Preorder

The book is available now on preorder!  Reserve your copy today!

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/A-Scary-Scene-in-a-Scary-Movie/Matt-Blackstone/e/9780374364212/?itm=1&USRI=a+scary+scene+in+a+scary+movie

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog, where you’ll find info about my upcoming debut YA novel, A SCARY SCENE IN A SCARY MOVIE, due out Spring 2011 with Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

 

The summary

Rene, an obsessive-compulsive high school student hell-bent on becoming a superhero, smells his hands and wears a Batman cape when he’s nervous, which is six to eight hours per day, depending on whether it’s a weekend or weekday.  On a weekday, he witnesses his English teacher, Mr. Head, smash his head into the blackboard. 

Rene is convinced that he is responsible—for this and all other tragedies.  If he picks up a face-down coin, moves a muscle during a time of thirteen (i.e. 7:42 is bad luck because 7+4+2=13), or washes himself in the wrong order, Mr. Head will die a gruesome death, someone in a state other than New Jersey will get blown up in a bus, and/or Rene’s explosive father will return to the family.

Rene’s new and only friend, Gio, tutors him in the art of playing it cool, but it’s not as easy as Gio makes it sound, for Rene must court his crush, Ariel (better looking than the mermaid), escape a shoulder-biting bully, and convince the school psychologist that he’s perfectly normal despite his inability to separate the fantasy of scary scenes in scary movies from his more frightening reality. 

 Can Rene ever be safe—he doesn’t like to talk when not surrounded by security details like locks or walls or people he trusts—when his obsessive, magical thoughts inevitably bring danger?  Where can he turn when the most horrifying place is in his head?

Why I wrote the book

Teachers often say that loud, disruptive students are thorns in their sides but most would admit that the truly dangerous ones—dangerous, at least, to themselves—are the quiet, aloof ones who fly under the radar because they nod politely at their teachers.  They play the game well, well enough to get promoted, but they are anything but well.  At best, these kids are wild cards who occasionally fail a test but turn out aces; at worst, they sleep on the street. 

A SCARY SCENE IN A SCARY MOVIE is the result of seeing a growing number of students isolate themselves.  Rene, the protagonist, is a composite of wild card students I have either taught or observed.  Rene’s rituals and magical thinking exemplify what it means to be mentally ill, or at least socially inept, in a high school setting that demands academic prowess and social fluency.  I wrote this book to offer hope to wild card teenagers (what teen isn’t a wild card these days?) or those who begrudge their parents (sometimes deservedly so), question conformity, and feel so desperate and alone that the only safe place is inside their heads.  But what if even that place isn’t safe?