Loneliness and the Evil Twin ... Happy Book Birthday to Alex and The Other!

Alex and The Other releases this week on March 31!
This is book 4 in the award-winning Weird Stories Gone Wrong series, horror stories for middle grade readers, ages 8-12, and is a classic doppelganger story.

Synopsis:

Alex is a lonely boy whose only real friend is his cat, Needles. One night Alex and Needles take a detour through the woods and come across what looks like a crash site, then tall strangers with green eyes start whispering at him from the trees ... BEWARE THE OTHER!

After that, Needles goes missing and a weird cat girl starts to take over Alex's life until soon no one can tell the difference between them. Can Alex outsmart his evil twin before she replaces him for good? And who is the REAL Alex, anyway?

So, why an evil twin story about a lonely boy? 

Alex and The Other is a classic doppelganger story. One of the reasons that I started writing the Weird Stories Gone Wrong was to introduce younger readers to different kinds of horror stories and tropes which they probably hadn't encountered yet.

So far I've written an urban legend (Jake and the Giant Hand), a psychological road-trip thriller (Myles and the Monster Outside, winner of the OLA Silver Birch Express Honour Book Award 2017), and a time-travel horror story (Carter and the Curious Maze). Future releases in the series include a scary sea story with horrifying mermaids and cursed pirates on an enchanted island (Blackwells and the Briny Deep, Sept 2018), plus a dystopia coming in 2019.

The girl with the braid: Alex's Other

Why so lonely? When I started thinking about what to write for book 4, I knew that I wanted to tell a story about a lonely boy, because I think loneliness is a really under-represented theme in children's stories.

Adults and kids alike can be lonely, but we really don't talk about it that much in our social media world where all things must appear fun.

Life isn't always that much fun, for whatever reason. Sometimes we're sad, sometimes we're lonely. So I explored that in Alex's character. Also in any doppelganger story, the hero has to be isolated. It's just the way it is, seems cruel I know, but if you're facing down some weird, alternate version of yourself you can't do it with a healthy crowd of supporters around you. Not if you're writing a horror story, anyway.

So, Alex had to face his evil twin all alone. But I think kids will get that or develop some empathy for loneliness through Alex.

But, in reality he's not completely alone. I did give Alex an ally: he talks to his cheeky, funny reflection in the haunted bathroom mirror at school. Now THAT was fun, writing two voices for Alex set in an empty, abandoned bathroom in the basement of his school. I riffed a little off Gollum arguing with himself in LOTR and Willem DaFoe talking to himself in the mirror as the Green Goblin in Spiderman.

Alex's reflection winks at him...

Another theme in the story is HOW TO ASK FOR HELP.

Even if we've never been lonely in our lives, we all need to ask for help once in a while. Alex does ask for help getting rid of his evil twin in different ways, but no one really hears him, or his evil twin outsmarts him. He comes closest to outright telling an adult what's happening to him with Jim the janitor, but like many of his encounters with adults, even sympathetic ones, Alex couldn't quite get the words out.

In the end, he DOES accept help from the one place readers probably won't expect. And that's realistic too, I think. Asking for help is scary, and difficult and sometimes you have to keep asking until someone actually HEARS you, whoever or in this case, whatever, that may be.

Alex and The Other publishes on March 31/2018. ORDER NOW!

CM Magazine Review of Alex and The Other
Goodreads Reviews of Alex and The Other
Alex and The Other Book Trailer with illustrations from series illustrator Shawna Daigle
Put a COPY ON HOLD at the Toronto Public Library
Here's more about Alex and The Other on this BLOG