You Might Be a Supernatural Thriller Author If…

You might be a supernatural thriller author if the ghosts in your head are noticeably quieter before that first cup of coffee than after it, and half-caf or not, you have started to suspect the spirits and the caffeine are working off the same schedule.

You might be a supernatural thriller author if one of your two Shelties barks at absolutely nothing in the hallway at 2 a.m., and instead of checking it out, you reach for a notepad, because something unseen setting off the dog is a Tuesday for you and also possibly chapter twelve.

Your outgoing tabby strolls straight through the commotion like she has already read the manuscript and knows exactly how the house wins in the end.

Her sister took one look at the two small poltergeists who moved in a few years back, weighed the sharp-clawed swipe against the quiet high ground of the closet, and chose discretion. She has been guarding that haunted den ever since.

You might be a supernatural thriller author if you have had a full, coherent conversation with a woman who has been dead since 1887, before you have had your coffee, and she made more sense than you did.

You might be a supernatural thriller author if your search history could get you a personal visit from several concerned government agencies, and the only thing standing between you and that visit is a very good explanation that starts with “I only research the hauntings. I don’t cause them.”

You might be a supernatural thriller author if the dog is asleep under your desk, the cat is asleep on your keyboard, and you have somehow still managed to dispatch a beloved character with something that, officially, does not exist.

You might be a supernatural thriller author if half-caf feels like a small betrayal and a small mercy at the same time, and you have decided the ghosts in chapter nine can just wait until the caffeine kicks in.

You might be a supernatural thriller author if you have tried to explain your plot to a non-writer friend and watched their face do that thing, that polite, glazed thing, right around the part where you say “and that’s when we find out the house has always known.”

You might be a supernatural thriller author if you have gone looking for one small historical fact and surfaced two hours later with absolutely no memory of what you were originally looking for, but you do now know entirely too much about how a Victorian family would have handled a death in the house.

You might be a supernatural thriller author if your character refuses to walk into the basement and you, the one inventing the basement, feels the dread right along with her.

You might be a supernatural thriller author if you have said out loud, to an empty room, “no, the entity wouldn’t do that,” with complete conviction, about a being that does not exist and never has.

You might be a supernatural thriller author if the good ideas, the ones that actually explain how the haunting works, always arrive in the shower, in the car, or at 2 a.m., and never once, not a single time, while you are sitting at the desk where you are supposed to be having them.

You might be a supernatural thriller author if, at the end of a day like that with dogs underfoot, a cat holding court in her haunted closet, your coffee gone cold, and a woman dead since 1887 more real to you than the mail carrier, you would not trade a single bit of it. It is a strange life. It is a good one.

Mary Ann Poll is America’s Lady of Supernatural Thrillers and the author of the Ravens Cove Iconoclast Series. She writes from Texas now, fueled by half-caf and outnumbered by pets, and she hosts the Real Ghost Chatter podcast when the cat allows her back at the keyboard.