I started writing Untethering Dark in 2021 after an autumnal weekend in Vermont, wandering the woods and exploring covered bridges. I had just released a monster romance novella and was voraciously reading the genre and in absolute awe. Monsters falling in love? Hot. Scary monsters falling in love? Even hotter.

Indie authors were, and still are, going there. Sing Me to Sleep by R.M. Virtues, Feed by Aveda Vice, Hyacinth by Elle Porter, and Bees and Honey by Victoria Weyland were some of my entry points, and I’ve been hooked ever since. Morning Glory Milking Farm by C.M. Nascosta, A Soul to Keep by Opal Reyne, The Dragon’s Bride by Katee Robert, Ensnared by Tiffany Roberts, and so, so many other indie authors I want to name, have thoroughly captured the hearts of readers, putting this genre on the map and keeping it there.

Monster Fucker is a badge worn with pride. At the genre’s best, it’s about embracing and celebrating differences; about challenging the status quo and uplifting and showcasing voices not always heard.

These bold stories are as serious as they are fun. They’re commentaries on real issues—queerness, accessibility, marginalization, environmentalism, otherness, and more. They stretch the “traditional” bounds of romance, love, and vulnerability. And they revel in characters with unique creature features—think vibrating tentacles, double-decker peens, and horns that moonlight as handlebars. It’s a limitless playground for imagination, pleasure, and joy.

Spookiness has always been in my soul, and horror has been a huge part of my media consumption—yes, even in the single-digit years. I’ve also always been feral for a good love story. Everything about the union of horror and romance, and monster romance specifically, just clicks for me as a reader and as a writer.

I didn’t just feel a desperate call to read more monster romance. I needed to write more.

The first scene I ever wrote for Untethering Dark—while sitting in Burlington International Airport feverishly tapping it into my notes app—was our ferocious hag-to-be charming her way out of a bad situation with a people-eating monster, armed with nothing but her wits and a plate of Christmas cookies. The story has evolved a lot since then, but it’s just as unhinged and unapologetically vicious as it started… Weirdly sweet and heart wrenching too, because I can’t resist making terrifying monsters soft and vulnerable.

While a part of me wishes it hadn’t taken me more than three years to get Untethering Dark into its final form, I don’t regret a single second. I needed every bit of that time to do the kind of research this book needed.

I started with German culture, language, and traditions. While I’m German-American on my mother’s side, so much of that knowledge was lost. Christmas was where the ghost of our traditions still lingered—decorating the tree, leaving out stockings (or shoes) for St. Nick to fill with treats, eating ham and potato salad on Christmas Eve, plating cookies for Santa—and it’s why I set Untethering Dark during the winter solstice. This book served as a way for me to learn more about my German roots and reconnect with it in small ways. I didn’t grow up eating Springerle or cracking a window in the dead of winter. But I do now on occasion.

Kristyn J. Miller was pivotal. She has a master’s in history and museum studies with a focus on pre-Christian Germanic culture and history. She’s also well-versed in the German language and modern customs; and she helped me with translations and constructing the male main character’s name: Gudarīks. It’s reconstructed Proto-Germanic for Godric which means “God King.” She also told me about Wiedergänger—the dead who walk again—and the Otherworld—the Indo-European conceptualization for the realm of the dead, which helped me shape the story’s pre-Christian antagonists.

Perchta is a winter goddess in German folklore, and I took a lot of liberties with her portrayal—more a reimagining—balancing her original folklore and protective nature toward children with her villainous Christian-era rebranding as the “Belly-Slitter.” Think Santa’s naughty-nice list but make it super dark. Silver coins are given to good children. And the bad…well, in Untethering Dark, there are no bad children, just bad parents, and Perchta’s “Belly-Slitter” persona is reserved for the abusive adults who don’t heed her warnings. She’s sometimes considered a female counterpart to Krampus, and yet, not a lot of people know about her…in the United States, at least. Her festival day, Perchtentag, is real and still celebrated in the alpine regions of Germany and Austria.

Untethering Dark, for all that it is a dark fairytale, also strives to handle its gritty German folkloric source material with sensitivity. When writing a story in a real-world setting that has a long, dark history with antisemitism—Europe, but Germany especially—all aspects need to be handled thoughtfully and with great care. While that history is not a focal point of the story, it is acknowledged. However, this story and its characters do center witchcraft, ritual sacrifice, and people-eating. So many witchy tropes—and fantasy tropes in general—perpetuate harmful antisemitic stereotypes. A huge part of the editing process for this book was spent researching and hiring Celia Winter, a Jewish sensitivity reader, to ensure such tropes weren’t used. I sincerely hope that shows, but any mistakes made are my own.

There’s nothing I obsess over more than horror, romance, and monsters. It’s the kind of genre mash-up that gets my blood pumping and heart racing in more ways than one.

Untethering Dark, I hope, is a compelling combination of all three.

xoxo

Desirée