by Lois Duncan
Heather: You have never shied away from darker subject matter. There are even shootings and kidnappings in THE THIRD EYE. What do you make of some of the recent articles that suggest that today’s young adult books are too dark for young minds? Do you think there is any merit to that, or do you think it’s baseless?
Lois: There is perhaps some merit to it, but I think today’s young people are exposed to such an overload of dark subject matter on television that the ones who search out books are not going to be harmed by them. I think the visual presentation of blood and gore and the excitement and stimulation that come from that are much more damaging than anything that could be in a book. With reading matter, you process the content differently. It goes through a step between your eyes and your brain where you make a translation of what you’ve read and invent your own visual images. Violence on film just smacks you in the face, and your own thought process can’t act as a buffer.
Heather: I agree. I actually think teens really like it when someone trusts them to make smart choices. That’s the good thing about books like yours that don’t try to protect them in ways they don’t necessarily need or want to be protected. They are seeking out the books; you can trust them to read them the right way.
Lois: Mine also are pretty mild. I don’t like sensationalized violence, and I don’t have it in my books. Violence takes place offscreen, if it takes place at all. We didn’t even see Rob get shot.
Jessica: I often find that makes for more suspenseful storytelling. To have someone imagine it, rather than telling them explicitly what happened, can be even scarier.
Lois: It makes the relationship between the author and the reader more of a partnership, because in a way, the reader is creating the story with his or her own imagery.
Jessica: Have you been reading much young adult fiction yourself lately?
Lois: No, not as much as I used to. But now that I’ve read Spoiled, I think I’m going to start reading more of it. I really enjoyed your book.
Heather: Well, thank you! I am curious, though—when you were writing all of these novels, were there particular young adult fiction books or series that you enjoyed reading, just to see what other people were doing, or just for fun? What were your touchstones from around the time you originally wrote these books?
Lois: There weren’t a lot of young adult authors back then, because YA literature was just starting to be recognized as a genre. Those of us groundbreakers who did write in that genre, such as Lois Lowry, Joan Lowry Nixon, Richard Peck, Paula Danziger, and I, would constantly be running into each other at librarians’ conventions and conferences of English teachers and, having become friends, we would all read each other’s books. So that was the group whose work I was most exposed to. I am much less familiar with today’s young writers.
Heather: That list of names alone is like the YA Hall of Fame. We love those books. Those books, and your books, are all timeless, and they deserve to be brought back and brought back and brought back. Just because a book wasn’t written in 2011 doesn’t mean it is not relevant and worth reading. Bring it on! Show the YA readers that there is more than just vampires out there.
Lois: Well, I’m certainly excited to see them coming out with these gorgeous new covers and am eagerly waiting to see the reaction of today’s readers to these new editions. It’s fun to go back and compare the covers to the original covers, because paperback covers change so often. Whenever they are reissued, they get a different cover. So if you get a whole stack of different editions of the same novel, extending back over a twenty-year time frame, it’s almost like watching the progression of the world.
Jessica: It’s like watching your baby grow up. Well, they look beautiful and we are very excited to see a whole new generation get to discover them. It’s been so great to talk to you. We really are huge fans and this has just been a pleasure.
Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan skewer celebrity fashion crimes on their popular blog, Go Fug Yourself, which draws millions of monthly readers. Spoiled and Messy are their first novels for young adults. Both ladies live in Los Angeles, California, and watch almost everything on the CW.
LOIS DUNCAN
Lois Duncan is the author of over fifty books, ranging from children’s picture books to poetry to adult nonfiction, but is best known for her young adult suspense novels, which have received Young Readers Awards in sixteen states and three foreign countries. In 1992, Lois was presented the Margaret A. Edwards Award by the School Library Journal and the ALA Young Adult Library Services Association for “a distinguished body of adolescent literature.” In 2009, she received the St. Katharine Drexel Award, given by the Catholic Library Association “to recognize an outstanding contribution by an individual to the growth of high school and young adult librarianship and literature.”
Lois was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Sarasota, Florida. She knew from early childhood that she wanted to be a writer. She submitted her first story to a magazine at age ten and became published at thirteen. Throughout her high school years she wrote regularly for young people’s publications, particularly Seventeen.
As an adult, Lois moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she taught magazine writing for the Journalism Department at the University of New Mexico and continued to write for magazines. Over three hundred of her articles and stories appeared in such publications as Ladies’ Home Journal, Redbook, McCall’s, Good Housekeeping and Reader’s Digest, and for many years she was a contributing editor for Woman’s Day.
