I am starting a new series featuring my auto-buy authors (authors whose work I will always pick up) and my first feature is on Erika T. Wurth! Today also happens to be her birthday.
Erika is an Indigenous author who local to me, and I love how she incorporated aspects of Colorado into her books and some of her stories. The Haunting of Room 904 is her most recent novel, and my favorite by far. It is a paranormal thriller/horror that touches on a massacre of Indigenous people that occurred here, referred to as “the Massacre.” While also including the Brown Palace, which is an infamous hotel in Denver.
Erika’s work is gritty and fully of strength, which I just love.
About The Haunting of Room 904
“You’ll want to follow Erika and her Olivia into any dark, creaky room.” —Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie
From the author of White Horse (“Twisty and electric.” —The New York Times Book Review) comes a terrifying and resonant novel about a woman who uses her unique gift to learn the truth about her sister’s death.
Olivia Becente was never supposed to have the gift. The ability to commune with the dead was the specialty of her sister, Naiche. But when Naiche dies unexpectedly and under strange circumstances, somehow Olivia suddenly can’t stop seeing and hearing from spirits.
A few years later, she’s the most in-demand paranormal investigator in Denver. She’s good at her job, but the loss of Naiche haunts her. That’s when she hears from the Brown Palace, a landmark Denver hotel. The owner can’t explain it, but every few years, a girl is found dead in room 904, no matter what room she checked into the night before. As Olivia tries to understand these disturbing deaths, the past and the present collide as Olivia’s investigation forces her to confront a mysterious and possibly dangerous cult, a vindictive journalist, betrayal by her friends, and shocking revelations about her sister’s secret life.
The Haunting of Room 904 is a paranormal thriller that is as edgy as it is heartfelt and simmers with intensity and longing. Erika T. Wurth lives up to her reputation as “a gritty new punkish outsider voice in American horror.”
About White Horse
“This ghost story is a perfect example of new wave horror that will also satisfy fans of classic Stephen King.” —Silvia Moreno-Garcia, author of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau and Mexican Gothic
Erika T. Wurth’s White Horse is a gritty, vibrant novel about an Indigenous woman who must face her past when she discovers a bracelet haunted by her mother’s spirit.
Some people are haunted in more ways than one…
Kari James, Urban Native, is a fan of heavy metal, ripped jeans, Stephen King novels, and dive bars. She spends most of her time at her favorite spot in Denver, a bar called White Horse. There, she tries her best to ignore her past and the questions surrounding her mother who abandoned her when she was just two years old.
But soon after her cousin Debby brings her a traditional bracelet that once belonged to Kari’s mother, Kari starts seeing disturbing visions of her mother and a mysterious creature. When the visions refuse to go away, Kari must uncover what really happened to her mother all those years ago. Her father, permanently disabled from a car crash, can’t help her. Her Auntie Squeaker seems to know something but isn’t eager to give it all up at once. Debby’s anxious to help, but her controlling husband keeps getting in the way.
Kari’s journey toward a truth long denied by both her family and law enforcement forces her to confront her dysfunctional relationships, thoughts about a friend she lost in childhood, and her desire for the one thing she’s always wanted but could never have…
About Buckskin Cocaine
Erika T. Wurth’s BUCKSKIN COCAINE is a wild, beautiful ride into the seedy underworld of Native American film. These are stories about men maddened by fame, actors desperate for their next buckskin gig, directors grown cynical and cruel, and dancers who leave everything behind in order to make it, only to realize at thirty that there is nothing left. Poetic and strange, Wurth’s characters and vivid language will burn themselves into your mind, and linger.
“This is the raw stuff, the loud stuff, the hard stuff, the true stuff. It’ll infect you in a way you won’t realize at first, too. Not until days later, when you can’t remember if you read this or you lived it. Trust you did both.”— Stephen Graham Jones
“BUCKSKIN COCAINE is a big voicey chorus of drugs, sex, booze, movies, and most of all the drumbeat of want, need, and desire.”— Kyle Minor
About You Who Enter Here
A beautifully rendered, brutally realistic Native American gang novel.
