By LINDY RYAN
Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes on the set of a ghost-hunting show? You’re in luck: Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Sarah Pinsker reveals all in her latest novel, HAUNT SWEET HOME.
When aimless twenty-something Mara lands a job as a night-shift production assistant on her cousin’s ghost hunting/home makeover reality TV show Haunt Sweet Home, she quickly determines her new role will require a healthy attitude toward duplicity, but as she hides fog machines in the woods and improvises scares to spook new homeowners, a series of unnerving incidents and a creepy new co-worker force her to confront whether the person she’s truly been deceiving and hiding from all along is herself.
RUE MORGUE recently had the opportunity to sit down with Sarah Pinsker to chat about HAUNT SWEET HOME, now available from Tordotcom Publishing.
HAUNT SWEET HOME joins a growing neighborhood of scripted-shows-gone-wrong narratives. What inspired you to write this book? Are you a fan of haunted reality shows?
I’m fascinated by all reality shows and the things that they pass off as real. They work so hard to bring us scenarios that seem natural but are manufactured or manipulated. The haunted ones in particular are fascinating because they have to work so hard to convince the audience. Places that probably would make you uneasy in real life flatten a bit on a small screen, so they have to react in a way that feels over-the-top to compensate. I’m also fascinated by the bigfoot shows, because they never, ever get to succeed. They breathlessly chase something that they can’t find because it would mean the end of their show. At least the shows about hauntings can catch up with their ghosts, even if it’s usually in a vague way that leaves room for interpretation. That’s what makes them fun for me. They try so hard! It was a lot of fun to try to work backward to see how I would create those scares if I were in charge of manufacturing a haunting And combining the haunting with a home renovation/glow-up show was even more fun. I would absolutely watch Haunt Sweet Home with delight.
Your novel takes an entirely new approach to staged scares when production assistant Mara gets more than she anticipates as the show’s resident haunter. Without giving away any spoilers, can you share your thoughts behind the unstaged haunting(s) in HAUNT SWEET HOME? Have you ever experienced any paranormal activity in your home?
Not in my home, even though it is old and has some dubious history! I’m glad for that. I can only write creepy stuff when I’m not creeped out myself. [The] closest I can come is that I was working in a locked archive at a library and ran into a woman in the stacks, only to find out later that there was nobody else let in while I was there. Who was it? Not sure, though it later turned out that the library needed some environmental remediation, so maybe I was just hallucinating from the fumes.
I haven’t figured out how to talk about the unstaged hauntings in HAUNT SWEET HOME without giving anything away! I guess I’ll say that even though I wanted to write a book about a TV show that stages hauntings, I wanted there to be something beyond the staged scares. The show was fun, but it was more fun to think about layering in real hauntings to see how the characters and the show deal with it. There’s a funny phenomenon where sometimes you write something that’s completely true, but people assume it can’t be. You can look up “the Tiffany problem” for an example. “Tiffany” is a medieval name, but when we see it in a historical book, it pulls us out because we think of it as a modern name. Similarly, I can imagine how a real haunting would mess with a show that depends on a kind of formulaic approach to its paranormal aspect.
Production assistants get the brunt of the grunt work on any film set, and Mara is certainly no stranger to that on the set of HOME SWEET HOME! Between her rough working environment on the night shift, a less-than-stellar assigned roommate situation, and family drama, both on and off set, Mara has her hands full! As a writer and singer/songwriter, have you ever had a spooky experience in your work? Or maybe worked a season scaring visitors at a haunted house?
I’ve never worked at a haunted house, but in my music career, I stayed in some unusual places. My band was given a place to sleep once in this cool old, abandoned factory in New England – in the area where HAUNT SWEET HOME is set, coincidentally! Someone was supposed to be staying there with us but then left, so we got locked in on our own for the night. We knew we were alone there, but we kept hearing horrible noises all night long, which turned out to be something in the industrial kitchen absolutely demolishing the remains of our dinner, which we’d put in a garbage bag.
And last year, I got to spend a week in a thousand-year-old castle in Spain for a workshop. It’s not supposed to be haunted, but I did have a night terror on my first night there [in which] the nuns who had run the place in centuries past were all standing around my bed. I have absolutely no Catholic background – nor any beef with nuns. But if any of my students heard screaming that night, it was me! I guess I added to the ambiance!
In addition to scripted shows, haunted homes, and “ratings-boosting screams,” you bring in an element of folk horror as Mara tries her hand at her family’s woodcarving legacy. How did you feel all these elements work together in HAUNT SWEET HOME?
I had wanted to write something about someone who turned trees into art for a while, inspired by a couple of pieces at the American Visionary Art Museum. There are some magnificent carvings in their permanent collection, all done by untrained artists. As I say in the acknowledgments, there’s a piece there made out of apple wood that is, in my opinion, one of the most profound self-portraits I’ve ever seen.
I love outsider art, and I love writing about artists. Mara’s carving is the one thing she can call her own in her life since the rest of her time is spent pleasing co-workers and family members. She tries to do what others want of her, even at her own expense. The carving is literally her carving out her own time and space in the world.
I like the combination of the contrivance of the reality show and this thing that interests her, which is kind of the opposite. There are no second takes if you make a mistake when you’re working with wood. And she’s trying to make something true, to make the kind of art that compels you, that’s out of your control, while working in a very controlled environment. There’s a kind of magic in the communication between an artist and their muse and an artist and their work and even an artist – or a writer – and their audience, where you are making something for yourself that speaks to others because it rings true. I love juxtaposing that with the other forms of communication seen here.
Finally, what can readers expect from you next? Are you working on anything new?
I’m always working on a lot of stuff! I actually had a novelette come out last month in Uncanny Magazine, called “Signs of Life,” which was also inspired by something at the American Visionary Art Museum – an exhibit of photos of rocks and trees and clouds that look like other things. I have one more reality show-related project in the works and another novel that I’ve been taking my time with because I love it, and it’s research-intensive. I want to get it right. And lots of short fiction because I love short fiction, and it carries me along as I try to figure out the longer works.
