Wide ranging 35-story tribute to Alvin Schwartz’s legendary If you are after a massive multi-author anthology of horror stories to scare young kids (ages 8-12 according to the cover) then Don’t Turn Out the Lights, which has been edited by Jonathan Maberry, has much to recommend. 35 stories, spread across 380 pages, is a lot of reading with many a mere five-to-seven pages in length. The shortish page length did detract from some of the tales, as it is hard to build-up effective scares with so few words and instead have to rely upon “BOO!” style ending, some of which worked better than others. However, one could easily imagine many of the stories being read aloud in class by teachers, during circle time with the lights dimmed, around the campfire or at sleepovers. They would be at their most potent in these situations and many will have been written for such occasions. The great Alvin Schwartz would surely be nodding in approval. The anthology is a tribute to Alvin Schwartz’s legendary Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and it was nice to see many of the stories written in a similar style to the original and two sequels. It is worth noting that although Schwartz’s collections are routinely and deservedly eulogised by the American horror community they made little impact in the UK and whilst American kids of the 1980s were being scared by the three collections published between 1981-91, we in the UK had our own anthologies and were more impressed by the likes of Christopher Maynard’s Usborne’s World of the Unknown: Ghosts which was massive on our side of the Atlantic. Even though I am a lifelong horror fan I never read them myself until well into the 1990s and that was because of their reputation as a banned book during a period when there was heavy censorship in American libraries rather than their status in the horror world. I am not sure why they never truly took off in the UK, as other literary exports from roughly the same era Goosebumps and Point Horror both transferred beautifully and hit the jackpot. Interestingly, the recent film version is aimed at a YA audience, whereas the books targeted kids of primary age. It is heartening to see the Horror Writers Association ‘presenting’ this anthology as there is plenty of scope for them to get involved in the junior horror market. However, if they are contemplating dipping their toes in this particular literary pond they need to make a better job of it than with the Young Adult (YA) Bram Stoker Award in which they have regularly presented their prestigious gong to books which are incredibly weak and have zero YA credibility beyond their own organisation. If the current holder of the YA Stoker Award is an honest representation of the ‘best’ in teen horror available of 2020 then I am a Martian. Thankfully, the anthology does include a decent mix of the best of current YA horror writers, including, Courtney Alameda, Amy Lukavics, Madeleine Roux, Margaret Stohl, Kami Garcia, Barry Lyga, Brendan Reichs, RL Stein, Sherrilyn Kenyon and Brenna Yovanoff. It is worth noting than none of these authors have ever won a YA Stoker and several them have written books which deserved to. Make of that what you will, or you could always ask the HWA. Many other notable names are thrown into the mix, including adult horror writers Josh Malerman and Christopher Golden. My three personal favourite stories were by Madeleine Roux (The Tall Ones), Amy Lukavics (The Neighbor) and Christopher Golden (The Open Window). Roux’s story closes the anthology in some style with probably the longest story, a small town has its own weird local myth, when strange chalklike signs appear in the local community this is a warning that creatures called the ‘Tall Ones’ are shortly going to visit. Although nobody knows what they look like, everybody follows the rules and leaves out offerings of food and gifts. The story is seen from the point of view of a little girl called Estrella who befriends a new boy, whose family do not believe in the myth and pay the price. Amy Lukavics is one of my favourite YA authors and I always take a keen interest in what she releases, in The Neighbor Dennis wakes up and sees a little boy across the street staring at him, they quickly become friends and go wandering in the encroaching forest which Dennis is usually forbidden to play in. This was also a slightly longer story, with a slightly deeper and impressive twist and a great description of a boy digging himself out of a grave, this is a story permeated with a deep sense of melancholy. Christopher Golden’s crazy The Open Window features a little boy who has a nightmare night when he is stalked by multiple doppelganger versions of his dad, to the extent that he does not know who the real one is. It does not end well. The beauty of the short story, both for adults and kids, is that there is no necessity to provide a happy ending and that is certainly the case with many of the stories in this anthology, as is the great tradition with campfire stories, nobody wants a ‘happily ever after’. Alethea Kontis’s The Golden Peacock was another entertaining entry with a grim ending which will have the kids going yuck! A couple with a five-year-old girl inherit a painting of a peacock feather which they hang in her bedroom. Soon she begins talking of an invisible friend called Melora, a name of some significance from their family history and a dark connection to the painting. Laurent Linn’s The Funeral Portrait was one of the few stories to be set in a different historical period. A blood thirsty newly crowned king gets too big for his boots and has his funeral portrait done by a painter with a mysterious reputation when still a young man, a big mistake, and you just know pride will come before a fall. Brendan Reichs’s The Carved Bear was the other story with a historical setting. A young boy steals a bear carving from a gypsy peddler and later the night, whilst gloating with his sister, the bear seemingly changes shape whilst the children sleep and becomes