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| Brian McAuley | |
As a WGA screenwriter, Brian McAuley has written everything from family sitcoms (Fuller House) to psychological thriller films (Dismissed). He is teaches screenwriting at Arizona State University's Sidney Poitier New American Film School. His debut novel, Curse of the Reaper, was named one of the Best Horror Books of 2022 by Esquire and is in development for a film adaptation. His holiday slasher novella Candy Cain Kills earned praise from several publications, leading to the sequel, Candy Cain Kills Again: The Second Slaying. McAuley's Breathe In, Bleed Out, a cinematic horror novel set in the remote southern California desert, will be published by Poisoned Pen Press on September 2, 2025.
How did this book begin for you--with character, setting, or a scene?
The setting was the key for me. What's a location that would lend itself to a spooky story, where people feel trapped? And the props and the milieu of the location should lend themselves to very specific death set pieces. Once I know it's a wellness healing retreat, I know that my protagonist is someone who needs healing, and I reverse engineer, finding the personal, deeper emotional well that's always hiding. I think I'm writing a fun slasher, and then I get deep into the book, and I'm like, oh, I'm working on some heavy emotional stuff. I want it to be an immersive experience. What's a setting where you feel like you can go with the characters, journey there and then end up trapped with them?
How does the book format differ from the classic slasher film?
I plot my stories the same way that I do with my feature film screenwriting work, in terms of character arcs. I have a corkboard here where I'm plotting my next book, and I put my index cards up and arrange them in a three-act structure the same way whether it's a script or a book. But for me the joy of the novel is the depth of character that I get to go into, because screenwriting is all "show, don't tell." You can't get into the characters' heads, because the script is only what the camera can film--it's like a blueprint for the camera. In a novel, you go directly into a character's experience. Writing from Hannah's first-person perspective allowed me to get into her emotions and her thought processes, both as she's processing trauma and trying to heal, and also as she's trying to figure out what's happening and put clues together. The novel allows a much greater depth of interiority. Similarly, the characters that don't survive the story in slasher movies tend to be pretty one-dimensional, because there isn't much opportunity to flesh them out. In a book, I try to embrace the opportunity to give them three-dimensional lives before I end their three-dimensional lives.
Why give those other characters their own brief POVs?
In movies, you'll often cut away to peripheral characters and see them get killed off while our protagonist has no idea what's happening. We'll cut back to our protagonist and they'll be none the wiser. It creates that dramatic irony where we know something that the protagonist doesn't, so our anxiety is especially piqued. It's a tricky balance, right? You don't want an audience too far ahead of the protagonist--you want them to be figuring things out with the character. But it pulls you in deeper if you have a piece of the puzzle that they don't, and you're trying to figure it out together.
What makes Hannah a captivating protagonist?
I love flawed and messy characters. That's just my reality as a human on this planet. And it's a way I try to play with common slasher tropes, like the final girl in the old-school films--Laurie Strode in Halloween is this very pure, virginal character while her friends are off having sex and doing drugs, and therefore they get killed. And that's a very boring and problematic trope to keep doing. I'm more interested in characters who have made mistakes and are riddled with guilt, or who have trauma they are trying to work through. Hannah really needs support, and yet she's been pushing people away, and that's a very relatable dynamic. I wanted a character who was deeply in need of healing, and trying, and failing, at the start of the book, through different avenues like working too much and leaning on medication too heavily. It turned into an interesting journey, especially writing in first person. She came alive very quickly on the page. I was really grateful to have her as my north star through the story.
What is the role of humor in horror?
For me it's essential. One of the first horror movies that I saw growing up was Evil Dead, and it's so over the top, gory, and slapstick humor is mixed in, and it's just fun. How fun horror can be is really a guiding principle. A modern idol for me is Jordan Peele. Every film he makes balances humor with horror so very well. In horror you have to build up tension and release it, over and over again, and humor can do that so well. Or use comedy to disarm them and then throw a scare in unexpectedly. That, for me, is part of the joy of playing in this genre: to mix those two up.
Why the wellness retreat?
I lived in L.A. for 10 years and I saw a lot of this culture firsthand. I try to write books about things that I have mixed feelings about. Yoga is amazing, meditation, so many aspects of the healing wellness culture are genuinely beneficial. And also there are people who use that as an opportunity to exploit people who are in a desperate place or who need healing. That's where it can get sticky, as with anything: when somebody with bad intentions gets mixed in. It felt like a prime opportunity to throw murder into the mix of that world.
What do you enjoy about teaching?
To be able to talk about story and character as my day job is a dream. I mostly teach writing workshops, and working with college age students who are not just finding their creative voice but finding their identity in the world is such a privilege. And a writing workshop is such a great place to explore that. You're trying to find stories that feel personal and are in tune with the genres that you like. I don't take lightly the responsibility to try and tap into a connection with each student and see: What are you trying to tell in a story? What matters to you? Can we focus that so that you can take it with you into the world, whether you pursue writing or not? I think writing is such a perfect outlet to get to know yourself better. --Julia Kastner