With Fever House and The Devil by Name, Keith Rosson released two of the greatest and most popular horror books of 2023 and 2024. His fast-paced, brutal, heavy metal style is praised by readers and authors alike, with Stephen King, Joe Hill, and John Dies at the End’s Jason Pargin all showing love for Rosson’s books via their social media accounts.
We had the opportunity to chat with Rosson about the upcoming release of Coffin Moon, a high-octane road horror vampire novel, as well as the writers who inspire him, his recent horror movie favorites, and his writing process.
Horror Geek Life: What are some horror books or authors that had an early, important influence on your writing?
Keith Rosson: Oh God, you know, I always say that I always want to be a literary writer so badly. The navel-gazing character development of literary fiction, I love reading that stuff. But I grew up on a steady diet of Stephen King, G.I. Joe, and X-Men. I want to be a literary author, but I can’t put a ghost robot in my shit, you know? I just can’t help it.
Obviously, the big heavy hitters are the ones I could find in mass trade paperbacks as a kid. McCammon, King, and Koontz. Watchers was a huge influence on me. All of King’s early stuff, and then Swan Song by Robert McCammon. When we’re talking about pretty strict horror as a young kid, those were the three big ones that were just galvanizing for me.
HGL: Which of your books has been the most challenging to write, and which has been the most fun?
Keith Rosson: Dude, they all get exponentially harder! Especially now with my editor, Caitlin McKenna. I’ve worked with her on four books now, and she is so good, and she will continuously push me to improve the story. I feel like Smoke City, one of my early books, that one came out almost fully formed, and that’s just not the way I write anymore. I write really fast these days, the last four books, she has pushed me so much that maybe 10% of the original drafts are kept in what people read on the shelves.
It’s a question of finding what works and what doesn’t, and sometimes you need someone to step in with another set of eyes, and you have to be willing to listen to it. It’s hard sometimes to be receptive to that, and in your heart of hearts be like, “Oh… shit, she’s right. This can be improved.”
So yeah, I think Smoke City is the one I had the most fun with. It was the most wildly inventive and the most natural feeling. It was such a blast to write, like to research about the lives of medieval French executioners, and medieval France and Joan of Arc. I love inserting research. I was a bad student, so understanding that I’m pretty good at research was a cool little thing that I discovered later in life and have been able to use in my books.
HGL: How did it feel to have Stephen King publicly praise Fever House and The Devil by Name?
Keith Rosson: It’s so weird, because it’s somebody who was so integral to your early reading experiences, and then I was lucky enough to get to hang out with him when I did an event in Maine last year, and to like try and play it cool, and not slobber all over myself and dork out uncontrollably.
It was a challenge. I think I did the opposite and tried to play it so cool that I came off as standoffish or whatever, but awesome dude. He and Joe Hill, his kid, I really appreciate how they use their platforms to continually boost writers who don’t have the same pull that they do.
HGL: Do you plan on writing another book in that series, or just keeping it as a duology?
Keith Rosson: Random House bought it as a duology. I can see that if somehow a TV show or something takes off, and people are screaming for more, I could see a trilogy, but as of now, nobody has any plans. I mean, I would do it. I still think about Hutch and Tim a lot. I have tentative thoughts of where I could see how the story goes here and here, but as of now, no one’s really clamoring for it.
HGL: There seems to be a “heavy metal feel” behind your last few books, Coffin Moon included. Is the heavy metal genre something that’s inspired your writing and creativity?
Keith Rosson: You know, I came up in punk in the ‘90s and started doing fanzines. I kind of made the leap from creative nonfictional fanzines to short story writing, and eventually to novels. I’ve just been writing for so long that I think that kind of style gets so ingrained in me as a writer that I almost couldn’t help it.
It’s kind of like what I was mentioning earlier with literary fiction. I would love to write about the slow dissolution of a marriage or something, but there’s got to be a werewolf in it too just to keep my own interest.
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HGL: How did you come up with the idea for Coffin Moon?
Keith Rosson: I wrote Coffin Moon while Fever House was being edited. I wrote it in like seven weeks, and I turned it in, and my editor was like “Yeah, this does not work, dude.” I kept like 10% of it and changed so much of the familial dynamics. It’s kind of a road trip in the latter half, but it started out in the first draft as a road trip novel. There was a lot wrong with it, but there was a lot of that kind of jubilance.
