Welcome to my spot on the Red Eye Blog Tour, I have Alex Bell on the blog today with a Q&A, so a great thank you to Alex for answering my questions.
If you guys haven't read or heard of Frozen Charlotte (you can read my review here), it's a part of the Red Eye Horror series that's being published by Stripes Publishing, the first in the series, Frozen Charlotte along with Sleepless by Lou Morgan were simultaneously published on the 5th January, so they're out now to buy, Frozen Charlotte here, and Sleepless here. You can also check out the trailer here.
Q&A Time!
1. What was the last book you read? And if you can remember, the first book you read?
The last book I read was The Executioner's Daughter by Jane Hardstaff. A brilliant, magical tale set in London during the time of Henry VIII. Highly recommended.
I don't think I can remember the first book I read. Possibly a Meg and Mog book?
2. Who is your inspirational author in the horror genre?
Henry James for The Turn of the Screw and Dennis Wheatley for The Haunting of Toby Jugg. Both very disturbing and creepy in very different ways.
3. Were there any songs used while writing scenes/ a Frozen Charlotte playlist?
I know a lot of authors write to music but I've never been able to do that. I find music really distracting so I don't have writing playlists as such. However, the Frozen Charlotte dolls are based on an old folk ballad called Fair Charlotte and I wanted to know how that went so I listened to this video on YouTube a couple of times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvfdFXxrlSA
4. What was your favourite scene in Frozen Charlotte to write, and why?
Hmm. I had a few scenes I particularly enjoyed writing, usually the scary ones. The bath tub scene, for example. I also loved writing Dark Tom's lines and anything to do with what happened at the school house in the past.
5. Have you (or anyone you know) had any paranormal phenomena experiences?
One of my earliest memories is of being on holiday in Cornwall when I was three-years-old. We were staying in a cottage that kept having power outages so we had to use candles. I wouldn't go to bed because I thought I could see pixies crawling all over the walls. I even started to freak my parents out in the end. Obviously, they must have been the result of candlelight, shadows and an over-active imagination but I still have the clearest memory of a pixie running under my bed and out the other side of it, and not being able to understand why my parents couldn't see it. So that's a bit of a weird one but I reckon it still counts!
6. As used in Frozen Charlotte, have you ever used a form of a Ouija board?
Whilst at junior school my friends and I went through a phase of making Ouija boards by writing all the letters and numbers out on a piece of paper and then using a bottle cap or something as the planchette. We entertained ourselves with this during lunch and break times but I can't remember ever doing it in the dark at a sleepover or anything like that. A Ouija board is something I would never seriously want to muck about with. You hear too many stories!
7. As there are different interpretations of every other paranormal thing out there, did you learn anything new while researching/writing?
8. When did you first come up with the idea for Frozen Charlotte?
I was looking for a creepy old song to come out of the phone when the main characters are mucking around with the Ouija app and that's how I stumbled across the Fair Charlotte ballad. Then I found out about the Frozen Charlotte dolls and everything fell into place then. Up until that point, the dolls were going to be voodoo dolls but I thought the Frozen Charlottes were really unique and creepy and worked much better.
9. Any horror recommendations?
I loved This House is Haunted by John Boyne. It's a brilliant, Dickensian, classic ghost tale with plenty of chills and twists. Like everything John Boyne writes, it really is fantastically good.
10. Name one thing you're scared of.
Clowns. But who isn't?
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Yikes, clowns. Almost as creepy as creepy dolls. ;) How about you guys, afraid of clowns? Had any paranormal experiences?
Don't forget to visit the next stop tomorrow over at Wonderous Reads!
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We're waiting for you to come and play. Dunvegan School for Girls has been closed for many years. Converted into a family home, the teachers and students are long gone. But they left something behind...Sophie arrives at the old schoolhouse to spend the summer with her cousins. Brooding Cameron with his scarred hand, strange Lilias with a fear of bones and Piper, who seems just a bit too good to be true. And then there's her other cousin. The girl with a room full of antique dolls. The girl that shouldn't be there. The girl that died
About the author:Alex Bell always wanted to be a writer, but embarked upon a
Law Degree as a back-up plan, writing no fewer than six novels
during her time at university. Now the published author of The
Ninth Circle and Jasmyn, Alex happily dwells in an entirely
make-believe world of blood, madness, murder and mayhem.
I think I would find it hard to write with music on as well. I can't even have it playing when I write reviews.
ReplyDeleteI prefer it on, though sometimes I do end up writing the lyrics in instead, haha.
DeleteGreat interview. Dolls really CAN be creepy. It's the eyes!
ReplyDeleteRight? Totally is, how they can stare at you wherever you go though the eyes don't move.
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