Horror novel Headlights by CJ Leede has hit the shelves.
Burnt out and defeated by the job, special agent Daniel Stansfield is ready for a change as he approaches his last day with the FBI.
However, before he can turn in his badge, he finds himself pulled back into the gruesome cycle, as he is summoned back to Denver, the city he ran from four years ago.
Seemingly innocent people are waking up on the side of the highway, with no memory of how they got there, wearing the skin of victims they have allegedly never met. Each of them is sharing one haunting detail: a strand of a stranger’s hair tied around their tongue.
Every clue leads Daniel deeper into the shadows of his own past, forcing him to confront the ghosts of his traumatic childhood and face what has been haunting him all along, before he and his loved ones become the next victims.
In an interview, the author from Los Angeles opened up about the inspiration behind the novel, which came to her on her daily two-mile walk to and from a coworking office.
“One day I was about halfway through my walk, and it was sunny and beautiful, and there were palm trees everywhere, and I just saw this image of someone standing holding this skin, horrified,” she said.
“And I remember kind of stopping in the middle of the sidewalk and thinking, what is that? And I always know when I have those moments that whatever that is, it will very likely turn into my next book,” she added.