Underworld (22 page)

I set my story in some caves because I am terrified of being underground – I won't even use the Tube in London – and I knew if I wrote about a group of pupils trapped down in the caves, in the dark, I would completely understand their fears.

I am often asked why I chose a worm as the monster.
Well, there are lots of legends of giant worms in Britain and when I imagined a giant worm boring underground, creating worm-like caves, it gave me the creeps. Get on the Internet and read all the stories about worms. They might be great for the ecosystem but they are gross. I bet they give you the creeps too.

I love the characters in
Underworld
. Fiona is based on how I would like to be, always saying the right thing at the right time. I never do that unless I have time to really think about it and write it down first. Zesh tries to be so perfect all the time that he's ashamed to admit he's asthmatic. Then there is Liam, who is devious and yet I can understand why he does the things he does. Axel is as hard as nails, but he carries a terrifying secret. And what about Angie? I'm always asked about what really happened to Angie. What do you think? She appears so suddenly and vanishes into nowhere at the end. But if you have read many of my books, you will know I always leave a question unanswered.

I enjoyed writing the parallel story about Lothar, the young German sailor. His fear echoes that of the children and the trail he uses to save himself offers the reader hope that the pupils will be saved too. Lothar Goldner was a boyfriend I once had – he was gorgeous!
I hope he doesn't mind that I used his name.

One more thing you might like to know. This is the first book I wrote in which I used multiple viewpoint. I didn't want there to be just one main character in the book so I told the story from everyone's point of view. I wanted to get into the mind of every character, telling the reader how each of them felt. Did you enjoy reading the story from the perspective of all of the characters?

Cathy MacPhail was born and brought up in Greenock, Scotland, where she still lives. Before becoming a children's author, she wrote short stories for magazines and comedy programmes for radio. Cathy was inspired to write her first children's book after her daughter was bullied at school.

Cathy writes spooky thrillers for younger readers as well as teen novels. She has won the Royal Mail Book Award twice, along with lots of other awards. She loves to give her readers a ‘rattling good read' and has been called the Scottish Jacqueline Wilson.

One of Cathy's greatest fears would be to meet another version of herself, similar to the young girl in her bestselling novel
Another Me
. She is a big fan of
Doctor Who
and would love to write a scary monster episode for the series.

Cathy loves to hear from her fans, so visit
www.cathymacphail.com
and email her your thoughts.

What are your favourite things to do when you're not writing?

When I'm not writing, I'm usually reading or visiting family – I love spending time with my children, turning up on their doorsteps when they least expect me! I enjoy going on cruises too because it's the perfect way for me to visit new places. Like most people, I also love going to the cinema. I always have done.

What are your favourite films?

Oh, there are so many films I love.
It's a Wonderful Life
is one of them. The hero is an ordinary man with just a few problems that are getting him down. Then he is visited by an angel who shows him how life would have been if he had never been born and he realises that his life is worthwhile after all.

Another fantastic film is
The Searchers
. A story set in America in the mid nineteenth-century about a man's struggle to find his niece who has been kidnapped by the Sioux. It explores issues of racism that were common at the time.

But at the top of my list is
Some Like It Hot
. Two men pretend to be female musicians to escape gangsters and one of them falls in love with Marilyn Monroe! It's so funny and it has the best last line of any film I've ever seen, ‘Oh well, nobody's perfect.'

If you could be a character from a book, who would you be?

I have thought and thought about this because most books I've read have at least one wonderful character that I'd like to be, but I think Elizabeth Bennet has to be my first pick. She is so bright. Then there's Cathy from
Wuthering Heights
. I like her passionate nature, and we share a first name! Also, both of them are admired by fantastic men! When I'm really old, I want to be Miss Marple. I will go around annoying people and solving murders.

Did you do any caving as research for the book?

One of my worst fears is being underground so it would be impossible for me to go caving. When I was writing
Underworld
, I was lucky enough to have my daughter Katie, who now works as a teacher, take her class to some caves in Yorkshire. They did my research for me.
Through them, I found out about the sounds and smells in the caves and the feel of the walls. And then, of course, there is the Internet, which you can find out just about anything on.

Count Dracula, the vampire from Bram Stoker's famous story of the same name. I love vampires and I like them to be really frightening. They don't come much scarier than in
Dracula
, which is made more real because it is written as a series of letters and diary entries. It was a book that I just couldn't put down and it got me hooked on vampires.

Zombies! Don't ask me why. At the moment, there are lots of stories about them.

The creature in
Who Goes There?
by John W. Campbell. This story is about a group of scientists trapped at a research station in the Antarctic who find an alien-type creature in the ice. When the ice thaws, this creature comes alive and has the ability to become any one of them. It terrified me because you didn't know who the creature was going to become next.

Seriously spooky stories guaranteed to thrill every reader

Catch up with Cathy at
www.cathymacphail.com

Katie trudged over the dump. This way at least she wouldn't meet Ivy Toner and her gang. It was the long road home from school, through the patch of waste ground where the city's tenements once stood. It was growing dusky in the late October afternoon. But Katie wasn't afraid. Not here. She was safer here, deserted though it was, than she'd be walking through the busy streets and lanes of the town.

Alone. She was so often alone nowadays. Her friends, one by one, had deserted her. Too afraid to be friendly in case they, merely by association with her, became the target for the bullying, the cruelty of Ivy Toner.

Katie kicked at a stone and looked around the dismal place. People dumped their rubbish here now. Black bags littered the area – cardboard boxes lay askew on the ground. A dump – a real dump – yet she was safer here.

She could feel the tears nip at her eyes, but she wouldn't cry.

Everyone told her one day Ivy Toner would grow tired of picking on her and move on to fresher, more fearing ground.

But when? It had been months since it began. Little things at first, almost comical at times. Pushing and jostling her in the corridors at school, not letting her pass. Chewing-gum on her seat in English. Katie had sat on it, and actually laughed back. Had that been her mistake? She had laughed when she should have fought.

But she wasn't aggressive. Didn't know how to be. She just wanted to be friends with everybody. Once, not so long ago, she had been everyone's favourite. Katie Cassidy, always with a smile on her face and something funny to say. Katie Cassidy, who used to make everyone laugh.