Welcome to my weekly Author Spotlight. I’ve asked a bunch of my author friends to answer a set of interview questions, and to share their latest work.
Today: Minnesota native Chloe Spencer (she/her) is an award winning writer, indie gamedev, and filmmaker. She is the author of multiple sapphic horror novellas, novels, and short stories. In her spare time she enjoys playing video games, trying her best at Pilates, and cuddling with her cats. She holds a BA in Journalism from the University of Oregon and an MFA in Film and Television from SCAD Atlanta.
Thanks so much, Chloe, for joining me!
J. Scott Coatsworth: Do you read your book reviews? How do you deal with bad or good ones?
Chloe Spencer: This is so bad, but I do! I try to read my earliest reviews on sites like Goodreads or Storygraph. The thing that I’ve come to understand is that I can’t control how someone feels about my work once it’s out in the world. Most of the time, I think people are upset about some of the graphic violence that’s within my books. I can do my best to educate readers about what sort of content they’ll encounter in the book by providing trigger warnings, but I can’t make people read trigger warnings, or make readers do research to find them. Other times, I’ve found reviews that just… don’t necessarily understand the story or the characters. In the end, I try to focus less on what’s posted in the reviews, and more about marketing to the correct audience on social media.
JSC: What do you do if you get a brilliant idea at a bad time?
CS: Since attending film school, I’ve developed a knack for writing down loglines for story ideas. Loglines are basically single sentence descriptions of what happens in a story: they describe the main character, their obstacle, their goal, and any potential antagonists. When I have an idea that comes to mind, but I’m working on something else, I open a Word doc, write down the logline, and any other small details that can help me remember what inspired that story, such as key character traits, or research topics I need to focus on.
JSC: Are there underrepresented groups or ideas featured if your book? If so, discuss them.
CS: There are tons of underrepresented groups featured in my books. As a disabled, neurodivergent person, I try to write characters that reflect my experiences. Monstersona and Haunting Melody both have protagonists who have PTSD, which I have as well. Haunting Melody is probably the most inclusive story that I’ve written in that the characters have multidimensional identities. Melody, the protagonist, is a mid-sized, disabled, bisexual femme girl. Cyrus, her love interest, is a plus-sized Latina butch lesbian.
JSC: What were your goals and intentions in this book, and how well do you feel you achieved them?
CS: Whereas Monstersona, my previous YA work, centered on the onset of PTSD, Haunting Melody focuses on a protagonist who has been in treatment for some time, and how she navigates life with this disability. A lot of the coping mechanisms, such as breathing techniques and counting colors, are ones that I use in my daily life. But just as she has coping mechanisms, she also has bad ones. She has rage attacks, flashbacks, and instances where she’s overstimulated and unable to calm down. I think Haunting Melody successfully demonstrates what it’s like to live with PTSD, and the ways that it limits you.
JSC: Who did your cover, and what was the design process like?
CS: Alex Moore, who is a comic artist, designed the cover for the book. I had the pleasure of working with Alex on Monstersona and on Haunting Melody, but I think the process was a bit different this time around! When it came to my first YA book, I had a strong idea of what I wanted it to look like, but Haunting Melody was more abstract. My publisher and I just had ideas of what we wanted to include: art deco elements, the theater where the characters first meet, and the general vibe to be sinister but romantic. But I had no idea what pose I wanted the characters to be in or anything like that; I was at a total loss. Thankfully, Alex is good with taking vague details and transforming into a gorgeous result.
They tend to produce a few different sketches or drafts to give us an idea of what directions we can go in. I think there were about four proposed poses for Melody and Cyrus on the cover, but the one with Cyrus slicing the bow across Melody’s neck was the one that knocked me out. It’s unique and brilliant and communicates everything about the book that I wanted to!
JSC: Tell us one thing about them that we don’t learn from the book, the secret in their past.
CS: I think my characters are open about their pasts, but the world itself is not as clear-cut as it seems. So, Haunting Melody implements a technique found in other books such as Tiffany D. Jackson’s The Weight of Blood, which uses articles or other resources to tell you more about the world. These resources, which range from podcast scripts to textbooks to diary entries, precede each chapter.
