Going Deep with Julie Hiner

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An Interview With Author Julie Hiner

I recently chatted with Julie Hiner, author of Fear of the Deep, about all things monstrous and watery. From the blurb for Fear of the Deep:

But the sea has a way of claiming what it wants. The discovery of a woman’s body, marked by peculiar and familiar bite marks, washes up on her beach, forcing Bailey to confront the fears she’s been running from. Deep beneath the waves, something sinister lurks, a nightmare born from genetic engineering gone awry. As Bailey delves deeper into the mystery, she finds herself entangled in a web of horror and science fiction, where sea creatures of the darkest depths become terrifyingly real.

With each tide, the line between reality and nightmare blurs, pulling Bailey into a psychological maelstrom. Her journey is not just a battle against the horrors emerging from the deep but a fight to overcome the demons within herself.

Julie Hiner spent her childhood lost in the pages of books. The only thing that took precedence was her Walkman. Julie remains a hardcore ’80s rocker at heart.

Julie worked as a computer scientist, specializing in network simulation. While traveling, she published an inspirational book, her own story of facing fear and anxiety by cycling up mountains.

She now writes a unique blend of heavy metal and horror, weaving both psychological suspense and various genres of rock and metal into a tapestry of musically infused storytelling. She has published an ’80s metal murder detective vs serial killer series, a ’90s nostalgic serial killer novella, a death metal demon possession novella, and co-curated a horror anthology. Several of Julie’s horror short stories have been published in anthologies. Torrid Waters, a pulp and extreme horror imprint of Crystal Lake Publishing, published Julie’s deep sea horror novella on Valentines Day 2025.

You can find her at KillersAndDemons.com serving up toxic cocktails of metal and murder.

When reading Fear of the Deep I kept flashing back (in a good way) to the scary underwater movies of my childhood—Jaws certainly, but also Leviathan, Deep Star Six, even Piranha and Alligator. What inspired you to write your own underwater monster?

 

One of my all-time favorites is the original Jaws—both the book and the movie. They are quite different from each other, but both stand the test of time.

 

I love a great deep sea / ocean / water creature feature. There is something so terrifying about the deep, open water—we literally do not know what is down there. We know very little about the ocean, and it’s a foreign place that humans don’t really belong in. I have always had a fear of the open water. I love to write about what I am afraid of as it really captures the raw, human emotion. Jaws was so good because it was based on the fear that the main character had of the water and how he had to face it.

 

Also—I love San Diego and the settings in my book are all legit. The look, the feel, the actual places.

 

And I was going to ask you about San Diego, so great segue! Sometimes in stories the setting is so vivid it almost feels like a character unto itself, and that’s definitely the case with San Diego in your story. Not only do you immerse us in the city, and its relationship to the Pacific Ocean, you evoke two very specific subcultures within San Diego: surfing and heavy metal. How were you able to go so deep in your descriptions?

 

Well… I tend to use settings that I have myself experienced.

 

I spent two winters in San Diego, and lived in Mission Beach the first time. I love the vibe, it still feels like the ’80s.

 

The 720 Beach House, where Bailey indulges in live music, does indeed exist. When I lived there, 710 Beach Club was a real dive. Just how I love a live music joint. Now, it’s been renovated and it’s ‘new’ and ‘fancy.’ But it’s still there. The Wave House was a short walk from where I was living, and a frequent stop. I loved watching the surfers on the simulated wave. I never had the guts to try surfing, but I love watching people do it.

 

I love the ocean as much as I love the mountains. Thus, I have spent many moments walking along the shore, breathing in the salty air and listening to the waves crash. Having been deeply immersed in the feel of San Diego myself, I would close my eyes and think of what I felt, saw, smelled, heard… while standing on the boardwalk or dipping my toes in the water. 

 

All those lived details really come through in your story, and certainly Bailey feels a profound connection to both the city and the ocean that we get to experience through her. I also found it interesting that Bailey’s experience of San Diego is very masculine: the people in her life are all men, and while her friends supportive of her in many ways, in the first part of the story she’s a bit like Roy Scheider in Jaws—struggling to convince others of what she witnessed in the ocean. It’s a classic trope that still works to build anticipation. Were these deliberate storytelling choices on your part, or was that just how the story evolved as you wrote it?

 

I never intentionally surround a main character with specific people. As I develop him/her, the people in their life materialize on their own.

 

In my core series, the first three books have a male detective who is surrounded by females (medical examiner, criminal profiler, bartender, etc….) In books 4, 5, and 6, the detective is female and is more surrounded by male characters. Also, I don’t write girly girls because I myself grew up and worked in male-dominated environments. It just comes out how it comes out.

 

As for trying to convince everyone that she saw what she saw… I think the best horror stories are when someone knows what they saw but no one believes them. It makes them question their own sanity.

 

You take care in the book to describe possible real-world correlations to your monster (it’s a rather clever bit of story craft, I tip my hat to you.) What do you think makes a good monster?

 

What do I think makes a good monster? I think something based on reality and then morphed onto something a bit more incredible keeps the reader/viewer thinking… wow… but… what if?

 

I researched many creatures that live deep in the ocean. Real deep. I thought, what if something that lives really deep and looks quite scary could come to the surface… and then start hunting.

 

I created a spreadsheet and used a few creatures that do exist, particularly the angler fish. I also researched mutation, which does happen, and cross-fertilization, which could be possible, to change the deep sea creature to survive at the surface.

 

Interesting thing…a few days after my book launched, an angler fish was seen and caught on video in Spain. They don’t know why or how it surfaced and it died too quickly for them to figure it out.

 

We really don’t know what is down there!

 

We spoke a little about gender in the book, but I’m wondering if you have any thoughts on being a woman in the horror genre. What has the experience been like? Are there other women writers you’d like to shout out?

 

It does seem that perhaps there are less women writing horror, but I can’t be sure. My favorite authors at the moment write extreme stories and have a strong author voice. I’m trying to find female authors that write extreme horror in a way that I find as addicting… but I have recently read Amanda M. Blake and Sarah Jules and definitely recommend them both.

 

I have worked in male-dominated companies for a long time. It hasn’t impacted my journey to write horror.

 

Anything else readers should know about you? What’s next in your writing career?

 

I just launched the last book in my ’80s metal murder series that fuses heavy metal and storytelling. Torture Track is Iron Maiden torture meets Iron Maiden metal and has an original soundtrack with my lyrics and music by a local band in my city (Calgary). If that sounds cool… check it out!

 

Rock On!

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