Welcome back to SCARY OUT THERE, the Horror Writers Association’s new blog on scary fiction for teens.

My guest this week is Tonya Hurley the New York Times and international bestselling author of the GHOSTGIRL young adult series and author of THE BLESSED.  Tonya has also created video games, two television series, written for film and is a contributor to The Huffington Post.  She lives in New York with her husband and daughter.

JONATHAN MABERRY: Let’s jump right in and talk about. With Scary Out There we’ve been exploring that nature of fear and what makes each of us afraid. What scares you, Tonya?

TONYA HURLEY: I’ve always been terrified of death, since I was a little girl.

JONATHAN MABERRY: There are a lot of ways to die. Is there a particular kind of death that pushes your buttons?

TONYA HURLEY: Death from the inside, like an undetected aneurysm, a sudden heart attack, an incurable acute illness, or anything that occurs without warning.

JONATHAN MABERRY: Was there something that ignited that fear in you?

TONYA HURLEY:  Yes. I remember being a little girl in the shower and screaming for my mother that my eyes were falling out of their sockets.

JONATHAN MABERRY: Yikes.

TONYA HURLEY: I was a terribly morbid child.

JONATHAN MABERRY:  No kidding. Does anything else scare the bejeezus out of you?

TONYA HURLEY: Sure, possession.  The idea of losing control was a big one with me.

JONATHAN MABERRY:  In what way?

TONYA HURLEY: The “monsters” inside. This is probably the same reason I am drawn to writing young adult.  There is so much going on inside mentally, emotionally, hormonally when you’re a teen that you have absolutely no control over.  It’s the best of times and the worst of times.

JONATHAN MABERRY: That speaks to a recurring topic here on Scary Out There. Some critics have voiced concerns about scary stories for teens, suggesting that they’re bad for kids. Do you agree with that view?

TONYA HURLEY: No, I don’t agree with the concerns.

JONATHAN MABERRY:  Why not?

TONYA HURLEY: Scary stories can often be our best teachers, especially when we are young.  They help us to understand the actual horror in the world and how to process and deal with it. I think that is one of the reasons why the fairytales of childhood are so brutal.  They are all just cautionary tales to one degree or another. Not to mention they are incredibly entertaining and they get teens reading.

JONATHAN MABERRY: Yup. So, makes good horror fiction?

TONYA HURLEY: I define ‘horror fiction’ simply as a story that scares you.

JONATHAN MABERRY: Is that an across-the-board view?

TONYA HURLEY: In a way. Everyone has a different fear threshold, so I don’t think we can limit it to tales of ghosts, monsters, real or imagined, and the supernatural.  Growing up, some of the most frightening stories I ever heard, and horrific images I ever saw, were in church on Sunday. My favorite horror fiction books mix horror with heart and humor.

JONATHAN MABERRY: Where you influenced by teen horror fiction?

TONYA HURLEY: Absolutely.  CARRIE by Stephen King is why I do what I do.  I read it when I was young.

JONATHAN MABERRY: That’s young adult fiction?

TONYA HURLEY: I think it’s the first YA novel before they were classified as such. All the elements are there.  High school, teenagers, peer pressure, parental conflict, fitting in, bullying, buckets of blood, sex, mayhem, murder and of course the supernatural.  It has influenced my work greatly.

JONATHAN MABERRY: As you see it, is horror fiction different for adults and for teens?

TONYA HURLEY: I don’t think it needs to be although you do want to take into account how graphic you can be without turning a younger reader off completely.  Teen readers perhaps react and relate more to characters like themselves and prefer to see those characters in familiar situations, i.e., high school, summer camp, because their life experiences are necessarily more limited than an adult’s.  But I don’t think the essence of what frightens us – the unknown – ever really changes.

JONATHAN MABERRY: Apart from an influence of CARRIE, what drew you to write horror?

TONYA HURLEY: I never set out consciously to write YA horror. I set out to write a trilogy that reimagined the martyr stories through three modern, confused but ultimately empowered, female characters who were chock full of badassery.  What I didn’t fully appreciate was how frightening those legends could be once I’d dragged them out of the past and into the present.

JONATHAN MABERRY: What’s the basic story?

TONYA HURLEY: The Blessed is the story of three Brooklyn teens at the lowest point in their lives, who fall for a mysterious guy who believes they are the modern-day incarnation of ancient female martyrs Lucy, Cecilia and Agnes.  Those saints died horrific, brutal and bloody deaths at very young ages as punishment for their defiance, so to stay true to those legends I really had to go there with my story and these characters and make no apologies.

