Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: In the Valley of the Sun
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1978
WEBSITE: http://theandydavidson.com/
CITY:
STATE: GA
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://theandydavidson.com/about/ * http://www.thisishorror.co.uk/book-review-in-the-valley-of-the-sun-by-andy-davidson/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1978, in AR; married.
EDUCATION:University of Mississippi, M.F.A., 2004.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and educator. Teaches English at a college in GA.
MEMBER:Horror Writers Association, Mystery Writers of America.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Andy Davidson is a writer and educator. Originally from Arkansas, he holds a master’s degree from the University of Mississippi and has taught English at a college in Georgia.
In the Valley of the Sun is Davidson’s first novel. Set in West Texas in the 1980s, the book tells the story of a serial killer named Travis, who, after a strange encounter with a female lover, experiences a dramatic change in his life. The lover, a vampire named Rue, has turned Travis into a vampire, too. He must control his urge to kill his employer and her son. Reader, a Texas Ranger, searches for Travis, hoping to charge him for his crimes.
In an interview with a contributor to the Qwillery website, Davison explained how he developed the idea for In the Valley of the Sun. He stated: “About five years ago, my wife and I decided to enclose our yard with a privacy fence. It turned out to be a massive fence, and when it came time to paint the sucker, I found myself outside for days on end. … I plugged into my iPod while I worked. One of the songs that kept cycling through was Dwight Yoakam’s cover of Johnny Horton’s ‘Honkytonk Man.'” Davidson continued: “It struck me that the singer … is fessing up to a compulsion, a compulsion that leaves him a little broken when all’s said and done. I thought it was kind of sinister, this song. At the time, I was learning scriptwriting by reading screenplays and books on writing, so I layered this idea—a psychotic cowboy who can’t stop hooking up with women in juke-joints—over Horton Foote’s Tender Mercies, which is one of my favorite films.” Davidson added: “I wrote the script, then turned the script into a first draft of a novel. But what I had written just wasn’t working. It had zero supernatural elements. It didn’t spark my interest, as a reader. So I went back to my great childhood love of horror novels, and I’m reading Salem’s Lot and it hits me: Travis is already a kind of metaphorical vampire, so why not make him a literal vampire?” Asked by Max Booth III, writer on the Lit Reactor website, if he would categorize In the Valley of the Sun as a vampire novel, Davidson responded: “I probably wouldn’t use the word ‘vampire.’ Unfortunately, it’s not a popular trope among mainstream readers anymore. Which is not to say there aren’t great vampire books out there (Christopher Buehlman’s The Lesser Dead springs to mind). But I’ve had very nice elderly ladies tell me, after hearing me read publicly from the book, that they probably won’t read the book because they ‘don’t do vampires.’ That’s unfortunate (but also very funny).” Davidson continued: “So I consciously avoid using the word, even in the book itself, and the marketing has eschewed it, too, mostly. I’m convinced using it in my query letter got me rejected by a number of agencies, even though they claimed they were interested in horror. To answer your question: I’d probably tell people it’s a book about what happens when evil walks into your life in the guise of everything you’ve ever wanted.”
Reviews of In the Valley of the Sun were mostly favorable. William Grabowski, critic on the Horror Review website, commented: “The author’s frank descriptions of Reader’s methods and feelings elevate the novel into literary naturalism. We’re forced to endure the unfiltered ugliness of murder, its everydayness and emotional devastation.” Grabowski added: “Davidson’s unrelenting realism renders the supernatural—when it strikes—completely shocking, nearly inevitable.” A reviewer on the Lone Star Literary Life website remarked: “Relentless momentum bounding toward the climactic scenes had me unconsciously holding my breath, consciously trying to stop my eyes from straying furtively to the next page. The payoff is satisfying and unexpectedly graceful. In the Valley of the Sun is a powerful, audacious debut.” Writing on the This Is Horror website, Bob Pastorella suggested: “There’s nothing typical at all about this novel, which is one of the reasons it’s so good. Davidson has taken all his influences, wore them on his sleeve, and cobbled something distinctive and compelling, transcending his inspirations with a tale only he could conceive.” Pastorella concluded: “In the Valley of the Sun could very well be the debut horror novel of the year, and in a year that’s already killing it with horror releases, that is something very special indeed. This one comes highly recommended, and Andy Davidson is one we should all keep our eyes on. We can’t wait to see what horrors he’ll unleash on us next.” A contributor to Publishers Weekly described the novel as “bold, confident” and stated: “Davidson successfully makes the lines between genre and literary fiction bleed together in a complex novel.” Booklist reviewer, Becky Spratford, called the book “hauntingly dark, yet oddly beautiful debut.” Spratford also asserted: “This is one that readers won’t easily forget after turning the final page.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, May 1, 2017, Becky Spratford, review of In the Valley of the Sun, p. 22.
Publishers Weekly, May 1, 2017, review of In The Valley of the Sun, p. 41.
ONLINE
Andy Davidson Website, http://theandydavidson.com (February 6, 2018).
Horror Review, https://www.horrorreview.com/ (June 26, 2017), William Grabowski, review of In the Valley of the Sun.
Lit Reactor, https://litreactor.com/ (July 26, 2017), Max Booth III, author interview.
Lone Star Literary Life, http://www.lonestarliterary.com/ (June 11, 2017), review of In the Valley of the Sun.
Qwillery, http://qwillery.blogspot.com/ (June 6, 2017), author interview.
This Is Horror, http://www.thisishorror.co.uk/ (June 26, 2017), Bob Pastorella, review of In the Valley of the Sun.
Born and raised in Arkansas, I graduated from the University of Mississippi in 2004 with a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Over the years I’ve published stories in print and online. Nowadays, when I’m not writing, I teach college English in a small town in Georgia, where I live with my wife and four to five cats.
Active Memberships
Horror Writers Association
Mystery Writers of America
QUOTED: "I probably wouldn’t use the word 'vampire.' Unfortunately, it’s not a popular trope among mainstream readers anymore. Which is not to say there aren’t great vampire books out there (Christopher Buehlman’s The Lesser Dead springs to mind). But I’ve had very nice elderly ladies tell me, after hearing me read publicly from the book, that they probably won’t read the book because they 'don’t do vampires.' That’s unfortunate (but also very funny)."
