Horror A Hunter Called Night by Tim Waggoner

A sinister being called Night and her panther-like Harriers stalk their quarry, a man known only as Arron. Arron seeks refuge within an office building, a place Night cannot go, for it’s part of the civilized world, and she’s a creature of the Wild. To flush Arron out, she creates Blight, a reality-warping field that slowly transforms the building and its occupants in horrible and deadly ways. But unknown to Night, while she waits for the Blight to do its work, a group of survivors from a previous attempt to capture Arron are coming for her. The hunter is now the hunted.

“Tim Waggoner consistently delivers the goods when it comes to hard-hitting horror fiction, with compelling characters and dangerous horrors at every turn.” – This is Horror

“Tim Waggoner…has a knack for taking conventional horror tropes and giving them a deliciously bizarre spin.” – Horror Fiction Review

Tim Waggoner recently spent some time with The Big Thrill discussing his latest thriller, A HUNTER CALLED NIGHT.

Can you pinpoint a moment or incident that sparked the idea for this book?
When I was nineteen, the phrase “A Hunter Called Night” popped into my head, along with an image of the main character and the five panther-like creatures that are her servants. It took me almost forty years to find the right story for her, though!

Tim Waggoner

A novel is such a major undertaking; there’s the writing of it, of course, then you’re spending months and months revising, polishing, and then promoting it. How did you know this was the book you wanted to spend the next couple of years on?
Since I envisioned the character of Night so long ago, I knew that I wanted to “close the circle” with her and finally put her into a story. I wanted to play with the idea of civilization versus the wild — forces of order and chaos — and how people react differently when under the influence of each. Exploring ideas like these, using them to create an exciting and hopefully original story, is what keeps me excited about writing for the long haul.

Were there any particular books, movies, or songs that were knocking around in your head while you were writing this one?
Because the main action of the novel centers around horrific events happening inside an office building where people are trapped, the movies The Belko Experiment and Mayhem, along with Brian Keene’s novel The Complex were inspirations.

In addition to a great read, what do you hope readers will take away from this story?
A major theme of the book is how people react in extreme circumstances. They behave in ways that surprise others, and likely surprise themselves most of all. What would we do in extreme circumstances? What kind of person would be become? What would we do to survive? I hope readers ponder these questions.

What can you share about what you’re working on next?
I’m working on the second novel in horror/action-adventure series featuring entropy-fighting agents who work for an organization called Maintenance. The first book in the series is The Atrocity Engine, and the follow-up is called The Book of Madness.

Tim Waggoner writes horror and has published over fifty novels and seven short story collections. He’s a three-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, and he’s also published a number of articles on various aspects of writing in such magazines as Writer’s Digest and The Writer. He teaches creative writing and composition at Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio.

To learn more about the author and his work, please visit his website.