Check out our interview with Rob Renzetti, author of "The Cursed Cloak of the Wretched Wraith.”
What was your inspiration behind your most recent book?
Inspiration for the “The Cursed Cloak of the Wretched Wraith,” the third installment in the Horrible Bag series, came from many sources. GrahBhag, the bizarre world hidden inside the horrible bag, owes a debt to Lewis Carroll’s wildly imaginative “Alice in Wonderland.” One of my favorite films is Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth,” which, like my series, features a young protagonist pursuing a quest in a dark realm populated by fantastical creatures. And although “The Cursed Cloak” remains rooted in dark fantasy, there are also science fiction elements that required I acquaint myself with the basics of quantum physics. Science was always my worst subject in school and yet here I was studying it again many years later, voluntarily!
What does Reading Rainbow mean to you?
As a reader, I want to support a diverse group of authors, and I want to spend my reading time following a diverse group of characters. But I also want to support banned books and the authors who write them. As I’m sure your readership already knows, a high percentage of banned books feature LGBTQ+ characters and /or people of color. Censorship hurts not only authors, but readers who want to see themselves represented on the page. I also love reading and supporting books about book banning, like “Book Comes Home: A Banned Book’s Journey.” It’s a wonderful picture book about book banning written by Rob Sanders, author of several banned and challenged books celebrating LGBTQ+ history.
Why do you feel representation of a variety of people is so important when it comes to writing books?
Readers want to see nuanced characters with whom they can identify. I wanted the human characters in the Horrible Bag trilogy to be defined by their thoughts, words, and actions. It was important to me that none of them were ever described in terms of phenotype or visually depicted in the cover art because I didn’t want to limit readers’ imaginations about their identities. I hope readers are able to project themselves onto Zenith and Apogee and Kevin. I also tried to create both human and non-human characters that challenge gender stereotypes. Hopefully readers appreciated that aspect of “The Horrible Bag of Terrible Things” and “The Twisted Tower of Endless Torment,” because female strength is a theme that recurs in “The Cursed Cloak.”
Tell us a little more about the book and why you decided to write it.
Having spent many years in the animation industry making kids laugh, I wanted to write this spine-tingling series because it gave me the chance to make kids shiver. I’m a huge horror fan and nothing makes me happier than sharing my love of all things spooky with young readers.
The world of GrahBhag is populated by many uncanny creatures including a gargoyle with a taste for human earwax, an eight-foot-tall living rag doll with a deadly definition of friendship, and of course, the Wretched Wraith, a terrifying fiend in a blood-red cloak, who has a vendetta against Zenith and Apogee. I gave the Maelstrom siblings fantastically formidable challenges to overcome as they grew throughout the series, learning more about themselves and each other. This final book presents them with the deadliest obstacles they’ve faced and demonstrates just how far they have come.
What can fans expect from your book?
Some genuine scares, a lot of humor, and many high-stakes adventures. The book straddles the horror, fantasy, and science fiction genres. But the heart of the story, and the entire series, is the evolving relationship between siblings Apogee and Zenith. They were very close as young kids, but have grown apart ever since Apogee, the older of the two, became a teenager. Their harrowing experiences in GrahBhag have only widened the rift between them. What happens in this final installment in the series will determine whether they can repair their bond.
What's up next for you in the bookish world?
Something completely different that I’m not free to talk about yet (though I wish I could). It will be my first non-fiction publication, and getting my head wrapped around it has been challenging in all the right ways. I just got the first set of pages back from the publisher and I’m thrilled with how it’s taking shape.
