I hear it all the time. Someone picks up one of my Ravens Cove books, reads the back cover, and says, “Oh, so it’s horror?” I smile, take a breath, and say, “Not quite.”
It’s an easy mistake to make. My books have ancient evil, dark supernatural forces, and enough spine-tingling moments to keep you up past midnight. On the surface, that can look like horror. But there’s a fundamental difference — and once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
“Horror exists to frighten you. A supernatural thriller exists to take you through the fear — and out the other side.”
In horror, darkness is the destination. The point of the story is to unsettle, disturb, and leave you in dread. Evil wins, survives, or at the very least, leaves a mark that never fully heals. The genre is brilliant at what it does — but that’s not what I write.
In a supernatural thriller, darkness is the obstacle. Evil is real — terrifyingly, genuinely real — but it exists so that courage can rise up against it. The battle matters. The stakes are eternal. And the reader never completely loses sight of the fact that light is in the fight.
Think about it this way: horror leaves you looking over your shoulder. A supernatural thriller leaves you leaning forward.
When I write a villain like Silas Corvinn in The Tide Weaver, I’m not writing him to horrify you for horror’s sake. I’m writing him so you understand what my characters are truly up against — and so the courage it takes to face him means something. Evil must have weight for good to matter.
My books are also rooted in something horror rarely carries: faith. Not faith as a tidy, comfortable idea — but faith as action. Faith as the thing that makes someone stand their ground when every human instinct says run. That tension, that spiritual warfare, is the heartbeat of every Ravens Cove story.
So if you’ve been hesitating because someone told you my books were horror — come on in. Yes, you’ll feel the chill. Yes, the darkness is real. But you’ll also find characters fighting back, hope that doesn’t quit, and a story that believes good is worth something.
That’s not horror. That’s a supernatural thriller. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
And if you want more of the real thing? My podcast, Real Ghost Chatter, just relaunched — with true supernatural accounts that will make you wonder all over again where fiction ends and something else entirely begins. Go give it a listen. https://open.spotify.com/episode/2KlwROvWsdgdNJc3dBlFU9?si=I8TTiPc2Q2ypZ_IFeM5Kiw
Mary Ann Poll is the author of the Ravens Cove supernatural thriller series. The Tide Weaver (Book 6) is available now on Amazon. Visit maryannpoll.com to learn more.