Synopsis of "Beneath a Pale Sky":
A finalist for the Bram Stoker Award, Beneath a Pale Sky is a chilling collection of eight horror stories—including two original novelettes—that showcases Philip Fracassi’s talent for blending classic horror with the uncanny and surreal.
From the locked confines of a high-security psychiatric ward to the dizzying heights of a Ferris wheel overlooking the ocean, Fracassi leads readers through a series of unforgettable nightmares. His stories plunge into the aftermath of a devastating earthquake, explore the mysteries of the afterlife, and reveal a quiet Midwestern town as the hidden realm of ancient, cross-dimensional gods.
Along the way, the supernatural disrupts a wedding celebration, a seaside pier becomes the scene of unspeakable tragedy, and survivors trapped beneath a collapsed building discover that the disaster above them is only the beginning of their ordeal. In another tale, a scientist makes a groundbreaking discovery—only to realize that what he has uncovered could have catastrophic consequences for humanity itself.
Philip Fracassi is a USA Today bestselling author and Bram Stoker and British Fantasy Award nominee. He is the author of acclaimed novels including A Child Alone with Strangers, Boys in the Valley, Gothic, The Third Rule of Time Travel, and Don't Let Them Get You Down.
His collections include Beneath a Pale Sky, a Bram Stoker Award finalist and Rue Morgue's Best Collection of the Year, as well as Behold the Void and No One Is Safe!. His short fiction has appeared in Best Horror of the Year, Nightmare Magazine, Black Static, Interzone, and other publications.
A screenwriter as well as a novelist, Fracassi has had feature films distributed by Disney Entertainment and Lifetime Television. His stories “Altar” and “Fail Safe” are currently being adapted as feature films by A24 and Sony Pictures, respectively, with Brie Larson attached to star in the latter.
Here is his Novelpro Junkie interview:
A finalist for the Bram Stoker Award, Beneath a Pale Sky is a chilling collection of eight horror stories—including two original novelettes—that showcases Philip Fracassi’s talent for blending classic horror with the uncanny and surreal.
From the locked confines of a high-security psychiatric ward to the dizzying heights of a Ferris wheel overlooking the ocean, Fracassi leads readers through a series of unforgettable nightmares. His stories plunge into the aftermath of a devastating earthquake, explore the mysteries of the afterlife, and reveal a quiet Midwestern town as the hidden realm of ancient, cross-dimensional gods.
Along the way, the supernatural disrupts a wedding celebration, a seaside pier becomes the scene of unspeakable tragedy, and survivors trapped beneath a collapsed building discover that the disaster above them is only the beginning of their ordeal. In another tale, a scientist makes a groundbreaking discovery—only to realize that what he has uncovered could have catastrophic consequences for humanity itself.
Philip Fracassi is a USA Today bestselling author and Bram Stoker and British Fantasy Award nominee. He is the author of acclaimed novels including A Child Alone with Strangers, Boys in the Valley, Gothic, The Third Rule of Time Travel, and Don't Let Them Get You Down.
His collections include Beneath a Pale Sky, a Bram Stoker Award finalist and Rue Morgue's Best Collection of the Year, as well as Behold the Void and No One Is Safe!. His short fiction has appeared in Best Horror of the Year, Nightmare Magazine, Black Static, Interzone, and other publications.
A screenwriter as well as a novelist, Fracassi has had feature films distributed by Disney Entertainment and Lifetime Television. His stories “Altar” and “Fail Safe” are currently being adapted as feature films by A24 and Sony Pictures, respectively, with Brie Larson attached to star in the latter.
Here is his Novelpro Junkie interview:
1. Which of the short stories in “Beneath a Pale Sky” gave you writer’s block and how did you get back on back?
None of the stories gave me writer's block. Short stories, for me, are kind of a way to play between novels and bigger projects. I never have a problem writing them. In fact, I have more ideas than I'll ever have time to write.
The nice thing about short stories is that if I have an idea, I can knock something out in a week and get it out there, whereas a novel, of course, takes months and months.
Behold the Void, Beneath a Pale Sky, and No One Is Safe! are my three story collections, and those books are basically me playing with the format, throwing ideas around, and having fun.
