In this fresh-yet-familiar gothic tale—part historical fantasy, part puzzle-box mystery—the worlds of Dracula and Sherlock Holmes collide in a thrilling exploration of feminine power.

At the dawn of the twentieth century in Paris, Samantha Harker, daughter of Dracula’s killer, works as a researcher for the Royal Society for the Study of Abnormal Phenomena. But no one realizes how abnormal she is. Sam is a channel into the minds of monsters: a power that could help her solve the gruesome deaths plaguing turn-of-the-century Paris—or have her thrown into an asylum.

Sam finds herself assigned to a case with Dr. Helena Moriarty, daughter of the criminal mastermind and famed nemesis of Sherlock Holmes and a notorious detective whom no one wants to work with on account of her previous partners’ mysterious murders. Ranging from the elite clubs of Paris to the dark underbelly of the catacombs, their investigation sweeps them into a race to stop a Beast from its killing rampage, as Hel and Sam are pitted against men, monsters, and even each other. But beneath their tenuous trust, an unmistakable attraction brews. Is trusting Hel the key to solving the murder, or is Sam yet another pawn in Hel’s game?

WRITE TO YOUR STRENGTHS

Strange Beasts is my debut, but it’s hardly the first manuscript I wrote. I wrote three manuscripts before it—each of which got so close I could practically taste the cigar smoke, only to be missing that ephemeral something.

So I did what any obsessively analytical person would do and made myself a quiz. Actually, a few quizzes. The first broke down the stories I love into the narrative elements that drew me to them. The second explored every aspect of what I love to write—from the themes I gravitate to, to what kinds of scenes I enjoy, to where I crave the most complexity. The third quiz was actually just the second quiz again, but answered in terms of my readers.

My theory was that my best stories were somewhere at the intersection between what I love to read, what I love to write, and what other people love about my writing. That if I could build a story around that, I could play to my strengths. After all, it’s not like readers crow about how your worldbuilding is so… adequate, your dialogue, present and accounted for. No, readers go feral for the things you shine at. I just had to uncover what they were.

GUT vs RUT

If you had asked me if I was writing what I loved before, I would have said yes, absolutely, why write anything else? These are the books I’ve pulled bloody from the cavity of my chest because what else is worth writing. But the strangest thing happened when I turned off the mood lighting and began my authorial autopsy. I realized I wasn’t following my gut—I’d fallen into a rut.

For example, writing secondary world felt right because it’s what I’d written since forever, but more specifically, since I was devouring fantasy books at the school library during lunch. But it turns out that what I love to write is a subset of what I love to read.

One of my questions on that questionnaire was “what do you enjoy most about world building.” For this, my readers and I are in agreement: it’s bringing a world to life, making it feel real, as if you could press yourself into the book, and walk its crooked streets. Mostly because if I can make the world feel real, then I can make magic feel real. I can make monsters feelreal. A feeling I’ve yearned for ever since I was a child, horrified that the world could dare to be so boring as to be bereft of magic.

You’ll notice I didn’t say “creating a new world and cultures,” which is what I was doing every time I wrote secondary world. I had fallen into a rut writing secondary world and not even realized it, thinking I was following my heart. The funny thing is, I wouldn’t have said I was unhappy writing secondary world, but I was so much happier when I began writing historical fantasy—and my readers were, too.

PERFUME IS FEMINIST

I dug into a wealth of research for Strange Beasts, most of which was rendered down into a single line here or there, but all of which was utterly fascinating (I regret nothing!). I was particularly drawn in by the stories of perfume in the Edwardian era. There were alarmist newspaper articles about socialites in France who bathed in perfume, drank perfume, or even injected perfume into their skin. (These stories might have a grain of truth to them, but were definitely not the cultural norm. If they did happen, it was most likely only socialites scheming for attention).

And then there was the lance-parfum rodo, developed using technology used for anesthesia which couldn’t possibly go wrong (reader: it did), which shot a provocative jet of perfume out, supposedly to make scenting your sheets easier, though that was definitely not what was selling it. See Alphonse Mucha’s rendition, with a reclining, artfully undone woman with a jet of perfume arcing toward her chest (ostensibly to the handkerchief she held), if you’d like a deeper ah, education in the matter.

But my favorite aspect of period perfume is how, in an era when the ideal woman took up as little space as possible, it was inexplicably feminist! Proper ladies, you see, only wore perfume on their artefacts, never their skin (the scandal!), and only perfume of a single note so their fragile lady minds wouldn’t get overwhelmed (there were whole books written about their fragile lady minds getting overwhelmed).

