With the Writer Spotlight Series’s , conversations with different writers and illustrators. This month we have been doing Q&As with many writers, to get to know more about them and their work. Here, we are showcasing all the questions we have asked author Benjamin Dean. We discuss her new book, Bury Your Friends.
Hello! My name’s Ben and I’m a full-time, bestselling author who probably spends far too much time on TikTok when I should be writing…but everything is inspiration, right?! I’m a big fan of all things pop culture, and if I’m not at my desk procrastinating, you can probably find me at the cinema in the middle of the day. Or at brunch. Big brunch fan!
What first sparked the idea for Bury Your Friends?
I was away for a weekend in the country with a big group of friends to celebrate a birthday. The house we were staying in was huge, really beautiful, and mostly made of glass, but I’m not exactly a countryside kind of person, so all I kept thinking was…guys, what if someone is watching us from outside in the dark right now? Obviously, my friends were sick of me by the end of the weekend because I just kept going on about it! But it gave me the first seeds of the idea for Bury Your Friends and I decided to write a story set in a similar location, bringing all those fears to life.
Definitely the setting. I really do love the countryside in the daylight, but when the sun starts to set and the darkness closes in…I’m sorry, but it’s SUPER creepy! I remember stepping outside at night while we were away in the glass house and the thing that struck me the most was how loud the silence was. It was so overwhelming and absolutely pitch black. Then when I looked back at the house, I could see all of my friends moving around inside, but they couldn’t see me. I knew that would make for a good slasher, so I threw in some rich nepo babies (my favourite ingredient for Bury Your Friends!) and things grew from there.
The friendships in the novel feel complicated and real. Were these characters based on friends you know?
Not really. I think the majority of the characters in this book are…quite horrible in one way or another haha and I’m very lucky to have lovely friends who wouldn’t try to evict me from the house and into the hands of a killer! I base a lot of my characters from the shows I watched growing up – those over-the-top, campy dramas like Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, 90210, Desperate Housewives. I love how exaggerated those characters can be, and it really lent itself well to the nepo babies in Bury Your Friends.
It was really difficult because it was the first book I’d ever worked on with a main cast of characters this big, which presented a ton of challenges I’d never faced before. I ended up making vision boards on Pinterest so I could actually see what the characters looked like, and then I focused on each of them in turn and built a short back story for them so I could get a better sense of who they were as people. I think the best way to build the dynamics though was through their friendships. They’re all so privileged and yet they’re almost constantly competing against each other, which is…well, just a little bit toxic haha!
Your work blends YA thriller and even true-crime vibes. Who did you imagine as the ideal reader?
When I was writing Bury Your Friends, I was really thinking a lot about the Halloween sleepovers I would have as a teenager growing up and how me and my friends loved to scare ourselves with horror/slasher movies. I think so many people love to feel the thrill of being scared in a controlled and safe setting, so I very much imagined a reader who’s settling down at night, locking the doors, and can’t put the book down until they know what happens next and who survives.
I love reading a wide variety of genres, and I’d like to try my hand at writing a lot of them too. I grew up on fantasy books, so I’d love to put my own dark, queer spin on something in that genre.
About the author
Benjamin Dean is a full-time author with a background in celebrity journalism. He has interviewed a host of glitzy celebrities and broke the news that Rihanna can't wink (she blinks, in case you were wondering). His award-winning middle-grade debut, Me, My Dad and the End of the Rainbow, was described as 'One of the most joyful books you'll read this year' (The Bookseller), and he's since gone on to publish The Secret Sunshine Project, as well The King is Dead and How to Die Famous for older readers.