Hello, my Followers of Fear! It’s been a minute since I’ve done an interview with a fellow author, hasn’t it? The last one was with Shaun Hamill in 2024. Well, I decided to bring it back, and I have a special interview to bring back this feature. Today’s guest is not only a fellow horror author, but a friend of mine whom I’ve worked with closely for the past several years in the Horror Writers Association. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome my friend, Neil Sater.
Rami Ungar: Hello Neil, and welcome to the show. Tell us about yourself and what you write.
Neil Sater: Ever since I was a child, I’ve always been drawn to creepy things. Scary books, movies, houses, music, imagery, you name it, I love it all. I have also always enjoyed writing, but for my career, I followed my father into engineering and later, business. I was lucky to retire early, allowing me to write full-time. So, these days I’m having a blast writing creepy stories and learning a new business, which is completely different from what I spent my career doing. My stories involve the supernatural. My four books are stand-alone, but they are all set in Homer County, Ohio, a fictionalized place that reflects parts of Ohio’s Tuscarawas, Coshocton, and Holmes Counties. This is a beautiful region that I love to visit. It’s filled with history, interesting places, and genuine, salt-of-the-earth people. But as a guy who has always lived in the city and the suburbs, I sometimes feel a certain loneliness and eeriness when I visit the region. This is a very powerful feeling to me, and I try to capture that unsettling emotion in my stories.
RU: Tell us about your new novel, Ungodly, and why people might be attracted to this “Amish horror” story.
NS: In a nutshell, The Ungodly: The Curse of Forgotten Valley is about an Amish Witch. A teenage girl named Emma takes her brothers backpacking on the Buckeye Trail, and they unwittingly stray into the wrong place, where crazy stuff soon starts to happen. Readers say it’s a unique story with plenty of twists and high tension. Although I’ve been calling my books supernatural mysteries, my editor, who writes thrillers, said I should call this one a supernatural thriller.
RU: The book sounds fascinating. What inspired this story? And what research did you do before you wrote it?
NS: I took my nephews backpacking on the Buckeye Trail when they were teenagers, and we experienced some spooky things that stuck with me. So that adventure planted the first seed of inspiration for the story, and I wove some memories of our trip into it. (As a side note, the main character of this story is named after Emma ‘Grandma’ Gatewood, a legendary founder of the Buckeye Trail. I recommend reading her fascinating story, well-documented in several biographies!)More recently, I read a few non-fiction books about corruption in Amish communities, and found them all riveting. These books were about Amish men who built a cult within their Amish community and started doing bad things. I found it fascinating to see how the broader Amish society responded, which sparked my imagination. The even darker scenario I conjured up became the main storyline for The Ungodly.
I always try to do a lot of research for my stories. For this book, most of my research focused on two areas: witch folklore and Amish culture and practices. Although I have some familiarity with Amish culture and practices, some further research helped me fill in the blanks. Katherine Kerestman, one of our Ohio horror-writing colleagues, shared an article she wrote on the history of witch folklore, which I found to be a helpful complement to other material I read.
RU: Yeah, witch history, folklore, and culture is always fascinating. Speaking of which, your antagonist is an Amish witch. Why did you choose a witch from an Amish community, instead of a traditional witch? Or maybe a witch from a different sect, like the Puritans?
NS: It started with the setting I use for my books. As depicted in my previous books, the rural Homer County is in Amish country. Since the setting of my books was already established in Amish country, I thought, Why not?
When I came up with the idea of an Amish witch, I thought it was a novel notion. But a few weeks after the book’s release, a reader told me that she practices witchcraft and she knows some Amish women who do, too. I was a bit taken aback to hear a reader practices witchcraft, and a bit disappointed to hear my idea might not have been as novel as I thought! <belly laugh> Oh well, there are other original elements to this story.
Now, I don’t know anything about real-life people who practice witchcraft in this day and age, but obviously, that’s a real thing. Regardless, the story I wrote leans more toward the historical folklore of witchcraft.