To wear perfume on your skin was to remind men you had skin. Which sounds like something out of a horror story, as one generally hopes women have skin, and all other genders too for that matter. But in that era, it was devastatingly provocative. What’s more, said perfume would linger in her wake, taking up space in an era where women were supposed to take up as little space as possible.

THE BEAST OF GÉVAUDAN

Werewolves often represent man’s inability to escape his primal nature. But after they were cunningly used by cult horror classic Ginger Snaps as a metaphor for puberty, I became obsessed with variations in monstrous symbolism. Werewolves, I decided, would be the perfect symbol for feminine rage. And using werewolves meant that my story had to take place in France, for France was the home of the Beast of Gévaudan.

Featured in the fantastic movie The Brotherhood of the Wolf, The Beast of Gévaudan is a real historical monster. Or… something. Accounts vary. There were theories it was just an exceptionally large wolf, a young lion escaped from a traveling menagerie, a striped hyena, a prehistoric predator, a pack of wolfdogs in cunning armor, and a even a man in a wolf costume. And then, of course, there were the theories that it was a werewolf—for the way it seemed impossible to kill, not even flinching at musket shot, until a silver bullet (allegedly) took it down at last.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Before the silver bullet found its heart, the Beast killed 100 people in rural France between 1764 and 1767. Even the king of France got involved, eager to prove himself after the humiliation of the Seven-Year War. He set a bounty on the Beast’s head, and sent his own gunbearer (among others) to hunt it down. When said gunbearer shot a large wolf, the king promptly declared “mission accomplished,” and ignored all the subsequent Beast attacks that followed in its wake.

Of course, there is one major difference between the Beast of Gévaudan and the Beast in my book—the Beast of Gévaudan primarily devoured women and children, whereas my Beast saves its appetite for rich and powerful men in the heart of the city. Rarefied taste, for a Beast. A werewolf, undoubtedly, if they hadn’t all been hunted down decades ago. Political? Almost certainly. A metaphor? Of course. And the mystery at the heart of Strange Beasts.

WOLFSSEGNERS: THE PIED PIPER OF WOLVES

Before I started writing Strange Beasts, I researched everything I could find on historical werewolves. This led me to Peter Stubbe, a werewolf who made a deal with the devil for a magic girdle that would turn him into a wolf; Thiess of Kaltenbrun, the so-called Hound of God, or self-proclaimed good werewolf; and, of course, Wolfssegners, which were kind of the Pied Pipers of wolves.  

Wolfssegners could, by way of a Wolfssegen charm, protect your flock from wolves—or, by way of a Wolfbann, sic wolves on your flock (which really incentivized you to pay the Piper). But when I looked deeper, the nuance I found was fascinating.

Their charms varied as much as the Wolfssegners themselves. There are more than 200 established variants in Nassau-Dillenburg alone. One famous example used bread imbued with the magical sayings/prayers to saints, and left in hollows of trees at crossroads while naming devils. Another used a blend of wormwood, asafetida, and other herbs with soil from the stable in a pouch buried under the threshold of your barn. Some also wore Benedictine clothes and taught their clients to bake this spell-bread, sometimes requiring them to say prayers afterwards for days.

By the 17th century, this had the fascinating effect of getting them equally accused of being charlatans (when their charms didn’t work), witches (when wolves attacked and they hadn’t secured the Wolfssegner’s services), and, of course, werewolves. This obviously perked up the Church’s ears because WITCHES, but also because the Reformation happened, and it was Germany, so they weren’t happy with the pre-Reformation feel of their spells.

This proved a deadly catch-22 for Wolfssegners, which lead to the dying out of the practice—though I see it’s echo in the equally fascinating Pennsylvania Dutch Braucherei. Interestingly, Braucherei leans much more heavily on the Bible, the practitioners are required to help others, and there’s a taboo against accepting payment for their work—all of which neatly counter the pitfalls that Wolfssegners fell into centuries before.

Susan J. Morris is a fantasy author and editor best known for a writing-advice column featured on Amazon’s Omnivoracious blog (which TIME magazine online once called “clever,” and which she hence forth has never let anyone forget), and her work editing Forgotten Realms novels. Susan delights in running workshops for Clarion West and in moderating panels for writing symposiums. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her partner; her cats, Adora and Kitava; and entirely too many plants. Strange Beasts is her debut novel. Find her online at susanjmorris.com.

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