Interview: Robin Benway April 22, 2008

Robin Benway is the author of Audrey, Wait!, published earlier this month by Razorbill (my review here). It’s a fabulous, funny, music-loving book, and Robin was kind enough to answer a few questions about the book. And a lot more about music.

First things first, what are you listening to now?
Well, well, well. Right now, I’m days away from finishing my second book, so I’m listening to the playlist that I made for it whenever I’m writing or in the car. (I don’t want to say what the songs are yet, but don’t worry, I’ll post it when it’s time!) But if you look at my last.fm page, it should give you an idea of what some of them are.

Other than that, though, I’ve found that I’m in a “song” mood rather than an “album” mood lately. I’ve been listening to a lot of earlier R.E.M., and I’m especially obsessed with “Leave” off of “New Adventures in Hi-Fi”. Other songs are Saul Williams’ “List of Demands”, The Shins’ “Australia”, and What Made Milwaukee Famous’s “Prevailing Wind”. Also, it’s spring in Los Angeles, which always makes me want to listen to Jane’s Addiction and Red Hot Chili Peppers, so those have been on rotation in between everything else.

For nighttime, though, it’s a lot of softer, folkier stuff: the Weepies, Ray LaMontagne, and AA Bondy. I have a playlist on iTunes called “Exhausted” and that serves me well.

I loved how every chapter began with song lyrics. Why/how did you decide to do this? And how did you go about picking the lyrics that ultimately appear in the book?
When I first started to edit “Audrey, Wait!”, my publisher asked if I would create titles for each chapter. I came back and said, “What about song lyrics?” because not only would that fit the theme of the book, but there were so many songs whose lyrics I felt described the book’s varying moods. So my publisher agreed, and I got started. However, I hadn’t realized that there were OVER FORTY CHAPTERS, haha!

I’ve always kept a Word document filled with my favorite song lyrics, even before I started writing “Audrey,” so I consulted that and then just started listening to even more music. As far as the different types of artists, it made me so happy that I could feature words from some of my favorite musicians. I loved the Belle & Sebastian lyrics, and the ones from Patti Smith (“amazed to stumble where gods get lost”) have always been some of my all-time favorites. When I heard the Arcade Fire song “Windowsill” that says, “MTV, what have you done to me?” I was like, “YES! THANK YOU, ARCADE FIRE!”

I just wanted to show as many different types of music as possible. What if a reader decides to listen to Belle & Sebastian or The Smiths or a band they’ve never heard before, just because they liked the lyrics? That would be amazing, I would absolutely love that!

Now that Audrey, Wait! has just been published, what song lyrics would head this chapter in your life?
Hmmm….I would have to say lyrics from the New Pornographers, “July Jones”: “Behind the daylight / Who knew what it could feel like?”

I just feel like I’m seeing a whole different side of my life, one where I get to do what I love, and it’s revealing facets that I never thought I would see. It’s like I’ve peeked behind the curtain and been able to live in a world that I had only imagined up until now. And it’s fantastic! (But for all I know, the songwriter meant the lyrics to be really depressing or something, haha).

How difficult was writing the lyrics to “Audrey, Wait!”?
Surprisingly easy! I just figured I needed a couple of rhyming words and it grew from there. I didn’t even really think about it, the lyrics just happened. Thank goodness! The last thing I am is a songwriter.

If someone were to write a song about you, what would it be about?
Hopefully, it’d be a long 12-minute rambly ballad about my life adventures. My friends would sing the chorus and Bob Dylan would write the lyrics and Neko Case would make a guest appearance. Another option would be if 50 Cent and Kanye started some sort of rap battle about who could write a better song about me. That would be awesome! Hee!

I think the plot of Audrey, Wait! could also work in an adult novel. Why write it as a YA novel?
I wrote it as YA because that seemed like the perfect audience for the book. I wanted readers who were completely limitless in their enthusiasm, and I know from personal experience that sometimes that enthusiasm gets tempered in adulthood. Also, sometimes I think that when teenagers are written about in adult novels, there’s a certain self-awareness about them that you don’t have as a teenager. I wanted “Audrey” to be written in the moment of being sixteen years old and loving music more than anything in the world and being on the precipice of having the rest of your life happen to you.

What kind of music did you listen to as a teen? In other words, was your taste in music as cool as Audrey’s?
My musical experience blew up when I was about sixteen years old for several reasons: I got “Automatic For the People” by R.E.M. for Christmas and listened to it obsessively. I also heard “The Downward Spiral” by Nine Inch Nails and could not BELIEVE what I was hearing. That album, more than any other CD, changed how I listened to music. I also used to send away for live Smashing Pumpkins bootlegs in the mail, haha!

Then my friend Anna-Lynne Williams (who’s now in the band Trespassers William) started making me mix tapes during our junior year of high school. I still have every single one of them. One the first one, she put songs by Velvet Underground, Nico, The Smiths, The Cure, Tori Amos, Peter Gabriel, and Patti Smith. And that was just one side of the tape! It was transformative and I’m always grateful that she gave me that music.

So I don’t know if it as as “cool” as Audrey’s, but it was certainly varied.

Audrey, Wait! is such a fun book to read. Was it also fun to write?
Definitely! After writing the first chapter, I had no idea what was going to happen to Audrey, so I just kept writing and the plot started to unfold. But there were moments & scenes (such as the part with the Lolitas and the last few chapters of the book) that were such a joy to write. I also loved listening to music and all of a sudden thinking, “That song has GOT to be in the book!” That’s how “Mama Said Knock You Out” by LL Cool J snuck in there.

Guilty pleasure (music) you don’t actually feel guilty about enjoying?
This is actually a good question for me, since I’m trying to do away with referring to some music as a “guilty pleasure”. Few things annoy me more than musical elitism, so I try not to contribute to it. That being said, I really enjoy Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance. I always get crap for liking them (from both teenagers AND adults) but I can’t help it! I saw both of them live last year and they were great shows. People were dancing everywhere! It was way better than going to see some “cool” band and having everyone stand there with their arms folded.

One song that I just love John Denver’s “Take me Home, Country Roads”. And I can also sing the entire “Annie” soundtrack from start to finish. I will NEVER feel guilty about that!

What is your writing routine like?
A lot of procrastination, followed by a lot of panic!

No, actually, it’s pretty good, and I’ve learned to just be patient and let the characters sort themselves out. Some days I can write 20 pages, while other times I’ll only have 2 or 3. What I try to do is get some coffee, put on some music, and re-read the last ten pages or so. Then I just say, “Okay, what would happen next? What is the very next thing they would do?” and I take it from there. I don’t write an outline until I’m about 75 pages away from the end of the book, and I never know what’s going to happen. It’s like traveling down a long road. You know you’re going to get to your destination, but you can’t see it yet. It’s the same for me & writing: I can only see so far ahead.

Thanks, Robin!

Robin Benway has also been interviewed at Teen Book Review. Visit Robin’s blog to see what’s on heavy rotation on her iPod, the five songs that are currently saving her life, and more.

Meg Cabot! Squee! February 14, 2008

If there’s one YA author who doesn’t need an introduction, it has to be Meg Cabot. Prolific and bestselling author, popular blogger, and today’s interviewee! Can you tell how excited we are? So read on to find out more about writing Missing You, upcoming projects, some of Meg’s favorite romantic novels, and more.
Is there a difference between how you approach writing novels that are part of a series versus standalone books? With your series, how much do you have plotted/planned ahead of time, and how much changes when you actually start writing a new book in the series?
Well, obviously with a series book you already have your characters and their world mapped out for you, so it’s more like visiting old friends than discovering new ones (both of which are fun in their own ways). Still, you have to keep it fresh to make it interesting (as much for yourself as for readers)–otherwise it gets old fast.

So, like with the Princess Diaries series, while I do have things loosely planned ahead of time, I try to keep things a bit free so I’ll surprise myself along the way. Otherwise, Mia would never end up growing and learning from her mistakes, and then making fabulous new strides towards becoming an adult, as she does in Princess Diaries 9. It’s like Mia says in the end of PD 9:

Do one thing every day that frightens you. And never think that you can’t make a difference. Even if you’re only sixteen, and everyone is telling you that you’re just a silly teenaged girl-don’t let them push you away. Remember the other thing Eleanor Roosevelt said: No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

Mia’s learned a lot since Book 1 and by the end of the series, Book 10, she’ll be (almost) all grown up. But not so grown up that she won’t still be making mistakes so we can go back and visit her once in a while for hilarity’s sake.

There was a four year gap between the publication of SANCTUARY and MISSING YOU. You’ve said that you had hoped to continue writing 1-800-Where-R-You books, but Simon & Schuster cancelled the series. So when HarperCollins offered to publish additional novels in the series, was it an easy decision to say yes and write MISSING YOU?
Well, they didn’t exactly offer. I pushed! It’s not like a new publisher is super eager to take on a series an author was fired from while writing for another publisher.