more threatening, moving closer to the fearful children. Jonathan Auxier’s Lint Trap is the first of the final five stories I would like to flag as personal favourites. A family move into a house with a dodgy past and soon five-year-old Jasper hears strange voices from coming within the washing machine in the basement. The voices are just so inviting and friendly he cannot resist their pull and hang in there for another bleak ending. Luis Alberto Urrea and Rosario Urrea’s Brain Spiders was a quirky spin on the school bully story. Katya is a Ukrainian immigrant who is tormented by her mean girl style classmates, because of her dress sense and strange health problems and once her classmates start digging beyond her bandages, they are really going to regret it. Tananarive Due’s The Garage is the only zombie story in the anthology. This was a stylish tale of a family in hiding from ‘The Freaks’ who started appearing six months earlier, with the daughter who narrates the story now very bored any living in the family garage. But being bored is better than being dead. DJ MacHale’s The Green Grabber was one of the longer stories, kids fooling around drinking beer tell the story of ‘The Green Grabber’ and then a mysterious new tree suspiciously appears in the garden of the holiday home. Finally, in Tonya Hurley’s Pretty Girls Make Graves an unpopular girl invites members of the cheerleading team home for a beauty makeover as she believes her mother is a beautician and can borrow her make up. Things do not turn out as planned. Too many of the other stories followed a very similar pattern and if you read the stories close together, you will pick up on the pattern. It goes like this: A kid is warned of a dodgy graveyard, ghost or urban legend, the kid then ignores the warning and goes outside anyway. The kid, to his or her peril, realises their parents were right all along and is killed or disappears never to be seen again. This is the standard format for a campfire story, it is not deep but is effective in delivering a short sharp horror shock. So, teachers, or parents reading the stories out loud, would best read them in small doses. Don’t Turn Out the Lights is a fitting tribute to Alvin Schwartz and there is much fun to be had within these pages. Editor Jonathan Maberry is no slouch at short story writing himself, but on this occasion does not contribute anything. Currently, Harper Collins (and imprint Harper Teen) are releasing some great stuff, including Adam Cesare’s excellent Clown in a Cornfield and it is nice to see horror in the spotlight at a big publishing house. This anthology will undoubtedly mean much more to American readers than I, many of whom will love it, but even this Scotsman thought it was highly entertaining and am sure lots of kids will be really taken by it. Potentially, it is a lovely gateway book into horror for many kids. Tony Jones Featuring stories from R.L. Stine and Madeleine Roux, this middle grade horror anthology, curated by New York Times bestselling author and master of macabre Jonathan Maberry, is a chilling tribute to Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Flesh-hungry ogres? Brains full of spiders? Haunted houses you can’t escape? This collection of 35 terrifying stories from the Horror Writers Association has it all, including ghastly illustrations from Iris Compiet that will absolutely chill readers to the bone. So turn off your lamps, click on your flashlights, and prepare--if you dare—to be utterly spooked! The complete list of writers: Linda D. Addison, Courtney Alameda, Jonathan Auxier, Gary A. Braunbeck, Z Brewer, Aric Cushing, John Dixon, Tananarive Due, Jamie Ford, Kami Garcia, Christopher Golden, Tonya Hurley, Catherine Jordan, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Alethea Kontis, N.R. Lambert, Laurent Linn, Amy Lukavics, Barry Lyga, D.J. MacHale, Josh Malerman, James A. Moore, Michael Northrop, Micol Ostow, Joanna Parypinksi, Brendan Reichs, Madeleine Roux, R.L. Stine, Margaret Stohl, Gaby Triana, Luis Alberto Urrea, Rosario Urrea, Kim Ventrella, Sheri White, T.J. Wooldridge, Brenna Yovanoff Last summer Ginger Nuts of Horror ran a series of articles on our favourite YA horror novels of the last decade. All four novels of Amy Lukavics featured in the top fifty and we rightfully crowned her the Ginger Nuts Queen of YA Horror. As it is Halloween and in honour of Amy having more entries than any other author, we asked our fifteen-year-old reviewer (and huge fan) AJ to review and rank her fiction. 4TH PLACE: The Woman in the Walls (SCORE 8.0/10) In a Victorian mansion in the middle of a forest, Lucy lives with her distant dad, her cousin Margaret and her surrogate mother, Aunt Penelope. They live together as a tight knit family until Penelope mysteriously vanishes causing her daughter Margaret to withdraw into the attic, claiming Penelope is dead, but can hear her voice whispering from inside the walls. Lucy’s father shuts her out as she watches her cousin descend into madness and has nobody to turn to for help or advise. The levels of isolation, paranoia and madness came off The Woman in the Wall in waves and like in all of Amy’s books it revolved around an incredibly convincing teenage girl character. I enjoyed this book because it had a creepy, dark mood that loomed over most scene. As the plot developed, I felt like the walls were their own character watching and looming everything, which created unease whilst reading. If there is any better YA author at creating this style of unsettling atmosphere I have yet to discover them. I also connected with the tension which arises between the two girls after Penelope has vanished and Margaret claims to hear her voice. The character of Lucy was particularly disturbing because of what is revealed later in proceedings. Overall, I really liked this story and although the ending was totally wild and which you will not see coming, I still think this is the weakest of Amy’s four novels. But it is still very, very cool. 3RD PLACE: Nightingale (SCORE 8.5/10) June is a young woman living in small-town America of the 1950s, where she is about to be married off to someone who is very controlling and is certain she does not love. She has passion for writing, particularly science fiction and horror, and dreams of going to college but her family will not allow it. The story is told in two past and present strands, explaining how June ended up in an insane asylum after some sort of ‘episode’ which is revealed very slowly. The asylum sequences were amazing and eventually realizes, it is much more sinister than it first appears and she and the other girls there are trapped in a real-life nightmare as things get stranger and stranger, possibly supernatural. Or is it all in June’s head? That is part of the charm of this very sneaky and highly unsettling book. This book was probably one of the strangest and most bizarre I have ever read and of Amy’s four novels this is probably the least traditional ‘horror’ novel she has written. It also creeped me out because of the detailed descriptions, particularly of the asylum and the possibility of madness. I liked the way the book is split up into the two sequences as we get to see June’s life before being committed showing us how she lacked control of her life. Women in the fifties were expected to behave in a certain way and she would love to buck the trend and be free. Throughout Nightingale June is trying to find herself again because of an incident that happened when she was writing her first story. The present part of the book was probably favourite due to the wide arrange of characters in the asylum and the sense of dread we feel for June. Towards the end, it gets even better with quite a bit of gore and the shocking ending left me stunned where the author really pushes the boat out. It would have been easy to write a ‘safe’ ending, Lukavics does the opposite. The ending is totally bonkers. I loved it. 2ND PLACE: Daughters Unto Devils (SCORE 9/10) Amanda and her family are moving to a different house, hoping to forget the last winter when her mother gave birth to their sickly sibling Hannah. But most of all she wants to forget the boy she was secretly liaising with, who also got her pregnant. When the family relocate to a remote cabin there is something wrong, it entirely covered in blood from the previous owners. Amanda realizes something is not right with the cabin or with her odd neighbours and then the crying starts. Her sins are weighing down on her as Amanda begins to think the devil is inside of her. This terrifying novel was set in the frontier period of American history, which is quite unique for a horror novel, and once again we have the theme which threads throughout Amy’s fiction: a troubled teenage girl. The blend of horror, historical detail and a convincing teen ‘voice’ was a complete knockout in this frightening and edgy book. Daughters Unto Devils left me uneasy at night whilst trying to fall asleep as I expect to suddenly hear a baby crying or my curtains to start rustling when there was no wind. It is slowly revealed what happened to the family in the winter and one particular moment freaked me out so much I had to put the book down and look at the window just to check that “it was only a book”. What I also like about this novel is that it was very psychological due Amanda’s guilt and how isolated the characters feel, another theme which often comes up in Amy’s fiction. The last few pages of the book were very disturbing, and the last sentence sent a shiver down my spine. I cannot recommend Daughter Unto Devil’s highly enough. 1ST PLACE: The Ravenous (SCORE 9.5/10) Mona Cane and her four sisters live a perfect lie as they hide the fact that they hate each other, their mother battles addiction and their father is never there due to working in the military. One night a fight gets out of hand and the youngest sister Rose is killed when she falls down the stairs in a particularly shocking scene as her neck breaks. After their mother disappears with her body, she is brought back from the dead but her surviving siblings soon discover not everything is the same and the little girl has changed. For Rose to stay alive she must now eat human flesh. With their mother having abandoned them for the bottle, the four Cane sisters must find a way to feed Rose before things get even worse. But who is to go into the cooking pot and who decides? Decisions. Decisions. After reading Ravenous I was incredibly grateful I am a Vegetarian, because this book portrayed meat in a disgusting and unsavoury way. Some of the homemade stews genuinely made my stomach spin! I loved that all the sisters did not get along but would work together to help Rose and that their morals were tested. The sibling dynamic were pitch perfect and I am sure lots of readers will see elements of their own family within the pages, hopefully without the murders though! There are a lot of graphic descriptions of cannibalism so be warned, this book is for those with a strong stomach. Towards the end, Ravenous escalates to even more unpleasant heights which had me on the edge of my seat. I think that all the characters were deeply traumatised from their upbringing and it showed by the way the interacted with each other as they found themselves in a mess which was impossible to get out of. A common theme in all the books is the main female characters are deeply troubled and Amy Lukavics does an amazing job getting into the head of the damaged teenage girl who is very easy to root for. I loved all her books, but this was my personal favourites. I am going to save the 10/10 for Amy’s next book. Whenever that might be! Soon, I hope. A.J. Today we feature eight novels which I have read over the last couple of months. They are presented alphabetically and are a range of dark and genre fiction, rather than straight horror which, as usual, are in short supply. Some are traditional Young Adult (YA) fiction aimed at kids aimed 12/13 or older, whilst several others are aimed at younger children, at