Check out our interview with Ryan Douglass, the author of "Night of Madness."
What was your inspiration behind Night of Madness?
This story is inspired by the chase for online validation, and how that can warp our sense of self. There’s such a focus on spectacle and entertainment in Western culture, and a constant pressure to perform and outdo others online. The digital world becoming so intertwined with our sense of importance leads us to confuse visibility with identity, and that’s what Night of Madness explores.
What does Reading Rainbow mean to you?
Reading Rainbow means diversifying your shelf with books featuring queer characters, engaging with the authentic realities of our experiences, and acknowledging the way the LGBTQ+ community shapes art, language, style, culture, and resistance all over the world.
Why do you feel representation of a variety of people is so important when it comes to writing books?
I believe it’s important because stories should show the world as it actually exists. The world is not homogenous, so our stories shouldn’t be either. Night of Madness pays homage to Willy Wonka while expanding its imagination to include a main cast from a variety of ethnic and economic backgrounds.
Tell us a little more about Night of Madness and why you decided to write it.
Night of Madness follows Mara, a horror fan who enters a haunted asylum competition for a cash prize that could change her life. She finds herself competing in a sinister tournament where she can’t trust the space, or the people around her. The funhouse-type setting grounds her psychological journey in something tangible, and I think it’s fun to see how the space reflects her inner journey. I’ve always loved tournament-style narratives, and the book’s theme of what it means to be “seen” feels urgent to me as social media increasingly influences what we put value in.
What can fans expect from your book?
It has a neon gothic aesthetic with liminal spaces, bright colors and carnivalesque style games, mixed with the brutality of “extreme haunted houses”, which are haunted houses where people essentially get tortured “for fun.” They appeal to thrill-seekers with extreme sensibilities, who willingly participate to test their limits. The spectacle in the book comes with social commentary on the rat race, the dash to go viral, and how this gets linked to how much we “matter” to ourselves.
What's up next for you in the bookish world?
I’m excited to be developing my first adult book, which is a sci-fi that looks at how people in confinement reclaim agency and inner freedom. I’m excited to continue to take stylistic genre risks in that one.
