Auteur: The Final Word: Erika De Atayde Interview

Erika De Atayde, creator of Cwej: The Series' very own Fantastic Realm, presided over a collision of two worlds — or perhaps more — in her medium-bending story The Face with a Thousand Heroes in Auteur: Volume 1: The Final Word. Now, the time has come for her to reveal all at Riley G. Boyd's prompting…

Above: Erika De Atayde pondering new creations in 2026.

Tell us a bit about yourself, your creative background?
My name is Erika and I’m a Brazilian-born citizen of the world. I grew up on a lot of different stories — my first books were Arthurian legends, Les Misérables, and Norse Mythology, followed by a Finn Foster look-alike, a good mix of 80s-to-2000s anime and Western cartoons, and a non-ignorable amount of Brazilian TV shows. But it was around my teens and the 2010s that I really fell in love with stories. Through magical ponies, time-travelling aliens, radical hedgehogs and comic book super-heroes I not only learned that stories can change the world, I learned that I too could do it through them — so I started writing, and I haven’t stopped since.

How did you first get involved with this project?
If I remember correctly, I was talking with Aristide about this character I had made for a different story, and he saw potential in them for Auteur, I brought in a pitch about Auteur giving an ant a bazooka, and we were set!

What makes Auteur an interesting character to work with, in your opinion?
It is easy to believe he is just cosmic evil with a penchant for French and a flair for dramatics — and don’t get me wrong, that’s a really fun aspect of him — but once I realised you could treat them as a secondary writer, mucking up your story in his favour, everything clicked for me. He’s more than a metaphor or stand-in for the author — there is barely any philosophical reason not to see Auteur as being, in a very real sense, the writer of each story he’s in, taking metafiction as equal parts comfort blanket and weapon.

What excites you most about being part of such a collaborative project?
The idea of putting some new bricks on a road that has been going long before I was here and will continue long after I’m gone.

Auteur is a character tied to authorship, art, literacy — did you tie into those themes with your work? 
I certainly tried — you can tell me how successful I was! I think once you mix two characters that are so intrinsically connected with stories, you’re bound to dance to a certain metafictional rhythm, aren’t you? Auteur definitely made a compelling case for it, the poor sod. 

Are there any other themes you regard as important to your story or to the anthology as a whole?
I think faith is an important one. Who we believe we are, what we believe in, the stories we tell ourselves, and what these beliefs build around and inside of us.

Indeed, Auteur is a kind of theological fantasy, prominently featuring Gods and Archons, nowhere moreso than in your own tale of occultism and rituals. How did you approach these topics?
Most things we made up as a species a long time ago are still built on a foundation of faith. Money, justice, the past, the future, but most importantly stories. An author is just a narrator with more ego, and a story is just a memory half-forgotten, but if we believe, lines on paper become a land, an actor becomes a character, and a promise can be fulfilled. Faith in gods, sure, but also in customs, in culture — all those things are so strongly ours that we forget how alien they could be from the outside. When we believe, we open a door to our mind so new ideas can come in, and something of us can also come out. The important thing is to have faith that in this transaction nothing of our selves is truly lost.

If your story was someone’s first encounter with Auteur, what would you hope they take away from it?
Perhaps a series of questions, moreso than answers. As Auteur demonstrates, any clever villain knows they are as strong as they are relevant. If no story is published about them, if no one is talking about them, are they even real? How does this apply to real life and the here-and-now? Are there less obvious villains in heroes’ clothes? And then again, can old-fashioned moral archetypes such as Hero and Villain even be of value in today’s world?

What were your biggest inspirations in the making of your story?
Oddly enough, George du Maurier’s Trilby comes to mind — it served to put me in the headspace of the time in which my story’s set. That aside, Homer’s Odyssey, Doyle’s Scandal in Bohemia and The Magician by W. Somerset Maugham are all directly involved in the plot, and there are some less overt touchstones too, like the referential structure of Grant Morrison, the fictional biographies of May Byron and the groundwork of late 20th century American comics. 

What were the biggest challenges faced during the course of writing?
As much as I’d like to say it was writer’s block, my country was struck by the worst flood in the history of South America, and I began volunteering on a human shelter between the beginning and end of this story, so most of my creativity and psychic energy were going somewhere else for a good stretch of development. Ironically enough, this probably made it easier to write, because the first couple weeks I was terrified of contributing to something that already had an established fan-base like this. The flood drowned out these worries, thank merciful Minerva.

How would you describe the editing experience; how did your story change and evolve during the process?
Oh, it was phenomenal. At the beginning I had a good intro and a decent plot, by the middle I had three different intros and a solid narrative, and in the end it was a brilliant story with a clear hook and a satisfying conclusion. I’d say the story was always the same, but the key players shifted quite a lot, until it all settled down as this late-Victorian esoteric nightmare with two sapphic heroines who go through it!

Do you intend to return to Auteur again in the future?
Absolutely! I certainly have unfinished business with him, and he himself has unfinished business with a certain realm of fantastical properties…

What’s your next creative project and where can our readers find you next?
If I got the timeline right there’s one story of mine to come that means quite a lot to me, rather more sci-fi than this one, but also somewhat more human. Don’t know how much I can share here, but it’s the middle chapter of a brilliant epic by the writers of Arcbeatle. I can’t wait to see it all together, and to share this tale of tragedy and redemption with you fine readers. 

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Auteur: The Final Word is available now:

eBook

UK Print Book

US Print Book