Final Final Girl by Joab Gilroy (that’s me!), is out now! It’s the first book in a series I’m calling The Best Books, because I’m a cheeky monkey and because one of the primary characters suffers from what is colloquially known as “Best Disease”.

Final Final Girl is a classic horror story, a tale about a spell gone horribly right, then horribly wrong. It’s about a town built on a legacy of despicable acts, about a woman who wants to be hated and about two Paranormal Investigation Arm agents who are sent to investigate it.

There are four pillars to The Best Books and Final Final Girl. Four primary sources of inspiration and reasons for it existing. Goosebumps, The X-Files, The SCP Wiki and Hidden Disability. Let’s go through them one at a time to work out how Final Final Girl came to be in a spoiler-free manner. If I can work out how to do a spoiler-y version without also spoiling books that aren’t yet out, I’ll do that soon!

Goosebumps

R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps was one of the most influential series on me growing up. It’s hard to explain its impact—I read every single book in the series as they arrived at my local library. They probably taught me more about how to use computers (I could reserve inbound copies) than anything else as a kid outside of having a Commodore 64 with a broken tape drive.

And I know I’m not alone in this. Heaps of people—kids then, adults now—read as many books in the series as they could. Adored them, and as a result, adored reading.

Unlike me, however, a lot of those now adults stopped reading at some point. And I have a theory on why.

Reading is an exercise. As an exercise, I think you can fall out of practice with it, and then need to get back in form. Take running, right. Little kids love to run. Some of them, you can’t stop from running. Few kids ever complained about having to run 100 metres at Sports Day back in the day. And it’s not about the competition of it, either. If you asked a bunch of eight-year-olds to line up and run 100 metres, they’d do it and have the time of their lives. Most of them would post times I could demolish, and they wouldn’t even care.

100 metres is easy. But what about a mile? Could a kid run a mile? 1.6 kilometres, in proper measurements. Yeah, probably. That’s probably as far as most kids would like to run, for an array of factors.

Let’s call 1.6 kilometres the Goosebumps of running. Knocking out a mile run is enough to get the heart pumping and the blood flowing. It’s a good run.

Triple that. A 5K. Could a bunch of kids run a 5K? We make them do it. Here in Australia, it’s called Cross Country Day, and a bunch of primary schoolers are compelled to run five kilometres as fast as their little legs will allow them. Most kids hate Cross Country (not me though, I loved it).

Do you know what else happens as you get older in primary school? They start making you read bigger and longer books. They take away the Goosebumps books and they give you Lord of the Flies. They get you to read To Kill a Mockingbird, then The Diary of Anne Frank, then The Power of One.

These are the Cross Country Days of books (I loved them too). The kids get older, and suddenly they’re not just running about for fun any more. They’re battling their way across hilly terrain, through dense themes and—in the case of both, for extended periods of time.

Reading, which used to be something fun, becomes a burden. It becomes work—homework—and analogous to the exhausting effort of an untrained-for 5K trail run. People grow up associating reading with work, and not with fun, and so they fall out of love with one of the most joyous things in the world.

So why not return to the fun? Why not return to the spooky, speedy, easy thrills of a Goosebumps style book? Something short and punchy and self-contained but with wider reaching elements, a world you can dip into for a short time and then take a rest from.

That was the idea behind the Best Books as a series. I don’t think I’ll be able to pump out 60 of them over the course of five years, but the plan is to have multiple releases a year, so the wait between each is as short as the books themselves are.

And in theory, if people get their taste for running a mile again, they might not be so concerned about the 5K novels that they’re missing out on as well. There are so many amazing books out there. I’d love to get people reading more again.

The X-Files

The X-Files was maybe as impactful on me as Goosebumps was—though at a different time in my life. Maybe my first encounter with “competency porn”, here were two characters who were incredible at what they did and (generally) respected for it. Sure Mulder was “spooky” and Scully was “a woman” so they were kinda outsiders in the FBI, but that didn’t stop them from doing their jobs to the best of their ability.

And the stories were so scary. Way scarier than I was ready for on TV. It’s hard to explain the impact horror had on TV back in the day, but I feel it’s lost some of its impact. You’d be watching a half-man half-leech swim through a sewer one second, and then the next an ad for Spray’n’Wipe would come on and you were just expected to be cool with it. They’d always have the spookiest imagery right when they cut to the break, too, just to heighten the scariness.

When I was putting together my series, I felt I had two options. I could go with the competency porn of The X-Files, or I could try for the inherent silliness of something like Scooby Doo. Scooby Doo was actually the winner for a long time. The original outline for Final Final Girl (titled Final Final Girl broad strokes, a document contained in the folder Scooby Series Mysteries) reads:

Girls set themselves up for a classic slasher horror. Read from a creepy book to do witch shit. It goes understandably poorly for them. Their dads – the elite of the city – die in a tragedy and the girls start dying one by one.

