Escape Hatch • 72 • Cutting Remarks

The purposes of an escape hatch; just glad to be on the list; chopping block; hungry yet?

My Two Cents

Well, here we are again. I hope you made it through the holidays all in one piece, with your spirits unbroken.

A lot has happened on the national scene in the last few weeks—to be honest, I can’t remember two weeks quite like it in my fifty-three years of being an American citizen—and I haven’t exactly kept my opinions to myself. But I view this newsletter as a respite from the news of the day, a place to catch a breather, and maybe a laugh or two, alongside some hopefully good talk about writing and books. If you want my political takes, you can always follow me on Threads; this is my literal Escape Hatch from all that.

(This newsletter is also, of course, relentlessly self-promotional, which I know can get tiresome. Whereas I spend far less time blithering on about my own work on Threads. If you don’t dig one, maybe you’ll dig the other—your call.)

Stoker’s Ace

I was psyched to see King Sorrow long listed for Superior Achievement in a Novel in the upcoming Bram Stoker Awards. In this case, I think I might have to be content with the nomination, because this list is absolutely stacked.

Am I gonna get Tingle-d? Buffalo-ed? Am I going down harder than one of Daniel Kraus’s angels? The jokes write themselves but I gotta say, if you read your way through this whole list, top to bottom, you’d be in horror heaven (or “horra,” as Tana Nighswander might say).

My thanks to the HWA for finding a spot for me on the list.

Cuts Like A Knife

After my editor, Jen Brehl, and some other early readers had a look at the second draft of King Sorrow, it became clear to me that it would be best for the book, commercially if not creatively, to cut 25,000 words. In the end I had to make some hard choices. One of the things I had to clip out was a whole suspenseful subplot about Donovan McBride on Cherokee Island and his not-so-meticulous escape plan. It just about killed me to clip it out, but I saw that it could be excised cleanly, and no one would sense the loss of it. So that was 6,500 words right there.

I had cause to think of it the other day, because while I can’t announce anything just yet (there’s nothing to announce), there might be a future limited edition in which I’m able to put that material back into the narrative. We’ll see. Seems to me that could be pretty cool.

The prospect of restoring one of Van’s best moments to King Sorrow got me looking back on the other things I had to clip out, stuff that’s kind of wild to think about now. In several early drafts, when we first meet Arthur Oakes, he isn’t living with his best friend Van in off-campus housing… he was living with his aunt and uncle, who both had jobs at the school. Yeah, that’s right: Reverend Erin Oakes had a sister! Aunt Kate was a big character too. My mom was especially attached to her, and had real concerns about the way she disappeared from the last third of the novel… I remember my ma wrote me a few hundred words, sketching out what I might do with her.

I hadn’t noticed the way Aunt Kate disappeared from the last third of the book until my mom mentioned it… but that was a good cue that I didn’t need her. She had to go, and that was another 6,500 words.

I fought harder to keep something else: once upon a time, Gwen used to be a smoker. To be specific, she was a pipe smoker. Her father was too, and it was her habit to finish her day by smoking a pipe with him out on the front step. That pipe followed her throughout the story and often appeared at moments of high drama. I remember she banged it down in frustration, in Part I, when her friends were talking about pooling their money to pay off the Nighswanders. Years later, when Gwen is in fairly desperate straits, she goes out on the back step of her house with Robin Fellows and has a pipe while they talk about her options.

It’s a weird but true thing that when I attended John Bapst in Bangor, Maine, several of the girls had corn cob pipes, and would whip them out for a sneaky smoke when teachers weren’t around. I found that indescribably cool and, while working on King Sorrow, it seemed like a little random bit of Maine cultural history worth preserving.

My wife and my U.S. editor didn’t agree with me and one or both of my parents found it a totally valueless affectation. I was dragged kicking and screaming but in the end the pipe went. Maybe if we ever get a TV adaptation (hey! I’m allowed to daydream!) we’ll get the pipe back, but probably not. Although smoking was fairly ubiquitous in the 1980s, you won’t see a single ciggy in The Black Phone movies. Our distributor, Universal, wouldn’t have it. Gwen’s pipe, that was maybe 500 words. More? Maybe more. That pipe kept busy.

If you’re doing the math, you’ve probably realized this tally only gets me to about 14,000 words, and I needed to cut 25,000. Where’d I get the rest? Well, I just made a rule for myself that I was going to cut one sentence from every page, no exceptions. Sometimes I’d get two, or more, but never less than one. I also hacked conversations down to the bare minimum (there is always too much banter in my early drafts). I got there. Barely. And the good news is the psychic wounds have almost healed!

Just in time for me to begin cutting things out of the next novel.

Stay Hungry

Some of you will recall that I decided, a little while back, to take a run at finishing 10 books in 10 years. That’s still my operating plan and a couple days back HarperCollins announced the forthcoming release of the next one, Hunger, complete with a pretty good sketch of what the thing is about. There’s also a release date, but I wouldn’t Sharpie that on your calendar just yet, I kinda got a feeling it’s gonna get bumped to early 2027. (Hey! I said I’d finish a book a year, I didn’t promise anything about publication dates, which is somewhat out of my control)

On the one hand, Hunger is the kind of thing I feel like I do well: a ghost story. On the other hand, it took me as far out of my comfort zone as I’ve ever gone: a story set in the 18th century, overlapping with some pretty well known historical events. Will I go splat on my face?? Won’t it be exciting to find out?!?

This is a whole ‘nother conversation, but at some point I hit on professional approach: my odd-numbered novels lean into all the things I know I do well, and my even-numbered books are for trying new things to see if I can pull them off. I guess you never want to let things get stale, y’know?

Snowed Under

That’s it for this January issue of Escape Hatch (which is almost certain to go out on the 2nd of February, but that’s practically January, and besides, I’ll try and have another issue before the month is done). We had a couple feet of snow last weekend and not long after, my wife and I took our twins sledding. Before she got on the sled with one of the boys, Gillian asked if I had any tips, and I said, “I dunno, aim for that part of the hill over there, it’s not as steep?” She went on a couple runs with one boy or another before I realized it was her first time ever on a sled. Growing up in Kent, she just never really experienced a let’s-go-sledding kinda snowstorm. We had a run or two together and it was just as happy and sweet as I think it was for Arthur and Gwen.

I’m closing in on the latest rewrite of this screenplay (adapted from a still-unpublished-but-it’ll-be-out-someday novella of mine) and Escape Hatch was a nice break from it. I’m also elbow deep in what will probably be the last major rewrite of Hunger (although there will inevitably be at least two more lighter revisions). I suppose I better get back to one or another now, but it sure was nice gabbing with you. These are anxious, tense, distracting times—do yourself a favor, force yourself to stop scrolling social media, and if you can take ten minutes to read and sip a hot drink, do it. You’ll feel better. It’ll do wonders for your nervous system and you’ll feel like you won your mind back.

Wishing you all the best and happy reading and we’ll talk again soon in a matter of weeks.

— Joe Hill, Exeter, NH, January 2026