63 pages • 2 hours read
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Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death and mental illness.
Nat Cassidy is an American author who began his career as a playwright in New York City. Cassidy’s writing has always been oriented toward the literary tradition of horror, as evidenced by his early works. In 2011 and 2015, he wrote and staged two plays inspired by the work of American weird fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, who works include the short story “The Call of Cthulhu” and the novella The Dunwich Horror. Cassidy pivoted to prose after producing a science-fiction noir narrative podcast called Steal the Stars in 2017. He subsequently wrote a novelization of the podcast, which was published the same year. Five years later, he would publish his first original novel, Mary: An Awakening of Terror.
In the Afterword to When the Wolf Comes Home, Cassidy states that his first three novels form an unofficial trilogy on personal loss and grief. Mary tells the story of a woman who moves back to her hometown and experiences terrifying visions and voices in her head, which reveal the truth about serial killings in the area.