the top end of primary school, or Middle Grade in the USA. This collection is a slightly mixed bag with the strongest entries being The Reckless Afterlife of Harriet Stoker by Lauren James, Lorien Lawrence’s The Stitchers, The Project by Courtney Summers, and the superb Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters. Paige Dearth – My Final Breath Amazon lists My Final Breath for ages 13-18, armed with the subtlety of a sledgehammer this is not a novel I would recommend to any teenager. Early in the action a twelve-year-old girl awakens in Limbo - after being slowly poisoned by her mother over a long period of time. The prologue lays the seeds for this with some of the mother’s backstory. Whilst in Limbo she is guided by a Holocaust victim to come to terms with her death and it blatantly obvious the mother was involved as the little girl looks down on her life, realising that the same thing might happen to her little sister. Abuse are tricky subjects to tackle in fiction, but I found this example clunky, obvious, and dull. There are no other hidden layers to the story and there are many better stories on the YA market which tackle both abuse and life after death. The Lovely Bones is still probably the best on the market with a dead child looking down on their family and their lives, this falls way short of that high standard. AGE 13/14+ Lauren James – The Reckless Afterlife of Harriet Stoker Lauren James is five books into a highly impressive career, with The Reckless Afterlife of Harriet Stoker her first supernatural effort. Her previous stories have taken in first love, with her third novel The Loneliest Girl in the Universe (science fiction) and fourth The Quiet at the End of the World featuring a virus kills off most of the human race, particularly enjoyable reads. I love authors who confidently dance around the genres and few do it better than the highly versatile Lauren James. In the simplest of terms this latest novel is a confident splash into the supernatural world and her world-building after main character Harriet Stoker falls to her death in the opening pages is second to none. YA novels set in the ‘after-life’ are dime-a-dozen (see the underwhelming previous novel in this list as an example), but this effort was top loaded with engaging characters and a carefully thought out after-life eco-system which adds extra dimensions to the plot. It is much to easy to have dead teens observing those they have left behind, this novel throws that concept out the window and concentrates on the ‘being dead’ side of things and is all the better for it. Harriet lives with her grumbling grandmother and has just started a photography course at university, whilst exploring an abandoned building she falls to her death. When she wakes up, she does not realise she is death, but the moment of her demise sent a bolt of life energy around the building and reawakened all the other ghosts which inhabit the building. Why do so many ghosts ‘haunt’ this building? You will have to read it to find out. Although Harriet is the main character, the story is also seen from a few other ghosts, who have been there for varying lengths of time. Also, many of the chapters are elusively opened by an unnamed narrator who drops hints here and there of the bigger picture at play. There is a lot going on in this book, some great twists, including ghosts having unique special powers and the system in which ghosts exist within the house (which they could not leave) was outstanding. And watch out for the granny! This was a great book and a fine splash into the world of horror by Lauren James. AGE 13+ Lorien Lawrence – The Stitchers (Fright Watch) If you are looking for a Middle Grade, top end of primary age 10 to 12 then The Stitchers was an entertaining read. It lacked the scares and depth of character to mix with out-and-out YA horror, but if pitched at the right age level has much to enjoy. The cover implies it to be the first book in the ‘Fright Watch’ series and seen as it finishes (not exactly with a cliff-hanger) there is plenty of scope for a second book with the horror film style mini-twist which comes in the final pages. The Stitchers main strength are the two main characters and their interactions with each other (and growing attraction) as the plot develops. It features a very engaging first-person narrative from Quinn Parker’s perspective and young readers will enjoy being in her head. Set in small-town America, the two best friends are future members of the ‘Scoobie-Gang’ who enjoy solving mysteries, fooling around, snooping on their neighbours, and in particular, “the Oldies” who live on Goodie Lane, close to where the two kids live. Whether the pair have an over-active imagination or not, when the action begins, they suspect the group of old people who live on Goodie Lane are either up to no good, or are hiding a deep dark secret. These old folks never seem to age, have liked there longer than anyone else can remember and as the snooping continues, “the Oldies” realise they are being watched. And, of course, they do have a secret. Some kids might find the supernatural story very slow to get going, but this is not a Goosebumps BOO! type of story and relies of strong characterisation, nice descriptions, and atmosphere rather than shock scares. I also thought it was very cool when it was revealed why the book was called The Stitchers. AGE 10+ Jason Price – Pleasant Grove Adult readers who might stumble across Jason Price’s Pleasant Grove are undoubtedly going to think of Stephen King’s Under the Dome, as the story takes place within a town which is isolated from the rest of the world by a strange gigantic dome. Why is the town of ‘Pleasant Grove’ cut off? Good question, which main character twelve-year-old Agnes Goodwin asks of her parents, friends and teachers and never truly gets a straight answer. This is one of those novels where adults seem to sleepwalk through the story and do not do much of any interest. All Agnes is really told is that the outside