Please join us for a Q&A with Daniel Kraus, author of 2025 BookBrowse favorite Angel Down, and Whalefall, soon to be a movie starring Austin Adams, Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Shue. His upcoming book, Partially Devoured, will hit the shelves on March 10.
Please join me in welcoming Daniel Kraus to our BookBrowse Q&A.
Daniel is a New York Times bestselling writer of novels, TV, and film. His latest novel, Angel Down, was a USA Today bestseller and a New York Times Top 10 Book of 2025. It was also voted a BookBrowse Best of the Year book by BookBrowse members. His novel Whalefall received a front-cover review in the New York Times Book Review, won the Alex Award, was an L.A. Times Book Prize Finalist, and was a Best Book of 2023 from NPR, the New York Times, Amazon, Chicago Tribune, and more. It will be released as a major motion picture in October 2026.
With Guillermo del Toro, he co-authored The Shape of Water, based on the same idea the two created for the Oscar-winning film. Also with del Toro, Kraus co-authored Trollhunters, which was adapted into the Emmy-winning Netflix series. He cowrote The Living Dead and Pay the Piper with legendary filmmaker George A. Romero. Krausās The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch was named one of Entertainment Weeklyās Top 10 Books of the Year. Kraus has won the Bram Stoker Award, Scribe Award, two Odyssey Awards (for both Rotters and Scowler), and has appeared multiple times as Library Guild selections, and more.
His forthcoming nonfiction work, Partially Devoured: How Night of the Living Dead Saved My Life and Changed the World, will go on sale March 10, 2026, and will be featured in the March 11 issue of the BookBrowse Review.
Please use this space to ask Daniel questions about his work. As a reminder, to reply to an existing comment, click the grey Reply on the right side under the comment. To ask a new question, click the blue Reply button a little lower down.
Daniel, thanks for being here! Please tell our group a little about yourself.
Daniel,
I loved Whalefall and our book club is reading it next month. I am wondering if you had a particular interest in whales before thinking of this plot line or did you study-up just for this book? I had studied the sperm whale a bit myself as the oil industry in the 1850ās has always fascinated me, and your details are so spot-on about the whale it really drew me into the story. The concurrent reveal of the father/son relationship with his struggle inside the whale made this story an emotional page turner and a favorite for me.
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Greetings Daniel,
I read Whalefall with my library discussion group and loved it! That was a fun surprise since the story is way out of my usual ācomfort zoneā and I probably wouldnāt have picked it up on my own. It sparked my interest in real life whale falls, and I found a couple of great non-fiction books in the childrenās section of the library that I shared with my grandson.
Hello! No, I had no particular interest in whales or the ocean, but thatās kind of what I enjoy doing these days ā ie, take on a book project that is way out of my comfort zone and that will require mountains of research. Itās a good way to shake myself up, change my style, and ensure Iām never repeating myself. I love a challenge. If It feels like Iāve done it before, I have little interest.
Yes, there are some great nonfiction books that touch upon it. I highly recommend THE WORLD IN THE WHALE.
Hi @Daniel_K! Welcome!
Youāre not kidding about changing up your style. Angel Down was completely different from any of your other works - in fact, much different than anything Iāve read. Where did that one come from?
Who knows? I definitely didnāt begin the book in that style (the whole book as a single sentence). I had written maybe 20 pages in a more familiar format but I was bugged by it; it felt like less than it could be. So I spent some time dwelling upon the theme of the book and how I might reflect that in the prose style. Once I tried a single paragraph in that style, I knew I had it. The book became a joy to write. (But a nightmare to revise.)
ā¦ and then thereās the book you have coming out: Partially Devoured. Iāve read it (and loved it!) but Iām sure no one else here has. The bookās jacket says:
Daniel Kraus first saw George A. Romeroās Night of the Living Dead when he was five years old. Through watching it approximately three hundred times since, Kraus discovered the many ways the film is tied to his childhood trauma and how its influence has carried into his adulthood. He couldnāt help but wonder: Are there other admirers of the film out there who feel the same?
