Steve Feasey describes himself as a late starter, discovering his writing vocation in his thirties. His debut novel Changeling was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize. He talks here with Nikki Gamble Changeling and the appeal of horror.

 Changeling is a debut novel, so I’d like to start by finding out a bit more about you. Have you been writing for a long time or did you appear overnight on the writing scene?

I came late to the game and perhaps I entered the whole thing a little bit naively. Changeling is my first book and I didn’t have any other books hidden under the bed when it was published. I do appreciate just how incredibly fortunate I’ve been to write one novel and to have that one novel published. Yes, that’s a good hit rate! And because I haven’t been doing it for a long time, it’s still wonderfully new and mysterious. Of course, when it doesn’t work, it’s the worst thing in the world.

So where did you begin?

I was watching a BBC 4 programme about the emergence of adventure books and how they were mostly written for teenage boys in the 40s and 50s, and into the 60s. Then they just died away in the ‘70s. I was caught in that maelstrom of when books stopped being written for teenage boys. I was an avid reader when I was growing up and I recall very clearly there being a void for teenagers in the library and bookshops. In libraries there was a children’s section, a reference section in the middle and then the adults section – there was nothing in between. I went from Tolkein’s The Hobbit to Stephen King, from Stevenson and Kipling to Cornwell because there wasn’t anything specifically written for me. It was too big a leap in my mind. The BBC4 programme was examining how Rowling, Horowitz and Higson were once again writing for that audience. That’s when I realised that’s what I wanted to write.

So you see yourself as a writer for boys?

Well I hope girls will like the book as well, and the feedback that I’ve had from those that have read it suggests they do.

Reading patterns show that girls are big consumers of horror. Of course it’s not horror in the vein of Edgar Allan Poe or even Darren Shan. there’s a strong emotional element in your novel.

 I don’t think it’s a horror book really. I think it’s an adventure book with horror elements. There aren’t that many really scary parts in it. Although when I originally wrote it, it was for an older audience. Some of the language was a bit more fruity and some of the scenes were gorier. For example, there’s one scene in the hotel, where a woman gets killed, and when I originally wrote that I had the guy witnessing the knife going in and because he couldn’t get the knife out he was pulling it with his foot on the shoulder. However, when I came to talk about that scene with my editor, it had to go. There are still some gorey bits in there but I think you have to pick your moments for those very carefully rather than just make it a big gore fest, otherwise you lose all the impact.

Although you have toned it down for a younger readership than you originally intended, you don’t condescend to your readers. Your protagonist is a real 14 year old boy with 14 year old boy preoccupations.

 I think there’s nothing worse than trying to write specifically for an age group. It’s all very well being aware of an audience and thinking, well, I am going to write for an age bracket, of say between ten and 16. The minute you start writing in such a way, you lose the plot. I think you have to be true to the story and true to yourself, and just write.

Is it important that somebody else approaches the story with a different lens after you have written it?

 I think so. My editor, Rebecca is very good at knowing what works well for children and what doesn’t, so I trust her to help me with that kind of thing. I have a tendency to write the books older than they will eventually end up.

Trey, your central character, is quite a literary chap, he makes references to The Wizard of Oz and Macbeth, is there a lot of you in him?

Yes I think there is but you never really think about it while you’re writing. I think it becomes apparent after you’ve put the book away for a long time and then come back to it. I do spot quite a lot of me in Trey, and Trey in me. I suppose his upbringing was similar even though I was not an orphan child. I’ve got three older sisters but they’re all much older than me, and my parents split up when I was young, so I effectively brought myself up as a latchkey kid from about the age of ten. Books were my escape route from all of that. I think those literary references hearken back to the days when I was reading so much. I read everything and anything. There’s an obscure Robert Heinlein reference as well. Even if only 3% of readers pick it up, that’s nice.

It doesn’t matter if they do or do not. They can still appreciate the story.

You mentioned Stephen King, reading him is a good apprenticeship for becoming a writer.

King is such a great storyteller and ideas man. His style of writing’s superb because he’s all about the story. I think you keep people interested in a book, if you always drive the narrative through. As you say, a great apprenticeship. If you can develop a tiny bit of King’s skill, you’re doing OK. He lost it for a while but I think he’s back to his best again. Duma Key is terrific.

Have you read On Writing?

Yes, and in fact, I was reading that when I decided that I would try and write a book. A lot of the tips that he gives I picked up as I went along.

So, from where did the story for Changeling emerge?