"So I consciously avoid using the word, even in the book itself, and the marketing has eschewed it, too, mostly. I’m convinced using it in my query letter got me rejected by a number of agencies, even though they claimed they were interested in horror. To answer your question: I’d probably tell people it’s a book about what happens when evil walks into your life in the guise of everything you’ve ever wanted."
Vampires Need to be Scary: An Interview with Andy Davidson
INTERVIEW BY MAX BOOTH III JULY 26, 2017 3 COMMENTS
IN: ANDY DAVIDSON HORROR INTERVIEW NOIR SERIAL KILLERS VAMPIRES
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Vampires Need to be Scary: An Interview with Andy Davidson
Andy Davidson came out of nowhere earlier this year with his debut novel, In the Valley of the Sun, a Southern noir masterpiece about serial killers, vampires, and West Texas. It quickly shot to my favorite book of 2017 and I doubt anything else released this year is going to change that. Davidson was kind enough to take a break from an extensive book tour to answer some questions for us.
I don’t know much about you, Andy, and there’s not much information already available online, so let’s start from the beginning: Who are you and where the hell did you come from?
I’m originally from a small town in south Arkansas. I had maybe fifty people in my high school class. I went to college in another small town about fifty miles from home, graduated in 2000 with an English degree and a minor in communications. After that, in 2001, I left Arkansas for graduate school in Mississippi. I spent a few years getting my MFA at Ole Miss, taught online for a while, then moved to Georgia in 2007 to take a job teaching college English. I found my soul mate there, and I’ve been living in Georgia ever since. I’m 38 years old. My favorite movie is Jaws.
None of that tells you who I am, I guess. I like to think of myself as a nice guy, but that’s how most people describe serial murderers on the local news, so that probably doesn’t tell you much either. I do get asked quite a lot: Why does a nice guy like you write about such horrible things? Which is probably a question most writers in the horror genre get, because most horror writers I’ve met are such incredibly nice people. Maybe the answer to that question would answer yours, but I’m never sure what to say. Seems like there’s some clue to who I am in there. Horrible things are always with us, and most nice people spend their lives avoiding them, whenever possible. I certainly do. Maybe horror speaks to the fear nice folks have of terrible things punching through and invading our quiet, “normal” lives. Maybe I find some catharsis in writing about those things? Or maybe I just like vampires and werewolves and stories about people trying to be good when the odds are stacked against them.
It’s neat, I guess, to be reminded that you were committed to this idea of being a writer, even when you were still this half-formed individual without any life experience.
Since I realize that’s a kind of strange answer, here are a few more fun facts about me and my wife, Crystal: we have five cats and live in a smallish house and buy books like unapologetic assholes. Every six months, we have to buy new bookshelves. Pretty soon, we’ll have to buy a new house. In a bigger town, maybe. Also, I lied a little: we really have eight cats (five live inside, three outside).
What was your childhood like? Was your family a “book” family or did you discover reading elsewhere?
I had a great childhood.
Mom was an elementary-school teacher, and Dad taught high school English until I came along. Not long after I was born, he took a principal’s job in a little Delta town in east Arkansas, not far from West Memphis. We spent a few years there, then moved back south, where I spent the next nine years being a teacher’s kid.
My parents are the sweetest people in the world, and they taught me early on not only to love books but also to love reading them for pleasure. I was in the fourth grade when Mom told me about Watchers by Dean Koontz, then Dean R. Koontz (back when he still had hair in his photos). It was the first adult book I ever read, and man, did it hook me. It was a gateway to Stephen King, a habit my Dad encouraged with IT. When I was in high school, we lived on a small lake near a state park, and I remember sitting on our screened-in porch in the dead heat of August reading King’s uncut Stand for the first time. That scene with Trashcan Man and the Kid? Scared the bejesus out of me!
One thing my parents loved to do that I didn’t was fish. They’d take my grandmother out to the lake or a reservoir somewhere in Louisiana and stand on a pier in the hot sun with her for hours, cane poles in the water. Me, I sat in the car and read comic books I’d bought at the bait store, things like The Punisher, Batman, Conan the Barbarian. I loved Savage Sword of Conan, those black and white annuals. The gorier the better!
I spent a lot of time in the public library, too, especially in the summers. Checking out Hardy Boys mysteries when I was younger and later on John Gardner’s James Bond novels, which I read over and over, just like I watched the movies, which I’d rent two and three at a time from a local video store. Every now and then, I happen to see a copy of No Deals, Mr. Bond in a used bookstore and I get this intense pang of nostalgia. It brings back that smell of old books and the sound of plastic slip covers crackling, Dewey Decimal stickers on spines, crooked Courier font. Fantastic stuff.
So, yes, I guess it’s safe to say we were pretty bookish.
When and how did you start taking an interest in creative writing?
I can’t remember having an interest in writing prior to the age of ten, when two major seismic events happened in my life.
The first was this: my fifth grade teacher had us journal every morning. She’d give us ten, fifteen minutes to write, then ask us to read what we’d written. I never did, on account of being shy, but there was a guy who sat in front of me who’d read my stories and decided, one day, to snatch my notebook and get up and read them for me. I guess he figured they were good enough they deserved to be heard, which is pretty altruistic and forward-thinking for a fifth grader. Turned out, he sucked at reading out loud, which prompted me to get up and read it correctly. It was a story called “Willy the Worm.” Who knows why I settled on that. It may have had something to do with Beverly Cleary’s The Mouse and the Motorcycle. Willy wore a hat, drove a car, had all sorts of relationship problems with his new bride (I like to think I was anticipating the influence of Raymond Carver, as a future MFA). Anyway, I read for a little while and finished and looked up and the whole class was rapt, and that was my first taste of what it felt like to have an audience. Goofy as it sounds, I think it taught me the power that words command when put together just right.
