Show notes
🎙️ Welcome back to The Mythic Mic Podcast, where haunted opera houses, masked men, and enough questionable romantic decisions to keep us arguing for forty years collide.
This week, hosts Bethany Amanda and Amara sit down with bestselling gothic fantasy author Erin A. Craig to discuss Our Strange Duet, her official reimagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera created in collaboration with Lloyd Webber Entertainment for the musical's 40th anniversary.
For anyone who has spent years wondering what Christine was thinking, what happened during all those missing months, or whether a few murders should really disqualify the Phantom as a romantic option, this episode is for you.
Before stepping beneath the Paris Opera House, Erin takes us backstage through her own incredible journey from professional stage manager to bestselling author. After spending fifteen years working in theater, musicals, and opera, Erin stepped away when her daughter was born and unexpectedly found herself returning to something she'd loved since childhood: writing. Her first attempt at publication earned roughly 180 rejections. Her next book became House of Salt and Sorrows.
But Our Strange Duet brings Erin's story full circle. Long before she became an author, The Phantom of the Opera was the musical that made her fall in love with theater. She wrote Phantom fanfiction as a teenager, built a career backstage, and years later received the surreal opportunity to help introduce a new generation to the story that started it all.
In Our Strange Duet, Christine Daaé finally takes center stage. The novel ventures into the spaces between the musical's iconic scenes: the months we never see, the relationships only hinted at onstage, and the thoughts and choices of the woman standing at the center of a story so often driven by what everyone else wants from her.
And yes, we absolutely discuss the question Phantom fans have been fighting about for decades: Phantom or Raoul?
🎭 What changes when The Phantom of the Opera is finally told entirely through Christine's eyes?
🌹 What happened between the iconic scenes we've watched onstage for forty years?
🎶 And can being mysterious, musical, and extremely good with candles make us overlook a few murders?
If you love The Phantom of the Opera, gothic romance, haunted theaters, masked men, tragic love stories, musical theater, morally questionable romantic interests, and books that let you step deeper inside stories you've loved for years, this episode is for you.
🔥 IN THIS EPISODE, WE TALK ABOUT:
✨ Erin's fifteen-year career as a professional stage manager and how working in theater and opera continues to shape the way she approaches dialogue, atmosphere, plotting, and character movement in her novels.
✨ Falling in love with The Phantom of the Opera as a teenager, writing Phantom fanfiction, and ultimately choosing a career backstage because of the musical that would unexpectedly return to her life decades later.
✨ The unpublished Peter Pan retelling that received roughly 180 rejections before Erin changed course and wrote the book that became her breakout debut, House of Salt and Sorrows.
✨ How Our Strange Duet became the official YA reimagining commissioned through Lloyd Webber Entertainment to celebrate the 40th anniversary of The Phantom of the Opera.
✨ Why Erin and the creative team decided to tell the story exclusively through Christine Daaé's perspective and finally place her desires, fears, grief, ambitions, and choices at the center of the narrative.
✨ Exploring everything the musical doesn't have time to show, including Christine's first encounter with the mysterious voice, her early lessons with the Angel of Music, the six months between Acts One and Two, and the relationships developing beyond the stage.
✨ Expanding Christine and Raoul's history to show the teenage summer romance that came before the musical so readers can finally understand why Christine chose Raoul.
✨ Taking iconic characters like Carlotta and Piangi beyond their roles onstage and giving readers a deeper look at the personalities, vulnerabilities, and relationships Christine encounters inside the Opera Populaire.
✨ The lyrics, references, and Easter eggs hidden throughout the novel for longtime Phantom fans while still making the story completely accessible to readers encountering the Opera Ghost for the first time.
✨ Plus: Team Phantom versus Team Raoul, overlooking murder in the name of fictional romance, the unparalleled appeal of a man surrounded by candles, justice for Carlotta, Erin's favorite Phantom songs, and the romantic option Christine probably should have chosen all along: herself.
CONNECT WITH US
🎙️ The Mythic Mic Podcast – @MythicMic
👤 Bethany Amanda – @BethanyinFantasyland
👤 Sara Santillan – @the_magical_quill
📚 Erin Craig – @Penchant4Words
✨ If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review. It helps more fantasy readers and aspiring authors find their way to The Mythic Mic.
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
Stay Connected
