13 Updates: Victor LaValle—author of Lone Women, The Changeling, and Destroyer

Aug 11

Looking over news, reviews, and interviews with this popular horror author.

“As I’m writing a cool monster,” LaValle says, “often halfway through I go, ‘What’s the monster’s point of view? Is it really a monster?’”

Victor LaValle writes horror fiction—including novels, novellas, short stories, and comic books. Below, find links and videos with news and reviews, and interviews with the author.

LaValle’s novels include Lone Women, The Changeling, The Ballad of Black Tom, and The Devil in Silver. His novel The Changeling will soon be a streaming show on Apple TV+ starring LaKeith Stanfield. The Devil in Silver is in the works at AMC as an anthology series. An adaptation of Lone Women has been in the works since even before the novel was published—in fact, LaValle himself wrote the pilot.

His comic book writing has included Victor LaValle’s Destroyer (a rethinking of the Frankenstein legend), the dystopian adventures Eve and Eve: Children of the Moon, and the Marvel Comics series Sabretooth: The Adversary and Sabertooth & The Exiles.

“I love monsters,” LaValle told Essence. “I grew up on horror, and often, when I’m reading a novel or watching a movie, I look at who the good person is supposed to be and I look at who the monster’s supposed to be, and there’s a part of me that identifies more with the monster. I’ve been made the monster often: I shouldn’t be at this school. I shouldn’t be in this neighborhood. I shouldn’t be on this airplane. In a fair bit of horror, it’s far too easy for me to be the thing causing fear, especially since it’s usually a white woman who’s in danger. So as I’m writing a cool monster, often halfway through I go, ‘What’s the monster’s point of view? Is it really a monster?’ And many times I go, ‘I think it’s not. I think maybe the real monster is the people dealing with it.’ That feels closer to life as I understand it.”

LaValle has received a Bram Stoker Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Key to Southeast Queens. His novels have been included in best-of-the-year lists by The New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, The Nation, and Publishers Weekly, among others. He lives in New York City with his wife and kids and teaches at Columbia University.

More about Victor LaValle online

13 Updates: Victor LaValle from Google

By the Book: Victor LaValle Stares at His Deepest Fears (The New York Times)
The PEN Ten: An Interview with Victor LaValle (PEN America)
Victor LaValle's Lone Women Has Been Optioned for TV Adaptation, LaValle to Pen Script (Tor.com)
Victor LaValle on his new horror western novel, 'Lone Women' (Los Angeles Times)
Vast Silences: On Victor LaValle's “Lone Women” (Los Angeles Review of Books)
The heroine of Victor LaValle’s western gothic ‘Lone Women’ wrestles with a horror from her past (The Boston Globe)
Victor LaValle's Westward Howl (Publishers Weekly)
The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaVelle: Invisible Monsters (dailyO)
Apple TV+ Horror Fairytale Series THE CHANGELING Fills Out Its Cast (Fangoria)
Best Horror and Fantasy Books About New York City (including Ballad of Black Tom) (Den of Geek)
Victor LaValle: Where to Begin with the Award-Winning Horror Author (The Lineup)
The Changeling author Victor LaValle turns childhood fears into fatherhood terrors | EW.com (Entertainment Weekly)
Victor LaValle's The Ballad of Black Tom and the work of H.P. Lovecraft (Slate Magazine)

Video interviews and reviews

The Ballad of Black Tom | Book Review

#PouredOver: Victor LaValle on Lone Women | Barnes & Noble

Victor LaValle on the making of LONE WOMEN | Random House

Sabretooth Interview with Victor LaValle! | Comic Book Herald

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Chris Well

Chris Well been a writer pretty much his entire life. (Well, since his childhood.) Over the years, he has worked in newspapers, magazines, radio, and books. He now is the chief of the website Monster Complex, celebrating monster stories in lit and pop culture. He also writes horror comedy fiction that embraces Universal Monsters, 1960s sitcoms, 1980s action movies, and the X-Files.

https://chriswell.substack.com/