So, kudos to HarperCollins for being such a good sport about both the Mediator and the 1800 series! And kudos to the new guard at S&S for re-issuing the 1800 series under my real name.

A good lesson to learn from all of this is…if you like a new author’s books…buy them. Really, if you love a new author, invest in her. That’s the only way her publisher knows readers care.

What was it like to return to the 1-800 series? Did you have to re-read the first four books prior to writing MISSING YOU, or were you able to just dive back into that world and start writing?
I re-read parts of them (okay—the romantic parts). Mostly I just dove back in. I had a completely new idea, about a girl who was totally burnt out, and had post traumatic stress syndrome. Mainly what mattered to me was getting everyone’s eye and hair color right.

How different is MISSING YOU from your original ideas for post-SANCTUARY novels?
Well, totally, completely different. Obviously the series was conceived pre-9/11. Post-9/11, which is when I took it up again, if there really were a girl who could find missing people, I would think her powers would be put to a different use.

With the war in Afghanistan, Douglas and Tasha’s alternative high school, class, the mentions of developers, chains putting locally owned stores out of business, and more, I thought MISSING YOU was a lot more serious, a lot darker, tackled more issues than a “typical” Meg Cabot novel. Do you agree? If so, was there a conscious effort on your part to address these topics?
Well…in many ways MISSING YOU was about going back…not just for Jess but for me too. I was going back to a series I’d been fired from, and Jess was going back to a town and a job and a guy she’d left behind.

In my mind, too, the end of the series, anyway, was always kind of wrapped in 9/11 (my getting notice they weren’t buying the next 4 books in the series—and also letting my editor go—happened around then; my husband worked across the street from the Trade Center, and I thought he was dead that day; plus, we lived about 20 blocks from there. I remember working on the copy edits of the last books, and breathing in the smoke. I was also getting emails from readers who wanted to know why I wasn’t continuing the series, not knowing I’d been fired from it. Also wanting to know why Jess didn’t find Osama Bin Laden…it was all pretty stupid and awful).

Plus, around the time I started writing MISSING YOU, I went back to my hometown and saw what the chain stores were doing to the locally owned businesses I once loved, and in Key West, where I live now, the whole place is going condo.

So, I guess all of that turned into MISSING YOU.

On second thought, perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised by how serious MISSING YOU is. After all, class has been an issue since WHEN LIGHTNING STRIKES, racism was a huge part of SANCTUARY, and Douglas has schizophrenia. What was the inspiration behind Douglas’scharacter? I can’t recall reading any other YA book with a schizophrenic character, and Douglas is such a great brother to Jess.
Thanks. Well, two things, really. One, I have an adopted brother who’s black. We lived in a small, Southern Indiana town where there were very few other African American families, so we often had to deal with racism. What were referred to in the 1800 books (and in real life in my town, back then) as “Grits” (people who lived in town were “Townies”) were people who occasionally, despite the crosses they wore around their necks, called my brother a “nigger”, and myself a “nigger lover”. They drove around with Confederate flags on their pick ups and spat on me and my little brother. Sometimes we wouldn’t get served in restaurants (hi, Denny’s!) My other brother and I would occasionally be called upon to fight the violent ones (so, the detention story from the first book is real).

When some people hear this, they’re always like, “Why don’t you write a book about this?” but to me, 1) this is like saying to a Chinese person who likes to cook, “Oh, you should only cook Chinese food,” and 2) the fact is, I think my books ARE about that. I can’t help it if other people don’t see that.

Anyway, my other brother is now a police sargeant and enjoys arresting homophobes and racists immensely, so he’s taking care of the problem.

So: the issue of being an outsider was ever present in all our lives. I wanted to write about the idea of being an outsider in your own town, but the racism thing , back when I was first starting with When Lightning Strikes, was (and is) still too hurtful for me to write about. (I should mention that the stuff about the murder of Tasha’s brother in SANCTUARY is true…I based it on some unsolved murders that have happened in my town that people speculate are the work of a bizarre cult.)

Anyway, later, when I escaped from all that, I had a lot of experience with schizophrenics when I worked in the dorm at NYU. I knew enough about schizophrenia, however, that I felt I could write about that instead.

PS Sorry for the long answer.

(PPS Rob is a made up character, but he’s partly based on a few people I’ve known who were, as people in my town would say, “Grits.” But there were some “Grits” who were super nice and not racist, just as there were some “Townies” who were total racist buttheads. I hope I made that clear in the books, too. Because it’s true in real life. I encounter them all the time.)

Now that one of your books has officially been banned, will you be writing a book about censorship or intellectual freedom?
Maybe tangentially, but not as the sole focus of a book, because that’s not my style.

While a number of your YA novels have paranormal elements, your adult books are straight historicals or contemporaries. Will you ever write a paranormal for adults? Because if you did, I would totally read it, especially since I know it would not be a vampire romance, and I’m all for more non-vampire paranormal romances…
Thanks! And yes, but I’m not ready to say more about it yet, because it’s still in the proposal stages (But no, there won’t be any vampires…I can’t get into the blood sucking thing, but I do love Buffy.)

In your most recent AAR interview, you mentioned a series called Abandon. I haven’t read much about it since, so is there any news you can share?
Yes, this is a series I pitched to Scholastic books. It’s a modern retelling of the myth of Persephone, only set in a modern day high school (well, actually very little of it takes place in school). The scheduling for this series is up in the air though, because I have yet to write most of it. It’s tentatively scheduled to be released in the Fall of 2009.

Before Abandon comes out, I’ll have another thriller-ish romantic series, Airhead, debuting from Scholastic in June 2008. I really can’t say much about this series, though, because if I give too much of the plot away, it will spoil the sci-fi-ish mystery.

And before THAT my first middle grade series debuts this March, Allie Finkle’s Rules For Girls!

You’re known for writing romantic novels and say that you “always consider what I write romance.” How did you get started reading and writing romances? What do you find most appealing about writing them?
Well, I guess it was when my mom handed me a copy of Jane Eyre on a rainy day when I was driving her nuts. I was eleven, which might have been a bit young, but I loved it. I loved Jane, and wanted to read more books with heroines like her, and fortunately my best friend’s mom was a women’s studies professor. She took us to the library and supplied us with Austen and more Bronte, and one day I wandered over to the romance section.

Then I saw ROMANCING THE STONE and realized you could make a living WRITING those books, and I was gone.

I wrote my first historical romance when I was eighteen and started trying to get it and various other ones I wrote published all through my twenties (my first one got published when I was 30). I’ve never written anything that didn’t have a romance at it’s core (well, except the middle grade series books, I guess, but the secret to those is, there IS a romance…Allie just hasn’t gotten there yet).

As for what’s appealling about it…I honestly don’t know. I just love it. It makes me go all girlie. Isn’t that enough? [Yes, it is! - Trisha]

What are some of your favorite romance, or just romantic, novels?
Hmmm, well, obviously, my faves are all the old classics, all of Austen and Jane Eyre (I’m not a fan of Wuthering Heights though); I love the Harriet Vane books by Dorothy Sayers, I love, love, love anything by Mary Stewart, when I was a teen I was a big Gothic, historical romance fan.

Past loves include Robin McKinley (of course). I loved Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm. More recently, Sophie Kinsella is up there, along with Megan Crane and Liza Palmer. There’s a cute new YA coming out called Audrey, Wait by Robin Benway that I liked…I think it’s out in April.

Phew…that’s a long list. The truth is, though, mostly now I read mysteries…I love cozy British country house mysteries by Patricia Wentworth and Ngaio Marsh and Agatha Christie, but I also read those Precious Ramotswe books….I adore the Laurie R King Mary Russell books…really any mystery that’s well written, if it has a romance. I love it!

Thanks, Meg, for stopping by!

Winter Blog Blast Tour: Blake Nelson November 10, 2007

Blake Nelson is an established young adult author with the following titles under his belt: The New Rules of High School, Rock Star Superstar, Gender Blender, Paranoid Park, Prom Anonymous, and They Came From Below.  His titles have been featured on several of YALSA’s booklists including Teens Top Ten (Prom Anonymous), and nominated for Best Books for Young Adults 2008 (They Came From Below) and 2005 (Rock Star, Superstar).  If you’re a young adult/teen  librarian like me trying to find realistic fiction to recommend to a teenage male that’s a fun read, recommend one of Blake Nelson’s books.  He’s also written a couple of adult novels: Exile and User.  His first novel Girl is being republished with a great new cover.  We’re looking forward to the reissue.

Some of you may be familiar with Blake’s blog, if you’re not you should definitely check it out.  This interview probably doesn’t do him justice, but you can glean more of what he’s like by reading his blog entries.  I first came across his blog when he was blogging about his experience at the Cannes Film Festival.  His book Paranoid Park was picked up and adapted into a screenplay by Gus Van Sant and turned into a movie.  It had a warm reception at Cannes and has been featured at several film festivals since.     

