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As the nights grow longer and the air turns crisp, it feels only fitting to dive into the world of the paranormal. With Halloween just around the corner, we're shining a spotlight on auronautic, whose work taps into the eerie, the unexplained, and the wonderfully strange. From their love of bending reality's rules into a 'what if' playground, their storytelling reminds us why this season is the perfect time to explore what lurks in the shadows.
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What draws you to the paranormal genre?
I just think that reality has so many rules... gravity is non-negotiable, you have to pay taxes, and you can't just develop telekinesis to grab the TV remote when you're feeling lazy, right? And the paranormal genre allows me to break all the rules. The ultimate 'what if' playground for a writer, if you may. I've also always been incredibly fascinated by the blurry line between myth and reality, between science and superstition. The paranormal lives in that grey space. It's like the modern folklore of our time. It allows you to ask enormous questions: What happens after we die? Are we alone? What is the true nature of good and evil? But you get to explore those questions with vampires, haunted houses, and ancient curses! Just super cool stuff.
Was your first paranormal story and has it inspired your other works so far?
That would be Dead Wrong! The whole story really started with a single image in my head: a student trying desperately to get to class on time, but being physically blocked by a very stubborn, very transparent 200-year-old ghost. That student became Soren Everglade, a faerie who sees the dead and is just deeply annoyed by it. And Soren's voice has definitely inspired everything that's come after. I discovered how much I enjoy writing characters who are thrown into these epic, world-altering situations and their only reaction is like, 'Are you kidding me right now?'. I love writing about the mix of the extraordinary and the utterly mundane! Like, how does a looming supernatural threat affect your friendships, your study habits, your love life? This human-level, relatable struggle within a supernatural setting is a theme I'll probably be chasing for my entire career.
