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Joe Hill, The Man Who Wouldn’t Be King
Detail from cover of Joe Hill’s Horns.
Given the critical and sales success of his horror fiction, author Joe Hill is almost inevitably asked about his famous father, Stephen King, the undisputed master of that particular genre. Hill never ducks the question, but he also reminds folks he sent out his first often-rejected manuscripts under a pseudonym, figuring that publishers would publish anything by him “just to make a quick buck on the last name” as he said in a recent interview. Hill’s fiction, which blends high concepts, pop culture references, and character-driven story lines, has grabbed the attention of a lot of readers and normally horror-adverse critics, who lavished praise on his story collection 20th Century Ghosts and his debut novel Heart-Shaped Box. His latest novel, Horns, tells the story of Ig Perrish, a man who wakes up one morning to discover he’s grown a pair of devil’s horns that give him bizarre powers of persuasion, powers he puts to use to find the killer who raped and murdered the love of his life. [email protected] editor-in-chief James Grainger interviewed Hill, who is in town today to read from Horns at the Lillian H. Smith Library on College.
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