Q&A: T. Kingfisher, Author of ‘Snake-Eater’

We chat with author T. Kingfisher about Snake-Eater, which is an enthralling contemporary fantasy seeped in horror about a woman trying to escape her past by moving to the remote US desert―only to find herself beholden to the wrath of a vengeful god. PLUS we have an excerpt to share with you at the end of the interview!

What inspired you to write SNAKE-EATER?

I’ve always loved the desert. I lived in Arizona for a number of years and missed it fiercely, and one day I found myself writing about a dog lying down on the porch, thinking about dusty roads and saguaros and little quail scurrying along the side of the road, and the rest just kind of fell into place as I wrote.

What about the fantasy and horror genres appeal to you as a writer?

I’ve never been able to get the hang of realistic fiction. After a point, I start to think “You know what would solve this? Ninjas. Or dragons.”

Your writing is a combination of creepy and humorous. Why the balance between laughter and unease?

It’s a combination of two things. First of all, many humans in terrible situations make jokes. (See also the entire run of M*A*S*H*.) It’s how we cope with things. But also you can’t rachet up the tension on something indefinitely. There comes a point where the spring is wound as tight as it will go. So you need to release a little tension for the reader so you can start ratcheting it up again, and I find that humor’s the best way to do that.

SNAKE-EATER features an eclectic bunch of women. What qualities are important for your heroines?

I think they just have to feel real to me. Most of them are flawed, but like people I know are flawed, they’re not concealing some terrible evil secret, they’re just tired and overstressed and trying to do too many things. I don’t sit down and plan out their characters in advance, they mostly reveal themselves on the page, so it’s an organic process.

What are some recurring themes in your fiction writing?

Nature, definitely, particularly nature seen in weird lights. (My readers occasionally say things like, “Okay, you ruined ladybugs in the last one, what are you ruining in this book?) Newly single women alone in a scary house with their pet is my quintessential horror scenario, but animal companions show up a lot in my work.

Found family is an important theme in SNAKE-EATER. How would you define what found family is?

I’m never quite sure at what point friendship tips over into found family. For me, it’s the people who, when I say, “God, I just don’t want to be around people for a bit,” don’t count. The ones who can sit at the table with you, both of you on your phones or with a book, and you don’t feel the need to entertain each other. You can just exist in the same space without it taking effort.

On the other hand, there’s a lot to be said for the kinds of friends who, if you call them up at 3 AM and say, “I have this dead body here…” will say “Do you want me to bring tarps and lye or do you have some there already?”

Regardless of the definition, SNAKE-EATER is definitely a book about finding your people when your own family has failed you, the people who think you’re fine as you are. And maybe also have tarps and lye if the situation arises.

You often write about nature in your books. Do you do a lot of research to incorporate these details and if so, what is your research process? What is something you learned that surprised you while researching SNAKE-EATER?

Heh! No, I’m an enthusiastic amateur naturalist and I generally have to stop myself from putting too MANY details. I really want to tell everyone about saguaros and creosote and all kinds of things, but if you do too much, it risks bogging the story down. But I did learn the interesting fact that while scorpions have very poor vision, they’re quite sensitive to green light.

You are an avid birdwatcher. What about the roadrunner intrigued you to give it such a starring role in your latest novel?

Roadrunners are dinosaurs. Seriously. They are freaky little carnivores. The Warner Brothers cartoons did them a disservice because people assume they’re like a weird harmless mini-ostrich, but in actuality, every time the coyote blew himself up, the roadrunner would be cheerfully stripping meat off his corpse. I have heard so many stories about horrible things people have seen roadrunners do—lying in wait to pick small birds off a feeder, or getting into a nest of baby rabbits and…well. They’re very much an example of a species that, if they were bigger or we were smaller, would go from being funny to being terrifying.

Who was your favorite character in SNAKE-EATER to write?

Oh, Grandma Billy, by leaps and bounds. Her interplay with Father Aguirre was a total delight.

You are a very prolific writer and write for both adults and children. What is your writing process?

I get up, I get something to drink, I stare at the garden for a few minutes, then I sit down at my laptop and write a thousand words. More if I’ve got it in me, but a thousand is pretty much the minimum. I have to get 4-5k done a week or all the plates I am spinning will collapse.

What is the main message you hope readers will gain from reading your new novel?

Oh, goodness. I don’t know if there IS a message as such. Maybe to respect the desert? It is spectacular and unique and pretty much everything wants to kill you. It’s also vanishing at a horrible rate due to development because it’s not like a rainforest where you can SEE that it’s full of life. Everything is much more subtle and underground.

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EXCERPT

She came around the corner, and there was the house, tucked up in scruffy green shrubs. An impressively multiarmed saguaro grew directly across the road, and an impressively dead one lay slumped beside it. Another low stone wall, like the one at Grandma Billy’s, ran along the road here, then curved around both sides of the house, though this one was devoid of peacocks.

It was a small house. Well, the postmistress said it would be.

It might be two rooms, possibly three. Certainly no more than that. It was tea-colored adobe with two windows in the front, and a wraparound porch that sagged in the middle. Some aggressive vine had eaten two of the porch posts and was making threatening gestures toward a third. There was a rocking chair on the porch that had been cobwebbed into place and glazed in pale-white dust. Solar panels covered the roof, none of them new.

There was a dirt path up to the house. White stones like blocky skulls picked out the edges of . . . well, you couldn’t call them flower beds. Scrub beds, maybe. Whatever the difference was between bare dirt and dirt with gray-green spiky things in it.

This is it. This is where Aunt Amelia lived, until a year ago.

A year ago. A year ago. A year too late.

She set that thought aside, for all the good it did her.

Once upon a time, Selena would have gone up to the house, walked around it, looking in the windows.

Once upon a time, she could talk without worrying about it, and didn’t run every sentence through her head a dozen times first. Once upon a time had come and gone and there were no happily ever afters. She let go of her suitcase, untangled Copper’s leash, and put her hand on the stone wall.

It was hard under her fingers, the stones rough, the edges sharp. She closed her eyes. She could believe that the peacock and Grandma Billy were part of a dream, but the stone wall was too clearly a real thing. If the wall was real, then everything else was real. All right. Not a dream, then. It was all really happening and her aunt was really dead and she was really broke and stranded in a town called Quartz Creek and the dead woman’s house was really in front of her.

It looked . . . friendly.

If the two windows were eyes, then the left one was half closed into a wink by the rioting vine. The porch sagged into a smile. The desert was enormous and the house was very small, but it looked brave and rather hopeful.

It reminded her of Copper when she was a puppy, deeply convinced that the world was full of kind giants who loved her, and if she only waited long enough, one would come and play.

I am losing my mind. I mean, I already lost it, I know, but now I am getting maudlin and reading things into a falling-down porch. It’s probably heatstroke. I should sit down.

If I go up to the house, I could sit down on the porch. I could even open up the door and go inside. It might be cooler in there.

Selena stood by the wall and didn’t move.

It was a nice house. She could see why her aunt might have lived there. But it wasn’t hers.

If I go in, I might start to like it and if I do, somebody will take it away from me. You can’t just walk up and lay claim to a house. That’s not how it works.

She remembered the empty houses in the middle of town, with the boarded-up windows. The postmistress told me—she said they can’t keep people in them—but it can’t be like that, not really . . .

It was too easy, too unearned. You did not get things handed to you. It was a central tenet of Selena’s mother’s philosophy, that you did not just get things handed to you. Everything had to be earned.

EXCERPT FROM SNAKE-EATER BY T. KINGFISHER TEXT COPYRIGHT © 2025 BY T. KINGFISHER, PUBLISHED BY 47NORTH