JONATHAN MABERRY: Pretty intense stuff.  Kind of suggests that we’ve had horrific stories for teens for a long time.

TONYA HURLEY: For me, these legends are probably the first YA stories we have, and definitely some of the first YA horror stories we have.  As I was writing it, I kept thinking: Girls meets the Exorcist with a Tarantino twist.

JONATHAN MABERRY: That’s one hell of a tagline. So, what’s next?

TONYA HURLEY: I’ve got two more books in Å trilogy.

JONATHAN MABERRY: When will we see them?

TONYA HURLEY: The first paperback ,PRECIOUS BLOOD, will be released June 25^th. The second book, PASSIONARIES, will be released early 2014.  Aside from that, I am working on a ghostgirl ‘Day Of the Dead’ novella.

JONATHAN MABERRY: Nice!  Okay, apart from CARRIE, hit me with a couple of other YA horror novels that you feel are must-reads.

TONYA HURLEY: I’m not sure if these qualify as ‘YA horror’ since they pre-date the genre, but they are nevertheless scary as hell and shaped me as a person while I was coming of age, and certainly as a writer.  Kickin’ it classic with The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. As frightening and memorable as the film was (and still is), you haven’t truly been scared out of your wits until you read it.

JONATHAN MABERRY: Why so?

TONYA HURLEY: Is there anything more horrifying than being taken over by an evil spirit? For many of us raised Catholic, this is not a fantasy but a distinct possibility and gives the story even greater power over the imagination. The slow roll out of the story requires patience but somehow makes the whole thing more unsettling.  I had to hide the book before I went to bed each night so I couldn’t see it!

JONATHAN MABERRY: And what else?

TONYA HURLEY: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.  It always comes back to this one somehow. We all know the big themes addressed and the cultural impact they’ve had over the years but at the core of its horrific plot is a mad scientist turned grave robber who lives to stitch together parts of corpses and reanimate them.  The stuff of nightmares.

JONATHAN MABERRY: Yes it is. Thanks for swinging by to open a vein for us, Tonya. Best of luck with THE BLESSED novels!

You can find Tonya at www.tonyahurley.com, Twitter @TonyaHurley, or www.facebook.com/Tonya.Hurley

And visit these sites for more on her writing: www.facebook.com/ghostgirl, www.facebook/TheBlessed, www.theblessed.com, and www.ghostgirl.com

Also, here’s a trailer for BLESSED trailer on EW / also on youtube if you prefer:

http://shelf-life.ew.com/2012/09/14/tonya-hurley-the-blessed-exclusive-book-trailer/

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NEXT TIME: Tune in next week when I sit down to talk with Darren Shan, internationally bestselling authors of thirty novels for teens (and adults), Cirque Du Freak, The Demonata, The City trilogy, and his new series Zom-B.  Until then, hurry home before it gets too dark!

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Jonathan Maberry is a NY Times bestselling author, multiple Bram Stoker Award winner, and freelancer for Marvel Comics. His novels include EXTINCTION MACHINE, FIRE & ASH, PATIENT ZERO and many others. His award-winning teen novel, ROT & RUIN, is now in development for film. He is the editor of V-WARS, an award-winning vampire anthology. Since 1978 he’s sold more than 1200 magazine feature articles, 3000 columns, plays, greeting cards, song lyrics, and poetry. He is the founder of the Writers Coffeehouse, and co-founder of The Liars Club. Jonathan lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania with his wife, Sara Jo. www.jonathanmaberry.com   Find him on Twitters at @JonathanMaberry and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jonathanmaberry

Welcome back to SCARY OUT THERE, the Horror Writers Association’s new blog on scary fiction for teens.

My guest this week is Rick Yancey, an author who writes powerful novels across genre and age lines. He’s the author of several adult novels and the memoir, CONFESSIONS OF A TAX COLLECTOR. His first young-adult novel, THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF ALFRED KROPP, was a finalist for the Carnegie Medal. In 2010, his novel, THE MONSTRUMOLOGIST, received a Michael L. Printz Honor, and the sequel, THE CURSE OF THE WENDIGO, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His latest series, THE 5^TH WAVE, will launch this spring.

JONATHAN MABERRY: Let’s talk fear. What’s the most frightened you’ve ever been?

RICK YANCEY: The most frightened I have ever felt – ever – is when, as an older teen, the idea that life is capricious and the world may not be – in fact, all evidence pointed to the fact that it wasn’t – ruled by a benign and generous intelligence.

JONATHAN MABERRY: What brought you to that point?

RICK YANCEY: I’m not sure when this happened, but it may have been around the time I read THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE.