Paranoid Park the movie, what was the process of adapting the novel to a screenplay?

There wasn’t much adapting on my end.  I sent the book to Gus because he had almost optioned my book ROCK STAR SUPERSTAR, and I thought he would like it.  He did and I think he started working on the screenplay right then, because by the time all he paperwork was done, he pretty much had it. 

I saw an early draft and it stuck pretty much exactly to the book so I was pleased, though I am all for Directors doing their own thing.  If that’s what they want to do.
 

Who would you chose to play yourself in the Blake Nelson movie?

Billy Crudup.  I feel kind of lost a lot of the time.  He looks kind of lost.

What’s the biggest secret that you remember from high school?

That I was a big reader and was into cultural stuff beside music.  I was on the football team and played in bands, so I probably appeared not too bookish.

Do you research your characters before you create them? Are you a skater?

I did some research about skating, which is unusual.  Usually I just go for it and if good characters appear I keep going.   If the characters don’t work, or the story isn’t right, I stop and start over.

Rock Star, Superstar  is about a serious musician who suddenly finds himself in an up-and-coming rock band. Were you ever in a band?  Who is in heavy rotation on your stereo (or iPod) now?

Yes I was in a band, and it has served me well as a writer. I have written a lot about it.  My favorite group of the new bands around now (3 CDs or under, is INTERPOL.)

Did David Lee Roth really drink iced tea from a whiskey bottle?

That’s what I heard, though you hear a lot of things in dressing rooms.

Your male protagonists seem to get the girls relatively easily, any dating advice for high school guys?

My characters are sort of clueless or obsessed in some way about something.  So I guess my advice is don’t think about girls that much.  Do what you love and the girls will find you.

They Came from Below is your first foray into a science fiction/fantasy book, was writing in a different genre difficult or a nice change of pace? 

It was a blast.  Really enjoyed getting into some heavy ideas and some “BIG ISSUES.”    I loved that feeling of following an interesting idea out as far as it would go.

What inspired you to write They Came from Below? Do you consider yourself an environmentalist? Impressions of Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth?

No, I am from Oregon and we think about that stuff more than other people.  Also, I think generally, people are flawed and they make mistakes, and do stupid things.  But messing up the planet is not the same.  We can’t really afford to do that. 

As a young adult librarian I go to schools and talk about books to middle and high school age students, if I could convey a message from you to them, what would that be? 

Be interesting.   Pursue your interests no matter how weird or off the beaten path.
 

What are your future plans? I read on your blog that you’re moving from New York to Los Angeles.  Are you planning a screen writing career?

No, my wife got a cool job here, at a high school called Viewpoint.  It’s awesome.  Also, I like to surf.  And after ten years in NY, I was ready to try something new.

One last note:  be sure to check out GIRL, my first novel, which is being re-issued by Simon Pulse for YA readers.  I’m very honored that they have done a whole new edition. 

Thanks Blake!  And thanks to all the readers and posters who made the Winter Blog Blast Tour possible. 

Winter Blog Blast Tour: Lily Archer November 9, 2007

The Poison Apples is one of those books that you find yourself reading out loud to other people because there’s so many good parts that need to be shared to be fully appreciated.  I personally loved the bits about Reena’s stepmother who seems to outdo her step children in the realm of being ethnic.  I had the chance to interview Lily Archer and find out a little more about her writing process and her future plans.  

So all you Poison Apple fans, read and enjoy.   

How did you come up with the idea of The Poison Apples?

The idea for The Poison Apples came to me while I was sitting in a movie theater. I don’t even remember what movie I was watching.

Suddenly I thought: three girls form a secret society to take refuge from/get revenge on their stepmothers. I liked it as a kind of “high concept” idea, but then I really started thinking about the moral implications of it all, what evil really means, etc.

Can you describe your writing process?  Do you listen to music or do anything special for inspiration?

I actually CAN’T listen to music–it influences my writing to such an extent that if I listen to different songs while writing, each paragraph appears to be written by a different person. So I have to sit in silence, and just listen to the voices in my brain.

Readers get a first person narration from each of the girls, instead of just one point of view. Why write from the point of view of all three instead of just one or using a third-person narration?

I decided to let all three girls narrate the book because one of the things I’m most interested in is the totally fractured nature of our social universe. Honestly, I was tempted to let the STEPMOTHERS narrate half the book, but then it would have ended up being a thousand pages long. Anyway, the fact that each girl tells her own story allowed me to play with the idea of the unreliable narrator. All the girls are WRONG at some point during the book. It also means that I–the author–was never pretending to fashion some kind of objective portrait of an evil stepmother. Shanti Shruti feels evil to Reena, and that’s all that matters.

Writing humor is pretty tough but you pull it off effortlessly in The Poison Apples, do you have any insights or advice to writers as to how to communicate humor well?

Whenever I try to be funny, I fail completely. It’s when I don’t care about being funny and start writing truthfully that things end being kind of comedic. Real life is really, really weird and funny. You don’t have to try to make it anything other than what it is.

Is Reena Paruchuri’s character based on a real person? She’s the coolest!

Unfortunately, she’s not. She’s little bits of a lot of people I know, a little bit of myself, and my fantasy of the Best Friend I Never Had at boarding school.

Which of your characters were you most like as a teen? And which of your characters would the teenage you have most wanted to be like?

Oh, man. I think I was a lot like Molly Miller, although when I was sixteen I sort of unexpectedly morphed into Alice Bingley-Beckerman without realizing it. When a guy asked me out for the first time I honestly thought someone was playing a trick on me. I would’ve liked to be like Reena, because she’s so self-confident and funny. And she has great clothes.

If The Poison Apples were turned into a movie who would you cast as Alice, Reena, and Molly?

Great question. I can’t say that I haven’t secretly fantasized about this already. I think Amanda Seyfried (Mean Girls, Big Love) would be a great Alice. I’m still thinking about Reena and Molly. Let me know if you have any ideas!

The cover of The Poison Apples is eye-catching. Did you collaborate with a designer to get the end result?

It was all Rich Deas, who’s the creative director at Feiwel and Friends. They emailed me the cover and I was like: oh my god. I actually like this.

Are you currently working on another book?  Like a sequel to The Poison Apples perhaps?

I am working on another book. It’s also about friendship, in its way, but this one takes place in China, in the Empress Dowager’s court. The lives of the Empress Dowager and her ladies-in-waiting were unbelievably decadent and fascinating.

Any advice for young women growing up with an evil stepmother?

Instead of thinking about her as “evil,” try figuring her out. Is she crazy? Is she traumatized? What was her childhood like? Even though being forced to deal with a (bad) step-parent is really, really hard (and ideally none of us would have to go through it), it is kind of an incredible learning experience. You will be way smarter and more mature and able to deal with crazy people than your friends with the super-functional-happy married parents.

Evil stepmothers are a common motif in fairy tales. What are your favorite fairy tales?

Maybe Hansel and Gretel. It’s just so WEIRD. Also A.S. Byatt wrote a short story/fairy tale called “The Thing in the Forest,” and I think it’s one of the best things I’ve read in recent years.

Who are your literary influences?

In terms of YA and children’s literature: Edward Eager, Diana Wynne Jones, Norton Juster, and this very strange but amazing book I read when I was thirteen about dolls in an attic who are also dead people? And who also eat the wallpaper? Whoa. I should go back and find out the title. But I think about it all the time.

Thanks Lily!  We’re looking forward to your upcoming book.  I think I speak for all the fans of The Poison Apples when I say, please write a sequel to The Poison Apples we’d love to know what happens to Kristen.  

Visit these other cool cat sites for more author interviews:

Loree Griffin Burns at Chasing Ray
Rick Riordan at Jen Robinson’s Book Page
Gabrielle Zevin at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Dia Calhoun at lectitans
Shannon Hale at Miss Erin
Jane Yolen & Adam Stemple at Shaken & Stirred
Alan Gratz at Interactive Reader
Lisa Yee at Hip Writer Mama

Winter Blog Blast Tour: Paul Volponi November 8, 2007

Paul Volponi is a hard hitting writer who doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to his stories about teenagers growing up in the city. His protagonists are fraught with difficult decisions that determine the course of their lives.  I had an opportunity to interview Mr. Volponi via email.  To say the least I am inspired by his words in the interview and in his books.  Paul Volponi offers hope through his writing to teens and young adult who find themselves in difficult situations.  Definitely keep your eye out for Paul Volponi’s upcoming books: Hurricane Song and The Hand You’re Dealt. His books will change your perspective on life and the way that you look at people and situations.    

Your author biography mentioned that you worked at Rikers Island, how did you start working there?  What did you learn from that experience?

