Hex

by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks for reading this. I hope you enjoyed these insights, and I hope you enjoyed the book. I have a new one coming out, called Echo, in 2022. Many readers have told me they were genuinely creeped out by HEX. I took it as an incentive to write the scariest opening I could think of. A young woman wakes up alone in a chalet high up in the mountains, in the dead of night. She needs to use the bathroom, but when she hits the top stair, she sees there are people in the staircase, staring up at her. Frightened, she goes back to bed, where of course she realizes she must have imagined the whole thing. She returns to the stairs. But the people are still there. And they have come a little closer. Twenty pages in, many readers had to put Echo aside for a bit, and told me they had to turn to pics of pups and kittens before they could continue. So I dare you to read it. And please, let me know if you were braver than the Dutch. Echo is my homage to the American gothic. It is the story of a man possessed by forces of nature—a man possessed by a mountain. Sprung from my own experience as a mountaineer, the novel contains everything I know about storytelling, about the wild, about identity, about obsession. At its core, there’s a beautiful love story between two extraordinary people. Last but not least, there is a small but clear reference to HEX in Echo. I challenge you to find it and let me know. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53329253-echo