Dark bleatings, my lovely tribe! Since starting this website and the accompanying YouTube channel, I’ve come to realise that – though I love every part – my favourite goating activity is conducting author interviews. From long-time idols to people I’ve just discovered, getting to talk to the people that write the stories I love is a wonderful privilege.
With that in mind, I thought the release of my last co-edited anthology, Strange New Moons, was a perfect excuse to round up yet another batch of excellent story tellers, and we’re starting with Somer Canon. Spoiler alert – I love her.
Somer Canon is the award-winning author of You’re Mine, Halloween my Way, Vicki Beautiful, and more.
Without further ado, on to the interview that she so graciously granted me!
Me: Hi Somer! Okay, let’s get this one out of the way first – are you or are you not a werewolf?
Somer: Officially, I am a werewolf groupie. If strange things happen in my area during the full moon, it’s almost certainly not me.
Me: ….Uh-huh. Let’s move on swiftly then. When approaching your story – Who Keeps Shitting on the Memorial Fire Tower? – what were your first thoughts and ideas about what kind of story you wanted to contribute to the anthology?
Somer: I knew immediately that I wanted a story that leaned heavily into the absurd. The werewolf is one of those monsters that has a wealth of comic potential because of the mindless animal aspect, and I really wanted to play with that. Everyone loves a goofy dog, and I wanted to incorporate that–the mental image of a drooling, grinning werewolf– with good old fashioned horror.
Me: The crux of the plot hinges on…a normal thing that all creatures do. Did you specifically focus on the “animal” aspect of the wolf when you came up with that, or did it occur to you some other way?
Somer: As a pantser of a writer, a blasphemous aberration to the craft, a lot of times my stories take a bit of work to get the whole story formed. There’s an evolution that happens between various drafts. Who Keeps Shitting on the Memorial Fire Tower? sprang from my head fully formed. The bodily function was built in from the start!
Me: What do you think is at the heart of a good werewolf story?
Somer: Oh there are so many things that I love to see in a werewolf tale. I love that initial shock and horror that characters express when they first see the werewolf. I love the shock and horror that characters express when they first BECOME the werewolf. I love the sadness that these tales often have, of love and liberation from a curse. I love when the storyteller spoils me with a bit of a look into the activities of the monster that aren’t just murderous rampages, although I love those too.
I feel like this could have been a shorter answer, but I honestly love werewolves so much that I can’t name only a single thing!
Me: I feel exactly the same! If readers have a lasting impression or image from your story, what do you hope it is?
Somer: In my younger days, I was involved with a man who made money by selling certain mind-altering treats. Not legally. At all. Anyway, he liked to sample his wares and he told me that one night he took a “product” that is notorious for giving one an overwhelming feeling of ecstasy (get it?) and he spent the entire night rubbing the palms of his hands with his fingers. He was fixated on the sensation. I think about that a lot and it’s something, in a little way, that I included in this story with my werewolf getting fixated on a certain sensation that has bad results for the two human characters. I’d like it if people remembered that.
Me: I think they will – my own memory of your story is full of detailed images! One of my favourite things about your writing is the way you infuse subgenres (quite unexpectedly!). What do you think it is about horror that works so well with other genres (like sci-fi, fantasy, etc.)?
Somer: Horror encompasses so many of our big emotions that it almost becomes a vessel that can contain several very easily. Sci-Fi, which can be exciting and imaginative, also carries a lot of uncertainty with it. That uncertainty makes many of us afraid, and it’s easy, as a storyteller, to exploit that fear and create tales that are horror simply because of that myriad of unknowns. The same goes for fantasy! The world-building element of fantasy can leave one with almost limitless possibilities, and with that loss of limitations, come those big, scary unknowns. Anything strange and alien is perfect for a bit of horror. Having said that, the everyday is also a perfect fit for horror, because the familiar is our comfort. Taking that away, destroying it or perverting it, is scary. We’re all scared of different things, and yet we’re all scared of the same big things. The different genres that look to express the human experience in different realms, time periods, and circumstances still deal, more or less, with people. And people are scared.
Me: What an excellent answer to that question!
You use supernatural elements and creatures a lot in your stories. What is it about fantastical elements that lend themselves so well to expressing real human problems?
Somer: I think that we wander through life constantly making rationalizations and excuses for our own behaviors as well as the behaviors of others. In real life, we overlook, explain away, or simply choose delusion over confronting and seeing some things for what they really are. I like to use the supernatural to sort of force my characters into honesty. That’s scary, and it’s devastating, and there’s no coming back from certain truths. For instance, in my book You’re Mine, the supernatural is a force that ends up overtaking the main character, but in the end, she’s granted a kind of clarity, even though it was forced on her in a horrible way. Being told the truth from just a regular person, you can dismiss them as a jerk and move on, but when the supernatural gets in your face and forces some honesty, there’s no more delusion. But you know what? Sometimes I include the supernatural because it’s fun and unpredictable and scary and it makes me deliriously happy.
