Ferndale author’s latest novel explores ‘anxiety as a monster’
There were several scenes that even scared New York Times best-selling author Josh Malerman when he was writing his latest horror novel, “Daphne.”
“And that is the best feeling for a guy like me!” said Malerman, 48, an alumnus of West Bloomfield High School and Michigan State University, who lives in Ferndale with his fiancée Allison Laako.
Influenced by the works of Stephen King, Alfred Hitchcock, and Agatha Christie, Malerman’s 2014 debut novel “Bird Box” became a Netflix movie of the same name in 2018 with Oscar winner Sandra Bullock (“The Blind Side”), Oscar nominee John Malkovich (“In the Line of Fire”) and Golden Globe winner Sarah Paulson (“The People vs. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story”).
“The first scary movie I saw was (1983’s) ‘Twilight Zone: The Movie.’ Changed my life… It showed me right away by nature of the very different stories within, it showed me the elasticity of the genre. That was a gift I couldn’t have known I’d been handed at the time,” said Malerman.
“Daphne” (Del Rey $28) occurs during the summer prior to basketball star Kit Lamb’s senior year of high school. The night before the big game, one of her teammates tells a story about Daphne, a girl rumored to be a murderer who went to their school many years ago and died under mysterious circumstances. It’s believed Daphne’s ghost still walks the earth and will appear to kill again.
One by one, Kit’s teammates start vanishing after hearing this story. Kit starts suspecting the stories about Daphne are real and not an urban legend. What’s more, she believes her own mind is somehow conjuring up Daphne. Now Kit must search for the truth about what really happened to Daphne and find a way to stop her.
“I’d been looking for an angle on ‘anxiety as a monster’ for a long time,” explained Malerman. “I’d also been
somewhat flippantly looking for a way to write a ‘basketball horror novel.’ I’d used basketball in my first book, but it was only one scene. And I did write a horror novel about a crosscountry team. Plus, a novella about a football receiver who gets knocked into another dimension and returns (from the hit) with seemingly overflowing wisdom.”
However, Malerman hadn’t pieced all these elements — anxiety, sports, horror — together.
“But one evening, with all this in mind, Daphne, the seven-foot denim-clad madwoman, practically walked into my office unbidden.
I saw her in full. I got her right away. She, no doubt, represents our protagonist’s panic attack. The more Kit thinks about Daphne, the closer the monster gets. And once I realized I had her, my ‘anxiety as a monster,’ the story erupted out of me,” he recalled.
Malerman spoke about how “Daphne” stands out from other horror novels.
“Here our lumbering beast is, in a way, a state of mind,” said Malerman. “Not a figment of the imagination, no no. Daphne is most definitely real. But still, so aren’t states of mind? And the entire novel could be looked at as a single panic attack, suffered by Kit Lamb, growing more serious, more grave from beginning to end,”
He continued: “I hope all my books come from whatever
spirit I have within me, just like the books of my peers come from theirs. So… voice. And isn’t it always voice that separates one novel from another? It’s one reason I’m so enamored with the novel as a medium: There’s few works of art with as naked a voice as the novel.”
In addition to being a novelist, Malerman also plays in a local band called the High Strung. The band’s latest album, “Address Unknown,” will be released in 2023. Additionally, he cofounded a production company, Spin a Black Yarn, which in 2021 released its first film, “We Need to Do Something.”