Freddie Kölsch: Every Story Goes in Directions That Surprise Me
In this interview, author Freddie Kölsch discusses the conflict within folk horror and her new young adult horror novel, Empty Heaven.
Freddie Kölsch is a connoisseur and crafter of frightful fiction (with a dash of hope) for teens and former teens. She is the author of Now, Conjurers. She lives in Salem, Massachusetts, with her high school sweetheart-turned-wife, a handful of cats, a houseful of art, and a mind’s eye full of ghosts. Follow her on Instagram.
In this interview, Freddie discusses the conflict within folk horror and her new young adult horror novel, Empty Heaven, her advice for other writers, and more.
Name: Freddie Kölsch
Literary agent: Martha Perotto-Wills & Molly Ker Hawn
Book title: Empty Heaven
Publisher: Union Square & Co.
Release date: August 26, 2025
Genre/category: Young adult horror
Previous titles: Now, Conjurers
Elevator pitch: Everyone in the New England village of Kesuquosh worships Good Arcturus the scarecrow, and everything in their town is always perfect … until the annual Harvest Hallow, when the chosen sacrifice attempts something no one’s ever managed: an escape. A queer YA homage to The Wicker Man and a paean to the profound power of human connection.
What prompted you to write this book?
Though I’d sent in a one-page description of my next project somewhere at the outset of the book deal, that one page had 1,000 possibilities stretching out from it. More than that. One million directions I could go in. And then, on September 10, 2022, I logged the following note on my phone:
On September 12, 2001, Anna’s dad sends her away from NYC. She’ll spend the autumn in Kesuquosh, a picturesque village to the west of the Quabbin Reservoir.
I’m 38, which puts me at peak millennial in terms of experience and cultural frame of reference. I was in the ninth grade when we watched the second tower fall via a TV-laden cart rolled into my Algebra class.
I had also much more recently watched the behemoth of a documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021), which has a runtime of over three hours (!) and is as comprehensive as you might expect. I’ve always loved folk horror; you can probably guess that from the fact that I happily sat through all 194 minutes of the aforementioned film. I came away from that marathon viewing session with the understanding that folk horror is a subgenre in constant conflict with itself.
In nearly any given work of folk horror you can find both the subtextual xenophobic fear of the colonizer that an indigenous culture will somehow come back to destroy them and, in the main text, the xenophobic fear of the small town that is practicing something unwholesome at the intrusion of the outsider. Fracture the lens a little more and you will see the works that play it straight … and the works that seem like they’re rooting for the designated baddies to win. Folk horror is the ouroboros, eating and birthing its thematic preoccupations again and again with varying degrees of self-awareness.
To me that felt like a perfect space in which to subvert expectations. To write about the very serious matters that interested me: the breakdown of family units, the betrayal of children by the adults they trust, PTSD, sexual assault survivors inching their way back to dating, loneliness, queerness in the unfriendly past. (Which has a distinctly different flavor than queerness in the unfriendly present.)
Most of all, it seemed like a place to carve out a story where the stakes were so high that all of the serious Life Stuff never felt like an author PSA. Teenagers are incredibly astute readers, and when I was a teen, I would only tolerate soapboxing paired with equal parts entertainment, or beauty, or intrigue. And it was from all of this that Empty Heaven, a folk horror taking place in the year before and immediate aftermath of 9/11, was born.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
The whole thing took about a year and a half, including a few rounds of editorial feedback, revisions, and copy editing. But of course, I didn’t really put my head down and start writing until about three months before the manuscript was due, which is basically the only way I can work. I’m writing these responses in the early morning before I have to turn them in, I can’t help myself!
As for the question of how the concept evolved … I’m not an outliner, so every story goes in directions that surprise me. I feel like I’m in a trance when I write, and sometimes when I read things back, I have no idea how I came up with them. It sounds stressful when I put it like that, but it’s actually what makes writing so fun. Everything is new every day, nothing is pre-planned, I have no map and only the vaguest idea of my destination.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
The pressure! Empty Heaven is the second book in a two-book deal, and I had a great many ideas and also no idea at all about what I was going to follow up my first novel with. Now, Conjurers—my debut—was effortless, because there was zero pressure. I wasn’t agented, I wasn’t showing it to anyone, I wasn’t being edited. Suddenly I had a contractual obligation to produce a 90,000-word manuscript. And a dreaded due date! In addition to that external pressure, I had the internal pressure of my own fears … I’ve heard a lot about the “second book slump”, and while I can’t speak to the factual side of that, I think that on a gut level it makes a lot of emotional sense.
An agent (let me pause here to say I have the best agents in the world) will oftentimes try to secure multibook deals for their client(s), assuming that’s what the client in question wants. It’s one small way to carve out a period of stability in an industry that is practically defined by uncertainty. So, what you end up with are a lot of creative types who have just started out in traditional publishing and are being confronted with the reality of books as business for the first time. It’s only human to feel that bearing down on you. And have it show up in your work, in any number of ways. But I feel very lucky, because I had a wonderful team to work with, and a lifelong propensity for doing my best work in a total panic at the last possible moment.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
Every single thing is a surprise to me every single time. My process itself is pretty simple: I just sit down and write. But what happens within the document is always something totally unexpected.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
There are three things I would really like every reader to get out of Empty Heaven, and they are the three things I want out of every book I read:
Entertainment. Let me type it again with more emphasis: ENTERTAINMENT. It’s the number one thing I look for in any book I open. I want to be transported. I don’t want to quibble about sentence structure or get snagged on unevenly plotted terrain, I want to be utterly immersed in Book World and feel like I’m surfacing when I take a break. This is the most beautiful thing about literature of any kind; the great equalizer. The deepest of intellectually stimulating adult fiction and the sweetly comforting middle-grade novel can be equally delightful if they have equal power to entertain.
Connection. I want to give teenagers something to read that has people who feel real, even in incredibly heightened circumstances. The characters don’t have to be anything like their audience, as long as they seem like actual people. Authenticity of the cast is a huge plus for me, especially in genre fiction, where I feel like the characters can be secondary to the plot.
Emotion. Sometimes when I finish a really good book, I cry because it’s over. The impact the story has on my emotions—whether it’s happy, or sad, or scary, or all of the above—is so important. The books that make me feel the most are the books I read over and over again.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
You are a better writer than you probably think you are.
Everyone I know spends a lot of time worrying about the quality of the work they produce. It’s a valid concern, to a point. But only to a point. No one will ever be the all-time greatest in this highly subjective artistic field. No one will ever produce a manuscript that is universally beloved. Some people will hate your strengths, some will praise your weaknesses. The number one thing holding you back is most likely a lack of completed work as opposed to a lack of raw skill.
Just finish something. Finish something and you’re already way ahead of the curve. Finish one thing and you can finish another thing. And the more things you finish, the better you’ll become.
