Zombies, tax and cold soup

“But isn’t that a little too much for teenagers?” 

That’s the question I get. But only from adults. No teenager has ever asked that question. 

I am five books -- roughly 2,500 pages -- into the Gone series, with Fear having just been released and the final book, Light yet to come.  I’m also one book into the BZRK trilogy. I’m the author or co-author of better than 100 other books, many of them dark and twisted. In all that, I’ve cut exactly one scene because I thought it might be over-the-top. There is a character in the Gone series, Lana, who can heal with a touch. At some points in the long story of the The FAYZ, as we call it, kids are starving and even, in a couple of regrettable instances, reduced to cannibalism. So I thought, hmmm, a kid could slice off a bit of his thigh, eat it, thus satisfying his hunger, and then simply have Lana heal the wound. Granted the entire experience would be unpleasant, but then so is starvation.

I happened to mention this idea to my wife, Katherine Applegate, and she said, “Why am I married to you?” (Hardly the first time she’s wondered that.) So I backed off that scene. But only in part because I thought it might be too gruesome. I was actually more concerned about causing a genre-shift: I didn’t want to suddenly find myself writing a zombie story.

As I said, adults do sometimes express concern that I am bruising the gentle souls of their children. They think my books are too grim.  Too dark. Too scary. For their babies.

Let’s interrupt for a short quiz:

1: You see a person riding a skateboard down a set of stone steps.  How old is that person?

a) 74
b) 34
c) 14

We all know the answer. 100% of you will get the right answer. Because we all know that teenagers are reckless. Or fearless. Same thing, pretty much. The 34-year-old and the 74-year-old are not reckless or fearless, they are cautious. They are fearful. They have spent decades adding to their long, long (long) list of fears. Fears are to them as barnacles are to a derelict ship: adults are encrusted with fears.

A short list of the things that terrify a 34-year-old that do not frighten a 14-year-old:

Drunk drivers
Tax audits
Undercooked hamburgers
Unemployment
Chest pains
All other pains
The breakdown of civilisation

A shortlist of the additional things that terrify a 74-year-old:

Drafts
Biopsies
Cold soup

You want to scare an adult? Tell him you think he should have that mole on his neck looked at. It’s that easy. Want to scare a teenager?  Good luck.

Teenagers are immortal. They cannot be hurt, they cannot be killed, nothing is going to happen, mom. I mean, OMG, mom, you worry about everything. You don’t even let me have a life. All my friends are bicycling down the highway blindfolded, why can’t I?

Here are some useful statistics - because every article should have at least a few statistics. The number of teenagers killed by scary books: 0. The number of teenagers killed by chips: greater than zero. 

Not a single teenager has been scared to death by a book. I know, because I’ve been trying my hardest and yet as scary and dark and intense as my books may be, I’ve yet to be arrested on murder charges. 

But what of coarsening? What of a loss of innocence? What of the tenderness of spirit so typical of the teenager? (Yes, it is hard to write that with a straight face.) What of all the other vague, ill-defined-yet-surely-worrying effects we hear about on daytime television?  Shouldn’t we, as a society, protect our children from ever feeling the need to say, “Ewww!” or, “Whoa!”?

You, gentle reader, cannot see me, but be assured that I am stroking my chin thoughtfully and also wearing the Frown Of Concern as I consider these weighty matters. I am nodding slightly and may even release a sigh, as I contemplate the damage to be done to a teenager’s mind when that teenager reads a scary scene in a book.

For one thing, the teenager may upon reading a scary scene, become scared. I recall my own teen years when I read The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe. For weeks afterward I could not drink sherry. And H.P. Lovecraft, that villain, destroyed my childlike faith in a world where nothing is unseen or hinted at and no mysteries are concealed beneath the surface of ordinary life. As for Stephen King, I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to hold a job as caretaker of a remote hotel, so right there, my career prospects have been damaged considerably.

In conclusion, here are some good things to worry about when it comes to teenagers. Worry that they’ll become addicted. Or pregnant.  Or depressed. Worry that they’re being bullied. Don’t worry that they’re reading books. If your kids are reading books, chances are they’re going to be fine. So long as they’re my books. 

I can’t really speak for Suzanne Collins.

Fear by Michael Grant is published by Electric Monkey.