Thrill Me
In Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction, his first book of nonfiction, Benjamin Percy challenges the notion that literary and genre fiction are somehow mutually exclusive. In fifteen essays on the craft of fiction, Percy looks to sources such as Jaws, Blood Meridian, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to discover how contemporary writers engage issues of plot, suspense, momentum, speculation, character, setting, and dialogue. The title essay is an ode to science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, horror, from J. R. R. Tolkien to Anne Rice, Ursula K. Le Guin to Stephen King—the books that make many love fiction in the first place. An urgent and entertaining missive on craft, Thrill Me brims with Percy’s distinctive blend of anecdotes, advice, and close reading, all in the service of one dictum: Thrill the reader.
Benjamin Percy
Benjamin Percy is the author of seven novels -- most recently The Sky Vault (William Morrow, 2023) -- three story collections and a book of essays, Thrill Me, that is widely taught in creative writing classrooms. He has been writing Wolverine for Marvel since 2017 and is known for his celebrated comics runs on Ghost Rider, X-Force, James Bond, Green Arrow, Nightwing and Teen Titans. His honors include the Whiting Award, a McKnight Fellowship, an NEA fellowship, the Plimpton Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, and inclusion in Best American Short Stories.