Joe Hill

Joe Hill is a relatively new writer of horror novels and a weirdness-filled comic book series.

There's one thing many people like to point out about Joe Hill, that his full name is Joseph Hillstrom King. Horror novelist called King? Well, yes - Stephen King is his dad. Fully knowing that comparisons to his father's works would be inevitable and fearing that he would be judged on the name alone, rather than the quality of his writing, Hill decided to keep his full name secret for his first publications, to the point of never meeting his agent or publisher in person.

After winning several awards for for his short story collection, 20th Century Ghosts, and receiving critical acclaim for his first novel, Heart-Shaped Box, the secret about his full name slowly started to creep out, but Hill felt that he had already created enough of a name for himself, and allowed it to happen.

His main works are:

 * 20th Century Ghosts: A collection of 14 short stories.
 * Heart Shaped Box: A novel, in which an ageing rock star buys a ghost on eBay.
 * Horns: A novel, in which a man wakes up to find he has horns on his head.
 * Locke and Key: A graphic novel series.

Tropes used in his works:

 * Creepy Child: Several examples
 * Evil Phone: Subverted in the short story "The Black Phone". The circumstances and nature of the phone are fairly dark, but the phone's actually not so evil at all.
 * Genre Savvy: One benefit to Eddie Carroll, the jaded horror anthology editor in Best New Horror.
 * Kitsch Collection: The short story "The Last Breath" features of collection of famous people's last breaths.
 * Magic Realism: "Pop Art" features the titular character Art who is a biologically-born inflatable person in a world where it's a rare but occuring genetic disorder.
 * X Meets Y: You Will Hear The Locust Sing is The Metamorphosis meets Them.