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Joe Hill

Goodreads Author

Born

in Bangor, Maine, The United States

Website

http://www.joehillfiction.com/

Twitter

joe_hill

Genre

Fiction, Horror, Science Fiction

Influences

Revolver - The Beatles, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap - AC/DC, Close Enc ...more

Member Since

November 2016

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Joe Hill's debut, Heart-Shaped Box, won the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel. His second, Horns, was made into a film freakfest starring Daniel Radcliffe. His other novels include NOS4A2, and his #1 New York Times Best-Seller, The Fireman... which was also the winner of a 2016 Goodreads Choice Award for Best Horror Novel.

He writes short stories too. Some of them were gathered together in his prize-winning collection, 20th Century Ghosts.

He won the Eisner Award for Best Writer for his long running comic book series, Locke & Key, co-created with illustrator and art wizard Gabriel Rodriguez.

He lives in New Hampshire with a corgi named McMurtry after a certain beloved writer of cowboy tales. His next book, Strange Weather, a collect ...more

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Popular Answered Questions

You've said a few times that you don't consider The Fireman to be a horror novel, though a lot of people disagree. Do you see genre as a constraint?

Joe Hill I see genre as a set of props that you can bring in to stage the performance. In the horror prop room there's the axe, strobes for suggesting the flas…moreI see genre as a set of props that you can bring in to stage the performance. In the horror prop room there's the axe, strobes for suggesting the flash of lightning, plastic gallon jugs of fake blood. In the science fiction prop room, you've got the robot costume and a drawer full of Buck Rogers zap guns. And so on. If you use those props, you're inevitably going to encourage certain expectations in your audience, which you can seek to meet or confound, depending on your goals.

If I'm not sure The Fireman is really horror, it's probably because I got most of my props from the science fiction department, with a couple side trips to to the room where we store stuff for romantic comedies. I also visited the wardrobe we use for "road trip" stories. Oh, and also, I grabbed a carpetbag left over from the theater's last performance of Mary Poppins. Ahem.(less)

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MJ Codename: ♕Duchess♕ I like the creepiness of it and how it really breaks human beings down to their primal versions of themselves, but man, Harper is awful.
Sep 12, 2017 11:39AM · flag

Erica Throne When we talked about Horror in my genre fiction class at university, one of the defining elements of the genre was death; a main character, often the ...more
Jun 09, 2019 11:47PM · flag

Who is your favorite fictional couple, and why?

Joe Hill Oh man! What a great question. If we're talking romantic couple... probably Jake and Sadie from 11/22/63. It seemed to me that Jake didn't just fall f…moreOh man! What a great question. If we're talking romantic couple... probably Jake and Sadie from 11/22/63. It seemed to me that Jake didn't just fall for a lovely, thoughtful woman, but also for an emblem of an innocent, more hopeful time. If I had to pick a runner-up I'd go for Yorick and Agent 355 from Y: The Last Man. I am a fan of the idea that the person you're looking for has often been at your side all along and you just didn't notice.

Cecilia and Robbie from Atonement are pretty wonderful too.

But it's possible for a "couple" to be defined just as a pair of comrades. In which case I'd go with Aubrey-Maturin from the Patrick O'Brian novels, and Holmes-Watson.(less)

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Combine Editions
Joe Hill’s books

Average rating: 4.03 · 1,201,677 ratings · 112,389 reviews · 485 distinct works • Similar authors

	NOS4A2 4.07 avg rating — 151,311 ratings — published 2013 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Heart-Shaped Box 3.84 avg rating — 160,231 ratings — published 2007 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Horns 3.93 avg rating — 122,567 ratings — published 2010 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Locke & Key, Vol. 1: Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill (Goodreads Author), Gabriel Rodríguez (Artist), Robert Crais (Introduction) 4.15 avg rating — 101,019 ratings — published 2008 — 48 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Fireman 3.92 avg rating — 68,218 ratings — published 2016 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Locke & Key, Vol. 2: Head Games 4.31 avg rating — 47,550 ratings — published 2009 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	20th Century Ghosts 3.89 avg rating — 50,904 ratings — published 2005 — 101 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Locke & Key, Vol. 3: Crown of Shadows by Joe Hill (Goodreads Author), Gabriel Rodríguez (Illustrator), Brian K. Vaughan (Goodreads Author) (Introduction) 4.39 avg rating — 41,203 ratings — published 2010 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Locke & Key, Vol. 4: Keys to the Kingdom by Joe Hill (Goodreads Author), Gabriel Rodríguez 4.37 avg rating — 36,975 ratings — published 2011 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	King Sorrow 4.34 avg rating — 35,989 ratings — published 2025 — 26 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Joe Hill…