I started working on Rikers Island because I lived so close to the jail. It was a time when there were many budget cuts in the NYC school system, and as a new teacher I kept getting laid off. A job popped open in the jail and nobody really wanted it. But I’d lived close to the jail all my life. People in cars would pull up to me on the street as I walked with a basketball tucked under my arm and ask, “How do I get to Rikers Island?” That could happen four or five times a week. It happened to most of my friends, too, because the jail is almost hidden off of an obscure avenue. None of us liked to be approached like that, so I came up with a smart mouthed answer. How do you get to Rikers?-Rob a bank! My friends would howl at that. But I could never use it on the people who really asked. They all seemed sad, embarrassed and lost. They were visiting someone they loved in jail and had to ask a stranger for directions. It never hit me that most of those people were black and Hispanic. But when I got a job teaching inside, and saw that 99% of the inmates were black and Hispanic, I couldn’t believe how unfair the justice system was to minorities. That became the basis for my novel Black and White.

What else did I learn there? I learned that the best teachers worry more about the students than themselves. And it takes some time getting used to the place that others can be your first concern. It was certainly one of the best experiences of my life and provided me with the strength to do certain things and write about what I’ve witnessed.

Your characters deal with serious situations, what advice do you have for young adults and teens in regards to dealing with a tough situation?

My advice to teens in tough situations is straightforward-Use your passion to motivate and inspire you, but don’t let your passion take away from your reasoning and self-control.

Your characters seem to keep secrets to their own detriment, is there a message you have about integrity? Peer pressure?

I don’t have any real messages for readers. I’m just a reporter writing down what I’ve witnessed. But I do think integrity is very special, and the characters I love and which you’re probably rooting for in my work have lots of it.

Your characters break down racial boundaries by having common interests like Marcus and Eddie in Black and White and Mackey and J.R. in Rucker Park Setup.  Do you have any insight as to how to ease racial tensions in schools?

I’m not smart enough to have solutions to big problems like that. But I feel that my honest reporting will inspire others to tackle these problems which I spotlight in my work.

Which of your characters do you identify with most?

I suppose I most identify with Mackey, aka. Hold the Mustard from Rucker Park Setup because so many of his moments on the basketball court were written out of my own street basketball experiences.

Part of the appeal of your books is the realistic dialog.  When writing do you consult with young adults and teens to make your characters’ conversations sound more authentic?

No. I actually live it. At 47, I still play hard-nosed street ball twice a week, and their dialogue is actually mine as well. Also, my work with teens in different programs keeps my ear sharp.  But I grew up in the streets and never really left, so it’s very natural for me. And I’m quite proud of the rap songs, I Flow like a River and It’s Time for Cochran, which I wrote for Rucker Park Setup.

Could you describe your writing process? Rucker Park Setup changed perspectives rapidly, how did you get those layers in there?

The layers come from trying to mimic stray thoughts in our minds, that stream of consciousness that changes so fast but seems to have sprung from the same root. As a process, I try to write every day. Because so many scenes are merely sketches waiting to be fleshed out when I write them, I wonder how tied they are to the moment. And if I missed working today, would I have come up with the same guts for the scene tomorrow?

Do you have any books in progress?

Next year I’ll have two books out. Hurricane Song (Viking) is a novel about a teen and his jazz musician father who spend two hellish nights in the Superdome riding out Hurricane Katrina, before they make their way through the flooded streets and looters to see what’s become of their home. The Hand You’re Dealt (Athenaeum) is about a high school teen who takes on his unscrupulous math teacher in a local poker tournament in an attempt to avenge a dishonor to his recently deceased father. The novel uses poker to examine life’s bigger losses.

Who are your favorite authors? Any book recommendations for teens?

I like Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, and Flannery O’Connor as authors, and Paul Simon, Neil Young, Tom Waits, Tom T. Hall and Towns Van Zandt as songwriters. I Think Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Simon’s The Boxer are my two favorite works.

As a young adult librarian I go to schools and talk about books to middle and high school age students, if I could convey a message from you to them, what would that be?

I think my message to teens is that what they write is very important because it’s real and from the source. I value what teens write. It doesn’t matter to me if there are mistakes in it. I don’t want to give it a grade. I wish kids would value there own writing and thoughts more than anyone’s on radio, TV, or a library shelf. We’re all part of the chain, and the things teens say and write are very important and worthy.

Thanks Paul!

Other WBBT interviews today: 

David Mack at Chasing Ray
Elizabeth Knox at Shaken & Stirred
Ellen Emerson White at A Chair, A Fireplace and A Tea Cozy
Jack Gantos at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
David Levithan at Not Your Mother’s Book Club
Micol Ostow at Bildungsroman
Laura Amy Schlitz at Miss Erin
Kerry Madden at Hip Writer Mama
Sherman Alexie at Interactive Reader

Winter Blog Blast Tour: Julie Halpern November 7, 2007

Jolene’s been traumatized by wisdom teeth extraction so I’m posting her interview with Julie Halpern, author of Get Well Soon.  -gayle 

First of all I really enjoyed your book. It reminded me of “Girl Interrupted” and “Prozac Nation” except way less depressing (ironic huh?) and much wittier . Was that your intention when writing the novel to show the lighter side of teen depression?

I consider “Prozac Nation” and “Girl Interrupted” to be “pity me” depression books.  I’m definitely “pity me” about some things, but depression is not one of them.  I always thought my experience at the hospital was so bizarre-how they focused so much on everything that went on in the hospital that we never talked about our lives outside of the hospital; how the kids would do the littlest thing and get in trouble; and how there were so many kids that were dealing with satanic issues.  When I looked back it seemed funny.  Plus, I like to read books that make me laugh, like the Georgia Nicholsen books.  YA books can be very depressing, and I love the ones that can cover serious topics and infuse them with a little humor. 

The book is based on your real life experiences. How were you able to overcome depression during your adolescence?

I think it was a combination of antidepressants, therapy, and a change in the way I looked at other people and myself.  I started to see that I was capable of really great things, and that everyone is flawed, not just me.  College was a wonderful experience for me because I explored a lot of new things- film, feminism, haircuts- and I saw that even when I would go through periods of depression (which I still do), I could come out of them and succeed.  It also helped to have great friends and good music to listen to.

In the novel you cite a couple of punk bands like the Ramones, Green Day, and Descendents. What would be the soundtrack for Get Well Soon?

“I Wanna Be Sedated” by The Ramones.  “Basketcase” by Green Day. Some James Taylor for the Relaxation scenes.  Some hip-hop for Free Time (but old skool, like Slick Rick or something else that tells a good story).  And of course The Doors.

By the way I really loved your essay on Degrassi. (I think Kevin Smith secretly wants to be Canadian. Casts Alanis Morissete as God in Dogma then lands a role on Nex-gen Degrassi. That’s like a 1,000 Canadian points.) In any case, if you could write an episode for Degrassi what would be the plotline?

It would involve me as an obnoxious, glamorous American coming onto the scene.  I think it would take place back with the original Degrassi cast.  It’s so hard for me to talk about Degrassi without feeling a little creepy. I mean, I am in my thirties.  I would only guest star as a teenager, not as I am now acting like a teenager.  If I were to actually write an episode for Degrassi TNG, it would involve something really deservedly bad happening to Peter.  And Jay would be in it because I love Jay.  And maybe JT would come back from the dead!  And Teri would come back.  What ever happened to Teri?  People should never ask me Degrassi questions.  I could blather on about it for hours.

Your book is based on your personal experiences, what made you decide to write a fictional book for teens rather than an autobiography?

That’s a good question.  I think a big part of it is that I didn’t remember every detail enough to write an autobiography.  Many of the characters in the book are based on real people, but I had to make up a lot of information about them.  I also did not want to write about my family, since I knew it would really upset my mom.  I tried to fictionalize the family as much as possible.  My real life wasn’t as instantly revelatory as in the book, and there also wasn’t as much romance.  But a lot of the really weird stuff, particularly the satanic business, actually did happen.  It was a lot of fun to intersperse truth with fiction.  But now it’s hard for me to remember which real details I included in the book and which ones I made up!

I really enjoyed the love story between Anna and Justin, are you planning on a sequel for their story?

Since the real life “romance” pretty much ended when I left the hospital, I never thought about a sequel.  It would be interesting to explore how relationships like that work outside of the controlled, extremely close quarters of the hospital ward.  If there were a large demand from readers, I would definitely think about writing a sequel.

Now that you’ve published a children’s book and YA novel, what other genres would like to try? Graphic novel, tween book, or non-fiction?

I’d like to keep writing for teens for a while because I have quite a few story ideas.  Plus, since I work with teens, it’s fun to have their instant feedback on my books.  I have kicked around the idea of a graphic novel, since I am a big fan of the genre.  My husband is actually working on one right now, and I see how much work it is.  I am not an illustrator, though, so that would be a whole giant dimension that I am missing.  I’d love for my husband to do it, but he’s got enough of his own stuff to worry about.  Maybe someday…

If you weren’t an author/librarian what other profession would you have chosen?

