"Something Old and Strange": C.N. Vair on Fawn, Appalachian Folk Horror and the Jezebel Spirit

I read Fawn in Kenya. I was somewhere else entirely within about ten pages, and I'd finished it inside forty-eight hours. So I'll admit up front that this interview involved a certain amount of quiet fangirling.

C.N. Vair has written a debut folk horror novel that does something rare: it makes a landscape feel like a character with opinions. We talked about how she did that, about the drafts that didn't survive, and about the sentence a man said to her in high school that she has been happily weaponising ever since.

Place as a character

The two things Carly set out to achieve in Fawn were both about feel rather than plot: she wanted the magic to be soft and undefined, and she wanted the location to work as a character in its own right.

"Those are also my favourite kinds of books," she says. "The ones with a really distinct sense of place."

That place is Western New York — where she still lives, and where she grew up. "There is just such a wild beauty about this part of the country."

 

"I think that's one of the reasons I just can't quit this place."

 

Here's the bit that surprises people. When she says the book is Appalachian, she doesn't mean West Virginia or Tennessee.

"That is traditionally what we're talking about when we say Appalachia. But the actual region — the physical characteristics of the region, and the economic characteristics — go much further than that, all the way up into the southern tier of New York. I think this area still has so much in common with what we traditionally think of as Appalachia."

Why Appalachian horror is having a moment

It's not just her. Mostly Human Resources, Forest Bleeds, When the Night Comes Knocking — Carly rattles off a list of recent and forthcoming books that are Appalachian and horror-or-horror-adjacent, and admits she doesn't fully know why the region has surged to the front.

Her best theory is about age.

"America as an idea feels very new, comparatively. And Appalachia — because of the actual physical age of the mountains, but also because it sort of amalgamated Native American culture instead of completely abandoning or discarding it — really has that sense of something old and strange in a way that most Americans probably aren't familiar with in their own country."

 

"That's what draws me to it. That sense of something strange and unknowable and almost eldritch."

 

She and her husband, whom she cheerfully describes as making them both sound ancient, like to drive around looking at the leaves in autumn. He'll gesture at the hills and ask if she can believe they're millions of years old. She can't. "It makes the everyday feel a little bit more special, and a little bit more strange, in a wonderful way."

There's a comfort in that scale, too — the sense that whatever's grinding away at you day to day is very small next to a story that's outlasted everyone who ever told it.

Who are our neighbours?

The folklore boom, Carly thinks, is tangled up with a question people are asking about each other right now.

"Who are our neighbours? What do we actually know about them? Are we as aligned as maybe we imagined? That question of is the monster within or without — is it us, is it others — feels really at the forefront at the moment."

That's what brought her to this story. Do I share values with the people who live around me? And if I don't, and they can't be reconciled, what then? How do we live in proximity?

 

"I wrote this book without ever having an answer. I just wanted to ask the question."

 

Tess, she notes, tries to find her people in the novel — much as Carly has in real life. "I think I've maybe been a little bit more successful than her in the long run."

On finding your tribe

We got briefly and happily sidetracked into how hard it is to find horror people in the wild — the little social dance of trying to suss out whether someone is on your wavelength without being either confrontational or reductive about it.

Carly's observation on this is sharp: a shared interest doesn't always bring you closer.

"Sometimes you think a connection — a book, a movie, a genre — will really bring you together, and instead you almost know too much. That connection separates you because you diverge within it. And because of the smaller space, it feels almost more alienating to differ within it."

The horror community, though, has been the opposite. Authors who blurbed her book, booksellers who read it, readers who've reached out — all of them, she says, extraordinarily lovely.

 

"I don't know how many horror readers are in my village. But my village is elsewhere too, and I really appreciate that."

 

Stumbling into horror

She did not set out to write a horror novel. She wasn't even a horror kid.

"I was not one of those kids who enjoyed the more macabre children's movies. I still am very particular about the horror that I watch. I can handle a lot more in a book than I can in a movie."

She grew up on The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia and Redwall, read fantasy right through university, and still does. With Fawn she simply chased the story, got to the end, and then asked what it was. There were edits afterwards to push the horror up a notch.

Since then, she's found her vein — and the books she gravitates to now sit at the crossroads of fantasy and horror, which is exactly where she thinks Fawn lives.