The second major event was Tim Burton’s Batman. One day, in that same fifth grade class, a kid named Billy Dowling leaned over and whispered to me, apropos of nothing, that Michael Keaton was going to play Batman in a new movie, and I called him a liar right there on the spot. Mr. Mom play Batman? No way! Later that week, I went home and turned on the TV and there he was, crashing through a skylight in a promo for the film, and I still remember how my heart just pounded over that image. In the run-up to the movie’s release, I read every comic book I could get my hands on, including Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. For Christmas, the year I was ten, my parents bought me the leather-bound edition, and I carried that book around like a new Christian might carry a Bible. It was transgressive, that narrative, disruptive to everything that had come before, and it left me dizzy every time I read it. I even read Bob Kane’s autobiography, Batman and Me. This was all significant because it fired my imagination. I started drawing comics of my own, some with Batman and the Joker, others with characters I’d made up. I read about the creative process of moviemaking, got my first taste of what it meant to other people to tell stories. I felt their value in a palpable way. Burton’s movie was a near religious experience (and it still holds up, if you ask me, has a timeless quality to it). Anyway, I must have seen it three, four times in theaters, which for a kid who lived in rural Arkansas was not insignificant. I read the novelization of the screenplay. Learned about deleted scenes and model-making and costuming and set-design. Began to think of movies not just as things to watch but things to build. I made videos with action figures. In short, Batman triggered my creative awakening. After 1989, I never went anywhere without a notebook.
Was In the Valley of the Sun your first attempt at a novel, or are there several other half-finished books buried deep in your backyard? Tell us a little bit about your journey from Batman enthusiast to kickass novelist.
In the Valley of the Sun is the first novel I ever finished successfully. But there were others.
When I was a junior in college, I wrote a 360-page manuscript as an honors thesis. It wasn’t buried in the backyard, but I did find a hard copy of it almost twenty years later in my Dad’s shed, come to think of it. That was a good laugh. It’s fun finding your old crap. It’s illuminating. You see bits and pieces of your style trying to emerge, like seeing those parts of yourself in childhood photographs that are still there every time you look in the mirror as a grown-up. My professors’ comments were there, too. One questioned my assertion that a “flatulent dog is somehow more amiable.”
It’s neat, I guess, to be reminded that you were committed to this idea of being a writer, even when you were still this half-formed individual without any life experience. Plus, writing that book helped me meet a few professionals, one of whom was kind enough to tell me about the MFA, how it would benefit me, creatively (or maybe it was just her way of telling me I needed to learn how to write). Either way, it put me on the right path.
But paths don’t always lead where you expect. I spent three years in an MFA program and never finished anything longer than a short story. In the end, twelve of these made a collection that got me a degree, but I had been trained to write as a literary writer, not a genre writer, and I’ve never had any ambitions to be thought of as “important” in the way literary writers are often regarded. After I got out of my program, I didn’t write for a long time. At that point, I had started two or three novels that never made it past the 10,000-word mark. There was just nothing compelling me to write. And when I did dabble at stories, it was just dabbling. I lacked maturity, I think, but I also lacked something to say and a way to say it.
The only other thing I finished before In the Valley of the Sun was a novella about a girl who turns into a werewolf. I self-published it, and even now, when I look back at it, I cringe at how undisciplined it feels.
What sparked the original idea for In the Valley of the Sun? What was your process like during the book's creation?
In 2010, my wife and I had a privacy fence installed around our lot. That summer, I had to paint the damn thing, which meant lots of time standing around painting and thinking. So I listened to music most days, and one afternoon Dwight Yoakham’s cover of “Honkytonk Man” shuffled through. The opening lines of that song sparked an idea: What if a cowboy picked up girls at honky-tonks all over Texas and murdered them? I married this idea to Horton Foote’s screenplay for Tender Mercies and had the spine of the story, which I wrote as a script. Which I then turned into a 40,000-word novelization. Which I then realized was missing something—something key. I happened to be re-reading Salem’s Lot at the same time I was revising the book, and suddenly I hit on it: the supernatural. Some greater horror than Travis. A female vampire, maybe, who turned the tables on her would-be attacker. That was really cool, I thought. So I re-envisioned it from the ground up and gave it some teeth.
Did you always intend on splitting the POVs? The cast of characters here seem to multiply quite a bit as the story progresses. The reader is blessed with some terrific, engrossing backstory for each one, too. How did you go about developing these people's lives so thoroughly?
A lot of the character development is owed to my editor, who pushed me to deepen the backstories of Rue and Travis. Annabelle and Sandy were almost always there from the beginning, but the others grew as I revised. As for the points-of-view, yes, I always wanted to tell the story from multiple characters’ perspectives, because I think multiple POVs make for better drama. If the reader knows, for example, that Travis is a killer of women, and then we cut to Annabelle’s POV as she confronts him for the first time, two things happen: 1.) the reader sees Travis through a fresh set of eyes and sees another side of him, a gentler, more appealing side, and so he’s humanized, and 2.) the reader knows he’s a killer and fears for Annabelle, so her limited perspective plays up the dramatic irony at work. When I first envision characters, it’s from the outside in. I see them with a cinematic eye, i.e. I know what they look like. I know what they do, too, but I don’t why they do it. Later, in the revision process, they tell me why, and so adopting their POVs is partly an act of crawling into their skin in order to see them from the inside out.
I was reading this at a diner in California, and the server asked me what it was about. I got about halfway through the sentence, "Well, a serial killer gets turned into a vampire and starts working at a motel," before she turned around and helped another customer. How would you describe this book without scaring people away?
I probably wouldn’t use the word “vampire.” Unfortunately, it’s not a popular trope among mainstream readers anymore. Which is not to say there aren’t great vampire books out there (Christopher Buehlman’s The Lesser Dead springs to mind). But I’ve had very nice elderly ladies tell me, after hearing me read publicly from the book, that they probably won’t read the book because they “don’t do vampires.” That’s unfortunate (but also very funny). So I consciously avoid using the word, even in the book itself, and the marketing has eschewed it, too, mostly. I’m convinced using it in my query letter got me rejected by a number of agencies, even though they claimed they were interested in horror. To answer your question: I’d probably tell people it’s a book about what happens when evil walks into your life in the guise of everything you’ve ever wanted.
How much research went into investigating serial killers? You seem to know your stuff. The agents assigned to the case feel very real and I wouldn't mind reading other stories with them involved.
I did some initial research to make sure I wasn’t coloring too far outside the lines, but the thing I kept finding was how there aren’t really any hard rules that govern what serial killers are capable of. You can pretty much assign any reason for why they do what they do and you’re in the clear. In the end, I tried to give Travis a believable psychological make-up, but I didn’t want to think of him as a textbook serial killer. To me—and this gets back to your question about POV—I just wanted to see the world through his eyes and, in doing so, wanted to urge the reader to care about him, not hate him.
