Marc Ruvolo: “…never forget what pain and suffering the queer community went through in the 80s.”
Last year during Pride Month, I had the pleasure of interviewing queer horror author Marc Ruvolo about his life, writing, and music career; we briefly conversed about the original edition of his horror novella Pieties. I also reviewed the book, which you can check out here.
Now I’m reconnecting with Marc to discuss his return to this deeply personal work of queer horror. Pieties has been revised, including a reworked ending that reshapes the story’s emotional and thematic impact. Also, check out that amazing new cover!
With Pieties: Expanded Edition, Marc Ruvolo revisits a
haunting narrative and deepens its emotional and psychological resonance, offering both new readers and returning fans a richer, more immersive experience. By expanding the story’s scope and refining its conclusion, he invites us to reconsider not only the fate of Andrew Fineman but also the uneasy boundaries between reality, belief, and fear. Pieties is unsettling, darkly beautiful, and undeniably thought-provoking.
Marc, you’ve added about 4,000 words and reshaped the ending for Pieties: Expanded
Edition. What drew you back to this story, and how did you decide what needed expanding or changing?
After Off Limits Press stopped publishing and returned the rights, the book lay in limbo until Slashic Horror Press offered to re-release it. The story is close to my heart, and I wanted to keep sharing it with others, so I said yes. I’d seen a few complaints that readers wanted “more” of the story, so this seemed like a great opportunity to expand the ending. When I re-read the novella, I felt I’d told Andrew’s story, but neglected the stories of those around him, so I started there.
In my review of the original Pieties, I noted that while the story was fast-paced and thrilling, the ending felt a bit abrupt, leaving some questions about certain characters’ actions and the balance between reality and surreal/supernatural events. And I hope my commentary never came across as complaints—! We’re still friends, right? 🙂
I’m curious, Marc, how did you find readers responded overall to the original ending? And with the Expanded Edition, without giving spoilers, how does the new ending change the way the story lands? Does it make the horror feel darker, the emotions hit harder, or shift the story in another way entirely? Did reader response play a role in how you approached the revised ending?
Some people like ambiguous endings, and some don’t. I enjoy them. I also like not having everything explained and tied up with a neat bow. With the novella length, it’s always a struggle to find the best point to stop the story. Originally, the story ended with a kind of “quiet after the storm” moment, but as I revisited it, I felt I hadn’t done Andrew’s friend, Christine, the proper justice. She’s an unlikable character, and so is Andrew.
The ambiguous ending inferred she was the next to suffer, but once I revisited from her perspective, I realized this was not the case. Andrew and Dick are stuck on their own trajectories to ruin. The women are not. They’re the survivors here; they’re stronger than the religious patriarchy, which destroys both Andrew and his father.
Rewriting and expanding something that’s already finished and published is tricky. I’ve discovered this myself as I’m currently revising my first two novels for republication. What were the most challenging parts of expanding and reshaping Pieties, and did you discover anything surprising along the way? Perhaps something that turned out to be easier than you expected or more complex than you anticipated?
The hardest part was figuring out what I wanted to do with it. I discovered I wanted to expand the ending, but how? A bloody confrontation? A fight to the death? None of that sat right with me in terms of story. Andrew was already lost, either due to external forces or just because he wanted to be. The story couldn’t be about him anymore. So, I revisited Christine, and that opened up a whole new angle. One that included Andrew’s mother, Enid, who is possibly the only true victim in this story. As I wrote the new ending, I was surprised by how much I cared for Christine and Enid—they deserved better.
Thinking about the original edition and how readers responded, what do you hope they notice or feel differently in the Expanded Edition overall?
I just hope more people read and identify with the story, and that they’re satisfied where I left it. I also hope people never forget what pain and suffering the queer community went through in the 80s.
Queer horror often explores fear, otherness, and societal pressures through a unique lens. How did you approach the gay/queer aspects of this revised edition of Pieties, and did expanding the story give you more room to explore Andrew Fineman’s identity and experiences, especially within the context of the period?
I lived through the 80s, and a much smaller version of Andrew’s experiences. The book is dedicated to my high school boyfriend, Dwight Glass, who later passed away from complications of HIV. I see a lot of Andrew in my memories of him. [Image of Dwight on the right.] I think this time around, I wanted to show the fraught relations we had with straight women. The love, and the hate, and the confusion. But we couldn’t have been who we were without them.
Going a tad meta here—if Andrew could send one piece of advice back to you while you were writing the original edition, what do you think he’d say about the changes in the Expanded Edition?
His advice would be: write his story, warts and all. To not pull any punches regarding the time and people’s attitudes. I think he’d tell me he was glad that, in the end, while I couldn’t save Enid, I saved Christine.
Marc, you’re a musician who founded the Chicago-based punk band No Empathy in the 1980s and served as their lead singer. You’re also someone deeply connected with the queercore (or homocore) scene. It’s clear that alternative music, dark melodies, and pounding beats are a core part of your creative soul. Since Pieties is set in 1981, if Andrew could play one cassette tape on a boombox while all the new horrors unfold, which album from that era would it be, and why?
I think it would be Buzzcocks “Singles Going Steady” for the first half of the book and Bauhaus “In the Flat Field” for the second half. I’d choose that Buzzcocks LP mainly because of the song “Orgasm Addict,” and Bauhaus for the song “Dark Entries,” which I feel fits the mood perfectly.
Now that Pieties has an Expanded Edition, do you see yourself revisiting other works in a similar way in the future?
My first novella, Sloe, is currently out of print, and I hope to expand it as well. It received some of the same criticism, the open ending left people wanting more, so I’d like to add a bit of what I think people were after. I’m busy finishing a few projects right now, but after those, I think I’ll tackle Sloe again. As it is my first published book, it definitely holds a special place in my heart. Thanks for the questions, and thanks to everyone who reads my strange, twisted little stories!
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