n I imagine a trailer for WHEN THE NIGHT COMES KNOCKING, this is the song I hear playing over it. It was the first song I added to the Spotify playlist I made for this book during the early drafting stages and really set the tone for the rest of the music to be added. The lyrics and Gin Wigmore’s voice capture so many of the core feelings that the characters of this story are plagued with throughout the course of the night as they try to survive—the desperation, the doubt, the fear and total weariness. The song’s score has this haunting, cinematic feel that matches the same pacing and style I hoped to convey in the writing, and it’s now something I can’t listen to without being immediately transported to the story’s main location, wandering helplessly beneath the bright fluorescents of Blackwell’s Country Store atop Blood Mountain.
“Lonesome Town” by Ricky Nelson
In many ways, the setting of WHEN THE NIGHT COMES KNOCKING serves as a secondary antagonist. Focusing on the isolation of the convenience store located deep in the mountainous woods of North Georgia with spotty cell service and very few lights was key to creating an atmosphere worthy of the clever monster wreaking havoc on this group of people. Not only are they physically cut off from the world, but they also are each internally battling their own unique guilt, fears, and regrets that further feed that isolation. To me, “Lonesome Town” captures that overall atmosphere and loneliness beautifully.
“A Quick One Before the Eternal Worm Devours Appalachia” by Lizard in the Spring
This song was added to my story playlist during the final stages of the manuscript editing process. While on an annual cabin trip in the North Georgia mountains with a group of friends, my brother played this song constantly; it became a sort of run-on joke, trying to catch everyone off guard with the creeping dread of the banjo building in the background of any conversation. The song was so unsettling and so completely perfect to the vibe of WHEN THE NIGHT COMES KNOCKING, and I could hear it playing so clearly as the background music to the scene when the character and storeowner, Kimi Blackwell, sits down with the other store patrons to explain the local Appalachian folklore of the monster they must face.
“All Wash Out” by Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes
This story weaves flashbacks throughout, and one of these is meant to represent a much calmer, ordinary time between the main characters and estranged siblings this novel centers around, Jane and Thomas Wilson. In this particular flashback, it’s a hot, sunny day at a baseball field, and there’s an ease between the siblings that is the last time they’ll ever truly experience it. The gentle melody of “All Wash Out” has a very innocent, youthful feel to it that I think represents the perfect ‘before’ picture for Jane and Thomas’s lives before everything changed so harshly.
“The Waves Have Come” by Chelsea Wolfe
This song has a very all-encompassing, emotional intensity to it that I’ve always felt pairs well with the struggles of one of the protagonists of WHEN THE NIGHT COMES KNOCKING, Jane Wilson. So many of her deepest fears stem from moments that were out of her control, and I think this song acknowledges that helplessness humans are so often forced to experience when it comes to being victims to life and the natural world. Towards the end of “The Waves Have Come”, there’s an urgency that picks up in the music that, to me, feels like fully surrendering to that lack of control; this is a very appropriate mirror for where Jane’s character arc and choices ultimately take her in this story.
In this Appalachian horror novel, two estranged siblings become trapped in a convenience store under attack by a monster from the mountains who feasts on guilty hearts.
Rattle, rattle in the dark…
The mountain’s bones seek out a heart.
Jane has not spoken to her brother Thomas since the accident that nearly killed them both. Their drive from college through the North Georgia mountains is uncomfortably silent, until they stop at a roadside convenience store, where a man stumbles in with a mutilated body, claiming to have been attacked by a monster.
At first, no one believes the man’s ravings, but when the next person to leave the store is brutally killed, they fear that local legend might be true:
There’s a beast in these mountains who feasts on guilty hearts… and someone among them has lured it out of hiding.
Jane and Thomas each harbor secrets, but so do the other patrons, and as the monster claims more hearts, the survivors turn on each other, desperate to save themselves by uncovering the guiltiest among them.
If the siblings can’t overcome the rift between them, they’ll surely become the monster’s next victims…or worse, become monsters themselves.
Thriller | Fiction Family Life [ Berkley, On Sale: October 20, 2026, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9798217191338 / eISBN: 9798217191352 ]
Katherine Daniel was born and raised in the heart of Georgia, where she grew up looking for stories in the people and nature surrounding her. She studied creative writing at Georgia State University and enjoys writing fiction that explores the most monstrous parts of being human.
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