What's the best serial killer story? The best vampire story? Or are they the same thing?
Well, vampires are serial killers, aren’t they? They tend to stalk their victims. They certainly have their M.O.s. Probably kill similar types of people, just like we tend to order our favorite meals at our favorite restaurants. But for straight-up textbook serial killer stories, I don’t think you can beat Manhunter, Michael Mann’s adaptation of Red Dragon by Thomas Harris. As for vampire stories, well, I’m not sure there is a best one. I’d have to give the boring answer and say Dracula, of course, then correct myself and say no, no, Stephen King’s “The Night Flier,” then turn around and say, whoah, wait, I forgot about The Hunger. Maybe the best vampire story, in the end, is the one that scares the hell out of you. In Salem’s Lot, there’s a scene in which a gravedigger becomes convinced the child inside the coffin he’s shoveling dirt over wants him to open the lid. And all the while he’s resisting, the sun is setting. That terrifies me, for some reason I can’t explain. Vampires need to be scary. And if it scares you, it’s good.
What's next for you? Any new projects you can talk about?
I’m finishing up a novel that’s a weird, Southern Gothic thing, featuring an orphan girl who’s entangled with a mad preacher and a swamp witch and a fish-boy. After that, I’ve got a third novel on the back-burner for now. I’m billing it as Smokey and the Bandit meets Bram Stoker’s Dracula. We’ll see.
Earlier you mentioned Jaws was your favorite movie. Did you see the showings Alamo Drafthouse sponsored recently? Float out in a lake on a tube and watch it on the big screen. Sounds terrifying, but a lot of fun. If you were given unlimited freedom and money, how would you show a hypothetical film adaptation of In the Valley of the Sun?
I read about that screening. I was delighted by the fact that they actually hired scuba divers to swim beneath people and yank their feet. The work the Alamo folks do to advance the love of movies is phenomenal. As for In the Valley of the Sun, I recently drove past a magnificent old west-Texas drive-in somewhere between Lubbock and a town called Muleshoe. It wouldn’t be all that expensive, I guess, but it sure would feel right. Maybe at some key point in the film, some strategically placed sonic device, a la Batman: Year One, could lure a swarm of bats to descend upon the unsuspecting patrons? I don’t know. There’s probably a lawsuit waiting to happen there.
Since we're already on the subject, who would you cast in a film adaptation of your novel? Ideal director? What song's playing in the trailer?
The song’s easy. I made a playlist of about thirteen or fourteen tunes that not only evoke the novel’s themes and characters but actually featured in early drafts. Chief among them was “My Heart Cries For You” by Jimmy Wakeley. This is actually the song Travis hears when he drops a quarter in the jukebox in the novel’s prologue. Of course, all of these had to go, as I couldn’t afford them. But as for an actor who might play Travis, I’m convinced the best way to go would be to cast someone unknown. Travis, after all, has a certain anonymity as a character. He’s a stray, a ghost. Casting a big name or even a known face in that part might disrupt that sense of mystery. The director’s almost as easy as the song. I’m a huge fan of Jeff Nichols, who directed Take Shelter, Mud, and Midnight Special. I’d be delighted to see him take a crack at it. Of course, that’s if the Coen Brothers aren’t free.
QUOTED: "About five years ago, my wife and I decided to enclose our yard with a privacy fence. It turned out to be a massive fence, and when it came time to paint the sucker, I found myself outside for days on end. ... I plugged into my iPod while I worked. One of the songs that kept cycling through was Dwight Yoakam’s cover of Johnny Horton’s 'Honkytonk Man.'"
"It struck me that the singer ... is fessing up to a compulsion, a compulsion that leaves him a little broken when all’s said and done. I thought it was kind of sinister, this song. At the time, I was learning scriptwriting by reading screenplays and books on writing, so I layered this idea—a psychotic cowboy who can’t stop hooking up with women in juke-joints—over Horton Foote’s Tender Mercies, which is one of my favorite films."
"I wrote the script, then turned the script into a first draft of a novel. But what I had written just wasn’t working. It had zero supernatural elements. It didn’t spark my interest, as a reader. So I went back to my great childhood love of horror novels, and I’m reading Salem’s Lot and it hits me: Travis is already a kind of metaphorical vampire, so why not make him a literal vampire?"
Tuesday, June 06, 2017
Interview with Andy Davidson, author of In the Valley of the Sun
Please welcome Andy Davidson to The Qwillery as part of the 2017 Debut Author Challenge Interviews. In the Valley of the Sun is published on June 6th by Skyhorse Publishing.
TQ: Welcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?
Andy: When I was ten, my fifth-grade teacher had us write in journals every morning—whatever we wanted, no restrictions. I filled up a notebook with weird, episodic little stories about an earthworm who wore a hat, drove a car, got married, had relatives come to stay. The teacher let us read aloud what we’d written, but I was too nervous to stand in front of the class. So, one day this other kid snatches my notebook and starts to read for me. Turns out, he’s a terrible reader, so I get up and finish the job, and to this day I still remember the expressions on the other kids’ faces when I looked up from the end of the story: they were rapt. That was the moment, I’ve always suspected, when I fell in love with writing.
It would be a lie to say I’ve been writing ever since. In fact, for about ten years after getting my MFA, I didn’t write fiction at all. I dabbled with screenplays, started smaller projects that went unfinished. Lost my way a bit. I don’t remember when, exactly, I woke up, but I did. A confluence of fear and love brought me back to it and made me see: it’s now or never. So, I worked harder at it than I ever had in my life, and I was as surprised as anyone when it paid off.
TQ: Are you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?
Andy: I guess I'm a hybrid, but I lean more toward plotting than pantsing. There's something about the word “pantser” that sounds dirty, like you could get arrested for doing it, so I try not to do it all that much. But writing is an organic process, whether you plot or not. I plot heavily up front, so that I always know (mostly) where I'm going. Inevitably, how I get there changes based on the needs of the story, and I end up reshaping things along the way.
TQ: What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?
