Publication Date: August 18, 2026
From Dusk Till Dawn meets The Thing in this debut horror novel, where a group of friends must confront questions of identity, aging, and desire during a vampire infestation in an isolated Californian desert.
It needs to feed.
After the recent separation from his wife Trish, Victor hopes his friends’ annual weekend retreat to the Californian desert town of Superstition will loosen him up and reforge the group’s fraying bonds. But something is waiting underneath Superstition, crawling its way into their group, and feeding into their desires.
Victor knows too well what it means to repress his desires. He’s always attempted to be the perfect partner, yet often found himself lacking. With Trish skipping the trip, he begins falling into the wild underbelly of Superstition in new ways. When the leader of the town’s Welcoming Committee approaches him with a romantic, sexually charged offer, Victor wonders if it’s too good to be true.
But the Welcoming Committee expects a price to be paid for its services. One that cannot be fulfilled by willing bodies alone. By the end of the weekend, group bonding will have developed a whole new meaning.
Because something is hungry for Victor and his friends.
For fans of Stephen Graham Jones, V. Castro, and Rachel Harrison, Tapeworm is an unforgettable, body-horror vampire novel that answers how far one will go to stop repressing their desires and finally set themselves free.
A weekend reunion of college friends at an isolated California desert retreat descends into a cosmic nightmare in A.P. Thayer’s skin-crawling debut, Tapeworm.
A year after the public meltdown of his marriage, Vic reluctantly returns to Superstition, California, for the annual weekend retreat where he and Trish fabulously fell out in front of their shocked friends. Tucked into the large “McRanchsion” home of married friends, Becky and Linda, the single Vic navigates the questions and concerned looks of Matty and Estela, as well as Charles and Diego. Still nursing the anger and grief of the breakup, the middle-aged Vic struggles to find his footing with friends who equally love his soon-to-be ex-wife.
At a gas station in Superstition, Vic encounters a sexy biker woman named Xochi, who enigmatically states she and her fellow riders are part of the Superstition Welcoming Committee. After getting her number, Vic heads on to Becky’s Airbnb house to nurse his loneliness among the group. But Vic soon learns that with every bad breakup, friends tend to take a side…and not everyone is on his. After awkward conversation, the crew swings into their familiar party mode by the pool that goes deep into the night.
But it is a night suffused with a far-off yellow mist, swirling closer in the form of a sandstorm, just as strange holes in the desert floor open and release unearthly worms that crawl, squirm, and twist their way toward any lifeforce they can feed on. Something dark and sinister is taking over the inhabitants of Superstition. But only Vic senses the wrongness of the place, most notably when he runs into the sultry Xochi the next day, and reality itself bends into monstrous visions Vic cannot explain. Especially the bite on his shoulder…
Billed as a “vampire novel,” Thayer’s debut is a cheeky, fearless, and proud in its depictions of a mixed group of Gen Z or millennials (who can tell which anymore?) who love fiercely and embrace their fluid sexualities among, and sometimes with, one another. Vic is the main narrator throughout, and his stream-of-consciousness thoughts about Trish, Matty, and the enticing Xochi reveal a man wracked with anger, grief, and sexual longing. As the evil descending on Superstition inches closer to the party pad in the desert, Vic’s actions and thoughts become more erratic, and the tense neutrality of the group begins to break down in slow, subtle ways.
Thayer’s story is strongest when revealing the backstories and dynamics of the friend circle: Vic and Matty are best buddies but also share an erotic attraction neither acts on fully; Becky, a high-powered lawyer, is the mother hen of the group while her younger wife, Linda, appears to Vic as a gold-digger not worthy of her time. Thayer dissects the solid lines and fraught connections of a friend clique to a gossipy degree…and it works almost too well, as the Vic-Trish breakup arc takes its time unpacking.
But this is a horror story, after all, and relationship drama yields to the final third act…and boy oh boy, gird your loins and stomachs, readers! In scenes reminiscent of From Dusk Til Dawn, Vic and company meet up with Xochi and her biker friends at an abandoned mission-turned-bar on the outskirts of town just as the blinding yellow sandstorm sweeps through. From there, it is a dizzy and grotesque homage to body horror as the creepy crawlers find new ways to get into their victims. While the grossout factor is high, the explanation of the monsters, their provenance, and their purpose lacks a robust origin story. This, plus the amount of graphic sexual acts, are enough to warrant a “reader beware” warning for the queasy.
Tapeworm is a strong, playful horror debut that gets under your skin (pun intended) until the last, wriggling page.
A.P. Thayer is a queer, Mexican-American writer of speculative fiction. His work has appeared in Apex Magazine, Dark Matter, Uncharted Magazine, the Los Suelos multimedia anthology, and more. He is a staff writer for Frivolous Comma and has been an editor at Constelación and Para El Pueblo magazines. His debut novel, Tapeworm, is a body horror novel set in the California desert. It is forthcoming from Evil Twin in August of 2026. Outside of writing, A.P. loves cooking for others, playing RPGs around a table or on PC, and being yelled at by a small dog for lack of attention.
