Jenni Spangler impressed me greatly with her highly entertaining debut The Vanishing Trick which is ideal for kids at the top end of primary school looking for a spooky read, which is not going to scare them too much. The fast-moving story also has a convincing Victorian era setting which combines sad orphan children, the Victorian’s interest in seances and a supernatural touch which gives us an evil villain in the same ballpark as Oliver Twist’s Fagan. Arguably, the evil Madame Pinchbeck steals the show by using her magic to con rich folks into losing their wallets, during and after her seances which use the children she controls with her games of smoke and mirrors. Although she was a great character, the story is not seen from her perspective, instead it is told from the viewpoint of three children who have been tricked into her service and are used as slaves.  
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Orphaned thief Leander is our main character; however, he is quickly outfoxed by Pinchbeck when he is conned into a magical trade; she persuades children to part with precious objects, promising to use her powers to help them. But Pinchbeck is a liar, instead turning their items into enchanted Cabinets that bind the children to her and into which she can vanish and summon them at will and use them in her seances and effectively as slaves. As the story develops the action is also seen from the point of view of Charlotte and Felix and we realise that Pinchbeck may be responsible for the disappearance of many other children and they must fight to break the spell. Because this was aimed at younger kids you always knew things were going to work out in the end, but it was great fun, with larger than life characters and a great introduction to supernatural fiction, blended with a convincing historical setting. AGE 9+

If you are yet to hear of Clown in a Cornfield, then you must have been living in one for the last six months! We were delighted to risk life and limb in catching up with Adam Cesare to discuss his YA debut, which is undoubtedly one of the most hyped YA horror novels for years.

You have been on the horror scene for around eight years now, why write a YA novel now?

It’s one of the most happening spheres in horror, I think. I also think a lot of my work (Video Night, Zero Lives Remaining, for example) have centred teen protagonists, dealt with their issues, so in a way I think I’ve been writing YA for a decade, just never really took that marketing approach.

I loved ‘Clown in a Cornfield’, as YA novels go it is gory, how did you manage to sell it to Harper Teen? Did your editors have much to say?

First off, thank you so much, Tony. I really appreciate that. Especially from you—someone who knows this genre inside and out—it means even more.

Honestly, I don’t think the gore was ever once a concern with the editorial department over there. Or if it was a concern, I was never told about it. I think the goal and the ethos of the book was, “Look, by its very nature—thematically and story-wise—this has to depict a certain level of violence. It’s a disservice to that story and those themes (and to readers, really) if those punches don’t land the way they should, or this will run the risk of feeling condescending if the slasher action feels watered down or compromised.”

Was ‘Clown in a Cornfield’ always, from inception, intended to be a YA novel or did you ever think it had potential to be an adult book?

Always YA, 100%. Like I’d said, from my very first book I’ve been dealing with teen characters/issues, but it was from the perspective of “the end goal of this is to sell/label it as midlist adult horror.” So I think with CiaC, I very consciously wanted to look at where the YA genre is/was and make a true attempt at writing to that genre and audience, but approach it in a way that stayed authentic to what interests me as a writer.

The funny thing is, now that this has been starting to hit reviewers, among those who’ve read my other work, they seem to be completely split. I’ve had people say “wow, this is so different for Adam” and then another person say the exact opposite, like “wow, this is just like his other books but it’s got a big press and the YA label.” Which, I actually don’t agree with either of those positions, but I don’t get a say. But I think it is kind of illustrative of how subjective the reading experience is. All I truly care about is whether people like the book or not, and—thankfully—people seem to be enjoying.

Although main character Quinn Maybrook is not quite a classic Final Girl, did you have that in mind when you were writing it?

I’ve seen a lot of slasher movies. And it seems to me that the final girl archetype—both the academic sketch Carol Clover draws in Men, Women, and Chain Saws and the ‘informal’ one that Williamson and Craven draw in Scream—isn’t wrong, per se, but does seem to best apply to the “tentpole” slashers. If you look outside the bigger titles, especially in the 70s and 80s when the people making these movies were businessmen trying to make a quick buck, not fans or “students of the genre” or whatever, the definition of what constitutes a final girl can be a lot broader.

I operated from a similar “there’s no rules” position. I just wanted to make Quinn a compelling, relatable character. She’s her own person, thus I felt she wouldn’t cleanly fit into any pre-stamped archetype. I feel like all people you meet are like that. We can all be broadly grouped, but it’s the wrinkles, the moments where our traits or interests buck against-type, that make us human.

Why did you decide to make the central character a girl? Ginger Nuts of horror ran an article last year which indicated that the male teenage lead had all but disappeared from modern YA fiction! Did you feel it would be an easier book to sell to publishers with a predominately female driven narrative? 

I think your last question answered that, in a way. The Final Boy exists in slasher film, but they’re few and far between. I’m a slasher traditionalist in a lot of ways. I wanted to subvert *some* of the tropes (all the best slashers do, no matter what the “rules” in Scream have taught people), but I was very, very, conscious of “if you remove too many signifiers from a thing, does it stop being that thing?”

So, Quinn was always going to be Quinn. But, and not to spoil it, but there are some POV digressions in the book where we get a couple of male character’s perspectives, one of whom emerges as very much running a parallel “Final Boy” story alongside Quinn. I (and readers?) get to have my cake and eat it, in that way.

Which slasher film most closely resembles ‘Clown in a Cornfield’?

