Posts Tagged Halloween

Interview with Middle Grade Author M.D. Payne

By on August 20, 2026   /   Articles, Author Interviews   /   Leave a comment
Author Photo of Matt Payne sitting in a chair

M. D. Payne on His Newest Book Pumpkin Apocalypse

Karen Reeder: Matt, when I saw the cover and title of Pumpkin Apocalypse on the list of interview opportunities I was like, ‘yes! That ridiculousness is just what I need in my and my kids’ life! (And I hope you take ridiculous as the compliment it is intended) I really enjoyed reading Pumpkin Apocalypse and look forward to sharing it with my kids! Thank you for a chance to chat about this fun story!

M.D. Payne: Yes, of course, it’s such a pleasure to chat with you, and I totally appreciate the “ridiculous” comment. That’s totally what I was going for, so I’m happy to know it landed!

Cover Image of Pumpkin Apocalypse by M. D. Payne

Pumpkin Apocalypse

KR: We all know that kids have limited attention spans. If you ran into me on vacation and we were in an elevator to the lobby with us and our kids, how would your kids pitch your book to my kids?

MDP: My 7-year-old would say, “It’s a book about evil pumpkins trying to take over the world!!” My 14-year-old would say, “My dad’s a weirdo.” They’re both right in their own way.

KR: Can you tell us what inspired Pumpkin Apocalypse?

MDP: Every year, we bring millions of pumpkins into our homes, or onto our porches, and it made me laugh to think, “What if they were all evil!?” Like, if they wanted to take over the world, they’ve got a pretty big reach! Not to mention, I can’t think of anything more boring than a vegetable sitting in your house, so spicing up the idea of what they’re capable of is fun.

KR: Ha! A Vegetable sitting in your house! I never thought of it like that. You certainly made pumpkins all more fun! And maybe a little disconcerting.

Is any of the book based on personal experience?

MDP: Yes, I’ve been possessed by pumpkins!!! Wait, just kidding. (But if anyone has, please reach out and let me know…). Ahem. I mean, the story was based on a number of childhood experiences that I pieced together to make this completely fictional story seem real. Scenes like the kids talking over lunch in the lunchroom brought me back to my school lunchrooms (Rio Vista Elementary in San Bernardino, California; Stephensen Middle School in Mountain Home, Idaho), and a lot of the teachers and students were inspired by real people (in middle school, I actually had a Principal Prouty and Mr. Stewart was my science teacher). Molly is based on my daughter (the aforementioned 14-year-old), and my Grandfather’s voice was literally in my head when I wrote the character of Gramps.

Author Photo of Matt Payne sitting in a chair

M. D. Payne Middle Grade Author

KR: Love it! What about with you? What character from PA was childhood you most like? And can you share an example of how you were like that character?

MDP: I think I was most like Adam in childhood: the smart kid who was content reading a book. Though I’m a lot like Molly in that I’m such a people person (even though I wrote the character based on my daughter).

KR: PA feels like something that kids will just eat up! How do you channel your inner child when writing for kids?

MDP: There’s a certain freedom found in writing for kids — you get to bend the rules a little bit and be…what’s the word…oh, yeah, a little more “ridiculous,” and I love that. When I write, I think back to my days in elementary school and middle school, and what seemed to matter back then, and how it really all came down to having fun with your friends: life just wasn’t as serious, though emotions seemed so much bigger! So letting the emotions be bigger, but letting the fun and friendships feel bigger, too…

KR: One of the main characters is constantly battling a childhood fear. Are you willing to share a childhood fear of your own and if it affected you in anyway growing up?

MDP: I was terrified of bees and wasps when I was a kid. When I was four, a friend dared me to poke a wasp nest with a stick. I did…and was suddenly covered in wasps. I was stung more than a dozen times before my dad hosed them all off of me, and hosed the wasp nest. From that point on, any flying insect that buzzed near me FREAKED ME OUT. I had zero control over my reaction, I’d just jump and scream and flail. When I was a teen, I bent my dad’s car key because I slammed into his arm when a bee buzzed me while he was unlocking the door. To a certain extent, I still am terrified of bees and wasps, I’ve just learned how to control it better. But it’s a shock into my hardwiring that I’ll always live with. (Hmmm…could Bee Apocalypse be a sequel!?!)

KR: Yes! We definitely need a Bee Apocalypse book from you!

Your family is on a road trip in your family RV, you have a closet filled with something that represents something about your family, it is also what you are going to have to use to fight off possessed pumpkins. What are those objects?

MDP: I married into an Italian family, so our RV’s closet would be a pantry chock-full of homemade jarred tomato sauce, herbs, pasta, Italian Bread, probably fresh cucumbers and tomatoes. I’m not sure how we’d use all of that to fight off possessed pumpkins, unless they have a natural aversion to meatballs or Sunday sauce. Though we could send my mother-in-law out and she’d cook them into something delicious!

