Joseph Stone is a historical, dark-fantasy novelist who lives in San Diego, California. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from San Diego State University and a Master of Arts in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.
1. Congratulations on your upcoming release, Blood Witch! How does it feel to be returning to The Haunted Women series after A Perfect Night introduced readers to Fran and Aurora?
Thank you! I’m excited to be with these characters again, and I can’t wait for readers to continue Fran’s journey with me. From the moment I finished A Perfect Night, I was driving the story forward in my imagination, and I’m thrilled to finally share what happens next.
2. You’ve written about werewolves in The Lykanos Chronicles and ghosts in The Haunted Women. What excites you most about continuing Fran’s story in this darker, more gothic direction?
I’m a huge fan of Gothic literature. From Mary Shelley to Nathaniel Hawthorne to Shirley Jackson, I’ve found no genre more enthralling or fulfilling. In fact, the first three books I can remember reading on my own as a boy were done by Bram Stoker, Gaston Leroux, and Anne Rice. After they came into my life, ordinary fiction never stood a chance. Decades later, I find it hard to recall a story I care about that doesn’t feature intense passion with a thunderstorm rumbling in the background.
3. If someone is meeting your work for the first time with Blood Witch, what’s the one thing you’d like them to know before they begin?
I want new readers to know they can trust me. This is a dark fantasy, and they might not be ready for some themes they’ll face. But I promise to guide them every step of the way through this haunted house.
4. In A Perfect Night, Fran believed her mother’s spirit was guiding her. In Blood Witch, we learn the truth is far more unsettling. Without giving too much away, how did you decide to shift from comfort to horror in Fran’s journey?
The purpose of this story has always been to show life from a different perspective. Fran begins as a child in A Perfect Night, losing her mother before the end of the prologue. Throughout the story, she comes of age believing in one constant: that her mother’s spirit remains with her after death. That belief causes her to interpret every moment of her adolescent development through a unique lens. No matter what others tell her, she knows what she believes is true. But, like all of us, Fran must eventually see the world through an adult’s eyes. A Blood Witch is the story of what happens to Fran when all she believes is stripped away, forcing her to abandon the comforts of childhood to face the horrors that await her in adulthood.
5. Aurora was such a powerful figure in the first book. Can you tease how her presence continues to shape Fran’s life in Blood Witch?
Fran’s great-aunt, Aurora, appears throughout this novel via the collection of documents she left to Fran at the end of A Perfect Night. Although we only hear her voice through her writings, each letter is written explicitly to Fran and filled with her insights and advice. As the hidden truths of their shared haunted history unfold, it is Aurora who leads Fran forward. In this way, the girl doesn’t feel entirely abandoned as she confronts the truth of her situation with the ghost that has followed the women of their family through centuries.
6. The Haunted Women series blends family legacy with supernatural terror. Why do you think generational secrets and inherited burdens make for such powerful storytelling?
I believe many of us are naturally curious about our family histories, mainly because we know so little about our pasts. Unless you were born to an economic class of people with the resources to record their histories before photography became commonplace, most ordinary histories are lost to time completely. Think about how many movies have been made about Europe’s royal families. Does anyone genuinely care about the life of Queen Elizabeth I of England? *Raises hand* Even when those movies are wildly inaccurate, I watch them because I find other people, places, and eras fascinating. Adding a ghost and some witches to a family’s troubled story is the icing on the cake for me.
7. Fran is stepping into adulthood in this novel college, independence, and first love. How did you balance those everyday experiences with the shadow of Daedrian’s presence?
While writing this story, I realized from the start that the only way Fran could survive was for me to surround her with strong, loving people. The bonds formed in the first novel anchor Fran to the real world, no matter how strange and terrifying it becomes. Even when she finds herself living under the control of a ghost, one only she can see, and whom she can tell no one about, it’s having her family with her that keeps Fran from losing her mind.
8. Many readers saw A Perfect Night as a story of women bound by a dark inheritance. Would you say Blood Witch leans even more into themes of feminine power and resistance?
