanted to find out who the reader was going to gravitate toward and applaud them for their decision, knowing that it would be different for everyone. I also reveled in the bog setting. I have tons of bog and botanical recommendations in my highlights on my Instagram that people can check out! This book definitely put me on a bog kick!
A Review of The Bog Wife by Sadie Hartmann
BUILDING A BRIDGE TO HORROR
“What is another major misconception about horror?”
"Misconceptions about the audience. A lot of people assume a certain demographic is reading horror– that we are all weirdos, or goths."
“I’m not sure what I expected when I met you at the book club meeting for Between Two Fires, but admittedly, I was pleasantly surprised by your friendliness and sweetness.”
Sadie laughed. “I think sometimes people think I'm going to show up to events and be dark, brooding, and mysterious, but I feel like I am more of a Mother Goose figure. My early childhood education background peeks through– I like to tend and care for the hearts of people who are reading horror and find them something that they will like and be comfortable with. So to reiterate, a misconception is that horror readers drift only toward gruesome things, or just like to applaud the villain and it’s not like that at all.”
“This is a great Segway into the topic of community. You have your online platforms,
your subscription service, you’ve started your in-person Tacoma book clubs, but you also recently created your Free Little Library! Which was so cool to see in person. How did the library come about?”
“I turned 50 this year and my husband asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I told
him that I wanted to go to California to visit my parents, but also mentioned that I wanted to
build a Free Little Library, so if he wanted to build one at any point in the year, I would love that. When I came back from California he had built the house.”
We love a handyman.
“I like to use a garden as a metaphor for the creative community. So if you think of your community as a garden, then how do you help your garden grow?”
“I’ve gotten to the point where I have done all the [literary] and in-person author events and I've done the author interviews– I am ready to transition into forming relationships with readers, especially in-person and in my own community. I love my local community here [in Tacoma]. Tacoma is so artistic, so diverse, and this in-person horror book club is my new favorite thing. Meeting and talking to people in-person changes the whole tone of an experience. It is not just me anymore, and I genuinely want to know how everyone else feels about the books we are reading.
“You have to have a spirit of not always being the main character and taking a back seat to allow other people to thrive. Try to honor their experience and their needs above your own. I feel like there are too many influencers who enjoy the main character syndrome and they hate when people are in their DMs asking questions. They dismiss the direct interaction and say, Just look at my content, it's all there! But, personally, I love having conversations in DMs and learning more about [my followers]. I have a Patreon where I make custom lists for people and I stalk their Goodreads and their StoryGraph and I make a list of things they haven't read yet. I love researching people and seeing what they enjoy and what makes them tick and I like to find those niche opportunities to recommend books. The key to community is about centering yourself less and everyone else more."