UK YA Spotlight: Harrow Lake by Kat Ellis and Good Girls Die First by Kathryn Foxfield - Holly Race

I haven't managed to read much over the last few months, as I rather foolishly decided to take part in NaNoWriMo to write book four, at the same time as editing my second novel. But the books I have read have been stunning. Proper, decide-to-let-the-toddler-sleep-in-dangerously-late-so-I-can-finish-this stunning.

The two books in question are both horrors: Harrow Lake by Kat Ellis and Good Girls Die First by Kathryn Foxfield.

HARROW LAKE, Kat Ellis

Lola Nox is the daughter of a celebrated horror filmmaker - she thinks nothing can scare her. But when her father is brutally attacked in their New York apartment, she's swiftly packed off to live with a grandmother she's never met in Harrow Lake, the eerie town where her father's most iconic horror movie was shot.

The locals are weirdly obsessed with the film that put their town on the map - and there are strange disappearances, which the police seem determined to explain away.

And there's someone - or something - stalking Lola's every move.

The more she discovers about the town, the more terrifying it becomes. Because Lola's got secrets of her own. And if she can't find a way out of Harrow Lake, they might just be the death of her...

This is the first of Kat's novels that I've read, but it certainly won't be the last. There's more than a little Stephen King in her writing, but the characters are rich with spikes and hidden trauma. I've seen a lot of people compare Harrow Lake to The Babadook, and that film sprang to my mind too. While the supernatural occurrences in Harrow Lake are creepy enough to keep you up at night, wondering if you, too, can hear Mr Jitters sliding into your room, the psychological roots of the story are equally strong. The ending left me sobbing and giving the air a little victory punch in equal measure.

Buy Harrow Lake on Bookshop.org

GOOD GIRLS DIE FIRST, Kathryn Foxfield

Blackmail lures sixteen-year-old Ava to the derelict carnival on Portgrave Pier. She is one of ten teenagers, all with secrets they intend to protect whatever the cost. When fog and magic swallow the pier, the group find themselves cut off from the real world and from their morals.

As the teenagers turn on each other, Ava will have to face up to the secret that brought her to the pier and decide how far she's willing to go to survive.

As with Harrow Lake, the atmosphere of the setting is one of the stars of this book. But there's more of an Agatha Christie, And Then there Were None vibe to Kathryn's debut novel. Secrets, and the ramifications of holding on to them, is the glue that holds together Ava and the other teenagers who find themselves on Portgrave Pier. Kathryn does an incredible job of making us feel for so many of the characters, despite some of the things they've done or find themselves doing. The momentum of the book swept me up and by the end I was delaying work meetings so that I could find out what happened!

Buy Good Girls Die First on Bookshop.org

---

Holly Race worked for many years as a script editor in film and television, before becoming a writer.

Her debut novel, Midnight's Twins, is published by Hot Key Books. She also selectively undertakes freelance script editing and story consultant work.

www.hollyrace.com

www.patreon.com/hollyracewriting

A Ghost Writer's Quiz by Steve Gladwin

After the death of my wife Celia in 2006, I turned against horror and ghost stories in a big way. Maybe it was partly because reading one of them seemed to anticipate the circumstances of her death so much that it all felt a bit too close to home. However, if I told you what it was called and who it was by, it would ruin one of the answers to the quiz which follows.

Recently and for reasons I don't fully understand, (ie it coincides with another health crisis) I have come back to these stories in a massive way and have rather embraced them like some long-lost ghostly brother. Now I can't get enough of them. Maybe it's due to not being able to find my own answers that I end up seeking the help of those who have to deal with and often accept the impossible and allow such fictional darkness to fall over me like some psychological comfort blanket. 

Of course a far bigger reason is that I really enjoy reading them and thanks to kindle, which serves its own purpose in this respect, I can download vast collections and choose to wade through them in strict order - as I am doing with Algernon Blackwood - or cherry pick the spookiest in other writer's work. But I have a bit of a collection mania and just as hearing Christoper Maltman singing Schumann's Dichterliebe resulted in my simply having to have the complete Schumann songs, so I am finding with Blackwood and others. But, whereas you can easily collect all thirteen CD's of Schumann's songs, if you start looking into nineteenth and twentieth century ghost story writers, you can disappear into the vaults of horror and never reappear. There is so, so much wonderful stuff and, having decided in good faith to pick and explore the ghost stories of thirteen of these luminaries and maybe write about them in a two part blog, two things have happened in the last two weeks.