 

"I think it speaks to how expansive horror has become. It's really shaken off the idea that it's just one thing — just slashers, or just ghost stories."

 

She's struck that the genre is stretching in both directions at once: room for something like hers, where the horror is soft and there's no gore to speak of, and simultaneously room for the darker, weirder, more extreme end. "I love that there's room for both, without it having to put aside what it once was either."

If she had to pick a shelf? Folk horror, and she's perfectly happy there. She just makes a point of mentioning the fantasy element up front, so readers expecting something visceral know what they're walking into. "They're not going to be getting faces melting off, or buckets, or anything of that nature."

But the folk horror label fits, she says, because the book is concerned with everything folklore traditionally is: the small town, the religious aspects, the strange creatures — and, again, the question of whether the monster is within or without.

"You have a Jezebel spirit"

Carly released a video this week about one of Fawn's origin stories, and it's this: in high school, a man told her she had a Jezebel spirit.

If you didn't grow up in Christian fundamentalism, that will mean very little. In context it means strong-willed. It means unwilling to be led by men. It was not a compliment.

She was delighted.

"People occasionally, when I tell them that story, will go, that's so awful. And I'm like — I didn't think it was awful. I was sort of enamoured by it. I was sort of flattered. I knew that's not how he meant it when he said it. But the idea..."

The idea being that Jezebel's spirit is out there, lingering, manifesting in women and rendering them unpalatable to a very particular kind of authority.

 

"It was the first time as a teenager that I felt I had some kind of power that was not just based on me being pretty, or likeable, or palatable."

 

She's worn it as a badge of pride ever since, and says the pride has only grown with age. She wouldn't thank the man — that would be far too confrontational, given exactly how he meant it — but she does, quietly, have to.

And it's all over the book. "Tess is very much a Jezebel, I think."

The witch and the devil

The seed of Fawn was a romance between a witch and the devil, because the connection struck Carly as almost too obvious to ignore.

"I joke that I've always had too much sympathy for the devil, because he really just feels so human to me. The idea of him being cast out for pride and disobedience — that is rebellion. Those are the hallmarks of the witch."

The mythology already binds the two together, of course. What she wanted was the emotional connection.

She didn't know what form it would take when she started. Early on it was cosier — closer to an actual horror romance, "before that was actually wanted, before anyone was that." In one version, Tess was two characters: a pair of sisters.

As the story crystallised, Tess's outsiderness came forward and took over.

 

"When you're writing, you aren't necessarily conscious of what you're drawing on. These aspects of yourself are just baked in at this point. It's not until I'm going back and reading later, or until someone asks me a question, that I go — yeah, I do know where that came from."

 

Why the villain had to be a pastor

Carly is aware that a small-town pastor with real power over his community might read as an old-fashioned villain to some readers. She's had the alternative suggested to her: why not make it a data centre? Why not some other kind of encroaching development for Tess to fight?

Because it had to be rooted in religion. That's the version that's true to the places she was drawing on — and, I'd argue, the version that stays welded to the land in a way a data centre never could. The land and the faith in Fawn are the same argument.

Her own gloss on it is drier: "I wanted the conflict to still feel relevant after the AI bubble bursts and hopefully we're free of it forever."

Letting the book go

She expected to feel protective. Or at least immune — she'd decided that readers' opinions were, in a sense, none of her business. "Whether they have negative thoughts or positive thoughts, that's between them and the book."

What she had somehow not budgeted for was how good it would feel when people loved it.

 

"To be able to shout this into the void and sort of expect nothing back — and instead hear the echoes, and hear people responding and saying no, we're also here, and we hear you — has just been incredible."

 

She calls this the upside of being, in her words, "kind of an idiot about those things": she gets to be genuinely astonished by outcomes everyone else took for granted. And the handover has been frictionless. "Okay, go on now. Now you're somebody else's. You're not mine anymore. Go out into the world and do your thing."

What actually changed

Less than you'd think. Same house. Nobody stopping her in the street.

What changed is the people. Booksellers, librarians, other authors — Rachel Harrison in particular gets described as "truly an angel from heaven," which is a fairly strong endorsement for a woman who writes about vampires.

Publishing is slow, and Carly has found an unexpected gift in that.

