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It’s been a little more than two years since Isaac Thorne released his first novel, The Gordon Place, in hardback, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats. Since that time, some readers have asked him when they can anticipate the release of his next Lost Hollow novel. Now, they have an answer. Of sorts.
Last month, Isaac released a video teaser trailer for the second Lost Hollow novel from his pen. Hell Spring, he says, will be completed and released sometime in 2022. He would not commit to a specific date or month.
“The pandemic and the politics of 2020 and, now, 2021 threw me for a loop psychologically,” he says. “In the past, I needed nothing but to sit down and put my fingers on the keyboard to produce something creative. This past year, though, I struggled to find the energy or motivation even to do that. Mostly, I was engrossed in other work, glued to the news, and doom-scrolling social media.”
Nothing has much changed in terms of pandemic anxiety and politics, he adds. “But I have decided that the new novel just isn’t going to get done unless I sit down and do it. I created the video trailer as a way to motivate myself to continue the process. The novel is probably two-thirds written already. I need to finish the draft and then go through the rewriting and editing processes.”
When asked to summarize what Hell Spring is about, Isaac said that the story takes place some 64 years before the events of The Gordon Place.
“Everything happens over a day and a night in the spring of 1955,” he says. “There’s a huge storm on the first day of spring that floods areas of the little town of Lost Hollow. It traps several of the residents in the local general store. Also trapped is a stranger. No one knows who she is. No one knows where she came from. There’s something a bit off about her, too.”
The stranger, he continues, bears a striking resemblance to a celebrity of the era. She immediately makes friends with several of the other survivors but is mistrusted by the others for reasons they’re not entirely sure they understand.
So how does Hell Spring tie into the previous novel? Isaac isn’t revealing many details about that.
“While set in the same town, Hell Spring contains none of the characters or specific locations mentioned in The Gordon Place.”
Although some have perceived The Gordon Place as containing a heavy socio-political message, Isaac maintains that he plans to deliver Hell Spring without much in the way of overt politics or commentary.
“I can’t write something that doesn’t have some ripped-from-the-headlines elements to it,” he says. “That’s the well from which I draw much of my inspiration, if you want to call it that. But, I’m going to leave it up to readers to decide on any subtexts they think they find among the pages. That’s not always how it goes with my stuff, but this one will.”
Watch the teaser trailer and read the synopsis below.
‘Hell Spring’ Synopsis
In the twilight of March 21, 1955, eight people take cover in their local general store while a thundering torrent and flash flooding threatens life and livelihood alike. None of the eight are everything they claim to be. But only one of them hungers for human souls, flesh, and blood.
An overflowing waterway destroys their only path of escape. The tiny band of survivors is forced to confront themselves and each other when a peculiar stranger with a famous face tries to pick them off one by one.
Can the neighbors survive the predator in their midst as well as the 100-year flood that drowns the small town of Lost Hollow? Or will they become victims of the night the townsfolk all remember as Hell Spring?