2. Was “Beneath a Pale Sky” the original title or were there other titles?
That was the original title, yeah. I knew the title for that collection pretty early on. It alludes to some language in the stories where I refer to this sort of afterlife dimension—a place with black oceans and pale skies. So it kind of came out of that imagery.
That was always the original title, and it was an easy one to come up with because, like I said, I already knew what kind of story collection it was going to be.
Behold the Void, which was my first story collection, took a little more time. I really had to figure out what I wanted to call it, and I came up with a bunch of different ideas before ultimately settling on that title.
3. Of all the characters you have created in “Beneath a Pale Sky”, which is your favorite and why?
Oh gosh, my favorite character in Beneath a Pale Sky? That's a good question. There are a lot of stories in there, so I'm trying to remember them all.
I think my favorite character comes from the last story in the book, called Death, My Old Friend. It's about a young boy who grows up with Death—the Grim Reaper—as his best friend, and they grow up together. It's sort of a fable.
So I think writing Death as a child growing up, going to college, and having these kinds of experiences was probably the most fun I've had writing a character in that book.
4. What does your writing process look like when developing a short story?
Writing short stories is very different from writing a novel or even a novella. My process is pretty straightforward. I don’t outline them the way I do with my novels.
Basically, I have an idea—usually a weird one. For example, what if somebody grew up with Death as their best friend, like in Death, My Old Friend?
From there, I’ll write without overthinking it. I’ll put down a few paragraphs or a page where I simply say: this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens. At that point, I usually don’t have an ending in mind.
Then I start writing the short story based on that loose idea of what happens in the story. I usually sit down and begin once I’ve got that core concept worked out.
The specific details of what happens tend to come to me as I’m writing.
5. Are there particular stories in the collection that you feel most personally connected to?
There’s one in there called ID (or i.d., depending on how you want to read it; you can go either way).
It’s about a guy who’s dealing with a lot of mental health issues and is in a strange romantic relationship. He’s not really sure what’s real and what isn’t, and the reader isn’t really sure either. The character is struggling with his mental state as well as this unusual, very unsettling relationship he’s in.
That story is probably the most personal one in the collection. It was drawn from some experiences I had when I was younger.
So that would be the one I’d say is most personal—more directly taken from my own life, as opposed to being entirely made up.
6. Which short stories from “Beneath a Pale Sky” would you personally like to write the screenplay and turn into a film or TV series? And why?
I hate to keep harping on it, but I think I would say Death, My Old Friend again. I’ve actually written a screenplay for that story that’s been circulating among different producers and studios.
So I think that’s the story with the most expansion potential. Even though it’s a very short story, it has the most possibilities for growth.
When you adapt a short story into a screenplay, you’re expanding it—you have to build it out and add material to fill it in. That’s different from a novel, where you usually have to cut things down to fit a screenplay, unless you’re working on a TV series, where you can sometimes keep more of it intact.
Out of everything in that book, I think Death, My Old Friend is the one that would have the clearest path to becoming a film.
7. Congrats on "Fail-Safe" ( from book collection titled "Behold The Void") being adapted into film (retitled “Skeleton”, J.T. Mollner directing, J.J. Abrams producing it), how did you discovered that it was being adapted?
That actually happened a long time ago—it’s been in development for a while. Like most things in the movie industry, it moved pretty slowly.
I think the story was originally read and optioned by a third-party producer who emailed my agent and said they wanted to make it into a film. From there, it went to Universal Studios, which held the option for a couple of years. At one point, Bad Robot was attached as well.
Then, when Universal eventually backed out, Bad Robot took it to FilmNation, another production company, and eventually Sony came in and acquired the rights.
What I originally found out about it was simply my agent emailing me one day to say, “Hey, we just got a query from a production company that read your story and really liked it.” That’s usually how I hear about these things—someone reaches out to my representatives, and they pass it along to me.
It’s always nice to know the stories are out there and that people are reading them. But most of the time, it all comes through my representatives.
8. A short story from Beneath a Pale sky, “Death, My Old Friend” was optioned for feature film (Christopher Riggert directing the project), could you provide an update on that project?
