In Search of Fear…..with Morwenna Blackwood

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“Fear," the doctor said, "is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

Back again for the most wonderful time of the year! Its Halloween at last, although some of us celebrate all year round, whatever you call it, Samhain, All Hallow’s Eve, I know its different this year for those who would be out celebrating or Trick or Treating, but we can still celebrate at home there’s plenty to watch and read so you scare the pants off of yourself without even leaving the house. This lady knows a thing or two about dishing out scares, so lets talk to Morwenna Blackwood, author of the thriller ‘The (D)Evolution of Us’ about what it takes to scare her….

What movie/book scared you as a child?

For someone who writes dark fiction, I scare pretty easily!  As a child, I remember my mum rushing me out of a cinema when we went to see The Wizard of Oz – I was having a hysterical crying fit because of the Wheelers.  They are SO creepy!  And then when I was about 12, some friends held my eyelids open and forced me to watch Child’s Play.  They had no idea that this wasn’t funny and that I’d be traumatised by it to this day – I can’t have a doll in the house, and going up the doll aisle in toy shops…urgggg!  The blend of horror with kids’ stuff totally freaks me out.  And don’t even get me started on Watership Down!

What was your biggest fear as a child?

When I was young, I was scared of “the Baddies getting me”.  I used to run up the stairs in case “they” were coming up behind me, and I’d jump into bed from as far away as I could so that the ones under my bed couldn’t grab my ankles!  Also, Christianity scared me – the bit about going to Hell if I wasn’t good, obviously, but the implication that someone invisible was constantly watching all I did and thought was so much worse.

Do you like scary movies? Which one is your favourite?

As a rule, I don’t like scary movies, but I’m drawn to them because all the feel-good stuff just doesn’t ring true for me.  I know it’s a spoof, but Shaun of the Dead, is one of my all-time favourite films, and because of it, I watched Dawn of the Dead.  I seem to be okay with zombies!

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I am usually scared the most by ghosts when I’m reading a book. Have you ever had a paranormal experience in real life? 

Have I ever had a paranormal experience?  I don’t know.  I can never be sure if I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing, and I’m not entirely sure what I believe about the world.  There was an incident where a name was written in dust, which I can only explain as paranormal; I can’t decide if I am unsettled or comforted by it this.

This sounds fascinating I’d love to hear more about the words in the dust!

Has a book ever really scared you?

Many books have scared me.  I’ve written about it a million times, but whenever I read Dracula I have to have a clove of garlic on my person, because it scares me that much!  It was the primary reason I’d chosen a module in Irish Literature for my  course at uni.  However, shortly before I started reading it, I fell out of a window and broke my back.  Long story short (ha!), I was very lucky and got away with having my spine fused, but I was flat on my back in hospital unable to move more than my head and my arms for several weeks.  I wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to sit my finals, but I read and revised as much as I could, just in case.  And so, lying on a hospital bed attached to goodness knows what, I picked up Dracula.  It scared the living daylights out of me, and as I wasn’t in control of my environment, my body, or even my mind at times (there was a lot of morphine and Valium!) it was probably the most scared I’ve ever been, but I couldn’t put the book down!  It is so wonderfully written and constructed and imagined; honestly I am in awe of Bram Stoker.  It’s a book that I keep coming back to, probably because it has that power over me.

Nineteen Eighty-Four frightens me, but on a deeper level.  I found it plausible when I read it as a teen, but the older I get, the more possible it seems – if we’re not living it already.  Maybe we always have been…

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Can you share with us an example of fear in one of your own novels? 

Fear is central to my debut novel, The (D)Evolution of Us.  The protagonists experience it in many different ways, but the overriding fear for each of them is the perception that they have no control.  What they do with this fear, drives the story.

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In real life what is your biggest fear? Do you use that when you write?

My biggest fear in real life?  That what I perceive to be happening, isn’t what is actually happening.  And, yes, I use this in my writing all the time!

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Some great choices there, I admist I have an issue with zombie movies, they usually make me feel nauseous – all that brain eating, but I do love Shaun of the Dead! I too was very affected by reading Dracula, as I recall I ended up going to sleep with stuff around my neck for a while to create access issues for any vamp that might pay me a visit. And the fear of a dystopian world has long sat with me, I must admit when we went into lockdown in March it caused a fair few anxieties to arise, were we all about to lose our freedoms? Morwenna is right, we have been living in an Orwellian nightmare of sorts for some time.

Very grateful to Morwenna for sharing her fears with us, if you would like to have her scare you even more check out her book, heres a taster….

“… the water was red and translucent, like when you rinse a paint brush in a jam jar. The deeper into the water, the darker the red got. No, the thicker it got. It wasn’t water, it was human. It was Cath.

Cath is dead, but how and why isn’t clear-cut to her best friend, Kayleigh.

As Kayleigh searches for answers, she is drawn deeper into Cath’s hidden world.

The (D)Evolution of Us questions where a story really begins, and whether the world in our heads is more real than reality.“

Morwenna’s book is currently in the big DarkStroke Halloween Sale over on Amazon! You can bag this book for just 99c/99c this weekend!

mybook.to/devolution

www.morwennablackwoodauthor.com

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