​INTERVIEWING ALDEN BELL OR IS IT JOSHUA GAYLORD? I’M CONFUSED!

My dad reviews a lot of horror novels and gives me most of my reading material. About six months ago he gave me a book called Reapers are the Angels, he watched me closely as I read it, especially as I got near the end, I think he hoped I would cry. I did, the ending was so sad. I think my dad was secretly pleased about my tears. A few weeks ago, he brought home a book called When We Were Animals, I did not cry, but I still loved it. My dad told me it was written by the same author who wrote Reapers are the Angels, but he used a different name.
 
My dad had known Josh/Alden for a few years on social media, so we contacted him about this interview and review. Both books really caught my attention and I could not quite figure out whether they were adult or Young Adult (YA), whichever, they both genuinely moved me. I’m sure Josh had been asked these questions many times before, but I loved his answers and it was a real thrill for him give me book recommendations and reveal more about the amazing character ‘Blackhat Roy’ (my favourite) from When We Were Animals.
 
AJ: Why do you write under two names Joshua Gaylord and Alden Bell?
 
Josh: This was my editor’s idea.  My first book, Hummingbirds, was a very straight-forward literary New York girls’ school novel.  Nothing supernatural, nothing scary.  So, when my second novel turned out to be a post-apocalyptic Southern Gothic zombie novel, the people who are in charge of the marketing end of my life thought it would be a good idea to develop a separate brand. 
 
AJ: Both novels feature incredibly convincing teenage girl characters. How did you do it? Why girls?
 
Josh: For my money, teenage girls are the best kinds of characters to write about.  Somehow, whatever they’re doing is believable.  I think it’s because teenage girls are masters of disguise—professional adopters of roles.  They luxuriate in their own drama and they are taught by culture to don a different mask for every circumstance.  What more could you ask from a character?  Also, when I was a teenager myself I think I was more of a teenage girl than a teenage boy.  I had no idea how to interpret boys.  They wanted me to hit a ball with a stick and run around in a circle. 
 
AJ: Why did the ending of ‘Reapers Are The Angels’ have to be so sad? Did you ever consider any alternative? Both my dad and I cried at the end.
 
Josh: I cried at the end too.  I think I chose that ending for a few reasons.  *Spoilers ahead* First, I didn’t want to be pressured to write a sequel.  I love the character of Temple, and I wanted her to exist in her most perfect form.  I think I was worried that if I wrote more about that character she would get diluted over time.  Or she would become a parody of herself.  It’s like Housman writes in “To an Athlete Dying Young”—sometimes it’s best to make your exit when you’re at your peak.  Also, I think Temple’s death is a beautiful inevitability.  I love that character all the more precisely because she’s doomed.  To have taken away her doom would have been to do her an injustice.
 
AJ: My favourite character in ‘When We Were Animals’ was Blackhat Roy can you tell us a little bit about how you dreamed up this character? He had this really engaging edge and layers which I found genuinely intriguing and way more interesting than ‘boring’ Peter!
 
Josh: You have made the classic and inevitable choice.  Have you read Wuthering Heights?  Blackhat Roy is exciting, dirty, violent, passionate, problematic Heathcliff.  And Peter is gentle, boring, pleasant Edgar.  Everyone chooses Heathcliff.  You have to choose Heathcliff.  And then you have to reckon with what it means about you that you have chosen the dangerous option, the “bad” option.  That’s the fundamental question for Lumen in the book: She is a classic “good girl” developing a taste for things that are unquestionably “bad”—and she is forced to ask herself what that means about her identity.  Where exactly does she fit in—and what aspects of herself is she fighting against?
 
AJ: Do you see ‘Reapers Are The Angels’ and ‘When We Were Animals’ as Young Adult novels or adults? Do you know of many teenagers reading them? I probably would never have discovered them except for my dad.
 
Josh: When I wrote them, I didn’t think of them as YA books.  I didn’t think of them as adult books either.  I just thought of them as books I would like to read.  My publishers like to market them as YA/Adult crossover novels—but I’m less concerned about categories and labels.  I think teenagers can certainly read them, and I think they would recognize a lot of themselves in the books.  But I think that’s true of adults too.  If you try to write something authentically human, then I don’t think such writing has age limits.
 
AJ: I read you are an English teacher? Do your pupils know you write horror and if so do they read it?
 
