At least that led to this book, Tell Me I’m Worthless. So I don’t really think that there was a, there wasn’t a sort of book that I read when I was younger that made an impression like that on me. And at that point, I jumped right to Angela Carter, and people like that. JH: Would there be anything like that, that you would have read kind of when you were younger, Gretchen and Alison?Īlison Rumfitt: I’m trying to think of what I’ve read, sort of going through the books that I read when I was younger, I didn’t really read horror until sort of mid-teens. Would Everlost be… Would that have been middle grade? Young adult? Adult fiction? I just wanted to ask social questions, along with the ghostly vibes that I had been inspired by growing up. That’s kind of how the antagonist was born, the antagonist who wants to possess Jake’s body. And I wanted to look at that from, I guess, a darker angle and put some social themes in there that felt applicable to that feeling of, I guess, like you were cheated out of life and want a second chance. And I started reading more ghost books and watching ghostly horror movies.
I wanted to kind of look at that, because I got into more stories like that after reading Everlost. And like, what that means for like spirits who feel like they have unfinished business in life. And just like how ghosts interact with the human world and like possession and what that means.
It was one of the first ghost stories that I read and it was about kids who get trapped in this limbo world, between life and death when they die, and I was just really interested in what that series did, and how it looked at mortality and what comes next.
I think that my biggest inspiration for this book, in particular, was the Everlost series by Neal Shusterman. James Hudson: What would be inspirations for your books, especially in terms of horror, what would be kind of your big horror inspirations? Ryan, is it alright to start with you? Thanks to librarian Ais Reina for helping with the transcribing of this interview provided below, lightly edited for clarity. The three sat down for a public Zoom interview and chatted with librarian and writer James Hudson about all things horror and humanity in their books.Īll three books are available to loan from the Small Trans Library Dublin catalogue! Follow the guidelines on our homepage to borrow it from anywhere in Ireland. For Samhain 2021 we brought together Ryan Douglass, Gretchen Felker-Martin and Alison Rumfitt, the authors of three ghoulish horror debuts – The Taking of Jake Livingston, Manhunt and Tell Me I’m Worthless respectively – under the banner of the Small Trans Samhain.
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