It’s always annoying when a creative person refuses to admit that their work is similar to, or influenced by, someone else’s. “So, it’s a movie about a kid who learns he has powers and he uses them to take down an evil empire lead by the father he never knew, and you say it’s nothing like Star Wars!?! Really!?!”
Thankfully, author C.J. Dotson doesn’t try my patience in the following email interview about her psychological horror novel The Cut (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), in which she admits that this story, which is set in a scary hotel, “Yeah, I don’t think I could have written a hotel horror story without thinking of The Shining, too.”
Photo Credit: Amanda Farrenholz
To begin, what is The Cut about, and when and where does it take place?
The Cut is about a pregnant young mother named Sadie Miles, who has just escaped from an abusive relationship. She finds housekeeping work, as well as a temporary place for her and her toddler daughter to stay, at a past-its-prime hotel called L’Arpin, situated near a questionable Lake Erie beach and a looming power plant. On their first night there, Sadie glances out her window and sees a guest struggling in the hotel’s pool, so she runs to help but finds the water calm and empty when she gets there. When that guest then goes missing, her manager insists they simply left without checking out, and Sadie starts to wonder if he’s covering up darker goings-on in the hotel.
After her ex, Sadie tells herself she’ll never let anyone convince her that what she’s experiencing isn’t real again, so she snoops around and finds the staff suspicious, strange noises stalking the hotel, more missing guests, and things that go bump in the night…and drip in the walls, slither in the tub, and squirm in the halls. Now Sadie has to figure out exactly what’s going on at L’Arpin Hotel and how to stop it, because until she and her daughter get back on their feet, they’re stuck here.
Where did you get the idea for The Cut?
When I was in my teens there was a very unpopular Lake Erie beach that my friends and I used to love hanging out at. The water at that beach was always warmer than the rest of the local Lake Erie beaches, because of the power plant that used the lake water to cool their machinery (honestly we probably never should have swam there, but I’m nearly forty now and no side effects, so I think it turned out okay in the end), and one night when we were there I thought I saw something in the water.
That image stuck with me, and when I was casting around for book ideas before I wrote The Cut I kept coming back to it. I didn’t want to set the book on the beach, though, and I felt like I wanted an outsider to be the main character, and the plot built up from there.
So, is there a reason you set this in a historic hotel?
Sadie and L’Arpin Hotel kind of came to me together. Like I said, I wanted Sadie to be an outsider, already on the back foot when things start going south in the book. But I also wanted a reason for her to not really be able to leave when things get rough, either.
I guess I could’ve had her be new to living in the area, but a lot of the properties near the beach in northeast Ohio are very expensive, and that setting didn’t appeal to me. Once I landed on a hotel, I wanted to be able to lean into an eerie atmosphere, and a historic hotel that was down on its luck and in ill repair felt perfect for that.
In a similar vein, is there a reason you made Sadie a single mom of a toddler with a second on the way, as opposed to a single dad with a toddler, or a single mom of twins, or some other configuration?
I definitely wouldn’t feel confident writing twins. I would worry the whole time about falling into cliched tropes or even harmful stereotypes without realizing it. Keeping track of and trying to do a realistic job of writing one small child in the narrative was enough of a challenge for me.
Similarly, I know that single dads and single moms face different challenges, and I felt much more comfortable writing from the perspective of a young mother than a young father.
It sounds like The Cut is a horror story, but I’m not sure if it’s a ghost story, a haunted house story, or a psychological horror story. Or all of that.
There’s definitely a psychological aspect to the horror in The Cut, with Sadie battling not only her fears but also her self-doubt and the self-blame that often comes after getting out of an abusive situation.
It’s also a monster book, but that’s about as much as I want to say about that right now.
The Cut is your first novel, though you have a second novel coming out called These Familiar Walls. You’ve also had stories in such anthologies as Particular Passages 3 and Found 2: More Stories Of Found Footage Horror. Are there any writers, or specific stories, that had a big influence on The Cut but not on anything else you’ve written? Because setting a scary story in a hotel immediately makes me think of Stephen King’s The Shining.