JONATHAN MABERRY: Why? What did that book do to you?

RICK YANCEY: It was a feeling of hopeless dread, the existential terror of a universe that is neither kind nor malignant, but indifferent.

JONATHAN MABERRY: This was when you were a teen?

RICK YANCEY: Yes, and this shook my worldview to the core. By that age, I’d come to terms with the inevitability of death – intellectually at least – but I hadn’t considered the possibility that my death might be utterly meaningless.

JONATHAN MABERRY: What does that mean to you?

RICK YANCEY: There is the childlike fear of the unknown – and then there is the more mature fear of the unknowable.

JONATHAN MABERRY: Beyond entertainment, what value is there in horror fiction?

RICK YANCEY: Scary stories are popular because they’re a safe way (physically, at least) to confront our deepest fears. I have an unprovable theory that the very first stories were horror stories, told as a way to impose structure on an environment in which we were not the top of the food chain.

JONATHAN MABERRY: Has horror been a part of your reading life?

RICK YANCEY: I haven’t read much horror since I was a teen. I’m very impressionable; horror sticks with me and disrupts my sleep.

JONATHAN MABERRY: And you write it.

RICK YANCEY: When I wrote THE MONSTRUMOLOGIST I didn’t consider it horror – I thought of it as an adventure/thriller, but I never worry too much about classifications and genre (maybe to the detriment of my career).

JONATHAN MABERRY: How do you define ‘horror fiction’?

RICK YANCEY: Oh, the same way most people do, I suppose. Death or some facet thereof confronted.

JONATHAN MABERRY: In what ways does adult horror differ from teen fiction?

RICK YANCEY: Adult horror has more explicit sex and language, superficially. I’m probably the wrong person to ask.

JONATHAN MABERRY: Why so?

RICK YANCEY: Lots of readers have commented that my monstrumologist books are not teen-friendly, based on the sophistication of language and the graphic descriptions of death and the attending mayhem. I think the bigger issue is one of experience. Horror can also described as fiction of loss – the ultimate loss being life itself. You could argue that adults have experienced loss, failure, betrayal, malaise…all the shit that life can ladle out and to a more profound degree, and so-called “adult horror” spends more time addressing this, while “teen horror” dwells on the more primordial stuff – like being eaten alive.

JONATHAN MABERRY: Where’d the Monstrumologist idea come from?

RICK YANCEY: The Monstrumologist series evolved as I wrote it. My original concept was to write a Jaws-like story set in the 19th century, told epistolarily through the journals of an old man. I loved stories from that era, loved the style, loved that time when “there were still dark places in the world and men who dared to delve into them.” The story of the monster-hunter and his apprentice grew in directions unforeseen, putting out roots and branching into places I hadn’t anticipated. This, by the way, is one of the great joys of writing, when your characters take your original idea and do something totally unexpected and wonderful with it. Midway through THE CURSE OF THE WENDIGO, the second book, I realized I was writing a love story disguised as a horror story. I remember writing in large letters at the top of the manuscript: LOVE IS THE MONSTER.

By the third book, THE ISLE OF BLOOD, I knew I had something special on my hands. This wasn’t just about hunting monsters or a unique relationship between a driven man and his impressionable apprentice – I had come close to the heart of all fear and horror – or at least felt I had; readers can judge for themselves.

JONATHAN MABERRY: Nice.  So…what’s next on the slab?

RICK YANCEY: The fourth and last book in the series, THE FINAL DESCENT, will be published this fall. It’s gonna be tough to say goodbye to these characters.

JONATHAN MABERRY: I hear you. Just went through that myself with a quadrology.  Okay, let’s wrap it with a key question. If you had to recommend just three YA horror novels –past or present—which books make your must-read list?

RICK YANCEY: Oh boy, that’s always a hard question. Poe blew me away as a kid. I like Daniel Kraus’s stuff. Early Stephen King is great for older teens.

JONATHAN MABERRY: Thanks, Rick. Great stuff.

Find Rick online at www.rickyancey.com or follow him on Facebook (facebook.com/authorrickyancey) and Twitter (@RickYancey).

NEXT TIME: Tune in next week when I sit down to talk with Tonya Hurley, New York Times and international bestselling author of young adult series GHOSTGIRL and THE BLESSED. Until then, don’t let the bedbugs bite!

