We chat with author Michelle Tang about Avery and Carlos Tam who travel to his ancestral home in the Philippines and they find that darkness clings to every corner. After a car crash leaves Carlos trapped in his own body, the house begins to stir. It watches. It listens. And it speaks—in a voice only Carlos can hear. As long-buried family lies begin to surface, Avery must confront the truth: that if the past won’t rest, their future may never begin.
Hi, Michelle! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hello! I’m a mother of two, an oncology nurse, and a speculative fiction writer. I was born in the Philippines, and immigrated to Canada as a young child. I dipped into my experiences going back home to visit family in order to write She Waits Where Shadows Gather, my debut horror novel that follows a Chinese-Filipino couple moving from Toronto to Manila.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was eleven. I remember filling up multiple notebooks when I was in grade school (with truly terrible poetry), and continued writing after I graduated from university. Writing took a back-burner when I started my nursing career and family, but I picked it back up in 2017 when I was off work for a while due to health issues.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: The Velvet Room by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
- The one that made you want to become an author: Spellbound by Christopher Pike
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
Your latest novel, She Waits Where Shadows Gather, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Secrets, superstitions, ghosts, resentment, and family.
What can readers expect?
Readers can expect an atmospheric haunted house story steeped in Filipino superstition and culture, featuring a toxic couple who love and resent each other in equal measure. It follows an unhappily-married couple trapped in an ancestral home full of spirits, and the book alternates between their very different perspectives.
Where did the inspiration for She Waits Where Shadows Gather come from?
One of my most persistent memories is climbing a very dark, very narrow staircase at my grandmother’s house. It was during a brownout, temporary losses of power common in the Philippines, and as a seven-year-old, I was scared. That image has stayed with me my whole life, and even though there was something comforting at the end—my grandmother—that staircase was the first thing I pictured when I decided to place the story in Manila, and I wanted to make the whole house feel as creepy. In terms of the dynamic between Avery and Carlos, as someone who often misses social cues, I was thinking about how two people might misinterpret each other, and what that might look like in a failing relationship from each person’s point-of-view.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I loved writing Carlos, because it was such an exercise to understand him and how he might see things, but Achi Tessa was my favourite character because her personality is an amalgamation of my aunts and cousins. Writing the dynamic between Tessa and Avery was really fun, I could feel them getting closer as the story progressed, which I actually hadn’t intended at first.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
I had two major challenges while writing (and rewriting) this book: I didn’t think I had the skill to write the story I envisioned, and I had a hard time reading/editing the manuscript objectively, because it felt so very personal. She Waits Where Shadows Gather was inspired by my family, my culture, and my memories of going back to Manila, and as such it was really hard to separate my own emotions from the characters’ in order find and fix the story’s flaws.
I overcame the first challenge by writing the book anyway, and then rewriting it, and with each iteration it grew closer to the story I wanted to tell. For the second challenge, I leaned heavily on my critique partners, my agent, Samantha Fabien, and my editor, Rachel Gilmer, and took a lot of breaks in between revisions so I could approach the book with fresh eyes.
What led you to horror?
I love being scared. I always have. Even now, I’ll watch scary movies and then sleep with the lights on for weeks. When I write, I try to recreate that feeling of dread, and horror can be mixed with almost any other genre, so the possibilities are endless.
This is your debut novel! What was the road to becoming a published author like for you?
I like to think there’s a lot of different paths to get to this point, and no way is wrong. I started off with short stories to work on my writing craft, and then moved up to novels. My first novel didn’t get much interest, so I wrote and queried another, which led me to signing with Samantha. To be honest, I think a large part of becoming a published author is luck, and I consider myself extremely lucky to have gotten this far.
What’s next for you?
I’ve got a second horror book coming out in 2027, also from Poisoned Pen Press, that I’m really excited about. And in the meantime, I’m always thinking about or working on the next book.
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up? Any you’ve read so far this year that you’ve enjoyed?
I just came out of a long reading rut, so these are older, but I loved Isabel Cañas’s La Hacienda, and Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box. For indie horror, I can’t stop thinking about Christopher O’Halloran’s Pushing Daisy, and Post-Haste Manor by Jolie Toomajan and Carson Winter. I’ve also been on a big romance/romantasy kick this year so highly recommend Phantasma by Kylie Smith, The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang, and anything by Shain Rose. And of course, Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I’m looking forward to reading Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker, Dead First by Johnny Compton, and Hear the Dead by Ann Dávila Cardinal.
