Paranormal City has given me the rare and slightly alarming pleasure of populating an entire dark urban fantasy world with creatures the Muse seemed determined to invent without any of my prior approval. I thought it was about time I introduced a few of them properly; partly for readers, partly because I’m not sure I’ve ever properly catalogued them myself.
The Ones That Arrived Fully Formed
Some creatures showed up in a single twenty-minute burst, complete and ready to terrorise a scene, with no further negotiation required. They tend to be the ones that stick closest to a recognisable horror tradition; the kind of thing that taps into something primal and doesn’t need much explanation for a reader to feel it in their spine and bowels.
However, even these are often non-standard.
For instance, one of the characters is a werebear. I suppose you've heard of werebears in Norse mythology, but this one is married to a werewolf. During his story in Paranormal City, he makes a fascinating discovery about his heritage as a werebear and realises he is even more than that.
Then there are the vampires. Some of them have evolved beyond the need for blood to sustain them. That makes them even more dangerous, as they are more manipulative towards the human population around them than before. They can cause societal damage far beyond their individual power.
Finally, there are the humans. People can be more monstrous than any monster, who are after all merely following their natures. We meet a couple of them in Paranormal City, and they are terrifying.
The Ones That Grew Stranger With Every Draft
Others started simple and grew odder each time I went back to them. Read, revise, edit, repeat doesn’t just polish prose; sometimes it mutates the creature itself, as a detail I add to make a scene work ends up changing what the thing actually is. I’ve had monsters quietly evolve an entirely new motivation between draft three and draft eight, purely because the story needed something I hadn’t anticipated when I first wrote them.
For instance, in an as-yet unpublished story, we meet the Chimaera. Homer described it as a lion-headed, goat-bodied, snake-tailed monster that breathed fire, though others say it was entirely different. My version changes shape constantly, yet always returns to one form. We follow the police as they try to track it down while it hunts the people responsible for a terrible new drug.
We also meet a new kind of werewolf who is in wolf form for half the lunar cycle, and explore the problems this can cause in their love lives.
I also play with ghosts, giants, Great Old Ones, dream characters, angels and demons, and even the odd witch and a fairy or two.
Why the Humour Sneaks In
As I’ve said before, dark humour and horror share a roof quite comfortably in my head (Why Dark Humour and Horror Make Good Roommates), and the Paranormal City creatures are where that’s most evident. Many of them are genuinely unsettling and, somehow, faintly ridiculous. I think this makes them scarier, not less so. A monster that’s only frightening is one thing. A monster that’s frightening and makes you laugh uneasily half a second later tends to stay with you longer.
For instance, we’re all frightened of the Bogeyman, or we used to be when we were younger. What, you still are? But what if he has his own psychological problems and phobias, making his job much harder?
And in a story I’m still working on, we meet the goblins. They are nasty creatures who think everyone else should be food, and consider anyone, including other goblins who are less than 100% fit and healthy, the perfect candidates for the main course at dinner. As my writing coach Brendan Thompson pointed out, that makes them scary. However, since they collect all their poop and vomit and pile it up as offerings to their holiest of holies, that also makes them both ridiculous and corrupting. After all, if they eat you, then poop you out and offer you to their gods, isn’t that a corruption of your humanity?
My Favourites (For Now)
I won’t pretend I don’t have favourites, even though choosing them feels a bit like admitting to favouritism among children. The ones I enjoy writing most are usually the ones that surprise me: the creatures that arrive for one purpose and then quietly insist on being something more complicated than I’d planned.
There are more of them on the way, too, with volume five in progress and 18 spin-offs. I won’t say what’s coming, mostly because I genuinely don’t know yet; the Muse hasn’t told me.