Interview with Heather M. Herrman, Author of Lady or the Tiger

Welcome to YAOTL, Heather! Please tell us a bit about Lady or the Tiger.

Hi! Thank you so much for having me here. I just discovered YA Outside the Lines, and I’m so glad I did. You’ve created such an empowering and inspiring place! I love it!

Lady or the Tiger is a western/horror mash-up about nineteen-year-old serial killer Belle King. The story starts when Belle turns herself in for murder. She is known far and wide as the wickedest woman in the Wild West, a ruthless outlaw who cuts out men’s hearts and replaces them with stolen diamonds. People come from far and wide to witness her hanging, hoping to also discover where she hid her last victim—a body that contains the world’s largest diamond. But while Belle is awaiting trial, the abusive husband she thought she killed impossibly returns very much alive. In order to escape his control, Belle will not only have to resort to all her old tricks, she will also have to turn to her past for answers—including the captivating boy, Cal, who still loves her and is now hell-bent on helping her escape. The story alternates between past and present as the notorious outlaw Belle King, once known as just Alice, must decide who and what is worth saving.

For anyone who isn’t aware, can you briefly relate the old tale of “The Lady or the Tiger”? What drew you to adapting it?

Sure! The short story “Lady or the Tiger” is about a king who has a very unusual justice system. Whenever someone breaks the law (it’s always a guy breaking laws in this story, never a woman) the king gathers his entire kingdom together to watch the show, and then he throws the accused into the center of an enormous coliseum. In this coliseum are two unmarked doors, and the accused must decide which one to open. Behind the first is a beautiful lady. If the lawbreaker chooses this door, he gets to marry the lady and is declared innocent. If he chooses the second, he’s guilty, and a ferocious tiger eats him. This all works great until one day the King’s daughter falls in love with a slave, and when the king finds out, he does what he always does and throws the man into the arena (because falling in love with the princess when you’re just a lowly slave is definitely breaking the law). However, this time behind the first door the king puts not just any beautiful woman but the most beautiful woman in the entire kingdom—maybe even prettier than his daughter. In fact, the princess thinks she’s even seen her lover checking this girl out a few times. Now, because she’s the princess, she does what people in power do and uses it to get what she wants—information about which door hides the lady and which one holds the tiger. Then the princess stays up all night wondering whether she’d rather watch her lover marry a beautiful woman in front of the entire kingdom or see him get eaten alive. The next morning, when her lover enters the arena, the princess very discreetly nods towards the door which he should choose. The man opens it. And that’s it. That’s where the story ends. The reader is then left with the question--what was behind that door? The lady or the tiger?

Beginnings can be difficult for any author, and this one opens immediately with such a strong hook and voice, right there in the first line. Did it come to you all at once, or did you have to find it through multiple rewrites?

I did one very big rewrite, basically scrapping my entire first draft. In my original story, a young female journalist goes to interview the infamous serial killer Belle King as she awaits trial. But both my editors were like, “you seem far more interested in this serial killer than the journalist, why not just write it from her pov?” After I gave myself that freedom, the beginning came very quickly and very easily, starting with that first line. Belle was just pushing her way out of my pen. It was wonderful. Writing isn’t always easy but Belle’s voice was so clear and distinct that I often felt like she was doing most of the work.

This is a Western. Your Author's Note mentions wanting to center a young woman in a genre that has largely ignored them. Were there any particular Western tropes you specifically wanted to challenge?

The damsel in distress was a big one. Cowboys are always saving beautiful women in Westerns. Either that or the women are used as disposable backstory, a reason for the heroes to commit violence. Their deaths are often justification for a dubious revenge fantasy. I wanted to challenge this tradition by placing a woman in the center of the story instead of at its periphery. I also wanted to let her be as complicated as all the rugged, dangerous male heroes and outlaws who have become the beloved antiheros of Westerns. I’ve also tried to push back on the idea that America’s frontier was a homogenous cis space by including diverse characters and historical descriptions that acknowledge that America didn’t just happen when white settlers decided to arrive but was already a rich tapestry of culture and traditions.

Belle King is a complex protagonist who defies traditional heroic archetypes. How did you approach creating a character that readers might simultaneously root for and be disturbed by?