Andy: I work forty hours a week in a regular job, so making time for writing—especially in the early stages, when I’m just trying to get a project off the ground—isn’t always easy. Imagining what the story could be, all the preliminary work, that’s play. It’s fun. But sooner or later, you have to start, and escape velocity is critical: getting enough words written so I can't turn back, so I have to finish. Eventually, the process kicks in and it becomes habit. But there’s an iffy period, early on, when I could easily crash and burn. Pushing through that (about the first 20,000 words of a novel) is tough.
TQ: What has influenced / influences your writing?
Andy: I keep a bulletin board at work pinned with pictures of writers and filmmakers (teachers, all of them) who remind me, daily, what I’m supposed to be doing and how I’m supposed to be doing it. Among these folks are Barry Hannah, Jack Butler, Cormac McCarthy, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Charles Portis, the Coen Brothers, Margaret Atwood, Flannery O’Connor, and David Lynch. Also: my wife. She’s a lifelong pen-and-paper gamer, and we often talk about the mechanics of story or some aspect of character or how to get out of a tricky place, plot-wise. It’s good to have someone who really understands storytelling to talk to. It keeps the wheels spinning.
TQ: Describe In the Valley of the Sun in 140 characters or less.
Andy: A Texas serial killer becomes a vampire at the hands of his would-be victim. Tender Mercies meets Taxi Driver by way of Near Dark.
TQ: Tell us something about In the Valley of the Sun that is not found in the book description.
Andy: There’s a lighter side to the book. It does have a few funny moments. And it’s ultimately a love story—not necessarily about one character’s pursuit of another but more about the idea of love, how we all need someone else to complete us, whether it’s a wife, a husband, a child, or even God.
TQ: What inspired you to write In the Valley of the Sun? What appeals to you about combining Horror and Westerns?
Andy: About five years ago, my wife and I decided to enclose our yard with a privacy fence. It turned out to be a massive fence, and when it came time to paint the sucker, I found myself outside for days on end, painting and painting and painting. I plugged into my iPod while I worked. One of the songs that kept cycling through was Dwight Yoakam’s cover of Johnny Horton’s “Honkytonk Man.” It struck me that the singer—a man who tells the listener he just can’t stop doing what he’s doing—is fessing up to a compulsion, a compulsion that leaves him a little broken when all’s said and done. I thought it was kind of sinister, this song. At the time, I was learning scriptwriting by reading screenplays and books on writing, so I layered this idea—a psychotic cowboy who can’t stop hooking up with women in juke-joints—over Horton Foote’s Tender Mercies, which is one of my favorite films. I wrote the script, then turned the script into a first draft of a novel. But what I had written just wasn’t working. It had zero supernatural elements. It didn’t spark my interest, as a reader. So I went back to my great childhood love of horror novels, and I’m reading Salem’s Lot and it hits me: Travis is already a kind of metaphorical vampire, so why not make him a literal vampire? As a reader, now I’m hooked. It introduces mystery, antagonism, all sorts of things that weren’t there before.
Horror stories and Westerns share this idea of the unknown, I think. In Westerns, the unknown is usually some outcome or destination you can’t see, i.e. a perilous journey to some unmapped place. That place can be a literal landscape or a figurative destination, some dark place in our own hearts. In Horror, the unknown is typically what terrifies us: a dark storm drain or basement. But it can also mean the bad things we fear we’re capable of doing, given the wrong set of circumstances. In both genres, though, people are usually drawn toward something that will either damn them or set them free. There’s a lot of that in my novel, being compelled toward a thing you don’t fully understand—and all the dangers inherent to chasing that compulsion. For me, that’s what the West is.
TQ: What sort of research did you do for In the Valley of the Sun?
Andy: Most of my research was about atmosphere and landscape, with a little bit of forensic research. Since the book is set in West Texas, I read No Country for Old Men again. I spent a long time with Google Earth’s ground-level views of the region. I listened to a lot of old country music, which was not all new to me (country music was a big part of my childhood, just like horror novels). I looked at a lot of Wikipedia articles about trees in West Texas. Diagrams of box turtle anatomy. Eventually, my wife and I were able to visit out there, which was invaluable in terms of finding perfect details the Internet just can’t give you, like the actual sound of a windmill turning in the desert, or the little bones you find littering the highways.
TQ: Please tell us about In the Valley of the Sun's cover.
Andy: Well, the sun’s going to feature prominently in any vampire novel—but especially in one called In the Valley of the Sun. The cover is really all about mood. In a word, “dread.” Erin Seaward-Hiatt at Skyhorse is the cover designer. Talking with my editor, we wanted it to have the feel of an old photograph found in a drawer, something that might chill you if happened upon it. Annabelle Gaskin, who owns the motel where much of the novel takes place, photographs sunsets and sunrises and hangs the pictures in her café. I always imagined the book’s cover was one of hers. Maybe one she never framed because it scared her, inexplicably.
TQ: In In the Valley of the Sun who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?
Andy: John Reader, the Texas Ranger, was the easiest. In part, that’s because I understood him from the beginning: he’s not particularly happy with what he does for a living, but he does it well, and he loves his wife more than anything else in the world. The two of them share what all couples share: a history of happiness and sadness and everything in between. Also, he’s an archetypal figure, the man of the law, so his course of action in any given situation was always clear to me, even if it wasn’t to him. Reader does what’s right. Maybe he strays, but he comes back to the path. Characters like that, if they have a clear voice, almost write themselves.
The hardest character was Travis. Writing a serial killer isn’t easy. The main challenge is imbuing him with a personality that’s not cold or blank—seeing all aspects of him, in other words, from his sense of humor to the genuine kindness he sometimes shows to others. Of course, at the end of the day, he does have to be scary, but he can’t be so scary that he loses the reader’s sympathy—ever. That’s a tricky thing to pull off. Props to my editor for pushing me to get him right. I’m really proud of him, actually—as proud as one can be, I guess, of a murderer.
TQ: Which question about In the Valley of the Sun do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!
Andy: This is sort of about the book. At a reading last year, I had a student ask me, “What’s your favorite novel?” It caught me completely off guard! I actually couldn’t think of a definitive answer. I told him I could have easily given him my favorite movie (it’s JAWS). But later, when searching for an epigraph for In the Valley of the Sun, it just struck me, the one book I’d call a perfect novel, and one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read? Davis Grubb’s The Night of the Hunter. So, there it is. If anyone ever asks me that again at a reading, I’m ready for it.