Either a travel agent or a hair stylist.

Your website mentions you were an extra on “High Fidelity.” Is Cusack cute up close?

You know, he was much larger and more manly than I expected.  I guess I was still hoping for the gawky Sixteen Candles/Better Off Dead John Cusack.  This was a very cigarette-worn John Cusack. 

There’s an entire section about zines on your website. How did you get started writing zines? Do you have any tips for creating a successful zine?

I started writing zines after a friend introduced me to The Scaredy Cat Stalker, a hilarious zine that has now turned into a blog.  I had done so much writing growing up, but once I was out of college there was no one forcing me to do it.  Creating a zine was a great excuse to give myself deadlines and actually publish my writing.

Tips for creating a successful zine:

-Write about what you are interested in. 

-Be sincere.

-Care about the way it looks, and people will care to read it.

-Don’t be afraid to express yourself, but do remember that people are out there reading it.

-Don’t use your home address.  There are freaks out there.  I speak from experience.

-Share your zine with other zinesters.  Send it to everyone.  Leave it with your tip at funky restaurants.  People will spread the word.

What’s it like being on the YALSA Selected Audiobooks committee? And will Get Well Soon be recorded as an audiobook? (Because Trisha thinks it would be a great audiobook.)

I love it.  I am the slowest reader with the longest commute, so it’s the perfect committee for me.  I love the other librarians on my committee and look forward to seeing them at all of the conferences.  I was really worried the first time we met to create our list that it would be scary and shouty, but it was actually filled with great discussions and respect.

I do believe there will be a Get Well Soon Audiobook.  I am off the YALSA committee as of January, so nothing can really happen until I finish with that.  My dream is to read the audio myself, but it would be neat to hear an expert reader read it, as well.  Maybe with an Australian accent!  Which would make no sense, but I lived in Australia for a while and do love the accent. Someday, I’d like to move back there for a while with my family.  There and Degrassi Street.  My husband and I visited Degrassi Street in Toronto a couple summers ago, and I checked out the cost of homes.  I think it’ll happen someday.  Um, you were saying something about audiobooks?

Thanks Julie! 

Today’s other WBBT interviews:

Lisa Ann Sandell at Interactive Reader
Christopher Barzak at Chasing Ray
Micol Ostow at Shaken & Stirred
Rick Yancey at Hip Writer Mama
Jane Yolen at Fuse Number 8
Shannon Hale at Bookshelves of Doom
Maureen Johnson at Bildungsroman
David Lubar at Writing & Ruminating
Sherman Alexie at Finding Wonderland

Winter Blog Blast Tour: Autumn Cornwell November 6, 2007

When I started reading Carpe Diem, I didn’t expect it to become one of my favorite books of the year. But the more I read, the more it grew on me. With its unique characters, unusual setting (how many YA books—or just fiction in general—can you think of about an American in Malaysia, Cambodia, or Laos, nevermind all three? Yeah, me too), and moments of humor and heartbreak, Carpe Diem was unforgettable. A few weeks and double-digit books later, I was still remembering much of the book, even as I forgot details about some of the books I’d subsequently read. And Autumn Cornwell’s author bio only added to my intrigue. A missionary kid and world traveler? An incident that inspired the book? So when I started thinking about potential interviews for the Winter Blog Blast Tour, Autumn’s name was on the top of my list.

But before we get to the interview, here’s some more about Autumn:

Squat toilets, profuse sweating, bamboo huts, jumbo centipedes, ear nibbling — these are just some of the delights Autumn has encountered in her global travels. Not to mention the can’t-believe-it’s-true Laotian jungle adventure which inspired her first young adult novel, Carpe Diem.

A travel junkie, Autumn has explored twenty-two countries and counting. She’s spent the last couple summers working with refugees and orphans in Burma, Thailand, and Laos. Southeast Asia remains close to her heart since her days as a missionary kid in New Papua. Which was nothing compared to navigating the intrepid jungles of TV & Film, where she spent her early career. (Not including a stint as a tour guide at Hearst Castle).

After spending the rest of her childhood in Washington State (specifically Port Orchard, which was “Port Ann” in the novel), Autumn moved to California, married her college boyfriend (they clicked while dancing to The Smiths and watching Monty Python), and refused to leave. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son.

You grew up in New Papua as a missionary kid. What was that like?
Awesome. I ate guavas from our own trees, played in waist high mud on river banks, visited tribes of reformed headhunters and cannibals, lived through an 8.0 earthquake, cavorted outside during monsoons, almost drowned three times (not so awesome, but interesting), watched my sister fall into an open sewer in Jakarta, kept my own pet fruit bat — and loved (almost) every single minute of it.

You’re a world traveler. What’s your favorite place and why? What locale is your dream vacation?
Aw, don’t make me decide! I consider Southeast Asia as a whole my favorite place. But if I had to narrow it down, I’d have to say that Luang Prabang, Laos was probably my favorite place. It has a tranquil setting, scenic landscape, over 32 vintage wats/temples (which truly are works of art), clean streets, friendly people, the Mekong with its long tailed boats, and the most aesthetically pleasing architecture — a blend of traditional Lao and French Colonial. It’s probably the most creatively inspiring location I’ve ever been. (I describe it in Carpe Diem in the chapter entitled: Veni, Vidi, volo in domum redire. I came, I saw, I want to go home.) However, Laos is communist, and “behind the scenes” (which tourists don’t witness) the government oppresses ethnic and religious minorities. So, the last two times I’ve visited Laos, it’s been to lead outreach trips to those minorities: providing medicine, food, supplies, doctoral and dental care, and meeting other needs.

So what would be my dream vacation? Sailing in a 1920s yacht (in period costume, of course — dig that cloche hat!) — and going from one exotic port o’ call to the next and staying in vintage hotels. (Like Raffles in Singapore and the P&O in Penang, Malaysia.) Or taking the Orient Express! Or, maybe, what my husband and I actually do about once a month already: head to the Central Coast of California and hang out on the beach in our 1960s tiki-themed Airstream.

Why set Carpe Diem in Malaysia, Cambodia, and Laos (as opposed to other places you’ve visited)?
The adventures and mishaps I experienced in Malaysia, Cambodia, and Laos lent themselves to the story of a girl transformed by travel. How would a sheltered American teen who’d never left the state she was born in react to being plucked from Washington State and plopped into a land of temples and squat toilets?

Since I always take extensive notes, photos, and footage when I travel, I had tons of material from those three countries in particular. (I have future books planned around Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Burma.) One of my goals with Carpe Diem was to expose readers to the Southeast Asian culture and to show how much we all really do have in common. (Especially regarding humor!)

How would you describe Carpe Diem?
A journey of transformation. Vassar’s physical journey mirrors her interior journey. She’s forced to deal with issues like “fish out of water” and how rugged travel brings out the “Extreme You” — the real self with all its flaws, idiosyncrasies, and prejudices. In extreme conditions you have no energy or time or resources to keep up a polite façade. You are raw and reactionary. And living in America, we’re often so sheltered we never get a chance to experience it.

There are also philosophical issues — like the struggle between “spending all your time achieving” versus “taking time to enjoy life.” Vassar is determined to succeed in life. And as a sixteen year old, her self-imposed path to success begins and ends with getting into Vassar College — and an Ivy League school for her doctorate. But when she’s forced to backpack through Southeast Asia during the summer with the wacky artistic Grandma Gerd, instead of taking crucial Advanced Placement classes (and Advanced Advanced Placement classes!) she has the choice to either L.I.M. (Live in the Moment) or continue obsessing about her future. Additionally, she’s forced to define “success” for herself — not just copy what her parents, teachers, or friends think.

The struggle between the present and the future can be best summed up in my novel’s epilogue from Blaise Pascal’s Pensees:

Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never without end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.

So, if Vassar can learn to L.I.M., she’ll at least have control over the moments. Or will she? Which brings us to another issue, this time spiritual: do you determine the course of your life or does God? Is there even a God? Dum dum dum DUM! Vassar finds herself in a situation where she has nothing else to do but mull this over. Like many of us, she refused to ponder the big questions in life until she was forced into it. (And boy howdy, is she forced!)

In the acknowledgments of Carpe Diem, you mention your sister and her desire to read books with “a virtually unlikable protagonist.” Besides your sister, what was the appeal of writing an unlikable narrator?
I actually don’t think Vassar is “unlikable.” She’s more along the lines of “quirky” and “textured.” Although, I’m sure some readers may find her qualities “irritating” at first. When I said “virtually unlikable,” I meant it as in “far from perfect.” I feel it’s essential for stories to have flawed protagonists — otherwise, how are we going to relate to them? There must be a character arc of some sort. And my sister Danica and I always liked those confident yet flawed heroines who made their own choices and then had to live with the results — good or bad. The most boring books are the ones with those oh-so-likable-yet-completely-boring protagonists where everything happens to them — they instigate nothing.