I think one thing that a reader might ask themselves is how legitimate is the practice of ghost hunting. There are debates between the characters in the book about what should be done with ghosts and spirits that won’t cross over. Melody grew up with a practice that involves sending ghosts to a dimension called “The Beyond,” but there are other experts within her community that believe ghosts should be allowed to exist in tandem with the living—these opinions have been largely suppressed by the leaders within their community.
If I got a chance to write a sequel for Haunting Melody, I would explore how “The Beyond” isn’t real; it’s just a wormhole. It’s a gimmick made up by corporate ghost hunting entities to sell their technology and equipment to ghost hunters, and the most powerful voices in the community have been paid off by these corporations to endorse and influence others to keep doing them.
This idea is something extremely tragic, as it basically means souls have been sent to some place that actually isn’t helping them in the way they think it is… there was simply not enough time to explore that in this book, but it would be so cool to do it in a sequel.
JSC: What inspired you to write this particular story? What were the challenges in bringing it to life?
CS: I was inspired to write this story because as I was recovering from PTSD and going to therapy for treatment, I realized that there were a lot of books that centered on mental health topics like depression and anxiety, but a limited number that focused on PTSD. I think some of the challenges involved borrowing inspiration from my life and translating that into Melody’s—I didn’t want her to be too similar to me.
JSC: Who has been your favorite character to write and why?
CS: I simply LOVE Cyrus! I honestly think I had the idea for Cyrus before I had the idea for Melody. I wanted to write someone who was a great catch. Cyrus is funny, sweet, and tremendously talented—she’s the kind of character that I could sit down and talk to for hours and I wouldn’t get bored.
JSC: Do you have any strange writing habits or superstitions?
CS: One of my strangest writing habits is that if I haven’t worked on a manuscript in a while, even if I’ve got an outline done, I need to start over from the very beginning. Yep. I have to refamiliarize myself with the book, and sometimes an outline can’t help me accomplish that. So I will reread my own work, edit it as I go, and then pick up where I left off. This means that when I try to return to a manuscript, it can take me several days-to-weeks. To prevent this from happening, I try to write every single day, but alas, with how busy I’ve been this summer, I haven’t been too successful.
Another thing: sometimes when I encounter writer’s block, I realize that it’s happening because a scene or a key detail NEEDS to be edited into the manuscript. A lot of writers will say that you need to just push through and finish, but sometimes I can’t do that; I must go back and fix it. I find that once I’ve done this, it helps me to feel better about a draft, and finish it quicker.
JSC: What are you working on now, and what’s coming out next? Tell us about it!
CS: I’m working on two YA projects right now! The first is a steampunk fantasy mystery about an escaped trapeze artist turned cat burglar, and the other is my upcoming horror novella, CodeSkull, with Mad Axe Media. CodeSkull centers on a teenage gamer in the 1990s who unknowingly unleashes a technological terror upon her town and has to team up with her worst enemy in order to stop it. It should release in July 2025!
And now for Chloe’s new book: Haunting Melody:
Failure is a sinister song. One that Melody Myere is all too familiar with.
The only child of an acclaimed ghost hunter couple, Melody’s First Sacred Hunt should have been a walk in the park. All she needed to do was catch a ghost, like she’s done all her life. But when an unexpected wraith showed up causing havoc, Melody was left scarred and embarrassed.
Suffering from depression and PTSD post-hunt, Melody relocates to the sleepy island town of Murkmore, where her parents have been tasked with capturing the ghost responsible for a series of grisly deaths. Determined to prove herself, and despite her parents’ protests, Melody sets out to capture the specter on her own.
When a haunting song lures Melody to an abandoned theater, she encounters a recently deceased musical prodigy by the name of Cyrus. All signs point to Cyrus being the killer, but Melody isn’t so sure, suspecting something more discordant is afoot.
Haunted by more than just a sinister song, Melody must learn to trust her instincts to catch the killer and prove herself before it’s time to face the music.
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Excerpt
Prologue
Three kisses for good luck. Forehead, nose, and lips. It’s a ritual I’ve shared with Brynne since our sixth coffee shop date two years ago, and I’m all the more grateful for it because tonight is my First Sacred Hunt, so I need all the luck I can get. She holds me ever so briefly before stepping back and letting me put on my gear. Dad upgraded my cap-can before tonight, and the silver hose attachment has been polished to the point of perfection, my reflection visible on its surface. The pockets of my cargo pants are stuffed with bags of freshly blessed salt. All my years of training alongside my parents have led up to this.
