My Crazy Corner

20 Scary Questions with Monster author C.J. Skuse

1. If you were in a horror movie and something big bad and nasty was chasing after you, what would your tactics be?

Stand very still and close my eyes and hope it can’t see me.

2. Was your school anything like the spooky and remote Bathory School in Monster?

Yes, I pretty much based the interiors on my old school which now sadly no longer exists. Hang on, I hated it. Scrub out sadly. I’m glad they tore that sucker down. It was haunted and damp and stank of sadness.

3. What's your favourite scary movie, Sydney?

First of all, don’t call me Sydney. Second of all – I have five favourites. Dawn of the Dead (Zack Snyder version), Carry On Screaming, Dog Soldiers, The Descent and House of Wax (the remake). I love any movie where Paris Hilton gets a pole through her skull.

4. Who's your favourite fictional villain and why?

The Joker. He’s just so cool. I wanted Heath Ledger’s Joker to beat the crap out of Bale’s Batman, just for the hell of it. Just once, I wanted the Joker to win. I always wanted the coyote to catch that damn roadrunner too but that never happened either. *shrugs* #That’sLife

5. What’s the scariest thing you've ever done?

All three rides on top of the Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas in 2007. How I came away from any of them with dry pants is unbelievable. My knuckles were properly white. I wasn’t that scared when I did a sky dive.

6. Would you rather lick jam off a panther’s paw or jump into a shark

tank wrapped in raw bacon?

I think I’d stand more chance with the jammy panther. If he’s just kinda lying in the sun, all drowsy, and the jam’s just there on its paw, I could creep over and start licking and then go all still when it opened its eyes. No way a shark’s not going to notice a huge lump of raw meat dropped into its tank.

7. Do you find clowns scary or funny?

I find clowns, I kill them, simple as that. You’ve got to get them before they get you. No good has ever come from something with eyebrows that high up on its face.

8. Who is your favourite Ghostbuster and do you approve of the new all-action female version of Ghostbusters?

I loved Peter Venkman as a child though I didn’t get a lot of his jokes. I admit I was wary of a female Ghostbuster movie when I first heard about it, having been such an early fan of the all-male versions. I just thought why bother? Then I saw the still they released of the women in their uniforms and OMG do they look fantastic. If the script is right, I think it’s going to be brilliant.

9. Would you rather be trapped in a very haunted old mental asylum or an abandoned theme park with a deranged killer on the loose?

I’ll take the mental asylum. Like a good Ghostbusters fan, I ain’t ‘fraid of no ghosts and I don’t believe ghosts can harm you anyway, whereas a deranged killer probably has a very real weapon and I can’t run very fast.

10. What were the best and worst parts about writing Monster?

Best part of writing anything is ALWAYS finishing it (for me anyway). Worst part about writing it was doing three different drafts before I realised who the ‘monster’ of the story actually was. Rewriting the same book from a slightly different angle three times over is a pain in the proverbial.

11. What in life are you most afraid of?

Running out of chocolate.

12. What in horror stories most scares you?

Things that hover just off the ground. Anything that hovers gives me the willies. The Gentlemen from Buffy the Vampire Slayer do this and I find them hands-down terrifying.

13. Where did the ideas come from for Monster?

I saw a newspaper article about The Beast of Bodmin Moor and I started wanting to write an underdog horror story about a group of people who have to defend themselves from it. I’ve had the urge to write a story set in a boarding school since my first novel Pretty Bad Things was released in 2010 and I thought the beast idea could lend itself well to a remote boarding school setting. Et voila.

14. If you could kill off any character from another book, who would you choose and how would they die?

Well he dies anyway but George Harvey from The Lovely Bones needs to die in a more satisfying and prolonged-pain kinda way. I was very disappointed with his quick demise.

15. If you could reanimate any character who dies from any other book, who would you choose and how would you bring them back?

Finnick Odair from The Hunger Games. I’d just give him the kiss of life for a very very long time.

16. Who would win in a fight, Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula or Mr

Hyde?

Well Dracula’s a wuss who has to go sleepy night-nights during the day and has tiny teeth so that rules him out. Mr Hyde could probably give Frankie a good old bruising before he turned back into old scaredy-cat Jekyll so I think Mary Shelley’s boy could take all three to be honest. He’s a lot cleverer than the movie versions of him would suggest.

17. Scariest thing you ever saw on TV as a kid?

Killer Bob from Twin Peaks, hands down. In fact, just Twin Peaks in general. Nothing before or since has burrowed into my psyche and scared the crap out of me as much as that programme.

18. Who would play your six schoolgirls – Nash, Maggie, Dianna, Regan, Clarice and Tabby – in a film version of Monster?

I have absolutely no idea. Nash was loosely based on a younger version of Mia Wasikowska and Charlie was based on the actor Freddie Stroma but as long as all their ages and physical features are right and they can act scared, I don’t really have any other preferences. The beast is based on a jaglion – a hybrid of a jaguar and a lion but I imagine that would be CGI’d to hell anyway so no sense auditioning them.

19. Tell me a secret about Monster that only you know...

The characters’ names are all horror-movie related in some way. Their surnames are all those of dead rock stars. Just for the hell of it.

20. And finally, plug the book...

Monster is available to buy in paperback and eBook the UK on 24^th September 2015.

Hi everybody!

I guess I should start with a quick introduction because I am by no standards a well-known author; instead, I stick to a little corner of the internet otherwise known as my Wattpad profile. My name is Leigh (pronounced “lee”) and online, I go by the incredibly imaginative username leigh_ (as much as I would like to have a cool story behind it, the underscore was merely an addition to get me up to the character limit). I’m currently a 19-year-old student at the University of Birmingham, where I study Medical Science. People often ask me why I’m not doing anything English-related, but I mostly tell them I’d go insane if I didn’t have something other than writing to think about.