Six of her novels—SUMMER OF FEAR, KILLING MR. GRIFFIN, GALLOWS HILL, RANSOM, DON’T LOOK BEHIND YOU and STRANGER WITH MY FACE—were made-for-TV movies. I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER and HOTEL FOR DOGS were box office hits.
Although young people are most familiar with Lois Duncan’s fictional suspense novels, adults may know her best as the author of WHO KILLED MY DAUGHTER?, the true story of the murder of Kaitlyn Arquette, the youngest of Lois’s children. Kait’s heartbreaking story has been featured on such TV shows as Unsolved Mysteries, Good Morning America, Larry King Live, Sally Jessy Raphael and Inside Edition. A full account of the family’s ongoing personal investigation of this still unsolved homicide can be found on the Internet at http://kaitarquette.arquettes.com.
Lois and her husband, Don Arquette, currently live in Sarasota, Florida. They are the parents of five children.
You can visit Lois at http://loisduncan.arquettes.com.
Also by Lois Duncan
DAUGHTERS OF EVE
DON’T LOOK BEHIND YOU
DOWN A DARK HALL
A GIFT OF MAGIC
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER
KILLING MR. GRIFFIN
LOCKED IN TIME
STRANGER WITH MY FACE
SUMMER OF FEAR
Praise
“Lois Duncan’s suspenseful storytelling is compulsively readable!”
—Jessica Morgan and Heather Cocks,
authors of Spoiled and Messy
“There are a lot of smart authors, and a lot of authors who write reasonably well. Lois Duncan is smart, writes darn good books and is one of the most entertaining authors in America.”
—Walter Dean Myers, Printz award–winning
author of Monster and Dope Sick
“She knows what you did last summer. And she knows how to find that secret evil in her characters’ hearts, evil she turns into throat-clutching suspense in book after book. Does anyone write scarier books than Lois Duncan? I don’t think so.”
—R. L. Stine, author of the Goosebumps and Fear Street series
“I couldn’t be more pleased that Lois Duncan’s books will now reach a new generation of readers.”
—Judy Blume, author of Forever and Tiger Eyes
“Lois Duncan has always been one of my biggest inspirations. I gobbled up her novels in my teens, often reading them again and again and scaring myself over and over. She’s a master of suspense, so prepare to be dazzled and spooked!”
—S
ara Shepard, author of the Pretty Little Liars series
“Lois Duncan’s books kept me up many a late night reading under the covers with a flashlight!”
—Wendy Mass, author of A Mango-Shaped Space, Leap Day
and Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall
“Lois Duncan is the patron saint of all things awesome.”
—Jenny Han, author of The Summer I Turned Pretty series
“Duncan is one of the smartest, funniest and most terrifying writers around—a writer that a generation of girls LOVED to tatters, while learning to never read her books without another friend to scream with handy.”
—Lizzie Skurnick, author of Shelf Discovery:
The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading
“In middle school and high school, I loved Lois Duncan’s novels. I still do. I particularly remember Killing Mr. Griffin, which took my breath away. I couldn’t quite believe a writer could DO that. I feel extremely grateful to Lois Duncan for taking unprecedented risks, challenging preconceptions and changing the young adult field forever.”
—Erica S. Perl, author of Vintage Veronica
“Haunting and suspenseful—Duncan’s writing captures everything fun about reading!”
—Suzanne Young, author of The Naughty List series
and A Need So Beautiful
“Killing Mr. Griffin taught me a lot about writing. Thrilling stuff. It was one of the most requested and enjoyed books I taught with my students. I think it’s influenced most of my writing since.”
—Gail Giles, author of Right Behind You and Shattering Glass
“If ever a writer’s work should be brought before each new generation of young readers, it is that of Lois Duncan. The grace with which she has led her life—a life that included a tragedy that would have brought most of us to our knees—is reflected in her writing, particularly (from my point of view) in I Know What You Did Last Summer. Her stories, like Lois herself, are ageless.”
—Chris Crutcher, author of Angry Management, Deadline
and Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes
“Lois Duncan’s thrillers have a timeless quality about them. They are good stories, very well told, that also happen to illuminate both the heroic and dark parts of growing up.”
—Marc Talbert, author of Dead Birds Singing, A Sunburned
Prayer and Heart of a Jaguar
Contents
Welcome
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Q&A with the Author
About the Author
Also by Lois Duncan
Praise
Copyright
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 1984 by Lois Duncan
Author Q&A © 2012 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
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www.hachettebookgroup.com
First e-book edition: June 2012
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ISBN 978-0-316-20293-0
