When I learned about a new book coming out that had a character with OCD (which I also write about) but was in the paranormal genre, I just had to read it! I’m excited to share my interview with Melanie Dale, the author of Girl of Lore, due out on April 21, 2026.
About the Book
Hi Melanie! Really fun read. Please give us a short summary of Girl of Lore.
Hi! I’m excited to chat with you! Okay summary. Fifteen-year-old loner and cemetery-lurker Mina Murray starts Lore Club to investigate local legends, but along the way she discovers a mysterious book and a body drained of blood. When a classmate goes missing, she worries that the town’s stories might be real. Is the monster lurking in the dark or in her own brain? Bahm bahm bahhmmm…
I felt a Stranger Things vibe. Any inspiration from it?
Oh my gosh I love Stranger Things and that is high praise. My inspiration came from Dracula and classic horror, but Mina and her friends do run all over town like the kids in Stranger Things. And the book is set in Georgia, where Stranger Things was filmed!
I enjoyed how you explained how people often think OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) means “being uber-organized and power cleaning all the time,” but how that isn’t always true. (There are many other types of OCD.) As someone with OCD, I appreciated this being addressed in the book. Can you explain what your goal was with helping the readers know more about OCD?
Yes! I have OCD as well, and when I was Mina’s age, I didn’t understand what was happening inside my head. It was scary and exhausting. I want readers like me to see themselves in Mina’s story and know that they aren’t alone and there’s help, and I want to give readers who don’t struggle with OCD a glimpse inside Mina’s head so they can understand that it isn’t like the stereotypes. My husband learned a lot about how my brain works from reading Girl of Lore! That’s what I love about reading fiction. It helps us develop empathy.
About the Author
Why did you want to write this book?
GIRL OF LORE is a love letter to my favorite genre and the stories that have shaped me, and it’s filled with gothic Easter eggs, obvious ones as well as tiny winks. My favorite novel of all time is Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Mina Murray is my favorite gothic character because she’s so smart and underestimated by the men. I remember when my son was in middle school I gave him a boxed set of some of my favorite horror classics, books like Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Call of Cthulhu, etc., and he gamely tried to plow through Dracula but petered off when Jonathan Harker was still trapped in that castle and I thought, “What if I could make this story more accessible for him? What if these characters were teens living in Georgia?”
How are you like Mina? And how are you different?
Ooh, fun question. Nobody’s asked me this. Hmm, Mina and I both have OCD, but some of my intrusive thoughts and compulsions are different than hers. I gave her my cherry red Doc Martens and love of graveyards. But I am an extrovert and more comfortable around people. Mina is much better at drawing than I am. She’s vegan and I’m not. We both love dogs. My Maltipoo Khaleesi is asleep in my lap while we’re having this interview.
Did you grow up reading horror/ghost stories? If so, what is your favorite?
Yes! In second grade I found In a Dark, Dark Room in the school library and read about Jenny, who wore a green ribbon around her neck. She wore the ribbon her whole life and when she was very old, she finally removed the ribbon. I’ll never forget the last line of that story: “and Jenny’s head fell off.” Oh my gosh AWESOME. I felt this delicious, visceral reaction. So ghoulish. I was hooked. I had a friend named Jenny and told her the story. She did not appreciate those nightmares. As I got older I discovered classic gothic literature and fell in love.
Scripts vs Manuscripts & Adults vs Kids
I read that you also wrote episodes for the horror television show Creepshow (and one Molly Ringwald starred in). Very cool! For those of us writers who also have an interest in switching gears, please explain one difference in writing a teleplay vs a novel.
With a novel, I’m writing all of it. Story, dialogue, setting, character descriptions. Film is very collaborative, so I learned to cut out a lot of the detailed descriptions and focus on the story and dialogue. For instance, in my first script I spent pages describing every detail on Molly Ringwald’s character’s desk and the script was twice as long as it needed to be. Cut cut cut. The set designer would make those details. I didn’t need to. And then writing a novel, the banter between characters came easily to me, but Mina’s inner thought life and fleshing out descriptions of locations was challenging. Many scenes in the book started out as straight dialogue, then I went back in and layered in actions and details.
In addition to writing for the upper middle grade market, you write for adults. Was it a difficult shift to write for a younger audience?
My books for adults are all nonfiction, so the biggest shift was switching to fiction, not the age of the reader. At the time I was writing Girl of Lore, I was raising three teenagers, which helped. That being said, I am a GenXer, so I’m thankful for early readers who noted several moments where a teen would not say that or think that.
This is me at the age Mina is in the book. I’m journaling!
And what drew you to the younger audience?
As a parent, I noticed a reading gap for my kids between middle grade and YA that I wanted to help fill. When they hit the tween and young teen years, they weren’t quite ready for some of the YA content but they wanted stories of teens like them.
Writing & Research
I loved how you had a character with OCD in a horror novel (quite unusual and why I wanted to read this book!). Which part came first: the character having OCD or the supernatural element? (And you do a great job of having her conquer both.)
Thank you! The OCD and supernatural grew together, although I skirted around the OCD in the first few drafts. I had a meeting with my agent to process some helpful feedback and mentioned that I’d like to explore Mina’s OCD more but I was worried it would be too scary for middle grade. She encouraged me to go for it, and I’m so glad she did.
With writing horror, I’m curious whether you start with knowing the ending and work your way backwards. Can you walk us through when you began (without any spoilers!)?
Dude, this was my first novel and I knew nothing. Ha, I had an idea for the concept, but I had never plotted out a story so large, so it took many drafts and invaluable feedback to point it in the right direction. I spent a long, long time creating the characters and getting them talking to each other. I wrote so many scenes that I ended up cutting. Maybe some of them will appear in future stories. I axed whole characters, gave Mina a more traumatic backstory, upped the stakes and then upped them again. My editor, Jessi Smith, helped pry my fingers off the original story of Dracula and encouraged me that Mina and her Lore Club friends were strong enough to live their own story.
I always find it interesting the research involved in fiction. What research did you do for this book?
I worried that I’d end up on a watchlist somewhere with the kinds of things I was googling. Burying bodies, mausoleums, obelisks, crypts. A friend of mine used to work in a morgue and I called her up and asked her what to do with a dead body, then threw in “FICTIONALLY” when there was a pause at the other end of the line. I had the best time researching graveyards. I really wanted to picture Mina’s graveyard where she spends a lot of her time in the book, so I visited a ton of cemeteries. Whenever I travel, I love visiting cemeteries and try to take as many ghost tours as I can. When I was in New Orleans I visited St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. In Edinburgh I visited Greyfriars. We have a bunch of really beautiful graveyards near where I live. The older and wilder the better.
For Teachers
Are you doing school visits related to this book?
I am so excited to talk with fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-graders about writing! You can find out more about my author visits at School Visits – Melanie Dale
How can we learn more about you?
You can find me on my website at melaniedale.com or on Instagram and Substack @melanierdale.
This was super fascinating. Thanks for your time, Melanie!
Thanks for having me!
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