Halloweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen!!!
(Yes, I like to say that randomly during the month of October.)
Ahem. Yes. I love Halloween. It's a very cathartic holiday, where you can be honest about parts of yourself that you don't usually share with other people (unless you're a cannibal). With this in mind, I have been cooking up a special treat for y'all….by interviewing Children's Horror Author Josh Allen! *muppet flail*
Josh's book, Out To Get You: 13 Tales of Weirdness and Woe, came out in September of this year (It's his first book!). Although it's targeted for kiddos, this is a book that speaks to everybody (including your Grandma Lucille). I laughed, I cried, I got hungry for more. Read it - you'll eat it up like the Donner Party (too much?).
(Not seen: the ding dang book cover - because Blogger is too darn stubborn to paste and position the picture properly! Grrrr,)
Josh graciously agreed to an interview, and so we did a Q and A back and forth for a month or so, and I thought it would be great to post it in time for Halloween. So here we go!
Lauren: So. I have to start with this question because I am a cat lover, and the Nine Lives story brought me to tears. Do you yourself like cats? Or do you think they’re weird little demons in furry coats? [Note: as I am writing this post, my cat thought it would be a great time to climb on top of me and demand attention.]
Josh: Do I like cats? Well, I'm honestly not sure because my mom was allergic to cats, and I never had one as a child. Today, my wife isn't really into pets, and so I've also never had one as an adult. I do believe, however, that if you're going to have a pet, you should try to be the best pet owner in the world. I've heard a lot of stories over the years of pet owners who've grown tired of their animals and discarded them in some way--by abandoning them, by neglecting them, by having them put down--and that strikes me as pretty cruel. "Nine Lives" is definitely a story about the responsibilities we have to our furry friends.
And I do think kittens are one of the cutest things on the planet.
Lauren: You mentioned in the epilogue that you watched The Twilight Zone a lot as a kid. Did any particular episodes make their way into these stories?
Josh: I don't think so. None of the stories is a direct homage to any specific Twilight Zone episode, but I've obviously been influenced by The Twilight Zone's fascination with dark humor and just desserts. Still, it wouldn't surprise me if OUT TO GET YOU includes Twilight Zone connections that even I'm not aware of. Good stories have a way of lodging in our heads and seeping out later without us always noticing.
I do have a few favorite Twilight Zone episodes I remember. One is called "Time Enough at Last." (I had to look up the title.) It's about a man who just wants time to read good books, but his boss and his wife won't give him that. Then, through freakish circumstance, he becomes the lone survivor a nuclear holocaust and is left with all this time and all the books in the world. As he settles down to start reading, he drops his glasses, and they shatter. It's just agonizing to watch. And the dark humor in the episode is lovely. There's also an episode called "It's a Good Life" that, now that I think about it, may have informed stories like "The Voice" and "Sorry, Froggy." That episode is about a boy who has seemingly unlimited powers and whose childlike whims shape the lives of everyone around him. It's horrifying, and I guess I loved the idea that a child, governed by whim, could have more power than any adult.
I do have a few favorite Twilight Zone episodes I remember. One is called "Time Enough at Last." (I had to look up the title.) It's about a man who just wants time to read good books, but his boss and his wife won't give him that. Then, through freakish circumstance, he becomes the lone survivor a nuclear holocaust and is left with all this time and all the books in the world. As he settles down to start reading, he drops his glasses, and they shatter. It's just agonizing to watch. And the dark humor in the episode is lovely. There's also an episode called "It's a Good Life" that, now that I think about it, may have informed stories like "The Voice" and "Sorry, Froggy." That episode is about a boy who has seemingly unlimited powers and whose childlike whims shape the lives of everyone around him. It's horrifying, and I guess I loved the idea that a child, governed by whim, could have more power than any adult.
Lauren: Something I noticed in the Ivy story is the strong resemblance of Ivy’s predicament to mental illness. She is the only one to see the ivy on her arms, and she thinks that by staying dirty and stinky, she can get rid of it. Like mentally ill people, her community doesn’t realize what’s wrong with her, and avoids her. It also reminds me of how some abuse victims will forsake showering and the like to make themselves unattractive to their abuser. Did you have any of this in mind as you were writing the story? Or was it just the simple moral of, “Don’t draw on yourself”?