KR: Oh, I can’t wait to try what she cooks up! Can we expect more from you with Adam and Molly and their town? Anything else that you have in the works that we can look forward to?

MDP: I’m currently working on another book with these characters, and it’s been fun to revisit Little Pine! I can’t say much about the book yet, except that pumpkins are no longer involved, but a super-creepy haunted house is. But this is not your regular haunted house…(insert evil laughter).

Lightning Round

KR: What is the best part about fall?

MDP: The crisp air!

KR: Your writing snack?

MDP: Anything that won’t make my fingers messy while I type. Popcorn is a go-to.

KR: Favorite vacation spot?

MDP: A lakeside cabin.

KR: Best reading spot?

MDP: My bed.

KR: Favorite holiday?

MDP: If you can’t guess by now…

KR: Hobby when not writing?

MDP: Hiking or drumming

KR: Something you dressed up as for Halloween as a child?

MDP: A vampire. Like 1,000 times. But my James Madison costume in 4th Grade might be the most unique.

 

 

Back to Top

Interview – Christine Virnig, author of A BITE ABOVE THE REST

By on August 26, 2024   /   Articles, Author Interviews  

I had the great luck to get to read an early copy of Christine Virnig’s latest middle-grade – a Halloween themed adventure set in the very unique town of Samhain,Wisconsin. And, even though Halloween is still a few month’s away, I’m sure my interview with Christine is going to have you itching to break out the wax vampire fangs and your best monster lawn decorations.

Please tell us a little bit about A BITE ABOVE THE REST.

First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to interview me! I really appreciate it!

A Bite Above the Rest is about a kid who moves from California to Samhain, Wisconsin, a tourist town where it’s Halloween 24/7. Halloween decorations stay up year-round, people wear costumes every day, and the town hall keeps vampire hours, of all things. Being the new kid is hard enough on its own, but then a terrifying encounter with the mayor causes Caleb to wonder: Could there be more to his new hometown than meets the eye? Could real vampires and werewolves and witches be hiding amongst the fakes? He immediately sets out to uncover the truth, aided by his quirky new best friend, Tai.

The premise of this book is super interesting and super fun. What inspired you to write this story?

I was inspired to write A Bite Above the Rest from the moment the main character, Caleb, popped into my head one day. The poor kid was walking around with a wooden stake in his back pocket because he was terrified that he’d encounter a vampire or werewolf or witch at any second. But as scared as he was, nobody around him was frightened. They were all just going about their business as though nothing was wrong. I was immediately filled with questions—Who was this kid? Where was he? Why was nobody else scared?—and A Bite Above the Rest was basically my attempt to answer these questions.

You tackle some very real issues in this book. A parent’s death, a new town, bullying, and anxiety among others. What do you hope readers will take away from Caleb and Tai’s adventure?

I actually didn’t write A Bite Above the Rest with any lessons or take aways in mind; my only goal was for readers to have fun reading it. But despite this, I do hope that Caleb and Tai’s adventure will show kids that we can all be brave when we need to be, especially when we’ve got a good friend at our side.

Caleb and Tai do a lot of research on monsters. Werewolves, vampires, witches, and merfolk all play a part in this book. Do you have a favorite scary being? If so, what about them do you love?

Probably vampires?? I find their lore absolutely fascinating, and I love the idea of living f-o-r-e-v-e-r.

I have always been terrible at coming up with Halloween costumes/decorations. The thought of doing it every day is exhausting to me, so I really appreciated Caleb’s approach. What about you? Are you a Halloween superfan? Do you have a favorite costume from your childhood? Do you go all out decorating your house now?

Apart from the candy, I actually didn’t like Halloween that much when I was growing up. A large part of this dislike was the costumes; they always made me feel awkward and exposed. I still feel this way as an adult, so I’m a huge fan of Caleb-style punny costumes myself. This year I think I’ll go as a fork in the road!

And no, I don’t go all out decorating my house for Halloween. But thanks to the throngs of spiders that LOVE living by our front door, we’re at least bound to have a bunch of very authentic-looking spider webs hanging about 🙂

Will you tell us a little bit about your writing process? In particular how did you go about tackling this story?

My writing process for fiction is supremely inefficient. As soon as I come up with an idea—which might be a character, a setting, a theme—I brainstorm just enough so that I can start writing, and then I let the characters do their thing. This writing style is definitely fun (for example, I didn’t know if Caleb’s suspicions about his new town would end up being real or not until I was halfway done writing, which meant I got to be surprised too!), but it does mean I need to do a lot of revising and rewriting once I finally finish my first draft.

We know no writer is created in a vacuum. Could you tell the readers about a teacher or a librarian who had an effect on your writing life?

Yes! When I was first considering writing for children, I asked the youth librarian at the public library in Verona, Wisconsin to point me towards a few of their most popular middle grade titles. Among others, she grabbed How They Croaked by Georgia Bragg. This nonfiction book was my first introduction to the world of FUNNY nonfiction, and it inspired me to write my first two books: Dung for Dinner and Waist-Deep in Dung. I wish I knew that librarian’s name so I could thank her for unknowingly giving me the inspiration I needed to just start writing.