The girls who are left either contact scooby crew…

and the rest is redacted for spoiler reasons.

But I couldn’t drop the X-Files itch. I mean, I watched all of the X-Files. Multiple times. I’ve watched more of Mike Tyson Mysteries than I have of Scooby Doo Mysteries on purpose. If I wanted to pay homage to something, surely it should be something I have a great affinity for, right?

And thus Gwenda Masen and Jordan Battist came to be. There’s no sceptic/believer dynamic here, not really. There is experienced/inexperienced, but the competence is still at the fore. Gwenda has been around the Paranormal Investigation Arm long enough, she’s seen some shit. Jordan is brand new to the agent role, but he’s seen some shit too. He just isn’t familiar with the processes like Gwenda is.

Still, it’s a classic duo. And I hope a fitting homage to one of my favourite TV shows of all time. I think they’re doing a reboot. If they’d like me to write some episodes for them, I’m down. I promise my episodes will be better than Stephen King’s.

SCP

Ok, so the agents, Gwenda Masen and Jordan Battist, are a pretty blatant homage to the X-Files agents Mulder and Scully. Gwenda is also a nod to Marion Wheeler, the heroic SCP Antimemetics Division chief from the web-version of “There Is No Antimemetics Division”. The PIA is perhaps the most obvious way in which FFG and the Best Books pay respect to the SCP world.

“If there are SCP elements, why didn’t you just write an SCP story?” I hear you ask. The truth is, that’s how this one started. That’s where Gwenda was born. I’ve been jotting down ideas for stories for years. I have about 100 of them. Some of them are very detailed and will probably become something some day. Some of them are just titles, like “Shadows Under Exmouth”, which is a great set in one of my favourite places in all of the world.

Anyway, after reading There Is No Antimemetics Division in its wiki-entry web-serial form, I realised I wanted to do something like that. A self-contained, complete story. I have traditionally enjoyed reading SCPs but the format—the clinical diagnostic entry system—did not appeal to me as a writer. I feel very strongly that a story should be told in the format it’s best suited to, and I just didn’t have an idea that I thought could be told best via wiki entries or interview logs. But Antimemetics Division just those as a jumping off point to tell something far grander.

And so Gwenda Masen was born. And the Brawlins Entity (although it was just called ‘the entity’ in preliminary work). A wiki entry for the capture of Brawlins, and then an examination of Masen’s role within the foundation as her eyesight worsened thanks to Best Vitelliform Macular Dystrophy by way of more traditional storytelling.

But I put the story aside to focus on my other books, and when I returned to it, I found myself somewhat disillusioned with the way the SCP community as a whole (though individuals did well) had handled the “Dr Bright” fiasco. They eventually arrived at the correct conclusion and apologised, but it took a community obsessed with redacting information far longer than I liked to do so.

So instead, I decided to make my own universe. Hence the Paranormal Investigation Arm. The three-letter acronym is a classic of the spooky genre, and there’s some fun elements about it—it’s an acronym for “Pain In the Arse”, for example.

This was, of course, a mistake. To return to the X-Files pillar, oh boy do they have it easy. Mulder and Scully work for the FBI! That’s an established TLA! They’re based in the real world, they do cop shit. Some of those episodes aren’t even actually X-Files. The episode I consider to be the best becomes an X-File almost by accident. They’re just called in to investigate a regular old spree killer because the victims all happen to have a tie to the occult (they’re fortune tellers), and then it turns into so much more.

And the SCP universe has deep lore to draw on already. Thousands of anomalies, hierarchical structures already defined, containment protocols written in fictional blood. Setting it there would have been a dream (provided I could ignore that one thing).

But instead, I had to go and choose to make up a whole new world. While being deeply, intimately aware of the other robust monster collecting worlds that came before me, thus forced to invent an idea and then panic and look to see whether I’d stolen it from somewhere.

I checked, and I haven’t stolen any of my monsters, by the way. Not from SCP, not from The X-Files, not from Control. The last two are more of a visual medium anyway.

Hidden Disability

The fourth pillar is Hidden Disability. I’ve already mentioned that Gwenda Masen has BVMD, Best Disease, a genetic condition that causes her to slowly go blind. This is a condition that she shares with my wife, the direct inspiration for the character.

