Jeneva Rose is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of several novels, including the multi-million-copy phenomenon The Perfect Marriage. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages and optioned for film and television. She lives in Wisconsin with her husband, son, and her English bulldog, Phyllis—named after Phyllis Vance of Vance Refrigeration (The Office), obviously. When she’s not writing, she’s navigating motherhood, overthinking plot twists, and convincing herself she’ll relax after the next deadline.

Tells us about Sometimes I Scare Myself. What inspired these stories?

Sometimes I Scare Myself is a collection of three horror novellas. Never Kill the Medium was inspired by a reading I received at a friend’s bachelorette party. After the male strip show was canceled due to low ticket sales, my friend hired a medium instead, as one does. I was skeptical going in, but then he started telling me things he couldn’t possibly have known. Naturally, my writer brain took that experience and thought, what if he died and the door to the other side was left open? The Nightmare House was inspired by a real life situation involving some awful neighbors. I was also a new mom at the time, living in a new house and dealing with postpartum anxiety, so I took a lot of that fear and vulnerability and gave it a supernatural outlet. All Curses Are Final was inspired by the horror movie Oddity. There was a small piece of background set dressing that caught my attention and sent my mind spiraling. It had nothing to do with the plot, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Sometimes I Scare Myself is a collection of stories. What drove this direction and how was the experience different from writing a novel?

I’m constantly coming up with ideas that I love but don’t necessarily have enough story to sustain an entire novel. I used to dismiss them because I thought, Well, what am I supposed to do with this? However, writing a collection gave me somewhere to put those ideas. With a novella, there’s no room to wander. You have to get in, establish the characters and the world, scare the reader, and get out. I found the length and structure to be challenging at times, but having three fresh starts within one project was a lot of fun.

Sometimes I Scare Myself is your first novel that is purely considered horror. What made you take the full leap into writing horror?

It didn’t feel like that big of a leap. Horror has influenced my writing from the very beginning, despite not writing in it until now. I love dark stories, shocking moments, morally questionable characters, and putting people in terrifying situations. The difference with Sometimes I Scare Myself was that I got to take off the thriller guardrails. I didn’t have to explain everything or keep one foot planted in reality. I could bring in ghosts, curses, séances, and all the other supernatural things I’ve always been drawn to.

In the scene, how do you know when you’ve crossed the threshold from thriller/suspense into horror?

I think the line between thriller and horror is incredibly blurry, and sometimes it comes down to what you’re trying to make the reader feel. With a thriller, I’m trying to create suspense. I want you racing through the pages because you need to know who did it or what’s going to happen next. With horror, I want to make you uncomfortable. I want to scare you, disturb you, or put an image in your head that you wish I hadn’t. A thriller makes me want to keep the light on so I can finish reading. Horror makes me want to keep the light on after I’m done.

What story in Sometimes I Scare Myself do you think is the scariest and why?

Definitely The Nightmare House. I started writing it when I was around nine weeks postpartum, and I was dealing with postpartum anxiety myself. Like the main character, I was also living in a new home and adjusting to being a mom to a new baby. The story has a haunted house at its center, but the scariest part for me is not knowing whether the thing you fear is actually real.

You’ve written books in multiple genres. What did you love about writing horror?

What I loved most was the freedom. Horror feels like a genre where there are no rules—or at least, where the rules are meant to be broken. I could be funny and gruesome in the same scene. I could introduce a ghost, a curse, or something that couldn’t be explained at all. With thrillers, I’m always thinking about whether the mystery holds together and whether every twist can ultimately be explained. Horror let me stop asking, “Could this actually happen?” and start asking, “How far can I take this?”

Is there a horror trope that scares you the most? Would you ever write it?

Possession and hauntings scare me the most. The idea of an evil presence invading either your home—or worse, your own body—and having no real way to escape it terrifies me. I tackled a haunted house in The Nightmare House, but I would absolutely write a possession story.

Is there a specific Halloween or horror movie that you watch every spooky season?

October is essentially one long horror movie marathon in my house, so narrowing it down to one feels impossible. There are quite a few I make sure to watch every spooky season: A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Conjuring, Evil Dead (2013), Trick ’r Treat, The Exorcist, Scream, Terrified, and, of course, Halloween.

What horror books would you recommend to someone that has never read horror?

I’d probably give them a few options depending on what already scares them. If they want something psychological and ambiguous, A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay. If they want a haunted house, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. If they want something deeply disturbing, Pet Sematary by Stephen King. And if they want something more contemporary, Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman. Horror is such a broad genre that I think the trick is finding your particular flavor of fear.

What are you currently working on?

I just wrapped up copyedits on my next thriller Dead Girl Summer, coming April 27, 2027. It’s set in a seemingly idyllic Wisconsin lake town where young women keep turning up dead and is best described as ‘the beach read with a body count.’

Sometimes I Scare Myself by Jeneva Rose

This chilling read tells three separate stories of horror and danger. In the first story, at what was meant to be a fun thirtieth birthday, a seance goes wrong killing the medium. The guests work to cover up the untimely death, without a clue that the unfinished seance has allowed something dangerous to cross over into this realm. In the second story, the Dalton family has moved into what was meant to be their dream home. That is until the house begins to whisper, the neighbors watch, and no one believes postpartum Kristin Dalton when she discovers that everyone who has ever lived in the house has died or disappeared. In the third and final story, on their way to a remote cabin for a relaxing vacation in the snow, a group of friends stops to see a store where a sign says “All items cursed. Curse lifted at time of sale.” They laugh it off until one of the friends finds an item in her bag that wasn’t paid for. Then a storm traps them inside and the bodies begin to drop.

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