For readers looking for a genuinely thrilling read, new author Alison Ames' debut novel, To Break a Covenant, should be at the top of the list. Packed with mystery, chilling imagery, and coming-of-age drama, the novel follows four friends who set out to unravel the dark secrets of their ghost town's haunted mine.
Long in the making
While Ames is new to the publishing world, the story behind To Break a Covenant has been stewing in her brain for over a decade. "This particular book I started writing in 2011 and now it's here," she said. While it may seem like 11 years is a long time to work on one novel, Ames clarifies that it wasn't until a few years later that she got serious about writing her debut book.
"I wasn't firmly writing it and trying to get it done. It was more like, 'Okay, I'm feeling the vibe today.' Then in 2015, I started being like, 'If I'm going to do this as an actual thing and think about publication, I have to do it and finish it and have a plan for it,' so that was when I tried locking it down. In 2017 I signed with my agent, and then we got the deal in November of 2019. Then it came out last year."
While it took her a while to turn To Break a Covenant into the novel she wanted it to be, Ames assures fans that her next book won't take as long to hit the shelves. Her sophomore novel, It Looks Like Us, was just released in September. She's hoping to release a book per year from now on.
Fans have also asked Ames about whether or not To Break a Covenant will get a sequel. "There have been some conversations about making a sequel or something in the same universe," she admitted. However, she feels the ending of the novel wraps the story up. "It doesn't necessarily leave itself open to any kind of a sequel, so doing any... bonus content or sequels will require some creative moving sideways."
Despite the difficult maneuvers it will take, she plans to release exclusive bonus content for the paperback edition of the novel, which will be released in 2023.
Based on true events
Although extending the plot will be difficult for Ames, continuing the spooky vibes of the novel won't be a problem. When plotting out her early drafts for To Break a Covenant, Ames said she took inspiration from the real-life town behind the popular Silent Hill franchise.
"I keep doing this based on vibes. I was just like, 'Silent Hill, the vibe.' I found out it was based on a real place. If you've seen the movies or played the games, you're just in this gray, like ash is raining down upon you, and it's just a very haunted and very oppressive feeling. I was like, 'I love this vibe. I would love to do something with this vibe. How do I work this into something that does not just vibe?' So I... got down into this Centralia rabbit hole, and I was just like, 'Okay, okay, haunted mine, here we go,' and everything sort of grew around that, basically.
"Centralia is a coal mining town in Pennsylvania. Once the mine caught on fire, it was abandoned. This book is based on a town that's exactly like this one," she added.
After the Centralia mine fire, the tenants of the town were forced to move. "It is so fascinating to me. They were like, 'You're sinking into the earth. The ground is not supporting your house anymore and the air is toxic, and it's going to give you all kinds of diseases and kill you,' and they were like, 'I don't wanna move away,' and the government had to physically remove them. The town is based on this industry, and the industry has collapsed. What does that make the rest of them, and how do they find an identity?"
Taking inspiration from history, Ames decided to write a different fate for the townspeople. "In the case of Centralia, everyone moved away and dispersed into other places. I was like, 'What if instead, they took everything and they just sort of moved it just far enough away and then did everything the same?' They don't have the mine anymore, but they have this new industry, which is ghost tours based on the mine. So, instead of being [a] mining town, they're [a] haunted mining town, and that's their new identity and how they rebuild themselves around that."
Writing a Gay novel
While the bulk of the novel has undergone multiple changes throughout her long writing and rewriting process, two things have remained the same throughout the drafts: the book is still based on the real town of Centralia, and the main characters are still Gay.
"That was important to me," Ames said.
She was originally inspired by the works of Megan Abbott and Judy Bloom when she created the characters Clem and Nina. "There's a very distinct tradition of all-consuming teen girl friendships and the idea that you're just the only person that each other cares about and that you don't need anyone else and you're together all the time," she said. "I think that a lot of times it doesn't turn out to be Gay, but for a lot of us, that is a place where loving another girl shows up before you realize what that means. Just 'I want to be her. I want to be with her. I want to be around her. I want to know what she thinks about stuff' — all that is a precursor to me."
