Look Back in Horror by Kathryn Foxfield

Today we welcome Kathryn Foxfield to the site with her article on her discovery and journey into becoming a fan of horror fiction. 

​Kathryn Foxfield is a germ-loving scientist turned writer. She’s the author of a popular science book about tuberculosis but her first love is children’s literature.

She writes young adult and middle grade novels about monsters, magic and mental health. She lives near Oxford with her partner, 4 year old daughter and the world’s clumsiest cat.

Her debut novel, Good Girls Die First, was selected by teen readers for the Write Mentor Novel Award shortlist.

My teenage years were an Impulse body spray-scented haze of bad fashion choices, dead Tamagotchis, and crushing self-doubt. So perhaps it’s no surprise that my chosen brand of escapism was horror. And these early dabblings in the genre continue to set the scene for my own writing, some thirty years on.
           
Back in the 1990s, the YA market was yet to experience its Twilight-flavoured explosion and books aimed specifically at teens felt few and far between. Aged nine or ten, I made the leap from the furry heroes of the Redwall series to the furry corpses in Pet Sematary. Thanks for the lifelong nightmares, Mr King.
           
And then I discovered Point Horror.
           
Introduced by Scholastic in the UK in 1991, Point Horror was a series of titles written by the likes of RL Stine, Diane Hoh, and Richie Tankersly Cusick. They were short, glossy, and a revelation to the teenage me in that they didn’t centre middle aged men. Instead, there were crushes, stalkers, and cheesy taglines. Think: April Fools—Revenge is no joke and The Lifeguard—Don’t call for help. He may just kill you.
           
But then the series died out and was presumably buried in a shallow grave in the woods. Necromancy rarely ends well for those involved, but I found myself in a nostalgic mood. So I dug up a few of the books for old time’s sake. And like many aspects of the 1990s, they probably only make sense to someone who was there.
           
The plots aren’t exactly well-developed and there are some issues with portrayal of female characters and a lack of diversity. Yet, the cheesiness! And the tropes! And deranged cheerleaders! As much as they would struggle to meet the expectations of modern day teens, Point Horror got a whole generation into reading and ignited a love of horror in my own black, shrivelled heart.
           
For me, Point Horror occupies the same place in history as weekly trips to the local Blockbuster to pick out a family film. It was within these yellow and blue walls that I discovered another gem of the 1990s—the trashy teen movie. The cinematic equivalent of the Point Horror books, only more. And instead of relying on tropes, they smashed them to pieces with a blood-soaked axe.
           
Unlike earlier horror films, teen flicks such as Scream, The Craft, and The Blair Witch Project featured well-developed female characters that the teenage me actually cared about. Gone was the sexually promiscuous girl who died in the first act. And the ‘final girl’ had been granted a reboot in that she no longer had to be a morally superior virgin in order to survive.
           
The Craft, in particular, had a deeper message about society’s fear of female sexuality and how attitudes of the day hadn’t moved on from the 16th century witch hunts as much as they should have. For a teenager who struggled to know how she fitted in, this film was everything. In fact, the books I write today all revolve around embracing the person you want to be, even when that means defying gender roles and embracing your outsider status.
           
​My debut novel, Good Girls Die First, is a love letter to the horrors that shaped me as a teenager. Point Horror, teen movies, and trying to decide who you want to be in a world that doesn’t always make sense. Some things never change.

Welcome to the most gripping thriller of the year: hugely entertaining, high-octane and read-in-a-single-sitting.Mind games. Murder. Mayhem. How far would you go to survive the night?

Blackmail lures sixteen-year-old Ava to the derelict carnival on Portgrave Pier. She is one of ten teenagers, all with secrets they intend to protect whatever the cost. When fog and magic swallow the pier, the group find themselves cut off from the real world and from their morals.

As the teenagers turn on each other, Ava will have to face up to the secret that brought her to the pier and decide how far she's willing to go to survive.
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For fans of Karen McManus' One of Us is Lying, Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None and films like I Know What You Did Last Summer.

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