In a time when many books plead to be forgotten when the spine closes, Johanna van Veen’s tales linger in the reader’s mind long after the last page is turned. The Dutch writer of the gothic horror novels My Darling Dreadful Thing (May 2024) and upcoming Blood on Her Tongue (March 2025) is quickly becoming a name spoken among queer book lovers, horror fans, and consumers of profoundly disturbing fiction.
But van Veen is not just a writer of literary specters; she is a cultural archaeologist, unearthing the skeletons in history’s closets and holding them up against the mirror of queer modernity. As she puts it: “Horror has always been pretty queer. and I love to explore the impossible and the strange precisely because that is the opposite of boring.”
From Academia to Apparitions
Van Veen started off with two MAs in English Literature and Digital Media, a combination which sharpened both her analytical precision and her creative sensibilities. “My MAs permitted me to read widely and have taught me the conventions of fiction on a deep and meaningful level,” she says. “You can only defy the rules in a way that makes meaning if you understand what the rules are.”
Following the purchase of an agent at 21 and the letdown of an unpublished début, van Veen discovered patience in failure and purpose. That sidetrack, she is convinced, was a blessing: My Darling Dreadful Thing became a more forceful, more dynamic book. “It’s a much better novel,” she states simply.
Her Dutch heritage finds its influence in her novels. Both are written in the Netherlands, drawing upon its complicated colonial and war history as rich soil for gothic suspense. My Darling Dreadful Thing is concerned with the trauma of WWII and Dutch colonization of Indonesia directly. “The 1950s in the Netherlands seems to me an inherently gothic period,” van Veen writes. “A horrible deed that refuses to stay buried. continues to impact the people and even the land around it.”
Beautifully Unsettling: The Book
At the center of My Darling Dreadful Thing is a dark love affair between a fraudulent spiritualist and a ghost named Ruth. The book is permeated with fear, but also with desire. “It’s not a really healthy love story,” van Veen acknowledges. “But it is a love story nonetheless.” In the ghostly and psychic, she sees beauty: “To hope for better is not just an act of resistance; it is necessary for survival.”
The new *Blood on Her Tongue* realigns the focus from love to sisterhood. The 1880s-set novel is about twins and disease, and it draws on van Veen being a triplet. “Twins are a horror staple,” she says, “but usually represented lazily or offensively. Being a triplet is one of the biggest joys of my life.” This inside-out position enables her to reclaim and subvert the old horror clichés.
Van Veen’s work has been characterized as “beautifully unsettling” – something she welcomes. “There can be no truth without some fear or discomfort,” she states. “The truth is often painful, uncomfortable, perhaps a little shameful. it’s the price we must pay to get at things that are true.”
Queer Horror, With Teeth
Queer horror is not merely an aesthetic with van Veen – she uses it as a lens for freedom. “The gothic enjoys probing the forbidden,” she says. “Queerness was forbidden, and remains so in a lot of places. Gothic is about revealing those secrets and taboos, about bringing them into the light.”
Not everyone is ready for what she discovers in her stories. “I once had a reader DNF My Darling Dreadful Thing when she discovered it was a queer book. She still gave it three stars though,” van Veen says with amusement. “Which is probably the most hilarious part.”
But for others, her books are revelation. “Some readers wrote to me and said that reading my book made them feel really seen and understood for the first time in a way that was unusual for them. I found it very moving.”
The Mission Beyond the Manuscript
Van Veen has no interest in following fads or composing to be passively consumed. “There’s this worrying trend of people saying ‘just switch your brain off.’ That’s highly concerning,” she says. “Writers want the aesthetic of being a writer without doing the hard work of actually being a writer.”
For her, narrative is inextricable from meaning, “You don’t have to moralize, but all good stories have some substance to them.” Her fiction, for its part, contains that substance layered both in content and structure. She frequently incorporates interstitials, which can be read as an interest in the ‘found footage’ look, something she would like to experiment with further.
Looking forward, van Veen’s creative plans are as big as they are varied: a currently ongoing middle-grade fantasy trilogy, a prehistoric horror book, a cosmic horror epic, even a supernatural romance novel. “There’s still plenty to get through on my writerly bucket list!” she chuckles.
Success for her, though, is not just about sales: “Ideally, a hundred years from now, people will still be reading my stories and be touched and inspired by them.” She even hopes for screen versions: “Something like a Mike Flanagan series would be beyond cool.”
For Aspiring Writers
To up-and-coming queer or gothic authors, van Veen presents a combination of realism and optimism: “Publishers want to make money. A lot of publishing is luck. If it doesn’t work out, that’s not a personal failing.”
Her artistic mantra? “Everything is subjective. Just because someone didn’t like my novel doesn’t mean it’s bad. What matters most is that I love it.”
Discover Johanna van Veen’s Work:
My Darling Dreadful Thing (May 2024): https://www.johannavanveen.com/my-darling-dreadful-thing
Blood on Her Tongue (March 2025): https://www.johannavanveen.com/blood-on-her-tongue
Author Website: https://www.johannavanveen.com
In van Veen’s universe, ghosts are never simply ghosts, sisters bear the burdens of centuries, and queer longing is both sanctifying and spectral. With every book, she invites us to gaze deeper into the darkness—and perhaps find ourselves looking back.
