Pride Month 2025: An Interview with Mia Dalia
What is your novel about?
My novel, Haven, is about a family who stays at an inherited house for a month of August. And all the things that go terribly wrong. So, on the surface, it’s a “dream vacation turns nightmare” story, but there’s a lot more to it. Both the novel and the house have a backstory of a woman wronged and determined to rise above. But a terrible injustice calls for a revenge in whatever way it finds it, and the past never truly stops bleeding into the present. Haven is far from an idyllic lake house, and the Bakers are far from an ideal family. And this vacation will tear them apart. Who will be responsible, the house or the people? That I’ll let the readers decide. A choose-your-own adventure approach, if you will. Just remember that not every house is a haven. For me, Haven was a chance to indulge my curiously persistent desire to dismantle the myth of an all-American happy family. Tolstoy had famously said that all happy families are alike, making the unhappy ones more interesting by default. I wanted to see how far I could take it.
What are you looking to express to readers with your work?
My goal with this novel was to challenge the societal norm for what a conventional family is and do it in an unconventional setting. At first glance, both The Bakers and Haven appear perfectly average as far as families and houses go. Then, slowly, their darker sides reveal themselves. Because, of course, things are seldom as they appear. If my work causes readers to take a second—deeper and more thoughtful—look at the world around them and the people in it, then I’d call it a success.
Why choose horror?
Well, the world is terrifying, so the choice is simple. But the longer answer would be that I’m very interested in psychology, so to me, it’s fascinating to deconstruct characters—occasionally layer by layer as they kick and scream—and see what makes them tick. And no genre does it better than horror. I actually write across genres and have published mysteries, science fiction, dark comedy, etc., but I always come back to horror because it suits my idiosyncrasies the best. Not just any horror; I don’t care for gore and guts and jump scares and any of that. What I love are slow-boiling, literary, dark psychological unravelings. It’s what I read, and it’s what I write. But then again, perhaps, horror has chosen me—I tend to dream in nightmares. It was only a matter of time until I started writing them down. And I sincerely hope readers out there will be tempted to check them out.
Mia Dalia is an internationally published, CWA-nominated author of all things fantastic, thrilling, scary, and strange. Her short stories of horror, noir, science fiction, mystery, crime, humor, and more have been featured in a variety of anthologies, magazines, literary journals, online, and adapted for narrative podcasts. Mia’s work has been selected as Tales to Terrify’s top ten best stories of 2023, shortlisted for the Crime Writers Association’s Daggers Award 2024, and praised by authors and editors such as Michael Marshall Smith – “One of the best novels I’ve read in years”, Stephen Jones – “horror tour-de-force”, Clay McLeod Chapman – “every flip of the page leads its readers deeper into uneasy dream”, Neil Sharpson, M.R. Carey, A.C. Wise, Ian Rogers, and more. She is the author of the novels Estate Sale and Haven, novellas Tell Me a Story, Discordant, Arrokoth, and Do You Know The Muffin Man?, and the collection Smile So Red and Other Tales of Madness. Her upcoming work will be featured by PS Publishing, Lethe Press, Crystal Lake Publishing, Brigids Gate Press, Dark Matter INK, Absinthe Books, Earthling Publications, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and more.
Find Dalia on Amazon, her website and through Linktree.
