Interview With Simone St. James, Author Of ‘A Box Full Of Darkness’

4 hours ago

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A few years ago, I randomly read The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James and boy, am I glad I did. It opened me up to a whole new world of chilling ghostly stories that I have come to look forward to whenever I hear that Simone has a new book out. Her latest book, A Box Full of Darkness, definitely satiates the hunger for more (not to mention, it returns us to the same universe her readers have come to know).

Siblings return to the house they fled eighteen years before, called back by the ghost of their long-missing brother and his haunting request to come home.

To celebrate the release of A Box Full of Darkness, I sat down with Simone via Zoom and chatted about what sparked the idea for the book, the sibling dynamic that fueled the story, horror, and more!

PopHorror: I really enjoyed A Box Full of Darkness. I think that people are going to love it so I’m super excited to talk about it today. What sparked the idea for the story?

Simone St. James: I first had the idea, it was just the germ of an idea, I thought of kids playing hide and seek and one of the kids hides and never comes out and goes missing. They’re in a house and I added in that it’s snowing outside so there’s no footprints outside the house, there’s no tire tracks so it’s like a disappearance that happened inside the house. It kind of came to me as like this locked room mystery. I thought, well that’s kind of a cool idea, which is sort of the beginning of an idea. I didn’t know the answer to the mystery. I thought, this is a neat start to a story, but then I pondered it for a while and then one day I was thinking about it and I thought, wow, those other kids who were playing hide and seek that day, that would affect them for life. I immediately knew that’s the story. It’s about these siblings and it’s 20 years later and this thing happened in their childhood and they have to go figure it out. From that, everything fell into place. The germ of the idea started with the mystery, but the second big thing that came was the characters. It was about these characters and what had happened to them and how they have been dealing with it and how they have to go back and deal with what happened. Everything just flowed from there. Once I had those characters in my head, everything really flowed from that.

PopHorror: I love locked room mysteries, so I am here for those.

Simone St. James: With all my books, I always start with a mystery that I actually don’t know the answer to. Before I’ve even started writing, before I’ve done anything like that or pitched it to my publisher, anything, just the beginning of the idea, it’s always like, well what did happen? And if I am intrigued enough to think, well I would read that to find out what happened, then I know that it’s an idea I should keep pondering because I always start with the question and not the answer. I always start with, “What happened?” I just go by my own reaction. I would read a book to find out what happened. I want to know! So, then I have to figure out the answer myself, which is more work.

PopHorror: I really like that because then you’re not trying to make the story fit the answer. It sounds like you kind of learn as you go how it’s going to end versus this is how it’s going to end, let me fit everything in so it ends that way.

Simone St. James: Yeah, that’s exactly what happens at the beginning. I do figure out pretty early on in the process. Once I’ve really invested in the story and the characters and I want to sit down and start writing, even with this book I think I started writing and still didn’t know the answer. I just wanted to get into the… I actually thought I’d get into the story, get into these characters’ heads and something would kind of come up. And it did. I knew pretty early on in the writing process what the answer was, but when I started writing page one, I did not know the answer so I just wanted to build up that suspense, the same way a reader would. In my head, I was basically the reader going, “Well, now what? What happens? I want to know!”

PopHorror: Just when I thought I had it figured out, I didn’t. It didn’t end at all like I thought it was going to. Was there anything that you were adamant about keeping in the final draft, no matter what?

Simone St. James: That’s a good question. There wasn’t really anything that my editor and I disagreed on. She, as always, went through the book after I turned it in and pointed out where I could make things better. But there wasn’t anything that she wanted me to cut. I’ve always felt from the beginning when the characters first introduce themselves to me that the real emotional center of the book is those characters and that sibling relationship and then rediscovering their sibling relationship. Obviously, it’s a creepy book and it’s a scary book and there’s a mystery and there’s a bunch of other stuff going on, but the emotional heart of it is that relationship. The way I refer to it is that’s the love story of the book, those three siblings coming back together and figuring out their relationship. That to me was always very central and very important. That was not something I would have compromised on at all at any point. Like, “Oh, you need to make that more of a subplot and bring out these other things” and there was no way I would have compromised on that because from the beginning that always felt like the center of the story to me.

