Novelist Joe Hill talking to Rick Kleffel about his new book, Horns:

People turn to fiction to approach questions that they’re almost a little afraid to look at in everyday life. They want stories to ask big questions. I think that we use fiction to approach big scary questions in the same way people will wear lead-lined gloves to handle a radio­active substance.

At the end of his first draft for Horns, Hill realised he was asking questions about the true root of all evil: “We like to blame the Devil for everything that’s wrong in the world… but really we’re bad enough without him. We don’t really need the Devil. The Devil’s more of a spectator laughing at us, and humanity’s pretty good at gener­ating evil on its own.”

That said, Hill talks about the book being a story of redemption, forgiveness and goodness as well. Nevertheless, his reading at the start of the interview is pretty fiery stuff.