Blame the Devil follows a wounded outsider in 1967 Jersey City, as she discovers her terrifying identity as an Avenging Angel and confronts an ancient evil hiding behind the face of ordinary authority. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

The inspiration for the story was real life. With one exception (which I won’t mention for it would be a spoiler) the evil Victor Varde is a spot-on duplicate of a child molester from my old neighborhood who has haunted me since eighth grade. From that starting point, I felt it was important that I be patient—giving the plotline room to breathe and make shifts, and allowing the physical characteristics, stories, and inner lives of each of the novel’s characters to achieve fullness.

Donna’s journey is both painful and increasingly powerful. How did you approach writing her as more than either a victim or a hero?

I had a couple of things in mind. One, I wanted to avoid a pair of opposing cliches: abused girl as unadulterated victim, and abused girl as super-hero. The second thing was that, obviously, she had to evolve.  “A” and “Z” couldn’t be the same. Again, how this change would happen only became clear to me over time. Her nurse Livvy Gomez was key in this, and, potentially, an undervalued character.

The evolution of Donna is very much aligned with what Anne Lamott describes as watching a Polaroid develop—stick around with the story long enough and more and more details, windows, and trap doors emerge.

The novel gives its supernatural horror a very grounded, neighborhood-level presence. Why was it important for evil to feel ordinary before it became cosmic?

It was the way the novel evolved. When I first put fingers to key, I did not have an intention of writing a literary horror novel. A couple of things moved me in that direction. One, was a simple matter of what I’ve written before—that is an exploration of life through the compact landscape of the Jersey City Heights/Plateau of my youth. I had a “been there, done that” recognition. So the realistic was in the groundwork.

Additionally, I had, from the beginning, been describing Victor Varde in demonic terms. From that, the move to going all in on the supernatural came to me quickly. A couple of early readers of the manuscript were against this, arguing that I had a good naturalistic novel in front of me.  But the supernatural level was appealing, even compelling. I couldn’t resist going there and engaging the metaphysical questions which have followed me for decades.

When and where will the book be available?

I’m hoping it will be available by early 2027.

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