In the beginning all I had was Trey. Well all I had was a 14 year old boy werewolf; I didn’t even have his name at that point. In the beginning the story didn’t have vampires; Lucien was going to be a long lost uncle and nothing more. Early on I had one scene - the scene in the gymnasium where Lucien forces Trey to come to terms with what he is and what he’s capable of. I had an idea that I wanted a beginning that was going to be traumatic for Trey and I had an idea of the ending where I wanted him to come through against all the odds, and I had that scene in the middle. The rest of it came into place almost magically. I don’t plot. That’s true even now with book three. I think plotting would spoil it for me. If I don’t know what’s going to be happening, hopefully the reader can’t second guess too much either!

Do you have some sticky moments working like that?

Well it is flying by the seat of your pants. I think I had writer’s block for the first time just recently, and I didn’t write for two weeks. I just got stuck, and I couldn’t work out how I was going to tie up various loose ends. I’ve probably got a little bit too clever for my own good with book 3. I took off with two different storylines that went in different directions, and I couldn’t work out how they were going to link back up at the end, so I just stopped writing. I couldn’t bring myself to write because I just thought I would write myself into a bigger mess.

So what did you do? Did you walk? Blow bubbles? Cry?

I just tried to forget about it, and I think that’s really useful. In the same way that when you’ve finished a book, if you’ve got the luxury of time to be able to put it away for a few months and then dig it out later, you realise what’s good, what’s tosh, what needs changing and how it’s going to work better.

I read that you think the werewolf has had a rough deal. Unlike the glamorous vampire, they’re not seen as sympathetic creatures,.

 I think there are pros and cons on both sides, aren’t there? And the big, big con probably of being a vampire is that you’re dead, which is a bit of a bummer. I think the immortality thing is overrated, if everybody around you is dying.

But they have the best costumes.

They are cool. I suppose since Twilight has been out vampires have become ultra cool. I’ve always liked the idea of werewolves, but the problem with having a werewolf as your main character is that if you rely on the traditional idea that werewolves are governed by the full moon, then you’re really restricted in what they can do and when they can do it. So you have to use devices that allow them to transform at will.

So you create your own mythology and challenge some of the myths that exist around werewolves…

Yes

Well your mythology is convincing, it seems to be well researched, or is it all invention?

 No, I did do a lot of research into vampires and werewolves, and those old legends. I wanted to see how much I could keep and how much I could play fast and loose with. The vampire thing was trickier than the werewolf mythology because there are so many people out there who are really into vampires. People even consider themselves to be vampires. Bram Stoker’s idea of vampires was far removed from the original legends but now we’re stuck with his imagery. I like some of those ideas, like the misting for instance. I really liked the word but I didn’t want Lucien to be able to turn into fog, so I gave him the ability to transport instantaneously from one place to another. It’s tipping a wink towards the vampire legends but playing around with them, and I quite like that.

Traditionally the werewolf is a very ferocious creature and feared throughout history. In my story a 14 year old boy is having to come to terms with that and is actually going to be the hero throughout the series.

Where did the idea for the dual state of the werewolf come from?

 I always had an idea where book two was going to go and I hoped I had an idea, a big enough idea for book three. So with that in mind I felt that I wanted there to be two different sorts of werewolf: a ferocious man-eating beast on all fours which is just a huge wolf and something else that is Trey. He has the ability to control his human emotions and thoughts and maintain those, while he metamorphosis into something which is half human and half wolf. The werewolves are more animalistic in the way they react and interact with each other whereas Trey maintains his humanity. That’s a great idea to play with because it allows different things to happen during those different states.

 It works from a human point of view in that we might all have a bit of the werewolf in us that needs to be kept under control. The werewolf could be seen as a metaphor for the state of being a teenager…

Yes, absolutely. The connection between werewolf and teenagers is an interesting one. It’s a trait that’s been explored lots of times by different people. The fact that Trey is changing from childhood to manhood is in some ways a less extreme version of the transformation from human to werewolf. It’s all piled on Trey in the first book, hopefully as thing go on he comes to terms with all that.

Perhaps that partly explains why the genre is so appealing to teenagers.

 I think it’s probably that horror, whether you’re writing or reading it, has an extra layer of heightened emotion. I don’t think any other genre allows you to play quite so hard and fast with people in the same way that horror does.

In other ways I think the genre is somewhat stifling. It’s a genre which is denigrated, though I don’t think it’s always been like that. King did a lot to help bring the genre to the fore. I think that before King horror was set in dark castles in some eastern European place or around satanic cults. He brought horror into the normal world so that you had horror in the kitchen with you. Then it became more mainstream.

