Steven Banks is the author of Out for Blood, the third in his Middle School Bites series for kids. He has worked on a variety of TV shows, including serving as head writer for SpongeBob Squarepants, and is a playwright.
Q: This is the third in your Middle School Bites series. What inspired you to create your character Tom, and do you think he's changed from one book to the next?
A: I was inspired to create Tom because I wondered what would happen if a kid was bitten by all three of the classic monster biters; a vampire, werewolf, and zombie…and then I added that it happened on the day before he started middle school and how he would deal with that.
And how would his family, friends, teachers, students deal with it.
Tom’s core personality is the same, but he is a bit more comfortable with his Vam-Wolf-Zom abilities; super hearing, night vision, changing into a bat, flying, increased strength, ability to hypnotize people whose wills are not too strong…but the powers are double-edged, sometimes you hear and see things that you shouldn’t!
And it’s still a pain to deal with sunlight, a ravenous appetite, changing into a wolf twice a month and surprise visits from his biters; Martha Livingston the 13-year-old vampire and Darcourt the werewolf, who we meet in Book #3 and isn’t all that he seems...
Q: What do you think fascinates people about vampires, werewolves, and zombies?
A: They are cool! And scary! And weird! They have superpowers, but they also have super problems.
Their origins go back many centuries, and many cultures have different variations of them. Hollywood plays a big part. For example, most of the “classic” werewolf tropes were created by a screenwriter, Curt Siodmark, for the 1941 movie The Wolf Man.
Monsters put regular people in extreme situations, and they have to deal with it, becoming the monster, creating them or fighting them. Conflict makes for good stories.
Q: The Kirkus Review of the book says, "The narrative flirts with the darkness of Tom’s condition but ultimately plays it for laughs, like when he sprints away from a bloodmobile to get himself a thirst-quenching, nonhuman-liver smoothie." What do you see as the role of humor in your writing?
A: You catch a lot more flies with honey…In other words, I like to lay in a subtle message beneath the humor. Get someone laughing and they relax, and you can sneak things in. Mark Twain is, perhaps, the master of this, also Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Any kid (or adult who went through middle school) who feels they are different can identify with Tom.
Tom finds some positive aspects to being a Vam-Wolf-Zom when he turns into a film noir-ish detective a la Sam Spade, using his Zom “powers,” when his valuable action figure is stolen, and he has to solve the mystery. He ends up sneaking into the school bully’s bedroom, as a bat, and makes some interesting discoveries about him.
There is a darkness to Tom’s condition; he needs blood, he has an insatiable hunger, he is very hard to kill and has the potential to live forever, or a very long time, long after his family and friends are gone. These issues could be dealt with if we see Tom age … High School Bites? College Bites? Hmmm?
Q: What do you hope kids take away from the story?
A: The desire to read more books! (And not just mine.) Also, that they can survive middle school knowing other kids go through some of the same challenges and “adventures.” The importance of friends and family. You do have the ability to change and evolve.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Over the past year I wrote 26 episodes of a new animated series, Stan Lee’s Superhero Kindergarten, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I got to direct Arnold in 8 of the episodes. It’s on Kartoon Channel and YouTube.
I also wrote a new book, and I am writing the script for a Broadway musical called Save The Last Dance For Me: The Doc Pomus Story.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Yes! But I can’t tell you…yet.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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