Absolutely! As a girl, Aurora learned about her family’s curse just like all the other haunted women before her. Specifically, she listened to the whispers of women caught under Daedrian’s hold. Genuine horror tinged every spoken secret—all of them lived in fear of provoking his anger. Aurora’s grandmother refused all her questions about the bigger truths of their situation or its mechanics. So, when the time comes for Fran to become Daedrian’s next bride, Aurora does everything she can to arm Fran with the tools needed to survive. Aurora’s greatest hope is that Fran, who becomes vastly more educated than she ever was, will learn exactly how to defeat Daedrian and free future generations from their destined slavery.
9. Horror often gives writers a way to explore trauma and survival. How do you see Blood Witch using the gothic lens to reflect real struggles women face in the world?
By using a Gothic historical lens to tell this tale, I’m able to have the reader examine how the limits of our perceived society hold up when confronted by unusual forces. The women featured in A Blood Witch, mainly set in the 1960s and 1970s, are genuinely the first generations of women to witness equal rights take root in the Western world. Though she lives a privileged life, Aurora Ciccone came of age during the time of Women’s Suffrage, and the culture it instilled is the foundation of her aims. Born in post-war America, Laura Tarantino witnessed firsthand the changes to a woman’s role in U.S. society. So, when her daughters come of age, she feels a profound obligation to make them (and her sons) understand how unusual the world they’ve inherited is. She reminds them how it hangs precariously, ready to send women back to the kitchen at any moment.
What makes this story so compelling to me is witnessing what these women do when a man with seemingly limitless power enters their lives. How does each generation of women view Daedrian, and how will they endure his rage as the evolving cultures they inherit shape each new generation alongside him?
In my view, the resilience of women from the Greatest and Silent Generations allows Fran, Mary Jane, and Carla to grow up successfully during a time when many American women began to take their safety for granted. I hope modern readers remember their stories as they confront the horrors of today’s world, where their sense of security is proving unfounded as men work to erode women’s liberties and rights.
10. Daedrian is a complex spirit seductive, terrifying, and controlling. What was the most challenging part of writing him in this second book?
The toughest part of writing Daedrian is preventing him from becoming the silly and tiring trope that many villains turn into. He is *spoiler* the ghost of a real man who lived long before women gained the right to freedom and self-determination. However, this is the story of a relatively modern woman, who would no doubt roll her eyes at any such controlling attempts by a real flesh-and-blood man. So, the most challenging part of Daedrian was making sure Fran neither forgives him, as she might in a dark romance, nor stops fearing him, as she might in a horror story, once his mask gets removed.
11. Your werewolves had telepathy, your haunted women have a dark inheritance. Do you consciously try to reinvent classic tropes, or do these twists emerge naturally as you write?
Both. I approach storytelling by first deciding what I want to experience as a reader. What is the mood? What does the world look like and care about? From there, I choose one or more of the classic tropes that writers reinvent every day, and start experimenting with them until a basic story outline forms. Then I begin writing seriously, an act that invariably uncovers all the twists that keep the story moving. Did I know that my werewolf heroine would be telepathic when I started outlining Criminal Beware? Absolutely not. That twist happened after I wrote my first draft into a corner, became frustrated, and thought to myself, “What would happen instead if…?”
When I began Fran Tarantino’s story, all I knew was that I wanted to write a ghost story about a young girl in the 1960s. I wanted her to believe her deceased mother’s ghost had stayed behind on Earth to protect her. The only twist I knew about when I started to plot out the book was that Fran is wrong in her belief. Everything that came after was simply a byproduct of my proving that Fran has no idea what she’s talking about.
12. Letters play an important role in the story as Fran uncovers Aurora’s secrets. What drew you to use letters as a device, and how do they shape the mood of the book?
To tell the story, I needed Fran to discover the histories of her family’s past. But selfishly, I also wanted to keep Aurora alive. So, Aurora reveals everything Fran learns about Daedrian to her through letters, a method she chooses because Daedrian cannot read. Having Aurora’s secret correspondence move the plot forward made the “how” of writing the story incredibly exciting for me. As the story progresses and more letters reach Fran, the mysteries of A Perfect Night are answered and replaced by a universe of mysterious details she never expected.
13. The setting shifts to Barnard College in New York. How did placing Fran in a new environment influence the tone of the series compared to the family home in A Perfect Night?
