“Enter not the forest deep. Beyond the Bells, the dark fiends keep.” — Erin A. Craig, Small Favors
Erin A. Craig was a Memphian for a time. She was the director of production and stage manager at Opera Memphis, where she nurtured her lifelong love of stories with arias and obligatos. Now, though, Craig lives in Michigan with her husband and daughter and a collection of typewriters. Her love of stories hasn’t faded in the interim; in fact, they’re still her bread and butter, her means for making a living. These days, her stories are told, not with actors and singers, sets and lights, but with paper and ink, in the pages of her novels. Her most recent, Small Favors (Delacorte Press), is a retelling of the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale, and it is beautifully executed, haunting, and perfect for October.
Hooked on Stories
I have definitely always been a reader,” Craig tells me over the phone. Her dad used to tell her tales of his own invention as bedtime stories. Her mother gave her the first chapter books she would read, and with that encouragement, an enduring fascination with stories — as plays, operas, fairy tales, and now her own novels — was set in motion.
Craig says her interest was cemented in junior high school, when she discovered scary stories that her parents doubtless wouldn’t have approved of checking out of the local library on their trips there. Her high school and junior high shared a library, accessible by both wings of the school. In that library waited tomes appropriate for older, almost-adult readers. The temptation for young Craig was too much; those books held the allure of the forbidden.
“I was way too little when I first read ’Salem’s Lot,” she remembers. “I was utterly convinced vampires were going to come through the window and get me, and I couldn’t tell my mom because she would know I’d read Stephen King books!”
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY RANDOM HOUSE CHILDREN’S BOOKS
Erin A. Craig
Sopranos, Newborns, and “Annabel Lee”
Storytelling was a part of Craig’s job at Opera Memphis. There are some differences, though, between crafting a story alone on a computer (or antique typewriter) and telling it with the help of librettos and coloraturas. For starters, as Craig points out, “As a stage manager you’re not supposed to be seen!”
The author says that even in her stage manager days, she wrote down little stories the way some people might doodle. It was just part of her life. But, as she notes, “It wasn’t really until I had my daughter that I started taking writing seriously.
“Newborns and sopranos aren’t necessarily the best mix,” Craig continues. So she took a hiatus from stage management — what was supposed to be a temporary break — to do the work of being a new mom. But some hands are not suited to remaining idle (not that many new moms have much time to be idle, but even the fussiest babies have to sleep sometime). “I very quickly realized I like doing things, and I don’t sit around the house very well, not having a job. So, I have this book I’ve been toying with for a couple of years, you know, why don’t I try to do something with that?”
“I definitely gravitate toward quiet, imaginative horror.” — Erin A. Craig
That book was a Peter Pan continuation, which was never picked up. Though few discuss it as openly, that experience is a huge part of the life of a writer. “I think I ended up with like 130 rejections,” Craig says with a laugh, before acknowledging the experience taught her a lot.
“So I started thinking, ‘What’s a story that would be intriguing to tell?’ I’ve always naturally gravitated toward retelling. I think it’s because I was a stage manager,” Craig says. “So much of rehearsals and theater, especially in opera, so many of the shows that you do are shows that have been done for hundreds of years. It’s all in the way that you choose to tell the story that makes the story meaningful.”
Her first published novel, House of Salt and Sorrows (Random House Children’s Books), was released in 2019. Based loosely on Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee,” House became a New York Times bestseller.
Return the Favor
Of her newest novel, Small Favors, Craig says, “It’s a very loose retelling of Rumpelstiltskin.” Think of a Rumpelstiltskin set in the American West in the 1880s, with nods to M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village and Stephen King’s Needful Things.
“I don’t want Rumpelstiltskin to be like these imps or elves,” Craig remembers thinking. “That felt very European, so I started looking at American cryptozoology stuff.” Which, of course, briefly (very briefly) led her to Sasquatch. “Oh, I could make him Bigfoot! That would be cool.” She laughs and admits she quickly discarded that idea.
“I ended up on this amalgamation of Pennsylvania’s Mothman and the California Dark Watchers, because they were so creepy to me. They’re these seven-foot-tall figures that just stand on this stretch of Highway One in California and watch,” the author explains. She was drawn to Mothman, she says, because the mythological creature is so closely tied to disaster — “His propensity for showing up when terrible things happen” — which brings us to Small Favors, the little town of Amity Falls, and Ellerie Downing.
Ellerie’s Story
Ellerie Downing lives on a farm with her parents, twin brother, and younger sisters. The Downings are beekeepers, raising bees to collect their honey, and tending fields of flowers to feed the bees. It’s a simple life, and the teenaged Ellerie sometimes finds herself wishing for more. She’s kept busy, though, especially recently. Her brother has been disappearing of late, and Ellerie must pick up his slack.
Amity Falls is isolated, cut off from the surrounding world by a nearly impenetrable forest patrolled by strange, monstrous creatures. For the most part, the isolation has forged a tight-knit community. When there’s trouble — like a fire that strikes the Downing farm — neighbors are there to lend a helping hand. But what about when it’s all bad, all over? Where do neighbors turn for help when everyone is hurting? And what dark deeds will even a good man or woman turn to in those times?
That question — what does an individual owe the community — is central to Small Favors. “Do you remember what you told me about the bees and the hive? How the actions of one affect the whole?” Ellerie asks her father after the fire that burns away their field of flowers.
The book mulls another question as well, a more sinister one. How much bad will a supposedly good person do to get what their heart desires? “Be careful what you say in the dark of the night, Ellerie Downing, lest you promise something you might regret,” a young, handsome trapper warns Ellerie. She thinks he’s teasing, but his words hint at darkness to come. The fire at the Downings’ farm is just the first of a series of troubling events that push the people of Amity Falls to steeper moral precipices. There is mob violence, petty grudges, a bad harvest, and something more … supernatural.
“I definitely gravitate toward quiet, imaginative horror,” Craig tells me. After all, what could be more frightening than discovering something cruel or cold lives in the supposedly warmhearted neighbor you so trusted?
Coda
Community is crucial to Small Favors, so it’s fitting that, though she now lives half a day’s drive away, her only request for this piece was that I mention the local bookstore where she launched the book. “Just give a shoutout to Novel,” she says. “It was awesome getting to do a launch there with them. Even though I’m up here, it was good to be back in Memphis for a little bit.”