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Jonathan Maberry is a NY Times bestselling author, multiple Bram Stoker Award winner, and freelancer for Marvel Comics. His novels include EXTINCTION MACHINE, FIRE & ASH, PATIENT ZERO and many others. His award-winning teen novel, ROT & RUIN, is now in development for film. He is the editor of V-WARS, an award-winning vampire anthology. Since 1978 he’s sold more than 1200 magazine feature articles, 3000 columns, plays, greeting cards, song lyrics, and poetry. He is the founder of the Writers Coffeehouse, and co-founder of The Liars Club. Jonathan lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania with his wife, Sara Jo. www.jonathanmaberry.com

There’s a sense of urgency that comes with horror. That feeling of your blood icing in your veins, sending your heart beating violently in your chest. Your breath hitches in your throat, anticipating what will happen next. You don’t know whether to turn away, or continue to witness what torturous thing the character will encounter before they’re out of reach. It’s that moment where you know it’s wrong to want to see the pain inflicted on their face, but somehow you can’t help but watch. You’ve invested so much already. There’s no going back now. You’re caught in the moment, watching, hoping, and fearing what anguish awaits. You want to know. You need to know. And when the moment comes, you can see it before they do. You want to scream. You want to tell them to turn back. But they keep running, colliding with their untimely end.

The adrenaline that accompanies this sort of setup is something we all look for. It’s the rush of it that’s intoxicating. There’s something about it that eats you up and you can’t help but let that fear mix with pleasure, because deep down we all need that excitement of the unknown. Whether you’re watching it on T.V. or flipping the pages of a book, horror gets your mind racing, and it’s the adventure of it that makes your chest ache with exhilaration and despair. People can deny it all they want, but they like being scared. And what’s better than being scared? Being the person who creates it. I find that even I get scared as I’m writing––fighting the urge to look over my shoulder, or avoiding the glare from the T.V., in fear that someone lurks behind me. That’s when I know I’m doing it right. Creating those images in someone’s head and getting the right reaction is difficult to pinpoint at times, but its the intensity, the buildup in which it’s described is what drives the fear. The excitement that comes with writing horror is what keeps me going. It took me a long time to discover that supernatural/horror was what I’m meant to write. I’ve loved it ever since I was a kid, and fear is one of those things I can’t deny. It’s such a strong emotion, and dabbling in that and getting a reaction from readers is what I live for.

So the next time you find yourself alone, give your old friend, Horror, a call.

Go on . . . try it. Don’t be scared.

—

Heather Marie is a YA writer represented by Michelle Witte at Mansion Street Literary. She lives in Northern California with her husband and baby box turtle. When she’s not writing or plotting her next idea, she spends an unhealthy amount of time watching Netflix and picking apart plot holes in movies.

2011 Bram Stoker Winner
Jonathan Maberry

Author bio:
Jonathan Maberry is a New York Times bestselling author, multiple Bram Stoker Award winner, and Marvel Comics writer. He’s the author of many novels, including Assassin’s Code,Dead of Night, Patient Zero, and Rot & Ruin. His nonfiction books cover topics ranging from martial arts to zombie pop-culture. Since 1978 he has sold more than 1,200 magazine featurearticles, 3,000 columns, two plays, greeting cards, song lyrics, poetry, and textbooks. Jonathan continues to teach the celebrated Experimental Writing for Teens class, which he created. He founded the Writers Coffeehouse and co-founded The Liars Club, and he is a frequent speaker at schools and libraries, as well as a keynote speaker and guest of honor at major writers’ and genre conferences. Jonathan lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Sara, and their son, Sam. Visit him at JonathanMaberry.com and on Twitter (@jonathanmaberry) and Facebook.

Book synopsis:
Six months have passed since the terrifying battle with Charlie Pink-eye and the Motor City Hammer in the zombie-infested mountains of the Rot & Ruin. It’s also been six months since Benny Imura and Nix Riley saw something in the air that changed their lives. Now, after months of rigorous training with Benny’s zombie-hunter brother Tom, Benny and Nix are ready to leave their home forever and search for a better future. Lilah the Lost Girl and Benny’s best friend Lou Chong are going with them.

But before they even leave there is a shocking zombie attack in town, and as soon as they step into the Rot & Ruin they are pursued by the living dead, wild animals, insane murderers, and the horrors of Gameland—where teenagers are forced to fight for their lives in the zombie pits. Worst of all…could the evil Charlie Pink-eye still be alive?

In the great Rot & Ruin, everything wants to kill you. And not everyone in Benny’s small band of travelers will survive….

Buy Dust and Decay on Amazon:

Dust and Decay

Dust and Decay was a Bram Stoker WINNER (TIE) and was published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

For more information, please visit:
http://www.jonathanmaberry.com/

Or contact Jonathan at:
jonathan_maberry@yahoo.com