A Q&A Interview with Megan Freeman
Megan Freeman’s debut novel, A Better Nightmare, is a fantasy adventure with a cast of passionate, determined young people and a plotline that raises parallels with issues in our own society. Megan answers our questions in this Q&A interview.
A Better Nightmare is your debut. Can you tell us about your path into writing?
My path into writing has been a long one, or at least it feels that way! I was an avid reader as a child and I loved to write, mishmashing together all the stories I enjoyed and creating something new. I started to seriously write in my twenties after university, converting my degree to a teaching qualification with an idea that I would write alongside. Turns out that teaching isn’t very conducive to writing as your brain is permanently frazzled… in Stephen King’s words ‘Teaching school is like having jumper cables hooked to your brain’. Eventually I left my job to focus on writing. After this, there were many years of writing and abandoning half-finished novels, then querying agents, until finally I wrote A Better Nightmare which was originally titled as ‘Emily Emerson has got The Grimm’. This found its home with Elizabeth my amazing agent at Northbank and shortly after Chicken House and Scholastic publishers. To have a real book being published is a dream come true!
How did the idea for A Better Nightmare come about?
The idea for A Better Nightmare came to life one Christmas when my Marvel obsessed sister put a superhero movie on the television. It was during one of those huge, cataclysmic fight scenes where the good guys and the bad guys were falling out of the sky and blowing up everything in sight, that I thought to myself – the real world would never allow this. That then led to the question: If kids really did have supernatural powers or magical abilities, then how would we really treat them? I think our society attempts to control what it can’t understand, so the kid’s supernatural abilities became ‘Grimm-Cross Syndrome’ or just ‘the Grimm’ a disease that society is attempting to cure. Afflicted children are sent to facilities, where they can be oppressed and controlled.
Tell us about your main character Emily. What do you admire most about her?
I admire Emily’s resilience. She’s spent her teenage years trapped in a facility, oppressed and unable to be her real self. To be able to still fight, to strive for a future for her and her peers that is unhindered, is a testament to her strength of character. Saying this, Emily has her wobbles, moments where she thinks ‘I can’t do this’, and it’s in those moments that I admire her most. When she’s terrified or hit an obstacle but steps up, brushes herself off, and continues to fight for herself and her peers.
You grew up and live in Cornwall. Has the Cornish landscape influenced the book – is it ‘set’ in Cornwall?
The book is not set in Cornwall as such, however (spoiler alert) at the end of the book when the young people break free from Wildsmoor Facility they head to the ocean. The ocean isn’t just a place of safety but symbolises freedom and a chance for a better future. In many ways, the ocean has played a similar role in my own life.
You work for a mental health charity. Has this influenced the writing of A Better Nightmare?
In some ways, yes. I’ve worked for The Wave Project, a children’s Surf Therapy charity for four years. Prior to this I worked as a teacher in London for another ten years. The young people who I’ve worked with over these many years influence me every time I put my pen to paper. I never base my characters on a specific person, but they’re all there in the way they speak and how they interact with one another, the things they care about, their worries and thoughts and feelings, as well as their hopes and dreams for their unfolding futures.
Do you suffer from recurring nightmares or bad dreams?
Don’t we all? For me, my most prominent recurring nightmare is standing on a beach when a tidal wave hits. No matter how much I run, I can’t escape this. As a child, I often dreamt of leaving my body and floating down the stairs or sometimes out of the window. I only found out as an adult that this is a dream lots of children have – I find this fascinating how this can be a shared experience in children who have no other connections. In the book, Emily explores what it means to be dream and to be human.
The main friendship group in the book refer to themselves as ‘The Cure.’ What do you think the soundtrack to the novel is?
I love this question! For Emily and her peers, ‘The Cure’ is a play on words as its the answer to the ‘disease’ they’ve been diagnosed with, but I also chose this specifically as I felt The Cure and their brand of ‘gothic rock’ encapsulated the mood of the novel. In some ways, it’s a love letter to the alternative kid I used to be – rock music obsessed, dyed hair, not particularly cool and a bit of an outsider, especially in a school of surfer kids. If I had to pick one song to be A Better Nightmare’s soundtrack it would be Just Like Heaven by The Cure. There’s a moment in the video when Robert Smith dances with a dream apparition and sings ‘lost and lonely, strange as angels… you’re just like a dream’. This always makes me think of Emily and Emir.
What advice would you give to debut authors like yourself?
Don’t read reviews or Google yourself! Not unless you have a very thick skin as the good reviews will pass you by, but the bad ones will stick in your head and keep you up at night. Other than this, network with other authors and support each other in every way you can.
A Better Nightmare by Megan Freeman is published by Chicken House, £8.99 pbk.
