By LINDY RYAN
Storms batter the cliffs, and shadows coil in the lantern room in WIDOW’S POINT, the blood-chilling new novel from Richard Chizmar and his son, W.H. Chizmar. Solitude quickly becomes madness when a paranormal investigator agrees to spend a weekend inside the infamous Widow’s Point lighthouse. He expects creaking stairs and cold drafts, but what he finds are restless phantoms, centuries of violence and a darkness that refuses to let him leave. With father and son joining forces, the Chizmars deliver a gothic descent into isolation, obsession and the horrors we bring with us into the dark.
A tight, terrifying plunge into supernatural dread, WIDOW’S POINT is a terrifying melange that blends the dark atmosphere and isolation of The Lighthouse with the lore-building of The Blair Witch Project.
RUE MORGUE recently had the opportunity to sit down with Richard and W.H. Chizmar to chat about WIDOW’S POINT, now available from Simon and Schuster/Gallery Books.
WIDOW’S POINT is a father-and-son collaboration. What was it like writing together? How does the creative process shift when you’re not just co-authors but family?
Author Richard Chizmar
Richard Chizmar: Billy and I had collaborated on a number of short stories, but WIDOW’S POINT was by far our most ambitious project. It was a real joy from start to finish. Challenging, for sure, but also a lot of fun. Most days, I couldn’t wait to sit down at the keyboard. We actually never sat side-by-side working on the book until we did the final editorial pass. Before that, it was always solo work and then sending along the updated file via email. Sometimes, we indicated where we thought the story was going, but mostly, we just trusted each other to pick up where we’d left off.
W.H. Chizmar: Being family makes it a lot easier, I think. I grew up with Dad as my rec sports coach, so he and I had plenty of opportunities to butt heads and sort it out. By the time we were writing together, we knew each other’s collaborative style like the backs of our own hands. Besides, we’ve been each other’s first readers for over a decade now. I know my dad’s storytelling voice; he knows my writing strengths and weaknesses, and we seem to mesh with each other.
Lighthouses are inherently eerie, perched between land and sea, safety and danger. What drew you both to Widow’s Point as the story’s setting?
RC: WIDOW’S POINT, the novel, was based on Widow’s Point, the novella, which was based on “Widow’s Point,” the short story. The original story, published back in 2017, was written for an anthology of sea-faring horror called Fearful Fathoms edited by Mark Parker. Billy and I figured most of the writers would be trying their hand at stories set on ships far out to sea, so we wanted to do something a little different. The idea of a haunted lighthouse with a cursed past hit us like a thunderbolt, and we ran with it.
W.H. C: It helped that we had recently returned from a New England road trip, during which Maine was a definite highlight. I think we stopped at every lighthouse we saw there, just as an excuse to stretch our legs and get a deep breath of fresh sea breeze. But we couldn’t help but be a little mesmerized by the massive stone towers, some of them on rocky islands hundreds of yards from shore. By comparison, the lighthouses in our hometown of Chesapeake are miniature!
The book weaves the lore of past tragedies at the lighthouse. How did you decide what “haunted history” to invent, and how much did you pull from real lighthouse legends?
RC: We’ve often referred to WIDOW’S POINT as our “everything-but-the-kitchen-sink” novel. In building the back story, we showed little restraint and pretty much threw in everything we could think of. That was the fun of it. To play with a whole slew of horror tropes and chestnuts. As for research, the only thing I really dug into was the design and architecture of lighthouses from that era. I wanted our descriptions to be authentic and believable.
W.H. C: I’m with Rich. Most of my lighthouse-specific research was practical, especially for the novella and novel versions. We had to know the day-to-day routine of a lighthouse keeper inside and out. That more grounded starting point led us to some fun and unique places, but also helped to remind us that keepers were just ordinary people with a pretty unique job. Though my mom and her siblings did grow up fishing on the Bay a lot, and even those shallow waters spark some very strange stories. So, nautical tall tales do run in the family!
The protagonists’ isolation spirals into psychological horror. Did you approach the story as more of a supernatural haunting or a tale of madness – or a mix of both?
RC: Definitely, a mixture of both… with very blurred lines delineating which was which. That’s something we discussed very early on.
W.H. C: Blurring that line was a heavy focus of the original short story and novella, but looking back at the full novel? With the 2025 section? I think we’ve leapt over that line, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.
Rich, you’ve built an impressive horror legacy. Billy, you’re carrying that forward. What did you each learn from the other during WIDOW’S POINT?
RC: From Billy, I learned to trust my instincts and not be afraid to let loose. He’s young but also a very confident writer. That was cool to see as the story played out.
W.H. C: Over the iterations of WIDOW’S POINT, I haven’t just watched myself grow as a writer, but my dad, too. I think this applies to any craft, but watching how the voice of someone I look up to has sharpened and matured makes it easier to see where I can improve myself.
Horror is a family affair for the Chizmars
And, of course, what’s next for you both – together and/or individually!
RC: I’m hoping to turn in the third and final Boogeyman book at the end of this year. That should come out sometime next fall. Then, I’ll take a short break and get to work on the next one. Hopefully, sometime next year, Billy and I will also be tackling a new book together. Fingers crossed!
W.H. C: I’m currently working through edits for Them, my debut solo novel, which will be widely released early 2026. It’s about monsters and the end of the world, a bit more sci-fi than supernatural.