Josh: These are some heavy questions. Hopefully the story is about much more than the simple moral of "Don't draw on yourself," but I'm not sure how conscious I was of that as I was writing it. I think that even writers don't always know everything that's going on in their stories. An example: I once wrote a story about a boy who acts cowardly again and again, and the central recurring image in that story involved this boy drawing on his skin with dandelions, turning himself slowly yellow. Only when a friend commented on how calling people "yellow" is a way of saying they are cowards did I see why that yellow imagery kept surfacing. This may sound weird, but I believe that our subconscious minds are brimming with images and symbols and themes and that these things inevitably surface when we sit down to create.
So, no, I've never really thought of "The Color of Ivy" as being a story about mental illness, but that doesn't mean it's not. The images and situations in the story came from somewhere, and they resonated as I was creating, which is why I stuck with them. So it's certainly possible that the story is more about mental illness and isolation than I've ever considered.
That answer might make writing sound a bit too mystical, but I really do believe we carry all of this heavy stuff below the surface and that it inevitably comes out in our art, whether we want it to or not. Some of it we might dredge up consciously, but some of it just surfaces naturally, with us being only partly (or barely) aware, and that's fine.
Lauren: Oh, for sure! I saw these things because A: I was an English major; B: I’ve dealt with times of poor mental health; and C: I’ve known someone who was heavily abused as a child, and used poor hygiene as a way to defend herself against her predators.
I’m also a writer myself, and I’ve been surprised by how people have interpreted my work. Stories are often like Rorschach tests - sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse.
How do you feel about the whole Death of the Author theory? Do you get concerned that people will completely misinterpret your work?
Josh: I do not get concerned that people will misinterpret my work. I write for kids, and I'm really passionate about helping kid readers grow into adult readers. I think kids should be granted the freedom to read stories and think about them and let their minds romp and play. So if there are kids out there reading my work and trying to interpret it, I'm thrilled. If some kid's interpreting my stories in ways I haven't thought about, that doesn't concern me at all. I'm just overjoyed this kid's out there reading and thinking and using my book to do it!
Lauren: Let’s talk about Dante. That was entertaining. I heard you were disinvited from a school in Idaho bc of that story. I don’t think you’re advocating for the devil, though. Do you feel like Alvin Schwartz is smiling in his grave at that?
Josh: Oh, I hope so! Spooky stories for kids have a long and honorable history of being looked at with suspicion. Alvin Schwartz faced his share of book bans and so did R. L. Stine (and he still does). It's sort of a badge of honor, being lumped into that crowd, but it's also too bad because more and more evidence is revealing that spooky stories are actually very good for kids. Spooky stories teach kids how to navigate their fears, and spooky stories let kids react to emotions like tension and anxiety is a safe, ultimately non-threatening way. When kids who've read spooky stories encounter fear, tension, and anxiety in their real lives, they're better equipped to deal with these emotions because they've already practiced handling these emotions in fiction. Basically, reading spooky stories gets kids ready for the spookiness of real life.
And you're right--my story absolutely does NOT advocate for the devil. I would just never, ever do that, and I think even the youngest kid readers are smart enough to see what my story is really saying.
Lauren: Also. I really want to see a longer story about how Dante escapes his curse. So will you write a sequel to Dante’s story? Even kids need catharsis.
Josh: Hmm. There are currently no plans for a sequel to that story. But you've got me thinking . . .
Lauren: Do you test your stories on your kids to see if it’s scary enough? How or when do ideas come to you?
Josh: I do have my kids read some of my stories as I write them, but not all of them. It's nice to have a test audience right at home, but I wanted my kids to get to read some of the stories fresh when the book came out, so I reserved a few for that.
And now, for the big announcement:
My formula for getting ideas is a pretty simple one. I'm really interested in the idea that the everyday things we rarely pay attention to could really bu out to get us. (Hence, the title OUT TO GET YOU.) So, I brainstorm ideas by looking around the world and paying attention to things we mostly ignore--a shadow, a school crossing sign, a stain on the cafeteria floor, a couch by the curb. And then I try to ask, "What if . . . ?" and reveal the phantasmagoric possibilities these everyday objects might have. What if the stain is really a mouth? What if my shadow doesn't like me? What if that boy and girl in the school crossing sign move sometimes but no one notices? What if the couch by the side of the road isn't really a couch? It's a simple formula, but it works for me, and I think there's an infinite supply of things to look at and wonder about. So for me, the way to get ideas is to slow down, look around, and wonder, "What if . . . ?"
Lauren: How many drafts do you usually go through? And how many rejections did it take for your book to be published? (As a writer myself, I like to imagine that each rejection is a sacrifice made to the mythical god of stories, before said god decides that the story can finally be published.
Josh: I have no idea how many drafts I went through, but a few months ago, I was cleaning my office, and each time I came across a draft, I stacked it in a corner. The picture below is what I ended up with. This doesn't include the drafts I never printed or lost along the way.
