Parker’s Pages: Waxing Off
The Evergreen Echo
We are starting the year off with a great read by one of our very own Creatives here at the Evergreen Echo! Waxing Off by E.E.W. Christman is a Queer, urban fantasy novella with elements of horror, self-exploration, and romance. It is a quick and delightful read, pulling you right into the action. Oh, and did I mention there are werewolves and pecan pancakes?
Waxing Off focuses on Drew, a somewhat awkward nonbinary werewolf, living off the grid in their tiny boat, the Gomez, just trying to make a living as a server at a diner. While going about their normal life things (as normal as life can be for a werewolf living around the Puget Sound), they stumble upon mystery after mystery: First, who killed Ken Moore, and second, are there other werewolves like them? Their sleuthing leads them to Gab, a whole other kind of mystery—one that confuses their heart more than their brain. With so many threads to untangle, Waxing Off is one of those books that are just so good that I had to stay up late to finish it, not wanting to sleep until I knew what would happen to Drew and Gab.
Christman also writes about the Puget Sound as if writing a love letter. Their work shows a deep understanding of what it feels like to live in the PNW. One of my favorite passages explains how Drew’s new home—Cat’s Cove—had taken shape as a town filled with rumors of strange beasts that lurked in the night. Here’s an excerpt:
“Cat’s Cove, like many small islands in the Sound, once had a thriving tourism industry. Families and lovers from Seattle and Vancouver flocked to their shore... However, unlike those other islands, Cat’s Cove had a violent invasive species. Campers had a knack for going missing; scared city folk called the sheriff’s station in the dead of night claiming to have seen a bear, which the island, of course, didn’t have… Incidents became patterns. Patterns became rumors. Rumors became a reputation.” (p89)
What I love about this passage is how much it reminded me of a trip that I took to Forks, WA last year. For anyone uninitiated, Forks has become synonymous with the Twilight series, and even now, over a decade since the last movie came out, Forks remains a tourist town, with stores and a museum dedicated to the series. What a lot of people might not know about Forks, though, is that along with Twilight merch in every shop, there are a dozen shrines to Bigfoot littered around the small town. There are whispers of The Big Man, even in stores dedicated to the movies. Christman effortlessly took me back there, to that little town full of little rumors, where it seemed like at any moment someone would go on a Jaws-esque monologue about where they saw “the Big One” while strolling about the forest.
The Evergreen Echo
But with that mandatory waxing on (pun intended) about the Puget Sound, let’s talk about Waxing Off.
Like a beautiful tapestry, Christman weaves together multiple genres seamlessly, extracting the best parts of each to create a story that feels fundamentally different from anything else I’ve ever read. Action, mystery, romance, thriller, fantasy—this story has it all, and even so, Christman’s point of view and voice keep our heads above water. Despite its many elements, one thing tied the whole book together for me: this book was made for Queer people, and especially those of us who feel alone.
Christman takes special care in showing us how being a werewolf—unhuman, a monster, a creature betrayed by their own body—can be an apt metaphor for the Queer and Trans experience. Their werewolves are thralls to the moon and to the rising hormones and emotions that accompany it, unable to resist as their bodies change and morph into something unrecognizable. In this way, werewolves are likened to the experience of Transness, particularly the experience of having a body that changes against your will through puberty and no longer seems to fit right. And the sensation of loneliness and otherness from the humans that Drew walks amongst echoes the loneliness felt by Queer youth everywhere. Without a strong support system, it is so easy to feel alone and afraid, trying to hide a deep secret about yourself. While the plot of Waxing Off is exciting, as is the world Christman creates, it is this carefully crafted metaphor that kept me emotionally in tune with their work.
The Evergreen Echo
