Q&A: Nicole M. Wolverton on her YA horror novel ‘A Misfortune of Lake Monsters’
“We as YA writers bring so much of ourselves to our work that writing is almost an act of therapy.”
Exclusive interview with the horror writer whose new book is recommended for readers of Harrow Lake by Kat Ellis and House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland.
Horror author Nicole M. Wolverton’s new novel is the Young Adult horror and suspense novel A Misfortune of Lake Monsters (CamCat Books). The Pushcart Prize-nominated writer talks to Monster Complex about her unique spin writing horror fiction, and what inspired her brand of stories. She also reveals her pet peeves with what some other storytellers do—and how she avoids making the same mistakes.
Wolverton served as editor of BODIES FULL OF BURNING (2021), an anthology of short fiction that centers horror through the lens of menopause. She is also the author of the adult psychological thriller THE TRAJECTORY OF DREAMS (2013). Her short fiction, essays, and creative nonfiction have been published in more than 40 anthologies, magazines, and podcasts.
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About the A Misfortune of Lake Monsters
When legends bite back…
Lemon Ziegler wants to escape rural Devil’s Elbow, Pennsylvania to attend college—but that’s impossible now that she’s expected to impersonate the town’s lake monster for the rest of her life. Her family has been secretly keeping the tradition of Old Lucy, the famed (and very fake) monster of Lake Lokakoma, alive for generations, all to keep the tourists coming.
Without Lemon, the town dies, and she can’t disappoint her grandparents... or tell her best friends about any of it. That includes Troy Ramirez, who has been covertly in love with Lemon for years, afraid to ruin their friendship by confessing his feelings.
When a very real, and very hungry monster is discovered in the lake, secrets must fall by the wayside. Determined to stop the monster, Lemon and her best friends are the only thing standing between Devil’s Elbow and the monster out for blood...
ENDORSEMENT:
“Nicole M. Wolverton delivers a wild, creepy, and thoroughly exhilarating creation with A Misfortune of Lake Monsters! This is everything you’d ever want in a monster story!”
—Jonathan Maberry, author of Rot & Ruin and Long Past Midnight
A Misfortune of Lake Monsters is for readers who enjoy Harrow Lake by Kat Ellis, House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland, Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain, and The Lake House by Sarah Beth Durst.
Read our interview with the book’s author, Nicole M. Wolverton, below!
Q&A: Nicole M. Wolverton on A Misfortune of Lake Monsters
Q: What can you tell us about your latest work? What inspired it?
A: On July 2, 2024, A Misfortune of Lake Monsters—a YA horror novel—will be unleashed on the world! I love YA horror as a genre and category: when I was YA-aged there was very little YA horror available other than, say, Lois Duncan. Instead I read a lot of Stephen King as a kid, which may or may not have contributed to my very vivid imagination and the origin point of A Misfortune of Lake Monsters.
I grew up in a rural town in northeast Pennsylvania, and my childhood home is located on the outskirts, making it an even more rural setting. I’d be standing at the window in the kitchen, washing dishes and staring at the lake that’s about a mile behind the house, wondering what terrible, horrible things might be swimming around below the water.
The idea of lake monsters lurking has been with me for a very long time—but the fleshed out plot for the book didn’t jump out at me until about six-ish years ago.
My innocent day-dreaming morphed into a book about a high school senior who desperately wants to escape her rural hometown to be the person she wants to be, but her plans are stymied when her family taps her to take over their generations-old legacy of super secretly impersonating the town lake monster; when she discovers a real monster with a taste for human flesh in the lake, it’s a secret she has to break so that she can recruit her best friends to help her stop the carnage.
I like to call it fun horror with a scifi twist and a sweet love story. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy writing in YA horror—there’s wiggle room to do a lot and cross genres!
Q: How do you describe your fiction that you write? How do you explain your unique spin on horror fiction?
A: In nearly everything I write, there’s an element of my suspicions of isolated and sparsely populated spaces—and that usually comes out in setting, be it rural or suburban. You can take girl out of the rural hometown, but you can’t take the rural hometown (or the fear of it) out of the girl, I suppose.
Q: What inspired you to go in this direction? When and how did you become interested in writing your brand of stories?
A: There’s something very suffocating and claustrophobic about growing up in small town America for some people, myself amongst them. I always felt very much like an outsider, like I wasn’t quite cut out for all that goes with rural living—the sense of community there is very different than the sense of community you develop in a major metropolitan area.
Even though I’ve been interested in horror books and movies since I was a little kid (my grandmother was fond of reading original, very terrifying fairy tales to me), the experience of growing up where I did absolutely deepened the sense of horror that manifests in my work and the way I approach horror (often through humor and the mundane).
It also absolutely influenced why I ended up getting a masters in horror and storytelling, but that was long after I started seeking publication of my work. Really, the when and how, like everything, goes back to my childhood.
Among the first short horror stories I ever had published is “Imaginary Friends” (The Half That You See anthology, edited by the wonderful Rebecca Rowland, Dark Ink Books), which included my own childhood friend. A little girl with curly red hair and knives for fingers—her name was Mona—was a character.
Q: What are your favorite things about the section of the genre you occupy?
A: I write YA and adult horror mostly (I also write creative nonfiction that isn’t necessarily horror-focused), and I love that it says so much about the people who write it. YA horror in particular is so revealing.
I’m in the middle of reading Lockjaw by Matteo Cerilli right now, and it also has a very small town feel that’s so visceral—so much so that I recognize Matteo as someone with an experience of rural living that must be similar to mine.
Or when you read anything written by Nova Ren Suma, it’s so easy to tell what her inner life is like.
We as YA writers bring so much of ourselves to our work that writing is almost an act of therapy.
Q: What are your pet peeves that you’ve seen other storytellers do? How do you avoid making the same mistakes?
My pet peeve... it’s treating young adult characters like they’re not intelligent or mature enough to handle things. That doesn’t happen much in YA, but I certainly does in adult books—and it’s part of the reason why book banning/challenging is so popular in certain circles.
Teens, middle graders, littler kids... they seek out the things they want to know about in the same way that I did at those ages. To cut off a source of education because an adult presupposes it’s a one-size fits all situation, and that they should be in charge of deciding what's good for everyone—or that everyone under the age of 18 in general has a “less than” intellect—is such a lazy and entitled attitude.
As a writer, whether it’s for adults or YA audiences, I default to thinking that the teens or the kids are smarter than those around them give them credit for—because that’s almost universally true.
Q: What are the best ways for fans to connect with you and keep track of what you’re writing (and related author news about you)?
A: Come hang out with me on social media—I’m easily found as @nicolemwolverton on Instagram, Bluesky, and Threads. I keep a blog at my website, NicoleMWolverton.com.
But the real way to keep up with author news is subscribing to my monthly website (also easily done on my website). For starters, you get a collection of four short stories when you sign up, but the newsletter also always has recommendations for movies, short stories, and books; news about what’s happening with me, and random pictures of my rescue dog Myrtle. Who doesn’t want pictures of my wonderful sweet dog?!!
More about Nicole M. Wolverton online
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