Darren Simpson on his latest frightening folk tale: Lykewise

I want to start by saying I loved the book. Lykewise is really gripping and genuinely scary. Certainly scarier than the books I read as a young teen! What drew you to this genre as a children’s author? 

I like jumping around with genres. I don’t like to repeat myself, and I like trying new things. I’ve always enjoyed writing the darker, more gruesome and tense stuff, so I get to really indulge in that. Though obviously you’ve got to tread carefully when you’re writing for that age group!

I love most genres of horror, but this time I went for the folklore angle. There has been a resurgence in folk horror recently, and I find it a bit more creepy. It doesn’t rely on the jump scares you find in slasher movies. It’s unsettling, and it taps into deep-rooted feelings and superstitions. So, I got really fascinated with researching folklore. It’s so rich and fascinating how much it still permeates our lives. It’s timeless. 

One thing you learn from writing horror for young people is the power of suggestion. You don’t really see the grisly things happen, but you find out later what was going on. And that’s what makes good horror films work too - the shock of realising what’s been going on. You’ve got  to let the reader do a lot of the work. That’s really important in horror.

It’s clear that a lot of love has gone into the setting; I truly felt transported to the fenland village of Harrowmere. How did you go about building the world of Lykewise? 

I think with folk horror, the landscape plays such a key part. For Thirst [Simpson's previous book], the small town in a forest seemed like an obvious place to go. The forest is very handy for the action stuff, with the chase scenes and the hiding. But with Lykewise, though I knew what the story was, I didn’t know where to set it. I could have gone for a small forest village again, because the two books are set in the same fictional county, but I wanted to set this one in a different landscape. 

So I started looking at different landscapes, and the wetlands caught my eye. It's a great environment to start off with, to fill with your own folklore, ideas, and characters until it becomes a real little village. I’ve had a few reviews already and people do comment on how atmospheric the setting is. And that’s what I like about the fens as a setting. It’s murky. It’s foggy. I recently visited the Attenborough Nature Reserve to take a few photos for the book because it’s a similar setting, and absolutely gorgeous. Just the reflections on the water, the sound of the birds… I’m glad I went for the wetlands.

What also struck me was the idea of communities living in the fens, who have learned to survive in this tricky landscape. The buildings are unsteady, they’ve got disease and mosquitos. In the olden days, communities living in the fens were sort of outsiders because most people thought ‘why would you live there?’ I drew a lot from that for the community in the book as well. They’re outsiders, but they’re quite close-knit because of that. And it’s that tight-knittedness that hopefully makes the tension and the paranoia of someone not being what they seem more effective. 

Speaking of the community, I loved that in Lykewise, it’s not just a group of plucky kids with oblivious adults in the background. Your grown-ups are full, flawed characters with a real role to play in the story. Was that a conscious decision? 

It wasn’t all that conscious. I started with the kids and what they’re going through, as they drive the narrative. But so much of the story relies on paranoia within the community, and I think by giving those adults a bit more depth, fleshing them out a little more, I hoped the reader would be more invested. I want readers to have their own suspicions of who the Lykewise might be, to have an idea of how the community works and who’s who, so you can start making guesses. So I think it came out of necessity. But I know in young fiction, you often get dead parents as a way to leave the kids to do things by themselves. But in this one, the adults are really crucial. 

Plus, the adults really tie into the complexities of the two main characters. Beah and Dunn have their own issues, and that comes very much from their families. So you’ve got to flesh out the parents so the characters make sense. 

While we’re talking about process, how would you say you begin writing a book? Do you find there’s a particular way in which a novel comes to you? 

I wish I did, because then I wouldn’t have those periods of not knowing what to do next - or panicking that I’m out of ideas until something eventually comes! I don’t really have a process as such, but I’ve learned that when you try and force a new idea, it backfires. You just end up putting out duds and getting desperate. 

So I’ve learned now to take my time and to take things in. Focus on reading, recovering, taking in lots of art, and movies… So that’s my process now. Once I’ve got a blank page, rather than sit staring at it, I know I’ve just got to wait patiently until something comes, and be open because something will eventually come. I have a big document full of notes on things which strike me, or resonate in some way that I might explore. 

And it can be just a moment. For my first book, Scavengers, it was at Calverton Recycling Centre; just seeing the cats that live on the rubbish eventually spiralled into Scavengers. The Memory Thieves was inspired by a car crash, which got me thinking: ‘Would you lose bad  memories - what’s the cost of that?’ So I know I’ve just got to wait. But I do try to feed it at the same time.

For Lykewise - I just loved writing Thirst so much! I loved being allowed to be so horrible in a book that I thought, ‘I’ve got to do this again.’ So, I asked myself: what really scares me? And  I thought of John Carpenter’s The Thing, which is the whole impostor-genre. It’s grotesque and horrible, but the best thing about it is the suspense and the dread and the paranoia. 

The idea was there quite early to attempt an impostor story in a folk setting. There were lots of great things that I came across in folklore to play with and adapt - things like changelings and skinwalkers. Loads of cultures have their own ideas of impostors; the fear of the uncanny or someone not being what we think they are. 

You describe yourself as a writer of ‘vivid and unruly fiction,’ which I love - it really gives the feeling that your work takes on a life of its own. How would you say that manifests in Lykewise? 

I hope it’s vivid in the sense that it creates a place, and that’s something I really enjoy reading and writing. In terms of ‘unruly’, at the end of the day, I think it will shock some readers. My publisher is great because I think some publishers would play it quite safe (and rightly so!) But Pushkin Press and my editor really acknowledge that this is a horror book. 

I would much rather risk being slightly too scary than being too tame, because I think young readers don’t want that. They don’t want to be patronised, they don’t want things to be safe.  The number of times that I’ll show something to my kids that used to terrify me, and they’ll just say: “That’s lame, Dad.” So I hope that Lykewise is unruly in the sense that it is not tame - it’s proper horror for kids. 

Lykewise explores some complex themes, most centrally the idea of the light and darkness within us all. What do you hope readers take away from the novel? 

I try not to be too didactic about the theme of the book or what readers should think about. But it’s good to leave people with thoughts. So the main thing I want them to take away is: to be entertained, but also the idea of acknowledging your bad side - accepting it and exploring it. We all bite our tongues for things we shouldn’t say, we all have biases, that sort of thing; and it’s all about catching yourself, working on yourself and bringing out the good side that stops all that stuff. 

There’s a dedication in the final version of Lykewise: “For your darkness and your light.” I think a lot of creativity stems from that darkness: Karl Jung talks about the ‘shadow self’, this subconscious part of you that has all your secret desires and fears that controls you in ways you don’t even realise. And it sounds like a dark thing, but it sparks a lot in us too. People are complicated; they do have good and dark sides, and sometimes there’s positive stuff that comes from the dark, you know? So that’s the message overall, I think, just about accepting that in yourself. It’s quite a shock to admit to that dark side of yourself, but at the same time, it’s probably quite healthy to explore where it comes from.

Lykewise is available for pre-order from bookshop.org, your local bookshop and the usual online places.

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