October Focus on Horror: Clay McLeod Chapman
Created by Bob Helmbrecht, collection development librarian
Our Focus on Horror Month author for today is writer Clay McLeod Chapman.
Chapman writes in a wide variety of genres and forms, including graphic novels, plays, screenwriting, and middle grade children’s books. The library has a number of the author’s works in our collection, three of which may be of particular interest to horror fans.
In 2019, Chapman published the novel “The Remaking.” In this supernatural thriller, an herbalist and her daughter are burnt at the stake when a baby is stillborn after the mother took one of her herbal cures. The novel follows the development of the legends about the incident, and the impact it has on several people over the years.
The author’s next novel was “Whisper Down the Lane.” Based on the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, it moves between 1983 and 2013, as a young boy is pressured into making false accounts of ritual abuse by teachers at his school, and then later becomes a teacher himself. As dark events begin to occur, is he being punished for his lies, or just paranoid?
Chapman’s most recent book is “Ghost Eaters,” just published in September. It’s already received a lot of great reviews, including in “Publishers Weekly,” “Library Journal,” and “Booklist.” Erin is wracked with guilt after a close friend and former romantic partner overdoses. She learns of an experimental drug called Ghost which will allow her to communicate with the dead. She hopes this will bring her closure, but instead begins a spiral of grief and addiction.
Check out a book by Clay McLeod Chapman today!