Yeah, I don’t think I could have written a hotel horror story without thinking of The Shining, too. The events that take place and the characters’ arcs in The Shining and The Cut are different, but one similarity I was aware of is the main characters’ responses to trauma. In The Shining, Jack is an alcoholic, and his addiction and his traumatic experiences around that leave him particularly vulnerable to the presences in the Overlook. In The Cut, Sadie’s trauma centers around the abusive situation she’s escaped from, which makes her vulnerable in many ways (homeless, financially insecure, navigating her second pregnancy and young motherhood with no support network), and the things going on in the hotel prey on that vulnerability. A big difference is that Sadie already found the strength in herself to escape her traumatic situation, and she spends the book rediscovering that strength again and again both to heal, and to fight back against what is happening in the hotel.
I also had Rachel Harrison’s incredible debut, The Return, in mind. I was blown away by Harrison’s portrayal of overactive / imagination / style fear and by her stellar representation of the close friendships between young women, and I was so enamored of the bright, vivid hotel setting she created. I see The Cut as sort of the opposite side of the coin, exploring some aspects of womanhood that can feel very isolating in certain circumstances, and with the hotel in disrepair and stuck in the past.
What about non-literary influences? Was The Cut influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games? Because setting a scary story in a hotel actually made me think of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining before I thought of King’s book. Which then made me think I was a bad person…
No, that doesn’t make you a bad person! I do prefer the book, but Kubrick’s movie is a classic for a reason.
There was more of a real-life influence than non-literary works of art. Pretty much everyone experienced a year of feeling trapped and claustrophobic in 2020, and right as that was ending my family and I moved from Ohio to Maine (we now live in upstate NY), which meant that my husband and I went from lockdowns with a kindergartener and a toddler, to living 12 hours from our entire support network with a first-grader and a toddler, and it felt incredibly isolating and lonely at first, and I was able to channel a lot of that into Sadie’s experiences in The Cut, which I wrote and revised over the year we lived in Maine.
Now, it sounds like The Cut is a stand-alone story. But, since you never know, I’ll ask: Is it?
I’ve played around with the idea of revisiting the world of The Cut, for sure. I left one or two things open-ended enough that there’s definitely room for at least one sequel, which could deal with Sadie and / or with the world at large depending on where I wanted to take it. I’ve also idly considered superficially linking an idea I have for a future book to The Cut.
But I don’t have any concrete plans for anything like that at this time. I have a lot more ideas I want to explore, and for now I feel like I’ve said what I needed to say with this book. But if I feel like that changes in the future, or if I’m somehow lucky enough to find the public clamoring for more of Sadie and the things happening at L’Arpin Hotel, I would certainly be open to revisiting this world.
Earlier I asked if The Cut was influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games. But to flip things around, do you think The Cut could work as a movie, show, or game?
Oh gosh, I would love to see The Cut as a limited, single-season series. I think that movie adaptations of books often feel too rushed (that being said, if a movie studio wanted to talk about The Cut I’d definitely hear them out), but I think that horror television has found its stride in a great way over the last five or ten years, and I just love it as a format for telling these stories. In my wildest daydreams, a Flanagan miniseries adaptation of my book would be just incredible. (If by some chance you read this, Mike Flanagan, I will keep a copy of The Cut just for you.)
I’m also obsessed with the Remedy Connected Universe games (Alan Wake, Control, Alan Wake 2). The storytelling in those games is absolutely incredible, and so are the directing and the visuals and the soundtracks. If Remedy Games wanted to adapt The Cut into a video game I would just about die of delight. (And if by some chance you ever read this, Sam Lake, say the word and I will send a copy of The Cut all the way to Finland).
So, is there anything else you think people need to know about The Cut?
Yes, but my answer is more about the themes in the book than about the plot or the characters.
I worked hard, and I hope my work paid off, to not give the impression that the abuse Sadie endured before the events of this book made her strong. I absolutely, categorically reject the notion that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Sadie escaped her abusive situation because she found and built upon her own strength. Whatever victimizes you is not responsible for the strength you find or cultivate in yourself, you are, and I believe in you.
Finally, if someone enjoys The Cut, what horror novel or novella of someone else’s would you suggest they check out next?
I’ve recently finished reading Kelley Armstrong’s Hemlock Island, and I just tore through it. On a superficial level, if you like the Great Lakes setting in The Cut, then you might dig a horror novel set on an island in Lake Superior. There are also themes relating to dealing with past traumas and loss, I think the main character, Laney, is super relatable and I could see her and Sadie getting along if they could meet under decent circumstances. There are a couple other aspects of Hemlock Island that I think people who like The Cut would enjoy, but they’re spoiler-heavy so I’ll leave it here.
