Real life's nasty. It's cruel. It doesn't care about heroes and happy endings and the way things should be. In real life, bad things happen. People die. Fights are lost. Evil often wins.
You can't hang around waiting for somebody else to pull your strings. Destiny's what you make of it. You have to face whatever life throws at you. And if it throws more than you'd like, more than you think you can handle? Well then you just have to find the heroism within yourself and play out the hand you've been dealt. The universe never sets a challenge that can't be met. You just need to believe in yourself in order to find the strength to face it.
Students never appreciate their teachers while they are learning. It is only later, when they know more of the world, that they understand how indebted they are to those who instructed them. Good teachers expect no praise or love from the young. They wait for it, and in time, it comes.
The message of 'Zomb-B' is that you have to listen to your own heart and head and question everything. Question stereotypes and the way the world seems or is being presented. Some of the people we should be most concerned about, dangerous right-wing bigots, sound convincing and reasonable.
One of the things I wanted to do with my own books was bridge the gap between 'Goosebumps' and adult horror.
All reading should be pleasurable! I don't like people who keep reeling out the 'books are so important' line. First and foremost, reading is about entertainment, the same as movies, video games and music.
I grew up on all sorts of horror - Hammer Horror and Vincent Price's 'Theatre Of Blood.' I loved the hidden, scary layers, but there wasn't that much around for youngsters in terms of horror books. I can remember reading Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot' and 'Cujo,' but I thought there should be more for teenaged horror fans.
Every generation likes to think that children don't read as much as they used to when they were young! You listen to some adults saying they were going around reading 'Ulysses' when they were seven or eight! I think children are voracious readers if you give them the right books and if you make those books accessible to them.
I wanted to write about racism and xenophobia in 21st Century England and Ireland, but I wanted to do it in an exciting way so that I could reach more readers. Zombies seemed like a good way to do that.