Yeah, so that was optioned, and then that option expired. So now it’s kind of circulating again.
I wrote a script for it, and it’s currently being shopped to different studios and production companies. But it’s one of several properties I have that are in circulation.
So right now there are no updates—it’s pretty much back to where it started, basically back to zero. Unfortunately, nothing is happening with that one at the moment.
But Skeletons is moving forward, which is exciting. I also have a story called Altar that was adapted into a film by A24 and is hopefully coming out next year. That’s already completed.
So there are other things happening, but nothing currently with Death, My Old Friend.
9. Would you considered making a cameo in either features if the opportunity present itself?
No, I’m more of a behind-the-camera guy. I’m not an in-front-of-the-camera guy. I probably wouldn’t do a cameo—I’ll leave that to Stephen King.
Yeah, I’d probably stay away from that.
When we were filming Altar last year, I was on set for a couple of weeks, and they asked if I wanted to be in a scene as a background actor. I said, “No, I’m good, thank you.”
I’ll pass. I’ll stay behind the scenes. Nobody needs to see my face on a big screen. I’ll leave that to the Charlize Therons of the world.
10. In one word, how would you describe publishing and releasing “Beneath a Pale Sky”?
One word I would use is satisfying. It’s always satisfying to get your work out to people, to readers.
So anytime I publish a book, it’s very satisfying that all the hard work I do here in my office alone finally gets out into the world for others to see.
I could also use the word fulfilling. Either one would work.
11. Are there ideas or stories that didn’t make it into this collection but might appear later?
Yeah, there are a lot of stories. I’ve probably written close to 80 to 100 stories—maybe more, I’m not sure. I think only about half of those have been published in collections. The rest have appeared in various magazines, anthologies, and websites.
So I’m pretty aware of what I put into my story collections. I usually handpick which stories I think work well together in a single book.
There are dozens and dozens of stories that didn’t make it into those collections, many of which may end up in future collections. And I’m still writing new ideas and new stories all the time.
So yeah, there’s a lot of material I have that isn’t in the books.
12. Which writers or works have influenced your approach to short fiction and horror?
I would say there’s a writer named Laird Barron who was a huge influence on me. He has written many books and story collections, but one in particular, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, was very influential for me.
It was actually one of the reasons I started writing horror fiction—reading that book and speaking with Laird about his work.
More recently, I would also mention a wonderful writer named Ralph Robert Moore, who is not very well known but whose writing style was very influential to me early on.
And then, from childhood, I read all the greats—Stephen King, Clive Barker, Peter Straub, Joe R. Lansdale, John Saul, and Shirley Jackson. Even Flannery O’Connor, who wrote Southern Gothic fiction, had a strong influence on me. All of those writers shaped my work in one way or another while I was growing up.
13. Could you give an interesting fun fact about your experience working on the TV Film “Girl Missing (2015)” and “Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups (2012)”?
Yeah, so those two movies are films that I wrote the screenplays for. I also work in crew roles—I’ve worked as a crew member on film and TV productions on and off for about 30 years.
But those were scripts I wrote myself. I love writing screenplays, though I don’t do it as much now because I have a lot of commitments to my fiction writing and simply don’t have the time.
One of the biggest lessons I learned from having a screenplay produced into a film is how much things change during the process. It allows for many voices: the director has notes, the actors have notes, and the producers have notes. When you get on location, you might find something useful or interesting that wasn’t in the script, and that can get incorporated as well.
A screenplay is almost a living thing—it never really stops evolving, even through the editing process, where the story is still being shaped. I learned this especially through the making of Girl Missing, where I saw firsthand how much a script can evolve during production. That was fascinating to me.
It’s very different from fiction, where once a book or story is published, that’s it—that’s the final version. It’s a completely different experience and a different form of artistic expression.
That’s one of the main things I took away from that experience: I was surprised by how much the work evolved.
As for whether there’s a genre I haven’t explored yet but would like to, I’ve written science fiction, supernatural thrillers, horror, and non-genre literary fiction in my earlier work.
