Finding the Beauty in Horror Novels

Author Teagan Olivia King on fear, strength, and imagination

By Anna Faller | Oct. 24, 2026

It’s officially spooky season, folks, which means it’s high time to stack your TBR list with tales of all things terrifying.

If you ask Michigan author Teagan Olivia King, however, not all of our favorite horror stories have to be quite so, well, horrible. In fact, we could even be friends with the creatures living under our beds, or at the very least, empowered by them.

“Everyone has to fight their own monsters,” says King. “But if those characters [in scary stories] can fight their monsters and survive, so can you.”

What’s the trick to besting the bad guy, though, when the most gruesome horrors so often come from real life? King’s advice starts with turning the page.

Destined to Write

As a fourth-generation English and writing major in a long line of matriarchal creatives—including a grandmother who published several books in the 1980s—author Teagan Olivia King was all but destined for a life of storytelling.

Born and raised in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (though she’s since moved to the Cheboygan area), King holds a creative writing degree from Northern Michigan University. In addition to her two full-length books, Spit Back the Bones and Bitterbloom, her work has appeared in numerous publications, including collections from Phantom House Press and Black Spot Books, as well as Bella Grace Magazine, among others. Her short story, “All Our Fertile Bones,” was even included in a 2023 Bram Stoker award reading list anthology.

“Growing up in my household, [writing] was just part of life,” King says. “I had my notebook, and I was outside writing as much as possible. That’s never really stopped.”

As an eldest millennial daughter and a kid whose childhood experiences also included traumas like religious uncertainty and divorce, however, literature also offered a means of escape. Consequently, much of King’s earliest influence comes from the fantastic classics of authors like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, whose mythical beings and epic battles opened the door to alternate realities.

The door to traditional horror, however, was one King happily kept shut as a kid. “I grew up in the generation of scary movies [defined by] jump-scares and gore. That was never anything I was into,” she explains. That is, until 2018, when she put a latent idea to paper: a middle grade fantasy horror novel—the writing process for which, she notes, was unexpectedly cathartic.

It was also around this time that King discovered the opulent terror of Mexican Gothic, a twist on horror noir by Siliva Moreno-Garcia.

“[That book] changed my life, because it opened up this whole new genre,” she explains. “I realized that horror didn’t have to be blood and guts. It could be slow, and supernatural, and terrifying.”

Two Books, One Throughline

Per King, it’s this lush, atmospheric prose that’s come to define her signature “aesthetic horror.”

“You could build a Pinterest board around my style,” she says. “I want it to be pretty, but also disgusting and terrifying.” (Think 17th century Dutch Golden Age imagery of flowers alongside skulls and rotting birds.) Though stoking slow-burning fear in her readers is the desired effect, King also stresses that abject terror isn’t the only emotion she aims to evoke. Strength, determination, awe, and even a sense of haunting beauty are all part of the package.

Enter: King’s debut novel, a contemporary horror tale entitled Spit Back the Bones (2025). In it, readers meet 19-year-old Mila, who, at the request of her sister Agatha, begrudgingly returns to their hometown in the Upper Peninsula, only to find that Agatha, like their brother three years prior, has suddenly disappeared.

With no help on the horizon from her fractured family or the biased local police, Mila takes matters into her own hands, joining forces with a childhood friend (“who just happens to be hot,” says King with a laugh), before tying everything back to the old family bog, from which voices of the dead emanate.

Bitterbloom (2026), by contrast is an “adult gothic fantasy that also plays with themes of religious trauma and chronic illness.”

The story follows Adelaide Thorn, whose mysterious visions are thought to be the force behind the unexplained deaths in her village. Even Adelaide’s awful father, the vicar, believes she’s been touched by something evil—that is, until she discovers a bell whose ring opens the gates to an Upside Down-esque hell known as Rowan Wood. Joined by a pair of unlikely partners, Adelaide must embark on a harrowing journey to free her mother’s soul from the Devil (spoiler: she meets a hot ghost) and finally bring the long-buried truths about her family to light.

Though born from very different visions—Spit Back the Bones pays homage to King’s late brother Jed while Bitterbloom was is a twist on a medieval legend—King underscores that the works are united by the concept of conformity as horror and the powerhouse female players who use their inner strength to surmount it.

“[Both books] have strong female characters who are expected to act one way by their community,” King adds. “Instead, they rip down the constructs that are trying to confine them to be a certain way.”

Survival Instincts

It’s in this thematic overlap where beauty and horror can go hand-in-hand if we let them, she says.

For starters, in a century where real-life ghouls—like global pandemics, the impending rise of AI, and beyond—increasingly rival the made-up ones that inhabit our closets and TV screens, King says that scary stories can also reinforce readers’ tenacity in the face of what feels like insurmountable terror.

In other words, if characters facing impossible odds can make it out in the end, then so can we.

“Horrible things happen in real life, but I’ve read these stories where things were even more horrible for someone else, and they survive it,” King says. “[I’d think], if this character can survive all of these crazy things, then I can get through whatever I’m dealing with.”

Then, there’s the distinct and singular beauty of burning it all down, whatever “it” might be (a relationship, a social construct, a career decision, etc.), but still letting yourself return to a place of softness and safety in the next chapter, and maybe even acknowledging that there’s beauty in the tough stuff, like hard-won growth or the destruction of a past life.

“I want my books to challenge those concepts,” adds King. “It’s okay to break apart and get angry, but I also want [readers] to be able to relate to the idea of [building] something new.”

The Next Story

In fact, King herself has recently embarked on a journey of reimagination.

Following a period of publication “limbo” and the ensuing burnout from releasing two books just months apart, King now works as a children’s librarian by day, a position she uses to inspire the next generation of readers through enthusiastically-selected titles (for burgeoning horror fans, she recommends The Clackity and Branden Mull’s Fablehaven series).

Though nothing’s set in stone just yet, there is another project in the works. Drafted in the late 2010s, the book, which King had previously tabled, is “a dark fantasy with a fun magic system,” though her lips are sealed as far as the rest. The plan is to revise the book, including voice and character modifications catered to a middle-grade audience, with the goal of finalizing and submitting for publication in the first half of 2027.

In fact, she hints that the genre swap from adult to middle grade might be even permanent; especially as it relates to equipping kids to fight societal monsters early on. (She’s even toyed with the idea of writing AI as a middle-grade antagonist!).

And it all started with cracking a scary story.

“Books give us the ability to escape for a while. I think that’s so important,” King adds. “It’s okay to step back sometimes and fall into a story.”

Check out Teagan Olivia King and her books at teaganoliviaking.com.