We chat with Megan Bontrager about The Sea Hides Its Dead, which follows a group of academics trapped in an underwater cave and must face a series of deadly, supernatural trials—each one demanding they confront their darkest sins—in this chilling aquatic cult horror debut.
Hi, Megan! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hello hello! I’m a lifelong horse girl and a recent TTRPG devotee currently based in Yorkshire. After a brief stint at a theatre conservatory, I received my BFA from the University of Central Florida, and an MA from Johns Hopkins. I’m in the liminal space of a half-finished PhD about Lady Macbeth and fan theory at the moment, and will absolutely finish that eventually (when the academic stars align). I have two rescue animals on whom I wait hand and foot, and am always one sad social media post away from adopting more… without my husband’s express approval. Sorry, Hunter.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
My grandfather was a writer and a lover of books, so I was deep in the world of stories from my earliest days. He had a whole library in the house they lived in for my whole life with books of all kinds, as well as his own never-to-see-the-light-of-day manuscripts tucked away. We used to go “camping” in the living room with a tent made from a broom and a sheet, and at camp I would concoct the most elaborate dramas for all the dolls I carted around with me. He’d always go along with it, and encouraged me to start writing it all down when I first showed an interest in it. This then evolved into writing terrible Final Fantasy fanfic, which he also read, to his credit. There was never a story too big, too small, too silly, too weird. It all started with him, and I feel like every story I tell comes back to him, too.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: A Horse Called Wonder by Joanna Campbell
- The one that made you want to become an author: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: We Sent Them Down Singing by Libby Edwardson
Your latest novel, The Sea Hides Its Dead, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Academic excursion goes really poorly.
What can readers expect?
The Sea Hides Its Dead is a cosmic horror, so readers can expect to cover a lot of “beyond the realm of human comprehension” territory. Cosmic horror is weird, because it always feels insurmountable. And that’s true here. The monster in the caves is larger than life and older than time, but it’s in human nature to try anyway in all adverse conditions, so there’s a lot of that in the book, too. Readers can expect a deeply flawed protagonist who grows to the best of her ability, a through-line of platonic love, and the worst academic man that’s ever existed. Also puns. I have a spiritual obligation to put at least one goof in every book.
Where did the inspiration for The Sea Hides Its Dead come from?
When I first started drafting, I was living to the south of Dublin on the coast. There was a lot of briny sea air in my everyday, so I knew immediately what the setting needed to at least touch on. I was also in the first year of my PhD, so you can imagine the kind of distress my brain was in at all times. At the same time, I was discovering Dungeons & Dragons for the very first time, and I was really going all-in with the character creation process. My first ever Dungeon Master didn’t know what to do when I showed up to a session with a sixteen-page lore document and a plan for my character’s political maneuverings in the region (Icewind Dale, for the enlightened). D&D opened my eyes to the intricacies of character depth, growth (positive and negative), and inner life in a way that I’d never really touched on before, and it made me wonder what a book might look like if all of that – the internal life, the secrets, and the balance of negative verses positive moral growth – was the heart of the narrative.
I fell into Dante’s Inferno as a vehicle for this once I’d already decided that I wanted the soul-baring trials to be a part of the plot structure. The idea of any iteration of Hell, the hyperfocus on sin and wrongdoing, and a journey to the heart of something – it felt like the perfect framework for the kind of character-driven horror I wanted to write.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I’m a big fan of platonic love in all forms of media, so the friendship between Caro and Mallory felt really special to write. It’s a hard balance, because with the nature of Caro’s emotional stuntedness and inability to see real connection, the friendship feels kind of wonky at first. Mallory is under the impression that they’ve been good friends for a while, but Caro is so blinded by her toxic attachment to Beck that she doesn’t really realize it until they’re in the thick of things. The “newsflash, dummy” moment where Caro realizes that she’s had a real, genuine friend all along – and that she’s seriously wasted time by overlooking that friendship – felt really cathartic to write, and it’s something that I hope resonates with people who’ve grown from similar situations to Caro’s.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
Caro is not an easy character. She’s unlikeable by design, and functions as a vehicle for talking about how narcissistic abuse can really mess with a person’s sense of self, ability to interact with others, and willingness to stick up for themselves. This was something that I was processing in my own personal life while writing, and so putting all of my own damage into a character was always bound to be rough going, no matter how well it may or may not end up for her. I actually disliked this book when I first turned it in to my agent! I sent the manuscript with a whole host of apologies, because I was convinced that Caro’s emotional journey was untenable – and since that’s the spine of the book, that would mean that the whole plot was an unbearable read, too. I was convinced that TSHID was going to live and die in my agent’s inbox, because I didn’t see it for what it really was and is. But my agent sat me down and told me otherwise, and it’s through her persistent encouragement that I realized that my difficulty with the book was really just difficulty with myself, and with things that I needed to address in my own brain, and in my own life. Once I did that work, I realized that Caro’s uncomfortable arc is necessary not only for the story, but for the necessity of narratives that highlight abuse in this way.
So everyone can take it from me: write the hard thing! Write the uncomfortable thing. It’ll work out.
What’s next for you?
My next book, a horrormance this time, is out in 2027 with Orbit! Think Annihilation meets The Boatman’s Daughter, set in a version of Okefenokee Swamp overrun with necromantic magic.
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up? Any you’ve read so far this year that you’ve enjoyed?
I have an ARC of The White North Has Thy Bones by Dorian Ravenscroft that I’m going to go crazy reading. I’m also stoked for Leigh Bardugo’s Dead Beat, Hannah Whitten’s Reliquary (more damp people having a bad time!), There Used to Be People Here by Kennedy Cole, and anything Hester Steel publishes next. I also have an ARC of Bitter Karella’s next book, Quaint Folk, which is something I feel very smug about having. And this is a hard left, but I also fell down a bit of a Lauren Palphreyman rabbit hole, so I’m going to need those werewolves to come home to me as soon as possible.
As for books out this year, I can recommend Our Cut of Salt by Deena Helm with my whole chest. I also loved Fawn by C.N. Vair, Home Sick by Rhiannon Grist, The Forest Bleeds by Rachel Kitch, (Mostly) Human Resources by Grace Viall, and (again) We Sent Them Down Singing by Libby Edwardson.
This is more than what you asked for, but you can never have too many recs!