First the trouble with doing this is you go in with the intention of reading several writers and get so caught up with the work of one, you lose most of the time you started with.

Secondly and literally a few minutes ago, I discovered that in compiling my thirteen, I was about to miss out one of the greatest of all ghost story writers, Then I remembered another - and so on.

Of course people will read this blog and the one which follows next month and will ask where so and so is. No-one for example may forgive me missing out Dickens, and both A Christmas Carol and The Signalman etc etc, There are just too many to choose from.

So in the interim I have devised a quiz for this month, giving me hopefully plenty of time I read all the others, (which currently is most of them), before next month

There follow some pictures of famous writers of ghost stories, followed by a jumble of some of the most stories they wrote. What you have to do, without initially using wikipedia or some such aid, is to match them together, with either one or both of their stories. I've mixed up well-known stories with some lesser knows works and there is one author who doesn't appear at all but is represented by her cousin, who was also rather good at this sort of thing and probably should be there him self as he wrote one of the great horror stories of all time. If you spot the two of them and the connection, there may be a special prize for the first one.

OK then folks, exam conditions, off you go and I'll be back next month with some more detailed enthusiasm.

Here then are are a list of their works. I've included two for each writer. Seaton's Aunt, The Haunted and the Haunters, An Incident at Owl Creek, The Wood of the Dead, Lot No 249, The Room in the Tower, Man Sized in Marble, Long Tom and the Dead Hand, The Monkey's Paw, In the Eyes, The Tell-tale Heart, Schalken the Painter, The Star Trap, The Great God Pan and The Beckoning Fair One,

And also All Hallows, The Damned Thing, The Occupant of the Room, The Leather Funnel, The Horror Horn, John Charrington's  Wedding, Yallery Brown, Jerry Bundler, Afterwards, The Black Cat, Mr Justice Harbottle, The Squaw, The White People and The Painted Face.

NB I've just checked and I've only read ten of the thirty so far, so I have a lot of spooky homework to do before next month. Best of luck with the answers.

All images courtesy of wikipedia apart from the tenth, which I can't quote a source for, or I'd give away an answer. 

Happy endings not (always) required - Cavan Scott

"Oooh, that's a bit bleak..."

I'd just told a friend of mine the plot of a short story I am about to pitch to a reluctant reader publisher. And he was right. The ending isn't just a bit bleak - it's abysmally bleak. A real kick you in the stomach-type affair.

But I don't think I could tell it any other way. The story needs to ends with a sucker punch. If everything turns out fine and dandy, it would lose all of its meaning.

It has made me think though. This week, I received copies of my latest reluctant readers from Badger Learning - Billy Button and Pest Control. Both of them end with the protagonist in deep water. Come to think of it, my last two books for Badger were pretty bleak too.

It's probably because they've been conjured up from the same part of my brain that used to enjoy late-night Amicus portmanteau movies such as Vault of Horror and From Beyond the Grave. In fact, what am I saying? I still enjoy them today! Horrible things happening to horrible people - and even sometimes nice people as well. The 70s and 80s were full of horrid little morality tales like these, from the wonderfully macabre Tales of the Unexpected to excesses of Hammer House of Horror.

I guess my recent run of reluctant reader books have come from the same stable. Stories to unsettle and to chill.

And why not? Children like to be scared. It stimulates a different part of their imagination and teaches them valuable lessons - that darkness is just as much a part of life as light. And where better than to experience these emotions than safely curled up reading a book.

Indeed, according to Kevin Brooks, recently crowned winner of the Carnegie medal, books should actively show children that life doesn't always include happy endings. He wasn't talking about the cheap scares of 70s horror movies of course, but novels that deal with the harsher sides of life, subject matter that is sometimes difficult to write about, let alone to read.