TQ: Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from In the Valley of the Sun.
Andy: “The world’s just full of monsters.” – Reader
TQ: What's next?
Andy: I’ve got another book already finished called The Boatman’s Daughter. I’m currently revising it, getting it ready for submission—it takes place in my home state of Arkansas, features a swamp witch and a mad preacher—and I’ve hit the 25,000-word mark on a third novel. If I had to pitch that one, I’d tell you it’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula meets Smokey and the Bandit.
TQ: Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.
Andy: Thanks!
In the Valley of the Sun
Skyhorse Publishing, June 6, 2017
Hardcover and eBook, 384 pages
Deftly written and utterly addictive, this Western literary horror debut will find a home with fans of authors like Joe Hill, Cormac McCarthy, and Anne Rice.
One night in 1980, a man becomes a monster.
Haunted by his past, Travis Stillwell spends his nights searching out women in West Texas honky-tonks. What he does with them doesn’t make him proud, just quiets the demons for a little while. But after Travis crosses paths one night with a mysterious pale-skinned girl, he wakes weak and bloodied in his cabover camper the next morning—with no sign of a girl, no memory of the night before.
Annabelle Gaskin spies the camper parked behind her motel and offers the cowboy a few odd jobs to pay his board. Travis takes her up on the offer, if only to buy time, to lay low and heal. By day, he mends the old motel, insinuating himself into the lives of Annabelle and her ten-year-old son. By night, in the cave of his camper, he fights an unspeakable hunger. Before long, Annabelle and her boy come to realize that this strange cowboy is not what he seems.
Half a state away, a grizzled Texas Ranger is hunting Travis for his past misdeeds, but what he finds will lead him to a revelation far more monstrous. A man of the law, he’ll have to decide how far into the darkness he’ll go for the sake of justice.
When these lives converge on a dusty autumn night, an old evil will find new life—and new blood.
QUOTED: "hauntingly dark, yet oddly beautiful debut."
"This is one that readers won't easily forget after turning the final page."
In the Valley of the Sun
Becky Spratford
Booklist.
113.17 (May 1, 2017): p22.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
* In the Valley of the Sun. By Andy Davidson. June 2017. 384p. Skyhorse, $24.99 (9781510721104); ebook
(9781510721111).
Rural Texas, 1980. Travis is not a good man--haunted by his violent past, he takes it out on the women he
meets. One night, however, a girl leaves him bloodied and weak in his trailer, and he wakes with an
inability to tolerate daylight and a strange and overpowering hunger. When a widow and her young son see
the trailer in the parking lot of their roadside motel, they offer the sickly cowboy some work around the
place. The three lonely souls strike up an awkward friendship, but not for long, because a veteran Texas
Ranger is following a trail of dead girls that leads right up to Travis' doorstep. This is not your typical
vampire novel, rather it is actually a lyrical modern western, with a large dose of suspense. Everyone has a
secret, and no one is completely innocent. The story drips with atmosphere, and the plot and the characters
will play with readers' minds. Hand this hauntingly dark, yet oddly beautiful debut to fans of literary
psychological suspense who don't mind a touch of the supernatural, and especially target fans of the film
Hell or High Water and the novels of Cormac McCarthy or Stephen Graham Jones. This is one that readers
won't easily forget after turning the final page.--Becky Spratford
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Spratford, Becky. "In the Valley of the Sun." Booklist, 1 May 2017, p. 22. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495034902/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7608b164.
Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A495034902
QUOTED: "bold, confident."
"Davidson successfully makes the lines between genre and literary fiction bleed together in a complex novel."
1/27/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1517095463145 2/2
In The Valley of the Sun
Publishers Weekly.
264.18 (May 1, 2017): p41.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* In The Valley of the Sun
Andy Davidson. Skyhorse, $24.99 (384p) ISBN 978-1-5107-2110-4
In this bold, confident debut, Davidson takes the vampire myth to 1980s West Texas, perfectly capturing the
feel of the era and place. Travis Stillwell is hardly a good man; he's strangled multiple women with his belt.
But when a vampire named Rue turns him and strands him in a motel parking lot, he resists killing the
model's widowed owner, Annabelle, or her young son, Sandy. This frustrates Rue, who has wandered for
decades before finding someone as violent as Travis and needs him to embrace his inner beast. Meanwhile,
a Texas Ranger named Reader is hunting Travis down, unaware of the change he's undergone. Davidson lets
his story play out slowly, using multiple points of view and long flashbacks to explore the perspectives and
histories of his various protagonists. The obligatory violence becomes an organic, inevitable result of the
needs of the characters coming into conflict. Davidson successfully makes the lines between genre and
literary fiction bleed together in a complex novel of horror, human nature, and the American South. Agent:
Elizabeth Copps, Maria Carvainis Agency. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"In The Valley of the Sun." Publishers Weekly, 1 May 2017, p. 41. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491575295/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=dc1ab730.
Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491575295
QUOTED: "There’s nothing typical at all about this novel, which is one of the reasons it’s so good. Davidson has taken all his influences, wore them on his sleeve, and cobbled something distinctive and compelling, transcending his inspirations with a tale only he could conceive."
"In the Valley of the Sun could very well be the debut horror novel of the year, and in a year that’s already killing it with horror releases, that is something very special indeed. This one comes highly recommended, and Andy Davidson is one we should all keep our eyes on. We can’t wait to see what horrors he’ll unleash on us next."
Book Review: In the Valley of the Sun by Andy Davidson
June 26, 2017
“A supernatural rural noir, reeking of Texas and blood, that grabs you by the throat and never lets go.”
In the valley of the sunTravis Stillwell isn’t a very nice guy. Cruising Texas honkytonks by night, Travis plays the ladies’ man part well enough to add the notches to his belt. Unfortunately, the ladies never wake up after the evening’s festivities. Unable to control himself, he does his best to stay one step ahead of the law. But there is someone else in the dark, watching Travis, and she knows they were meant to be together … forever. With a feisty Texas Ranger nipping at his heels, and a vile evil swallowing his soul, Travis finds refuge with a young woman and her son. If only for a moment, he thinks he can make everything right. But time is running out for Travis, and it might be too late for salvation.