My publication process was a bit different. I started writing spooky stories about five years ago, and one night, I stumbled across a call for submissions from Cricket magazine. Cricket was looking for stories about monsters, so I sent them "Vanishers," which is also the first story in Out to Get You. Cricket agreed to publish it, and when I shared this good news with a friend, he offered to put me in touch with an agent he knew. I sent this agent (Rick Margolis at Rising Bear) a bunch of my stories, and, thankfully, he liked them. He sent me a contract, I signed it, and we got to work revising my stories. About five months later, we had an offer from Holiday House. This all sounds pleasant and easy, but I can assure you, my road to publication was a rocky one. Sure, my story isn't littered with hundreds or thousands of rejections, but I finished an MFA in creative writing in 2001. My book came out in 2019. It took me eighteen years to develop my skills and hone my craft and find the stories I was meant to tell. Along the way, I did an awful lot of floundering. I spent a lot of nights filled with doubt and despair. So while I don't have a trail of rejection slips a mile long, I do have eighteen years of failed starts, abandoned projects, and insecurities under my belt.
We all pay our dues, in one way or another.
We all pay our dues, in one way or another.
Lauren: What are some things that most people fear, but you don’t? What are some non-scary things you’re afraid of? What scared you as a child?
Josh: I had a recurring nightmare when I was a kid about a joker from a deck of playing cards who just terrorized me. For a while, I was no fan of playing cards. I just never knew when the joker would turn up.
My fears today are all pretty standard. Mostly, I’m afraid that people I live will end up in pain or trouble, and I’ll be unable to help. My most common nightmare now is one where loved ones are in danger and where I could help them if only my legs would move, but they won’t. It’s deeply frustrating.
Lauren: What books scared you as a kid and as an adult? Does horror do better written down or on a screen?
Josh: "Something Wicked This Way Comes" by Ray Bradbury gave me the heebie-jeebies. There's this witch in that book whose eyes have been sewn shut, and to this day, thinking about her makes me shiver.
I prefer written horror to horror on the screen. Here's why: When horror is presented on the page, readers can still use their imaginations to maintain some control over just how horrifying things are. In a spooky scene, for example, readers get to maintain some control over how the horror looks. How dark are the shadows? How menacing is the villain's smile? How narrow are the monster's eyes? Writers simply can't provide 100% of the details. Readers imaginations have to work a bit to help create the spooky world. This matters because I think different readers are capable of handling different levels of horror, so we can use our imaginations to build a level of horror we're comfortable with and entertained by. When you're watching a film, your imagination doesn't really have to do much work. All of the images--100% of them--are pre-built for you, and you relinquish control completely. All of the horror is given to you. None of it is created by you. So, basically, as far as the imagination is concerned, reading is an active pursuit and watching a movie is a passive one. So, I prefer reading.
I prefer written horror to horror on the screen. Here's why: When horror is presented on the page, readers can still use their imaginations to maintain some control over just how horrifying things are. In a spooky scene, for example, readers get to maintain some control over how the horror looks. How dark are the shadows? How menacing is the villain's smile? How narrow are the monster's eyes? Writers simply can't provide 100% of the details. Readers imaginations have to work a bit to help create the spooky world. This matters because I think different readers are capable of handling different levels of horror, so we can use our imaginations to build a level of horror we're comfortable with and entertained by. When you're watching a film, your imagination doesn't really have to do much work. All of the images--100% of them--are pre-built for you, and you relinquish control completely. All of the horror is given to you. None of it is created by you. So, basically, as far as the imagination is concerned, reading is an active pursuit and watching a movie is a passive one. So, I prefer reading.
Lauren: Alrighty then. Last questions: what do you like about Halloween, and what are you guys doing to celebrate?
Josh: I like EVERYTHING about Halloween. I like the decorations and the general air of creepiness that descends upon everything. I like that children get to go bananas running from house to house gathering up as much candy as they can. I like that people get to dress up and inhabit another persona for a while. I like it all.
This year, I'll be celebrating with my family, as usual. I like answering the door and giving out candy to trick-or-treaters. I might wander with my youngest son as he runs from house to house. (I get the Almond Joys. That's the deal.) We'll probably watch a spooky movie and make homemade donuts. It'll be domestic bliss!
Thanks, Lauren, for the interview!
Lauren: You're welcome! Thank YOU.
I am now a published author. Details to come, but my story will be published in July by Corvid Queen Magazine. It is amazing
Happy Halloween, y'all!.
| |||
