The Dark Book of Gwenna Luna by Guenther Primig

It’s a series that has very deep roots in the classic English ghost story and, further back, in various folk myths and stories. How would you explain the Gwenna Luna series to a new reader? Comedy and horror give you that measurable reaction that visceral reaction. You're like Victor Frankenstein: “It's alive! It's alive!”. So you try your first apparition and if people use words like “freaked out” and “ terrified”, it's heady stuff. So you write a careful joke and, by Jove, it works! So then, of course, the little devil on your left shoulder says, ‘Yes, but can you frighten them?’. I think as soon as you start writing for an audience and realise you can engage people that way, there are two things you simply have to know. To mark the release of the book, we caught up with Guenther to find out more about his creation, his views on writing effective horror fiction, and what stories spook him out, among other things.Īs a writer, what is the appeal of the horror genre? Now, the Germany-based author and his titular teenage witch are back to share a second gripping selection of nightmarish visions and fiendish phantasmagoria in The Graveyard of Gwenna Luna: Six More Dreams from the Dark Book. The collection of bloodcurdling short stories, The Dark Book of Gwenna Luna: Six Dream of the Supernatural, proved an instant hit with its artful combination of classic horror atmosphere with contemporary settings and concerns. In 2019 he first introduced readers to Gwenna Luna, a young anti-heroine outsider who hails from “a place of profoundly strange, dangerous and mad occult happenings”.

If you were to sum up the writing of renowned horror author and screenwriter Guenther Primig, you could describe it as cinematic, singular, and supremely sinister.

The Dark Book of Gwenna Luna by Guenther Primig