Books like The Traveling Vampire Show — picked by fans

I love delving into a world unlike my own and navigating along with a young hero of a story. Sometimes rooting and sometimes cringing at the decisions they make. A story that challenges a young boy resonates with me, and what makes the coming-of-age description in a book is having the young hero deal with grown-up problems, often before he is prepared. All decisions have consequences, and all problems, no matter how seemingly trivial, have significance to the user. I enjoy stories that capture just this type of world and ones that do it in a manner where it is not forced. 

I think all horror authors have at least one coming-of-age novel inside them. I suppose I have some expertise on the topic because I recently finished my first coming-of-age novel, The Dancing Plague. I’ve written stories from the perspectives of children before. One of the challenges I found is getting the voice right. Kids think and talk differently than adults, so it can be a bit tricky finding the right balance between credibility and readability. Nobody wants to read an adult novel that sounds as though it was written by a kid. Conversely, nobody wants to read a novel that’s narrated by a twelve-year-old that sounds as though it was written by an adult.

I’ve always been intrigued by the behaviors of humans. Even as a child, I’ve watched how people interact with each other. We are all so different, yet we are all the same. Each of us has an imaginary box where keep some things locked up such as: our innermost desires—and our worse fears. Fears that, in a very subtle way, guide us in our life decisions. Afraid of blood… then you’d likely not choose nursing. Afraid of flying… then you probably won’t become a pilot. But what happens when we cannot avoid what we are most afraid of? This is where a horror story begins.

I think all horror authors have at least one coming-of-age novel inside them. I suppose I have some expertise on the topic because I recently finished my first coming-of-age novel, The Dancing Plague. I’ve written stories from the perspectives of children before. One of the challenges I found is getting the voice right. Kids think and talk differently than adults, so it can be a bit tricky finding the right balance between credibility and readability. Nobody wants to read an adult novel that sounds as though it was written by a kid. Conversely, nobody wants to read a novel that’s narrated by a twelve-year-old that sounds as though it was written by an adult.

As a queer reader and writer of horror, I have little interest in anything that could be deemed “positive representation.” Horror is most compelling when it gets honest and ugly about the bad, selfish, cruel, or simply unwise choices people make when they’re truly scared–and that includes queer people. I love queer stories that aren’t primarily romantic or neatly resolved. I like messy groups of friends, toxic emotional entanglements, and family dynamics that don’t fit in a Hallmark card. These days there are lots of stories in other genres about queer people becoming their best selves, but horror also has space for us at our worst.

I love books that whisk me away and keep me reading long into the night. There’s something so exciting about realizing you’ve been reading for so long that you have no idea what the time is or if it’s even the same day. I’m also incredibly passionate about horror and what it can teach us about ourselves and our society. Being diagnosed with epilepsy at the age of 12 made me feel isolated and alone, but horror granted me a form of escapism and taught me to embrace what made me feel different, something each of these books does. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did!

I write books for intelligent, adventurous, globally-minded teens who aren’t afraid to fall in love with someone different from themselves. I started as a journalist, so it is no surprise that my YA books contain a lot of facts to go along with the fiction. Whether you want to know about Japan (Tanabata Wish), the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 (Breathe), what it’s like to be an Olympic-caliber skater (Every Reason We Shouldn’t), or how unscripted television works (Faking Reality), I take readers on swoony journeys to unusual places. So, if you like books that educate as they entertain, I hope you’ll check this book list—plus my books—out.

I’ve been reading ever since kindergarten, and when I entered high school and discovered YA books, I found my home. Even when I read adult books now, I tend to gravitate towards rough-around-the-edges male leads. There’s just something fun and tempting about an anti-hero, bad boy, or morally gray male lead that always delivers spice and yearning. I’m a sucker for those bad boys who are only good for the girl who has their heart. While not all of my male leads are “bad boys,” naturally, I do tend to find myself writing quite a few of them and enjoying them, especially when you can show they’re multidimensional and have a soft side. 

I’ll tell you a secret. I’m obsessed with money—not fast cars, designer labels, and McMansions, but the accumulation of capital: who has it, how they got it, and what lengths they’re willing to go to to keep it. So I’ve always loved novels about work. They cut right to the heart of a character’s true motivations, revealing what they’ll fight for and who they’ll love. Don’t show me what a person looks like, show me how they earn (or don’t earn) their living, and I’ll remember them forever.

Having grown up in segregated Knoxville, TN, I've often wondered what having a black friend as a child would have been like. My MFA thesis, in the 1980s, was a novella about just such a friendship. A small group of my (white) MFA classmates insisted that I could not, should not write about black characters. Although I believed them to be mistaken, I put my thesis away and haven’t looked at it since. About ten years ago, I decided to try again. I took an early draft of a new novel to a workshop with John Dufresne, who encouraged me to continue. The result was Beginning with Cannonballs, which received positive reviews and won the 2021 IPPY Silver Medal for Multicultural Fiction.