Serial chiller: an interview with Jennifer Killick
Andrea Reece interviews Jennifer Killick, the queen of teen screams, for Books for Keeps.
Jennifer Killick has written several very popular books but is well known in particular for the Dread Wood thrillers, far and away the best contemporary horror series for young readers and noteworthy too for their wit and sparkling dialogue. I spoke to Jennifer on the launch of The Witch in the Woods, the first book in a brand-new series, Serial Chillers, which, like the Dread Wood books, takes a group of teenage friends and exposes them to some truly terrifying events. Readers will laugh even as they’re jumping out of their skins, while the characters feel like real friends by the closing pages. Talking to Jennifer, it seems it was almost as much fun to write the book, as it is to read it.
Jennifer Killick first discovered the joy of writing jump scares in the Crater Lake books, published by Firefly Press, but claims that creating the Dread Wood series (Farshore) was ‘the most fun I’ve ever had writing anything.’ When that series reached its end, she was ready to write more scary, funny books. ‘I started off wanting to write a series of books about a group of kids being stuck somewhere for one night and facing some kind of threat or danger. Each book would be different, with a different group of characters – a series of standalones, but when I started working on it, the Farshore team said they loved the characters I’d created so much they wanted more of them.’ It was decided that the books would follow the same set of characters and that they would all be set in one place, which is when Jennifer came up with the idea of Hazard, a town that not only has an enormous and expanding sinkhole but is so rich in creepy stories and unsolved disappearances that its multiple urban legends are celebrated in its very own theme park, Apocoland. Inspiration for the first book, The Witch in the Woods, came from Richard Marx’ 90s song Hazard, about a boy who moves to a town and is immediately regarded by its residents as being not quite right. When a girl he is friends with goes missing, the finger of suspicion is pointed squarely at him, though he swears to us he left her safe and sound. ‘No one knows what happened to Mary,’ says Jennifer, ‘And it’s always really intrigued me: did he kill her or didn’t he? I thought Hazard was such a good name and I loved the Mary element. It got me thinking about what could have happened to her if she wasn’t murdered, and that lead to the idea of the witch in the woods. Then there are those old legends about Bloody Mary appearing in the mirror – we had a ‘Bloody Mary’ in my primary school toilets in fact – so the story is all wrapped up in this character. Plus, I just wanted to write a truly horrible, repulsive, disgusting, angry witch!’
Her witch in the woods, Blood-Eyed Mary is rumoured to be over 120 years old, and with a habit of ripping out people’s eyeballs … Taking her as the subject of their school local history project, some of them more enthusiastically than others, Travis, Zayd, Danielle and Seline set off into the woods they’re always warned to avoid, armed only with a large quantity of snacks and a certain amount of optimism. Faster than you can say, ‘Behind you!’, they’ve encountered flesh-eating worms, trees that scatter razor-sharp pine needles, and a weird tableau of murders and violent acts, that Zayd, adapting his newly learned word macabre, terms ‘macart’. Running into Mary herself is the icing on the horror cake, and she is truly terrifying (just wait until you read about her wild-dog style of running, or as the kids term it, her ‘Raging Kong’).
All deliciously gruesome but made so enjoyable because we’re experiencing it in the company of those four young people. ‘Character is always the most important thing to me in any story’ says Jennifer, ‘If I don’t love the characters, it doesn’t matter how good the plot is, I’ll put the book down.’ Her characters are loveable and apparently inspired in part at least by real people. ‘All of my characters are loosely based on real people. I’ll take a real person as a starting point and then they’ll develop as I’m writing.’ She took the name Travis, star and narrator of Serial Chillers, from Taylor Swift’s boyfriend. ‘He looks very solid, and even though he’s got these twinkly eyes, it always looks like he’s glowering a bit.’ She wanted Travis to be someone who just accepts that life is going to be a bit miserable: ‘I know lots of children like that about school, “Same old rubbish. This is just how things are”.’ Travis’ gloomy outlook is balanced by his chirpy friend Zayd, named after one of her youngest son’s friends. ‘He’s got this face that just looks wide eyed, always so innocent and wholesome’. She’s told his mum.
Then there’s Danielle, member of the town’s powerful but maybe not as trustworthy as you’d hope De Santos family. ‘I like writing female characters that are not too soft and sweet. I mean, there’s space for that, but I like girls who are a bit angry and not scared to show it. Because why shouldn’t they be?’
For many readers though, it’s bossy, ambitious Seline, always ready with a coruscating put down, who’ll be their favourite. ‘I was going to put her in the story originally just as this mean girl, who is friends with Danielle. And then I started writing it and I thought, “You know what? I really like Seline.” I love that she’s very honest, obviously, and she can be mean, but there are reasons behind that and a lot of what she does and says is very fair. And she’s very self-aware; she knows she’s mean. And I was so pleased that we see this nicer side of her come out, albeit reluctantly, which was really unexpected. Yes, she’s my favourite and I wasn’t expecting her to be. She says and does the things other people are scared to do and say.’ At one point, reflecting on their situation, Travis thinks, ‘I’m glad I’m in this trash-fire situation with good people… glad that if I had to be in a horror movie, I at least have these guys around me. Even Seline.’ Readers will agree.
Jennifer is a frequent visitor to schools, partly no doubt why the dialogue is so on the pulse, and we talk about the appeal of horror stories to young readers. ‘There are some children who are very sensitive and don’t like it, but on the whole, I go into schools and most of them want to be scared. They want the blood and the gore; preferably they want literally every single character to die in a horrible way… For children who aren’t necessarily already readers, this is the stuff that can hook them in and engage them. That’s something that’s always been at the forefront of my mind: I want all children to have the benefits of reading. It’s brought so much to my life, and we all know that children who read for pleasure are more likely to have successful, fulfilled lives. If my books get them reading, that’s a massive bonus.’
‘I’m a very scaredy person’ she adds, ‘I have nightmares all the time and growing up I was very timid. I’m scared of clowns, creepy dolls, the dark – scared of most things, really. People think it’s strange that I write horror, but to me it makes sense because it’s my way of exploring all these things and controlling them. And I love feeling a bit scared, but in a safe way. I think when children pick up my books, if they’re scared, they can close the book, they can put it away, so it’s a nice safe way for them to experience horror. But also, I think when you face these little fears, even in a story, it helps you realise that you can be brave and that helps you face fears in real life. The world is so hard and there are so many scary things so hopefully I’m helping children to find courage. It’s the same with my characters – if you’re facing scary things and you’ve got people around you that you can talk to, they can help you. It makes everything so much less scary.’
There are reasons of course for the scary things going on in Hazard, with more to be revealed in books two and three, which are coming soon. There’s potential for more too, and when books are this good and this much fun, who wouldn’t want lots more?
Andrea Reece is Managing Editor of Books for Keeps.
Serial Chillers The Witch in the Woods is published by Farshore, 978-0008720506, £7.99 pbk.
