October Guest Editor Claudia Lux on How People’s Interpretation of Hell Influenced Sign Here – She Reads

Meet Claudia Lux, the debut author of the wildly dark book pick that we’re all reaching for during October. Sign Here is the perfect combination of dark humor, paranormal horror and satire, rooted in the unique premise (and incredible world-building) of being an employee in the depths of Hell. Think the sticky web of wealthy family secrets in Revenge meets the The Good Place’s absurdist take on a workplace afterlife.

In Sign Here, Peyote Trip is one of the countless “employees” living out his afterlife sentence in Hell. And while the Hitlers and the sex traffickers of the world may reside in the worst rungs, there are several places dedicated to the liars, the petty thieves, the low-grade jerks. In Hell, time (often measured in millennium) and hunger (main cravings: salt and fresh air) have no defining boundaries, none of the pens work, and the bars only serve Jägermeister. In order to get promoted, Peyote is dedicated to collecting as many souls as possible, including a member of the bougie Harrisons—a wealthy, secretive New England family back on Earth—to sign their soul away to him, and he grows obsessed with the family as they embark on their New Hampshire summer vacation. His desperation and ambition to meet his quota intersects with the Harrison’s intergenerational secrets and scandal, plummeting them all into the family’s dark past in a way no one sees coming.

This is an electrifying unexpected story about what life looks like after we stop living, and more so, what it looks like when we decide to live on anyway.