I am ready. More than ready. Born ready.
So why do I feel so nervous?
Brynne frowns, her lower lip protruding in a childlike puppy
pout. She rubs my shoulder affectionately, but there’s a stiffness to her touch. “What’s wrong?”
“I—I don’t know.”
Her brow furrows. “Don’t psych yourself out, Melody. You’ve got this. It’s one little ghost. You’ve bagged them on your own before.”
Yeah, but that was different. When I was accompanying my parents on a mission, they were there to help if anything went awry. They were always one floor above me, or one hallway over. Tonight, I’m entering this giant Victorian mansion surrounded by foreboding, jagged trees to capture a ghost entirely on my own—such are the rules of the First Hunt as it’s written in the Thistlefeayr Tomes, the sacred text of our people. Brynne lucked out on her First Hunt. The Apostles’ mission for her was to track down a little girl ghost living in an abandoned carnival on the other side of Harbor’s Edge, a city about a half hour away from Mountain Ridge. She even figured out how to turn on the carousel and go for a ride while waiting for the will-o’-wisp to appear.
With how wretched this place looks, I’ll be lucky if I don’t fall through the floor. The foundation is so lopsided, the house seems to quake in the August breeze. Many of the roof tiles are missing, and in their place are clumps of visible spores—an unfortunate side effect of too much ectoplasm in a poorly insulated environment. The fuzzy white masses pulsate with a sickeningly slow rhythm, like the lungs of a chain-smoking cancer patient. Instinctively I pull my mask over my nose and mouth. I’m pretty sure I won’t inhale spores from standing here, but the last time I had ectochitis, I was laid up for three weeks, hacking blue phlegm into the trash can beside my bed.
“Melody.” Brynne nudges my shoulder a little too aggressively.
She nods in the direction of my parents and our family’s Apostle, Simon Wallace, who have gathered at the base of the rickety porch steps. I glance overhead at the crescent moon hanging high in the sky, glowing a radiant amber even through the cover of clouds obscuring it.
It is time.
We walk over to the others and Mom squeezes me a little too hard, forcing all the air from my lungs. Dad smiles at me and tousles my russet-brown hair before giving me a kiss on the head. They’re all joyful, except for Simon. For as long as I’ve known this man—which has basically been since birth—he hasn’t liked to smile. Dark expression, dark hair, dark energy. He clears his throat, as if such a display of affection is offensive to him. With watchful blue eyes, he pinches his fingers together, touches them to his tongue (gross), and uses them to flip to the proper page in the Tomes. As Simon begins to recite the incantation, my mother rubs my cheeks and forehead with sea-salt salve for good luck. The gristly goop seeps into my pores, and I can already feel tomorrow’s breakout erupting underneath the surface of my skin. Again—if it’ll help me out, I’ll take it.
“Spirits in Sanctity, Spirits of the Beyond, and Spirits Ancestral, heed our prayer. Melody Myere, Whisperer in Kind, shall begin her First Sacred Hunt, and on this most precious night, we ask that the Three Bodies watch over her…”
In the light of the moon, listening to the low rumble of Simon’s voice as he recites his prayer from the scripture, my heartbeat quickens. Not even the smiling faces of my girlfriend or my parents can comfort me. What is wrong with me? I’ve done this before. I bagged my first ghost when I was ten years old. It’s burned into the surface of my memory like a Polaroid. Little boy in a yellow rain jacket, in the heart of the Canopy Woods in the Western Wildlands, his gray paper-thin skin melting into the open receptacle of the roaring hose—
“Melody.”
I jerk my head up, my gaze fixing on Simon’s unfriendly face. The tome is closed, folded tightly across his chest in the same way a young girl would protect her diary from prying eyes. It would be comical if this wasn’t supposed to be so serious. I try to nod my head slowly, like I’ve been listening this whole time and appreciating the recitation, but Mom knows better. She touches my sticky forehead.
“What’s wrong? Are you feverish?” She turns to Dad, the pace of her voice quickening as her anxiety climbs. “Honey, she’s hot. I don’t think she feels well.”
