Q&A with Eric Red discussion

In this book I tried to deal with sexuality and violence both physical and emotional, that can be a major part of the teenage experience in an honest and responsible manner. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts about edgy Y/A material in general.

As a parent it's terrifying to see all the things that my children are exposed to on a daily basis, but I think responsible is the key word here. As long at the writer is responsible with his or her choices, then I think young adults can and will enjoy a little sex and violence. Restraint is what made Hitchcock so great, and it's also what made The Hitcher and Near Dark the classics they are. What I'm saying in a very long winded fashion is that edgy doesn't have to be taboo in young adult fiction as long as the writer doesn't confuse edgy with distasteful.

A lot of the responsibility has to do with the morality of the piece and the author being sure his or her theme has the right human values. That's more significant than the amount of sex or violence required to tell certain stories. Sometimes graphic is good, but many of times it's not how you show it, it's how you don't show it, because then the audience or reader films in the blanks and their own imagination can be much more powerful.

There's also a peculiar double standard in America where strong levels of violence are acceptable in current pop culture but sex is taboo to a surprising degree, even though it's less harmful. Not so outside the US. Probably the puritanical heritage in this country.

Do you think that Y/A novels of the horror genre tend to follow a softer approach that 80's slasher films started?

Just the reverse, seems to me. It's interesting that many of the books popular with Y/A readers like the Harry Potters, Hunger Games and others deal thematically with young people being brave facing the threat of utter annihilation, or having to kill their friends to survive. That seems to be in the mythological consciousness of teenagers today, who seem a more hard-nosed generation than ours. I worry sometimes whether kids today have no childhoods.