Josh: They do know—and, sadly, they don’t care.  It’s an odd phenomenon.  When you’re standing in front of a classroom, you’re just an English teacher.  They know I write books, but I think they see me as too common or goofy to be taken seriously as a writer.  Once you start giving people pop quizzes on their reading, they stop being able to see you as a high intellect.  The funny thing is that I have a friend who teaches at another school, and she has told her students that she knows a writer.  Her students are fascinated with me, apparently.  There’s an adage in there somewhere.  If you get too close, the luster wears off.  I’ve stopped trying to be impressive to people I see every day; I’ll stick with trying to impress people I don’t know. 
 
AJ: My dad says ‘Reapers Are The Angels’ is the finest zombie novel ever written. I loved it too. Do you read zombie fiction and if so what do you recommend or were inspired by?
 
Josh: Actually, I don’t read zombie fiction.  But the books that inspired it are Southern Gothic novels.  If you like Temple, try Tom Franklin’s Smonk or Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone.  Those are both books with main characters who inspired Temple.  And, of course, William Faulkner.  Just read all the Faulkner you can stomach.  There’s nothing better.  In terms of the zombie mythology, I was inspired by movies—especially George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead.  I’m a fan of traditional slow zombies.  Once zombies start running, they hog too much of the story space.
 
AJ: In ‘When We Were Animals’ there are no mobile phones and the time period is very vague, when the teenagers go out ‘breaching’ is it supposed to symbolise periods when kids fooled around without phones and social media?
 
Josh: I know—it’s kind of anachronistic.  My first novel is also about a contemporary high school, and there are also no mobile phones.  Honestly, it’s hard for me to incorporate mobile phones into my books.  Those things are like where drama goes to die.  Even in real life.  I see my students spending so much time on their phones, and it makes me sad to think what their version of human communication has become.  I know I sound like an old man—but I do notice how teenagers’ interactions with each other have started losing their spark and spontaneity.  Their reactions IRL are dulled.  Their conversations are curtailed.  When I wanted to talk to a girl in high school I had a crush on, I was a blathering mess.  It was like my own personal journey through hell, because there was was—right in front of me.  For teenagers now it’s too easy to avoid those journeys into hell.
 
AJ: ‘When We Were Animals’ came out in 2015, do you have anything new coming out soon or what are you working on?
 
Josh: I have a number of projects I’m working on—but they’re all in various stages of incompleteness.  There’s actually a third book in the Reapers series that I’m currently trying to find a home for.  Fingers crossed - I would love to see that one in print.
 
AJ: Which horror authors would you recommend to a fourteen-year-old (me) or the kids in your classes?
 
Josh: When I was fourteen, I was immersed in Stephen King and Clive Barker—but I also had a real fixation on gore and the grotesque.  Clive Barker is wonderful because so much of his stuff involves body horror—which is particularly apt for teenagers.  But, of course, you have to have the stomach for it.  I wouldn’t recommend it to the faint of heart. 
 
AJ: In ‘When We Were Animals’ the phenomenon of ‘breaching’ when teenagers run wild and crazy at night is never truly explained why it happens, but the moon seems to play a key role, could you expand upon this a little bit? To begin with I thought it was werewolves!
 
Josh: Yes, the story is definitely my version of werewolf mythology.  But it also comes from the fact that when I was younger I always romanticized werewolves because of their freedom.  I was like Lumen—a good student who was always overly concerned with what people thought about me.  When I thought about what it would be like to be a werewolf, I imagined not caring about all the mundane daily concerns of image or moral consequence.  I loved the idea of just running through the streets, not caring what people thought about me.  For me, the werewolf mythology was always about fulfilling the fantasy of being selfish, of dropping the choirboy façade I was so intent on maintaining.
 
AJ: Could you explain the lack of speech marks and punctuation in ‘Reapers Are The Angels’? It was confusing at first, but I quickly got into the rhythm of it.
 
Josh: That’s a convention of the Southern Gothic style—and I wanted to acknowledge that I was writing in that style.  For me it represents the breakdown of the barrier between dialogue and exposition.  I like the fact that my characters’ voices don’t always seem realistic.  Temple’s voice is too inexplicably poetic and majestic for her character.  That’s the author’s voice creeping in.  That’s the exposition merging with the dialogue.  The lack of quotations marks represents that.
 
AJ: Thank you so much Josh, I’m going to read ‘Wuthering Heights’ next!
 
AJ

Check out Aj's feature on Alden Bell / Joshua Gaylord by clicking here