I, Hannah, had the delight of sitting down and talking with genre-defying author Steve Hugh Westenra, author of The Erstwhile Tyler Kyle and Wings of Ashteroth. We had a blast talking about horror, inspiration, and building complex characters. Below is our interview, done via both writing and over Zoom. It’s edited for readability.

1. What made you want to become a writer? 

I’ve always loved stories. When I was a kid, that often meant acting out stories (pretending to be a pirate, or an explorer, or a garbage man), but whether I was putting pen to paper or conjuring worlds to run around in from my imagination, storytelling has always been there. Of course, there are many storytelling media, but I think writing was perhaps what I had an affinity for.

2. What books inspired you to write? 

So many! I don’t know that my inspiration started only with books, since I’ve wanted to write from a very young age (I grew up with Roald Dahl and James Howe and K. A. Applegate and a whole host of others). The fact that my mom was a writer certainly inspired me, I think, and I was very influenced by musicals and movies.

3. What made you pick Indie Publishing? 

I’m an indie author who tried for years to find representation and failed. I had been querying for, you know, longer than 10 years. It was a long time (for me), and it was several projects and I kept running into the same basic issues. Things like “this is ready but we don’t have anywhere to place it now” or “we don’t know where to place it in the market,” or “I’m just not the right agent for you, but you’ll find an agent in no time!” Which is a really sweet rejection, and I appreciate the thought behind it, but at the same time, after getting that rejection several times, it’s like, “Okay, great. Where’s my agent?” It’s disheartening when you don’t find that person

After a while, I started to get more and more frustrated. I started to think, well, you know, the common denominator here between all my works is me. I write stuff that is too genre mashy, or sometimes too long, or it’s not commercial enough. And I’m never not going to be doing those things. So it’s really going to be–is it okay that I swear a bit on this? –it’s a bit of a crapshoot, you know? Along with the knowledge that the gates are getting narrower into trade pub for debuts, that kind of thing. You almost have to know people already. And I was so tired. I saw someone post about how writing was so important and getting their work out there was so important that self-pub, to an extent, became the only option. They were saying, you know, what if something happens to me and I die and my books never get out there? After I read that, I just felt so much better. I told a friend, if I die, I want my book to be out there. I’ve got to kind of start saying yes to myself instead of waiting for someone else’s permission.

4. Are you a plotter or a pantser?

I’m a bit of both. I think most people are a bit of both. I don’t think you can ever fully be totally one or the other. I do tend to do quite a lot of plotting, but it doesn’t always come at the immediate beginning stage. Or rather, it’s layered. So I’ll have to come up with a certain amount of stuff and write a bit of the story in order to figure it out. Then I have to answer certain questions for myself before I can move forward. With [The Wings of] Ashtaroth, that was more heavily plotted ahead of time. I had a little exercise book with an outline of each of the POVs, and I could flip through it and visualize the story very quickly. While with [The Erstwhile] Tyler Kyle,  some of my ideas I plotted beforehand because it originated as a short story 10 years-15 years before. Then I changed a lot about it. I changed Tyler, who was originally a biology PhD student, to a YouTuber and an actor, which was at least more familiar to me and my voice. So I plotted up to a point, but then I needed to get a sense of voice. I think it was very clear right away that the voice was going to be critical for this book. Also, originally, the book was supposed to end a certain, different, way, and a friend convinced me to end it differently.

5. Can you tell us a little bit about your book?

Can you tell us a little bit about your book?

The blurb!:

The Erstwhile Tyler Kyle is an adult horror comedy for fans of Ghost Files, Buzzfeed Unsolved, and Twin Peaks. 

Tyler Kyle doesn’t believe in monsters.

A washed-up thirty-year-old actor and reluctant cryptid investigator, Tyler is used to playing the Scully to his best friend Josh’s Mulder on their stupidly popular YouTube channel. But when Tyler receives previously unseen footage of the B movie bombshell mother who abandoned him eighteen years ago—footage linked to an isolated island in the Canadian wilderness—the mystery is one conspiracy he’s determined to investigate. The fact that following the scent gives Tyler an excuse to run away from the “straight” Josh, whom he drunkenly made out with, is just the cherry on the shit sundae.

