Brittany Maresh

writer

Based on a day of watching bad horror movies and reading “real life experiences” from a variety of paranormal magazines and books (research, I swear).  Don’t take this list too seriously, because “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” is my idea of research

1. Before you buy a house, do some research!  Find out what it was before it was a home. Make sure it’s not built on old Native American burial grounds or a moved cemetery, an old prison, or the site of a particularly horrible catastrophe, like a fire that killed 15 people, or that girls don’t mysteriously disappear from the home.  Find out how often the house has changed hands. If it seems to be plagued by bad luck, and people abandon it or leave it all the time, I’d be wary. It might just be that the neighbors are bad, but maybe it’s not the neighbors you need to worry about. Maybe it’s the former occupant who didn’t quite leave.
2. Make sure the house passes the “small child” test.  Get a kid, say, ages 3-8, and ask them to find all the “scary” parts of the house.  See if they notice any people that aren’t there, or identify rooms they won’t go in to.  Or you can do the mini version, the pet test – like the “small child” test, except done with a cat or dog. Are they chasing invisible things, barking at nothing?  Did your goldfish go belly-up overnight?
3. Talk to the neighbors – and I mean all of them, even the creepy house to your right.  Have they noticed anything funny about the place?  Do they think there was ever a witch there? Have they had any strange incidents in the area? Are they living in a haunted home, themselves? Where is the local haunted house?   Are you living over an abandoned silver mine? Don’t leave out the local children – with parental supervision and permission – to find out if they think the house is haunted. Do they avoid it on Halloween?  It might just be for a reason. Also remember to check up with the area paranormal agencies, to see if the place has any reports of activity. Sure, the odds are someone might have told you, but maybe not.  People don’t want to look crazy.
4. Invite a pack of young adults to test the house out – if they survive the night, you’re good. Ghosts and demons can’t resist the lure of the young adults. Alternatively, if they flee before dawn, you might want to pass on the property.
5. Do a walk-through of the house, on your own. How does it make you feel?  As in all good horror movies, sometimes you just need to trust your instincts.

Lauren Oliver’s Before I Fall is a book to swallow whole, to devour quickly, and then to re-read more slowly. Honestly, I can’t believe this is (as I’m assured by multiple sources online) her “debut” novel. The writing itself is beautiful, and I didn’t once think the voice was faltering. Perhaps I’m too generous, but I was really lured in by the voice of the main character, Sam.
Far from perfect, Sam’s that girl you all know, and you all hate – pretty, popular, cruel, and unrepentant. Before I Fall is a shockingly vivid and insightful look at how she comes apart during the course of the book, finding layers underneath she didn’t know she was capable of having, while she relives a day that ends in her own death, seven times.

Sam isn’t the only compelling character in this story .
We meet Juliet, a social reject teetering on the edge. And her sister, a beautiful, interesting character waiting to be squished.

Izzy, who is Sam’s sister but more awkward and independent than any third grader has a right to be.

Kent, the world’s most dorky, adorable, and altogether heartbreakingly neglected good guy. He’s far too good for Sam, from page one, and even though I was dead set against liking his character, I couldn’t help it–I can see people I know in him, and people I don’t appreciate enough, day to day, too.

Lindsay rounds out the important cast by being the “bad” guy, the popular girl who helped forge Sam into what she is in the beginning: a mean girl.

The story itself is tightly written, a fast-paced story despite repeating the same day several times (to varying results). Each day takes us further into the picture, shows us more about the characters, and changes Sam, as well as our perception of the people she’s already cast judgment on.

I’m not sure it’s really my sort of book. I probably won’t hold on to it (if only because it’s so much easier to get people to read books if you give them to them). But it’ll stick with me, I think, at least for a while.

It’s not perfect, but it’s powerful.

Read this book.

Disclosure: I picked up this book because I saw the cover and thought “huh, it’s about a dead girl.” Also, because I have been hunting for ghosts, and I was craving a dead girl story. More of the ghostly kind, like Bad Girls Don’t Die than the sad kind, like Lurlene McDaniels. This book was neither, and shocked me in ways I couldn’t have predicted.
Further disclosure: I tried to find it on the shelves, because let’s face it, that cover is haunting, and they didn’t have it. I had to ask the book lady to get it for me. She couldn’t find it in the computer, but that darn cover, it was so striking she remembered it, too, and was (fortunately) able to find it for me. Yes, this is why I like my local bookstore ladies.
Some books you bring home from the bookstore, you read a few pages, you wander away to do chores, you come back, you read a bit more, you maybe go have dinner, finish the book in a day or two.
It was really worth the effort, though. The book is fantastic.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of chance or fortune in fiction. In the story I’m writing, there is nothing coincidental. I have too much magic to let fortune play a role. It’s a sort of re-telling of Sleeping Beauty, except with a twist that negates the whole sleeping thing. I don’t know how well it’ll turn out, but I do know that if I have even one apparently random coincidence, it’ll make the whole thing look a lot less genuine. It will fall apart.

How often in a book has a fantastic coincidence jarred you out of the story? For me, it’s something of a pet peeve. If the whole plot survives only because of random chance–not foreshadowed, carefully hinted at chance–I’m likely to hate it entirely. Those kind of books, I throw them aside and never finish them. And I definitely don’t buy the sequel.

I’m more willing to buy coincidence in non-fantastic fiction. If there’s no magic, it doesn’t seem less ingenuous to me. I can’t say why this is, but it’s true.

Right now, I’m struggling to get around a particular piece of fiction without throwing in a chance meeting. It might not be horribly unrealistic, but I know if I read it, I’d be setting the book aside wondering if there was a better way for things to pan out. As a writer, it’s something I’m struggling with. Either to make it believable, or to cut it entirely.

Maybe I’ll go back, hint at it, and make it believable–hint that it’s to come?

I suppose it’s time to go back to work. I’m going to try my best to make it work, and if I can’t, I’ll just cut it (even if I don’t want to).