Awake at Midnight welcomes James Preller, author of Bystander and The Jigsaw Jones books, to discuss writing scary stories for kids and his middle-grade series Scary Tales.
Awake at Midnight:
What frightening books influenced you as a kid? What gave you goosebumps?
James Preller:
I remember a book. I cannot for the life of me remember the title. It was an over-sized, richly illustrated collection of stories from, I believe, Tales from 1001 Arabian Nights or some such thing. It was filled with powerful genies, sea monsters swallowing ships, an enormous Cyclops, and other wild sights to incite my imagination. At a young age, I endlessly pored over those illustrations. They were frightening and fascinating. I can close my eyes and still picture them. That’s the thing I’ve learned about scary. It jars you. It upsets you. It disturbs your universe. And for that reason, it sticks to you.
Many kid’s horror authors cite The Twilight Zone as a childhood inspiration. Do you have a favorite episode?
To begin, The Twilight Zone was hugely influential in terms of structure. You have to understand, I wrote the Jigsaw Jones series: forty books with the same main character and essentially the same setting and plot scaffolding. I love those books, but I was actively looking to expand my horizons as a writer. So I wrote a number of stand-alone hardcovers, including Six Innings, Bystander, Before You Go, and The Fall. But also, my heart has always been with the fast-paced paperback book. I wanted to write another series, but with a lot more freedom. With The Twilight Zone, we get a tremendous variety of genre: from a two-bit gangster alone in a hotel room to a space mission on a distant planet. As fans we accepted that wide variety because every episode delivered the TZ promise. Things would get weird. There would always be a twist. And the writing, as well as the performances, would often be top quality. So that’s what I borrowed for Scary Tales. Each story is different, with different characters in different settings. It keeps it fresh for me. Favorite episodes? An impossible question.
Horror and children aren’t words that usually associate well together. In fact, Harlan Ellison once made it a point that he wrote stories of the “macabre” as opposed to “horror”. Do you think there’s a better term for the genre encompassing scary books and ghost stories for kids? How would you classify Scary Tales?
I do not think of them as “horror,” which to me seems like something darker and more psychologically complex than what I’m trying to accomplish. When my editors, Jean Feiwel and Liz Szabla, first discussed a potential series with me, we hoped to call it “Shivers,” which seemed perfect. Just the right tone. Unfortunately, that name was already trademarked, so the Macmillan marketing department came up with Scary Tales. It’s not great, but it’s not terrible either.
When you write scary stories for the Scary Tales age range (2-4th grade), How do you judge what might be too scary? Where do you draw the line and kind of step back from describing how red the blood is?
That’s the thousand dollar question, isn’t it? How scary should it be? And how do know? For starters, I decided that children today are quite sophisticated. They’ve all watched Harry Potter. If they picked up a book by their own choosing that’s called “Scary Tales,” the worst reaction would be for them to shrug and say, “That wasn’t scary.” They are seeking a certain quickening of the senses, the heart beating faster. You don’t go on a roller coaster and hope it travels at cautious speeds. For readers at this level, which I’ve seen range from grades 2 all the way up to reluctant readers in grades 6, I decided that no character would get killed. No real injuries, actually. In the end, everyone comes out okay. I would deliver the reader back to a safe world. As for your other question, how do I know? Well, I don’t. I can’t know. But I’ve learned that the best children’s writers have a natural sense of their audience, a way to tap into the age group that is completely outside any sort of calculated analysis. I think we see that in everyday conversations between adults and children. Some folks can make that connection, others simply can’t.
Given that you can’t rely on many of the more intense tropes of the genre, how do you go about conveying that frisson (shiver) of terror in a relatively short book?
