In a couple of weeks, INCHWORMS, my next book in the Dude Goodfeather series will come out–or maybe it’s just one week? I’m not sure.
Bad author! Bad.
Anyway, recently a woman in a message on a social media platform said, “Carrie. You are such a nice person. Why do you write about scary things?”
And I said, “I don’t always write about scary things.”
And she basically harrumphed via messenger.
It’s true though that lately the books I’ve been putting out do have scary things that happen in them. They are serial killers and reporters in small Maine towns (in the Bar Harbor Rose series), there are killers and teens in Maine and the south (Dude Goodfeather series), there are demonic influences in Maine (Saint, Maine paranormal series).
So why?
A long time ago, I wrote in an essay for Hunger Mountain, what I still think is true right now.
“Our world is full of responsibilities. We pay bills. We do homework. We get sick. We argue with our relatives. We worry about war and the economy and finding someone to love. Fantasy offers hope. It shows us there are other potential Big-footed ways of living. There are possibilities of lives and worlds greater than our own and if those possibilities can be imagined, maybe our own lives can become grander things. Maybe we can be a boy wizard who defeats the ultimate evil. Maybe we can find an entire new world by leaping through a cupboard. Or even if we can’t be those characters, we can be our own heroes, pushing ourselves to our greatest limits by following their examples.
“When I write fantasy I am stunned by my characters’ abilities to deal with their massive problems and it gives me hope that I can deal with my own. Compared to fighting off a pixie invasion, dealing with the fact that I forgot to pay my cell phone bill is a breeze. I like that. I like the fact that characters don’t give up even when their mentors die; even when they are facing the ultimate evil and they only have a .02% chance of succeeding. I want to be more like that. So I write it.
“If you suck away the every-day complicating details like homework and parents, and make the dramas big you can really hit on those universal truths. You can build stories for kids that are about good and triumph and hope. Kids deserve those kinds of stories. They deserve characters who fight the trolls, who find Bigfoot. They deserve heroes like themselves. They deserve to believe in magic, in their dreams and in themselves.
I don’t know about you, but I get so sad about the world and mad and horrified and I do what I can to help, but I also write scary things, I think, to help me feel like there is hope and possibility, to give me a pathway towards understanding both my own inner failings and society’s.
Anyway, I hope you’ll check out my next book (or any other ones) so I can keep being an author for a living and not have to leave the house. Just kidding! Sort of!
A fascinating must-read suspense from New York Times bestseller Carrie Jones.
A new chance visiting a small Southern college.
A potential love interest for a broken girl obsessed with psychology.
A damaged group of co-eds.
A drowning that’s no accident.
A threat that seems to have no end.
And just like that Jessica Goodfeather aka Dude’s trip away from her claustrophobic life in Maine to try to get an amazing scholarship to her dream school has suddenly turned deadly. Again.