world is dangerous and that the safest place to be is within the dome. However, once this sinks in Agnes wonders whether she wants to spend her entire life within a town where everybody knows everybody’s business and all the days are identical. Although Pleasant Grove was an entertaining enough read, it felt very long and at certain points became a slog, I felt it would have been stronger if it were significantly shorter. The town itself was deliberately bland, all the days blend into each other, and this was reflected in the writing which became repetitive and one wonders whether many kids would have the patience for it. However, there were lots of plus points and the author drops lots of breadcrumb style clues over what the bigger picture is; namely what is outside? Young teen readers, unless they find Agnes slightly immature, should enjoy spending time with her and her gang of friends and will be intrigued when she discovers a boy, with no memory, who seems to have come from outside and plays a big part in solving the developing mystery. Although the plot meanders, it has some nice twists and heads into slightly unexpected deep science fiction territory but simply takes far too long to get there. AGE 11/12+ Lily Sparks – Teen Killer Club Teen Killer Club was one of those novels which I struggled to decide whether I liked or not, and in the end found it rather frustrating. Perhaps this was because at its core it is built around such an old idea, turning kids with problems into potential killers. Since the 1960s, and films like The Dirty Dozen this idea has been played out repeatedly, and more recently in kid’s books, probably aimed at those slightly younger than the teen audience of this. So instead of turning kids into spies like in Anthony Horowitz (Alex Ryder), Robert Muchamore (CHERUBS) or Mark Walden (HIVE) convicted teen killers are offered the change of freedom (with a kill switch) if they do 'messy' kill, so as to throw the suspicion away from the government and professional hits. I thought this whole idea was dumb and unconvincing. The main character is a confused (but engaging and one of the stronger features of the book) seventeen-year-old girl called Signal who has been convicted of killing her best friend, but her memory is foggy, and it is blatantly obvious she is innocent. Way too much time is spent in the training camp and I found this relatively dull and I am sure teen readers will too. There is limited action, all the characters are dysfunctional and the programme they followed was uninspiring. These killers are called 'Class A' and sadly there is another book already called 'Class A' which features teenage spies, so that was also similar. The action picks up when it moves away from camp, but it was little too late as Signal tackles a cult and a former Class A himself. It promises a sequel - which I will not be reading. I will be surprised if a teen audience connect with this book as it suffered from an identity crisis and most school librarians would struggle in figuring out who exactly it is aimed at. AGE 13/14+ Courtney Summers – The Project (PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 2021) I’ve been a fan of Courtney Summers for a while and initially came across her with her excellent zombie novel This is not a Test (2012) and since then she has written some varied YA which seamlessly moves around the genres, whilst always staying on the dark side of things. Her latest thriller, The Project is no different, and is aimed at teenagers aged 14+ for its mature themes, older characters, and relatively slow pace. Aspiring journalist trainee, 19-year-old Lo, is looking for a scoop to climb the greasy pole of the magazine she writes for and after witnessing a suicide which she connects to The Unity Project she returns to a part of her life she thought was closed. Lo was a great character and I’m sure readers will tap into her anger when they realise she has personal reasons for investigating The Unity Project; her sister Bea, a member of the Project who she hasn’t seen for some time. I have read a lot of books about fictional cults and from an adult point of view The Project offered nothing new, but teen readers might be gripped and pulled into its inner workings, revealed via Bea’s narrative. I loved the clash of narrative styles and the voices were incredibly clear and distinct. This is a very mature, and slowly paced book, which is aimed at strong teen readers and carries convincing emotional whack. AGE 14+ CL Taylor – The Island Billed at “Lost meets the Hunger Games” fans of that famous cult show (but does it have any relevance to teens of 2020?) and the huge selling dystopian series might find themselves slightly underwhelmed. CL Taylor has written numerous page-turning thrillers and horror novels and made a minor splash a few years ago with The Treatment which was also targeted at the YA market. The story is set on a remote island near Thailand which six teenagers visit for a week. After the first day the guide suffers a stroke and dies leaving the teens stranded as somebody has seemingly sabotaged their boat, their only way of returning to the mainland and the trip of a lifetime turns into a nightmare. The problem was that this ‘nightmare’ was rather boring, and the characters dull and unlikable. Written with a split narrative ‘Jessie’ who has issues connected to a serious accident the previous year and ‘Danny’ who is seriously possessive over his girlfriend, the outgoing Honor whom enjoys flirting with others. Early on strange things begin to happen and the story teeters along, not quite sure whether it wanted to be supernatural, weird or something else. In the end it fell between two posts and has a rather disappointing ending which I saw coming a mile off. This was undemanding stuff but young teens looking for an easy read might still enjoy it. AGE 12/13+ Erica Waters – Ghost Wood Song The debut novel from Erica Waters, Ghost Wood Song, has a unique position in YA horror; the first I have ever read which features