MICHAEL GRANT: GONE (9 BOOK SERIES 2008-19)

I was a huge fan of Gone which is an outstanding science fiction series with strong elements of horror, however, it went on too long and I do not know that many kids who made it to the end of book six Light in 2013 when the series looked done and dusted. However, Grant revived it in 2017 with the very tame Monster which is both billed as ‘book seven’ or ‘book one’ of a new second series. Either way, I found it disappointing, but don’t let that put you off Gone, which has an outstanding opening three books and has been a massive hit with young teenagers. In the blink of an eye all adults disappear into thin air. For a couple of days this is exciting; no school, no rules and everybody goes crazy. However, soon gangs start forming, everybody is raiding shops, and nobody is looking after the babies, little kids or working in McDonalds. The way this immediate collapse is portrayed is incredibly convincing, and in the background, there is a 400-hour count-down, but to what? As the oldest kids continue to disappear at an alarming rate… An outstanding series which begins like a lion but goes out like a lamb. AGE 12+
 
CHARLIE HIGSON: THE ENEMY (7 BOOK SERIES 2009-15)

In this huge selling teen series everyone over the age of fourteen succumbs to a deadly ‘sickness’ virus and now the kids must keep themselves alive by hiding in empty shops in central London, adopting a gang lifestyle whilst they are stalked by the zombie-like and very hungry adults and parents. Bring on ‘The Waitrose Gang’, ‘The Morrison Gang’ who are hiding near Baker Street and the battle across London looking for sanctuary with the resistance which is rumoured to be grouping at Buckingham Palace. But to get there, the kids need to watch out for what lurks in London Zoo and other dangers as they battle across the very dangerous capital city. A top-quality series, which just went on a bit too long as it starts much better than it finishes, with many kids I know struggling around book five or six, but a few do make it to the end.  AGE 11+
 
JULIE KAGAWA: IRON FEY (7 BOOK SERIES 7 BOOK SERIES 2010-15)

If you fancy a dark fantasy with a nice dose of romance then the Iron Fey series, which combines old legends, is worth closer inspection. Megan Chase is bullied at school and if not for her best friend Robbie then life would be unbearable. By chance Megan discovers she is part fey (faery) and ventures into the land of NeverNever only to find she is the daughter of Oberon, the Summer King which makes her a target for many of his enemies. Megan attracts the attention of Ash, the Winter Prince, and friction soon develops. Winter and Summer have always been foes, but Ash may be the one person who can help her in the dangerous adventures which follow. Kagawa has created a vivid world which combines old legends with a wide range of characters to keep the story going. The romance was tender and bittersweet, the humour dark and twisted. AGE 12+
 
SHERRILYN KENYON: CHRONICLES OF NICK (8 BOOK SERIES 2010-17)

The Chronicles of Nick series begins with Infinity, which is itself a prequel to the Dark-Hunter series, a long-running sequence I have not read which includes the first appearance of main character Nick Gauntier. Nick is fourteen when Infinity opens and after getting into a fight and being saved by a weird superhero style character is sucked into the world of the Dark Hunters, immortal vampire slayers who are waging an endless fight to save humanity. Although this is probably categorised at Urban Fantasy, it does have a lot of horror and supernatural creatures from zombies, to werewolves and an endless supply of demons. The plot is reminiscent of Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instrument series where the human world is a veil for a much larger and more dangerous battleground in which she becomes one of the Hunters, whilst trying to negotiate high school at the same time. It’s good fun, easy to read and moves at an entertaining lick.  AGE 13+
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ALEX SCARROW: TIMERIDERS (9 BOOK SERIES 2010-14)

I was a massive fan of Alex Scarrow’s Timeriders series but nine books in less than five years was a lot of reading and no matter how good the writer it is hard to keep the plot fresh. The story is built around a classic time-traveling idea; moments before their natural death, such as on the Titanic or in deadly fires, selected teenagers are pulled out of real time at the moment of their death and recruited by an organisation which only has one purpose: to fix broken history. Their job is to go backwards and forwards in time to change the past and ultimately to stop time travel from destroying the world. Each of the novels reads like a standalone adventure but I would recommend reading them in order and the opening trilogy is top-notch. AGE 11+
 