How difficult was it to write about Vassar? Or was it easy? Are you like Vassar in any way?
I’m probably half Vassar, half Grandma Gerd. I can relate to both ways of being. I’ve always been ambitious and “future thinking” — yet I’m also creative, right brained, and an adventurer. But I do find it tough to continually L.I.M… so that’s where I have more in common with Vassar. I found her very easy to channel — maybe TOO easy! That’s what I love about writing — it’s like you get to “act out” each character, don their skin, and feel what they feel. So, honestly, I can relate to everyone in the book in some capacity. (Even Mr. Tee-Tee!)

Hanks—the name, the pompadour, the cowboy dreams. How did you come up with him?
My husband J.C. used to travel internationally during his previous career in robotics. He spent most of his time in Asia, and on one trip he met a “Korean Cowboy” at one of the companies — and although I never met him myself, I was captivated by the idea of an Asian Cowboy. And I’d heard about a group of guys in the Philippines who love dressing up cowboy style. So I just let my imagination run with it. Oh, and J.C. actually has “chops” (real, not adhesive) — but he’s more rockabilly than cowboy.

The efficiency and life-coaching tips from Vassar’s parents: are they real or did you make them up?
Made them up — although they were inspired by real self-help, organizational, and motivational type suggestions. Vassar’s father being an efficiency expert was a slight nod to the book Cheaper by the Dozen. My parents read that book aloud to my sister and me when we were kids. And I always got a kick out of how the father organized the household of twelve children through eccentric, yet highly efficient, means.

So, that incident that’s mentioned in the author bio. Can you share it with us?
Let’s see. How can I answer this without spoilers? (SPOILER ALERT just in case!) Well, my whole “Can’t Believe It’s True Laotian Adventure” was pretty much exactly what happened to Vassar in the Laos part of the book. Except: instead of “one week” it was “one hour” — we managed to find a way to pay, so we didn’t have to “escape.” (For those of you in the dark right now, you’ll just have to read the book!)

Durian: love it or hate it?
You know, I don’t really love it or hate it. I kinda can take it or leave it. Growing up in New Papua, I smelled it all the time, so its odd odor doesn’t throw me. I’d just rather eat rambutans, starfruit, guavas, or jeruk bali instead.

What can we next expect from you? Will you be writing about Vassar’s friends?
Good question. I’m wondering the same thing myself! I’m currently finishing up a proposal for my next young adult novel — another one set in Southeast Asia.

Oh, and I’ve gotten a number of fan emails which ask if I’m going to write a sequel to Carpe Diem. I know there’s definitely a sequel in there somewhere… and it would be fun to write about those characters again. So, we’ll see!

Do you have any advice for aspiring world travelers (besides, I assume, to LIM)?
Visit the Thorn Tree Forum on www.lonelyplanet.com

I found the advice on there invaluable for planning my first three trekking trips through Southeast Asia. You’ll get answers to everything from “Which ruin is a must-see in Angkor Wat?” to “What’s the best malaria pill for northern Vietnam?” to “What’s the cheapest and cleanest guesthouse in Phnom Penh?” to “How much should I pack for a hill tribe stay?”

That and JUST GO! I’ve talked to more people who freak out at the idea of traveling alone (or even with someone) through Southeast Asia. They make a way bigger deal out of it than it is. Honestly, there is always someone who can help you, most people speak some English, and via internet, it’s easy to book guesthouses even in remote areas. So just buy your airplane ticket and figure it out as you go. (It’s a fact that if you’re traveling alone, the locals will be even more inclined and happy to help you. And want get to know you. I’ve found this true all over the world.)

Is there really such a thing as a Traveler’s Friend Hygienic Seat?
Alas, no. I wish there was, though — it would sooo come in handy. (Hint, hint, to all you inventors out there!)

Thanks, Autumn!

For more interesting, intriguing, inspiring interviews, head on over to these sites:
Lisa Ann Sandell at Chasing Ray
Perry Moore at Interactive Reader
Christopher Barzak at Shaken & Stirred
Jon Scieszka at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Gabrielle Zevin at Jen Robinson’s Book Page
Judy Blume at Not Your Mother’s Book Club
Erik P. Kraft at Bookshelves of Doom
Clare Dunkle at Miss Erin

Winter Blog Blast Tour: Perry Moore, Part 1 November 5, 2007

I had the opportunity to hear Perry Moore speak at the ALA annual conference this past June. He was one of the authors speaking on a panel in the Trends in Teen Literature session and very passionate about the power of books and libraries. I had some questions I really wanted to ask, and when I finally got around to reading the ARC of Hero, his absorbing debut novel about a teen struggling with both his sexuality and his burgeoning superpowers, there were even more things I was curious about. Thankfully, there’s this blog, I knew the WBBT was coming up, and Perry was kind enough to answer my questions.

Because of the length of the interview, I’ve split it into two parts. Links to the rest of today’s WBBT interviews are at the end of Part 2. Now, on to the interview.

How did you come up with the idea for Hero? How long did it take to write Hero?
Two things helped me come up with HERO. 1. My dad, and 2. comic books.

I’d always wanted to find a way to tell the story of my father, a Vietnam Veteran, and his son. For very different reasons, each of us grew up feeling alienated in a world that didn’t value those differences. In his case, people didn’t always treat veterans the way they venerate them today. In his era, things were very different, much worse. I saw a lot of how he dealt with that from the perspective of the little boy I was. It was very…interesting. In my case I didn’t feel like I fit in anywhere because I was gay. You have to remember I grew up in the conservative South during a time when my friends would gather around the TV set to hear Eddie Murphy tell AIDS jokes. Ultimately I wanted to use these specific characters to tell a very universal story about two lonely souls longing to find their place in the universe. The father-son relationship is the spine that holds up the narrative of HERO.

When I married that idea with my lifelong passion for the world of comic books, the book finally began to take shape. What better allegory for a Vietnam vet than a fallen superhero? What better allegory for growing up gay than a kid who has to hide his superpowers?

My parents instilled two very important values in me. One: that none of us on this planet were put here to ride on the back of the bus. We were put here to shine bright, no matter what our differences may be. Two: from years and years of taking me to the library every week, that there is this incredible power of literature to change the world for the better. In a nutshell, this is the story of how HERO came to be.

To illustrate the second point, I’ll give an example of the power of a book that helped me understand what my father experienced as a Vietnam veteran. I know Dad saw things in Vietnam. He rarely spoke about it when I was growing up. People just didn’t talk about such things back then, about what Vietnam vets went through. That’s something those me had to carry around with them forever. I know Dad won a Bronze Star, and they award those for valor in the field, so he definitely saw things. Years later, when he thought I was old enough to understand, he gave me a book to read that he believed captured the experience. He gave me Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. After I read the book I was in awe of its power, of what my father had finally shared with me. I had a meeting with Tim once about a possible movie adaptation (which I’d still love to do), and he signed a book for my father. His inscription read, “Dear Bill, Peace and Welcome Home.” That signed copy meant the world to my dad. I get teary-eyed just thinking about it.

I wanted to write a book that meant that much to someone. Whether you’re growing up and feeling alienated in the world, whether you want your parents to understand what you’re going through, whether you want your children to understand about young people who are growing up with some of these differences, I hope my book reaches everyone.

At the same time, as an avid comics reader, I was noticing some very disturbing trends in comic books, particularly in their regard to gay characters. I was very surprised and somewhat disheartened by the low number of gay characters in comic books. Every other barrier has been broken in comics: race, gender, age, class, physical challenges. But gay characters remain far and few between, especially gay male heroes. Too few and far between to be killed off so regularly, without bringing attention to some rather ugly publishing trends.

One case in particular shocked me. Freedom Ring, a new gay, aspiring hero in the Marvel Universe. First, he carried a purse, and more importantly he wasn’t very good at being a superhero. But most shockingly of all, Marvel Comics’ head Joe Quesada heralded Freedom Ring’s introduction into the Marvel Universe as their newest example of their open-minded policy toward gay characters. At first glance this sounds like something very good. But then, in the very next issue of Marvel Team Up, Freedom Ring met one of the most horrific deaths I’ve ever seen in comics. An evil, alternate-universe version of the hero Iron Man sliced off Freedom Ring’s finger, then graphically killed him by impaling him with 28 spikes, one through the groin protruding through his anus. You really have to see the whole Freedom Ring debacle to believe it. (For those of you interested in reading my full compilation of the treatment of gays throughout comic book history, please visit my website. I appreciate all input and feedback, and I’d like to keep the list as up to date as possible, and correct any errors or omissions. Hopefully the list will become more and more positive as fans post their ideas!)