There was something else at play, as well. Many people are curious about the Amish. The Amish live in very close-knit communities and choose to forgo many of the modern conveniences that the rest of us center our lives around. Some find the Amish culture and practices mysterious, and perhaps people are intrigued by them because, in many ways, they live as our own forebearers did. Regardless, I thought that if I could portray this culture with some degree of authenticity, readers might find the idea interesting and perhaps somewhat informative. So, I went with it.
RU: Speaking of your other novels, why not tell us about them?
NS: My books are all stand-alone stories, but because they’re all set in the same fictional Ohio county, there are some loose interconnections between them.
Phantom Realm: The Haunting of Misery Mansion is a ghost story, but it’s a different kind of ghost story that includes a time-travel twist.
Mercy Killing: The Haunting of Ghoul House leans a bit more into psychological horror, involving terminal illness.
And Atrocity: The Haunting of Moravian Village is inspired by true events involving Native Americans. The story centers around a haunting related to the tragic Moravian Massacre, which occurred during the Revolutionary War, in what is now Ohio.
RU: Your books tend to be geared towards the Young Adult crowd. What is it about YA horror that makes you gravitate towards those stories?
NS: I’m glad you asked this. The reality is, I try to write my stories for both adult and teen/young adult readers. My stories are what I call “soft-core” horror. Sometimes people use the terms “gentle horror” or “cozy horror.” I avoid explicit sexual content and heavy gore, and I consciously seek to close my stories with an uplifting ending, which isn’t all that common in the horror genre.
My books also tend to be shorter than many novels, and my stories usually feature teen/young adult characters. These things all add up to making them well-suited for young adult readers, but I’m not intentionally targeting this demographic. In fact, as far as I can tell, the vast majority of my readers are adults, not young adults. Either way, I’m just thrilled people are reading my books, because there’s no greater satisfaction to an author!
RU: Tell us what you’re working on now and if you have any future plans.
NS: I’m already working on my next supernatural mystery, which will also be set in Homer County, Ohio. I expect to have it published by early 2027.
It’s anybody’s guess what happens after that. I’ve never been much of a long-term planner!
RU: Time for some questions I ask every author I interview. What is some advice you would give some other authors, regardless of experience, genre or background?
NS: Get to know other writers through writers’ groups and other organizations. For me, joining the Horror Writers Association helped me build my network. I’ve gained new, valued friendships, including you, Rami!
Work with other writers to improve your writing skills through critique partnerships and critique groups. Don’t approach these things seeking affirmation; instead, seek out all the constructive criticism you can get from others and always err on the side of following their advice rather than ignoring it. Building this network will also help teach the business practices that help establish authors for success. Writing is a solitary endeavor, but learning how to become a writer is not.
RU: Aw shucks, you’re making me blush! Now, final question: if you were stuck on a desert island for a while and could only bring three books with you, what books would you take?
NS: For some reason, I shy away from long books, so I’ve never read Stephen King’s IT. Yeah, I know, I should be ashamed of myself, but I’ve seen the movies; does that count? Stranded on a desert island, I would finally have plenty of idle time to read IT!
I seldom read books more than once, but I’ve read Lord of the Flies by William Golding many times over the years. So, I’d have to include that one.
Stephen Graham Jones is one of my favorite authors, and his recent book, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, unseated my previous favorite among his books, which was Mapping the Interior.
So, those would be my three choices: IT, Lord of the Flies, and The Buffalo Hunter Hunter.
RU: All great choices, Neil. And thank you for joining me here on the blog.
If you would like to check out Ungodly or any of Neil’s other books, you can find them on Amazon. And if you would like to follow Neil and find out more about his writing endeavors, you can find him on his website and his Facebook page. I’ll include links below.
That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I hope you have a good night, pleasant nightmares, and watch out for Amish witches in Homer County, Ohio. From the sound of things, they can be totally freaky.
Rami Ungar The Writer 