"There's never one moment where you feel yes, I'm here, I've arrived, I've made it. That just doesn't exist. And yet because it is so slow — this series of checkpoints and moving goalposts — there are so many opportunities to stop and appreciate the people who have been supporting you all along."

She is, by her own admission, terrible at receiving any of it. Asked by her local library whether she'd like to say a few words about her book to an assembled book club, she reports responding: "It's coming out." That's all. That was the speech.

Next: The Walking Tree

Book two is in edits, under contract, and currently scheduled for autumn 2027. The title may not survive.

The premise absolutely should: a very tall lady arborist discovers that the tree she cares for is haunted by the spirit of the girl who was sacrificed to it a thousand years ago.

Her name is Genevieve, she is six foot one, and Carly — who is not — is having the time of her life. "I'm living my tall person fantasy through her."

The themes rhyme with Fawn: "Furious, unpalatable woman. Creepy small town. Some gods, some old religion, some old magic." Nature again. And angst, which she confesses to being a sucker for.

The difference is Genevieve herself. Where Tess is traditionally feminine, Genevieve has the height and physical strength we'd normally read as male, and grapples with that — literally and metaphorically — while being proud of it rather than trying to shrink.

Carly's biggest fear starting book two was that Tess would bleed into it. "When you've been writing and wanting to publish a book for so long, the one that makes it becomes the golden child." But Genevieve is different enough, and the handover held. "It feels like Tess has gone. She's out in the world now. She's not haunting me, waiting for me to finish her story."

The earworm

I like to end by asking guests for an unsolved problem that rattles around their head — so it can become the listener's problem too. Carly's is the one Fawn asks and refuses to answer.

"How do we coexist with people whose values we don't share?"

She's clear that looking for sameness isn't the answer. "I don't think someone has to be identical to me in order for me to care about them. I think that assumption is what's landed us in a lot of trouble to begin with."

But community requires something held in common, and she doesn't know how deep it has to go. "The questions just kind of keep getting bigger."

It's the spine of a third book she's already thinking about. In Fawn, coexistence is a question about nature — can we live with it, or is this a zero-sum game? In the next one it widens: nature again, but also men and women. "Looking at the different facets of coexistence, and how different aspects of our identities play bumper cars with other people."

The three books could share a universe — nothing in them insists otherwise — but they're standalones. "I don't think I have it in me yet to write a series, as much as I love a series to read."

What she's reading next

The Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden, saved deliberately as a post-launch present to herself: "I adore Katherine Arden and I'll read anything she writes." And On Sunday She Picks Flowers, which she insists she's late to, as she insists she's late to everything.

Carly reads, by her own description, strangely: find an author she loves, and instead of devouring the backlist she goes and reads something completely different. I am the opposite — six books deep before I come up for air — so we compared systems. Mine is three at once by format: e-book in bed (with a clicker, so it can't fall on my face), a physical copy for out and about, audiobook for driving and dog walks. Hers is usually two, one read and one listened to. Her friend Norm apparently runs four to six simultaneously and reports that the themes start talking to each other, which we have both now decided we need to try.

Frequently asked questions

What is Fawn by C.N. Vair about?

Fawn is a folk horror novel following Tess, an outsider in a small Appalachian town where a pastor holds enormous sway. It grew out of the author's desire to write a romance between a witch and the devil, and asks whether it's possible to coexist with neighbours whose values you don't share.

Is Fawn scary?

It's soft horror rather than visceral horror. C.N. Vair describes the magic as deliberately "soft and undefined" and warns readers expecting gore that they won't find it — but the book sits comfortably in folk horror, with old religion, strange creatures and a small town that feels like a character.

Where is Fawn set?

In Appalachia — but the northern end of it. C.N. Vair draws on Western New York and the southern tier, arguing that the region's physical and economic characteristics extend well beyond the West Virginia and Tennessee that people typically picture.

How is C.N. Vair's name pronounced?

Vair rhymes with "vare". Her first name is Carly; the initials on the cover were a stylistic choice rather than a pen name.

What is C.N. Vair's next book?

The Walking Tree, currently scheduled for autumn 2027. It follows Genevieve, a six-foot-one arborist who discovers the tree in her care is haunted by a girl sacrificed to it a thousand years ago.

Is Fawn part of a series?

No. Fawn and The Walking Tree are standalones, though they share themes and could conceivably occupy the same universe.