DARREN SHAN: ZOM-B (12 BOOK SERIES 2012-16)

Darren Shan set the YA world alight with both The Saga of Darren Shan (12 books) and The Demonata (10 books) but although it had its moments, ZOM-B failed to have the same impact. The whole series was published over a brief four years and perhaps should have been spread over a longer period or the stories merged in some way, as most children lost interest in the series very quickly and they just never took off in my school library. Ultimately, the zombie fiction craze did not have the same impact in YA fiction that it did with adult horror and ZOM-B is presented as an apocalyptic survival story which begins in Ireland and then spreads out. Initially everyone thinks the outbreak in Ireland is some type of hoax, but it is already too late. As well as zombies the story does deal with more serious themes of racism, bullying and abuse, but lacks the magic the previous Shan series had. As the series develops the apocalypse worsens and there are episodic adventures and other characters thrown into the mix. AGE 11+
 
LEMONY SNICKET: A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS (13 BOOK SERIES 1999-06)

This beautifully constructed series has been turned both into a cinematic vehicle for the talents of Jim Carey and three successful Netflix series built around the thirteen-book series. Although the books were a huge hit, I’ve wondered whether they would have been even more successful if they had been released at a slower pace, thirteen books in a mere seven years was some rate! After the sudden death of their parents, the three Baudelaire children must depend on each other and their wits when it turns out that the distant relative who is appointed their guardian is determined to use any means necessary to snatch their fortune. Enter the dreaded uncle, Count Olaf, who is the real star of the show in this wonderful comic series which has an incredibly dark heart beating throughout its paces. Few series can keep the intensity going for thirteen books and even though there is a dip between books nine and eleven it is a stunningly well-crafted series and is one of the very best children’s series in modern fiction and has all the beauty of the most cynical of fairy tales. Even adults who read this should marvel as the quality of writing and sly hidden jokes. AGE 9+ 
 
RACHEL VINCENT: SOUL SCREAMERS (7 BOOKS 2009-13)

This smooth and silky supernatural thriller opens with My Soul to Take, enticingly built about a girl who senses when someone near her is going to die, and when it happens involuntarily unleashes a deafening banshee like scream. This is a very enjoyable horror thriller series to try from a highly prolific author who likes to mix romance with her urban fantasy/horror. Overall, I wasn’t a huge fan of the Paranormal Romance sub-genre of horror, but this series was a cut above many of the others and I know lots of kids who gulped down the whole series. AGE 11+

To mark the release of her latest novel, Hold Back The Tide,  we are honoured to welcome Melinda Salisbury to the Young Blood Library with her fascinating article  article on how we need to look the monster of climate change right in the eye.  

Be sure to check out the excellent review of Melinda's novel from our resident Librarian Tony Jones, by clicking here 

It’s commonly acknowledged that fictional horror is usually created (and consumed) in response to real-world fears or occurrences. As well as terrorizing us with fantastical or imagined horrors like zombies, crazed murderers, ghosts, aliens, or the rise of sentient technology, fictional horror reflects back at us the things we collectively and often instinctively fear; death, disease, intruders, invasion, losing our position at the top of the food chain. Horror acts as an avatar that allows us to confront those fears by placing them in a fantasy context and, more often than not, watching as others escape or overcome them. It’s this eventual triumph and mastery that allows us to leave a horror film, turn off our TVs, or put down our books and sleep soundly that night. After all, it’s fun to be scared.  
Or at least it was.
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Until we were forced to recognise that the thing that is actually bringing us closest to our own annihilation is ourselves.

Not through war, or the rise of a single dictator, or even the awakening of an ancient, slumbering evil. But through collective consumption, greed, our lack of understanding or concern about the effects of the things we’ve innovated. Every single one of us alive today has – knowingly or unknowingly – added a nail to the coffin of our species, simply by existing during these times, the biggest threat to the human race is, and has always been, the human race.

