Going Dark: Why I’m Excited to Move From YA Fantasy to the Dark Side

After trying her hand at Barkeresque dark fantasy in her youth, Fi Phillips ended up creating a magical YA world that’s resulted in a four-book series. But now, older and perhaps wiser, she’s finding the call to the dark side growing stronger once more…

I was brought up on a reading diet of fairy and folk tales. These weren’t the Disney retellings, but instead books of Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson, and stories of mythology from all over the world. I was an only child to parents the age of most of my friends’ grandparents, living in a house full of books. My parents weren’t cruel or neglectful, but they were born in a time when children didn’t need to be mollycoddled or played with. So I was left to my books and my own imaginings.

In my teens, I discovered tales of ghosties and ghoulies, and vampires that tap at your window. To be fair, they were probably moths instead of vampires. I would scare myself silly with these tales of terror and keep my bedside lamp on all night. 

Around the time I began to write a full-on fantasy novel called The Crystal Prince, I discovered the novels of Clive Barker. This was fantasy with a dark, bloody edge. It looked at our world, and other imagined worlds that touched our own, with a raw, highly imaginative, and often erotic approach. Where the novels I’d read by authors like Stephen King, John Saul, and Peter Straub were jump scare, creeping scare, violent scare horror, Clive Barker’s novels took that terrifying darkness and added a heavy helping of magic. 

I soaked up Barker’s novels and tried my hand at writing something similar, but the knack evaded me. My stories weren’t dark enough, or they were full-on horror. I just couldn’t manage the precise balance needed to create dark fantasy. 

The Crystal Prince was completed, several times, and did the rounds of literary agents. In the end, it found a home in my piles of writing notebooks and computer idea files. What I took from that novel, however, were two characters who would feature heavily in my then-future YA fantasy series. There was a jovial, slightly mysterious, and very misbehaved travelling salesman called Hartley Keg, and a dark fae character who became the darkling in my novels. 

Got to get out of here, Steve thought. He took a step. The floorboard beneath his foot creaked. 
“Good morning,” a deep voice boomed. “How’s your head?” The owner of the voice stood in a doorway at the opposite end of the shop from Steve’s escape route, wooden spoon in one hand and a floral apron tied around his middle. The man was tall and round in stature, with a mane of chestnut hair that flowed down into an impressively full beard. Steve supposed he was in his fifties, from the lines around his eyes, but it was difficult to tell under so much facial hair. 
“Eggs?” 
“Sorry?” said Steve. 
“Would you like eggs with your bacon?” the man said. “I take it you do eat bacon?” 
“Yes,” said Steve, wondering how much more bizarre the conversation could become. “I eat bacon.” 
“Good,” said the man. “Come on, come on.”

Extract from Haven Wakes

When my debut novel, Haven Wakes, was picked up by Burning Chair Publishing, I was over the moon and heading out to space. Then they agreed to publish the next novel in the series, Magic Bound. Wow! The third instalment of the Haven Chronicles is in their hands right now. They’ve just shared the wonderful book cover design with me. While I’m still beyond happy that my YA futuristic fantasy series is out there in the big, wide world, writing for a teen audience has its constraints. It means that I’ve had to write with a filter for that age group’s sensitivity and life experience. For instance, there may be fights and threats of violence but they’re dialled down. 

There are two more books in this series—but the plan has always been to write a duology for a grown-up audience after that.

This forthcoming adult work is destined to be a dark fantasy with scares aplenty, but also much magic and monsters. Here’s a clip I wrote as a tester:

She stepped over the shoe, leaving the safety of daylight behind her. Within the sprawl of the trees, the air felt heavier, colder, and for some reason, worrying. The branches tangled above her head, heavier limbs crisscrossing with jagged twigs and leaves. 
The ground felt velvety soft under her careful steps. It should have been a pleasant sensation, but it simply increased her feelings of discomfort, as if the ground could sag and drag her down. There was no noise. No twigs snapping underfoot. No birdsong above. The silence felt like held breath.
The man lay on his back. The mouth that had downed a pint of beer in the Ways Hotel only hours before, was stretched open. He looked like he’d died mid-scream. He wore one shoe – the partner to the shoe she’d found – while the other foot was shielded only by a sock that desperately needed to be darned or replaced. The yellow anorak she’d seen him pull on as he left the hotel was ripped open. His once white shirt and pale blue tie were drenched with crimson. 
Jeannie pressed a hand to her stomach, feeling the contents churn. The forest suddenly seemed too closed in, too warm, too—
The snarl made her jump. A cloud of bile rose up in her throat. Her eyes stung at the vile taste. She clamped a hand to her mouth, as her stomach lurched.
Deeper in the forest, something moved. Darkness upon darkness, stalking closer. The snarl had settled into a throaty rumble as the creature wound itself between the trees.

Test extract from The Ways

This is a series I’ve wanted to write for a very long time. The main character is a person I could have become if my life had taken a different turn. She’s alone in the world, on the verge of 40, and finding out who she is away from all the voices who tried to tie her to roles that suited them. Writing for an adult audience means that I can investigate her character in an honest and perhaps self-reflective way. Writing her story as a dark fantasy means I can turn her journey into an adventure that links to the world of my YA fantasy series without the restraints of a younger readership. There will be monsters, and magic, loss and triumphs, self-realisation, and many many scares.

But how can I write dark fantasy now, when I couldn’t do so in my twenties? I think the answer to that is simply life experience and perspective. While Clive Barker was penning dark fantasy in his thirties, it’s taken until this stage in my life for me to embrace the dark side of my imagination. 

My muse would much rather I start writing The Ways now while I work on book four of the Haven Chronicles. But who knows who will win that fight?