8 posts
Joe Hill's Blog

Fatal Snark Attack

Okay, okay, okay. I'm probably going to sound like a curmudgeonly cultural Puritan but I gotta 'fess up to a little pet peeve. I'm not a big fan of books written for two year olds, where the abiding tone is one of cynicism or snark. I feel like there's time enough to introduce an ironic, world-weary, and embittered protagonist when a child reader has reached the advanced and sophisticated age of, Read more of this blog post »

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Published on February 15, 2024 15:45

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Series by Joe Hill

Locke & Key (8 books)
by

Joe Hill (Goodreads Author) (Writer),

Gabriel Rodríguez (Illustrator)

4.31 avg rating — 309,975 ratings

NOS4A2 (2 books)
by

Joe Hill (Goodreads Author)

4.07 avg rating — 156,889 ratings

Locke & Key: Alpha (2 books)
by

Joe Hill (Goodreads Author),

Gabriel Rodríguez (Artist)

4.48 avg rating — 33,297 ratings

Basketful of Heads (7 books)
by

Joe Hill (Goodreads Author)

4.11 avg rating — 9,457 ratings

Locke & Key: One-Shots (5 books)
by

Joe Hill (Goodreads Author),

Gabriel Rodríguez (Artist)

3.97 avg rating — 8,107 ratings

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Related News

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At the beginning of each calendar month, Goodreads’ editorial team assembles a list of the hottest and most popular new books hitting shelves,...

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A Haunting

by William Boyd

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Quotes by Joe Hill (?)

“The best way to get even with anyone is to put them in the rearview mirror on your way to something better.”
― Joe Hill, Horns

603 likes

“You think you know someone. But mostly you just know what you want to know.”
― Joe Hill, Horns

tags: life-lessons

562 likes

“She breathed deeply of the scent of decaying fiction, disintegrating history, and forgotten verse, and she observed for the first time that a room full of books smelled like dessert: a sweet snack made of figs, vanilla, glue, and cleverness.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

tags: books, smell-of-books

295 likes

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Polls

Que livro de Horror vamos ler em Outubro?

Elevation, by Stephen King

6 votes, 42.9%

Lovecraft Country, do Matt Ruff

4 votes, 28.6%

The Fireman, do Joe Hill

3 votes, 21.4%

My Soul to Keep (African Immortals, #1) by Tananarive Due

My Soul to Keep, da Tananarive Due

1 vote, 7.1%

14 total votes

comments and details

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Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
Goodreads Librari...: Incorrect Pages Listed for ISBN	4	57	Oct 14, 2008 06:55AM
Every one's Choice: Heart Shaped Box	24	49	Oct 30, 2008 09:21AM
The Seasonal Read...: By Blood or Marriage (25.2)	41	415	Aug 24, 2009 02:23PM

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Joe’s Quotes

“The lifelong friends, he said. We sometimes wait a lifetime for them.”
― Ali Smith, Autumn

tags: connection, friendship

107 likes

“The smallest indivisible human unit is two people, not one; one is a fiction. From such nets of souls societies, the social world, human life springs.”
― Tony Kushner

tags: community

68 likes

“Is there never any escaping the junkshop of the self?”
― Ali Smith, Autumn

tags: regret

45 likes

“Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

tags: better

2094 likes

“Truth is singular. Its 'versions' are mistruths.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

tags: cloud-atlas

559 likes

More of Joe’s quotes…

Joe’s Friend Comments

Comments (showing 1-2) post a comment »

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message 2: by Roslyn

Mar 12, 2021 11:54AM

Joe wrote: "The Fireman

The Fireman is a finalist for a GoodReads Award in Horror! I'm not sure it's really a horror novel, but it has scary parts, and winning prizes is always fun, so if you ..."

Thanx, Joe, but I'd rather have McMurtry do the toe-licking honors. Corgis rock!

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message 1: by Joe

Nov 18, 2016 06:22AM

The Fireman

The Fireman is a finalist for a GoodReads Award in Horror! I'm not sure it's really a horror novel, but it has scary parts, and winning prizes is always fun, so if you feel inclined to vote for it, I WILL LICK BETWEEN YOUR TOES IN GRATITUDE.*

*not really