Before the innovation of the last two hundred or so years, there was little on earth that existed needlessly. Everything had a function and a place, everything held and was in turn held in balance by nature. And once something was finished with, it was redistributed and reused; usually returning to the earth to breakdown and nourish the next thing; the oft-mentioned Circle of Life. Nature is usually quite forgiving of mistakes. After all, the planet has over 4.5 billion years under its belt; it can afford to wait out most aspects that threaten the grand eco-system. But not us. We have moved so far, and so fast that nature is going to have to take extreme measures to right the wrongs we’ve inflicted upon it. If we’re lucky it might not mean the annihilation of the human race, but it will mean the end of living as we do. There is going to have to be a change, and the race now is whether we are the ones who make it, or we wait for Nature to step up.

It was this realisation that sparked the idea for my latest book, HOLD BACK THE TIDE. The acknowledgement that of all the things we’ve overcome, and all the amazing things we’ve achieved, the one thing we won’t be able to do is fully halt the tide that we’ve unleashed with our endless march for innovation and convenience. That at some point the chickens will come home to roost, the horror we’ve unleashed will become manifest and we’ll have to face up to it when it does.

A lot of climate change fiction focuses on a dystopian future, where the remnants of the human race are dealing with the fallout from previous generations’ lack of care towards the planet, but I wanted to write something a little more reflective of the state of things right now, for the youths and teenagers who are campaigning for change.

In 2018, Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg stopped going to school on Fridays, instead spending the day outside the Swedish Parliament, campaigning for stronger action on the climate disaster. She was joined by others, across the world, an entire generation of young people willing to face censure and ridicule begging for the people in charge to do something about the catastrophic damage we’re doing to the planet. Since then the world’s children and youths have led the marches calling for change, Greta herself has travelled the globe (and used the methods of travel as a platform for demonstration), addressing world leaders and summits, begging them to use their positions and power to take action against the climate disaster.   

In HOLD BACK THE TIDE a teenaged girl is the first to notice the damage to a local loch being caused by the rapidly-expanding paper mill in her town. She duly reports it to an adult, who – for their own reasons – sidelines her concerns. This willful ignorance continues, until disaster strikes and a very real and terrifying horror is unleashed. It renders the small community forever changed, damned by their refusal to listen to the concerns of the young, who are the main ones to suffer because of it, and their assumption that natural resources are there for the taking and there will be no repercussions. In the book the horror is very literal, and something that can be fought. In real life, we won’t be so lucky.

This was supposed to be a piece about horror, and it is. But it’s not about the monster in the closet, or under the bed. It’s about the monster in the mirror, and how if we want to avoid a real, true nightmare we need to look the monster in the eye. We need to acknowledge that it’s there. 

If Grief Angels predominately tackles grief, then All the Lonely People looks at the theme of loneliness, a factor which can play a large part of the lives of teenagers who struggle to make friends. All the Lonely People looks at this subject with real compassion, balancing a very observant look at how much kids rely upon their online profiles to boost themselves, or escape, the real world. In day to day life, main character Kat has few friends, finds it difficult to talk to people, and is completely anonymous at school. However, this is not the case when she is online, where she is bubbly, funny and popular. If she has a problem at school, she will turn to her internet friends for comfort, rather than the real world, or her father.

Things take a turn for the worse when she is targeted by an online bullying campaign which have influences beyond the school. It becomes so severe, for example, her image is morphed onto nasty porn stuff, her profiles get hacked and corrupted and she if forced into deleting her online accounts. To Kat this is like a death, or worse than losing her soul, as she is left with the person she does not like, her real self, in the flesh and blood real world. But without her online personality who is she?

From there on the book gets very strange, as in the real-world Kat begins to physically disappear. So, few people knew her, who would miss her? Strangely enough, one of the boys who computer hacked/bullied her notices, normally he bullies from afar, but Kat is different and the book heads into fascinating directions.

All the Lonely People has a lot to say about online culture, both good and bad, that explores the experience of loneliness in a world where everything and everyone is supposed to be connected. We all like positive comments about things we post ourselves and often write negative things about others online we would never say direct to their faces and this book takes a fascinating look at it. ‘Would anybody miss me if I was not here?’ is a tough question to answer, but young people ask it of themselves all the time. This novel, loaded with empathy, has some answers which might help. ​

Although I was initially dubious when I heard about the concept behind The Fallen Children ultimately, I was blown away by it. David Owen’s second novel is a very clever update of John Wyndham’s classic, but arguably dated, The Midwich Cuckoos. In Grief Angels there are many references to the classic reboot of the tv series Battlestar Galactica, you should see this ‘update’ in the same sort of light. It takes Wyndham’s story be the throat, throttles it, and drags it kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. Interestingly, Owen notes in the accompanying interview that virtually no kids were aware of the original and his book was generally seen as a ‘new’ work, although I’m sure many librarians, parents and teachers were aware of the original source material!