Now, I’m a firm believer that you have a choice in how you react to things that disturb you. I mentioned that my parents had done a great job of teaching me that the pen is mightier than the sword. CS Lewis provided me with the same valuable lesson with “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe,” the book that to this day is my inspiration for writing. So I became more determined than ever to finish HERO—a story that features a true front-and-center gay male teen-aged superhero, not as a joke, not as a token, not as a one-dimensional character, not as a supporting character, not as a victim, but as bona fide hero—and have it connect with audiences everywhere. Its mission is vital; its message is more important today than ever. Thank God for such a wonderfully supportive and gifted publishing team at Hyperion—they didn’t shy away from my mission at all. They embraced it!

So that’s the story of HERO. I started the book while we were casting “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe,” and turned in my final draft right when we got back from directing our feature film debut, “Lake City,” starring Sissy Spacek, Dave Matthews, Rebecca Romjin, Troy Garity, Drea De Matteo, and Keith Carradine.

And I can’t wait to write the sequel to HERO!

Why tell Thom’s story in the form of novel instead of a movie or comic book/graphic novel?
I answer this question a little bit in your question later about adapting books to the screen. The short answer is I believe you must always begin with the story. Story and characters must come first. And a novel allows you to do just that more than any other medium.

YA literature in particular allows me to focus on story first. From my earliest age, ever since I read “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe,” I wanted to be a YA author. No constraints whatsoever, so I can be as true to the story as possible. If it’s not authentic, if it doesn’t feel real—even if it’s fantasy—then I’m not doing my job very well.

Even so, I’d love to adapt HERO into a comic book/graphic novel and a movie. Reach as many people as possible with this groundbreaking story. Maybe even a TV show, too. Those characters have so much more to do and say. Once you create the characters, the stories just keep coming, and these folks keep telling me they have more to do. Sometimes it’s all I can do to keep up with them. They’re very much alive.

But I did begin with the world of teen literature, because I knew this would be such a daring concept, and that librarians and publishers are wonderfully forward thinking. Truly the keepers of the imagination. You saved my life growing up. Libraries were always a safe haven for me when I was young. I was free from my peers to explore, to think for myself. Such a gift. And as Dad often pointed out, they were basically free, which fit our budget nicely.

Overall, I trust completely in the power of books, so that’s where I started.

Why write for teens?
Because most people talk down to them, and I don’t. Teens are anything but stupid. They may be a little newer to the planet, sure, but you should never judge teens by MTV or any of that other stuff that gets marketed directly toward them. It’s my experience that all teens are in the process of discovering just how special they are. Aim high when you write, and you’ll find them, and they’ll find you.

One of the most fascinating things about working on Narnia was to see what a genius CS Lewis was at leaving things to a young person’s imagination. That was one of our biggest challenges in making the movie: making what a child’s mind can conjure into something real. Working with two storytelling geniuses, our director Andrew Adamson, and posthumously CS Lewis himself, really taught me almost everything I needed to know. Working on a documentary about Maurice Sendak didn’t hurt either. That man is full of such wisdom and inspiration.

I mentioned that my parents introduced me to the power of literature from a very young age, and for some reason it just took with me. I just read everything I could get my hands on. I think for any of us who long to connect with the world, great books are a source of tremendous solace and inspiration. I feel very lucky, on a good day, to contribute to such a rich tradition of young adult literature. It’s been a dream of mine for years to write for young adults. I hope I can do it half as well as my own literary HEROES.

Having grown up in the south, I can also tell you this much. Old bigots don’t worry me. They won’t be around much longer.

But new bigots? They terrify me. And yet, people make the mistake of talking down to young people. Young people are much smarter than most adults give them credit for. And that’s why I write for them. You can give someone a lot to think about. You can open up minds.

Who are your favorite writers?
Margaret Atwood
Tim O’Brien
Alan Moore
William Faulkner
Flannery O’Connor
Octavia Butler
Jorge Luis Borges
Lorrie Moore (maybe we’re related)
Daniel Clowes
James Sturm
Allan Heinberg
Dennis Potter
CS Lewis (big surprise)

And all the writers who gave me quotes for my book–what an honor!
Maurice Sendak, Jim Howe, Stan Lee, Lisi Harrison. And Lloyd Alexander. That one was really special.

Other than The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, the book that meant the absolute most to me as a young boy was Lloyd Alexander’s “The Black Cauldron.” I remember crying the night I finished reading it. It’s really heartbreakingly bittersweet at the end of the epic adventure. From there I read all of his Prydain Chronicles. After the first Narnia movie came out, I contacted him about getting a live action version of those books going as a movie and we became friends. I learned so much from him, I’d always idolized him as a writer.

So when it came time to ask for author quotes for HERO I called him up and asked If I could send the book. He said in a raspy voice, “Perry, you better hurry up, I’m dying.” Now, I’m also good friends with another literary legend, Maurice Sendak. My partner Hunter and filmmaker Spike Jonze and I are making a documentary about Maurice. Maurice is friends with Lloyd in fact, and Maurice is always joking around with us to hurry up with things or he may die on us. I always thought that this morbid sense of humor was their way of using humor to take the bite out of the fear of the great unknown that awaits us in the great hereafter.

Then I went to the BEA with HERO, and someone told me Lloyd had died just the week before. My eyes welled up with tears. He hadn’t been joking when I called him.

And during his last time in this realm, he took the time to send me a letter with his quote for HERO. I think I may have the last thing Lloyd ever wrote. That letter is forever a treasure of mine. Sometimes I just look at it, I like to feel the paper on my fingers. It gives me this wonderful and terrifying feeling that I am carrying on a very important tradition. It’s a gift and a responsibility that I take very seriously. To give back.

(continued in Part 2)

Winter Blog Blast Tour: Perry Moore, Part 2 November 5, 2007

(continued from Part 1)

You’re a successful movie producer. How did you get started as a producer? Are there any similarities between producing and writing?
I feel like with my producing career, I’m just lucky to have had the good taste and the great fortune to work with some of the most talented people in the movie business. They’re not all the stereotypes you hear about, some of the people in the business are truly inspired.

My career in movies took off when I joined a company called Walden Media. My time working for them helped solidify my belief in the power of young adult literature. The fact that Narnia had been largely ignored by Hollywood, or bastardized with attempts at modernized adaptations (e.g. Cheeseburgers instead of Turkish Delight!), should let you know how the much of the movie industry feels about important stories for young people. For a long time if Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts couldn’t star in it, then they just didn’t care. Then Walden Media, led by Cary Granat and financier Phil Anschutz, came along with this brilliant, revolutionary idea, and as a lover of literature I was very lucky to be even a small part of that special team. Why not stay faithful to the stories? Now look at what they’ve done: The Chronicles of Narnia, Bridge to Terabithia, Holes, to name a few. They are truly pioneers, dedicated to bringing good stories to the screen. And the industry really woke up when Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Narnia dominated the box office with no major box office stars whatsoever other than the titles of the story. People do in fact love good stories!

For me, that’s the similarity between working in movies and writing books. Always start with a great story.

Sure, there are still going to be giant movies that Hollywood loves to talk about that are based on toys and high concept pitches and the torture/dismemberment of teen actors, because these movies can still make loads of money, but I guess I’m a little bit classic and at the same time a little bit forward-thinking.

I believe we deserve the best stories!

Between producing the Chronicles of Narnia movies and writing a novel of your own, you must have strong opinions about movies adapted from books. In your view, what is the key to making a movie that satisfies both people who’ve never read the book and people who love the book?
That’s a great question, and I’m certainly no expert, but in the case of Narnia, we make movies that stay as faithful as possible to the books. I think that’s the best place to start when adapting a book into a movie.

Anything Walden Media makes will be good, for instance, because they stay so true to what makes the book special in the first place. If you want to satisfy both audiences, you must stay true to that great story.

According to Newsweek, there’s interest in turning Hero into a movie. Is there any news on that front? If there is a movie, would you be involved as a producer, or is the material too close to you?
Ideally, since I’m also a screenwriter and director, I’d love to do both for HERO, too. I now just need some talent and a studio who are as brave about telling the story as I am. Stars like George Clooney or Daniel Craig have the power to get this movie made. (And to win an Oscar for playing the dad—what a part!) I truly hope they notice the book, recognize its ability to change the world, and contact me about it.

You’ve said that your father was the inspiration for Thom’s father. Can you tell us more about this?
My father certainly is the inspiration for Thom’s father In HERO. I talked about this in length when I answered the first question, so I don’t want to run the risk of boring you. (Or annoying him.) Seriously, though, he and my mother have always been so incredibly supportive of me and love me unconditionally for who I am. I think I went through a lot of things Thom did in the book with regards to his father. Knowing how people felt about gay people back then, I was so terrified that I would disappoint him, that I would alienate him and my entire family. Turns out, that hasn’t been the case at all. But as a young boy, I had nowhere to turn with these worries. I always felt like I was just trying to stay one step ahead of this inevitable doom that I knew would one day come knocking on our door and ruin our lives.

