AJ Locascio on Spoops! | Interview and Preview

As the end of summer draws near, thoughts turn to Halloween – and Top Shelf has just published a super-cute picture book to help get young readers in the mood. Spoops, by AJ Locascio and Laurie A. Conley, is a cheery tale, told in rhyme, about little Halloween spirits—spoops—who help young Holly overcome her dentist parents’ objections to Halloween by emphasizing the creative side of the holiday, making costumes and carving pumpkins, over the sugary treats.

Locascio is a voice actor whose credits include playing Gambit in X-Men ’97, Prince Lotor in Voltron: Legendary Defender, Gizmo in Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai, Han Solo in various Star Wars projects, and Marty McFly in Back to the Future: The Game. But his real loves, as we will see, are writing and Halloween. We talked to him about how he came to write this book and what Halloween means to him.

You’ve had a career as a voice actor, so this is a big change. Why did you decide to do a book, and why a children’s book?

I was trying to write a book, or books, since long before voice acting was a thing. When I was a kid, that was what I would do for fun. It was kind of my fascination. I was obsessed with Roald Dahl and Peter Pan, so this is my hobby—or my passion—and voice acting is just kind of a funny thing that happened along the way. 

OK, but why a children’s book?

Children’s books are what I gravitate towards. I’ve never found anything in an “adult” book, other than Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, that quite hits the same note. And I wouldn’t even necessarily say that’s an adult book. That’s just a book for everyone. 

There’s a charm to children’s books that you don’t find anywhere else. Especially, I was talking about Roald Dahl, there’s a charm and a quaintness and a cheekiness to all of that that I just love to death. Obviously, Dr Seuss is a huge inspiration for this. It’s where I feel safe. There’s a magic to that—it’s kind of a genre, that style of writing—that is just inescapable for me. 

Why did you write Spoops in verse?

It just felt right. That is what I wanted to read as a kid. I was really charmed by Dr Seuss and The Night Before Christmas,and also the cleverness, the joy of discovering the rhyme. It’s like, okay, we started here. What could possibly rhyme with this? And then like, Oh, that’s cool!

It also puts you in a box in a really funny way. When you’re writing, you discover things because it needs to rhyme, or it needs to rhyme in a way that works, so you find yourself coming up with things that you wouldn’t have just come up with if it was just regular, straight prose. It was fun, extremely frustrating, but I find it enjoyable, and I like the fun of having it be lyrical. And also it’s funny. 

Nobody wanted to publish a book that rhymed. That was a big thing. When I was trying to do this prior to IDW, everyone was just like, “Nope. Nobody wants a book that rhymes anymore. That’s too old fashioned.” And I was like, I don’t think that’s true. So hopefully we’ll see, we’ll see whether I was right or not.

I guess my next question is, why Halloween?

I’m just obsessed with Halloween. This is obviously a self insert in many ways. My parents weren’t strict about Halloween. They didn’t care one way or the other. But Halloween is one of my favorite things in the universe. 

The book started off as I was sculpting little figurines that I would make just for fun. I wanted Halloween decorations, but I couldn’t make giant ones. I could only make small ones. And then people started asking, “Well, what are these things? What are the Spoops?” And that kind of spun into creating this story. So it was kind of a weird, backwards way of doing things, but that was the beginning of it. It was my love of Halloween, and then my desire to make something Halloween-related, and then that kind of became the story of the book. What would be one night for the Spoops, an adventure? that was how it happened.

Where does the name “Spoops” come from?

We were in the Tumblr era of things when I started sculpting, and people kept saying they were so “spoopy.” And I was like, “What does this mean?” They’re like, “It’s spooky, cute.” And that just kind of stuck.

So you had brought this out to the public via social media first?

Yeah, my Instagram at the time was just kind of like, “Here’s some stuff I make!” I just sculpted them and posted some photos and then kind of left it alone and went about my normal posting. And once this show I was on, Voltron, kind of blew up, people combed through my Instagram and saw those, and they were like, “How do I buy these?” And I was like, “Oh, well, you could try making them,” but that obviously wasn’t enough, so I learned how to cast them and make things in resin, and that kind of became its own little weird side business.

How did you work with the artist? Did you give her some of the figures as models?

She’s Laurie Conley. I’ve been a fan for many years. I just stumbled on her stuff, and it was the first time I’d seen an illustration in so long that that wasn’t from an older book, that wasn’t from Peter Pan, or Quinton Blake, or Maurice Sendak where the illustrator was still alive. And she was also really into Halloween. Early on, I reached out to her and commissioned a sketch, and I thought that would be the end of it, but as I got more intense about the book, I reached out to her again and commissioned some concept art, like, “I’ll send you the Spoops, and could we workshop basically what the Spoops would look like and what this main character would look like?” So early on, I had her come up with some drawings to pitch the story. 

It was a process, because I’ve been sculpting these for so long that it took a lot for us to meet in the middle and be like, “Okay, but their backs curve like this when they move and they know there’s nothing under here, and there’s something up here.” It was kind of like trying to do animation, where they have turnarounds, where I was like, “Okay, this is what their head looks like from this side.” It was definitely a long back and forth of us trying to narrow it down, because I also didn’t want to hinder her, because she has her own style. It was a long process.

You never thought of drawing them yourself?

I did, but I decided that I would, it would be better and more efficient to hire someone much better than me. Also her stuff just so charming. I feel like, as an artist, you have to know when to go, “Okay, I’m going to hire someone better than me to do this.”

What do you want the readers to come away with? Are you just looking to amuse them? Do you want to open up their minds a little bit? What do you want a kid to feel or think when they’re done reading the book?

I always loved the softer side of Halloween. It’s a time to express yourself, and I feel like we rarely get those opportunities or the space in which to do that. For me, that was kind of what Halloween meant. I loved the ghosts and the pumpkins and all that stuff, but to me, Halloween was a time in which I was allowed to make my own Spider Man costume, or I get to do this thing that is expressive in a way that no other time of year allows for. I strongly feel that Halloween is a time to express yourself, and that’s what Holly’s trying to get across to her parents: This is a time for me to be creative and to share that with other people.

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