This superb revamp is not set in a quaint English village full of white middle class kids, the action takes place in a London estate aptly named the Midwich Tower.  In a single night, many inhabitants of the Midwich Tower block loses consciousness, when they wake up, four girls are pregnant. It’s quite graphic, slightly sleazy, and unsettling stuff. Answers are hard to come by; what happened to them? What does it mean? How do they explain everything? Then the pregnancies start developing much faster than they should, time is even shorter, and everything changes for these innocent teens. It’s a great YA novel which meshes horror and science fiction with the troubles the girls face, the shame, the name-calling, and having to tell parents about the pregnancies. And, of course, nobody believes them, why should they?  Some might find it a tad explicit for a teen novel, but the conceptions are handled well, and the teenagers are both sympathetically and believably drawn. The Fallen Children pays considerable respect to the Wyndham novel, but it really does run on its own two feet and should not be viewed as a modern retelling of a classic, it is much more than that. ​

avid’s debut Panther is also set in the south London area about a teen with food issues, problems with depression, and an obsession with a creature, apparently, stalking the local night streets. As with both Grief Angels and All the Lonely People there is a certain amount of ambiguity surrounding the ‘panther’. Does it exist? Or is it a manifestation of Derrick’s personal problems? As he believes if he was to catch this beast then surely his life would take an upward turn. Panther was a very brave book, which thoughtfully tackles difficult subjects head on, whilst adding a certain amount of mystery and thriller with the black beast never far from Derrick’s thoughts.

It is not easy being young and family life can be very difficult are two of the key themes explored in this moving, but unsentimental novel. Bullying is never far from the surface; friendships are difficult and before long you’ll be hoping the Panther is real and that the troubled Derrick finds it. I do enjoy reading novels set in and about London and Panther is an authentic and believable trip around our streets and in the head of a very likable main character, Derrick.

Tony Jones

We are delighted to welcome YA writer David Owen to the site today. An author of four excellent novels, which feature both troubled teenagers and a sense of the fantastic, darkness is never far away. David’s fourth novel Grief Angels has just been published, which we discuss along with many aspects of teen fiction, horror and writing.
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The teenagers in all four of your novels are faced with challenging life situations and although you are not a horror writer you often use a sense of the fantastic in your message. For example, in Panther Derrick was both weight issues and family problems and believes a huge cat is stalking south London. What attracts you to combining the gritty with the far-out?

It’s a few of things! Firstly, I struggle to write a strictly contemporary story because I need some capital ‘p’ Plot to hang everything on – adding something weird gives me that. Secondly, I feel that having fantastical elements allows me to explore those grittier ideas in greater depth. They allow me to push my thoughts and ideas as far as they will go, beyond the boundaries of reality, so there’s no limit on how deep I can dig into these themes. Essentially, they serve as shamelessly unsubtle metaphors! Lastly, there’s already so much brilliant contemporary YA fiction out there that I feel compelled to offer something a little different and putting a weird twist into otherwise contemporary stories does that.

Your 2017 novel The Fallen Children was exceptionally brave; reimagining John Wyndham’s Midwich Cuckoos into a modern south London housing estate. This was a very risky project to take on which if executed badly would be undoubtedly judged harshly. However, the result was a convincing and scary ‘almost’ horror novel which took Wyndham’s masterpiece into new territories. What attracted you to this project? Did anyone try to warn you away from it? Finally, do you think its success partly lay in the fact that the YA audience of today are unfamiliar with the original work? Personally, I recommend The Chrysalids quite a bit in my library as I think it has aged much better than the Midwich Cuckoos….

I don’t think it was a risky prospect because, as you say, so many people of my generation and younger haven’t heard of the Midwich Cuckoos. When I announced the book, I was quite surprised by that – I had to reference the film adaptations and an episode of The Simpsons before they knew what I was talking about! So that was kind of an advantage because there wouldn’t be much direct comparison.

