Author Scott Westerfeld speaks to Hypable about the monsters and the humanity of his chilling new graphic novel Spill Zone.

Spill Zone tells the story of Addison and Lexa, two sisters who survived a catastrophic and utterly unexplained “Spill” that left their hometown a surrealist hell-zone. Orphaned by the event, Addison sneaks into the town to capture the horrifying phenomena that now populate the town with her camera, selling the photos to support herself and Lexa.

But what haunts the Spill Zone may not be content to remain there. When Addison receives a dangerous offer for a mission within the Zone that she can’t afford to refuse, the creeping tendrils of arcane evil may have found a way to stretch out into her life.

Interview with Scott Westerfeld

Tell me about creating the world of Spill Zone. How did you invent this creatively nightmarish scenario, contrasted by a pretty normal world functioning as usual?

In the 80s I had a roommate who’d been a protester in South Africa, with police baton scars on her back to prove it. Then one day I learned that her father was a used car salesman, and it blew my mind, that in this awful society built on blood and oppression, there were still used cars to be sold. But of course there were, because the normal world has this way of still going on in the background. And after 9/11 I learned how that’s the oddest, awfullest part of disasters, that you still have to make your breakfast the next day.

Of course my heroine, Addison, not only has to make her own breakfast but also her kid sister’s, because the Spill has made them orphans. That’s Addison’s real bravery, more than sneaking into a deadly and illegal site — the bravery of dealing with normal life after normalcy is stripped away. That’s why the Zone is more the background, and the day-to-day world the foreground of the story.

What did you find most challenging about this particular story?

Keeping words out of it.

I’m a novelist, which means I usually get 80,000 words or so to tell a story. But that would clutter the page and erase the amazing work that Alex Puvilland and Hillary Sycamore are doing. For one thing, Alex’s characters are very good actors, their gestures and body language communicate emotions that words can only approximate. So most of the challenge in writing Spill Zone was learning how much story the visuals can carry, and then adjusting my script to emphasize that strength.

Did you always envision telling this story in graphic novel format? Why, or why not?

It always had to be a graphic novel. Though the story is from Addison’s point of view, I wanted the reader to directly experience the psychic link between the kid sister, Lexa, and her doll, Vespertine. Addison doesn’t hear those conversations, which in a prose novel would entail some pretty messy POV shifts.

But in a graphic novel, thought bubbles can efficiently create another layer of information for the reader. I like how it leaves the reader sympathizing with Addison as a main character, while knowing that something creepy is going on right under her nose.

Were you surprised by any of the artistic developments in the graphic novel? Were there any choices made that changed your perception of the characters or world?

Alex Puvilland, my wonderful artist, has a tendency to stretch out my script. Often he’ll add a couple of silent pages to scenes, which tilts the balance from straight-up action to an exploration of mood and setting, a shift from fear to melancholy. The whole thing got much richer that way, and changed the story from surviving otherworldly dangers to surviving loss.

Which is much more interesting and useful story to tell, after all. Very few of us are going to be chased by monsters, but we are all pursued by death and loss.

In spite of all of the horror and strangeness, the novel is really grounded in the relationship between Addison and Lexa. What drew you to that particular bond, and what do you think it adds to the story?

Sibling relations are a robust subgenre of YA, from stock bratty little sisters to Cain-and-Able-level conflict. So that lens seemed the most meaningful way to explore what it’s like to have your family and home town destroyed.

Basically, Addison was a bad older sister before the Spill, sneaking out and leaving Lexa alone when she should have been babysitting. And she was gone on the night of the Spill, so there’s a really nice dance of guilt and protectiveness in their relationship. The two sisters being drawn together by destruction of their home lit up all those sibling rivalries and dependencies in really interesting ways for me.

After all, every family is its own world. Only the people inside it really understand the rules and customs. So when a family is lost, the leftover siblings are like survivors of Atlantis, sharing a culture that no longer exists.

Aside from being the creepy third wheel in Addison and Lexa’s relationship, Vespertine is also one of the flat-out scariest elements of Spill Zone. How did you go about creating that character, especially her uniquely acerbic voice?

A friend of mine who teaches at a girls’ middle school, grades 6-8, always tells me about how intense that period of transition can be. He says his students start that age range loving rainbows and unicorns, but leave it cynical and swearing like truck drivers. So I wanted Lexa to represent the beginning of that process, and her doll Vespertine the end.

Lexa has been been frozen (and mute) since the Spill, and so her doll has taken on the process of growing into a savvy and insubordinate young teen.

Though it’s of course very original, Spill Zone reminds me of similar stories of strange perversities hidden in ordinary towns. (And it doesn’t get more ordinary than Poughkeepsie!) GONE by Michael Grant and Stranger Things come to mind. Were you inspired by any other stories will writing Spill Zone?

It’s not original at all, really. The story owes its biggest debt to Boris and Arkady Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic, which is also about a scavenger who makes his living picking through the leftovers of an alien visitation. (It’s more clearly science fictional than Spill Zone‘s ambiguous disaster.) In both works, events of cosmic importance are turned into tourist traps, criminal enterprises, urban legends, and opportunities for profit.

Human processes — capitalism, culture, competition — make everything that happens to us into the same porridge, no matter how epic and alien it is.

Finally, would you rather be a book, or a computer?

Book. All those corporations bugging me to upgrade myself would get tiresome.

Spill Zone by Scott Westerfeld is available now from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and your local independent bookstore.