Worthy Readers!
Welcome to another Worthy Read review and author interview!!
This time I interviewed Dora Mitchell author of the new book Haunted Serpent!!
Worthy Reader Haunted Serpent Review of Haunted Serpent:
Young sleuth Spaulding is afraid. Creeped out by the emerging scary creatures and dastardly people around his hometown. To make matters worse, he is an outcast outsider trying to find where he belongs amidst the murky mysteries of his community. This hauntingly relevant story is sure to resonate with readers trying to find their tribe, their community and their place in the world.
Official Author intro:
Dora M. Mitchell is a writer, illustrator, and children’s librarian living in a small Northern California town that dates back to the Gold Rush. She writes surrounded by dark woods where the evidence of mining days can still be found hidden away among the trees—the inspiration for the setting of her debut novel, The Haunted Serpent (Sterling Books, June 2018). Her illustration work can be seen in The Boatman, by Kat Hawthorne (BookFish Books, 2015), and in her all-ages mystery webcomic, The Curse of Crooked Mile.
Dora intro in her own words:
I live in a small Northern California town, in an old house surrounded by trees. I like writing about weird little towns where people have things to hide and everyone knows everyone. If I'm not writing or drawing, I'm hanging out with any animals I can find -- my pets, other people's pets, birds, beetles, cows, whatever. I've been a vegetarian for 20 years, and I have two dogs, two house rabbits, and a very bad cat who wears stylish leopard-print underwear to keep him from peeing on the furniture.
Official Haunted Serpent intro:
Haunted Serpent official Intro:
Spaulding Meriwether, Thedgeroot Middle School’s new resident weirdo and son of questionable television ghost hunters, just wants to fit in. But after a revenant chases him through the woods, Spaulding suspects there’s something afoot in Thedgeroot. (At least he thinks it’s a foot. Maybe it was a hand. It’s hard to tell when you’re running away.)Then he notices the chimneys of the abandoned factory at the edge of town puffing smoke—and his dead next-door neighbor materializes, along with David, the missing pet boa constrictor that supposedly ate him. Spaulding can’t help wondering if these strange happenings have anything to do with his undead friends in the forest. Of course, Spaulding just has to investigate—but he may be biting off more than he can chew…
Dora’s intro in her own words:
The Haunted Serpent is my first book. It's about a kid named Spaulding Meriwether, who uncovers weird things happening in his hometown. Spaulding hopes unraveling the mystery will prove to the kids at school that he's not weird, he's actually totally cool and smart and completely right that the undead are on the loose. But it turns out the living dead aren't the only creepy creatures in town -- the place is crawling with ghosts, killer boa constrictors, scary schoolteachers, and murderous business owners. Spaulding can't handle all this on his own...which means he has to solve an even tougher mystery: how can he make friends when everybody thinks he's a weirdo?
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| Worthy Reader and Dora Mitchell at NCIBA Fall discovery show 2018 |
What is your intended audience for Haunted Serpent? Intended audience for the webcomic?
Intended audience as in age, or type of reader I wrote it for? As far as age, I'd say 8 or 9 and up (nobody's ever too old for kids' books!). As for the type of reader: I wrote it for imaginative kids, kids who'd love to have an adventure or stumble on a mystery, and especially for kids who feel like they don't fit in.
The webcomic is aimed at all ages, for anyone who likes a spooky, funny mystery. It's set in the 1910s, so if you like weird old-fashioned stuff, you'll probably enjoy it! Fans of Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline will probably dig it too.
I’m glad you felt the illustrations helped bring the story to life! Making the pictures as if they came from Spaulding’s notebook gave me a whole new feeling of what it would be like to actually be Spaulding. In fact, I went back and re-wrote parts of the story after I started drawing the pictures, because I felt like I knew Spaulding so much better.
As far as balancing the illustrations and text, I re-read the whole story and tried to imagine, if I were in Spaulding’s shoes, what would I write down or make a sketch of? What would stand out to me? What kinds of notes and things would I save as evidence? It was also interesting writing the notes in first person and the rest of the story in third person -- sometimes his notes give us a slightly different take than what the narrator tells us!
2. Why did you choose to focus on creepy haunted and or undead creatures?
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved scary stories -- even though I’m a pretty nervous person. My family went to the library every week, and I’d promise myself I wouldn’t check out any scary books...but they were always too tempting to resist, and I’d go home with an armload of them! I was petrified of the dark, and I had a lot of nightmares (and this was before the scary books. My brain came up with terrifying ideas on its own, as brains will do). I didn’t realize it at the time, but I think that’s why I liked creepy books. Deciding to scare yourself puts you in control; it shows you that you have power over your fears.
3. What are some of the most important influences on your book? Goosebumps maybe?
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Haunted Serpent, on shelves now! |
As for my artwork, many of John Bellairs’ books were illustrated with wonderfully creepy pen and ink drawings by an amazing illustrator named Edward Gorey. He’s my biggest inspiration as an illustrator. Another influence on the art side was Stephen Gammell, who illustrated the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series (not the newer edition illustrated by Brett Helquist). Fair warning, if you look up Gammell -- some of his art is almost too creepy to even look at!
4. How do you write in such an immediately relatable, funny and even familiar way about ghosts, dead things and creepy creatures?
Well, they say “write what you know,” so I just think about all the ghosts and ghouls and undead I’ve met...just kidding! :) (I don’t believe in ghosts, for the record!)