bluegrass music as a major theme. Hell, how many mid-teens even know what bluegrass is? I just asked my fifteen-year-old daughter and she responded with “that weird hillbilly banjo music that kid from Deliverance played” so perhaps a few might! Shady Grove is named after a famous bluegrass tune and longs to follow in her late father’s footsteps by playing old school bluegrass music and part of the conflict comes from the fact that the other members of her band, including Sarah (who Shady has a thing for), want to play more modern or mainstream tunes. Although Ghost Wood Song was terrific, I doubt it will transfer to the UK teen audience easily, with the combination of bluegrass, family problems and trailer park small town American life distant from our lives on this side of the pond. However, for older teens looking for a slow-burning drama with a strong musical theme and supernatural overtones there is much escapism to be had in these pages. Family dynamics play a key part of story after a death in the family, whilst Shady struggles to get over the death of her father, continually returning to one of his favourite songs. She believes that her father’s fiddle had the power to conjure up the dead and is set on finding it and although the supernatural story was interesting, I was more drawn to Shady’s relationships with Sarah and others. The music scenes genuinely sparkled, as they should in novels with this kind of vibe, and I thought Shady was very cool in sticking to her guns and not selling out. Ghost Wood Song also had an outstanding ending and although it will be too slow for some teens, those who enjoy a thoughtful read, with well-drawn characters are in for a treat. AGE 14+ Today we are delighted to welcome Mike Ford to Ginger Nuts of Horror in a wide ranging interview which covers publishing, writing for Scholastic, YA horror, pseudonyms, Shirley Jackson Award nominations, book agents, Indiana Eerie (who remembers that cool show?) and his latest middle grade series Frightville of which four titles have been released over the last few months. Mike writes across the board and is equally comfortable and skilled penning for adults as he is for teens and the younger middle grade age group. His back-catalogue is both vast and varied; labelling him a horror writer does not do justice as his outstanding body of work includes non-fiction and non-genre fiction. Mike’s current project is the Frightville series for Scholastic which is aimed at kids in the third to fourth school grade in the USA (Reading Level Grade 4) which is around ages eight to ten in the UK. The books are on average 100-pages and are for children who are comfortable reading chapter books and are ‘spooky’ reads rather than outright horror, as Mike explains in the interview. I read the first three books in the series and found them to be tremendous fun and I can guarantee if my daughter read them when she was eight, she would have adored them! They are: BOOK 1: Don’t let the Doll in – The constant in all the stories is the new Frightville store in the local town where the action takes place and kids buy quirky junk store objects from the creepy Odson Ends. In this opening tale Mara is delighted to purchase a small figurine doll called Charlotte. Kids love creepy doll stories, and this is a beauty when odd things happen after Charlotte ends up in Mara’s dollhouse. A fast-paced supernatural story quickly develops, with a very cool ending which your children will love. BOOK 2: Curse of the Wish Eater – Us adults (who have read The Monkey’s Paw) know making wishes lead to a world of pain and regret, but sometimes we have to let our kids must make their own mistakes! In this second outing Olson Ends sells Max a set of wind-up teeth which promise to grant any wish and he stupidly wishes his siblings out of existence! Once again there were some nice twists and turns and another smart ending which will have the kids smiling and thinking about how they would handle a similar gift. BOOK 3: The Haunted Key – Sofia buys a skeleton key from Frightville shop and hopes the key will open a mysterious trunk in the attic of the old house her parents are developing for a hotel, however, a spirit is released from the trunk and we quickly head into a great haunting story which takes us back to the children who lived in the house a century earlier. Like its predecessors The Haunted Key is fast paced and perfectly pitched at the child hungry for getting lost in a book. So, if you are a parent of a kid under the age of ten Frightville is a series which is well worth closer investigation, meanwhile, onto our chat with Mike…. Why do you keep ‘Michael Thomas Ford’ and ‘Mike Ford’ separate? I notice neither are connected to each other on the Fantastic Fiction site…. Mike Ford was the name Avon used when they published the first fiction I wrote for young readers, back in the 90s. I don’t actually recall having any conversation about it. I think they just preferred the shorter name on the cover. At the time I was publishing, under the MTF name, nonfiction books for teens on social issues that were considered a little controversial, so that might have been part of it. There are at least three other Michael Fords publishing that I know of, and we’re often mistaken for one another, often with amusing results. I also published the 15-book Circle of Three series under the name Isobel Bird, and even though those books were very popular in the US, it’s only been recently that people have connected me with them. I probably ought to have chosen a better name, like Garth Nix or Benedict Cumberbatch. Combined, Mike and Michael have written a lot of books [way more if we include Isobel!] how did you get involved in the ‘Frightville’ book series which are aimed at third and fourth grade kids (age about 8-10 in the UK)? My first (and only) job in publishing was as an editor at Macmillan Children’s Books in the US. One of the other editors there moved to Avon/Camelot, and she asked me to write for her on a series called