I brush Mom’s hand from my forehead. I wish that Brynne would say something, but she regards me with this bizarrely icy look, her pupils mere pinpricks, her jaw clenched like she’s chewing a tough stick of jerky. What, is she disappointed with me? Why? I haven’t failed yet. No, I won’t fail.
“I’m fine, Mom.” A lie. “Just…can’t believe it’s really happening.” Well, that’s true.
I felt like my First Sacred Hunt was never going to happen. When you’ve known about it from the age of five, but can’t do it until your sixteenth birthday, I mean, the anticipation builds and builds and builds—no wonder I feel fit to burst. I’m fine. I double-check the placement of my mask on my face, flick my cap-can on and off to test the battery, and drum my fingers against my chest to quiet my pounding heart. Underneath my button-up shirt, my tactical chain mail vest, crafted from the finest of blessed silver, bears no gaps, tears, or imperfections. And why would it? It’s brand new. Bought special for me. Special for today.
“Honey?” Dad asks, his smile kind but his voice stiff.
He’s getting freaked out the longer I stand here. So am I. He nods in the direction of the house, encouraging me to go inside and start the ritual.
I hope my eyes are smiling. “I’m all set.”
I walk up the steps of the ramshackle house, each one creaking underneath my weight as I go. Once on the porch landing, I take a deep breath, then wrench open the door. It creaks loudly, the hinges threatening to snap off the rotten wood frame, but miraculously stays intact as I maneuver inside. I squeeze my eyes shut as the door closes behind me, and when I open them, I’m greeted by tarnished floorboards, weathered wallpaper roses, and a crystal chandelier with a missing light bulb. Although extravagant, the light fixture is grimy and sad, like an engagement ring that fell down a drainpipe.
Most of the furniture was ransacked over the years, judging from the scuff marks and less dusty spaces outlining where things used to be. Some stuff remains: Sun-faded family portraits hang from the walls, the bleached eyes of their subjects ever watchful, even underneath years’ worth of dust. A stained red Persian rug runs down the length of the hallway. Decades ago, I’m sure it was beautiful. It doesn’t deserve to rot in a place like this—and rotting it is. The stench of ectoplasm, sticky-sweet but noxious, clings to the walls. I tentatively place a gloved hand against the peeling wallpaper, and a mucus-thin layer of blue goo sticks to it in weblike strings. The resident of this house staked their claim a long time ago, and they probably won’t be too happy to see me.
I flatten my back against the wall as I walk by the staircase. This is an easy place for a ghost to jump you from above. You’re always vulnerable going up or down, Dad told me. You never want to leave your back exposed for too long. As I make my way through the foyer, I pull out one of my little bags of salt and sprinkle a trail behind me. Should I need to retreat or retrace my steps, this will keep me protected. Most ghosts don’t like salt. For whatever reason, if they touch it, it burns little holes through their forms. Maybe they don’t feel pain, but they sure don’t like watching themselves disappear.
A ceramic clatter echoes from the kitchen, and I stick my cap- can’s hose around the corner of the doorway before looking inside. It’s empty, aside from the lone plastic mixing bowl rattling in circles on the counter. Nothing in it. There’s a giant gap between the scratched-up marble countertops where a stove used to be, rust and rot staining the wall a putrid shade of brown. No reason to be in this kitchen, but if the ghost is making noise, he’s letting me know he sees me.
The end of this mission might come sooner than I think.
I sprinkle a little more salt behind me and walk through the kitchen into the dining room. Scattered newspapers and crumpled-up coupons carpet the floor, signs that someone has been here recently. A pathway guides me into the center of the room, the other side of which is walled off by an overturned dining table, cardboard boxes, and piles of trash. Something is etched on the underside of the table.
SUZIE WUZ HERE AUGUST ’00
I can’t help but crack a smile. In creepy, ghost-inhabited spaces, it’s always nice to find signs of people who once lived here, no matter how many years ago it was. For some reason, it helps me feel a little less alone. I run my hands over the table, pulling away tiny droplets of ectoplasm. Suddenly, a chill courses through me, and in the pocket of my cargo pants, my EMF reader whistle-whirs anxiously, its pitch undulating.
Someone is in here.
