Notes on The New Neighbor

I have always believed that horror — in literature or film — works best when it is familiar. I like to settle my reader into a familiar situation populated by recognizable people who have familiar problems. And then I introduce some kind of totally unfamiliar threat — a vampire, a werewolf, a ghost, a psychopath, whatever. If the situation is too foreign to the reader and the characters are completely unlike anyone the reader might know, then confronting the reader with an unfamiliar threat isn't nearly as effective.

But what kind of things are familiar to everyone? Well, there's family and all the problems that come with it, whether those problems come from parents, siblings, children or in-laws. Money — or, more accurately, the lack of it — causes a lot of anxiety in individuals and tension in relationships. In spite of whatever differences we may have — political, religious, racial — we all have a lot in common. But there is one thing that is true of everyone, no matter what their social or economic standing or educational background or profession or occupation: We all enjoy and want — even need — sex. It's the great equalizer. For that reason, I often turn to sex in my writing, because it's the one thing that is familiar and important to all of us. Of course, the kind of sex that takes place in my books is not necessarily the kind of sex we all want because it sometimes involves creatures like vampires and werewolves.

By the end of the 1980s, I had developed a bit of a reputation for writing erotic horror. My first novel, Seductions, was very sexual. Live Girls was about seductive vampires who sucked blood from their victims' veins — but the vein being sucked wasn't always in the neck. Crucifax involved an incestuous attraction, a single mother who tried to hide from her children the fact that she did some stripping to make extra money, and even included a cunnilingual abortion. And there was plenty of sex in my short stories. But none of those books were permeated with sex. I wanted to find out if I could write a book that was. So I wrote The New Neighbor.

It's set in the town I lived in — Redding, California — on the street I lived on at the time — Deerfield Avenue — a street with green trees, trimmed lawns, flowers in yards, children, cats and dogs. It was an average neighborhood, fairly quiet. It was familiar. I decided to write about it, and to bring in a new resident — Lorelle Dupree. She's quite beautiful, and she's warm and friendly. But she doesn't want to borrow your Weed Eater or a few eggs from your fridge. She wants a lot more than that — and she has no intention of giving it back.

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