Tanya Pell’s latest shocker of a novel, This B Just Won’t Die! (out today) is a darkly funny, blood-soaked love letter to slasher movies, horror fandom and the women Hollywood refuses to let move on.
The book relates how, twenty years after becoming famous as the star of the Mirror horror franchise, aging scream queen Barbra Jacobs is still trapped by the role that made her name. Now making a living signing old photographs at horror conventions, Barb sees a chance to reinvent herself when she’s approached to host a new horror docuseries. But when fans begin dying in ways that mirror the kills from her films, she finds herself back in familiar territory: running for her life as the Final Girl.
To celebrate the book’s release today, CinemaChords caught up with Pell to discuss horror conventions, the pressures of being forever boxed into one identity, the slasher genre’s feminist potential, and why audiences remember the killer but tend to forget their victims.