To many longtime readers of The Day, Rick Koster is your friendly neighborhood food critic/arts and music writer, a familiar face around town, at a concert or restaurant.

To me and to most folks who know him, he’s Koster: Somewhat zany, whip smart, thoughtful, and as affable and approachable a fellow as I’ve ever met.

What many may not know is Koster is also a novelist, whose latest, “Gris-Gris Gumbo,” a tale of voodoo gone awry among friends in pre-Katrina New Orleans, is out now, 20 years after it was first written.

“I gave up on ‘Gris-Gris Gumbo’ 20 years ago,” he said. “That it’s published is a total surprise to me.”

Back then, Koster tried to sell it, came close a couple of times, published another novel (“Poppin’ a Cold One”), and would still occasionally send his voodoo book out to open submissions. He sent it to JournalStone, a small horror publishing house, the week of Halloween 2021. Almost a year later, they called.

The title is a story of its own. Gris-gris is a voodoo spell or curse, but most folks can’t pronounce it or have never heard of it, especially if they’re not from New Orleans or the South.

“I have a whole list somewhere of alternate names,” Koster said. “I always liked (the title). When JournalStone said they wanted this, the first thing I said was, ‘Should we change the title of it?’ Scarlett (Algee, JournalStone managing editor) said, ‘I like it.’ I said, ‘You’re from the South. You know what gris-gris is.’ She said, ‘I want people to ask what it is. I want it to make you think.’”

The book is set in New Orleans, and the city oozes off of every page. From the Neville Brothers to the Saints and go-cups, “Gris\-Gris Gumbo” is very much a book of and about New Orleans.

Koster’s first book, “Texas Music,” a non-fiction historical account of the very title subject, was followed a few years later by “Louisiana Music,” and he spent a lot of time in New Orleans researching the latter. His feelings for the city go back a ways.

“My parents would take us to New Orleans on vacations, which is not what most families would do, I don’t think,” Koster said.

A trip down Bourbon Street to see Al Hirt play trumpet as a 13-year-old still stays with the native Texan.

“It was exotic. From the time I was a kid, I was just kind of under its spell,” he said. “There’s a dark energy. It sounds romantic, but there is a rhythm to that town. You know you’re there. It’s almost like a drumbeat.”

“Gris-Gris Gumbo” centers around two friends in the city in their mid-20s — Crayton and Green. Crayton inadvertently integrates himself into a voodoo sect when he disturbs a ritual while doing a favor.

Odd things start to happen, but there’s more to it than your typical “wacky hijinks ensue.”

Koster handles a delicate subject — voodoo — well, delicately.

“I’ve always been into dark stuff like horror movies,” Koster. “That stuff is fascinating to me.”

Koster explained that New Orleans is associated with voodoo in part because when slaves were brought over to the U.S., there was a big effort to convert them to Catholicism. A sort of deal was arranged wherein they incorporated some elements of Catholicism into their theology and were allowed to gather in Congo Square north of the French Quarter on Sundays to practice voodoo, perform rituals and dance. It became something that people would come to watch.

“Voodoo is a real religion with a system of gods and spirits, and they wanted to continue to practice their own religion,” he said. “Like anything else, there’s a dark aspect. There are people who use it for dark purposes. But the average follower of voodoo is just as religious in a positive, hopeful way in their relationship with God or the spirits or whatever, as a Christian is.”

In the book, Crayton begins to use the powers he’s unwittingly collected for dark purposes, and he becomes consumed with the power he has stumbled upon, which raises the suspicions of his friends.

The book features some supernatural elements that are spooky — Hand of Glory, goofer dust, a death pool — but it’s not over the top or frightening.

Although “Gris-Gris Gumbo” is marketed as a horror novel and published by a horror publishing house, it’s not your classic horror novel. More than anything, it’s a story about friendship and coming of age. It’s a story about friends of a certain age, young adults finding their way in a specific time in a specific city.

“I wrote the bulk of ‘Gris-Gris Gumbo’ as a sort of love letter to New Orleans pre-Katrina — the way it is in my memory as someone who never got to fulfill the dream of living there at the right age,” Koster said.

Koster said he has five unpublished novels he views as publishable, but he’s become disillusioned with the book industry. Waiting 20 years to have a novel published will do that.

“It’s not unusual to be rejected by agents over 200 times on one project,” he said. “It doesn’t mean you’re not good. It is so time-consuming and so spirit-choking to get rejection after rejection after rejection.”

Koster has a book signing at 6 p.m. on Friday at Bank Square Books in Mystic, but “Gris-Gris Gumbo“ won’t be in most brick-and-mortar bookstores. It will be available locally at Bank Square Books and across the country at select indie shops as well as through JournalStone, Amazon and Barnes & Noble. He said he’s planning some other book signings in Dallas and New Orleans and maybe a couple other places.

“It’s like putting on a Tupperware show for your friends,” he said of a signing in his hometown. “‘All of you are my dear friends. Would you like to buy some Tupperware? Now that I’ve bought you a beer.’ That’s what it feels like to me. … The rest of it is word of mouth and social media. I have no expectations for it.

“I’m really just surprised and happy that it finally found a home.”

If you go

Who: Rick Koster

What: Author talk and book signing for his latest novel, “Gris-Gris Gumbo”

Where: Bank Square Books, 53 West Main St., Mystic

When: 6 p.m. Friday