Guest Author Blog Post – Samuel J. Halpin

Samuel J. Halpin Blog Post – The Agency for all Things Spectral: The Case of Dr Dust

Samuel J. Halpin is the author of laugh-out-loud funny and terrifyingly spooky middle grade series, The Agency for all Things Spectral. If you love ghosts, sinister villains and scary monsters, you’; love Samuel J. Halpin’s brilliantly fun and creepy middle grade adventure stories.

To celebrate the release of The Case of Dr Dust, Samuel’s our first guest writer on our revamped blog! So scroll down to learn what Samuel’s favourite children’s book was growing up, why he wanted to become a children’s author, and what he hopes children will feel or learn from his book.

What inspired you to become a children’s author?

I can’t overstate how important stories are to me as I know they are to so many people. I was a strange child who liked strange stories and the strange, courageous, quiet, combative people in them.

I’ve always told myself stories wherever I am: as I listen to music waiting for a friend, as I’m packed into a stuffy bus, even as I’m hoovering dead flies on the windowsill. So I think it was a very natural progression for me to want to write stories other people could read because I always felt like there were such a lot of them trampling on top of each other inside my head.

But if I had to pin-point one reason, I would say that reading alone for me was never quite enough. I didn’t want to just be told stories. I wanted to tell them. To live inside them for months: to be with those characters quite literally on the page, as my fingers strike the keys and they took their first breath in their new surroundings.

What’s your favourite thing about being a children’s author?

I have two favourite things:

Firstly, I love a stranger telling me they’ve rad one of my books because of the strange feeling of surprise it gives you. It doesn’t happen very often – the world is a large place, you – but when it does I stare at them and think: How on earth is it possible that this person here knows all those characters who have been living in my head for so very long? It ‘s just the most wonderfully surprising thing.

I also very much love discussing my stories with kids. I love the angels they find, I love the feelings they get from the books. What a joy to talk about the thing you love doing most with the exact people it is meant for?

What was your favourite children’s book growing up?

I’m not someone who keeps favourites of things. Even growing up, my favour changed like the wind. But some books that I kept finding in my hands were: All of Tolkein, al of Roald Dahl most particularly The Witches and a dusty old book that belonged to my mother called Fairy Tales from the British Isles by Amabel Williams-Ellis.

How did the idea of The Case of Dr Dust come about?

I think the seed was planted in my brain the very first time I ever used a VR headset and I wondered what it would be like to see into different realms through an innocent looking pair of glasses.

But more specifically to Dr Dust, the idea for a character who went around at night with a street-sweeper type machine actually came from a rather terrifying old pot belly incinerator that my grandfather used to have in his garden.

In the early autumn evenings, he’d rake up the freshly mown grass and hep it into the incinerator which would let out this white, strange smelling smoke. And I remember having a very frightening dream as a little boy where I would get sucked into the chimney by the smoke and get stuck there!

What was the best part about the writing process of The Case of Dr Dust?

I liked finding Billy because she came so very quickly out of my fingertips. She has a lot of me in her, but also does and says a lot of things I wouldn’t dare. Whenever I sit down to write Billy I generally know exactly what she’s going to do next – but very strangely, there are times when Billy surprises me and does something I didn’t expect, which make her feel very alive to me – just as a character should!

If you could invite one children’s book character to tea, who would it be and why?

I think I would rather like to have tea with The Very Hunger Caterpillar because there would be no judgement at all about the volume of little cakes the two of us could consume.

But on a more serious note – I think it would have to be Matilda so that we could discuss books at great length. I would love to hear what she thought of my books.

Finally, what do you hope children feel or learn about your book?

I hope children learn to delight in the spooky and strange, but more importantly I would be overjoyed if they learned a thing or two about bravery and courage – both at its biggest and at its powerful smallest.

Being brave is something I struggle with, and I’ll let you in on a little secret –

Whenever I’m in need of a little courage, I often think of some of my pluckier characters, like Billy, and I tell myself – if she can do it, so can you. And then I grab onto the armrests of my seat, close my eyes and wait out the turbulence.