Jillian is a sapphic author who loves stories with big feelings and a lot of heart — even if that heart is a little bloody and bruised. When not writing, you can usually find her doting on her cat, listening to music, or gently obsessing over whatever piece of media has currently grabbed her attention.
Author Links:
All links: byjillianmaria.com
Book Sample: Read the first 3 chapters of A Colder Home on Jillian’s website.
Elevator Pitch for Readers/Book Clubs:
Real terror plagues the production of an amateur horror film when a blizzard traps cast and crew in a haunted house. But Cleo finds herself strangely drawn to the ghosts on the other side of her camera…
Your novel, A Colder Home, was just released in February (2026). What has been the most enjoyable part of the whole process for you, from the drafting stage to publication? What parts are you glad to be over?
What a great question! I’m going to have to answer it out of order, though. A Colder Home is, without exaggeration, one of the hardest books I’ve ever written. So when it comes to what I’m glad to be done with, I definitely won’t miss the parts where I stopped a draft halfway through because I couldn’t finish it, or the times where every word felt like pulling teeth.
There were several times where I put away the draft sure that I was shelving it for real this time. I’ve abandoned other projects over far less! But this was one book that I just couldn’t give up on. And I think that made it all the more exciting when the story did finally “click” for me. That moment where I worked out what the story was about was incredibly satisfying, and it made me grateful for every draft — and half draft! — that made it possible.
What inspired this ghost story, and do you have any experience with the paranormal yourself?
I love ghosts as a metaphor. The specters you find in this story are not souls so much as they are manifestations, influenced and warped by the perceptions of those left behind. I was very much inspired by my own experience with grief.
Specifically, the strange feeling of realizing that your memory of a lost loved one is fallible, and for better or for worse, you’re remembering the version of them that you want to remember. Sometimes that means remembering them as better than they were, and sometimes it means magnifying their worst traits to lessen the sting of missing them.
Either way, it’s very difficult to hold onto the whole complex version of someone in your head, especially when they’ve been gone for a long time.
I will say, earlier versions of this story had far more sentient ghosts. Virginia, and to a lesser extent Laura and Gerald, had agendas and goals of their own. But I found that it slowed the story’s momentum, and sort of muddied the message. Having them be a little less human made the story far scarier, and made the themes a lot stronger.
I can’t say I’ve had a genuine paranormal experience, although I’ve had a few that come close! And I’m definitely open to it. I love hearing about local ghost stories when I travel.
The story is about the cast and crew of an amateur horror film; what drew you to these characters, and what made you decide a horror film production would be a good vehicle for this story?
I knew from the very start that I wanted this story to be about a horror film production, but it wasn’t until much later in the process that I started to grapple with what that actually meant. In early drafts, “horror movie production plagued by real ghosts” just felt like a really fun concept! But somewhere along the way, the story started to ask questions about what it means to be an artist, to make art. And the story eventually became about the creation of art, in a way… how it can be used to process difficult emotions, or how it can be used to wallow in them.
What is your character development process like – how do they take shape from first idea to final form, and who are you most excited for people to meet?
Nothing about the writing of this book has followed my “usual” process, and that includes character development! Building out the initial cast was pretty easy because of the conceit of the book — a film production needs a cast and a crew — but while roles and basic traits have stayed more or less the same, each character evolved along with the plot.
Most changes got made based on the needs of the story.
For example: Cleo, my main character, changed a lot from her initial concept. She was always the film’s cinematographer, but in earlier drafts she was also the main director and the one calling most of the shots. She was a perfectionist and a bit of a control freak, because she had a really hard time trusting other people. But in later drafts, that perfectionism turned inward. She doesn’t trust herself, and it’s paralyzed her so that, in the final version of the story, this is the first time she’s even tried to make a movie in years, and she’s already half given up on it before it’s even begun.
It was odd to realize that I actually needed to make my main character more passive, because it feels like it goes against traditional narrative structure, but for the kind of story I wanted to tell and the themes I was trying to convey, it just made sense. And it made her final arc far more satisfying.
But we needed someone driving the early part of the story, so a lot of early Cleo’s bossiness and determination got shuffled to Noah.
Originally her co-director that she struggled to effectively delegate to, he became the movie’s champion, doing his best to keep things on track even as the supernatural elements of the plot ramped up. I really liked this change in him, because it made him a far more complex character. It also made him really fun to write from Cleo’s perspective! He’s her cousin, and she’s known him for so long that she’s got a lot of preconceived notions about the type of person he is.
The original version of him didn’t actually stray that far from what she thinks of him, but in this draft, we’re able to peel back those layers a bit more. Other characters went through similar changes based on what the narrative needed. Isobel ended up getting a lot more philosophical and thoughtful as the story became more about artistry and what it means to be creative — this had the added bonus of deepening her romance with Cleo, as both of them open up about their aspirations and what their respective arts mean to them. I ended up giving Declan an interest in occultism and spiritualism because his nature made him a good foil for Rhiannon, the resident sceptic.
Andrea and Zander ended up getting more page time as certain events got shuffled around, and it made them far more interesting as a result!
Were there things you cut out of the final draft that you wish you’d kept in, or things that you’ve added that went in fairly late in the drafting stage, and can you tell us anything about them in a spoiler-free way?
Ooooh, absolutely! There’s plenty that didn’t make it to the final cut that I wish did. A sillier one is an early scene where Cleo and Noah get fast food together. They have this routine where they order one vanilla and one chocolate milkshake, and then Noah splits them in half and mixes them together with his bare hands while Cleo makes a show of being disgusted by him. It was a fun look into their dynamic and unfortunately had to go for pacing, as now we start the book right at the beginning of filming.
One of the final major developmental edits I made was the decision to make Michelle, the owner of the home, a painter. That detail ended up solving a LOT of the issues in earlier drafts, and also helped reinforce that theme of making art! A lot of what you see in the final book is a result of that decision.
Lastly – what has been your favourite ARC reader responses so far?
A few beta readers told me that they cried real tears reading it. That’s pretty special!
Leave a Reply