Wow. That’s a great question. And I really don’t have an answer beyond… all of them at once? I wanted something that feels “a part of the tradition” without having to be “dependent upon” the genre and its history.

Were you aware that the pacing was quite (slasher) cinematic? Most of the action is centred over a single night and violence held back to the second half of the story. Was this deliberate?

I always try to at least *keep in mind* the unities of space, time, and place, even when my books rarely adhere to them. But, like you said, this felt like one case where it made a lot of story and thematic sense to stick to it.

Did you part of you feel that the clown had been overplayed as a horror device in recent years?

Yes. And, not that the book’s a metatextual 4th wall breaker anything, but “clown fatigue” was 100% a consideration when it came to writing the villain, Frendo the Clown. The book’s very quick to point out that he’s not a “clown” in any sense of the word beyond the costume and the mask. I didn’t want joke-slasher kills like crushing someone’s head under an oversized Ronald McDonald shoe, or cotton candy suffocation, or anything like that.

The killer here is someone who’s deliberately using the iconography of this small midwestern town against their victims. It just happens to be a clown mask (and all that that thematically implies…).

This is one of those horror novels that adult readers may well pick up and not realise it is primarily for teens, do you have any concerns that the teen audience of 2020 may not pick up on the nostalgia for the horror of yesteryear an adult reader might smile at?

I think a lot of that sense that this is “retro” or “throwback” horror the book owes to its cover (which is beautiful, I think, Matt Ryan Tobin and the HarperTeen design team knocked it out of the park). I almost hope most teens don’t read it that way. It’s a book that was written in a crazy, specific period in American (and world) history and that’s almost gotten more-timely (sadly) as we near publication. In some ways I bet *how* modern it is might be a turnoff for some readers, especially if they pick up the book expecting Stranger Things-level “Yeah, wow, I remember Alf too.” (And not to judge, my book Video Night operates on that level, this just isn’t that).

The slasher genre’s been around for half a century and it’s changed with the times. Some early readers are comparing it to certain slashers they love, I think that’s more of a Rorschach test of when they were watching these movies than it is a reflection on the actual content of the book. So far, I’ve gotten as many Friday the 13th Part 2 comparisons as I’ve gotten, I Know What You Did Last Summer. Both of those points of reference are completely valid and correct, but there’s a lot of years between those movies. I think in each case it’s that nostalgia trigger of the genre itself. The slasher is cyclical (and currently semi-dormant), I wrote this in a mind of “well, what would the cycle look like now?”

Do you read much current YA horror? If you have been following Ginger Nuts of Horror recent top 50 novels of the last decade there is much for you to check out…

If you’d asked me 4 or 5 years ago, I would have said no, but since I wanted to do this right, and not be a kind of carpetbagger or interloper for the genre, I did my research and read a ton. Was blown away by a lot of it, really. I think a lot of “adult horror” fans ignore these books, and I was that way myself, but now that I’ve had my eyes opened, I’m not going back.

But I could always be reading more, so have bookmarked that list.

Was YA a thing for you when you were growing up? Who did you read, and did you graduate to adult horror early?

I’m the perfect age for Goosebumps mania, so I had every single one of that original runs. But I think my “graduation” to adult horror, as a kid, was a lot more of a porous process. Because I was starting to dabble with King, Rice, and Barker at the same time, so there was definitely some overlap, before I fully immersed myself in adult horror fiction.

Do you feel you’ve written a book you would have loved to read as a 12 or 13-year-old?

I hope so! But I think by 12 or 13 I’d kind of adopted that prematurely mature “nobody can tell me anything, I’m already an expert” stance (which, kids, stop doing that, you’re insufferable), so who knows if I had a time machine if I’d even be able to convince myself to read it. I’d have to leave it somewhere in the house, trick myself into thinking reading it was my own idea.

The number of authors who successfully write both YA and adult horror is very small, so congratulations for bridging a very difficult gap! Which adult horror writer you admire would you love to see write a YA horror novel? (mine is Adam Nevill)

Orrin Grey feels like he’d have a voice suited for it. And I selfishly always want more long fiction from him.

I read you were working on a second YA horror novel, could you tell us a little bit about it?

It’s one mean mother! Other than that, nope, can’t yet, sorry.

If you were to spot any writer (alive or dead) reading Clown in a Cornfield who would it be?

When I got an email from my editor that Clive Barker had read and blurbed the manuscript, I was completely overwhelmed. Legitimately sat there speechless and trembling. And since then a lot of incredible writers who I love and respect have said nice things about the book. But I can’t even answer this hypothetical honestly, because the best case-scenario has already happened. I’m so grateful to Mr. Barker for his kindness.

Adam, it has been a pleasure having you on the site and we hope Clown in a Cornfield brings you the success it richly deserves.

Tony Jones

​In Adam Cesare’s terrifying young adult debut, Quinn Maybrook finds herself caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress—that just may cost her life.

Quinn Maybrook and her father have moved to tiny, boring Kettle Springs, to find a fresh start. But what they don’t know is that ever since the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory shut down, Kettle Springs has cracked in half. 

On one side are the adults, who are desperate to make Kettle Springs great again, and on the other are the kids, who want to have fun, make prank videos, and get out of Kettle Springs as quick as they can.

Kettle Springs is caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress. It’s a fight that looks like it will destroy the town. Until Frendo, the Baypen mascot, a creepy clown in a pork-pie hat, goes homicidal and decides that the only way for Kettle Springs to grow back is to cull the rotten crop of kids who live there now.