In the Valley of the Sun, the debut novel by Andy Davidson, takes hold of one of the most popular tropes in horror, and brings the clichés to their knees, twisting tired concepts in thoughtful, and dare we say, original, ways. The result is a supernatural rural noir, reeking of Texas and blood, that grabs you by the throat and never lets go. This novel is truly scary, one of the scariest we’ve read this year, both in tone and scope. The horror remains unnamed, but it certainly has bite. It’s best to say that just when you think it’s safe to go out in the night, this book proves you should lock yourself inside and bolt the door, at least until the sun comes up.
Broken into several parts, Davidson’s use of perspective and pacing is spot on, giving readers a laser focus on what’s happening right now, then taking the time to look at the main characters individually, pulling the lens back to wide-angle so we can observe from a distance, letting us read between the lines and form our own conclusions. We start with Travis, and we see the carnage he’s capable of with no apologies. On the run from something he can’t explain, or even remember at first, he parks his truck at The Sundowner Inn. There he meets Annabelle Gaskin and her son, Sandy. When he comes up short for the water hookup to stay on the property, Annabelle offers Travis the chance to work off his welcome. Reluctant at first, Travis is too sick and too tired to go on, so he takes the job, working in the sun and sweltering heat as he gets to know Annabelle, who has troubles of her own to deal with. As each day passes, Travis grows sicker; he knows something isn’t right. Unable to hold food down, he continues to suppress his urges. Several hundred miles away, a grizzled Texas Ranger named Reader begins to build his case, on the hunt for what he believes is a serial killer.
When Davidson does breakaway from the main story, these sections shine with deep introspection while maintaining a safe distance, giving the reader glimpses of the past, never going in close enough for explanations, heightening the mystery. We get to know the other player in this story, Rue, and discover her own personal hell. Unable to escape her past or fate, Rue’s acceptance of what she has become is harrowing and ruthless. Seeing a connection to Travis, and believing he is her kin, Rue forces her ways on him, wanting to hold him in her clutches forever. We see the struggles of Annabelle; her run down hotel, raising her son by herself, and get a close look at Sandy, growing up fast, soon to be a teenager, and more aware of the horror that has come than he should be. Another lengthy break with Texas Ranger Reader gets us up to speed with his investigation without bogging the narrative down with boring police and forensic jargon. Once he identifies his killer, Davidson breaks away from the main story once more, going through the years with Travis as he develops into a killer with terrible urges he cannot satisfy.
Davidson ratchets up the tension so well that the most common aspect of the genre tropes are completely forgotten, but only until he brings them up again in ways you never see coming. The dread begins with the first page, and steadily ramps up throughout, building as the tension increases. As much as these characters fall within the moral grey area of the spectrum, we can’t help but to feel for them, even Travis, who is about as bad as they come. We don’t feel sorry for them or the mess they’ve gotten themselves into, but they are compelling nonetheless, and we do care what happens to them, which is what makes us squirm when the pressure pops like a cork. The dialogue here is realistic and fitting, not a word wasted, providing expert character insight and movement of the plot. Davidson doesn’t rely on southern dialect, but he does get a little creative with some word choices, providing local color and firmly setting the story in Texas. Skillful misdirection leads to some of the most horrifying scenes in the book, with readers only knowing what’s happening a split second before the characters know. By building the dread he set in place early on, Davidson makes this all seem so easy, and the story moves swiftly from one set piece to another, yet it also feels like he’s just taking his time with us, toying with us in ways we can’t help but to enjoy.
In the Valley of the Sun is not a story about heroes or heroines, but of people cut from reality, flawed and wretched, harboring secrets and fears. Yet Travis Stillwell may be the most sympathetic killer ever, instantly relatable regardless of his horrible deeds. There’s something about him that we feel, something hard to define and describe, beyond the periphery, tickling our minds. The thing that Davidson brings to the table here is a deep understanding of human behavior, showing us that even the most corrupted among us, even the evilest inhuman thing in the world, is still capable of feeling the worst of our human pains. Grounded in reality, this supernatural story is at its scariest when we see people we care about facing the cold hard facts of life in ways we’ve all experienced before, only this time it’s a matter of life and death. The scenes in the book with Rue are among the most horrific we’ve experienced in quite a while. There’s a pale monster lurking in Travis’ cabover, and she’ll never stop, relentless and undying. Davidson’s descriptions are terrifying and inventive, as are his use of some of the conventions of the genre. Some of the images of Rue are difficult to shake, and she’ll no doubt be visiting your nightmares soon enough.
Reading this book easily suggests the wonderful Kathryn Bigelow film Near Dark. The rural setting, the choice of never naming the evil, the tone and mood, all fit very nicely here. If comparisons are to be made, think of it as though Cormac McCarthy or William Gay wrote Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist. There are shades of Red Dragon by Thomas Harris here as well, even though those particular scenes aren’t very typical of police procedurals. Actually, there’s nothing typical at all about this novel, which is one of the reasons it’s so good. Davidson has taken all his influences, wore them on his sleeve, and cobbled something distinctive and compelling, transcending his inspirations with a tale only he could conceive. In the Valley of the Sun could very well be the debut horror novel of the year, and in a year that’s already killing it with horror releases, that is something very special indeed. This one comes highly recommended, and Andy Davidson is one we should all keep our eyes on. We can’t wait to see what horrors he’ll unleash on us next.
BOB PASTORELLA
QUOTED: "Relentless momentum bounding toward the climactic scenes had me unconsciously holding my breath, consciously trying to stop my eyes from straying furtively to the next page. The payoff is satisfying and unexpectedly graceful. In the Valley of the Sun is a powerful, audacious debut."
