Welcome to another Ask the Author – Spooky Edition!

To celebrate

To celebrate Halloween, we thought we’d treat you by rounding up a whole host of fantastic horrors authors and asking them how they’d celebrate the season with their characters. We have three of these posts sprinkled through the month for you to enjoy, so settle in and enjoy our second one – hopefully we’ve featured your favourite writers, or maybe you’re new favourite writers…

Read the first week here

Which of your characters would you want with you if you got lost in the woods?

Maria because she wears steel toe boots and knuckle dusters. Nothing is jumping out at us.

– V. Castro | Maria the Wanted

Alastair has his virtues, and one of them is taking charge of panicky people in crises. He’s divinely gifted and a trained swordsman who fights eldritch monsters for a living, so getting lost in the woods isn’t going to faze him. It also means he can fend off the cryptids, mutated spiders, cannibals, and whatever else lurks in the woods. I’ll just take a backseat and let him run the show, as he believes he was born to do. My one hesitation is that he wouldn’t be the best company; Alastair reserves his sparkling conversation for his favourite people, of which there are few. But, if the brooding silence starts to get to me, I can always bait him into an argument. He likes those.

– Danielle Knight | A Rather Vengeful Accord

Duane Minor seems like a guy who’d know his way around a deer stand, or how to make a fire in the rain. I imagine we’d get out of there pretty soon if he was taking the lead.

– Keith Rosson | Coffin Moon

 I feel Eric would be the best bet. His powers could maybe get us out of those woods.

– George Morris De’Ath | The Haunting at Morsley Manor

Phee from the Cerulean Chronicles, as she’d be able to bend all the trees so that we could find our way. Magic makes everything better

– TJ Klune | In the Lives of Puppets

Laura from my novella Dear Laura. Most of the story revolves around her walking through the woods to meet a man who has tormented her for thirty years. She’s got a compass, a lifetime of pent up rage and a few soggy map scraps to work with and she still doesn’t get lost.

– Gemma Amor | Dear Laura

 Evie Winstanley is the lead character in Circle of Shadows. As she investigates the mysterious death of her father, a dealer in occult books, she begins to unravel a sinister world of occult forces, unexplained deaths and growing danger. As she realises the extent of the dark forces ranged against her, she discovers that her younger sister may become the next victim. Evie’s a natural investigator, quick-witted, determined, and endlessly curious. By the end of Circle of Shadows she has grown into her new role as an occult detective. She’s impulsive and can be reckless, so her ideas don’t always work out. If lost in the woods she might choose some wrong paths, but she’ll keep going till she finds a way out. And she’ll be fun company along the way.

– Marisa Linton | Circle of Shadows

If I were lost in the woods, I’d want one of my main characters, Siri Monthan, close by. She’s a farm girl, she’s used to being outdoors and in the elements, and she’s nothing if not a survivor. Underestimate Siri at your peril. She’ll have a trick or two up her sleeve!

– Michael Nayak, author of Sentient, Book two of the Ice Plague Wars series

Charlotte, a hundred percent Charlotte. She’s the last person I’d want with me in any situation, except if there was a risk of mortal danger. Your typical Southern Belle now in her fifties—butter-warm on the outside, arctic-cold on the inside—Charlotte isn’t very good at being loving, or honest, or kind. But when it comes to protecting her family, she’d hack through acres of thorns and brambles to get them to safety. Lost in the woods, shipwrecked on a desert island, neck-deep into a zombie outbreak. Doesn’t make a difference. In times of crisis, Charlotte’s the champion I want.

– Rachel Louise Adams | No Rest for the Wicked

Hmm, I don’t know that any of my characters would be very good in the woods, considering that they’re all ultra-rich urbanites who are used to having everything done for them. Probably the most practical one in the family is Dardan Berisha, the eldest child and only son–although he did let his best friend die on his watch.

– Alma Katsu | Fiend

Definitely Ash from Bloom–as long as she was on my side. In her linen dress and Heidi buns, she’s the ultimate homesteader with nerves of steel and would have no problem hunting, cooking, and providing, not to mention defending. And if any creepy guys tried to corner us, she would make sure we ate well that night

– Delilah S. Dawson | Bloom

I don’t want to be alone in the woods with any of my characters, or meet them in a dark alley, or in a light alley for that matter. In fact, I’m going to go on record as saying I don’t think I want to meet any of my characters… anywhere. I’m keeping a safe distance, thank you

– Clay McLeod Chapman | Acquired Taste

Fola from The Tower of the Tyrant. She has a grab-bag of tricks to keep us alive – including a magical nightjar that can feed us, baby bird style, in an emergency situation. We might wind up wasting a lot of time investigating faerie rings or any odd elvish ruins she stumbled across, but we would make it out alive.

– J.T. Greathouse | The Tower of the Tyrant

Belle, the hound dog—obviously. If I’m lost in the woods, I want a nose that can find both the trail and the snack stash. Belle would keep me on course with her uncanny scent-tracking, bark off anything with too many teeth, and curl up beside me at night to keep the chill off. Plus, she’s got the kind of stubborn loyalty that means she’d never leave me behind, and she’s not big on chit-chat.

– Lindy Ryan | Another Fine Mess

Definitely Lucy from Moonstone. She’s a werewolf with heightened senses of direction and smell so we wouldn’t be lost for long!

– Laura Purcell | Moonstone

A returning character from Gorse in Ragwort has a particular affinity with trees. I won’t spoil who but she’d be exceptionally useful in the woods. Just don’t let her near any needles.