I would like to try writing fantasy at some point—specifically dark fantasy. I’m not entirely sure what that would look like yet, but I read a lot in that space. I enjoy Joe Abercrombie’s work and Christopher Buehlman’s as well, though his work leans more toward historical horror than traditional fantasy.
I like that swords-and-sorcery kind of vibe, but I’d want to approach it in a way that feels unique and interesting to me. So I’m not sure exactly what form it will take yet, but I imagine I’ll write a fantasy novel eventually—I just need to figure out what it will be first.
14. How do you hope readers will remember your work in the long run?
You know, I hope that my work continues to be available and around. I owned a used bookstore for a long time. I'm a big book collector, and I always loved finding out-of-print books by authors I'd never heard of and then discovering those writers—people like John Fante or Charles Bukowski. At the time, Bukowski was still in print. There was also Frederick Exley, and I could go on. There are a lot of great writers who existed in their time, but then their books go out of print, and people gradually forget about them.
So, for me, I just hope that my work continues to be found and discovered long after I'm gone. I've always had this fantasy of someone, 50 years from now, picking up one of my books and discovering my stories. I hope we'll still have books then—that it won't all be electronic or AI-generated. That would be a legacy I'd be very happy to leave behind.
15. Last question, who (dead or alive) would you like to sit down and chat with?
You know, I hope that my work continues to be available. I used to own a used bookstore for a long time, and I’m a big book collector. I always loved finding out-of-print books from authors I’d never heard of and discovering them that way—writers like John Fante or Charles Bukowski. Bukowski is still in print, of course, but others like Frederick Exley and many more great writers were widely read in their time and then gradually faded as their books went out of print and people began to forget them.
So for me, I just hope my work continues to be found and discovered long after I’m gone. I’ve always had this fantasy of someone, 50 years from now, picking up one of my books. I hope we still have books then and that it isn’t all digital or AI-driven, but that someone can physically pick up a book of mine and discover my stories.
That would be a legacy I would be very happy to leave behind.
None of the stories gave me writer's block. Short stories, for me, are kind of a way to play between novels and bigger projects. I never have a problem writing them. In fact, I have more ideas than I'll ever have time to write.
The nice thing about short stories is that if I have an idea, I can knock something out in a week and get it out there, whereas a novel, of course, takes months and months.
Behold the Void, Beneath a Pale Sky, and No One Is Safe! are my three story collections, and those books are basically me playing with the format, throwing ideas around, and having fun.
2. Was “Beneath a Pale Sky” the original title or were there other titles?
That was the original title, yeah. I knew the title for that collection pretty early on. It alludes to some language in the stories where I refer to this sort of afterlife dimension—a place with black oceans and pale skies. So it kind of came out of that imagery.
That was always the original title, and it was an easy one to come up with because, like I said, I already knew what kind of story collection it was going to be.
Behold the Void, which was my first story collection, took a little more time. I really had to figure out what I wanted to call it, and I came up with a bunch of different ideas before ultimately settling on that title.
3. Of all the characters you have created in “Beneath a Pale Sky”, which is your favorite and why?
Oh gosh, my favorite character in Beneath a Pale Sky? That's a good question. There are a lot of stories in there, so I'm trying to remember them all.
I think my favorite character comes from the last story in the book, called Death, My Old Friend. It's about a young boy who grows up with Death—the Grim Reaper—as his best friend, and they grow up together. It's sort of a fable.
So I think writing Death as a child growing up, going to college, and having these kinds of experiences was probably the most fun I've had writing a character in that book.
4. What does your writing process look like when developing a short story?
Writing short stories is very different from writing a novel or even a novella. My process is pretty straightforward. I don’t outline them the way I do with my novels.
Basically, I have an idea—usually a weird one. For example, what if somebody grew up with Death as their best friend, like in Death, My Old Friend?
From there, I’ll write without overthinking it. I’ll put down a few paragraphs or a page where I simply say: this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens. At that point, I usually don’t have an ending in mind.
Then I start writing the short story based on that loose idea of what happens in the story. I usually sit down and begin once I’ve got that core concept worked out.
The specific details of what happens tend to come to me as I’m writing.
5. Are there particular stories in the collection that you feel most personally connected to?
There’s one in there called ID (or i.d., depending on how you want to read it; you can go either way).