6.11.2017
WESTERN/HORROR
Andy Davidson
In the Valley of the Sun: A Novel
Skyhorse Publishing
Hardcover, 978-1-5107-2110-4, (also available as an e-book), 384 pgs., $24.99
June 6, 2017
In the autumn of 1980, drifter Travis Stillwell washes up west of the Pecos in the fictional town of Cielo Rojo, Texas. After a surreal night at a local watering hole where he meets Rue, a young woman with “skin … light as bone, her hair as red as a fortunate sky,” Stillwell wakes covered in blood inside the camper on his rattletrap pickup, parked in the otherwise deserted lot of the Sundowner Inn, with no memory of the previous night. The old motel and its café are owned by Annabelle Gaskin, “solemn and pretty and not unlined by the life she had made here in the desert,” a young widow and mother of a ten-year-old son. She hires Stillwell to clean up the motel in barter for his stay. You’ll want to point and holler as danger walks among them unrecognized, while the Gaskin farmhouse sits atop a hill overlooking the Sundowner Inn like Norman’s manse in Psycho.
In the Valley of the Sun, Andy Davidson’s debut novel, is an original synthesis of horror and Western with a dollop of police procedural. Part From Dusk Till Dawn, part Fargo, part Something Wicked This Way Comes, it bucks the trend of glamorous vampires. These aren’t Anne Rice’s Old-World vamps, nor Charlaine Harris’s Bon Temps vamps; they are distinctly American, brutally Old-West undead. If Stephen King and James Lee Burke had a love child, it would be Andy Davidson.
Intricately plotted, fast-paced, packing serpentine twists, In the Valley of the Sun progresses inexorably from curious to creepy to oh-my-good-lord-somebody-DO-something. Davidson gifts his characters nuanced backstories, informing their motivations and choices. Two Texas Rangers provide comedic relief as the veteran schools his junior partner. Subplots add dimension without clutter. Ironically, we meet Annabelle on the day of her baptism, another way to be renewed by blood.
Minimal detail subtly anchors the stark West Texas setting with its mesquite, arroyos, pumpjacks “plunging and rearing like giant birds tearing at the land,” and the red Pegasus taking flight from a defunct Mobil Oil station.
Third-person narratives alternate between hunter and quarry; sometimes the two switch places. There’s a cadence to Davidson’s sentences, his arresting phrases. In New Orleans, Rue’s enhanced senses “taste the dirt between the sidewalk pavers, the green grass growing up through the cracks, the salt in the air, the bogs and muddy slick lizard stink of alligators miles away.” In another passage, “A sudden inexplicable sense of the universe in total, a God’s-eye view of all the strands that formed the web,” seizes the veteran Ranger. “Some were straight and true, and others made patterns without purpose, as if the weaver were lost or drunk or simple.” There’s your Burke.
Relentless momentum bounding toward the climactic scenes had me unconsciously holding my breath, consciously trying to stop my eyes from straying furtively to the next page. The payoff is satisfying and unexpectedly graceful. In the Valley of the Sun is a powerful, audacious debut.
QUOTED: "The author’s frank descriptions of Reader’s methods and feelings elevate the novel into literary naturalism. We’re forced to endure the unfiltered ugliness of murder, its everydayness and emotional devastation."
"Davidson’s unrelenting realism renders the supernatural—when it strikes—completely shocking, nearly inevitable."
In the Valley of the Sun – Book Review
by William Grabowski | Jun 26, 2017 | Book Reviews, Reviews | 0 comments
In the Valley of the Sun
Andy Davidson
Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
June 2017
Reviewed by William Grabowski
Spring 2017 has delivered a veritable bounty of books, all (with one exception) written by authors unknown to me. Better still: these are works of some originality, wherein common tropes and stale storytelling are doused with gasoline like cruddy engine parts, scrubbed, and assembled into forms barely recognizable—and dangerous.
You might recall the late William Hjortsberg’s brilliant novel Falling Angel (1978), and the equally (if “transformed”) brilliant film adaptation Angel Heart (1987). Through In the Valley of the Sun‘s first 50 pages, I experienced that wholly subjective thrill of climbing into a place, my actual surroundings dissolving into irreality. Davidson had seduced me into caring very much for the tormented Travis Stillwell, a man whose suffering (and ability to inflict same) reaches Biblical profundity.
Imagine, if you will, The Silence of the Lambs‘ Jame Gumb committing atrocities, but possessing empathy. Likewise Travis, whose upbringing and trauma render his catastrophic crimes somehow even more devastating. How could he have known one of his victims would turn out to be someone even worse than he, damned beyond any chance for redemption? As my old pal Joe Lansdale once remarked: “This one’ll knock your dick in the dirt.”
Set in the American Southwest, primarily Texas circa 1980, the narrative spaces are wide, thinly populated, and lonely in a way hard to imagine compared to current 24/7 hurry-up-already standards. Based on this alone, anyone younger than 30 will be faced with dreaded silence, sitting still in darkness, and other real thrills. What separates good storytelling from great? Good storytelling hooks your attention, and takes you on a reasonably predictable ride whose hazards—even in the dark—are familiar. At the end, you’ve had a few hours (or days) of entertainment and jolts. Great storytelling requires no hook, immerses you in nuanced, unobtrusive prose. You want only to know these people more, and find out What Happens Next. Plot becomes incidental.
Travis, crossing the vast dusty emptiness between Texas honky-tonks, motels, and chaotic memories in his cabover camper, takes refuge in the parking lot of single mother Annabelle Gaskin’s motel/café—a remote business barely functional but popular with locals. Annabelle is no stranger to turmoil, hard work, and solitariness. At first cautious around the scarred cowboy seemingly residing on her property, Annabelle offers him work cleaning junk out of the neglected pool and performing various repairs on the motel. Her pre-teen son, Sandy, is curious, and slowly invests trust in the resourceful but too-quiet Travis. Annabelle observes that Travis (rightly) goes out some nights. After a while he appears to suffer from a major irritation—disease?—of the skin, and must work at night. Travis often makes disturbing remarks, but it’s hard to tell where they’re directed due to his essential hauntedness and practicality.
Across the state, Texas Ranger Reader is hunting for a killer of young women—a man with a signature “style.” If Davidson was going to turn predictable, here was his chance. But Reader is an actual person whose job pushes him into horrors no one should see, and the author’s frank descriptions of Reader’s methods and feelings elevate the novel into literary naturalism. We’re forced to endure the unfiltered ugliness of murder, its everydayness and emotional devastation. Eventually, of course, he locks onto Travis Stillwell.
Davidson’s unrelenting realism renders the supernatural—when it strikes—completely shocking, nearly inevitable. I’m certainly not alone in hoping he can sustain this level of craft and artistry in future work.