It was actually the ‘90s film adaptation that introduced me to Wyndham’s story. I saw it on TV when I was 11 years old and was so spooked by its central concept. That led me to read the book and I’ve been obsessed with the idea ever since. But you’re right that the Midwich Cuckoos hasn’t aged brilliantly – arguably none of John Wyndham’s work has because of his trademark incredibly British, bucolic take on science-fiction. It’s deeply uncool. But the central ideas are still so brilliant! That makes him ripe for retelling, in my opinion.

One of the biggest things that ages the Midwich Cuckoos is how little women feature in its narrative. This is particularly glaring given it’s about a great number of women forcibly being made pregnant by aliens! It focuses instead on men dealing with the fallout. I saw an opportunity there to update the story, with ideas around agency and roles within society, which I thought would really resonate with a YA audience. Plus, the central idea leaves so much room for horror and murky morality.

Your focus modern teenage issues from depression to loneliness is exceptionally convincing, however, considering you often mix the fantastic into your writing, do you think future projects might take you towards more genre-based YA fiction?

Maybe! The Fallen Children and my new book Grief Angels lean into genre a little more strongly than my others (sci-fi and fantasy respectively). I have ideas for genre books, but I also have books I want to write that have nothing weird or fantastical in them at all. My style being what it is means I could end up going either way, which might be an advantage in terms of creative freedom but a disadvantage because I’m not known for either one! I guess I’ll have to see what happens.

Your latest novel Grief Angels is ultimately about two troubled teenage boys failing to open up about their feelings, part of which is explored through a recurring dreamy fantasy sequence. Could you give us some background on this new novel?

It started with the thought that there’s so much brilliant YA fiction about the friendships of teenage girls, but less about the dynamics of boy friendships. What’s out there is great – Alex Wheatle is a favourite, but I wanted more of it. Plus I obviously had that experience from my own teenage years and, looking back on that, I found I had so much to say about the relationships between boys at that age – how you’re both friends and competitors, how you’re changing so rapidly as you approach adulthood, the limited roles you’re expected to play.

I honestly have no idea where the fantasy side of the story came from! I was interested in writing something that was a little more explicitly fantasy, which is why those chapters are more separate to the main narrative here than the weird stuff in previous books. The obvious inspiration are books like A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, Skellig by David Almond, and Eren by Simon P. Clark. Some of the ideas came from Romanian folklore, which I stumbled across and found fascinating due to its earthy darkness. Somehow that all ended up mashed together into this book!

Your fiction probably uses magical realism rather than horror; do you have any interest in making things even darker in your fiction or is reality bleak enough?

I think my books are probably dark enough! I suppose it depends how you define darkness. The Fallen Children is dark in terms of leaning the most into horror and being quite gory at times, but I think All the Lonely People is very dark too, young people so disillusioned with life that they’re willing themselves out of existence. And some of the things they’re able to do with their fading bodies is quite horrific, in my opinion. I love grounded horror, and it’s something I really enjoy playing with.

All my books are very dark thematically. I’m interested in darkness and it’s likely to be a major part of anything I write.

I enjoyed all the references to Battlestar Galactica in Grief Angels and how this amazing TV show broke the ice for the two main characters beginning to communicate. Did you use this show because it is one of your personal favourites? Are teen boys genuinely this poor at communicating? Were you?

I love Battlestar Galactica! As Duncan says in the book, it’s so much about humanity as well as all the cool sci-fi stuff. The first couple of seasons are some of the best television ever created in my opinion. At first, I used it as a placeholder, intending to change it to something more current, but BSG just seemed to fit well.

I can’t speak for all teenage boys, but in my experience they’re terrible at communicating with each other about personal things. Hell, men in general are. That’s why the highest suicide rate is among young men. There’s still such stigma around men being vulnerable. That’s an incredibly difficult thing to push against when you’re a teenage boy trying to fit in with other teenage boys. They have all those fears and anxieties and everything else, but they think they’re not supposed to have them. You can’t show weakness, or you’ll be eaten alive. Duncan desperately needs to be more open but has nobody he can open up with, until Owen – who doesn’t give a fuck about pretences anymore since his dad died – comes along and changes everything.