 I think teenagers process horror differently to adults. I think it’s a way of testing yourself, measuring up…

Yeah, and maybe it’s just a reflection of what you’re going through at the time. The world’s against you, nobody understands you and you almost feel inhuman in some ways because you’re not a child and you’re not an adult.

 Let’s talk about the cattle prodding scene, where Lucien forces Trey to confront his nature. It’s an unsettling episode at least for an adult reader.

It was exciting to write. When I was approaching that part of the story, I knew I had to face a challenge. How was he going to make Trey become something that he really, really didn’t want to be? The cattle prod was quite an interesting means to an end. I couldn’t think of any other way without of Lucien exerting force without physically damaging Trey in some way. This is one of the passages I read at schools’ events. I find the children aren’t really affected by the violence in the same way as the teachers. In fact they often want more…

But isn’t a case of less is more? The impact in this scene works because the rest is toned down.

Yeah. It has a darker side too.

Lucien is presented as a good guy, so perhaps that forces us to confront the issue as to whether the end justifies the means. Lucien must have a darker side to even contemplate treating Trey in this way.

I think Lucien’s a really interesting character. I hope most people really buy into him. After she had finished reading the book, I asked my daughter who her favourite character was, thinking she would say Alexa or Trey. She surprised because it was Lucien because, ‘he’s really cool’. I’m interested in exploring that a little bit more. He is cool but the fact that he has done terrible, terrible things in the past and that he’s trying to make amends for that may be worth exploring. Well the seed for that is there.

Tell me about the names you chose for your characters. They are so apposite, each one fits the character like a glove. Some are obvious, like Caliban, for instance

 The only thing with Trey is that I wanted him to have a very short first name. I don’t know why his surname turned out to be French (Laporte) but once I had the name, I decided he would have some kind of French heritage. I think the ideas for names come from deep in the subconscious I was aware that lots of names are two plus two syllables, so you have Harry Potter and you have Alex Rider. At one point I was wondering whether I should follow the convention. The sounds of names are important. Even though Lucien Charron and Caliban are brothers they have different sounding names. Lucien Charron is quite flowery and flows nicely. Caliban is a hard sounding name. I suppose that’s why I picked them for those characters. I think once you hit upon a name, you know it’s right. You could write 60 names down and all of them would be wrong and then something will happen that will just suggest a name and you’ll know instinctively that it’s right.

Do you find endings or beginnings more difficult to write?

I find the building of the story challenging because I quite like books that don’t start off with a big flash, bang, wallop. Changeling starts with a destroyed room but the reader is probably expecting a dead body somewhere. But I can’t write like that. I don’t think I can go for the big wow in the first two chapters. I think it’s better to pull people in first. By chapter four or five, I’m happy to have those big moments.

 It’s a matter of personal preference; I’m happy to give a story time, to enjoy the sensory writing…

Again, that’s Stephen King. I think it’s different if you’re writing a crime thriller. With mystery and crime thrillers you know within the first, couple of chapters that you’ve got to have a dead body or it’s just not going to work. I don’t think horror has to be like that. I think you can use more sensory writing to create an atmosphere and build relationships. That’s especially important in a first book in a series because you have to have people empathise with the characters.

The big opener can become rather formulaic

Yes and I try not write in a formulaic way. My first book is quit simple but the second and third books are a bit more complex. There are two stories going on, and they are intercut between chapters.

Your writing is very visual. Do you think that comes from your previous job working with image processing?

 Yes, I think so. I was looking at so many photographers’ images and I’m a very visual person in the way that I learn, which is great as a writer, because when you flick your eyes back and look into another world it’s great to be able to see it. The only thing I have to remember is that it’s not all visual, you have also to describe smell and sound and touch. I realised early on that I was relying too much on visual images to begin with. I think that’s why Trey’s is great to write because he does have these other senses, and wolves are much more reliant on sense of smell and taste.

 Was the epilogue the beginning of the second book or written specifically as an epilogue?

 It was added in as an afterthought. The ending has been a double-edged sword. I had emails from people saying you can’t just say to be continued, which is great in one way because it means the book has the go the right reaction. But some people were upset by the cliff hanger ending.

David Fickling would say that anger is a sign of love.

It’s a nice thing because people care about what happens next and they have bought into the story. They care about the characters and I really do want the characters to be rounded.

What did you learn, if anything, about yourself as a writer in writing this book?

 Well, I think I learnt that I can actually write, which was a lovely thing. I can do something that I wasn’t trained for, I haven’t been on any courses but I love stories and I can tell stories. And long may it continue because now I’ve discovered writing I feel I should have been doing this earlier.

Thank you Steve Feasey for talking to Write Away.