Me: Have you ever planned to kill a character but become so attached to them that you just couldn’t do it? Or planned not to but then realised the story demanded it?
Somer: Absolutely. In my book A Fresh Start, I was working through something in my personal life, I’d made a decision that I wasn’t totally at peace with, and I was working through that in the writing of this book. Kyle, a character in that book, was originally slated to die at the end, but it occurred to me that it wasn’t right for the story, and ended up looking a little too old school Hays Code for my liking. It wasn’t because I was attached to him, actually. It turned out, him surviving was the better karmic hit and killing him might have martyred him.
Me: Rachel Harrison is known for writing excellent, authentic friendships. Paul Tremblay is known for his endings. What would you like to be known for?
Somer: Anything! Okay, seriously, I’d love to be known for my characters. I’m a bit partial to a few of them and I would love it if others saw the flawed beauty in them that I see.
Me: From your first published story to your most recent one, do you still get as excited when the new book comes out?
Somer: I feel such a great relief to have finished another work that I sort of sit back and enjoy the glow of accomplishment for a bit, but then I get nervous and anxious that people will hate it and run me out of town. It’s a party mix of sweet and sour, but I keep going so I must like the combination.
Me: Oh man, I totally feel that. It’s most likely why I haven’t yet released anything longer than a short. Okay, I’m sorry to do this but we have to move on to some really serious questions now. My audience will want to know….
The zombie apocalypse is happening and you lucked in to surviving with the Winchesters. But, oh no! They’re both about to get bitten, and you only have time to save one of them. Which will it be – Dean or Sam?
PS. They can’t come back from the dead in this universe
Somer: This is uniquely cruel, and I am very upset! But if I want my own butt saved over and over again, I gotta go with the well-meaning rage monster that is Dean. He survived purgatory, he can drag my hysterical self from various locales and keep me breathing.
Me: I’d have to go with Dean too, and it’s nothing to do with his cheekbones.
Next question: You’re forming a vampire hunting team and they’re not the Cullen kind. They’re the 30 Days of Night kind. You can pick 3 fellow hunters from this list. Who will it be and what do you think your odds of winning are?
Hoggle (Labyrinth)
The Mad Hatter (Alice in Wonderland)
Daphne (Scooby Doo)
Elijah Wood
R2-D2
Mrs Carmody (The Mist)
Somer: Mrs. Carmody! Oh my gosh, I don’t think I should pick someone that the other hunters would kill on our first outing! I’d have to go with Hoggle, because he’s at least nice. We can teach him some tricks.
The Mad Hatter would be a bad idea, but I’m picking him anyway because every team needs the whackadoo character that will distract the bad guys with their antics. But he’ll distract us too, and probably get us killed.
If I choose R2-D2, can I understand what the heck those clicks and whistles mean? Like, can I take a midi-chlorian supplement and gain that ability? Surely, big pharma will make that in pill form soon. Either way, the droid is on the team!
And we’re absolutely not getting out of this alive. Hoggle will somehow be in league with the vampire master, but he’ll be hanging out with us because he likes us, which is nice, but he’s kind of a coward. The Mad Hatter, who is still SUCH a bad idea, will get us killed because he dumped a pot of tea on a vampire’s head, enraging it to the point of murderous super speed. R2-D2 will know how to help, that droid will know exactly what we need to do, but because we can’t understand his retro Nintendo sounds, the vampires swarm us and wring the blood out of us like we’re dishrags! I give us a solid five minutes before we’re mushy puddles.
Me: Honestly, I kind of stitched you up with the options for that last one, but I agree about R2-D2. Anyway, you’re in charge of casting for the remake of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Who are you casting in the main roles?
Somer: I think recasting Buffy with Anya Taylor-Joy as Buffy would be neat. Make it a little darker. Elle Fanning could be Willow, Nicholas Hoult could be Giles, can we just get rid of Xander and make a new role for Michael B. Jordan? That’s better. And Zendaya can be Cordelia. That would be fun.
Me: Yeah – I’m all for just ditching Xander completely!
Last question! What can readers expect if they give you a whirl?
Somer: I’m a fan of surprises. Hard left turns. I wouldn’t necessarily call my books “thrilling”, but I would caution against getting comfortable. I like to throw a wrench in the gears and wreck up the place! If you don’t get my playful meaning, I put some twists and turns in my books. Sometimes in the middle, sometimes in the very end. Either way, prepare to get attached to some characters that I very lovingly craft, and then to get mad at what I do to them.
It was at this moment that Somer somehow managed to slip the handcuffs. I left the room and when I came back, the window was open and the chair she’d been secured to was spinning like in a cartoon.
Not that she didn’t willingly agree to this interview or anything.
Anyway, you can find Somer and a list of her works at her website:
We did also enjoy chatting through a video interview some months back, so if you’re interested in checking that out, you can find it at:
YOUTUBE VID OF US GABBING AWAY
If you’d like to read Somer’s comical but still toothy werewolf story, grab a copy of the anthology:
Bleeeeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
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