With Grief Angels I wanted to show how difficult it is for young boys to be open with their feelings, how momentous it is to find somebody you can be open and vulnerable with, and how actually everybody at that age has their insecurities and doubts even if they’re very good at hiding it.

Your 2019 novel All The Lonely People, concerning a teenage girl forced to delete her online profiles after being bullied, feels this loss like a death; as a result, she begins to physically disappear as nobody remembers the ‘real’ her. What message does this very moving book have about teenagers and the online world today? I found this to be a particularly moving book….

I wanted to explore the positives and negatives of being a teenager in such a connected world. How social media and other online spaces can offer such incredible freedom for young people to celebrate the things they love and meet like-minded people, where their voices and creativity can flourish. But also, how they can make you feel more isolated from the world around you, and how darker forces can take advantage of that to turn these spaces into a recruiting ground for extremist ideologies. Both main characters – Kat and Wesley – start in very similar places emotionally, but the internet takes them down two very different paths.

The message, ultimately, is a simple one: be kind to each other, online or otherwise. The internet often doesn’t encourage that.

By day I’m a school librarian and am always trying to find books with messages about the obsession with the online world which do not come across as worthy or preachy and felt All The Lonely People did this convincingly. I read you also write for gaming magazines, did your wider writing experience in the IT world attract you to this subject or the reality that technology continues to squeeze reading time in teenagers?

I haven’t written for games media for a long time now, but I was doing so during a particularly fraught time in that industry: GamerGate. This was an online hate campaign waged largely against women and other marginalised figures in the video game industry. This was where I saw bored, isolated, disillusioned young people – usually young men – being recruited for a far-right movement under the pretence of something relatively harmless. It was startling to see how insidious this was and how, because video games still aren’t completely mainstream, the wider press just ignored it. This was, undoubtedly, the canary in the coal mine for many of the tactics employed by the so-called ‘alt-right’ movement in the years since.

I’m not sure it’s as simple as technology squeezing reading time. Most of the teens who are playing games or whatever instead of reading probably wouldn’t have picked up a book anyway (and games can be a valid form of storytelling, but that’s an argument for another day!). I think technology has changed how young people read. Those who aren’t interested in novels have better access than ever to other forms of reading – web comics, fan fiction, articles, and much more. Those are every bit as valid as reading a novel. Technology makes it so much easier for young people to find the stories they need. I think I’d have loved to have access to all of that when I was a teenager.

What sort of fiction did you read when you were a teenager?

I read a lot of what you might call proto-YA, before YA was a defined thing: Jacqueline Wilson, Malorie Blackman, Marcus Sedgwick – the latter of which is particularly brilliant at dark, horror-tinged books. I also read a lot of ‘big name’ genre books – The Lord of the Rings, The Shining, headline stuff like that. I think I was really working out my tastes at that age.

Which character from your four novels most closely resembles the teenage version of yourself?

Definitely, Derrick from Panther. That book is semi-autobiographical. His disordered eating is my exact experience, and his struggle to understand depression comes from reflecting on my own teenage years now I have intimate knowledge of the illness. In a way, Derrick served as a vessel for me to work through some issues from my teenage years and in a broader sense, to seek absolution by behaving better than I did back then.

What made you study for both a BA and then an MA in creative writing at university? It’s a well-known fact that lots of highly successful authors have cut their teeth in these courses, however, the horror genre has a very much more DIY approach where the majority have no academic/literary training. Do you think aspiring horror writers could benefit from such courses?

I wanted to be a writer, and before university had been writing short stories and the like for fun. I didn’t know it was something you could study at that level until I saw it in a university prospectus. The opportunity to learn about it more formally was instantly appealing. The path to becoming a published author seemed impossibly steep at that age, and a degree seemed to offer a clear way of navigating it.

These courses aren’t for everybody, and by no means are they necessary or a guarantee of getting published. But my writing undoubtedly improved a huge amount by having tuition and constant feedback from peers – that will be as valuable in horror writing as any other genre.

You studied an MA in Writing for Children. Did horror or genre fiction get much coverage in the course?  I’ve looked at these and teacher training courses and have been disappointed by the range of things they feature, usually concentrating on tried and tested authors such as David Almond, Mal Peet and Jamila Gavin, not that I have anything against those three examples…

Although I can’t remember many of the specific books we looked at, the MA covered a wide range of genres. Most people there were writing genre fiction, many of them horror, and the course only encouraged that.

