We chat with author Tanya Pell about This B Just Won’t Die!, which is a humorous, heart-pounding, feminist slasher follows an aging scream queen as she is pursued by a serial killer mimicking the murders from her horror films.
Hi, Tanya! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Absolutely! I like to lead with my bio and say I’m a narcoleptic horror author who drinks bougie coffee. I live in the Carolinas with my family and two trauma rescue dogs. I used to be an English teacher, and then, I was an aerial instructor, and now, I write horror. I’ve pretty much covered all my childhood dreams except for Broadway, but I guess there’s still time.
Your new novel, This B Just Won’t Die!, is out October 13th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Perimenopausal final girl gets angry.
What can readers expect?
Slasher with satire. I wanted to write a slasher that not only made fun of itself–because who doesn’t like to laugh at themselves a little–but also had something to say about the way women are treated in the industry, the way we view ourselves, how we constantly feel judged, and how final girls have evolved beyond accidental survivors.
Where did the inspiration for This B Just Won’t Die! come from?
I have body dysmorphic disorder, and one day, I just had this flash of an idea of a woman sitting at a horror convention signing photos of herself from years past, and I thought what would I think if I had to do that day in and day out? And there was Barbra and that first line, and it never changed. It went into a Word file along with a mood board in March 2022 and grew from there.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
Barb was easiest and possibly most cathartic to write because so much of me is Barb. My intrusive thoughts and my dark humor and the way I can be pacified with potatoes or coffee. I loved writing Leesa because she is Barb’s foil. She is all the things Barb–and women in general–want to say but don’t because polite society. She’s a study in contradictions, and I loved writing all of them. And of course, Bill Curry, because Bill was an amalgamation of all these horror icons I loved growing up. He was enjoyable to write because I wasn’t just writing him as those characters on screen, but as the actors after having watched their interviews and reading their autobiographies and seeing interviews about working with them. He was like trying to write all those layers at once.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
Slashers operate on a system of rules that we’re all pretty used to by now, especially since Wes Craven so famously pointed them out in Scream. What I wanted to do was still abide by those rules while making fun of them while recognizing that in a real world scenario those rules would be ridiculous and the final girl who had played a final girl for years would recognize that those rules would be ridiculous. The idea was to make it a meta slasher that was both revolutionary and reactionary horror. On top of that, I had a forty-year-old final girl that I wanted to give agency. And I wanted us to be in her head so we saw that she wasn’t just afraid of the bogeyman. She was afraid of what people thought of her. That she wasn’t pretty enough or smart enough or good enough. Because that’s the test for a true final girl, isn’t it? Being good enough? So, this was a balancing act, and I had the best time.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I think it was 10th grade history when we had to keep a journal as if we were in the French Revolution. It was Mr. Peters’ class, and he had us read entries out loud every so often, and I remember reading mine one day which was about watching a public execution by guillotine and the entire class going very quiet. It was probably only a few seconds after I was finished, but it felt like forever, and my teacher just said, “Wow.” I thought, “Oh, I could get used to this.”
What’s next for you?
I have a monster/motherhood grief horror coming out next fall with Gallery called A DARKNESS RATHER BLACKER. It is about grieving mother Ryan, who finds herself on an organized hike to an abandoned kirk in the Scottish Highlands. But as she tries to come to terms with the death of her son, she and the rest of the group find themselves being hunted. And while they make their way to the kirk, she finds a lost child out on the moors and may have to protect her from more than one monster. I also have my first YA called ABANDONED HOPE coming in 2028 with Shortwave, and that will be their first young adult on their new YA imprint. And I have some short stories making their way through various pipelines.
Lastly, what books have you enjoyed reading this year? Are there any you’re looking forward to picking up?
This year, I’ve really loved On Sundays She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield, Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt by Ben Reeves, The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan, and It Came From Neverland by Cynthia Pelayo. I’m really looking forward to Cassandra Khaw’s Find Me Where it Ends, Dichotomy by Kat Silva, and She’s All the Rage by Leigh Radford.