I actually do follow that advice, though. To me, “write what you know” doesn’t mean you only write about real things. It means you think about the feelings you want your readers to feel, and you find those feelings in your real-life experiences. Like, say I want to write about characters finding something spooky in the woods (and don’t I always!). Maybe I’ve never found a living dead guy lying in a shrub -- but I have been walking alone on a foggy day, heard a weird noise I couldn’t identify, smelled wet leaves underfoot, started to get a creepy feeling. . . So I use all the things I really saw, heard, smelled, and felt to make the imaginary scene come to life. That, to me, is how you write about weird and crazy stuff while making it feel real and possible.
5. What was your process like for writing The Haunted Serpent?
Spaulding popped into my head out of the blue. I heard his voice saying, “The name’s Meriwether -- S.S. Meriwether. But my friends call me Boat.” I felt like I’d made a new friend! But coming up with a story for him was a long process. It was only the second novel I’d completed, and I didn’t really know what I was doing. Now I know a lot more about how to craft a plot so it’s a much faster process, but Haunted Serpent took me six years to hammer into shape! Lots of trying different things, realizing they weren’t working, and starting almost from scratch again. Lots of how-to books and classes on plot and character development. For aspiring writers out there: be patient with yourself, and accept that some stories take a looong time to bring into the world! It’s all a learning process, and you’re never done learning.
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| Picture by Dora Mitchell from Haunted Serpent |
6. Eeriness is abundantly felt and seems to be a focus throughout the story. What made you choose this tone?
I just love anything eerie, mysterious, or creepy! I love a cloudy day, an old house, creepy woods. Not flat-out horror, but suspense. I think eerie stories are a good way to process real-life fears about things that are too big or overwhelming to think about directly. Life can be kinda scary, right? Stories with a feeling of suspense or eeriness can help you experience fear in a safe way that you can put aside when you want to be done with it.
7. The warnings in the chapter titles add to the feeling of caution yet they add moments of fun into the story. How do you mix humor with such a ghostly otherworldly story?
The idea for the Note to Self chapter titles came from thinking how Spaulding might respond to these bizarre events in his usual dry, kind of deadpan way. Spaulding’s scientific researcher attitude contrasted with the goofy/creepy things he’s facing became one of my favorite ways to mix in some humor. He’s a pretty matter-of-fact kid, so if he’s going to be dealing with ghosts and snakes and revenants, he’s going to try to draw some logical conclusions (especially because he’s determined to be different than his superstitious parents -- he’s going to handle the supernatural in an orderly way, thank you very much!).
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| Dora Mitchell |
8. I love the way the kids especially Spaulding use humor to face their fears. How can readers do the same in their lives?
Humor is definitely a powerful weapon against fear! (Just think about Harry Potter, when they learn to use Riddikulus.) Of course, real-life scary stuff, like mean kids at school or speaking in front of the class or whatever, is harder to face than a ghost -- since it’s real and, as I mentioned above, ghosts aren’t! It helps to remember that very soon whatever you’re facing will be just another memory. Your memories are your stories. Can you imagine how you’ll share this story with someone once it’s all over? Can you see what parts you’ll tell in a funny way, even if it’s not so funny at the time? Everything that happens to you -- even scary and hard things -- is your story, that you choose how to tell.
Were you an author or an illustrator first?
I started drawing as soon as I could hold a pencil, but writing stories started pretty soon after! Writing is harder, in my opinion, so I've spent more of my life intending to be an illustrator than an author. But eventually I realized that I love writing so much that I had to do it, even if it's really hard. So in college (while I was working on an art degree), I started really focusing on writing too, and ever since then I've hoped to make a career doing both.
Did the book always have plans for illustrations in it?
Not exactly -- I always drew pictures of the characters and settings as I wrote, just for the fun of it. I didn't expect to include them in the book. It wasn't until I'd finished writing the whole thing that an early reader commented that it'd be fun to see excerpts from Spaulding's notes, and that's when the idea for the illustrations came along.
What material did you start with? What were the primary sources for the Haunted Serpent story?
Lots of material came from my hometown. For example, the factory was inspired by the lumber mill in my town (it isn't out of business, but it does spew a lot of smoke -- yuck!). Mr. Radzinsky came about because I lived next door to a house that was kind of creepy and sad because a guy had died there alone, and I wanted to reimagine his story in a happier way. It's also an old mining town, so I read a lot about mining history and got ideas from some of the weird facts I learned. For example, it might seem unlikely that kids could just roam into old mine tunnels, but it turns out the U.S. is full of abandoned mines -- unmarked, and open for anybody to wander (or fall!) into. Yikes! That's the kind of stuff that makes me itch to write stories. :)
9. Above everything else What do message do you hope to share with readers from your new book The Haunted Serpent?
I hope that kids will embrace being different and not worry too much about fitting in. The middle school years are tough, but even if you feel like a dork, don’t worry, there’s always somebody else feeling the same way!
10. What’s next for you and your writing?
I post a new page of my spooky mystery webcomic, The Curse of Crooked Mile (www.owensuncles.com), every Friday. It’s about a boy named Owen who’s just been adopted by his mad scientist uncles -- I write and illustrate it, so if you liked Haunted Serpent, hopefully you’ll enjoy it too! It’s got all the fun, eerie stuff that by now we all know I love!
I’m also working on a sequel to Haunted Serpent, and another creepy mystery starring new characters, so keep an eye out for those -- hopefully in the near future. Thank you again for reading Haunted Serpent!
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From Dora Mitchell's Web Comic Curse of Crooke Mile |
Gratitude and social media links: Thank you to Dora Mitchell and Sterling Publishers!
Dora's Social media:
Twitter: @inky_beast
Instagram: @inkybeast
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authordoramitchell/
website: http://www.doramitchell.com
Sterling Publishers:
twitter: @sterlingkids
twitter: @sterlingkids