Panic flutters in my chest. I pull back the trigger on my hose, and the cap-can rumbles in warning. No point in staying quiet anymore. This is the part of the hunt where the ghost will try to assert dominance over the intruder—where they’ll try to scare me into fleeing the scene. Although there’s a dead end in front of me, the wall of boxes looks smaller and easier to push through a few feet down from where I’m standing. I walk over and unceremoniously kick over the boxes, then trudge through. But as my foot hits the ground, something slick grips onto it. Ew. More ectoplasm, gobs of it, smeared on the floor. I turn my back to the wall and grit my teeth, trying to free my boot from its clutches, but the sound of something else fills the air. More whirring from my EMF reader? No. Not the same. Then I realize it’s not a whirring but a buzzing: a flurry of buzzing from desperate, hungry flies. Swirling through the air ahead of me, a cluster of them is swarming something—no, someone.
Someone is sitting on the ground.
The EMF reader whirs, its shrill screams piercing and painful like a tornado siren. Even the flies are fearful; they disperse immediately, darting toward the wilting rafters overhead. Their absence exposes the face of their last meal: an old man whose bloated blue tongue hangs limply from between his lips. A soft, rose-colored foam nestles at the corners of his eyes and nose. A gaping hole in his chest, its fleshy edges shriveled from dehydration and putrefied blood, serves as a window into his broken rib cage. The splinters of crisscrossed bone inside resemble a bird’s nest. Solidified gore, dried after the Spirits know how many days, surrounds the hole, staining the ends of his plaid shirt and denim pants.
I resist the urge to shit myself and instead grab the radio from the holster around my waist. My trembling fingers fumble to press the Talk button, and my heart quakes within my chest when I hear the chattery static.
“Mom, Dad, wrai—”
Before the words can escape my mouth, a hideous screech shreds the air, rattling the walls. My breath comes out in icy puffs as the air rapidly cools. I already know where the wraith is, but I can’t help my morbid curiosity.
I tilt my head back and look at the ceiling.
The wraith floats above me, its black cloak billowing around its formless figure like a cloud of smoke. Its face resembles a mummified human, the skin so thin and tattered it’s almost skeletal. Eyeless, its sense of smell and hearing are keen—it’s the strongest of all the ghost types. Its mouth is full of sharp, crocodile-like teeth: prehistoric and gnarled, but tough, stained red with blood.
Wraiths are born when a living being dies in an extremely traumatic way. It’s as though the trauma destroys their minds, leaving their souls lost and left to wander for decades, usually centuries. They’re one of the worst ghosts you can encounter, as they are the only type that feels inclined to eat humans, despite that they don’t need to eat to survive. Another fun fact about wraiths? They can’t be sucked up into cap-cans easily. Unlike other ghosts, whose clothes stick to them stiffly underneath the layer of ectoplasm, the cloaks of wraiths are large and tangled— and can easily clog the hose attachment. Now, as for how to capture wraiths? I have no damn clue.
A drop of blood from the creature’s mouth smudges my cheek, right above my mask. I grimace but remain still. The blind husk hovers menacingly over me, its spindly hands stretching toward me. I tuck and roll out of the way, which frustrates the creature enough to make it shriek. Spirits, that shriek.
Eager for a taste, the wraith claws at my back with sharp, bony fingers, but it hisses in pain and recoils as it grazes the blessed silver. Outside, the panicked commotion of the others grows louder as they realize what’s in here with me. My radio crackles and snarls, Mom’s cries desperately trying to break through, but the wraith’s presence is overpowering it. I take a deep breath, spring to my feet, and sprint back into the kitchen. The bowl on the counter violently rattles and whips in my direction with intimidating force. Somehow I duck just before it hits the wall with a resounding slam, leaving a crater riddled with spiderweb cracks. My lungs feel empty and my eyes are blurry from tears, but I have no choice but to keep running.
Exiting the kitchen, I scramble through the foyer and make a beeline for the door. The salt trail I left behind earlier does not ward off the wraiths; they’re tougher than that. The wraith springs after me, its claws digging into the moldy runner that lines the front hall, tearing it seam by seam from the floor, tripping me with a tumultuous wave. I crash headfirst into the railing of the stairs. The trigger for the hose jams and the cap-can switches on.
Head throbbing, I roll onto my back before the wraith pounces on me. It screeches like a pterodactyl, gnashing its teeth, and I scream, gripping its jaws and prying them open.
This is not how I want to die.