Erin Brown

Author Interview: Erin Brown – “I Unlock The Cage” — Hungry Shadow Press

Erin Brown is a black woman writer of horror and fantasy fiction.  She is a member of Speculative Ink, a Los Angeles-based writing group, and has been a guest of The Genre Hustle podcast.  She has been published in FIYAH Magazine, Murder Park After Dark Volume 1, Midnight and Indigo, the Los Suelos CA Interactive Anthology, and 3Elements Literary Revue. Erin is also the recipient of the Truman Capote Literary Trust Scholarship in Creative Writing for Spring 2022. 

We sat down with Erin to discuss her upcoming story in It Was All A Dream: An Anthology of Bad Horror Tropes Done Right, morally ambiguous characters in horror, and returning werewolves to their roots.

What trope did you focus on?

I subverted the popular lycan romance trope. Alphadude werewolf trying to contain his feral violence, just barely restraining himself from destroying his innocent and naive human girlfriend, who would of course rather die than live without the excitement and passion he brings to her life. 

Rate your trope on a scale of ‘kind of annoying’ to ‘if anyone writes this thing again there will be blood’.

Well, sexy beasty shenanigans are going to be popular for a long time, and it’s easily adaptable to avoid the he-monster-she-damsel gender roles that people are beginning to stray from with other tropes. But I think the way the formula has been overused inspires less of the “there will be blood” and more feelings of “why is it always the same?”

What’s a good example of this trope you’ve seen/read? Or has there been one so terrible that it sticks in your mind (no names, unless it’s famous enough we’ll figure it out anyways)?

Good example- Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow. It’s just fantastic, the way sex and love are treated there, the description of the bonds in the pack, the brand new intricately woven plotline bundle, and the fact that it’s a modern epic poem in novel form. From start to finish, it’s a breathtaking book.

As for examples I’m less enthusiastic about, um… I hate to speak badly about books, but when I was a very young teen I loved this werewolf book written for very young teen readers where consent was not in any of the characters’ vocabulary, and the alpha and his girl love interest were too far apart in age for it to be okay. And the movie was twice as problematic as the book. But, I didn’t know better back then.

The characters in this story don’t really represent a singular moral good or bad. How do you write characters that are compelling without necessarily being someone you would root for?

I think horror readers don’t care nearly as much about absolute moral identifiability as much as they want to be charmed and entertained, especially if they can be seduced. Everybody loves an interesting villain. So I guess I take a horrible character trait and wrap it in charisma to the best of my ability. And if I can’t swing the charisma, I’ll try for pathos. The general idea of a person who would do anything for love is kinda sweet… until they start to test the boundaries of what “anything” could mean. 

If the questionable behavior amps up slowly enough throughout the story, you have your reader going along for the ride fully invested, thinking “Why do I like this awesome horrible person? They are the worst! I should hate them… ugh, but I can’t!” That’s the sweet spot. And readers are free to root for the bad guy, then feel a melancholy sense of justice when they get what’s coming to them.

That said, I honestly thought the victim in my story was a good person despite the affliction, and the narrator was pure distilled bone-chilling evil. It makes me happy to know that there are other ways to read it!

Werewolf tropes aren’t commonly used in horror as much as other types of stories these days, for instance paranormal romances. Why do you think it fits so well in the horror genre?

The violence that is promised in werewolf stories allows it to be a format that can deliver utterly gruesome, visceral, primal terror with heartbreaking plot twists. It allows a real exploration of what makes a human monster, and what it means to be truly out-of-control. Also there’s that collective subconscious aspect of the human reaction to enormous growly meat-eating things; the unease is built right into our bones. It’s a rich mythos to explore, if we change the intentions of the romances that these stories tend to be centered on nowadays. I mean, in the original story in Ye Olde English, all the harm was caused because a lady hid her husband’s pants, right? I think the trope has plenty to give if we return some focus back to the sources of inspiration.

It Was All A Dream: An Anthology of Bad Horror Tropes Done Right includes Erin’s story “I Unlock the Cage” and is available for pre-order now! The book launches on October 18, 2022.

Cormack Baldwin

Cormack Baldwin is a glad scientist who would like to remind you that Mr. Frankenstein dropped out of undergrad. Cormack’s work has appeared in anthologies from Ghost Orchid Press, Mischief Publishing, and Skullgate Media, as well The Grey Rooms, The Magnus Archives, and Alternative Stories podcasts. He is also the head archivist of Archive of the Odd, an analog horror and found-fiction magazine. You can find a full list of his works at cmbaldwin.carrd.co, or find the man himself @cormackbaldwin on Twitter, where he complains about disability tropes in horror (hey, wait a minute!).