Before you start rolling your eyes, I’m not a #wifeguy. I mean, I love my wife, but I’m not out here making her the hero of my new series because I’m IRL simping or something. I did it because I find the way she navigates the world to be fascinating. She has what is called “low vision”, caused by the scotoma in the centre of her vision. She has a hard time focusing her vision on things to the point that she can’t drive a car, read subtitles or recognise people’s faces at a glance. Depending on other factors—lighting, distance, the regular impediments to visual acuity—her ability to determine what is happening from sight alone can be impacted even further. This situation has progressed over time, and will continue to do so into the future.

But in a strict and legal sense, she’s not “blind”. And this is what throws a lot of people. She appears to be, from the outside, sighted. She can read, if the text is large enough, she can pick out a person’s face if she’s familiar enough (or able to look for long enough). These things lull people into a false sense of security, into the assumption that ‘oh, she can see’. This frustrates her to no end.

Another factor at play is that she has incredible peripheral vision. I don’t want to play into the whole “one sight goes so the others heighten” thing too much, but it does appear that, as my wife’s central vision has degraded, she has trained herself to use her peripheral vision better than most.

These two factors make up a large part of Gwenda Masen’s role in the story of Final Final Girl and The Best Books, because that peripheral vision is what lead to her initial capture of The Brawlins Entity, and BVMD is what leads to Gwenda getting benched and needing a chauffeur.

At the same time, it’s difficult. I have to avoid deifying Gwenda as a character through her low vision, because I don’t want to fall into the trap of discriminating through lowered expectations. She is one of the heroes of the story, but she’s not heroic for doing everyday things. It’s tricky to balance, because putting focus on Gwenda’s disability sometimes reads like I’m saying exactly that.

That leads to the third piece of the puzzle, I think.  It’s a reflection of my own journey of understanding what living with a hidden disability is like. Gwenda is a flawed character, with a complicated relationship with her diminishing sight. She still feels like she ‘suffers’ from it, she pre-emptively gets mad at people for assumptions she assumes they’ve made. She gets frustrated, and that’s ok, because people are allowed to be frustrated by frustrating things.

As the series progresses, I’m hoping to explore that kind of thing more—while also delving into other aspects of living with a hidden disability from the perspective of some other characters. The hidden part of hidden disabilities makes functioning in public all the more stressful for some people, and while I don’t want the series to be some sort of soapbox, I would love to bring more awareness to the concept. Another great way to learn more is via the Hidden Disability Sunflower program, which hopes to use the bright and colourful iconography of the yellow flower to provide visibility for those who might need a little more help sometimes. There’s a direct reference to the sunflower within Final Final Girl, in Gwenda’s office near the beginning.

Miscellaneous other elements

Jess Ibbett, the can designer and co-owner of my favourite craft brewery, Kicks Brewing, did the can art for Final Final Girl, and I love how it turned out. She did the can art for Till The Heavens Burst as well, and I am always amazed at how much she can do with some of the worst briefs anyone has ever constructed.

Obviously you know where it finished, but here was her first cover.

I honestly love it. But I figured that, for the debut novel in a horror series, it might be better to go for something spookier? Maybe one day I’ll do a special edition with that cover art. The logo she created for series is amazing, though, and the font she used is a low vision readability font called Luciole. It’s an incredible touch that made its way to the final product.

As to the launch date, July 30th was my dad’s birthday. He passed away a few years ago. I’d love to say I picked it to honour him, but I was actually being much more selfish. Every year on his birthday, I’m reminded of how I didn’t spend enough time with him. I moved 1000 kilometres away two decades ago, and I didn’t get back up to see him as often as I should have. So selfishly, I thought, perhaps the 30th of July could be the birthday for a new series—that way, when it rolls around next year I’ll have something positive to remember as well.

Obviously the real solution would be to appreciate the time I did get to spend with my dad, and to remember that all our time is finite, and all the time we get to spend with our loved ones is limited in some way. But knowing the facts and writing the words doesn’t make the pain go away, so I’ll try this instead.

Also I needed time to work on the other books so that I could (hopefully) put out sequels at a decent rate. As I said above, I’m not going to manage 60 in five years, but I would like to do more than six. And series are tricky. You need to have a plan for the entire thing, but you also have to test that plan against at least one complete story. I have the first six books all deep outlined, and every time I finish more of the previous, the later books alter. That’s just how it goes. Sometimes, though, I’d write something in book two and realise I needed to change something in book one.

Now that Final Final Girl is published, I can’t do that any more.

But that’s the magic of publishing, right? And magic always has a price.

Final Final Girl is out now. Book two will be out before the end of the year. Hopefully I won’t try to launch it on the busiest weekend of my other job. You can buy it now, right here, on Joabyjojo.com. It’s also on Kobo and Kindle. If you think any of the above pillars sound interesting to you and you haven’t read it, now’s your chance!