Nicolina Torres is the author of the new novel Night of the Mallrats. Her other books include This Red Fire. She is based in Ohio.
Q: What inspired you to write Night of the Mallrats?
A: I joke it was a mid-life crisis, but that’s not far off. I remember not long before I wrote Night of the Mallrats, I was texting a guy I’ve known since fifth grade and he admitted he bought old Thundercats or He-Men, something like that. I told him not to feel bad because I ordered the YM magazines I once loved.
I’ve come to realize every generation has experienced what we Gen-Xers are going through right now: We get busy raising kids and bettering our jobs and living situations and then one day, we can stop for a breather and look around, but there’s nothing familiar about our surroundings. Where’s my old Ground Round? Where’s Blockbuster? Where’s my high metabolism? I miss all three of those things.
I'm at an age where I found my kindergarten lunchbox in an antique store.
I went looking for a story that would comfort me like those YM magazines, something about time-traveling back to a mall in the early ‘90s to solve a murder mystery, but couldn’t find it, so I wrote it.
This is how I’ve always been, starting at age 8, when I penned My Little Pony Goes to France. I have a vivid memory of being in elementary school and Mrs. Craig giving a lecture while watching me write my own Sleepover Friends book and doing nothing about it. I never did homework as a kid, but I wrote a lot of books.
I had fun writing Night of the Mallrats, so I hope readers enjoy the laughs and scares and maybe feel less alone in wishing they’d turned left in life instead of right.
Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: I never learn my lesson. Every title and character name I’ve ever had was a quick placeholder because I’m so eager to get started on the writing. Every time, I say to myself, “I’ll change it later” and never do.
I needed a word pertaining to a mall and settled on “mallrat.” The spooky came from Night of the Living Dead, which seemed fitting because our characters travel back to one fateful night. I was open to changing the title, but my book-to-film agent said people liked it, so it stuck.
Q: The author Maggie Thrash said of the book, “Nicolina Torres goes hard with the creepy mall vibes, time travel, unsolved mysteries, and the sweet and sour of nostalgia, all while serving a feast of references bound to satisfy even the most diehard 90s kid.” What do you think of that description?
A: Well, first off, thank you to Maggie Thrash. That’s the nicest thing anyone could say about my book, especially an author like her—Thrash’s Rainbow Black is fantastic.
She's correct that Night of the Mallrats is packed with ‘90s references. Readers are going to be taken back in time to a mall that doesn't exist anymore; to a lifestyle that doesn't exist anymore, written by someone who was there, using her own diaries and photo albums.
Everyone seems to have a year from their youth they consider to be their year and for me, that's 1994. It smelled like Noxzema and tasted like Pizzarias.
Q: How did you create your cast of characters?
A: I was the biggest nerd in school. Classmates just lived their lives around me like parents who think their children are statues that don’t know the divorce is coming.
This is great if you’re a writer! I often observed the small group of popular kids, who seemed extremely co-dependent on one another back then.
When thinking about writing Night of the Mallrats, I wondered what would have happened if their queen bee went missing. I took it from there. Like anything else I’ve written, each character is a stew of traits from various people I have known.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m still living in the ‘90s, and the book I’m editing is a nod to those so-bad-it’s-good teen slasher films I love. I’m not sure I can say anything else, but I'm having a blast writing it.
While Night of the Mallrats is a slow burn as you and these quirky characters figure out who the killer is, this new book is a splatter fest with a huge beauty queen body count. And a murdered hamster.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I am not Colleen. People think I am because we’re both snarky and short and have the same taste in movies and worked in bookstores, but she’s so bitter about how things turned out.
I make fun of my age, but that girl is downright mean to herself and others. There are worse things than dating a man with a C-Pap machine. I do root for her though because she’s desperate to find out what happened to Beth so she can fix the past and have a better life.
I also want readers to know that the horror in Night of the Mallrats isn’t far from my childhood home. Danger lived in the ‘90s suburbs, but no one wants to talk about it. So I wrote about it.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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