Fever House was my fourth book, and to get a book deal like that, and I’ve always had people who have had faith in me, but to get this larger overarching umbrella of people who are like, “Hell yes, man, you can do it!”, I was writing like a champ. Unfortunately, it was salvageable, but it wasn’t good. There were a lot of revisions, and the one I’m wrapping up now has gone through even more revisions. It’s just part of the process now.
HGL: The two main characters of Coffin Moon, Duane and Julia, they share a trauma early in the book, and obviously, they process it in different ways: one is prone to self-destruction, and the other is hellbent on revenge. When creating them and writing them, was it difficult to stay in a balance that contained both characters?
Keith Rosson: Yeah, because both of them, their lives just get upended. Duane is a sad sack who is completely devastated, and taking care of his niece, Julia, is kind of all he has to hang on, and he’s not doing a very good job of it. In earlier subsequent drafts, he was doing even less of it and was more self-destructive. My editor was like, “Take him by the hand a little bit, and have him be a little more of a participant in the story.”
My entire schtick as a writer is to convince you that these characters are believable. If I can do that, then anything else, any other ghost robot I bring up, doesn’t matter. It’s the people that matter, and what their hearts, and minds, and intentions are that matter. So, if I can do that, hopefully readers will be along for the ride. I couldn’t have them both be cartoonishly vengeful. I needed that balance between those two characters.
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HGL: How did you come up with the character of John Varley? Were there any established villains you were thinking of when creating him?
Keith Rosson: Here’s the challenging part about talking about books. I wrapped that book up with final edits like six or seven months ago, and that shit becomes fog-like, the creative process becomes ethereal and I’m like, “How did I do that?” I don’t know what it was like writing Varley, and I know that’s such a cop-out answer.
HGL: Well, I can tell you that while I was reading Coffin Moon, he felt like Ron Perlman’s Clay from Sons of Anarchy meets David from The Lost Boys.
Keith Rosson: Right! Yeah, at his core, he came up at a certain age and was affected by this very casual brutality. He was very fun to write, because again, you have to straddle that line between cartoonishly violent and cartoonishly evil. It was harder to navigate that line with him, because he is such a bad guy, but he was a lot of fun to write.
HGL: The cover artwork for Coffin Moon, Fever House, and The Devil by Name is all rad! Who did the artwork for them?
Keith Rosson: The woman who did Fever House and The Devil by Name is Ella Latham. I believe she’s now with Saga Press. The Coffin Moon cover was done by Aarushi Menon, and we did the most minute tweaks on it, like making the teeth bigger, and that was it. It was ‘70s, vintage, pulp horror. Absolutely amazing.
HGL: So, you wrote a book of short stories called Folk Songs for Trauma Surgeons. Do you prefer writing longform novels or short stories?
Keith Rosson: It’s been so long since I’ve written a short story, that I get scared that I don’t know how to anymore. I know that isn’t true, but I just haven’t worked that muscle. It’s a totally different set than writing a novel. I’m really hoping to get another book of short stories out soon; it will be this next deal I have coming up. It will be fun to use that muscle more, but as of now, I only find myself in novel writing.
HGL: What is your favorite horror movie, and has it influenced any of your stories?
Keith Rosson: I think Talk to Me was the last one to really hit all those notes of grief and violence, and a surreal, supernatural environment. If it were a wine, I’d swish it around and say, “Ahh, nice!” It hits all the notes of everything I want in a horror movie. It has some intense shit in there that I still can’t watch. I can’t watch Bring Her Back yet, I’m not ready. Talk to Me is probably top five for me, but I have a hard time listing off my favorite movies and books.
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HGL: Along with Coffin Moon, is there anything you’d like your fans and our readers to be on the lookout for?
Keith Rosson: Yeah, Coffin Moon comes out on September 9th, and then after that, next year, I’ve got a witch-crime novel coming out called CRONE. Beyond that, we’ll see what the future holds!
We thank Keith Rosson for his time and for the fantastic exclusive interview. You can follow Rosson on Instagram, Bluesky, or his personal website.
Coffin Moon will be released on September 9, 2025, from Penguin Random House.
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