Quoted in the Telegraph, Brooks says:

“There is a school of thought that no matter how dark or difficult a novel is, it should contain at least an element of hope.
"As readers, children – and teens in particular – don’t need to be cossetted with artificial hope that there will always be a happy ending. They want to be immersed in all aspects of life, not just the easy stuff. They’re not babies, they don’t need to be told not to worry, that everything will be all right in the end, because they’re perfectly aware that in real life things aren’t always all right in the end."

He concludes by saying:

“To be patronizing, condescending towards the reader is, to me, the worst thing a Young Adult fiction author can do.”

I found myself applauding as I read Brooks' words. It's not to say that I never write happy endings - hey, I can do heartwarming as well as bleak - but being over-cautious will just kill your writing dead. And children will see through it anyway. They know all too well what real life is like. 

_________________

Cavan Scott is the author of over 60 books and audio dramas including the Sunday Times Bestseller, Who-ology: The Official Doctor Who Miscellany, co-written with Mark Wright.

He's written for Doctor Who, Skylanders, Judge Dredd, Angry Birds and Warhammer 40,000 among others. He also writes Roger the Dodger and Bananaman for The Beano as well as books for reluctant readers of all ages.

Cavan's website
Cavan's facebook fanpage
Cavan's twitterings

Title Horror: Ruth Symes

Coming up with a title:

Some authors don't write a word until they’ve thought up a title for their work, whilst others spend weeks chewing their pen’s end and pulling tufts of hair out trying to come up with just the right one, only to have their publisher announce that they've thought of something much better.

My first children’s novel to be published (back in 1997) was a gritty urban school based story with an extremely elusive title. Whatever I suggested my publishers, Puffin, didn't like. At one point there was a class of thirty or so 10 year olds being read the manuscript and trying to come up with something suitable but my publisher didn't like any of those either.

Finally my then editor, the lovely Lucy Ogden, told me they'd decided my book would be called 'The Master of Secrets' and later I found there was also going to be a picture of my anti-hero, Gabriel Harp, on the cover rather than the story’s real hero, Raj.

Much as I loved working with Lucy I found the publisher’s title to be confusing for readers who assumed, quite naturally, that they were going to be reading a fantasy novel.

Do titles make a difference to book sales?

Yup: When 'Dancing Harriet' was about to be published by Chicken House my editor told me the feedback from Scholastic in the USA was that they would prefer it to be Harriet Dancing.

'Of course it's up to you... but the potential for thousands of copies...' she murmured.

Harriet Dancing the book became.

'Chip's Dad' was originally ‘Colin's Dad’ until the publisher asked for it to be changed (I really should have realised it was going to be aimed at the US - which is the only place it sells and asked for a larger royalty than the pittance the educational publisher - who seem to have now gone bankrupt - thought was fair).

‘Little Rex’ started off as a crocodile with another name not just a title but a whole species change (I think – although crocs and dinosaurs must be related....) Then my publishers in the USA asked for the title to be Little Rex, Big Brother which was a brilliant idea because now I could have Little Rex and the Big Roar, Little Rex and the Big Mud Monster, Little Rex and the Big Egg even Little Rex's Big Day....

And finally my 2010 memoir written under the pseudonym of Megan Rix was originally 'The Puppy Mum' (my title) then ‘Puppies from Heaven’ (my agent’s title) before becoming ‘The Puppy that Came for Christmas’ (publisher’s choice). I liked this one – although with it’s pink cover the book does very often get mistaken for a children’s book rather than an adult one.

What title horror stories / experiences have you had?

And speaking of HORROR I wanted to let you know that I am going to be onstage around a cauldron talking about my Bella Donna books at SCAREFEST 3 on Saturday the 6th October at The Civic, Crosby from 1pm. Please come along if you can. It should be WILD. Tommy Donbavand, the writer of Scream Street, is hosting an interactive game show. There’s a budding author's workshop from 10-30-12, an exclusive staging of the 'Spook's Apprentice' and the 'Doom Rider' show from 4-5.30, and a 'Spook-Tacular Extra-GORE-Vanza' in the evening.

More info from the wonderful Tony Higginson at www.formbybooks.co.uk

PS Have just spent all weekend re-vamping my websites so if you have time to click by it’d be nice to see you at www.ruthsymes.com or www.meganrix.com