Spinetinglers, which as you might guess from the name was a Goosebumps knockoff. When that editor left, I started working with another editor there, and we did 25 or so books together. I eventually followed her when she moved to HarperCollins, where we did two novels together, and then to Scholastic. She recommended me for the Frightville series which, as is often the case with Scholastic, began as a request from someone in the school book-club division for a series about a store that sells haunted toys. I enjoyed the three ‘Frightville’ novels I read, I could see lots of ideas from adult horror repackaged for kids, similar to what RL Stine did with the ‘Goosebumps’ series, is that the plan, to write accessible gateway horror? Scholastic has very specific dos and don’ts for most of the books that are packaged for their school book-clubs. They like certain things (haunted dolls and ghosts are big favourites) and stay away from others, like Ouija boards or anything specifically occult. Their books for older readers are a little more horror-oriented, but the books for younger readers are meant to be more spooky than terrifying. Also, my editor and I very deliberately try to include different types of kids as main characters and to come up with plots that allow the characters to be the heroes of their own stories. So, I would not say they’re intended to be gateways to horror as a genre so much as they’re meant to be quick, fun reads for kids who like their adventures on the slightly scary side. You indicated in a previous conversation that Covid-19 played a part in cutting the series short? Scholastic’s primary market is school book-clubs and fairs. With schools closed due to the virus, sales slowed dramatically this year. As a result, they have cut back on the number of new titles they’re putting out, so for the moment the Frightville series is on hold. I’ve proposed four more, so I hope they take it up again. But it is also a series where the titles are not connected, so they could also be done as standalone books, which would also be fun. A few YA writers (horror and other genres) have dropped down to Middle Grade and younger age groups as their primary audience. Do you think this is a financial decision? There has been much in the media about the declining sales of YA….. When I started in publishing, in 1989, I very much wanted to write YA horror, but the boom that saw series like Goosebumps and the Christopher Pike books selling phenomenally well was winding down, and I was told that publishers weren’t interested in horror. I’ve heard that every single year since. YA horror has always been a difficult sell here, I think mostly because so much adult horror is already popular with and accessible to teen readers, who often want to read more “adult” books anyway. I was reading Stephen King and Peter Straub and Anne Rice when I was a teen, and I think that trend has continued. That means authors writing horror often write for the adult market hoping YA readers will come along anyway. That leaves middle grade as its own thing. And I think it’s true of all genre fiction. There are more middle grade mysteries and fantasies as well. I judged the juvenile category for the Edgar Awards last year, and we had more than 120 books submitted. In comparison, I have been involved with the YA category of the Bram Stoker Award for several years and we never received more than 40 submissions. There is an incredible nostalgia for both ‘Goosebumps’ and ‘Point Horror’, the heyday of kid’s horror from the 80s/90s, what are your recollections and thoughts on them? I was too old for those books when they came out, so I didn’t read them except as part of my work in the publishing world. But I was certainly very aware of them and their importance, as they were everywhere, and everyone tried to copy their success. I was particularly pleased to see the Horror Writers Association give RL Stine a Lifetime Achievement Award a few years ago, as I think he almost singlehandedly created a market for middle grade horror. I actually took his Master Class online last year, as I was curious what he had to say about his writing process, and it was a lot of fun. The ‘Frightville’ books are published by Scholastic, one of the powerhouses of kids/YA fiction, how hard is it for a new writer to get noticed by one of these big publishing houses? Do you have any tips for any indie horror writers who dream of breaking into the mainstream? I am the worst person to ask about this, as my career has never progressed in any “normal” way. I’ve never submitted manuscripts on spec and didn’t use an agent for any of my books for young readers until a few years ago. With Scholastic, at least in the US, much of their list begins as requests from people inside the company for specific kinds of books. Then they approach writers they’ve worked with before or agents they work with to find a good fit for that specific project. As far as other large publishers, I think selling horror to them is the same as selling anything else, and the most effective way is through an agent. Then the question becomes one of how to interest an agent in representing your horror writing. Fortunately, finding those agents who actively want horror has become easier thanks to things like Twitter, where agents frequently post about what they’re looking for, and agency websites where individual agents often post their wish lists. You seemed to have ‘retired’ Mike Ford in 1998 after writing ten of the ‘Eerie Indiana’ novels. That show lasted one season in the early nineties, I had never heard of it as a book series and was surprised it was deemed successful enough to be novelised, can you tell us a little bit about it? One day my editor at Avon called me and she was in a mood. The company had recently been acquired by a larger media company that owned television properties, and they were pressuring the publishing division to come up with books based on some of these series. She said, “I have to do a series based on this show no one has