Pity the crew of the nearly century-old sailboat, the Black Watch. They’re crossing the ocean to deliver the antique to a new owner. Some of the sailors on board are very experienced, others not so much. And there’s something else on board as well.
John Hornor Jacobs’ newest novel of horror is titled The Night That Finds Us All, and it slowly envelops the reader into an ever more confining, claustrophobic trip aboard the Black Watch. An aged bottle of rum and a decaying diary lend a few clues to what darkness may actually curse the ship.
John Hornor Jacobs lives in Little Rock and continues to receive national acclaim for his work. He’ll discuss his latest book on Oct. 8 at Underbrush Books in downtown Rogers, and he says for this one, he actually got onto a sailboat to learn more about that world.
Jacobs: When I first started writing the book, I had the idea and I started writing it and I got about, I don’t know, a few chapters in and I realized sailing was one of those things you really can’t fake. You can do a lot of research or whatever, but ultimately, you can’t really fake it well. And it mattered to me that I sort of got it right, as right as I could.
So I actually went and figured out a way to become a crewman on a passage from delivering a yacht from Saint Martin to Newport, Rhode Island. And it took, like all of it took about a month with travel there and everything. But it was something I’m proud of doing. Would I ever do it again? Probably not.
I mean, it was an offshore passage, which meant that it wasn’t like a literal — not like, l-i-t-t-o-r-a-l, right, like literal. It was an offshore passage. So at some point, we were 800 miles from the nearest land. If anything happened, we were far from rescue.
Kellams: So could you use that sort of feeling, that sort of experience, to put into kind of helping the readers feel what that might be like?
Jacobs: Most definitely. Most of the imagery and some of the mood of the book is derived specifically from the watches I was on on this passage. So you’re in 3 in the morning by yourself at the helm, or usually we had another person, but they would go in. And there would be times when you’d just sort of find yourself alone on the great face of the ocean, and you’re like, wow. Right. Especially when the seas are high and it’s scary.
Kellams: Three of the characters in The Night That Finds Us All are named Steve. And they’re these white middle-aged guys who’ve paid to be on the crew. And the experienced sailors, understandably, see them when they first get on. They think, oh boy. They nicknamed them the Threves. Do we see a little of John in the Threves? Not that you’re an annoying person or anything like that.
Jacobs: Oh, definitely. No, definitely. The difference between me and most, like almost all the people I went on my passage with, were wealthy white men going to get offshore miles so they could, I don’t know, either get lower insurance rates on their sailboats or some sort of captaincy license or whatever.
It was funny because I was like the poorest person on the boat. Right? But yes, definitely. I will say that I think I acquitted myself well. The captain, who was a salty old Australian guy, was like, you can just sign up on the message board and if you ever want to sail again with me, you’re welcome to. Which is cool. But I was thinking, no thank you. It was rough. It was physically challenging.
Kellams: I’m speaking with John Hornor Jacobs about his new latest novel, The Night That Finds Us All. This is a horror book, but what I love about this book is the pacing. And I don’t know if you’ll take this as a compliment or not. About halfway through, I put down the book and thought, I don’t care if it becomes scarier. I just like learning about Vines and her struggles. I mean, it is a horror book, but it’s very much a character study. And I wonder how much you thought about that as you were putting it together.
Jacobs: Well, ultimately, when you write a first-person narrative, it’s always a character study because you’re trying to figure out what their voice is and their story and their motivations. But a lot of that comes through figuring out what their voice is.
That was really the thing once I sort of figured out how sort of snarky and one of the things she does that I really appreciate, which I wish I was more like her in the sense, was that she kept her sense of humor even in the bleakest sort of things. That was part of her indomitable spirit. She wasn’t going to let them take her humor away from her. So that was important to me. Once you sort of figure that out, it informs the fabric of her character, puts flesh on the skeleton.
Kellams: The pacing is amazing because it is a slow build. It reminds me of Hitchcock’s The Birds. Or if you’re reading Stephen King and you’re in the Overlook Hotel and just slowly, as the reader, you pick up this book and you know that there’s going to be something dark eventually. But I just like how it seems weird to say for a book that deals with the supernatural, but it seems like a natural progression of how things happen.
Jacobs: Yeah. I mean, I guess it’s interesting. Edgar Allan Poe invented two genres. He invented the mystery novel, and he invented pretty much horror. And there’s a reason that he did both of them, in the sense that most horror books and movies function very much for the first part of it like a mystery.
