DON'T TALK TO ME OF GRIEF GRIEF ANGELS: AND INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR DAVID OWEN

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.

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