Escape Hatch 059: Happy Hellidays

20 Years With The Ghosts; Cuddle with Charlie Manx; end-of-the-year recommendations; signed books; it's a wrap

The 20th Anniversary of 20th Century Ghosts

It’s been almost two decades since the release of my first book, a collection that included “The Cape,” “Abraham’s Boys,” and other family favorites. It wasn’t 20 years ago to me—it’s only been 12 minutes—but the calendar takes a different view. William Morrow is out next summer with a hallucinatory new edition, featuring a brand new cover and crazy sprayed edges (‘spredges’ if you’re nasty). I love the way it looks—the first time I saw it I thought maybe the gummy had just kicked in. Oh, I also wrote a new afterword for it, reflecting on the lives some of these stories lived after the book came out. A few of them have had some unexpected adventures!

Keep Christmasland Close

The Crew has a cunning Christmas surprise for you: A Charlie Manx plushie based on CP Wilson III’s shocking-yet-disturbingly-cute illustrations for Wraith (the graphic novel sequel to NOS4A2). There are only 250, with tags autographed by yours truly, so if you want one, get yourself one before they’re gone. It’ll be like owning your own little corner of Christmasland!

You’ll find the Charlie plush and a pile of heavily discounted goodies onsale today in the Joe Hill Charity Event.

As a side note, Skelton Crew has been my faithful partners for quite a few years now, beginning with their line of beautifully sculpted keys lifted from the pages of Locke & Key, and continuing through all manner of lovingly-made merch. My profits on those sales are always passed on to the Redfearn-Hill Charity Fund, which has given $160,000 to charitable causes over the last four years. There’s been money for Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF USA, World Central Kitchen and more. At least two-thirds of the money in Redfearn-Hill is there because of you guys—because you were kind enough to buy a key, or a signed book, or a pin through Skelton Crew. I kinda feel like maybe we did some good in the world? That thought makes me happy.

2024: The Best

We’re getting to that time of the year when the Internet clutters up with a few thrillion best-of lists. Who needs them? Me, I guess! Whenever I come across one, I always at least give it a skim. They’re irresistible.

Time is short and there’s too much of everything—too many shows, too many books, too much noise. If my own end-of-the-year recommendations help you cut through the clutter and find something worth your attention, then they did their job.

The Books

Months after reading an early draft of Karla’s Choice I’m still floored by what has to be Nick Harkaway’s best novel yet. It’s not just that it’s a precision engineered thriller, as finely tuned as an intricate 19th century European clockwork. It’s not even that it’s a masterful work of literary ventriloquism—Nick has assumed his father’s literary voice so perfectly it’s a little uncanny (the book opens with Picasso’s most amusing line, “I can paint a fake Picasso as well as anyone else.”). Karla’s Choice is a masterwork of historical fiction, capturing the details of mid-sixties Cold War Europe on an almost atomic level, from the clothes, to the kitchen appliances, to the period accurate instruments of murder.

A pair of leg breakers show up at a methhead’s crash pad to get the money he owes and discover he’s got a severed hand in his icebox… the hand of a demon. In the endless, rainy night that follows, a whirl of federal agents, sleazeballs, and lost souls try to claim the hand for themselves, while Portland, Oregon, descends into supernatural chaos. Fever House plays like an unholy mashup of World War Z and Pulp Fiction and for five days gripped me wholly. Then I went straight on to the just-published sequel, The Devil By Name, and was shocked, rocked, and delighted all over again.

Lost Man’s Lane is a different kind of horror thriller altogether: elegiac, tender-hearted, hopeful and haunted. It’s in the same space as Stranger Things, although instead of looking back at the 80s, it casts its uneasy gaze upon the last days before Y2K. The book features a terrible unnatural snake and a sociopathic cop who just might be a ghost, but probably the most upsetting moment was a recollection of the Columbine massacre. The kids watch the whole shattering tragedy play out on TV and then, as that terrible day winds down, one of the parents says solemnly, “we will never let this happen again.”

Small Things Like These can be read in a single day and was my favorite book of the year. Bill Furlong delivers coal, looks after his wife and daughters, and is quietly appreciated by his community. One morning he runs a load up to the convent on the hill and finds a half-starved, half-crazed girl locked in the basement there… and his whole carefully constructed life begins to totter. There’s a plain beauty to this story of Ireland in the 1980s that held me captivated and made me a Claire Keegan fan for life.