But Echo Island isn’t what it seems. Its eerily scenic veneer hides a twisted secret buried in its roots as a gay conversion camp, and as Tyler retraces his mother’s footsteps, he discovers a supernatural connection between the residents and the island—one they seem to think Tyler and his mother share.

Even worse, the footage of Tyler’s mom came from someone on the island–a stalker whose obsessive fascination with both Tyler and Josh is about to make Tyler wish he hadn’t gone this one alone. Puppeteered by his stalker, searching for his mother, and debating whether it’s possible to queerbait yourself, Tyler comes to realize that it doesn’t matter so much whether you believe in monsters, if they believe in you.

6. What was it like creating this book from your more high fantasy, The Wings of Ashtaroth?

It’s very different. Partly the answer is l had some in-between works between those two books that bridged the gap a little bit. So that helped. Two of those projects were never completed. I do hope to complete them one day, but they were skewing more literary. They were single POV, whereas The Wings of Ashtaroth was multi-POV in a big way. Tyler Kyle is sort of multi POV, but sneaky. I also wrote what became my Pitch Wars novel, now retitled So Sing the Barrows (but I always just call it Lesbian Vikings). “Lesbian Vikings” doesn’t suit the tone of the book at all, so I can’t call it that, unfortunately, but it’s just Lesbian Vikings in my mind.[So Sing the Barrows] is not a horror, but it has horror elements. It has fewer POVs. So that helped a little bit. But I’ve always loved when people experiment, and when genre isn’t really clear cut or the archetypes and the typical forms and structures that you find in something like epic fantasy or romance get played with a little bit and kind of pushed or reassembled like a jigsaw puzzle, that kind of thing–a book that can create a new picture when you put the pieces together differently. A lot of the same kinds of themes tend to creep into my work, in the way that I approach things like POV or genre. I think it creates a unique tone or atmosphere, or a different vibe between the books.

7. Have you always been a fan of horror?

I’ve always been a fan since I was a little kid. My parents really weren’t fans of horror, at least not in a way that they thought of themselves. Subsequently, it turned out that they were a bit more into some things than I had realized, but I very much wasn’t allowed to engage with horror media as a child because they were worried I’d be frightened. They thought it was too violent. They didn’t like my sister and I watching violent stuff as kids–perfectly understandable. But I was always really attracted to darker stuff. I remember a garage sale. There was some kind of Gothic castle that had all these bat action figures in it. It was obviously meant for a boy, and I’m a trans man and my grandmother (who actually was a tomboy growing up and was someone I thought would have more sympathy) told me I didn’t want that. I still remember that because I think that was a moment when I recognized where my aesthetic interests lay.

There was also this kid’s book we had in our kindergarten class. I don’t remember what the book itself was called, but one of the stories was “The Girl with the Green Ribbon” or “Green Ribbon”, something like that. It was a simple story. But it was a spooky kids book, and it was about this woman who goes around, and she always has to wear this green ribbon around her neck. She marries this man, and he keeps pestering her, “What’s what’s with the green ribbon? Take off the green ribbon.” I can’t remember if he takes it off while she’s asleep or he convinced her to take it off, but her head falls off. There’s variations of this same story, including a Japanese folk tale that’s very similar. So I really liked that as a kid. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was a classic. I also loved James Howe–those kinds of books. 

When I was in my early teens, I started sneakily watching horror movies with my friend Nicole. We’d go to the video store–our local corner store–and they would always ask to talk to a parent on the phone if you were renting something that was R rated and stuff. We always called Nicole’s parents because they didn’t care. We would rent 10 horror movies and just bring them to her house. After a while, my parents were just like, OK, we’re not gonna be able to stop him from engaging with this stuff. I also used to sneak-watch Are You Afraid of the Dark?

8. Do you have a favorite horror story?

The Erstwhile Tyler Kyle draws a lot from camp. One of my favorites, and really underrated, is this terrible movie called Waxworks from 1988. It’s so funny and my friends Nicole, Melissa and I used to watch that one over and over again because I think we thought it was funny and recognized how foolish it was. It’s very aware of its own campiness. Doctor Giggles was another favorite back then. I’ve always been a fan of The Wicker Man. And there’s some Wicker Man references in the opening to The Erstwhile Tyler Kyle that are pretty overt. 

