February 1, 2024

Award-winning and best-selling Tremblay (The Pallbearers Club, an LJ Best Book) returns with a novel about a cursed movie. The only surviving cast member of a doomed 1993 film joins its Hollywood reboot three decades later, but reality and script--and past and present--blur as he remembers the bizarre events of the original movie. With a 150K-copy first printing. Prepub Alert.

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April 15, 2024
Tremblay (The Beast You Are, 2023) returns with a terrifying novel about the creation of art and its effect on all it touches, told with a strong Gen X perspective and dark humor by the Thin Kid, identified solely by his character's name in the 1993 film Horror Movie, a film marked by tragedy--he is the only surviving team member. Although never released in full, the film has achieved cult status and is being rebooted 30 years later. Moving effortlessly between "Then" and "Now,"" the Thin Kid speaks directly to readers, placing them under his spell--despite repeated warning signs not to trust him--explaining the details of the original film and its current reboot and including sections of the original screenplay. The result is a suspenseful story that is marked by its relentless unease and disturbing revelations about the characters, yes, but also about the readers themselves. An immersive reading experience that will forever alter the way those who encounter it watch horror movies. For fans of Peter Straub and the cursed-film trope like in Clay McLeod Chapman's The Remaking (2019) or Craig DiLouie's forthcoming How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive (2024), but it pairs even better with the menacing, intricately plotted, and unputdownable storytelling of Catriona Ward.

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Starred review from July 8, 2024
Tremblay (The Beast You Are) raises the bar for the cursed film trope with a novel that cleverly breaks the fourth wall between imaginary horrors and their real-world repercussions. The unnamed narrator is the sole surviving crew member of the eponymous film, a low-budget monster movie whose production began in 1993 but was never completed for dramatic reasons revealed over the course of the narrative. Thirty years later, a bigger crew with a bigger budget hopes to reboot the film and capitalize on its reputation with horror fans as a legendary might-have-been masterpiece, most of whose creators died tragically young. They also want the narrator to reprise his role as “the Thin Kid,” a masked victim who turns monstrous under the cruel torments of his teen classmates. Tremblay hopscotches back and forth between two converging plot threads, one set during the movie’s original filming and the other in present-day Los Angeles, and splices in portions of the original screenplay, the better to highlight the narrator’s increasingly unsettling identification with his creepy Thin Kid character. A shocking but perfectly planned twist at the story’s climax makes this one of the most exciting outings in the recent crop of fiction about horror movies. Readers won’t want to miss out. Agent: Stephen Barbara, InkWell Management.

July 15, 2024
When an unreleased cult movie is rebooted, the surviving member of the original film's crew grapples with psychic whiplash. Even though it's not steeped in horror lore like the bangers being cranked out by Stephen Graham Jones or Grady Hendrix, this captivating take is tailor-made for fans of Stephen King and Jordan Peele alike. A cautionary tale with elements of indie movie darlingsThe Blair Witch Project, Blue Velvet, andRiver's Edge, this chronicle of hometown kids trying to make a cheap slasher flick is shockingly memorable and deeply disturbing. Our unnamed narrator is the last survivor of the eponymous movie, filmed in the summer of 1993. TheirHorror Movie concerns teens who torture one of their own--the narrator's role is that of the Thin Kid, akin to the Slender Man of urban legend--and suffer the consequences. In the mix are the film's obsessive director, Valentina; a handful of cast and crew; and the film's ethereal screenwriter, Cleo, whose presence is most fully felt within the pages of her unusually personal screenplay. After a bewildering tragedy, the film was never released. Decades later, Valentina uploads a few scenes, some stills, and the screenplay to the internet, inspiring the modern-day reinvention. With his crewmates long dead by mostly natural causes, the narrator reluctantly agrees to capitalize on his infamy, eventually agreeing to participate in a hot horror reboot. Revolving between the original production and the big-budget reimagining, Tremblay deftly sidesteps genre tropes and easy laughs for a truly disturbing experience inside some very troubled heads. "Don't get me wrong, it's going to be a great movie," cautions our Thin Kid. "You're all going to see it. Most of you are really going to like it....Will the movie be something you take with you, that stays with you, burrows into and lives in a corner inside you? That, I don't know." A fever dream about despair and regret that will stay with you long after the credits have rolled.

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