Letting Children and Characters Grow Up, a guest post by Sean Ferrell

When I first saw the cover art for The Sinister Secrets books, I couldn’t breathe for a moment. Seeing cover art—any art—for a piece of writing is always powerful for the author. It can be elating or deflating (and oddly, sometimes both) to see how others interpret your descriptions. In this case, it was a wave of surprise that washed over me. 

“How did Graham know?”

The beautiful illustration of Noah (by the talented Graham Carter) was of a skinny red-headed boy with large, emotive eyes and a bit of worry in his face. It bore an uncanny resemblance to my son. This was particularly touching because Noah was in fact created for and based on my son. This was a detail Graham could not have known, and even if he had known he still had never met my son. Yet, here was the drawing, looking like it was a caricature of the boy who started the entire book’s creation. 

Noah emerged when my son was three. These were bedtime stories about a young boy who lived in a strange house with a strange caretaker, his adventures escaping the city, and his discovery of his father on an island covered in monkeys and robots. The details evolved, the monkeys disappeared, and the character name changed (Noah was originally named directly after my son’s initials). The spirit and purpose remained the same: a boy learning to navigate the adult world. 

It took more than a decade for those stories to evolve into a book. Where book one (Sinister Secrets of Singe) was largely for a reader who needed to know it was okay to be confused by the world, book 2–The Sinister Secrets of the Fabulous Nothings–walks slightly different terrain. In the Fabulous Nothings, Noah and his friends explore the evolution they see in themselves and others, and the confusion that comes with growing up. 

Noah, his best friend Winona, and even the robot caretaker Elijah find themselves facing obstacles they couldn’t have anticipated, and at the same time they wrestle with changes in those around them. In a very clear sense I am referring to the physical adventure of the book, the escapes from danger, the warnings of robots, the pursuit of battleships. But I also refer to the emotional undercurrent pulling at all of them. It was the undercurrent that is in many ways the most important. It can be hard for young people to know whether they are ready to move beyond the shock of independence. They may not know if they’re ready to see friends leave, or change, or reject them. Most importantly: young readers may not know whether they are ready for how their own growing up will be reflected in strange, sometimes inscrutable reactions from the peers and adults around them.

The trick in Fabulous Nothings was to make an antagonist (not a villain; Cruella DeVille is a terrific character, but the kind of tension I love to explore isn’t so mustache-twirly (not that she has a mustache!)) that was relatable, compassionate, and very, very familiar. Sinister Secrets of Singe moved the character out of the safety of an incredibly narrow environment and into the bigger world. Not surprising it was about growing up, and I wanted to continue that theme, but while growing up is often about the paths of our lives looping larger and longer into the wider world, it also must be about our inner lives and relationships expanding, evolving, and sometimes straining.

In Fabulous Nothings, Noah is more confident. He pushes boundaries and challenges his mother’s expectations. The challenge ahead of him was no longer finding a missing piece (he had discovered who his father was and what tragic things he had done). Now the challenge was finding his own path, wondering how far to follow it, and being unsure of how to hold on to what he’d left behind. The more I dove into these elements for Noah, the more I found myself writing about a parent that doesn’t wish to let go. This was my antagonist (again, not a villain!). This isn’t villainous behavior. It’s human. Sinister Secrets of the Fabulous Nothings would be a chance to explore how Noah’s growth tests the adults around him. But where did this element of the story come from?

Did I mention Book 1 was more than a decade in the making? It started when Noah’s inspiration was not yet in school. He’s now in college. There are long, confusing trails between those two points, and the intensity of parenting has shifted. Where once it was enough to take my son’s hand and say “here is what to do” I now find myself watching him make decisions without my input. Not only that, my input in some cases is clearly lacking. Of course a parent is going to want to share their wisdom, but what about those times when our wisdom doesn’t match the situation? The world is different from the one I knew in my late teens. Drastically, scarily so. The challenges my son and his peers face are how the world was when they arrived into it, not one they’ve lived in and made, and no amount of my wishing for him to follow my guidance will change the math: his experiences need to shape his decisions. 

The challenge that emerged as I wrote The Sinister Secrets of the Fabulous Nothings was not between a villain and protagonist, but between two people whose complex relationship, growth, and emotions create a gap which remained hidden to both.

The strain between Noah and his mother in the first book had been about secrets. This is an actual part of parenting (what to share, what to wait on “until they are older”), and it was a natural fit for book 1. Fabulous Nothings emerged with Noah already worried that his new friends would leave him behind, and this meant he was looking at the horizon in a different way. He no longer wondered what might be there, he wanted to actively seek it out and in many ways had already done so. This is was the line that had already been crossed, and having him cross it again would do little for the reader (or for Noah), but if the parent’s fear of danger was brought into the physical world in a way that manifested and pushed back, then I could wrestle with some new, hard truths about growing up. If Singe was a stand-in for a reader worried about what might lurk over the horizon, then Fabulous Nothings is the reminder that the people who have your back aren’t always having an easy time letting go. 

For the protagonist, independence is the goal. Finding the horizon and being willing to jump is growing up. For the antagonist, keeping loved ones safe is the goal. The antagonist in the story is not Noah’s mother. The antagonist is the desire to protect run amok. Watching someone head to the horizon and letting them jump is growing up as well. It was important to highlight the difficulty that kids face when the adults around them do things that are hard to understand, how to bridge those gaps, and how to trust both good instincts and good intentions when they are in conflict.

My hope is that the book might help both protagonists and antagonists in the world give each other the time and patience to jump some horizons. My second, smaller hope is that it might soothe the aches and pains that come with the hard landings that sometimes follow those jumps.

Meet the author

Sean Ferrell lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He writes stories about children and adults who don’t understand why they keep getting into trouble. Sometimes those stories are for adults. Sometimes for children. His work is usually speculative in nature. 

Find out more about his work at seanferrell.com

About The Sinister Secrets of the Fabulous Nothings

Technological wonders and terrors combine to weave an enchanting tale of finding your own way to belong in the second book in the sweeping Sinister Secrets series.

It’s been thrilling for Noah having the crew of the Abbreviated stuffed in his odd-twisting home. After spending a life being lonely, he finally feels like he has a family. But sailors are meant to be at sea, and now Noah’s terrified that they’ll leave him alone once more. He wishes he had the answer to solve this latest predicament.

And then the strangest things start happening in the city of Liberty. Under cover of darkness, people’s greatest wishes start to come true. But what begins as the marvelous realization of dreams soon morphs to ghoulish nightmare . . . and only Noah seems to be able to see the chimeras for what they really are. What’s more, the infiltration may all be his fault.

Now Noah must use his cunning to save Liberty once more. But how do you battle an invisible threat? And what will it cost him?
Accompanied by vibrant black and white illustrations, the stunning second book in the Sinister Secrets series reunites old friends for new challenges in a quest brimming with eerie mystery, adventure, and an aching desire to find a space in the world.

ISBN-13: 9781645951865
Publisher: Holiday House
Publication date: 06/25/2024
Series: The Sinister Secrets #2
Age Range: 10 – 12 Years

Filed under: Guest Post