Lily Sparks on YA
An all new Writers Panel
Last chance to sign up for my Draft Intensive class, which starts next week. It’s a fun and practical class in which you’ll go from your existing outline to a solid first draft. It’s highly collaborative, and you’ll receive notes from me and your very smart classmates. Class runs for three sessions, every other Sunday morning. Sign up here.
Hey YA
In this craft-centered conversation, author Lily Sparks (Teen Killers Club) discusses writing YA, showing the world as it should be versus how it is, sex in young adult fiction, and more.
The final book in Lily's "Teen Killers" trilogy, Teen Killers at Large, is available now and you can pre-order The Merciless King of Moore High at her website.
Get the podcast via Apple or Spotify or Acast or your favorite podcast app.
We had a terrific turn out for the live Zoom Q&A with Jenny Klein on Sunday! Thanks to everyone who showed up. Jenny texted to say what great questions everyone had. I’ll post the audio soon.
Next month we’ll have Ben Edlund (creator of The Tick; Supernatural), and the only way to attend or listen later is to become a paid subscriber, so please join the fun!
Scare Packages
Some more horror movie recommendations as we get deeper into October! Previous recs here and here.
I hadn’t seen David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986) in probably twenty years, and I was completely blown away by a recent rewatch. It’s such a tight and riveting script by Cronenberg and Charles Edward Pogue. The script, directing, and incredible performances by Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis all lean into the tragic love story, so that when Seth Brundle’s transformation occurs it’s all the more horrifying. And it is truly horrifying. The practical effects are unmatched and super, super gross.
The Fly made for a great, inadvertant double feature with Upgrade (2018) this past weekend. Like Goldblum’s Seth Brundle, Logan Marshall-Greene (in a really strong performance) becomes something more than human when he agrees to have an artificial intelligence implanted in his body. More sci-fi than horror, though it definitely lands the horror trope grace notes. I’m a big fan of co-writer/director Leigh Whannell’s Invisible Man movie from 2020, so I was curious to see his other stuff.
Whannell is also the co-writer, with James Wan, of the original Saw film, which I’ve never seen because I do not care for that torture stuff. But I’m told that the original isn’t what the franchise eventually became! Can anyone confirm that it isn’t just gratuitous torture and gore?
On a lighter note, Double Date (2017) is a genuinely funny British horror-comedy. It’s smart and smart-silly, and to tell too much about the plot would be to spoil its fun surprises. Suffice it to say, Double Date is a charming and not-too-scary lark that made me look for everything that co-writer and star Danny Morgan has done.
It’s been fun revisiting stuff like The Fly and even The Faculty (1998) recently. What are some of your favorite horror rewatches? The ones you can see over and over and they still work?
LOVED Upgrade so much. Meant to rewatch The Faculty with it showing on Criterion. Need to see that with adult eyes.
The Saw franchise is about human manipulation games like getting characters to face something within themselves. But the scenes are quite gruesome.