A Bite Above the Rest ends with Caleb getting some worrying information. Can you give us a hint about what we can look forward to next from you?

Of course! As much as I’d love to revisit the world of Caleb and Tai and Samhain at some point—and I already have some ideas!—my next book is another standalone that I hope fans of A Bite Above the Rest will really love. Slated to come out in late 2025, it features a cast of ghostly main characters who attend Phantom Academy, a school for underaged ghosts. I also have a picture book coming out sometime in the next few years, but those details are still hush hush.

 

Christine Virnig is a fan of books, candy, spooky stories, poop jokes, and coffee…in no particular order. As a former physician, Christine now spends her days writing books, reading books, and working at a library where she is surrounded by books. Christine lives in southern Wisconsin with her husband, two daughters, a ridiculous number of dust bunnies, and one incredibly lazy cat. You can visit her on the web at ChristineVirnig.com.

 

A BITE ABOVE THE REST is out now and available for purchase here or at your favorite bookstore. You can follow Christine on at her website or on Instagram.

 

 

Are you ready for some Halloween fun? If so, let us know in the comments.

 

 

 

Back to Top

Should Parents Let Their Kids Read Scary Books?

By on October 8, 2020   /   Articles, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers  

It’s the season of all things spooky, and readers of all ages are reaching for scary books. But for middle-graders, should parents, teachers, and librarians step in and vet kids’ frightening picks, or let their newly-independent readers decide for themselves how much spookiness they can handle?

To get advice, I turned to two experts: Derek Furr, Associate Professor of Literature & Dean of Teacher Education at Bard College, a reading specialist and former schoolteacher, and Trish Grace Malone, a children’s book author and psychotherapist based in the Hudson Valley. 

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

To start, it’s totally common if the children you know love reading frightening tales. After all, Malone says, “Scary stories are as old as storytelling and they fulfill important human needs. They draw us in with an immediate and compelling message – What would I or could I do if I were in this kind of scary situation? We are hard-wired by evolution to be very interested in how to survive,”

“There is satisfaction, even a kind of physical pleasure, that comes from not knowing, wanting to know, and finding out.”

A frightening page-turner’s attraction may be the same reason that such texts appeal to adults, adds Furr. “When reading a novel for pleasure, most of us read for the plot. A burning question pulls us in, suspense keeps us turning the pages, and a resolution is gratifying (especially if we’ve been right!) There is satisfaction, even a kind of physical pleasure, that comes from not knowing, wanting to know, and finding out.”

Beyond the engrossing thrills and chills, scary books can be beneficial for kids for a variety of reasons.  According to Malone, these books “Teach us lessons, like a ‘Beware of Dog’ sign for the psyche. Children need to know what might put them in danger. It might not be safe to trust a stranger with a house made of cookies and candy. Children also can feel a vicarious sense of courage and triumph by reading about how to defeat the monsters that lurk in dark corners.”

And Furr says that when he taught middle school, his students “devoured” the Goosebumps and Animorphs books, and that doing so seemed to set them up for more challenging ‘horror’ like Poe and Shirley Jackson down the line. Any genre that gets kids reading at this stage is, in his opinion, fantastic. “Remember that the intermediate years (grades four through nine) are crucial for the development of reading fluency—that is, increased reading speed by rapid word/vocabulary recognition and a sense of prosody. Reading volume–just the sheer amount of reading that a young person does, regularly–correlates with fluency and vocabulary development. Unsurprisingly, it has also been shown to correlate with academic achievement.”

“Exerting some kind of creative control over what scares us is one of the most powerful ways to deal with our fears.” 

I asked both my experts if parents should intervene if they’re concerned their student is going to scare themselves silly. Furr says, “I always think that it’s best to follow the child, especially if they’re reading,” but if your concern is that the subject matter may be inappropriate, he suggests reading along with the young person so you can discuss the book together.

Image by Peter H from Pixabay

Image by Peter H from Pixaba

Malone believes that most kids are smart about choosing the level of scary they can tolerate, and typically stop reading if the material is too much for them, but, “if you have a child who is dealing with anxiety, they may need support in avoiding scary stuff that other kids their age find fun, especially as they may feel some shame at their own sensitivity.”

But facing their fears in a safe way — inside the pages of an amazing book or story — is healthy and enjoyable for most #kidlit readers. And, Malone adds, “Ultimately, exerting some kind of creative control over what scares us is one of the most powerful ways to deal with our fears. That drives a lot of writers to write scary stuff in the first place, including me.”

Experts: 

Trish Grace Malone, a children’s book author and psychotherapist based in the Hudson Valley 

Derek Furr, Associate Professor of Literature & Dean of Teacher Education at Bard College

Back to Top