It’s about a guy who’s dealing with a lot of mental health issues and is in a strange romantic relationship. He’s not really sure what’s real and what isn’t, and the reader isn’t really sure either. The character is struggling with his mental state as well as this unusual, very unsettling relationship he’s in.
That story is probably the most personal one in the collection. It was drawn from some experiences I had when I was younger.
So that would be the one I’d say is most personal—more directly taken from my own life, as opposed to being entirely made up.
6. Which short stories from “Beneath a Pale Sky” would you personally like to write the screenplay and turn into a film or TV series? And why?
I hate to keep harping on it, but I think I would say Death, My Old Friend again. I’ve actually written a screenplay for that story that’s been circulating among different producers and studios.
So I think that’s the story with the most expansion potential. Even though it’s a very short story, it has the most possibilities for growth.
When you adapt a short story into a screenplay, you’re expanding it—you have to build it out and add material to fill it in. That’s different from a novel, where you usually have to cut things down to fit a screenplay, unless you’re working on a TV series, where you can sometimes keep more of it intact.
Out of everything in that book, I think Death, My Old Friend is the one that would have the clearest path to becoming a film.
7. Congrats on "Fail-Safe" ( from book collection titled "Behold The Void") being adapted into film (retitled “Skeleton”, J.T. Mollner directing, J.J. Abrams producing it), how did you discovered that it was being adapted?
That actually happened a long time ago—it’s been in development for a while. Like most things in the movie industry, it moved pretty slowly.
I think the story was originally read and optioned by a third-party producer who emailed my agent and said they wanted to make it into a film. From there, it went to Universal Studios, which held the option for a couple of years. At one point, Bad Robot was attached as well.
Then, when Universal eventually backed out, Bad Robot took it to FilmNation, another production company, and eventually Sony came in and acquired the rights.
What I originally found out about it was simply my agent emailing me one day to say, “Hey, we just got a query from a production company that read your story and really liked it.” That’s usually how I hear about these things—someone reaches out to my representatives, and they pass it along to me.
It’s always nice to know the stories are out there and that people are reading them. But most of the time, it all comes through my representatives.
8. A short story from Beneath a Pale sky, “Death, My Old Friend” was optioned for feature film (Christopher Riggert directing the project), could you provide an update on that project?
Yeah, so that was optioned, and then that option expired. So now it’s kind of circulating again.
I wrote a script for it, and it’s currently being shopped to different studios and production companies. But it’s one of several properties I have that are in circulation.
So right now there are no updates—it’s pretty much back to where it started, basically back to zero. Unfortunately, nothing is happening with that one at the moment.
But Skeletons is moving forward, which is exciting. I also have a story called Altar that was adapted into a film by A24 and is hopefully coming out next year. That’s already completed.
So there are other things happening, but nothing currently with Death, My Old Friend.
9. Would you considered making a cameo in either features if the opportunity present itself?
No, I’m more of a behind-the-camera guy. I’m not an in-front-of-the-camera guy. I probably wouldn’t do a cameo—I’ll leave that to Stephen King.
Yeah, I’d probably stay away from that.
When we were filming Altar last year, I was on set for a couple of weeks, and they asked if I wanted to be in a scene as a background actor. I said, “No, I’m good, thank you.”
I’ll pass. I’ll stay behind the scenes. Nobody needs to see my face on a big screen. I’ll leave that to the Charlize Therons of the world.
10. In one word, how would you describe publishing and releasing “Beneath a Pale Sky”?
One word I would use is satisfying. It’s always satisfying to get your work out to people, to readers.
So anytime I publish a book, it’s very satisfying that all the hard work I do here in my office alone finally gets out into the world for others to see.
I could also use the word fulfilling. Either one would work.
11. Are there ideas or stories that didn’t make it into this collection but might appear later?
Yeah, there are a lot of stories. I’ve probably written close to 80 to 100 stories—maybe more, I’m not sure. I think only about half of those have been published in collections. The rest have appeared in various magazines, anthologies, and websites.
So I’m pretty aware of what I put into my story collections. I usually handpick which stories I think work well together in a single book.