Finalist for the 2020 Colorado Book Award in the Literary Fiction category presented by the Colorado Center for the Book
Finalist for the 2019 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Multicultural (Adult Fiction) category
2020 In the Margins Top Ten and Fiction Recommendation
Matthew has grown up in hell. His father is gone, and his mother drinks and hooks up with men who abuse Matthew and his sister. He finally decides to hit the streets of Farmington to get away and to drink himself to death-in his mind, his destiny. He meets Chris, who saves him, takes him home, cleans him up, gets him sober, and initiates Matthew into one of Albuquerque’s Native American gangs, the 505s. The 505s have been around for generations. They now sell heroin, and it’s their subservience to the Mexican gangs that has allowed them to survive. However, Chris decides that his little Native American gang deserves to be as big as the Mexican gangs in Albuquerque, bringing in new business from deep inside Indigenous communities in Mexico. Then, Matthew falls in love with Chris’s girlfriend. Matthew’s story is one of terrible darkness, but also, unexpected beauty and tenderness.
About Denver Noir
“Denver Noir presents an impressive range of perspectives and observations. Between the writers and their characters, you’ll encounter dozens of distinct and compelling relationships with this place. Maybe you’ll start to see our city–and even yourself–in new ways.” —Denver North Star
“Denver Noir is a fascinating exploration of this sunny city’s dark side. Mountain views, a roughneck Gold Rush past, and stories of murder and mayhem make this anthology a must-read for anyone curious about Denver and its environs. Like the countless entries before it, Akashic Books allows an editor to craft an anthology filled with stories varying in tone and perspective.” —New York Journal of Books
Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city.
Brand-new stories by: Peter Heller, Barbara Nickless, Cynthia Swanson, Mario Acevedo, Francelia Belton, R. Alan Brooks, D.L. Cordero, Amy Drayer, Twanna LaTrice Hill, Manuel Ramos, Mark Stevens, Mathangi Subramanian, David Heska Wanbli Weiden, and Erika T. Wurth.
From the introduction by Cynthia Swanson:
“Even a city that boasts three hundred days of sunshine a year has its sudden, often violent storms–and writers have long taken advantage of that metaphor. Renowned authors Katherine Anne Porter, Jack Kerouac, Stephen King, Rex Burns, Robert Greer, Michael Connelly, and Kali Fajardo-Anstine–among many others–have brilliantly portrayed this picturesque but often merciless city. Today, Denver is home to a thriving literary scene, with writers of all stripes finding inspiration in its people and streets. The authors and stories featured in Denver Noir are no exception . . .
Editing Denver Noir, working with this talented group of writers, has been one of the highlights of my career. Fans of noir and Denver devotees alike, I invite you into this journey of our Mile High City, our home beside the mountains, our capital of sunshine and darkness, optimism and anguish.”
About Howl
Flesh splits. Bones break. Screams build.
The synchronicity of woman and wolf has long been buried. Ruled by the moon and her cycles of blood, rage, and transformation, the desire and pull to shapeshift and transmute runs deep beneath her skin. She is a beacon of duality, the divine and the monstrous, the deep glow of wolfsbane and the indent of fresh bite marks on skin.We fear her because we are her: the feral, the wild, the mad.From Angela Carter’s “The Company of Wolves” to Rachel Harrison’s Such Sharp Teeth, women have been dancing with the wolf and teasing it out of the woods for centuries. We feed the untamed, hoping to release the beast inside, giving us strength, sisterhood, and the confidence to howl. The animal releases us from shame and permits us to seek out and accept our truth. With the wolf, we are free; with freedom, we are empowered.In a world where silver is the least of our worries, HOWL seeks to give voice to the wolves and women of contemporary horror as they shed their skin, unhinge their jaws, and bare their teeth for all to see.From award-winning editors Lindy Ryan and Stephanie M. Wytovich comes HOWL, a brand-new anthology of original stories and poems from women of contemporary horror who give voices to wolves as they shed their skin, unhinge their jaws, and bare their teeth for all to see. Featuring Delilah S. Dawson, Christina Henry, Gwendolyn Kiste, Ai Jiang, and many more, with an introduction by Rachel Harrison.
I asked Erika to choose one of the favorite quotes that she has written, and she chose the following:
Leave a Reply