Ginger Nuts of Horror has commented widely on the complete disappearance of the male protagonist/central character in recent YA horror fiction and has found this trend to be rather worrying. We’re not even sure authors are aware of the phenomenon; you predominately write with a male voice, is this because of your own life experience rather than what publishers dictate or any other factors?

I wasn’t aware of it in YA horror fiction, but this is a discussion that comes up regularly in the YA community. Personally, I don’t find it at all worrying. Boys have always been well-represented in fiction, while girls often haven’t. I think it’s natural then that we’re going through a period where the scales have tipped the other way a little, as there are more previously unseen characters, voices, and stories there to be explored.

I’d also point to great books like Martin Stewart’s Riverkeep and The Sacrifice Box, Frances Hardinge’s Deeplight, and Darren Charlton’s upcoming Wranglestone that are recent YA horror books with brilliant male leads.

We know that girls will read male protagonists but not vice versa. The answer to that isn’t to adhere to some idea of ‘books for boys’, but to encourage boys to read outside of their own experience and realise that stories about girls are just as relevant to them.

I’ve written from the perspectives of both – three of four narrators in The Fallen Children are young women, and half of All the Lonely People is told from Kat’s perspective. My publisher has never dictated to me what perspective to tell a story from. For me, it’s simply what suits the story and allows me to best explore its themes.

Given that your radical reimagining of The Midwich Cuckoos was very well received would you consider trying something similar with another classic. If so, what would it be?

I’m more confident in my own ideas these days, so I haven’t thought about reimagining anything else! We’re living in the age of reboots though, so you never know. I think it could be interesting to revisit some of the ‘60s - ‘70s sci-fi books that speculated on the social impacts of climate change, like J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World, John Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up or Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! Thematically they couldn’t be more relevant, and each of them is horrifying in its own way.

You have an unpublished novel Black-Market Beards of which you have been releasing sections on your blog. Have you given up trying to get this published or you intend to revisit it in the future?

I’ve long since given up on getting it published! Honestly, it isn’t very good. It was the book I began for my BA creative writing dissertation and went on to finish. It’s fun but not of publishable standard. I learned a lot from writing it though.

Do you read much current YA fiction? What have you read recently you would recommend?

I still read lots of YA fiction. A few recent favourites have been:
Deeplight by Frances Hardinge
Dangerous Remedy by Kat Dunn
The Places I’ve Cried in Public by Holly Bourne

What are your future projects? Do you have any plans to write adult fiction?

I can’t give any details on anything, I’m afraid. I’m working on a couple of books, one of which is adult (not horror, though, sorry!) and one of which is for a younger audience. Whether either of them will ever see the light of day remains to be seen.

If you could bump into any living author reading one of your books on the London Underground who would it be?

 Patrick Ness. I adore his books and he’s been a massive influence on my work. He blends big ideas and weird stuff with compelling narratives and emotional truth so effortlessly. I’d lose my mind if he read one of my books.
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 David, thanks for joining us on the site and for putting so much thought into your answers, it makes great reading. Every best wish and success for Grief Angels and your future projects.

Tony Jones

'Not many YA writers can combine authenticity with such tenderness, so raw at times it's painful. A unique premise told beautifully' Kiran Millwood Hargrave (via Instagram)
15-year-old Owen Marlow is experiencing a great, disorienting loss after his father suddenly passed away and his mother moved them to a new town. None of his old friends knew how to confront his grief, so he's given up on trying to make new ones. There is one guy at school who might prove to be different if he gives him a chance but lately, Owen has been overwhelmed by his sadness. He's started to have strange, powerful hallucinations of skeletal birds circling above him. Owen tells himself that these visions are just his brain's way of trying to cope - until one night, the birds descend and take him to an otherworldly forest. There, he is asked to go on a dangerous journey that promises to bring him the understanding he so desperately seeks - if he can survive it.
Grief Angels is an urgent and heartfelt look at the power of nostalgia and the many different forms of grief. It's about young men learning how to share their stories, and teens discovering who they are, and who they might one day become.