And, you know, if not now, when? I mean, I’m 70 - when else am I gonna do it? When I’m 90? I really started writing it when the pandemic was happening, which was really sort of great - I mean, not the pandemic of course - but, being able to have the time where I’m not running around the country doing live appearances was really sort of perfect timing. And then, all of a sudden, you have a deadline. We went around New York and we got a book deal. I can guarantee it.” And so she suggested her agent. And then finally, my friend Pamela Des Barres, who wrote I’m With The Band, said to me, “you know, if you don't really get serious about this and write a book, get an agent and get a book publisher, you will never never do it.

I was always going to writing workshops, writing stories about my life, things that I remembered from my past, and just putting them in a notebook. People who know me know about my wacky life, and everybody's said to me so many times, “you've got to write a book.” So, I kept collecting little stories that I'd write down. Well, it's something I've really been thinking about doing for years and years and years. You’ve released your memoir, Yours Cruelly, Elvira: Memoirs of the Mistress of the Dark in conjunction with the 40th Anniversary of ‘Elvira,’ as well as your 70th birthday. I recently had the great pleasure to speak with the woman behind the bouffant about her memoir, her Broadway ambitions, and being taken seriously in Hollywood. She’s also recently released her candid, tell-all memoir, Yours Cruelly, Elvira: Memoirs of the Mistress of the Dark, currently #4 on the New York Times bestseller for Nonfiction, where she revealed for the first time, intimate details about a brutal sexual assault, her 19-year relationship with the love of her life, a woman named Teresa “T” Wierson, and her lifelong fascination with the macabre that led her to the title of “Mistress of the Dark.” She also has been enlisted for the month of October by streaming service Netflix, as part of their Netflix & Chills weekly Halloween programming, and even has her own action figure coming out in 2022 from NECA Toys. In September, she celebrated 40 years of the Elvira character with her anniversary special, Elvira’s 40th Anniversary Very Scary, Very Special Specialon AMC’s horror streaming service Shudder, coinciding with her 70th birthday. It’s hard to deny that the rest of 2021 belongs squarely to Cassandra Peterson’s famous alter ego, Elvira. It’s little wonder that even on vacation, the woman whom horror audiences know as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, would be hugely in demand.

“I’m spending all my time doing interviews and signing bookplates,” she chuckles warmly through the phone. Actually, Cassandra Peterson, the actor/singer/dancer/entrepreneur and now New York Times bestselling author behind the macabre icon is on vacation, although her holiday isn’t quite what most of us would expect from a little time off.

Your cruelly elvira