In terms of books, it was a long time before I read any novels by Stephen King. Nicole and I used to read his short stories aloud to one another when we were kids, and we found those cheesy at the time. I do wonder what I would think if I reread the short stories now, but I’ve read his works as an adult and really loved It. It was really fantastic. I wasn’t much of a fan of the movie. But I really liked the kind of depth of character and the sense of period. That was one of my complaints about the recent movies. I think they made a mistake setting it in the 80s. They should have kept it to its original time period, which I believe is the 50s. It just made everything make so much more sense. King was able to write with authenticity about that, because he’d grown up at that time. It gave the story an extra layer of realism. 

[SMALL SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE] In the recent movies, they make one of the characters gay, who’s not explicitly [in the books]. Stephen King was very pro-the change and I thought it made sense too. I know a lot of people weren’t into it. I really liked it. 

Interviewer: I read the book and know the change to the movie and I really thought it was effective. It made sense on the page. 

Exactly. Eddie was already really queer coded himself. It made so much more sense of what was going on there and those relationships. I think it’s one of those things that you can retroactively find support for it in the text itself. This is a group of outsiders, right? They all come from very different backgrounds for the most part. They all experience this otherness within their community and the thesis of the book, the movie, and the miniseries is really that the monster is actually the small town they live in. Pennywise is an embodiment of that. It’s all the things that they are afraid of within the town of Derry itself. So I really liked that book.

For something more recent, I don’t know if it was an influence so much as a comp, but I used Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires as a comp because it’s a horror comedy, and I did really, really enjoy that one a lot.

9. What excites you most about your story?

So much! I think, above all, the wealth of feeling beneath the surface. All (or most) writers will say something similar, I’m sure, but I poured a lot of myself into The Erstwhile Tyler Kyle. This comes through, I hope, in the strength of the book’s voice. Otherwise, I’d say I find the odd combination of genres and subgenres exciting–there’s probably (hopefully) not another book exactly like it, and that’s important to me. The queer, camp aspects were especially fun to play with in combination with the horror (which, I argue, is an inherently camp genre itself).

10. What excites you most about your characters?

A lot of things. I feel like I ought to mention their various marginalities, but honestly I don’t find that exciting–if all a character has going for them is their identity, they’re unlikely to be fully-fleshed and nuanced. I think their personalities are probably what excite me most–the fact that they feel vivid and real and complex to me. It’s possible readers will totally disagree with that, but for me I’m happy with that side of them. Once I feel like I could authentically answer questions about what a given character would do in different situations–that’s, I think, when I know I’ve reached a point in terms of characterization that’s critical for a book to work for me. 

11. So I think that is amazing, because there is so much more to a human. You have a great way of writing real world characters with stakes and depth, but also letting it be light and fun. Are you feeling yourself more drawn to the fun twisty/darkness?

I think I am. People don’t sit there all day thinking about what makes them miserable. One thing I’ve always said is: no matter how bleak whatever the piece of art is, or the subject that you’re writing about, or the character, in real life funny shit happens in the weirdest places (just as darkness can nip at the most joyful moments). So I tend to bounce off of things wherein a story is totally 100% without levity, or is funny with absolutely nothing deeper beyond surface-level jokes. In comedy, I like there to be just a little bit of an edge and vice versa. It doesn’t have to be very much, but there has to be something. A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin is a good example. Those books are actually quite funny with Tyrion Lannister and his antics with the hill tribes and in the Vale. There were moments where I laughed out loud. That’s not what people would expect, especially with all they’ve seen in the show (although the show does have funny moments too). I think people kind of assume it’s a certain way.
There should be a mix. The ratios can be different, though, of course.

