Guest post written by They Call Her Regret author Channelle Desamours
Channelle Desamours is a high school science teacher from Atlanta, Georgia who loves writing tales about magical Black girls. When she’s not napping to recover from her five a.m. writing sessions, she can be found building tiny homes on The Sims 4 or tending to her house plants.
About They Call Her Regret: In this young adult speculative mystery, a teen must find a way to free a cursed witch in order to save her best friend before time runs out. Out February 17th 2026.
Some of my earliest childhood memories are of watching The Twilight Zone with my great-grandmother. We’d cuddle up on the couch in the evenings and watch the unnerving, black-and-white stories unfold—tales that probably would have given most small children nightmares. For me, though, it was the beginning of a lifelong love affair with speculative fiction. The series was so influential to me that readers will likely find echoes of it embedded in everything I write. In a playful nod to the show, the main character in They Call Her Regret, Simone Washington, has a pet cat named Serling, after the show’s visionary narrator, Rod Serling. But inspiration from specific episodes can be found throughout the book in themes, character motivations, and moral dilemmas. Let’s take a look at a few examples!
“The Night Call” Season 5
This episode follows an elderly woman named Elva who keeps receiving frightening phone calls from an unknown caller. For years, Elva has been haunted by a choice she made as a young adult—a choice that came with deadly consequences. “The Night Call” ends with a devastating twist that left me with more questions than answers. How do we handle it when the mistakes we’ve made can’t be undone? What do we do when we desire forgiveness from someone who can’t—or won’t—offer it? And if we were presented with an opportunity for redemption, what would we be willing to sacrifice to claim it? These are all questions I enjoyed exploring in They Call Her Regret.
“Living Doll” Season 5
In this iconic episode, a cruel man is threatened by his stepdaughter’s new doll, Talky Tina. When I was a child, I had a talking Barbie doll that I thought sounded eerily similar to Talky Tina, but instead of being terrified by this, I was fascinated. After all, in the episode, Talky Tina is really just trying to be helpful to a little girl in need. In They Call Her Regret, you’ll meet a curious doll named Gabby Greta. Will she be of help to Simone—or will she turn out to be something more sinister?
“The Hitch-Hiker” Season 1
While on a cross-country road trip, Nan Adams keeps seeing the same hitchhiker everywhere she goes. This episode is suspenseful and deliciously eerie, but what I found most compelling was its focus on Nan’s growing desire for companionship amid mounting fear. She desperately doesn’t want to be alone, yet she can’t explain what she is experiencing without seeming utterly unstable—something she and Simone have in common.
“Nick of Time” Season 2
In this episode, a newlywed man becomes convinced that a cheap fortune-telling machine is actually predicting his future. I love how you can feel the characters’ anxiety slowly ramp up over the course of the story. One line from Rod Serling’s closing narration really stuck with me and became a major source of inspiration while drafting They Call Her Regret:
“Two people permanently enslaved by the tyranny of fear and superstition, facing the future with a kind of helpless dread.”
Simone feels that sense of dread intensely but must fight her way through it because the consequences of standing still are far worse.
“One for the Angels” Season 1
A salesman attempts to negotiate with Death to escape his own fate, only to discover that doing so may condemn an innocent person instead. They Call Her Regret is my own take on the dark, complex bargain trope—one that’s been a favorite of mine ever since the first time I watched this episode. I was also really drawn to the way Death was personified and chose to do something similar—but notably darker and scarier—in my book with Regret.
“The Self Improvement of Salvadore Ross” Season 5
One of my personal favorite episodes of the entire series, “The Self Improvement of Salvadore Ross,” follows a man who discovers he can trade characteristics with other people. Things get messy when he swaps out a certain personality trait in a futile attempt to win a woman’s affection. In They Call Her Regret Simone talks a lot about the masks she wears to please other people. She laments aspects of her own nature that she believes are flawed and would go to great lengths to keep them hidden. Lucky for her, she doesn’t share Mr. Ross’s ability—because if she did, she’d almost certainly find herself in the dark side of The Twilight Zone.
