20 Questions with Erika T. Wurth

Today we have a fun spooky treat for you! We have the pleasure of chatting with author Erika T. Wurth as she answers 20 questions about herself and her book, THE HAUNTING OF ROOM 904!

But first, let’s dive deeper into THE HAUNTING OF ROOM 904, a horror novel that examines grief and what it means to be Indigenous in America.

Haunted by her sister’s death five years earlier, paranormal investigator Olivia Becente has been asked to help solve the mystery of the deaths occurring in room 904 of the landmark Denver hotel the Brown Palace, where every five years a woman appears in the room with no memory of how she got there, and two weeks later reappears in the same manner and dies. When her mother appears in room 904, Olivia only has two weeks to figure out who or what is haunting the Brown Palace. Along the way, Olivia has to deal with betrayal from friends, a dangerous ex, a vindictive journalist, a calculating cult, and shocking revelations about her sister’s secret life.

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NOW LET’S HEAR FROM ERIKA!

1. What’s something that made you smile today?

Thinking about how I saw the film Smile 2 and how astonishingly fun, smart and scary it was. What a great meditation on pop culture.

2. What have you been reading lately?

IMAGINARY FRIEND by Stephen Chbosky—it’s incredibly fun. 700 pages are going by in a flash.

3. What is your favorite thing to do when you’re not writing?

I’m pretty nerdy and boring so the answer is reading. But I do like to hang out with my fluffy white dogs, my niece, and obviously adore watching horror movies.

4. Do you have any writing traditions or rituals?

This is also going to be an inordinately boring answer, but I love to write in the mornings, I have to have coffee, I often listen to music when I’m writing, though not editing, and I need to have my ginormous headphones on when I do, and because I’m a former smoker I have to chew on gum the entire time.

5. What was your favorite book or series when you were a kid?

I remember telling a teacher that I would give up an entire summer, a big statement for a kid who hated school, just to read the new Piers Anthony novel in the Xanth series.

6. What is your favorite local bookstore? What about your favorite library?

I have to admit I don’t go to libraries as much these days because I think I spent enough time in them during my doctorate and so much is online, but I love the Tattered Cover. I’ve gone there since I was a kid when it was this glorious book mansion, and of course there’s The Bookies here in Denver, a great independent.

7. Could you tell us a bit about why you are so drawn to writing horror specifically?

I’ve thought about this a lot as somebody who wrote literary realism for years because I thought I had to, to be a serious writer, but I was just a nerd as a kid. If it involved dragons, ghosts, or spaceships, I was in. And so, when I realized that I needed to go back to my nerdy roots to be happy, the genre that was the closest to the darker realism that I had been writing, was horror—though I’m on the more paranormal versus slasher of things.

8. How was the process different from your debut novel, WHITE HORSE, to THE HAUNTING OF ROOM 904?

I would love to say that it was easier because I feel like I’m finally truly understanding structure and plot, but honestly, the plot of 904 was so difficult to wrangle that it took even longer to get right.

9. How long has THE HAUNTING OF ROOM 904 been in the making?

I started thinking about my next novel about eight months before WHITE HORSE came out, signed the contract for it two years ago and have been working on it ever since.

10. Have you ever had any paranormal experiences of your own?

Maybe. When researching for WHITE HORSE, I went to the Stanley hotel with my niece. We stayed in a room where there was supposedly a cowboy who would appear at the bottom of your bed and scratch your legs. I never saw the cowboy, but then again, my niece and I offered him a spirit plate and told him that we were thankful that he was allowing us to stay in his room. Every time we talked to the cowboy, the light flickered. The other paranormal experience I’ll save because it’s at the heart of the book I’m working on.

11. Do you have any shows or movies that you recommend to people looking to replicate the feeling they got from reading your book?

It’s not an exact analogue, but I think MEXICAN GOTHIC. And I like to think the vibe of one of my favorite horror movie franchises of all time, The Conjuring, is alive in most of my work. Ditto for The Ring.

12. If you could collaborate with any author who would it be and why?

100% my friend Rebecca Roanhorse. She’s one of those Indigenous authors, who is completely unique in her vision, and imagines indigenous people unfettered by colonization, and that is truly magical.

13. Are there any upcoming debuts that you’re excited about?

Absolutely, I am totally excited about BOCHICA by Carolina Flórez Cerchiaro. She’s asked me to blurb and I’m honored.

14. What do you hope your readers will take away from this book after reading?

I like to believe that everything I write is first and foremost, fun. But I think one of the big themes in all of my work is the importance of female friendship and community, and on the other side of things, lateral violence in different communities.

15. What part of THE HAUNTING OF ROOM 904 are you most proud of?

I am genuinely proud of the plot simply because I worked so hard on it. But I also think my female characters and the relationships with one another are really complex and interesting and relatable. I think my female characters are funny, irreverent, and have totally different tribal backgrounds—that’s something I work really hard on.

16. Do you see yourself in any of your characters? How are you alike or different?

I’m an academic like one of them. I’m a tremendously irreverent, direct person like one of the others. And I also have a doctorate, like two of them.

17. THE HAUNTING OF ROOM 904 is a moving exploration of grief. What made you decide to write a horror novel that also explores grief so carefully?

Very long story short, I have lost people that matter to me in my life either through death or because I just couldn’t be a part of their lives either at all or in the way that I wanted to.

18. Why did you choose to write Olivia as holding a doctorate in psychology? It creates such an interesting dichotomy, since she’s also a paranormal investigator.

Like I said, I’m an academic, and my last character was tremendously smart and self-educated in WHITE HORSE. But then I wanted to go completely the other direction since it was something that I know. And I think it’s important for non-Natives to understand that there are Indigenous women who have doctorates like my main character Olivia and her friend Sara, or are members of Mensa, like my character of Victoria. And so important for Natives to see that kind of reflection in fiction.

19. Why did you choose to incorporate the Sand Creek Massacre? How much did you know about it before writing THE HAUNTING OF ROOM 904?

I think if someone wants to read something by an Arapahoe/Cheyenne author they obviously need to read Tommy Orange’s WANDERING STARS. But I grew up right outside of Denver, not far from the massacre, and it’s always in the backdrop. It felt important and respectful to talk about that since I talk so much about urban Indian Denver in my work. Additionally, my cousin is Arapahoe/Cheyenne, and his ancestors lost relatives at the Sand Creek massacre.

20. Are you working on anything new?

I am! It’s tentatively titled THE GHOSTS OF LORETTO CHAPEL, and it’s about a couple who went to school at the Institute of American Arts, became famous visual artists, and decided to move back to Santa Fe. It’s a bit of a possession novel. And of course, a paranormal novel. It’s also about the Manhattan Project. The main character, like me, had an incredibly intense experience in the Loretto Chapel and decides that she has to find out why, all while her troubled brother has come to live with her, and her mental health continues to spiral because she continues to have more and more intense paranormal experiences.