It’s like, oh, there’s this uncanny thing, we have to figure it out, right? We have to figure out what it actually is. What is going on here? What is going on in this case, this haunted house that’s this sort of immovable feast.
So it tends to work like a mystery. And mysteries tend to be slow to begin with — or not, it just depends on the writer. But ultimately, it’s a very short book. It’s not a long book. So I felt like I had a little bit of time to stretch my legs and let you get to know. And it was a lot of setup, because sailing is such a specific thing. I felt like I had to deliver some of the information about it naturally.
I mean, it would not do to just dump exposition. Which I actually have to do, sort of. But it comes through dialogue. So the pacing is just really the barest of minimum. Like when I finished the first draft, it was just barely novel length. My editor was like, we gotta sort of pad this out, add more details. So I went back to the drawing board and fleshed out those areas, gave it more tissue.
Kellams: One of the most difficult things, I think, whether it’s a mystery or a horror novel or anything that’s going to have some twists, is not telegraphing. And I think it’s remarkable, as I went back and thought about reading this book, and it’s a horror novel, I’m not going to give too much away here. But when one of the Steves doesn’t return, in lesser hands, John, I would have instantly kind of seen what’s revealed later in the book about this person. But you write it so well. And I don’t know if you’re distracting us or you’re just giving us deeper character study. I was surprised when we found him.
Jacobs: Yeah. Well, I knew what I was doing, so I tried not to telegraph it. But you have to also provide some crumbs so that when it actually happens, people are like, oh, right. Otherwise, you sideswipe people out of the blue. So there’s foreshadowing throughout it. There are crumbs, little tidbits that hint toward what’s going to happen.
But yeah, I try. Thank you for saying that. It’s always pleasant when someone affirms that you did your job the way you’re supposed to.
Kellams: It’s a book of fiction. I don’t want to give too much away, but did you know early in your process what Samantha Vineyard and all the other sailors were going to be dealing with?
Jacobs: No, actually I didn’t. My first thought, the sort of gestational inspiration, was during the pandemic. I was watching escapist videos, some of them sailing, and I was watching this guy who has a sailing channel. He gets hired to be a crew member to deliver a yacht. And I thought, that’s a job people do.
Most of my books are like that — something that fascinates me. Sailing, or ethnomusicologists working for the Library of Congress in the ’30s, some esoteric bit of study. And it’s like, what if a guy’s hired to crew and deliver a sailboat for the sailboat’s home? That was the original kernel of an idea. So what if? And then it was exploring that.
I don’t want to spoil anything, but it is a haunted house story, ultimately. That’s how it came about. But I didn’t really know where it was going to end up. I do tend to write — I’m really trying not to write bleak endings. Honestly, I feel like with horror novels that can be an easy out. Rather than wrap things up in a way that returns the world to the status quo, I want someone to come out of it having grown, having had some self-realization.
And I feel like in that sense, this book is not a bleak ending. It’s kind of an upbeat ending.
Kellams: When did you know what your ending was going to be?
Jacobs: Usually about halfway through a book, I have this sort of serious talk with myself. Like, hey buddy, how are we going to wrap this up? Often I’ll know what the ending is, or the final scene, or thematically what I want to do. But sometimes I have to say, about halfway through, let’s outline the rest of it.
I tend to be more of a pantser, flying by the seat of my pants, rather than a plotter. Or as George R.R. Martin says, I tend to be a gardener rather than an architect. I let it grow. And then at some point, though, you have to put on your architect pants, your plotting pants, and say, all right, we’ve got to wrap this up.
Kellams: On your website, you say it’s kind of like your first ever “book tour.” You’re going to be at Underbrush in Rogers. You’re going to be in Tulsa. Looking forward to that?
Jacobs: Yes, I am. It is going from city to city in a row. It’s going to be tough, because it’s a performance every time. And naturally, as a writer, I’m probably more introverted than extroverted. I can deal with periods of extroversion, but days in a row of going and performing requires a lot of energy. But I’m very much looking forward to it.
Kellams: The name of the book is The Night That Finds Us All. John Hornor Jacobs, congratulations. Thank you for the book. And can’t wait to talk to you again.
Jacobs: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Kellams: John Hornor Jacobs will discuss The Night That Finds Us All Wednesday, Oct. 8, at Underbrush Books. He lives in Little Rock, and our conversation took place via Zoom.
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