ever heard of, called Eerie, Indiana.” I said, “That’s one of my favourite shows!” and proceeded to talk about the various plots and how great they were. She signed me up immediately, mostly because she was so relieved that I was already familiar with the characters and the peculiar quality of the show. It was supposed to be a huge deal, because they were rebooting the show with new actors and bringing it back. There were all of these product tie-ins and plans for marketing, my favourite being for a line of canned pasta. Then the reboot flopped and nothing ever came of the marketing plans. Those are actually some of my very favourite books that I’ve written, so it was disappointing to see the series not do well. I would have happily written a dozen more of them. [ED: The Rebooted show was called Eerie, Indiana: The Other Dimension] (1998) and one of Mike’s books The Dollhouse that Time Forgot (Eerie Indiana #11) was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award in the category - Works for Young Readers). I loved your 2016 novel ‘Lily’, which made the preliminary ballot of the YA HWA Stoker Award and was a finalist for the prestigious (adult) Shirley Jackson Award. That is a strange double to be nominated for. Looking back; what are your feelings on this? Did you write it as a YA novel and how successful was it? I didn’t write Lily as one thing or another, and the publisher (Lethe Press) didn’t position it as one or the other, so it was interesting to see how it was received. School Library Journal here in the US reviewed it as a YA novel. Then it got the Stoker nomination as a YA book. But it was a finalist for the Jackson and the Lambda Literary Award as an adult book. The character of Lily is a young girl, so I see how people could take it as a book for young readers. And the fact that it’s illustrated (by the remarkable Staven Andersen) also makes it feel like it could be for young readers. But the themes are significantly more adult. I kind of like that it isn’t one thing or another, as that fits both the style and themes of the book. But it definitely did not help sales. Despite the award attention, it’s sold the least of all my books, which is too bad because it’s my favourite thing I’ve ever written. It is also very difficult to get outside of the US, so I would love to find an international publisher for it and maybe get it wider attention with a new audience. From our previous conversations I am aware that you read a lot of YA horror, have you any plans to return to this age group in the future? In the past you have written ‘Love & Other Curses’, ‘Suicide Notes’ and ‘Z’…… I love writing for both YA and middle grade readers. When the kinds of books I wanted to write for those audiences became less popular, I took a detour into publishing books for adult readers and doing other kinds of things like ghost-writing. That lasted quite a long time, and I only got back into writing for young readers under my own name in the past couple of years. I have a number of things I’m working on now for both YA and middle grade. The publishing world, like everything else, is in a peculiar state due to what’s happening with this virus, so it’s difficult to know how things will play out. But writing is the only thing I’ve ever done or am good at, so hopefully I can keep doing it. Who are your favourite current YA writers? There are so many wonderful books coming out now, and of course I always blank when asked for specific ones and authors. Some of my favourite writers for young people in general are Frances Hardinge, Susan Vaught, Colin Meloy, Kate Milford, Kenneth Oppel, Hilary McKay, Claire Legrand, Robin Stevens, Celine Kiernan, Marcus Sedgwick, and too many more that escape me right now. As far as specific horror(ish) books, some of my recent faves are Shea Ernshaw’s The Wicked Deep and Winterwood, Claire Legrand’s Sawkill Girls, anything by Amy Lukavics, Tessa Graton’s Strange Grace, Sara Faring’s The Tenth Girl, Kate Alice Marshall’s Rules for Vanishing, and Jacqueline West’s Last Things. I also really love Chavisa Woods, particularly her book Things to Do When You’re Goth in the Country, who although she isn’t a YA writer writes about young people in a way that is absolutely extraordinary. You have written a lot of books and have an incredibly impressive back-catalogue, which of your adult titles would you recommend to a reader who had never tried you before? My absolute favourite of my books by far is Lily. But it’s best read in physical form, as the illustrations are so much a part of it, and it’s difficult to get the physical book outside of the US. I’m also very fond of the three humorous novels I wrote about Jane Austen living as a modern-day vampire in the United States. Of my non-genre books for adults, my favourite is probably a novel called Changing Tides. GNOH: Which writer, living or dead, would you most like to see reading one of your novels on a train? Tove Jansson is the author who made me want to be a writer. I got to correspond with her for several years, but she died before I published anything I wanted to send to her to read. I wish she could have read my novel Lily, as it owes so much to her. I would also love to be on a train and see the ghost of Iris Murdoch reading something of mine. Even better, a ghostly book group consisting of Jansson, Murdoch, Shirley Jackson, Flannery O’Connor, and Carson McCullers. They are the biggest influences on me, each in their own way, and I would love for them to see that. Mike, Michael, and Isobel it has been an absolute pleasure featuring you on the site. Many of us who watched the original Indiana Eerie show have similar nostalgia for it! Good luck with your future projects and we hope ‘Frightville’ is resurrected for your planned books 5-8 and that somebody much more influential than us namechecks ‘Lily’ and it goes on to be a surprise international bestseller! Tony Jones THE HEART AND SOUL OF YA HORROR FICTION REVIEW WEBSITES |
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