Interview From Beyond the Grave

Last month John Bellairs joined the likes of A.A. Milne, Frank L. Baum, and J.D. Salinger and other authors as being one of Young Adult Mag's Interviews from Beyond the Grave:

YA: Who were your major influences?

JB: For my young adult horror novels, I wanted to impart the creepiness of Edgar Allen Poe without necessarily duplicating his nihilism. I wanted to create stories with a similar tone, but with more hopeful endings and consequences.

YA: You left quite an impressive legacy. Your characters lived on much longer than you yourself did.

JB: After I passed on, my characters Lewis Barnavelt and Johnny Dixon both continued to have adventures penned by Brad Strickland.

YA: The illustrations on most of your works are particularly terrifying.

JB: I had the incomparable Edward Gorey illustrate the jackets to many of my books. His interpretation of horror has been lauded by critics ever since the middle of the last century.

 Go figure.