I tried not to worry about it too much. For me, if a character is complex, I think a reader will root for them simply because they’re interesting. It’s why people love Walter White, Dexter Morgan, and Tony Soprano. The problem is we don’t often get to see these antiheroes as women. And women need our own antiheroes because they’re often depicting the parts of ourselves that we are expected to hide away. For a very, very long time Western society has asked us to repress certain aspects deemed undesirable in women—what Jungian psychologist Lisa Marchiano dubs our “outlaw energies.” Things like anger, selfishness, and even power. But without acknowledging these aspects of ourselves (what Jungians call our shadow) then girls and women can never truly be whole. We need our darkness to claim our light.

Lady or the Tiger explores themes of female rage and autonomy. How did you balance showing Belle's legitimate grievances while also depicting the consequences of her violent choices?

I probably didn’t balance it very well. I was tired of women with power always getting punished, and I just wanted Belle to be able to do what the complicated male heroes in Westerns often did—stay complicated and still be rewarded.

The book explores different types of captivity—physical imprisonment, societal constraints, and psychological cages. Did this theme come ahead of the plot, or did it rise out of Western genre?

Hmm. Great question. I think with most of my books I have a word that’s rolling around in the back of my head that acts as a kind of guiding theme that I want to explore. For Lady or the Tiger that word was “possession.” I wanted to think about that in all its forms. What do we possess and what possesses us? So, in Belle’s case, there are certainly men and institutions who try to possess her or claim that she is, in fact possessed, but what I wanted to do was show her breaking free of that captivity and claim the right to possess herself.

In your Author's Note, you mention wanting to challenge the YA genre's emphasis on romance as an ultimate goal. Can you elaborate on how Lady or the Tiger responds to these conventions?

Ha. Yes. Let me first start off by saying I don’t hate romance! I really don’t. In fact, I’m in awe of all the very talented YA authors out there who put some serious spice in their books. Teenagers are always and forever going to want to read about love. I know I did (we passed around romance novels under the tables in class). That said, I think making romance the only story, or even the primary one available to young adults and especially teen girls, is limiting. When we are given the monomyth of love as the end all be all solution to happiness, then we start to believe it. Validation and satisfaction become external instead of internal. This takes away a young women’s power to please herself. Girls are constantly being told to look outward for completion. They can save an entire world but that what really matters, at the end of the day, is getting the guy (or girl or nonbinary). I want young people to have books that are about all kinds of things, ones that don’t always center romantic love. Right now, YA has become almost synonymous with romance, and I think this is largely because studies estimate that something like fifty-five percent of readers are adults. And many of these adults have already been through their trials and tribulations with love. They have a firm identity and are looking for an escape. But that’s not necessarily true for teen readers who are still looking to find themselves. I’m more interested in holding up a mirror for these younger readers, especially girls, to see themselves represented as whole and flawed and complicated characters who accept themselves rather than seek to gain acceptance from someone else. Both things can be true of course, but there is still so much pressure on teenaged girls to look and act a certain way and to cater to external judgement that in Lady or the Tiger I wanted to flip that script. To remind young women that that they don’t always have to please someone else. That their power doesn’t have to be in service to a greater cause. That sometimes it’s okay to just choose yourself.

The original short story "The Lady or the Tiger" leaves readers with an unresolved choice. How did this influence your novel and your decision about its ending?

Oh my gosh, I love the ending to that original story, and I know I’m not alone. I’ve had countless conversations with strangers reminiscing about our shared experience reading the story for high school English class. None of us can stop thinking about it, even all these years later! There is so much danger in that original story’s ending, but not the kind you expect. And I think that’s what I love about it, the audacity of the writer, Frank R. Stockton, to just let the reader decide what they wanted to happen. The ending says way more about the reader than it does the writer, and when it came to crafting my own version of Lady or the Tiger, I knew I wanted to give the reader that power too.

Where can we find you?

The easiest place to connect with me is at my website www.heatherherrman.com. I’m also @heatherherrmanauthor on Instagram, tiktok, and facebook.

What’s next?

I’m so glad you asked! I’m currently in the middle of drafting a brand-new YA project that features, yet again, a deliciously wicked woman. The powers that be won’t let me talk about it yet, but let’s just say there will be plenty of pointy teeth and blood. I’m hoping to make the official announcement come summer!

 Snag a copy of Lady or the Tiger