12. I’m always here for a good mystery. What was it like creating a mystery novel mixed with horror and comedy?

For a long time, subconsciously perhaps, I was a bit nervous about doing it because the simpler an idea seems to be, the more nervous I get that it’s going to be really obvious or that I’m not going to be able to pull it off–that it’s going to be boring. I like a lot of works in the puzzle box sub-genre–which can be done very badly–but I’m drawn to it and you can hook me very easily with a puzzle box. Whether it turns out to be good or not is another question.

I tend to, when I’m watching stuff, figure out things pretty quickly, and part of that’s just because I’m naturally fairly analytical and fairly critical. I’m also an academic and I work on genre, so I’m quite aware of the kinds of tricks and things that people will do, so there’s a part of me that always wants to try to write for me where I go in the opposite direction. It’s really a problem where I obscure things too much, so I usually need a good CP to tell me to sprinkle a few more clues in. So there are a few more breadcrumbs. So one of my worries when you have something really complex, like Wings of Ashtaroth, is just in terms of its moving pieces. You can do a lot to fool people or misdirect the reader just by overwhelming them. But with TETK, in comparison it feels like there are basically two characters (although I did have a CP or an agent say there were too many characters, and I was shocked). But, you know, depending on your reading, there probably are too many characters! Also, I have this weird thing where I don’t like to engage with things directly that I work on professionally, so sometimes I think I’d never written a horror novel because I was so embedded academically in the genre. That was one of the main things I studied, so it was almost like a way of keeping those things separate. But I would infuse other things I wrote with horror. So, like, there’s scenes in The Wings of Ashtaroth that are, you know, quite horrifying, arguably more horrifying than Tyler Kyle and “Lesbian Vikings”.

Now I’m just really excited to actually be writing a horror novel and be in that space and trying my best. Whether or not I pulled that off is another question. But I tried my best to imbue it with all of the things I love about horror and tried to make it more than just a pastiche. To make it its own thing.

13. Tyler seems to be a bit of a self-sabotager with his friends and relationships. Was it fun looking at things from a messier protagonist? 

Yeah, I think so. You put that so well. I think it’s always interesting to meet a character when they are at a low point, or when they’re at a conflicted point. If you meet them at a high point, you know, you can also have a lot of fun because you can see them fall to the low point. But for me there, it would always be a low point. So, I think I like it when characters are shown immediately to have foibles, to be imperfect. At least for me, as a reader, it’s going to make them more identifiable. I tend to bounce off of characters who are too perfect, who get everything easily, and it’s never challenged in the text or it’s never engaged with. There is still sometimes a commentary about entitlement, but that to me is still sort of like viewing [perfection] as a flaw or, like, examining flaws. For me, especially in horror, in a setting like this, you kind of need to establish that the audience cares about the characters who’re all about to get stabbed (not that that’s going to happen in my book necessarily). But, in a broad sense, you want the audience to feel something. With this genre, and slashers in particular, sometimes there are stories wherein you want the characters to get stabbed because they’re all awful, but generally I think it’s important to me to have those raw, emotional moments with the character. 

In particular with Tyler, it was something Jeff Vandemeer said on writing, but he talks about the importance of kind of writing raw material. Like, probing things that you maybe don’t want to probe about yourself.

14. This may be leading me into spoilers, so you can tell me like, Nope, that’s something for the book. But what made you choose to have like Tyler’s mom have this tragic back story of she’s a beatless actress who suddenly disappeared. And like Tyler at the beginning, is like, no, she’s definitely dead. Like, what brought you to that decision?

That is a great question because that’s one aspect that was different from the original short story. Originally, he goes there to ostensibly study this rare animal, right, as part of his thesis project. So this was totally new. It’s hard for me to remember why I specifically chose this [back story]. I think I probably needed some reason for him to go to the island. At the time, [I was preoccupied with] disparate images and his relationship with Josh and the mystery that was gradually going to unfold. It appeals to me on a lot of levels because it allows for that theme–this sense of loss or abandonment–which is pretty critical to his character. I think a lot of it for me is the psychoanalyzing of the character. Tyler runs away from Josh, replicating the abandonment that happened to him and replicating his own trauma because there’s some part of him that’s comfortable there in that place. He just had to react to that and removed himself from the situation because of that.

