The Nightmares of Finnegan Quick by Larry Hayes
Our first blog of 2025 is about the inspiration behind The Nightmares of Finnegan Quick from author Larry Hayes.
The Nightmares of Finnegan Quick – Inspired by Fear The Nightmares of Finnegan Quick is dedicated to my brother. When I was young, sharing a bedroom, I woke one night and saw a goblin sitting on his sleeping body.
It was crouched low, peering over at his head. The light was dim and if I’d taken a second look, I’m sure I’d have realised it was just a dream, an illusion or a trick of the mind.
But I never did take a second look. I don’t think there’s an eight-year-old in the world who would have done.
Instead, I became addicted to horror, and above all else: comedy-horror. From Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein to Zombieland via The Burbs, Elm Street, “Kingstown Falls” and “Woodsboro, California”. I’ve laughed and cowered through them all. Best of all was the horror I read: Goosebumps, Coraline, Good Omens, Carpe Jugulum and The Dark is Rising – where imagination could paint the deepest of fears.
Then I grew up, and forgot.
But decades later, now a children’s author, I rediscovered this wonderful world of comedy-horror during school author visits. I run creative writing workshops for 9 to 13 year olds and it soon became obvious that children of all ages are gripped by the funny and frightening. The stories they create are almost universally some combination of horror and humour, gags and gore.
Kids love comedy-horror more than adults seem to realise or remember. More perhaps than even publishers and booksellers understand. RL Stine discovered it long before me – probably whilst spending royalties from the sale of 400 million Goosebumps books. If you want a reluctant reader, or any reader, to read a book – give them comedy-horror.
Boys as much as girls will delight in the rollercoaster of a story where humour and horror flip back and forth – two sides of the same coin. Horror instils fear, dread, tension. Humour brings release, relief, and joy. Horror gouges a hole in your guts, leaving no space for happiness. A good laugh leaves no room for apprehension. And with comedy-horror, everything turns on the flip of that coin. The stronger the horror, the greater the relief of laughter. And lurching from fun to sudden terror is all the more disturbing.
Fear on its own is exhausting. Pure horror needs constant escalation and comedy-horror is the better way. A way to spike our dread, impale it on the javelin of a good laugh. And then pull the rug from under our joy – and drag us down into the basement of our terror.
The Nightmares of Finnegan Quick was written to celebrate my love of comedy-horror. It’s a paranormal-mystery adventure that sees three young teens thrust towards all their worst fears. But they go, as all teens would, with jokes, humour and wit. They laugh in the face of jeopardy. Which after all, is a lesson we all need to practice.
Especially my brother, who for all I know, still sleeps each night with a small goblin squatting on his chest.
The Nightmares of Finnegan Quick by Larry Hayes, published by Bloomsbury Publishing on 2nd January and is the first in a new series of Comedy-Horror Mystery Adventures for 10+
