Hi, I’m Griss.
I tend to see the world through a lens of ‘before’ and ‘after’. Based in Plymouth (UK), I spend most of my time digging into the parts of the human experience most people would rather look away from.My background is a bit of a trifecta for the gothic: I have a PhD in History, a degree in Psychology, and a professional history in Mental Health. This means that when I write about ghosts, trauma, or monsters, I am bringing a significant amount of psychological weight and research to the table. I am not just interested in what scares us; I am interested in why it haunts us.
I am non-binary, and yeah, that fluidity defines my work. I have written twenty eight novels in total. Eleven of those were published under my deadname, Emma Barrett Brown, but those belong to my past. Today, I write as Grissea Fox: a name that represents my current, more authentic self. Every author has a moment where the training wheels come off. For me, that was The Manor Street Hauntings and The Murders at Foxhill. Though they were originally published under my deadname, they were the bridge to where I am now. They showed me the path to my current style and genre: a sharper, more visceral Gothic that felt authentic to my own lived experience. They were the point where I found my footing and realized I wanted to pull bigger, real-world themes into the shadows.
At least half of my catalogue is explicitly queer. Living in a trans and polyamorous household, writing queer and neurodivergent dynamics is not a ‘choice’ for me: it is simply the reality I know. I write these lives with normalcy, complexity, and a refusal to sugar-coat the struggle. If you are looking for that specific intersection of identity and the supernatural, The Monster at Blakemore and The Ghosts We Carry are both trans queer coming-of-age novels. They use the gothic tradition to explore the visceral, often messy process of finding oneself in a world that often wants you to stay hidden.
Then there is the other side of my work. I bridge academic scholarship with transgressive dark romance. Yes, it is spicy. We are all adults here, after all. But I am interested in the friction of power: specifically, the vulnerability found in submission and the strength it takes to get there.My Dark Romance collection, including A Bargain of Thorns and The Infernal Candidate, is built on character-driven plots that do not disappear the moment the clothes do. These are stories for readers who want their ‘happily ever after’ to be a little bit bruised and a lot more complicated. These days, most of my energy is dedicated to my newer books under Grissea Fox. The Emma Barrett-Brown books are still out there in the wild, but I’m focused on what I’m making now… darker, sharper, more me.
So, if you like your fiction darker, sharper, and unapologetically queer, you are in the right place. Welcome to the foxhole.
Grissea Fox 