Partially Devoured uses a frame-by-frame deep dive into Night of the Living Dead to produce a kaleidoscopic cultural investigation of the filmās importance and to examine the authorās early life of rural isolation and local violence.
What can you tell us about the development of that book?
Careening from film analysis to rabbit-hole tangents, Partially Devoured will take readers from screaming laughter to the depths of grief, all while illustrating how a beloved genre film has woven itself into so many facets of our lives.
It really did seem to work. Our members ended up voting Angel Down one of their top books of 2025.
It seems to have some connection to the Angel of Mons legend. Is that safe to say? Had you been mulling a story about an angel on the WWI battlefield for a while, or did you encounter something that put you on that path shortly before starting the project?
Partially Devoured is a book that I started without any idea that it was a book. Thatās highly unusual. Usually I know what Iām doing. It began as an essay, I guess? I wanted something to noodle on between doing press stuff for Whalefall, and had had vague thoughts about writing something definitive on how Night of the Living Dead affected me. So I just started the movie, paused it a few seconds in, and wrote about those few seconds. Suddenly I had multiple pages ā just after a few seconds of film. This continued for a while, and pretty soon I did the math, and I realized, yeah, this is going to be book-length project, provided I can keep going. I had no idea how far I could keep it going. As it turned out, pretty far.
Though I did a lot of research before starting the book, somehow I never came across the Angel of Mons legend until I was already writing the book. Then it just seemed like kismet; angels were a collective dream of sorts on WWI, so it fed into what I was already doing.
Itās much more than just a commentary on the movie and how it impacted you, though. Itās got short bios of the cast and crew, a bit of history, and I especially appreciated how you talk about how the movie was ahead of its time in casting a Black actor as the lead. Did these additional facets get added as you were going along, annotating the movie, or did you go back and add these elements after? What gave you idea to include them?
Am I correct that Partially Devoured is your first nonfiction work? Did you have much difficulty getting it published?
Speaking of movies, I and many others are looking forward to the Whalefall movie. Iām interested in the process. In particular, how involved you the author are in the screen play process and if you attend any shootings or even preliminary screenings or editing sessions or what extent of involvement you are comfortable with?ā¦
Yes, thatās right. I loved writing it. That wasnāt a total surprise ā I wrote a book called THE GHOST THAT ATE US a few years back that was a fake nonfiction book, but used that journalistic style. But, yeah, definitely I had no idea if how far down the rabbit hole people would be willing to follow me. I didnāt know if I was writing a book for 20 people of 200,000 people or what. It didnāt end up being hard to sell ā the editor who bought it, in fact, had never seen the movie! And that was the greatest, because it suggested the book could stand on its own.
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I was heavily involved! First as the cowriter of the script and then, in preproduction, as a general advisor on all things whale! I was on set a few times and it was fascinating, but definitely the directorās world. Iāve seen edits and offered comments, but I trust the filmmaker completely. Thereās actually a preview screening tomorrow night, but I have no interest in attending that, that sounds tough to stomach!
I hadnāt seen the movie either. (I watched it as I was reading the book. It gave me nightmare, I gotta say.) Why do you suppose the movie has such a huge following, even today, almost 60 years after it hit the theaters?
Iām glad to hear of your involvement! When I first heard of the movie being made I wondered how they could capture not only the excitement but the intimacy the book offered. Sounds like your fingerprint will definitely be on it so Iām relieved and you trust the film maker so great news. Canāt wait!
Basically all of it that was in the mix from the beginning. I never over-thought it; I just tried to go where the impulse took me, while keeping a good mix of all the elements. Definitely the book got much longer in revisions, because I kept learning new things and layering them into the narrative. It helped a ton that I had a pretty massive knowledge base of the movieās background before I even started. Starting this book from zero would have been nearly impossible, but I had a lifetime of obsession to build from.