The Films

Man, it was a good year for horror films. The Dark and the Wicked is ferociously frightening. Godzilla Minus One is one of the most human and humane kaiju flicks ever made, with lots of quietly moving things to say about mass trauma and wartime regrets. Late Night With The Devil proves there’s always room for another found footage fright flick, provided you’ve got a top-notch script, inventive scares, and a cast that goes all in. I loved The First Omen and thought it went so f$#%n hard. I delighted in every eccentric, perfect period detail (that nun smoking a cigarette while jumping on a trampoline!).

And the year isn’t over yet! I’m chomping my fangs for Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, out on December 25th. That particular release date doesn’t surprise me. After all, Christmas(land) was made for NOS4A2.

The Shows

Pedro Pascal is everybody’s apocalypse daddy now and I’m fine with that; if only we could all face the worst with Bella Ramsey’s fierceness, wit, and sense of fun. Last of Us is essential. For me, Season Three is the best of Slow Horses to date (although the final scene of Season Four had a nearly wordless emotional force that stayed with me for weeks). Shogun was great the way The Sopranos was great—they’re surprisingly similar! A tough, desperate warlord finds himself fighting for survival against the families of other warlords crowding in from every side. C’mon, you really don’t know whether I’m talking about Tony Soprano or Lord Toranaga, do you?

And Evil was a hell of a good ride. I will miss Father Acosta, Ben Shakir, and Dr. Bouchard. It was a lot of laughs and more than a few screams. They helped me make sense of this f$%#d up century. Nothing good can stay, I guess.

The Tunes

In my mind, I could maybe manage without TV and film—it wouldn’t be fun, but I could do it—but I’d have a hard time getting by without books and rock-and-roll. Every few years I’ll come across an album that I know is going to be a lifetime companion, something I return to again and again. I discovered not one but two records that fit that description this year, Zach Bryan’s absolutely huge American Heartbreak from 2022, and Made by These Moments from the Red Clay Strays.

But the song is the thing that matters; you can only listen to an album one song at a time, and you fall in love with a record tune-by-tune. So here’s four songs that are so good I always stop what I’m doing to listen:

• “Pink Skies” - Zach Bryan (it was a Zach Bryan kind of year)

• “After Hours” - Christian Lee Huston (as pretty as any of Paul Simon’s best)

• “Thirteen (Orchestrated)” - The Outcharms (a throwback to the britpop anthems of the 1990s)

• “The Kill” - Maggie Rogers (three minutes of searing want)

It’s That Time Again

If you’ve ever wanted an autographed copy of one of my books, they’re not that hard—or costly—to grab. Forget paying e-bay prices. As I mentioned above, there’s lots of stuff available, often wildly discounted, through Skelton Crew. But you can also get a book signed (and personalized!) through Water Street Books, my local bookshop. They offer books year ‘round… but if you want something before Christmas, do try and get your order in no later than December 10th, to give me time to sign stuff, and them time to ship it out to you. (And do they ship worldwide? Yes! But it’s probably too late to guarantee delivery by Christmas if you aren’t in the States).

This Ride Isn’t Slowing Down

It was a year all right—sometimes it feels like it was three or four years packed into one (and I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way). My twins turned two and suddenly had all kinds of things to say (just yesterday, Teddy announced, “I got in the car and ate a meatball and went to school,” which is an entirely accurate report on his morning). My big kids are doing amazing things about which I don’t say much because their lives are theirs. My wife had cancer, had surgery, and then didn’t have cancer anymore. Thank you, PWGA Health Insurance; fair to say you were a literal life-saver. I had another Kindle Original, “Ushers,” and people seemed to like it. Boy, that makes me glad. I turned in a third draft of the next novel, King Sorrow, and at the time of this writing, I’m zipping through the copy-edits. It’s been a long time between novels, but hopefully I packed enough story into this one so people will think it was worth the wait. There was an election. We’ll see what happens next and we’ll get through it together. No other way out but forward. I solved a couple hundred crossword puzzles. I saw Liam Gallagher and John Squire in Newcastle and brought home a pair of happily ringing ears and a whopping case of COVID, my first. I had sickness and health, sleepless nights and some good dreams, peaceful cuddles on the couch with Gillian in front of The Great British Bake-Off. I had the best fish-and-chips of my life in Hastings. I’m still here. So are you. Here’s wishing you joy, serenity, health, and good reading in 2025. I’ll see you there.

— Joe Hill, Exeter, NH, November 2024.