Susanne Schmidt writes supernatural stories for young adults (and sometimes for those who are not so young anymore). She started a new series called The Order of the Strawberry Circle that mixes German Fairy Tales with a modern twist.
Hi Susanne,
thank you for joining me here today for a little trick or treat. So without further ado, let me treat you to some questions! You mentioned your love for Halloween in the foreword – what’s your favourite costume?
The costumes that always impress me the most are the homemade ones where someone had an idea and spent hours and hours making something quirky and unique. That’s something I like about Halloween stuff in general. There’s so much creativity in homemade decorations, costumes, and recipes.
Unfortunately, I’m terribly bad at costumes, and I usually end up as a witch of some sort, but my creativity goes into decorations, on which I may have overdone it in the past. The scientific term for this condition, I recently learned, is “home haunter”.
In which case you probably don’t visit friends, but rather haunt them, I guess – that would make quite a nice shirt story, “Visit of the Home Haunter” – sounds like something fresh out of Goosebumps . Apropos – how old were you when you first read those stories?
I read absolutely everything I could find as soon as I learned to read, so I can’t say for sure, but maybe around eight or nine? I was a bit of a scaredy cat and probably too young, so some of those stories absolutely terrified me, but they also taught me that there are ways to overcome the monsters, and that’s something we can’t learn soon enough.
Several people who read Bad Grains also compared it to Point Horror, which is a series I had never come across, but I’m excited to remedy the situation soon.
Can’t say that I ever heard of that series – with regards to Horror for Young Adults, my mind immediately wanders to Joseph Delaney and his Spook’s series. Talking about classics, there’s always Coraline, and I got some strong Coraline vibes. How much did Neil Gaiman’s style influence your own story telling?
I’m so happy you made that comparison! Coraline is my absolute favorite movie to watch on Halloween, and when I set out to write Bad Grains, Coraline was the kind of story I wanted to write. Coraline, except as distinctly German as Gaiman’s work is British.
As for Gaiman’s influence, I was already an adult when I read Coraline, and also The Graveyard Book, which I read as research before I set out to write Bad Grains. So while Coraline definitely inspired Bad Grains, I’m probably equally influenced by the German fairy tales I grew up with, and by Eddy C. Bertin, a Belgian writer whose Valentina Hellebel horror novels I adored as a teenager. Bertin also wrote a ton of short stories, some of which are translated to English and very creepy stuff, definitely not for kids.
As much as I loved Coraline, I have to admit that I cherish The Graveyard Book even more – the way Neill puts a special view of the world into his stories is what I like about him. I also loved the fact that you gave the red reaper her own song – any reason you drafted it directly in English? I would have loved to see a German version of it as the origin (with a translation to English, of course) – I believe it would have added flavour.
That’s an interesting take. I switched to English as my professional writing language sometime in college, when I lived in the US, and so my German writing has suffered a bit of neglect. I don’t think it occurred to me to try writing the song in German? But who knows? If Bad Grains ever gets a German translation, you might still get to see it.
I’ll stay curious about it, then! But first, let us talk a bit about your monster – I adore the rye mother and the way you described her. I think she was well done in the way of Grimm monsters, even if the dirndl was kind of wrong. What was your inspiration behind her?
When I first came up with the idea to write a German take on Coraline, I went searching for a monster that could be responsible for abducting Hektor, and I eventually found the Roggenmuhme or Kornmutter, which is a child-snatching spirit or demon, said to live in unharvested grain fields. The Kornmutter was a sort of bogeyman meant to keep little kids out of the fields where they could get lost and die. But there were also stories of the Kornmutter bringing good harvests to families who left a sacrificial bushel of grains uncut when the fields were harvested, and the idea of a monster that could be equally good and evil made the story instantly more interesting to me, and sort of formed the backbone for turning Bad Grains from a standalone book to the start of a series..
A big theme in the book is about sacrificing one thing for another, and the rye mother with her sacrificial bushel fit that story quite beautifully. I also loved that she’s a monster who appears in the middle of the day, in the middle of summer, which ran contrary to most horror stories, so it was a bit of a challenge to myself to try and still make it spooky. The only problem was that I needed the story to take place during Halloween when the fields would already be harvested, so I had to fiddle with the folklore a bit to have it all make sense.
Well, since Samhain is a time of the year where the veil between worlds grows weak, I thought it made sense – also the way you laid the foundation for a series with that sacrifice thing (but no spoilers). And while we’re talking about origins, the Hunt you mentioned reminds me of The Wild Hunt, as popularized by Jacob Grimm, but found throughout Northern, Western and Central Europe. Can we expect to meet them in the next installment?
The next book is set during winter, so you can expect to meet several wintery creatures and figures from German mythology. I won’t spoiler who they are exactly, yet, but you were right to wonder if Jo might have unleashed something worse than the rye mother on Fels.
In the meantime, for anybody wanting to do a deep dive into German folklore, if you have a good grasp on the language, one of the influences that set me onto the path of writing this series was Rauhnacht im Winterbrauchtum by Franz Kuchler. The book taught me a lot about the traditions and folklore around the twelve days of Christmas we used to have here in Germany, and which we are largely starting to forget. Case in point, the only reason I stumbled upon this book, even though it was written by the leading expert on Bavarian Forest folklore, is because my grandma was friends with the author and she had it in her bookshelf.
I stumbled upon the Rauhnächte myself while brushing up my knowledge of the Wild Hunt (which is a theme all by itself – let’s just say Sapkowski didn’t invent them for his Witcher, far from it). Last but not least, what is your favorite drink or cocktail? Besides hot chocolate, of course.
Favorite fall drink? Pumpkin Spice Chai Latte, although it’s a pain to get in Germany. I used to go as far as making my own pumpkin spice syrup before the German Starbucks started selling at least pumpkin spice lattes.
The rest of the year, I’ll probably have a Japanese highball.
Stefan, thank you so much for your time and for coming up with so many interesting questions. It’s been a pleasure getting to know you a bit.
The pleasure was all mine ! Thank you for your time, and I hope to see the next installment in The Order of the Strawberry Circle in due time!
Usually, I would try to write a cocktail recipe here, but the Japanese Highball is quite simple (take Japanese whisky and add soda. If you’re unsure about what whisky, I would like to suggest Nikka Coffey Malt – although that one is so nice you should try it pure). But instead, let’s go with:
Pumpkin Spice syrup!
- 300 ml water
- 300 mg sugar – preferably brown or cane sugar (for a syrup, you always mix water and sugar in equal parts)
- 100 g mashed pumpkin (I suggest Hokkaido)
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- 1 tablespoon ground ginger
- 1 tablespoon ground muscat
- 1 tablespoon ground Piment
- optional: 1 tablespoon ground chili
Mix everything in a pot, cook it for 10 minutes while stirring lightly, then let it cool down for 10 minutes before filling it into bottles. Should be good for at least 6 weeks in the refrigerator.
Crossing the Pond Reviews 