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John James Minster Q&A: The Undertaker’s Daughter [Spotlight]

“I still talk in my sleep and sometimes punch the wall during nightmares.”

New in stores is John James Minster’s novel The Undertaker’s Daughter (Hellbender Books). Scroll down for more about the book, and for an interview with the author.

Anna Dingel, introverted and socially inept, raised in the family funeral home, turns eighteen during summer break before senior year. Her interest in Timmy from class is requited when she discovers a music video of him performing a song composed about her.

Her best friend, Naomi Silver, is consumed with validating the authenticity of Jewish scripture as the factual, unaltered history of her people. When Israeli archaeologists unearth an ancient stone fragment, on it a name missing for millennia, Naomi celebrates by treating Anna to an extensive make-over. Once mousy and plain, now transformed, Anna breaks away to see Timmy’s band perform live, where the leader of a bad school cabal attempts to assault Anna in the parking lot, and gets arrested.

Released from jail, so begins an ever-widening maelstrom of cruel retribution, turning Anna and Timmy’s summer of love into a nightmare. Meaning only to frighten the bullies into peace, Anna and Naomi experiment with the recently revealed old Jewish magic to end the persecution. Inserting the long-missing name, the ancient Abrahamic ritual works, though not as expected.

As Timmy’s high school music career appears professionally promising, the eldritch power Anna has unleashed with the singular objective of protecting herself takes dark and unexpected turns, endangers those she loves, and forces her to decide who she is and wants to be. A story of love, forgiveness, consequences of choices, and exceedingly creepy, supernatural, violent horror. Fast-paced with surprise twists throughout—as children learn not to play with dead things.

The Undertaker’s Daughter
by John James Minster
Hellbender Books
Genre: Horror

Find a local bookstore here or you can buy The Undertaker’s Daughter online.


Interview with John James Minster


1. The Undertaker’s Daughter is your debut horror novel. What drove you to become a writer?

“Carrying around a story idea is probably not unlike a music composer hearing a beautiful ‘hook’ in his mind, walking around humming it to himself, maybe even dreaming about it. It isn’t until he plays it on an instrument, develops and records the song that he feels truly happy; relieved, in a way. This powerful thing trapped within him driving him crazy is finally out. Like a thing with a life of its own gnawing away inside that can no longer be contained.

“I love to write. Every night since childhood, I still talk in my sleep and sometimes punch the wall during nightmares, which are ‘nightly mini horror movies.’ Hello! This is my head every single night of my life—so no writer’s block on the horizon or chance that I’ll run out of stories.”


2. What inspired this story specifically?

“For a long time I have wanted to write about a golem. To do this was a decision. After conducting deep research, I sat before a formatted Word .doc titled Golem.

“Then my muse kicked in: within sixty-seconds the entire story (characters, their names, personalities, story plot) came to me in a daydream, again like a movie in my head. If your university assignment was to watch a movie and tell the story in words, pretty much that is what inspired The Undertaker’s Daughter. A waking nightmare.”


3. What authors or storytellers do you consider to be influences to your fiction?

“Edgar Allan Poe. Best writer ever. Brilliant, disciplined, gifted mind. Whenever in Baltimore, I go touch his grave and have a little talk with him. Brother from another mother, he is. Don’t ever think that dark horror stories come from dark horrible people. His life indeed was dark and yet his was a loving, sweet, and tender heart. I love the man.

“Of those active in my lifetime: Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Cormac McCarthy, Anne Rice, F. Paul Wilson, Isaac Asimov, Lawrence Block, Mario Puzo, Nelson DeMille…I love their product and always learn a little something from each. I think fans of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary would enjoy The Undertaker’s Daughter.


About the Author

As a child, John James Minster walked in his sleep His parents found him at the top of the stairs about to leap down, dreaming that he could fly. Every night since childhood, he still talks and punches walls in his sleep during nightmares, which he describes as nightly mini horror movies: “Terror is feeling dread at the possibility of something frightening; horror is the shock and repulsion of seeing the thing—this is my brain every single night of my life—so, no writer’s block on the horizon; no chance that I’ll run out of stories.”

As an adult, Minster held a successful international business career since the 1980s in the technology sector, all the while publishing horror short stories in major magazines and horror anthologies since 1990. In July, 2018, his first YA full-length horror novel, Dreamjacker, which met with five-star reader reviews, was born of nightmares: “Crystalline episodes are given to me in my sleep, as detailed and real to me as memories of actual events; I put these into words and rely on daydreams to complete the story into a melded product.”

Visit the author online: JohnJamesMinster.com


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