Why am I passionate about this?
I’m an October baby born during a full moon, into a small New England town notorious for their connection to the Salem Witch Trials. My house was for sure haunted growing up, I’ve had a lot of nightmares over the years, and I found solace in the horror genre. Though my true background is in comedy having studied with Second City Chicago, the experience afforded me the opportunity to explore the more pained and shadowed sides of myself as a tool to write relevant material. I learned to focus those explorations into narratives and create stories with a lot of heart that highlight my own quest to uncover inner peace.
Tyler's book list on transport to the heart of spooky season
Why did Tyler love this book?
The first full novel by Hill—who I secretly recognized as Stephen King’s son—takes his father’s traditions to a whole new level. I fell immediately in love with Hill’s twisted yet insightful storytelling.
An aging rockstar protagonist who sets out to confront his unsettling past and weird addiction to odd memorabilia? Yes, please. I’m in awe of Hill’s ability to pack more into a single sentence than most authors do in an entire chapter. He balances the pace of a face-melting guitar solo with the gentle tenderness of vulnerability as his characters struggle to understand their place in the world.
This book had me clutching the covers one moment and reaching for the tissues in the next.
7 authors picked Heart-Shaped Box as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
'Buy my stepfather's ghost' read the e-mail.
So Jude did.
He bought it, in the shape of the dead man's suit, delivered in a heart-shaped box, because he wanted it: because his fans ate up that kind of story. It was perfect for his collection: the genuine skulls and the bones, the real honest-to-God snuff movie, the occult books and all the rest of the paraphanalia that goes along with his kind of hard/goth rock.
But the rest of his collection doesn't make the house feel cold. The bones don't make the dogs bark; the movie doesn't make Jude feel…