In July 2011, I didn’t know it, but I did something that would change my life. I took the plunge and uploaded the first chapter of a novel I’d been working on (a 15-year-old atrocity called Serenity Falls) to Wattpad. Later that year, I completed National Novel Writing Month for the first time, and I found myself with a second book under my belt. It was at this point I realised I had fallen irreversibly in love with writing again, a hobby that had started when I was a kid. I continued writing, uploading each story chapter-by-chapter to my Wattpad profile, on which I was slowly building up a huge fanbase. By July 2015, I had hit 100,000 followers, with seven finished works to my name.

Formal publishing is still a dream of the future, but writing on Wattpad has been a massive experience all the same. I have made friends from all over the world (some of whom I’ve got to meet in person), had my first experience speaking on a Q&A panel and even signed my first autograph(!).

My latest finished book, Trapeze, is the story of talented teenage trapeze artist Corey Ryder, whose life is turned upside down in the space of a single night. While the entire book can be read for free on Wattpad, I have included the summary here:

For seventeen-year-old Corey Ryder, life on the road is all she’s ever known. A trainee trapeze artist in her aunt’s circus, she’s never found herself in one place for more than a few weeks at a time. For her, it’s a way of life.

But when a tragic accident leaves their entire livelihood in tatters, Corey is forced to leave the circus behind and revisit a part of her life she’s been trying to forget: her mom. All of a sudden, what once was just another stop on an endless road trip becomes the very center of Corey’s life.

Unnerved by the stark differences between circus life and that of her new home, Corey’s convinced she’ll never settle in. She can’t wait for the moment she’ll be able to break free from the bubble of Sherwood, California and return to life on the road. But when an unlikely friendship sparks between her and Luke Everett, the school’s Golden Boy, Corey comes to realize it may be the most unexpected bonds that keep you tethered.

As bonus content for my followers, I have decided to include a newspaper article set five years after the story ended, for anybody who is intrigued about what happened to the characters after I stopped writing. Enjoy!

Hello! My name is Julie Dawn and I’m so excited to be part of this Blogfest, bringing along my debut zombie novel Yosemite Rising. The journey of writing it was as painful as my main character’s. I hadn’t planned on that. Life throws a lot at us that we don’t expect. Here’s an added scene, written just for this event.

The Mirror

Night had fallen. My eyes drifted over the small privacy windows at the top of the bathroom walls. Sleep was coming. If I believed in fairytales, I’d wait for the Sandman.

He’d save me from this fucked up world, make me feel whole again, take me to a place where I could see Mom, Dad ….

I pushed my thoughts away and sunk back against the wall. My head leaned right and nodded as my eyes pulled me into darkness, relief from the world. I forced them open one last time to make sure there were no feet beneath the stalls. There was something behind the toilet—a pen or marker. My heart jerked at the sight of it. I felt what those cavemen did centuries ago. The incredible urge to leave my mark, leave some kind of evidence that I ever existed. Tomorrow those things out there—out in the world—outside this bathroom, could tare me to pieces.

I glanced at the dagger that had slid into the shadows. I didn’t want to have to be there, stuck in a bathroom, alone, cold, hungry, staring at the stitches in my wrist, wondering if it’d be easier just to die. Every time I close my eyes, they’re there. I see my parents smiling at me, hugging me goodbye like they were supposed to. My sister had an infectious laugh; anytime she smiled it forced into one. Then I see Dominic, his bare ass pounding between her legs, spread out on my mattress. I hope they ripped him apart.

Where was the sandman when I needed him?

I looked away from the dagger at the toilet and forced myself from the cold cement floor. My reflection followed me past the mirror and disappeared as I entered the stall. I kneeled in front of the porcelain bowel and leaned behind it. The tips of my fingers touched the pen, sliding into a thick, sticky substance. I tired to pull the object closer, but it moved further away.

I sat up. I can’t even get a pen out from behind the goddamn toilet. My head sunk against the toilet’s rim and the tears came. They were warm. Why me? Why am I left? Why can’t I do anything right? Why is everything …?

Something smacked the window.

I sat up. My whole body tightened and the tears trickled to a stop. Time pounded by in quick heartbeats until I gave up listening, for any evidence as to its cause.

I wiped my fingers on my jeans and reached around the other side of the toilet. My middle finger touched the pen’s tip. I pressed down as hard as I could. It flipped and I grabbed it. It was a magic marker.

I sat up, listening, waiting for one of those creatures to pound in the door and tare the one, small accomplishment from my fingers—with no Sandman to save me.

The moon had inched across the night sky by the time I exited the stall. I could graffiti the whole bathroom. Anything I could dream up, anything I wanted to leave for the next person rested in that moment, in my hand.

I stepped in front of the mirror allowing it to capture my worn reflection. The woman, who looked back, looked so tired, beaten. Beaten. I wanted to look away, but if I did, what would be left? The Sandman could take me away and no one would ever know. No one would care. No one was left to mourn me.

The woman’s fingers shook as she reached for mine. My fingers pressed against hers and I felt nothing. You’re nothing. I closed my eyes.

You can give up, die with the rest of them, or you can live. Leave something. Tell them your name, your story. Tell them. Give them something to remember you by.

I opened my eyes and took the cap off the marker. I had never graffiti anything. It had always been wrong. Now I couldn’t understand why. Why we were all expected to leave no evidence behind.

I pressed the tip of the marker to the mirror. If it’s only my name, I’ll leave something. The girl in the mirror inhaled and held her breath as she pressed the tip of the marker to mirror.

I drew down the line for an E and a faint, dried-out marker line left nothing. I let go of the marker. It fell into the sink and landed on the drain.

I wish I could believe in fairytales.

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