Today in celebration of his blog tour, Robert
Gray is guest posting about the inspiration behind
Eve Hollows. Welcome, Robert!
I believe every story is inspired by specific questions the author wants to answer. When I started thinking about the kinds of questions to initially ask in the Eve Hallows books, I had two main influences: the old Munsters television show and a short story by Ray Bradbury called The Homecoming.
If you remember the Munsters series, you might also recall the only human in the family, Marilyn. Besides a mention or two that she was niece to the vampire Mom, Lily, there was no real explanation of how a human came to live with a family of monsters. Also, it was never explained why these monsters moved to the human world in the first place. These were the first two questions I wanted to answer.
Bradbury's The Homecoming is one of my favorite Halloween stories. It's about a young human boy, Timothy, who is raised by a loving family of monsters. As a kid, I thought it was a fun story, though it became sadder the older I got. I wanted to explore some of the emotions of Bradbury's short story, particularly the way Timothy feels about being the only human in a family of monsters, so a big part of the Eve Hallows books is answering the question: How does it feel to be so different from everyone else, even other humans?
From there, Eve's story branched off and became its own thing, but these two influences planted the seeds for the story, giving me the questions I wanted to answer. After all, it's the answers that make a story unique, not the questions themselves.
For fourteen-year-old Eve Hallows, life can be summed up in one word—horrible. She has the most horrible friends. She lives in a horrible old castle. Even her family is a bunch of horrible monsters.
However, in the monster-inhabited world of Gravesville—a world where messages are sent through Ouija boards, jack-o’-lanterns get facials to suit their moods, and the worst thing Eve has to deal with are those annoying zombie tourists who overrun her favorite graveyard during the Halloween season—horrible means wonderful. And everything for Eve is perfectly horrible.
But her life is about to go head over heels when a mysterious group known as The Source starts terrorizing Gravesville. Now she must move to the human world—where everything is opposite ... and for Eve, that's absolutely adorable!
EVE HALLOWS AND THE BOOK OF SHADOWS (BOOK 2)
Ever since encountering The Source and its minions on Halloween, Eve Hallows has found life surprisingly quiet … not to mention adorably boring! So when Dad receives a Ouija message that she must return to Gravesville, Eve couldn't be happier—at least until she discovers the Director of URNS, also known as the Grim Reaper, has a special job for Eve … one that will lead her to New York City and to the true identity of The Source.
With The Book of Shrieks offering zero help and a new URNS agent driving the school boys—and Eve!—crazy, Eve's beginning to realize this whole saving-the-world nonsense isn't what it's cracked up to be.
All this and she still has to find The Book of Shadows....
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Robert Gray is a writer. If that job description doesn't impress you, how about fantasy writer? Too general? Well, he doesn't get insulted if you call him a horror writer. If horror's not your thing, then scratch out horror and replace it with suspense. And for the kiddies, you can slap on a YA or MG in front of that title.
Gray lives in Bushkill, Pennsylvania with his wife and two children.
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if you need somoen who does a great interview let me now i love to read and blog
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