PopHorror: I agree and I really liked their relationship because I’m the youngest and by the time I came along, everyone was already out of the house, so I was by myself and I didn’t get that sibling dynamic. I didn’t get that living with them and being with them all the time. I love seeing relationships like that as adults.

Simone St. James: I’m the youngest too. I have an older brother and then the oldest is my sister. We have the same pattern although we’re nothing like the characters. I did have that. My brother’s four years older than me so we had that dynamic where he was the big brother and I was the little sister, so I drew on a lot of that. We’re nothing like the Esmie siblings in actual real life but of course I fed a lot of sibling dynamics from my own life into that relationship.

PopHorror: If your book was to be made into a movie, who would you cast as Violet, Vail, and Dodie?

Simone St. James: I’m going to have to answer your question by time traveling because I based Violet on young Demi Moore. That’s who she’s based on. Demi Moore from the 80s, early 90s. I literally had a photo of Demi Moore in the 80s in front of me when I wrote those chapters. That’s who she looks like. If I could time travel, Demi Moore back to her early 30s, then that would be who I’d cast as Violet. Vail is not based on an actor. I honestly don’t know who should be Vail. I actually thought a lot about this because he’s just so real to me in my head but I did not base him on a real person at all, so I actually don’t know. I am interested once the book comes out if readers have suggestions of who should play him because I’m open to suggestions on that one. Dodie… Dodie is based on the actress Eva Green, who you may know from various things. That’s who she’s kind of based on. So again, Eva Green, as gorgeous as she is, is still not in her early 30s anymore so she’d have to time travel just a little bit to play Dodie. Yeah, that’s sort of who I had in mind. Again, Vail was just very clear to me in my head so I don’t have an actor for him but I would love suggestions on that.

PopHorror: I am the worst at this. I ask this question a lot and they sometimes ask me who I think and I never have an answer.

Simone St. James: I don’t have anybody!

PopHorror: I like that you picked Demi Moore in the 80s and Eva Green and didn’t just limit it to newer actors. A lot of times I get answers that they don’t know any newer actors and I’m like, yeah, me n either. I usually picture characters pretty generically. Like Vail, I pictured him in basketball shorts and a tshirt.

Simone St. James: Yeah!

PopHorror: Kind of like Jensen Ackles from Supernatural only a little buffer.

Simone St. James: Yes! See, there you go. That’s an answer! That’s a great answer.

PopHorror: What is it that draws you back to the horror genre?

Simone St. James: There’s just so much thematically that you can pack into any type of a scary story. I mostly write ghost stories and a ghost story, as fun as it is on the surface, it’s fun to write something that’s creepy and mysterious and suspenseful. You can just pack so much thematically into. It’s about your past haunting you, literally haunting you, and it’s about having to go through stuff that you left behind that you are trying not to think about but it won’t go away. Stuff from past years and past generations that lingers. All kinds of thematic stuff that you can pack in to really up the emotional punch. I think that really great horror writers tend to do that. They tend to make it more than just a scare fest. A scare fest is fun but they tend to be like, well, what is this really about? There’s more going on here. If you want to dig deeper, you can find deeper things going on with these characters, the setting, or the themes. At the same time, it’s scary and spooky, unsettling. I like the tension. Aside from the real scary stuff I like just the tension as a reader where you know something is going to go really wrong. You don’t know when and how it’s going to manifest. Like that’s great. That’s fun to read and it’s fun to write as well.

PopHorror: I have just one last question for you today. What is your favorite scary movie?

Simone St. James: I am awful with scary movies. I am a big chicken. I don’t watch a lot of them. I will say probably then – I’m going to count it as a movie – The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix, the limited series that Mike Flanagan did, and then he also did Midnight Mass, which is also a limited series on Netflix. Those two I have watched numerous times and they are very scary. I’m going to count those as movies and I’m going to put those as my answer.