Meet Erica Summers

We were lucky to catch up with Erica Summers recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Erica, thank you so much for opening up with us about some important, but sometimes personal topics. One that really matters to us is overcoming Imposter Syndrome because we’ve seen how so many people are held back in life because of this and so we’d really appreciate hearing about how you overcame Imposter Syndrome.

Imposter syndrome is a powerful thing and can be so crippling to creativity. I consider myself an artist in many mediums. Since I was young, I wrote short stories and movie scripts, I drew, I painted, I started making short and feature films, I did a lot of photography and event videography… and in every single medium I felt like I was a phony waiting to be discovered. I knew I would never write like Stephen King. I knew my movies weren’t going to be as wacky and revered as Tarantino’s. My paintings felt unoriginal because I mostly could only draw and paint exactly what I saw. My movies were always compared to others that were already out there. My photography even won some little awards and yet I’d turn around and see a different photo on someone’s wall and feel so small in comparison.

It wasn’t until I started trying to re-program my thinking that I ever felt good enough. It took years of reminding myself that most creators, especially the humble ones, really feel this way deep down. I looked at my sources of inspiration and realized they were all just regular people too. There was nothing inhuman about them. They hadn’t fallen in toxic sludge and suddenly gained powers. Stephen King threw Carrie in the trash can. Tarantino draws a lot from the films that shaped HIM growing up. Many of our classic painters had models sitting in front of them while they dabbed oil on a canvas, things that I pay money at the Louvre to see today. My movies were compared to others, sure. But THOSE movies could be compared to more still, ones that came before them. It wasn’t until I really convinced myself that I don’t have to be better or more original than any of these people to have my work dazzle or entertain someone. There is an audience out there who will love me and embrace my weirdness just as it is. Once I realized that, I realized, there really are not a lot of imposters really out there. We all draw our creativity from the sources that formed us.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I am many things. For decades, I solely considered myself an independent horror filmmaker but my favorite part of the filmmaking process was always the screenwriting. I loved coming up with weird ideas and writing stories around them. During the pandemic, my last film Obsidian ended up winning a lot of awards on the festival circuit but were seen by very few people because no one was allowed to gather for screenings. The film went straight to streaming sites where it was quickly hidden by all of the bigger budget movies out there.

During this time I took an online horror writing course and rediscovered my love of writing stories, especially ones that I don’t have to think about the logistics of “How can we possibly shoot this?” or “How will we be able to afford these costumes or suits and the actors who wear them?” “Where am I going to be able to locally find a mountain that can pass as Devil’s Tower?” et cetera. I published some short stories and even made money off them, which blew my mind. It wasn’t long until I self published a book (I had done it once a long time ago when a script’s budget got way out of hand so I decided to publish it as a novel, Mantis, instead.)

Shortly thereafter, I turned Obsidian into a novel as well and added in a lot of the things we had to cut while filming the indie film version and published it under a different name (Vanity Kills) and it sold very well. People were loving the story. It was then that I realized I could reach far more people and save myself a lot of stress if I wrote novels instead of scripts. Within a year, I had published several more titles and even started a small indie publishing house called Rusty Ogre Publishing with my younger sister, Heather Wohl. Ever since, I have had so much fun sharing these stories with the world and developing fans of my work.

Due to the film strikes (I am also a grip in the film industry and until the SAG and DGA strikes, it was my main source of income) I have started writing and publishing full-time. I have multiple pen names to keep my genres separate. I write horror and fantasy under my real name Erica Summers, romance under Odessa Alba, and thrillers and cozy mysteries under my upcoming pen name Trixie Fairdale.

An abridged version of my very first novel, Mantis was released last year followed by my very first collection of short horrors called The Rictus Grin and Other Tales of Insanity. As a horror author I also have released the following other titles: vanity Kills, Bad God’s Tower, Writhe (with H.M. Wohl), Price Slashers (with Chisto Healy and Mick Collins) and a lot of short stories. My romance releases include The Billionaire’s Assistant, Rumspringa, and The Ugly Sweater Party (with Aurora Alba). This year I will be releasing my cozy mystery series by Trixie Fairdale, a romance called Tangled Heirs, and some horror works that I cannot announce just yet.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I have a few pieces of advice to impart on anyone in a creative field, ones that have been extremely impactful in my journey.

1. Never give up. Stubbornness can be your best trait. If you are presented with a brick wall, find something hard and start bashing. Eventually, the bricks will give. We always see famous people and want their lives but so few of us stop to consider how many brick walls were placed in their path to get where they look like they so effortlessly are when they come into our view. EVERYONE struggles. It is only those stubborn enough to keep whacking through the brick walls and building muscle with every one that eventually reaches that enviable place in life.

2. Don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone. Creativity is a fluid thing. You will never grow if you don’t try new things to see if you like them or not. To be perfectly frank, I started writing romance as a way to try to fund my horror titles. I figured if I could make money writing romance, I might be able to afford more time to write horror. The joke was on me. When I started writing romance (which was the LAST thing I thought I would ever like doing) I realized I actually loved it and I feel like I’m actually surprisingly well-suited for it. I only learned this about myself by stepping out of my comfort zone and trying new things.

3. Never stop learning. As someone who had pitched countless scripts and already published a novel and several stage plays, when I signed up to take a beginners horror-writing course, people in my life would sometimes chuckle and as me “Why? You already know how to write.” And of course, that’s technically true. But by going back to square one and re-examining the basics, it freed my mind to explore concepts I had previously overlooked and forced me to go back to a simpler time in my writing and get to the bottom of it all. I learned so much from that basic online course that it astounds me. No matter what you THINK you know, you can always know more. And if you are open to learning and re-learning, you will find your creativity will astound you.

Who has been most helpful in helping you overcome challenges or build and develop the essential skills, qualities or knowledge you needed to be successful?

My sister, Heather Wohl, has always been the most helpful in helping me overcome creative obstacles and challenges. She’s also helped me to overcome life’s challenges at every step, too. Every time I have hit a wall, she has been there to help me brainstorm a way through it. Every time I am creatively blocked, I have been able to call on her and say “how can I get my character from A to B?” This is because she has read almost every scrap of my writing my entire life. There is no one on this planet who has even read half of what she has of my work because some of it never saw the light of day. She read every play, every script (sometimes many different drafts as it evolved. I’m sure she probably read at least 6 different drafts of my latest film Obsidian through the years it was in production limbo. She’s read just about every short story I’ve written since I was a child and she’s always the first person to read anything new that I write and give me feedback before another soul can put their eyes on it. She is my forever beta-reader and for that I am extremely grateful. She has seen my work evolve and encourages me during weak scenes to do better (because she knows I can.) And years ago, she became a writer, too, and I have since been able to return the favor by always reading her work first and offering ways that I think will make it as strong as it can be. It is nice having that one person who cares enough to always make time for your work.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.rustyogrepublishing.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rustyogrepublishing/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RustyOgrePublishing