There are dozens and dozens of stories that didn’t make it into those collections, many of which may end up in future collections. And I’m still writing new ideas and new stories all the time.
So yeah, there’s a lot of material I have that isn’t in the books.
12. Which writers or works have influenced your approach to short fiction and horror?
I would say there’s a writer named Laird Barron who was a huge influence on me. He has written many books and story collections, but one in particular, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, was very influential for me.
It was actually one of the reasons I started writing horror fiction—reading that book and speaking with Laird about his work.
More recently, I would also mention a wonderful writer named Ralph Robert Moore, who is not very well known but whose writing style was very influential to me early on.
And then, from childhood, I read all the greats—Stephen King, Clive Barker, Peter Straub, Joe R. Lansdale, John Saul, and Shirley Jackson. Even Flannery O’Connor, who wrote Southern Gothic fiction, had a strong influence on me. All of those writers shaped my work in one way or another while I was growing up.
13. Could you give an interesting fun fact about your experience working on the TV Film “Girl Missing (2015)” and “Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups (2012)”?
Yeah, so those two movies are films that I wrote the screenplays for. I also work in crew roles—I’ve worked as a crew member on film and TV productions on and off for about 30 years.
But those were scripts I wrote myself. I love writing screenplays, though I don’t do it as much now because I have a lot of commitments to my fiction writing and simply don’t have the time.
One of the biggest lessons I learned from having a screenplay produced into a film is how much things change during the process. It allows for many voices: the director has notes, the actors have notes, and the producers have notes. When you get on location, you might find something useful or interesting that wasn’t in the script, and that can get incorporated as well.
A screenplay is almost a living thing—it never really stops evolving, even through the editing process, where the story is still being shaped. I learned this especially through the making of Girl Missing, where I saw firsthand how much a script can evolve during production. That was fascinating to me.
It’s very different from fiction, where once a book or story is published, that’s it—that’s the final version. It’s a completely different experience and a different form of artistic expression.
That’s one of the main things I took away from that experience: I was surprised by how much the work evolved.
As for whether there’s a genre I haven’t explored yet but would like to, I’ve written science fiction, supernatural thrillers, horror, and non-genre literary fiction in my earlier work.
I would like to try writing fantasy at some point—specifically dark fantasy. I’m not entirely sure what that would look like yet, but I read a lot in that space. I enjoy Joe Abercrombie’s work and Christopher Buehlman’s as well, though his work leans more toward historical horror than traditional fantasy.
I like that swords-and-sorcery kind of vibe, but I’d want to approach it in a way that feels unique and interesting to me. So I’m not sure exactly what form it will take yet, but I imagine I’ll write a fantasy novel eventually—I just need to figure out what it will be first.
14. How do you hope readers will remember your work in the long run?
You know, I hope that my work continues to be available and around. I owned a used bookstore for a long time. I'm a big book collector, and I always loved finding out-of-print books by authors I'd never heard of and then discovering those writers—people like John Fante or Charles Bukowski. At the time, Bukowski was still in print. There was also Frederick Exley, and I could go on. There are a lot of great writers who existed in their time, but then their books go out of print, and people gradually forget about them.
So, for me, I just hope that my work continues to be found and discovered long after I'm gone. I've always had this fantasy of someone, 50 years from now, picking up one of my books and discovering my stories. I hope we'll still have books then—that it won't all be electronic or AI-generated. That would be a legacy I'd be very happy to leave behind.
15. Last question, who (dead or alive) would you like to sit down and chat with?
You know, I hope that my work continues to be available. I used to own a used bookstore for a long time, and I’m a big book collector. I always loved finding out-of-print books from authors I’d never heard of and discovering them that way—writers like John Fante or Charles Bukowski. Bukowski is still in print, of course, but others like Frederick Exley and many more great writers were widely read in their time and then gradually faded as their books went out of print and people began to forget them.
So for me, I just hope my work continues to be found and discovered long after I’m gone. I’ve always had this fantasy of someone, 50 years from now, picking up one of my books. I hope we still have books then and that it isn’t all digital or AI-driven, but that someone can physically pick up a book of mine and discover my stories.
That would be a legacy I would be very happy to leave behind.
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