College is the first step into adulthood for many of us; it’s the first time we must live without parental supervision. Fran and Mary Jane had spent years dreaming of moving to New York City for college, but when they finally arrive in this story, it’s nothing like they expected. Lily’s house rules replace the freedom they longed for under Aurora’s liberal watch. The woman all but locks them up in their Morningside Heights penthouse, only letting them outside when Marcus walks them to and from class.
For Mary Jane, the restrictions feel more like the 13th grade of high school rather than the Mary Tyler Moore fantasy she’d harbored as a girl. And Fran must face the same disappointment while trying to figure out her new life under Daedrian’s inexplicable control. Unlike Mary Jane, she has no one to turn to for help and being away from Laura’s rational counsel makes Fran feel all the more isolated.
14. In an earlier interview, you mentioned an editor once caught your “California car bias” in historical fiction. Did Blood Witch have any similar moments where research or feedback surprised you?
Certainly, my bias in A Perfect Night showed itself in how Fran, an only child like me, views living in a house with siblings crawling all over each other. My friend read that book and pointed out that it would still be a horror story even without the ghost, because of how terrified I seem to be of sharing anything with siblings. And I tend to agree. My lifelong motto has been: Happiness is separate bathrooms.
I’m not yet sure which of my biases will be revealed by A Blood Witch, but I can’t wait for my friends and readers to enlighten me.
15. In The Lykanos Chronicles you explored immortality; in The Haunted Women you explore curses and bondage to spirits. How different was it for you as a writer to move from eternal life to inherited enslavement?
As I see it, the two extremes are opposite sides of the same false-privilege coin. What makes the characters from both worlds intriguing is how they fight against the limitations imposed upon them.
The immortality that my lycan characters face is actually an illusion. While the limits of mortal life may be suspended, the lycans are much more likely to be slaughtered in the violent world they’ve inherited. Because of this, their sense of immortality causes them to believe in an invulnerability that isn’t real, and for most, eternity is nothing more than a fleeting dream.
Similarly, the Haunted Women have all the material wealth they could desire, but they are enslaved by a tyrant who never allows them to truly live their lives. They cannot fall in love or build any relationships where they can speak their secrets openly. Instead, they are confined in a gilded cage, in which many languish or develop Stockholm syndrome. Like the lycan, the haunted women can never enjoy their privileges because they are not truly free.
16. Do you envision The Haunted Women as a long intergenerational saga, or is Fran’s story the central heartbeat of the series?
The story of The Haunted Women spans three centuries, with all their individual tales contained within the three books I’m writing. With Aurora’s help, Fran is the woman who uncovers all its secrets and ultimately concludes the saga.
17. Beyond Blood Witch, are you already working on the next installment or another project? Can you share a glimpse of what readers might expect from you in the future?
I’m nearly halfway through writing the final installment of The Haunted Women, which I plan to release next year. After that, I don’t have concrete plans for what’s next, but I can hear my wolves calling out for more.
18. Both The Lykanos Chronicles and The Haunted Women feel very cinematic. If Blood Witch were adapted to screen, what atmosphere or feeling would you most want viewers to experience?
I started college as a film student, and everything I’ve written since reflects a visual and cinematic style. When I promote my novels, I make video trailers for them. Often, I create the trailer before I finish writing the book. Sometimes, the visuals in the trailers inspire a scene in the book rather than the other way around. Like writing, the creative process of making these short films is one of my favorite pastimes. Anyone curious about how I picture the atmosphere of my novels can simply visit my website or YouTube channel.
19. As you prepare to launch Blood Witch, what do you hope readers will carry with them after closing the last page and how does that tie into your own next stage as a writer?
At the end of A Blood Witch, I hope readers will be amazed and eager for the final act. I get anxious whenever I write a large overarching story that spans multiple novels. Like many readers, if one of the middle books doesn’t satisfy me somehow—if I grow impatient or bored, etc.—I tend to give up. No matter how much I want to see how the bigger story ends, my fidgety fingers will pick another story to start. I’m currently writing the last Haunted Women novel, and I find myself jumping out of bed in the early morning just to get back to the story. So, I hope everyone has the same experience when they’re reading.
20. Your books often deal with ghosts and curses. But outside of fiction do you believe in the supernatural yourself? Have you ever had a spooky experience that stuck with you?
Unfortunately, I haven’t had any supernatural experiences. Of course, that probably explains why I can’t stop thinking about these characters and try to live a different life through them each morning.
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