– Sam K Horton | Gorse

Isolde the unicorn. Who better than a mystical horse to help me navigate the treacherous woods?

– Lucy Lehane | Thirsty

Definitely Fei from The Nightblood Prince or Meiya from To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods. The other characters would kill me to save themselves in a heartbeat. Those two are the only two who would save me

– Molly X. Chang | To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods and The Nightblood Prince

Kesta is always appropriately attired for getting lost in the woods, right down to her combat boots. She is a woman made for endurance. Given everything that’s been thrown at her thanks to the viral outbreak that infected her husband, getting lost in some woods would represent a trifling inconvenience to her. She wouldn’t think twice about setting fire to the woods either, not it if got her out of there faster. As she wouldn’t really need my help orienteering, I could just focus on the snacks for our journey.

– Leigh Radford | One Yellow Eye

Arent Hayes. He’s a super competent ex-solider, but also an excellent musician, lively conversationalist, and probably cooks a mean mushroom stew. The danger there is that I’d be having such a good time I wouldn’t want to leave the woods.

– Stuart Turton | The Devil and the Dark Water

Mehrab from next year’s A Forest, Darkly. It is literally my ‘grumpy menopausal witch in the woods novel’. Mehrab (so powerful she’s a mononym) knows the forest like the back of her hand – or she thinks she does. She doesn’t know everything. Things can (and do) go wrong. But she’s good company and no nonsense, handy in a fight. Very grumpy.

– Angela “A.G.” Slatter | The Cold House

Gabriel is impressively unflappable and would remain calm, though he’d probably blame me for getting us lost in the first place. While he has zero outdoors skills to speak of, I would feel very safe knowing the searing force of his glare could make even the scariest of forest monsters cower and flee.

– Camilla Raines | The Hollow and the Haunted

Sir Una Everlasting, hands down. Like, what if we needed to huddle together, for warmth?? In this scenario it’s simple math to choose the biggest and hottest character.

– Alix E. Harrow |  The Everlasting

This one is easy. Olga Volikova from Ascension, the Russian microbiologist. She’s hardy, clever, observant, and would take no nonsense from any wolves, witches, or ill-intentioned folk coming our way. Plus, she’s got a real sense of adventure about her, so while she might not immediately get us out of the woods, she’d probably get us into something a lot more interesting

– Nicholas Binge | Ascension

Mikołaj, of course. He’s attuned to nature and wilderness in a way that’s going to be really helpful in a dark wood at night. I suspect he’s half fairy or something, perhaps somehow related to Dziewanna, the Slavic god of forests. Or perhaps he’s just really, really good with everything that grows green from the earth. In any case, if there’s someone who can get us out the woods, it’s him.

– Andrea Morstabilini | A Blood as Bright as the Moon

Definitely Mae. She belongs to a coven. Their name translates to “night weavers,” but most importantly, she’s got experience with casting spells and running through forests. I have no doubt that she could find her way out of the woods. I’m not sure I’d entirely trust her, but I figure as long as I didn’t piss her off, we’d both get home alive.

Christopher Golden | The Night Birds

I would take Mallory Hawthorne, MC of The Undetectables. Her scientist’s mind would refuse to panic and she would probably implicitly understand moon positioning and how to find true north, and I fully believe she’d have a theoretical range of survival skills she’d come across in a book at some stage. Plus, her chronic pain and fatigue would mean we would be equally motivated to get unlost ASAP

– Courtney Smyth | The Undead Complex – The Undetectables series

I think Nia, from The Way Up Is Death, would be my lost-in-the-woods person. She’s smart, doesn’t panic easily, and I could trust she wouldn’t sacrifice me to whatever that strange supernatural figure following us is.

– Dan Hanks | Swashbucklers and The Way Up is Death

Oh I would definitely want Desiree, Sierra, Jesse, and Gabrielle from my Teenage Girls Can Be Demons story “Benny Rose the Cannibal King” around. Those girls know how to survive, so we wouldn’t be lost for long.

– Hailey Piper | Teenage Girls Can Be Demons 

The Thin Kid from Horror Movie. If he’s anything like me, he won’t have any survivor skills, or skills useful for surviving the woods, anyway. He might have a chainsaw with him, though, which could maybe help cut through some rough patches. And since we’re the same size and height, I’m sure he’d let me borrow a sweatshirt if I get cold. He kinda owes me.

–Paul Tremblay | Horror Movie 

Agnes Gunn hails from a part of Scotland famously without many trees, but she’s still the person you want in your party if you were lost anywhere. She’s savvy and has a particular way with nature, and if you ran into anything untoward chances are she could stare it down and send it on its way in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. Not to mention she’s well-used to cooking over a fire, so you’d be full of delicious porridge as you stumble towards civilisation.

– MK Hardy | authors of The Needfire

Nell. She managed to negotiate a treacherous walk through a snowstorm on her own and lived to tell the tale. I’m sure she’d get me out of a wood.

– Heather Davey | The Ghosts of Merry Hall

Jodi, from Secret lives of the Dead. She’s quiet and unassuming to those who don’t know her, but she’s also confident, utterly prepared for the unexpected, and she knows her way around a woodland. She’s spent years preparing to confront danger, so if we’re in the woods alone and someone, or something attacks … I’d want Jodi there alongside me. Trouble is, I’m sure she could run faster than me…

– Tim Lebbon | Secret Lives of the Dead

Dread from It’s Only a Game because he’s the most likely to have been a boy scout. It’s a gamble, though, because if we didn’t find our way out early on, he’d eat all our food fast!

–Kelsea Yu | It’s Only a Game