In terms of Tyler’s mom, she jumped off the page as a character. I was picturing her as a Vampira or Elvira-type figure. That was really fun. It allowed me to play up the horror camp elements and infuse it right from the get go.

15. What was something you struggled with in the writing process?

Before I really start writing, I have to have a pretty deep sense of character already (otherwise I don’t find writing the thing at all compelling). Because of that, my struggles with character tend to come early in the process–it’s finding those initial voices that’s the challenging part, but after that I’m usually fine.

I think sometimes I instinctively know things about characters.

This isn’t about a character, but there was a time my sister met somebody. She met him, and she was like “his mom died.” There was something about his mannerisms that communicated that to her. He didn’t tell her this. He didn’t suggest it in any way (and she turned out to be right). I always thought that was really interesting because it shows my sister’s quite empathetic. But I feel that way about characters, too.

16. Do you have a favorite character and a character that you struggled with?

Ignoring Tyler, because he’s obviously the main character. He was great fun to write because his voice is so strong. It’s quite easy to sink into him. In terms of the secondary characters, I don’t know if you’ve seen him, but I really liked writing Conrad Uphill. He’s mentioned in the opening so he does appear. There’s also an antagonist character who I’m not going to name, who was a lot of fun to write. The things he says are just so ridiculous. As I was writing it, I was laughing. It’s so over the top, which was intentional.

17. What advice would you give to other writers who want to write in fantasy and/or horror/comedy? 

Yeah. I mean, I’m about to say something really cliche, but follow your bliss. There’s no way I can put that where it sounds original and not like it came off a Hallmark card. But write what you’re interested in reading. Write the book that you’re always looking for on the shelf and not finding. Ultimately you have to care about what you’re doing. You’re gonna sit with this, whether you’re self published or traditionally published, but especially if you’re traditionally published. You have to read that book a lot of times, and you’re gonna have to be that book’s number one fan. And you’re gonna have to be that book’s salesman. It’s a lot easier of a job when it’s something that you love, though that might mean that it’s harder to sell. It might mean it’s harder to find an agent. It might mean your audience is small. Still, I think it’s going to be more rewarding in the long run to do that.

Now, there are people, too, who legitimately say, you know, I actually don’t care. If I could churn out 3 or 20 books a year, I would love that. Go to it if you like that–that’s totally fine as well. I’m probably not the person to help those people, though.

Also, just listen to your gut. Listen to other people. Take feedback. I tell my students this all the time, but when you get feedback, wait a few days before emailing back, because our emotions are always heightened when we initially get that feedback. You need time to reflect. It might not be good feedback. It might not be something you want to incorporate into the novel. Maybe you just disagree. Take a little bit of time and don’t let somebody bully you into making a change, especially if it seems like they really don’t get the book, which can be hard to determine. But at the same time, be open to the idea that maybe you don’t know everything, especially because you’re so close to the book, particularly when you’re fresh off writing it or finishing. So be humble, but also firm in terms of what you’re trying to do.

18. Do you have any projects that you are currently working on that we should be on the lookout for?

I am putting out So Sing the Barrows. I’m aiming for a December or January release. I don’t call it an epic fantasy, but more fantasy that is set in an epic world. It’s set in the same world as The Wings of Ashtaroth, but on a different continent, a ways in the future. It’s more tightly focused and is about a particular group in exile–a witch and her companions who are trying to find a gift that will get them back into the good graces of their king. They’re exiled because she, you know, possibly accidentally killed his child. They get embroiled in all of this, like, mystery on the mainland and murdery stuff in the wild. 

19. What are you reading, watching, and/or enjoying?

Way too many things! I’ve fallen behind on my reading, but currently: Michael Roberti’s The Traitors We Are, Elliott Gish’s Grey Dog, and Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant. I’m also finally about to start playing The Quarry, which I’ve been eyeing since its release and which went on sale today.

20. Where can people find you and your work? (socials, website, etc.)

You can find me on most social media sites! I’m @stevewestenra on Twitter, Tiktok, and Bluesky. I’m @stevehughwestenra on Instagram! My website is stevehughwestenra.com and you can read my reviews on beforewegoblog.com