I always think of Alfred Hitchcock, that close up of the footsteps slowly climbing the stairs, step by step. I decided that the best sentence for my purposes was, “The doorknob slowly, slowly turned.” It’s all about tension, the twisting knot in the stomach, anticipation and suspense– rather than the bloody payoff and cathartic release. But you can only build those big suspenseful scenes a few times, at best, in any story. The plot has to rise and fall. Character is still central to everything in story, bigger than plot. A lot of what I’m trying to do is write the most entertaining story I can possibly imagine. Fast-paced, easy to read, filled with twists and turns. Some are scarier than others. I can’t accurately predict readers’ reactions. Everyone is different.
Why do you think it’s important to expose children to things that are frightening?
I don’t want to sound too high-minded about this, because some people can go a little overboard. Many brilliant scholars and artists have spoken eloquently about the value of a good, safe scare: The experience of it, and the experience of moving beyond it. Whew, you know? I have decided that some of us actively seek the bone-rattling thrill of having our universe disturbed. A feeling of “up-set-ment.” As a parent, I’ve come to believe that growth follows a simple, reliable pattern. There’s a period of disequilibrium, followed by equilibrium, in an endless pattern, like a set of stairs going up, up, up. You can’t grow without some sort of “dis-ease.” A new school, a new job, a new country. You grapple with the changes and adjust. A lot of people want to be scared; they like it. There’s value in having our universe disturbed.
Talk to us a bit about the future of your writing. How many books are planned for the complete Scary Tales series? Is there any limit?
There are currently six Scary Tales available. Beyond that, I guess the answer will be determined by market forces. I love writing these books, and obviously there’s still much ground to cover. I would love to write more.
Do you have any plans to do a stand-alone horror or sci-fi novel? Did I hear you mention a story in the works that has zombies?
I do daydream about one day writing a scary story for older readers. With Scary Tales, I’m often holding back, bumping against self-imposed rules. I’m gently rocking their universe, not grabbing it and maniacally shaking it. I think it could be fun to go farther with that one day. Likewise, I’ve been thinking about sci-fi for some time, and in fact I wrote a SF-lite story for Scary Tales that my editor did not think was scary enough. I love that story, but it’s still in my desk drawer. What movie had that classic tagline, “In space no one can hear you scream”? It would be fun to try to write a story that lived up to the promise of that line.
Zombies? Yes, sort of. I started writing that book about three years ago, and as it’s developed I’ve moved farther away from the zombie aspect. It’s more a “world gone wrong” story, inspired by a lot of my interest in climate change issues, the bees and the bats, super flus, crude-oil “bomb trains,” and whatnot. The zombie is just a subset of the bigger issue. Also, it has to be funny. With any luck, we’ll see that book in 2017, tentatively titled: Dead (But Cautiously Optimistic).
The Courage Test is slated for an October 2016 release; it sounds a lot like the kind of father & son bonding trip that’s in Zen & Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. What inspired the story?
It is the story of a boy who is suddenly, and somewhat inexplicably, taken on an adventure by his father. There’s something mildly “off” about the trip. His parents are divorced and yet his mother seems to be pushing him out the door. I was initially inspired by Roald Dahl’s book, Danny the Champion of the World. I loved how it was so clearly and directly a book about a boy and his father. You don’t see that much anymore. And yet, as we know, fathers are important – even if they no longer seem to have an important place in children’s literature. I decided that they would follow in the footsteps of the Lewis and Clark Trail, which is as close to the American soul as you can find. The book has a lot of history in it, and whitewater rapids, and a bear – both literally and metaphorically. Father and son together are on the path to courage.
I also understand there will soon be a new edition in the Jigsaw Jones series? Does it have a title yet?
I suggested a title to my editor the other day, but I haven’t heard back. The book will be out in 2017, along with several older titles in a repackaged format. The tentative title is Jigsaw Jones: The Case from Outer Space. What’s not to love?
Thank you so much for joining us today! I will be looking forward to reading Dead (But Cautiously Optimistic), whatever its final form.
Thank you for inviting me over to check out your space. At a time when some gatekeepers frown at anything “scary,” it’s refreshing to talk to someone who respects and values the genre. One thing I do know for sure: there’s a lot of young readers out there who love this stuff.
James Preller’s Website: James Preller
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