From the beginning, Ames knew she wanted to take the trope of teen-girl best friends and make it Queer. "It was really important to me to be like, they are obsessed with each other in this best-friend teen-girl way that all teen girls can have with each other, but then the additional layer of, also they're into each other romantically, so how do you tip them over that line to get one or both of them to say it? To be able to cross that line is very scary and hard, especially when everything feels so huge as a teenager, and... even if it doesn't seem like it's that big of a change, it does change that relationship. Hopefully in a good way, but the fear of the sort of drawing that line and verbally stepping over it is a fear I have had. I wanted to... let them do it and have it go well."
The book's biggest controversy
While writing any kind of LGBTQ+ romance can attract backlash, critics and readers alike have supported her characters. The only backlash To Break a Covenant has garnered is over the book's ending. "I like the ending, because I did it the way I did it," Ames said. "It's been polarizing for a lot of people. A lot of people are like, 'This is the worst thing that's ever happened to me, and I hate this ending and I hate you,' and I'm like, 'Okay.' And then there are other people who like it and are okay with it."
While the book has seen many changes over the years, the ending has stayed relatively the same. "The ending was always what it was. There's a lot of me being winky and cute and being like, 'Here are some things that I love referenced in this book.' I had to put all my Easter eggs in."
Inspired by author Shirley Jackson, Ames always knew she was going to wrap up the mystery by the end of the novel, but she leaves some elements up for interpretation. "You have to answer your questions at the end of the book about what you think happened, and so I always knew it was going to be that type of a thing, where I answered the question, but I want you to also answer it. We can see if we have the same answer."
What's next for Alison Ames?
Ames is quickly carving a niche for herself, and she brings similar mystery horror vibes to her next novel, It Looks Like Us, as well. "The general Alison Ames trademark, according to most of my friends is, 'What if we were underground and it was fucked up?' No matter where we're going, you can expect at some point it will be underground."
Her latest novel, which does end up underground, is set in Antarctica, and also includes LGBTQ+ protagonists. "There's representation in it, but there isn't any plot romance. The main character is Asexual, which gets touched on briefly, and then one of the other main characters is Gay. But again, that's only touched on briefly, because there isn't time. It moves very quickly, so there isn't a lot of time to explore a lot of individual identities."
While this book also follows the horror/mystery style of To Break a Covenant, it differs in a few ways. "It's gorier than this one, and it's less ghosty and more monster-y. And apparently, there's more swearing," she said.
The rough language has gotten Ames flagged by international presses. "They're doing an Australian edition, which is very exciting, but they came back to us and they were like, 'Can you cut the swearing down by, like, half?' and I was like, 'Intensity-wise? Like they're saying the F-word and you want them to say the S-word? Or just numbers-wise?' and they sent me a manuscript and they were like, 'You can delete this one and this one and this one,' and I was like, 'As I'm looking at it, it does seem like a lot.' I'm a little bit worried about that one when parents get ahold of it, but hopefully, people will like it," she said with a laugh.
Walking the line regarding representation
Encouraged by the reception of her first novel, Ames says she plans on continuing to put LGBTQ+ characters at the forefront of her mysteries, but she also acknowledges that writing Queer characters can be difficult, as they are often scrutinized by readers and critics in ways straight characters are not.
"It would be the same if you were reading a straight YA book with two people spending a lot of time together, having emotional closeness. The odds that they will get together... are pretty good. But then when it's a Gay relationship, or any kind of non-straight relationship, it becomes much more of 'Oh, they're representing something, they're doing something with it,' and it's like, no, they're just teens discovering their emotions in the middle of an otherwise heightened emotional situation. And in this case, the teens are girls who like each other as girls.'
She hopes the romantic elements of the novel don't overshadow the other parts of it.
"Ideally you want everything to just be a part of the character. Like, she's not just 'the Gay one,' this is just a facet of her personality. But I also don't want to downplay it. She is Gay, and she must be Gay, it's important to me that she's Gay, but it's not the only thing about her. [It's] walking the line that these are things that you know about the characters — and you must know them — but it's not the focus of the book to the exclusion of everything else," she explained.
Whether readers are looking for a supernatural thriller, a coming-of-age story of friendship, or an LGBTQ+ romance, Ames hopes the book leaves them with a sense of inner strength. "I hope they take away that you do have the power to fight evil where you see it, no matter how small you are and how young you are and how huge the evil seems.
"I also hope that they take away that evil is real, monsters are real, your friends are the most important thing, and the relationships you choose and cultivate and draw strength from will be there for you even in the presence of evil. Even if the evil seems to be triumphant, you still have each other."