Jill Baguchinsky—the author of contemporary YA novel Mammoth—goes dark and moody in So Witches We Became, a supernatural YA horror novel that tackles issues of female friendship and healing from assault. Nell and her best friend Harper have been growing apart. So, when Harper invites Nell to vacation with her on a private Florida island, Nell jumps at the opportunity to rekindle their relationship, but things take a turn when Harper’s antagonistic boyfriend Gavin arrives. As Nell navigates these fraught dynamics, a more sinister force comes into play in the form of a mysterious and toxic haze that encompasses the island and blocks off all the exits. In a conversation with PW, Baguchinsky spoke about disaster prep, Dirty Dancing, and her advent to the horror genre.

This is your first horror YA. What brought about this pivot?

Horror has always been my home. I have that origin story that most horror writers seem to: I grew up reading Stephen King way too early. My first YA, Spooky Girl, which skewed a lot younger than So Witches We Became, was a paranormal fantasy, so it had some horror elements, but it was a very gentle, light story. And while I was drafting So Witches We Became, I sold a couple of horror short stories to various outlets and anthologies.

It’s nice that genre-hopping isn’t such a taboo thing in the industry these days. When I started trying to get into the business, people would say, “You have to pick your lane, and you have to stay there.” I’m so glad that I was able to jump into contemporary to write Mammoth, which is a story that’s very close to my heart and was very fun to research. But it was great to settle back into the spookier stuff. It was like horror was welcoming me home.

How much research did you have to do for So Witches We Became?

It has a ton of hurricane information in it, like hurricane prep and how the storms work. About 90% of that just came from my own experience, because I grew up in Florida, and I’ve been through so many tropical storms. That was much easier to settle into than Mammoth was, because I had to research paleontology and learn how to do some of that.

I did work with a therapist for a bit for So Witches We Became because it contains some dark subject matter and I wanted to make sure I was handling that in a sensitive and realistic manner. So my research went more in that direction.

Can you talk about how these dark themes show up in the novel and how they impacted your writing process?

What really got me thinking about writing this book was going through Hurricane Irma, which hit Marco Island directly in 2017. I’ve been through a ton of hurricanes, like I said, but when I was younger, I always had my father around to give me guidance. He was really good at staying calm during storms. He was also a contractor, so he knew if a house was built well enough to withstand a storm. It was always reassuring to have him around.

He passed away in May 2017, and then we got hit directly by a strong category three hurricane that September. Without having him around to reassure me and my mother, it was just a whole new level of trauma and anxiety. I really wanted to write a hurricane story to work through some of that and process some of it, just for myself.

I was originally going to write a disaster thriller, with the teens trying to survive this horrible hurricane or something. But then I realized, as I was starting to draft the following year, that I didn’t really want to write a story where the hurricane was the villain because hurricanes aren’t villains. They’re not good or bad. They’re just forces of nature, they’re things that happen. I realized that I wanted to write about a different sort of bad guy.

At that point, as I was trying to figure out what I was doing, there was so much discussion and discourse going on about things like locker room talk and “boys will be boys.” I grew up hearing some of that, and then hearing so much of it so publicly, and seeing so many things get dismissed, ignited a lot of rage in me. That’s how I came up with the idea that the real villain is going to be someone who embodies those behaviors.

What themes or experiences did you hope to highlight when creating Nell, Harper, and Gavin’s dynamic?

It’s important to recognize, especially for teenagers, that as you grow older and you’ve had a certain friend for a while, maybe you go off in different directions, and your friendship has to kind of evolve with it. And that can be very, very tough, especially when maybe one of them gets into a relationship. That can be overwhelming for everybody involved. It’s not only young people who go through that; I’ve had adult friends who, once they get into a relationship, you don’t hear from them again for a couple of months. It’s frustrating when you always thought you were connected in certain ways. I think that will probably speak to a lot of readers.

How does Nell’s developing romance with island local Tris come into play regarding Nell and Harper’s shifting friendship?

Tris and Nell’s romance came across very naturally for me. I wanted to have one character who was local to the area and who had been through hurricane warnings and knew how that kind of thing worked. So I came up with Tris, whose full name is actually Tristan Castle because I was watching Dirty Dancing and I noticed that Johnny Castle was the local who knew how everything worked, and I wanted something like that. But I wanted it to be a queer romance.

Nell is kind of hesitant about being in a relationship. She hasn’t moved along as far as Harper has, in terms of romance. She just hadn’t really had that much interest in forming those kinds of bonds until she met Tris. And even then, it’s almost too difficult for her to navigate. She’s constantly asking herself, “What is that? What am I feeling? What’s going on?” It was fun to write that.

What other books or writers have had an influence on your work?

Definitely Misery by Stephen King. I read it as a love story to writing, which is probably very bizarre for anybody who knows what it’s about. Also, YA horror like Shea Ernshaw’s The Wicked Deep, Tiffany Jackson’s White Smoke, and Katrina Leno’s horror novels.

It’s interesting to see how far horror has come because when I was a kid, I didn’t really have much to read in the way of horror. There was Christopher Pike, of course, and R.L. Stine, but that was pre-Goosebumps, that’s how long ago it was. And I read those, and I liked them, but they were so short, and they didn’t get into a lot of deep issues. So it’s great to read horror now that’s written for teenagers, and gets into some deeper, more interesting issues. It’s a way for young readers to process some of these darker experiences and feelings.

So Witches We Became by Jill Baguchinsky. Little, Brown, $18.99 July 23 ISBN 978-0-316-56880-7