I usually say it’s pretty hard for me to talk about this stuff with my dad, but I guess in exploring the relationship between Thom and his Dad in HERO, I worked through a lot of my own real-life feelings with my father. So it’s actually not difficult to discuss at all.

Secrets. Lots of secrets. I was aware from a very young age about how scarred he’d been by his Vietnam experience. But this was something that simply wasn’t talked about. Not in my house. Not in society at all, really. For years I longed to know my father better. He put up such a brave front, but I knew there was so much going on inside. These days you can’t turn on the news without someone doing a glorification piece on war veterans or on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Well, when I was growing up, things like this simply didn’t exist. But the scars still did.

And then one day I discovered a box in the attic…This is something I’ve never told the press before, but for some reason I feel compelled to tell it here first.

One day when I was an older teen I discovered a box of pictures. I leafed through the black and white pictures—this is the scene that inspired Thom’s leafing through his mother’s photo album—and I couldn’t believe what I saw. Dad’s camp was overrun one night. I have this distinct memory of seeing a shot of a man lying in a ditch, and about six feet away from him was a pile of…something.

My father discovered me going through the pictures. Instead of getting angry, his reactions surprised me. He sat down and explained the pictures to me. He’d taken pictures of the aftermath the morning after his camp was overrun. I asked him about the picture of the man lying in the ditch. I asked him what the pile was a few feet away. He told me those were the man’s brains.

That day was a seminal moment in our relationship. For the first time, my father shared some things he’d been carrying around with him his entire life. And I felt I knew him a little better. And it was at that moment that I decided I wanted him to know me better too, even if it would take years for me to come clean about everything.

And I believe this is something very universal about HERO: we all want to know our fathers. And we all long for them to know us for who we are.

I have a good friend from growing up, Kevin Lilly, who is a marine who fought in Iraq. The thought of anyone treating him like my father was treated upon his return from war makes my stomach turn. These veterans are all of our HEROES, and I wrote this book in large part to show that my own father is one of the biggest HEROES in my life. Always has been. Always will be.

Vietnam veterans are alive and still with us. Treat them with the respect they never received. If anyone merits an opinion worth listening to on the war overseas, it’s the veterans.

Another friend of mine from growing up, Bill Watkins, was one of the very first casualties in this war. I believe it was April of 2002 when his plane went down. He was so nice to me when I was young, he really believed in me, at a very tough time when I was an awkward teen. And here was this graduate from VMI who took the time to listen to me and to encourage me to express myself. I’d always wanted to tell him how much that meant to me. And then he died in Iraq.

If you take anything away from this book, please take away a great respect for all the veterans. It would mean a lot to me.

And how close is Thom to yourself?
He is by far his own character—he tells me what he’s going to do when we write. But you’re right, I draw on a lot of my own personal experiences when I write him. Still, his reactions to things I encountered can be very different.

Some of the incidents are the same, but he’s his own character. In that regard, he’s a lot like me. Try to tell him what to do, and he’ll run screaming In the other direction. Stridently Independent, although he’d be the last person to tell you that about himself. I know, since I have to write him, that he calls the shots In the stories, thinks for himself, makes all his own decisions, good and bad.

And I wish I had superpowers like he does. Think of all you could do. If you had to choose one, which would be your favorite superpower? Honestly, I want to know. It’s great research for the sequel and the rest of the books.

But overall, I think Thom in HERO is universal character that anyone can relate to. We’ve all crushes in school on people we were afraid to tell. We’ve all had obstacles. We’ve all felt alienated. We’ve all had secrets. But it’s when you learn that those very things that alienate you, that make you feel different, are also what make you exceptional…well, once you embrace those special things about you, it’s an entirely empowering experience. I am a firm believer: there is a HERO in every one of us!

In many ways, according to all the fan mail that’s starting to pour in, a lot of people the book strikes a chord with are teen and young women. This doesn’t really surprise me because the relationship between Thom and Goran is a true romance that appeals to these readers. They’re deeply meant for each other, and there is something very true about the way their relationship grows. In fact, I’d love to hear from more young women who’ve read the book about what they think of it and what they’d like to see more of in the sequels. I have some big things planned for Thom and Goran, and I really want to know what girls find special about their relationship and what they’d to see me explore more in the next books.

Why did you decide to base some of the heroes in the League on actual comic book superheroes? And how much fun was it to create your own heroes’ names and powers? (Typhoid Larry? I love that)
I love that you ask that question because you have very astutely picked up on something I did very deliberately in the book.

The older generation of superheroes (i.e. The League) are archetypes of familiar hero icons. They play into my theory about the older generation: they are more set in their ways. I had a lot of fun playing with our notions of those icons.

But the next wave of heroes… who we are, and who we want to be… well that’s entirely up to us! We can be anything we want to be. And if that means we have the power to make people sick, like Typhoid Larry, then so be it. He’s a hero too. Wait until you read the sequel. He really steps up to the plate.

So by design I had such a blast writing these original characters—Thom, Goran, Scarlett (based in part on my best friend since I was ten years old, Bretta Zimmer Lewis), Typhoid Larry, Golden Boy, and Ruth (what an absolute joy it’s been to create her)—who become Thom’s team, the next generation of superheroes. And the contrast between the new generation of heroes and the more established A-list Leaguers is dynamic. It’s pretty clear by the end of HERO that I turn the establishment on its ear. I hope I draw the contrast well, because it allows me to deal with and hopefully have a hand in inspiring the next generation of everyday heroes that will soon appear in real-life. That part of writing HERO excites me.

Who is your favorite superhero and why? Has this changed over the years?
Colossus in the X-Men. A wonderful big galoot with a body of superhard organic metal and a heart of pure gold. I placed Goran as a character from Eastern Europe, in part because Colossus hails from Russia. I drew some inspiration from how Colossus affected me as a young boy. How could you not fall for him? My love for the character has not changed after all these years. He’s every bit as alluring and pure-hearted to me today as he was way back when I first discovered him.

Others I love:

As a kid:

• Princess Projectra/Sensor Girl
• Star Boy
• Mon-El
• The whole Legion of Superheroes (read HERO and you’ll get it.)
• The Teen Titans
• Especially Wonder Girl (Donna Troy)
• The X-Men
• Ms. Marvel
• Wonder Man
• Magick from the New Mutants
• Kitty Pryde

As an adult:

• She-Hulk (if you haven’t read the Dan Slott series, you’re missing out. I’d love to make a movie or create a TV series about her. Wouldn’t Rebecca Romijn be perfect to play her?)
• Captain America
• Lucifer (I wish that book were still going)
• Green Arrow
• Black Panther Zatanna
• Booster Gold
• Blue Beetle (the one they killed off)
• Wonder Woman
• Rictor (until they made him straight)
• Midnighter and Apollo from the Authority
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the Alan Moore series, not the movie)
• Anyone Allan Heinberg writes (especially his run on Young Avengers.)
• The Fantastic Four (especially in the stunning graphic novel “Unstable Molecules, by James Sturm)
• And last but certainly not least, The Justice League (it is my dream to make the definitive Justice League movie! I hope some executives at Warner Bros. read HERO and give me a shot at it.)

As I’ve grown, my tastes have changed some. Normally the more independent minded, creator-driven books are the better ones. During most of the late eighties and nineties, you couldn’t make sense of old reliables like The X-Men. Teen Titans had been cancelled. And they kept re-booting The Legion of Superheroes so many times, I think it’s very difficult for anyone to follow them anymore.

That’s one reason I created my own world in HERO with my own characters and my own stories. No corporate continuity problems or rules or constraints. No Super-Battle-to-beyond-the-Secret-Infinity-Wars, or other such silliness.

When I was a boy, I used to buy books solely because I was loyal to the characters and the teams. Now I very much gravitate toward the writer or artist. I’ll go for any story - no matter who the character is — as long as it’s well told.

What are you working on now (books and movies)?
The sequel to HERO. Boy, I can’t wait for that one. Those characters wake me up in the middle of the night sometimes telling me what to do with them next. I wish they’d let me get a good night sleep. More with Thom and Goran, more with the rest of his team, and some MAJOR surprises in store for fans of the first book. (No spoilers here, sorry: you’ll have to wait and read it. Or you can try to pry some secrets out of me if you come visit me on book tour or your can write in to my website.)

We’re also working on our third Narnia movie, “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” which is such a moving, powerful story. Can’t wait to see that one myself. Prince Caspian is already in the post-production process.

And more movies that Hunter and I will make with our partner Allison Sarofim. Making LAKE CITY was such a special experience. I can’t wait to get back to them. Hopefully, someone in Hollywood will come to me now, knowing my passion for adapting stories well.

Oh yeah, and another book, for a little bit younger reader, that I’m just about finished writing for Hyperion. I’ll give you one hint about it: WEREWOLVES. It’s the start of a whole new series. Watch for that one. It’ll knock your socks off.

In HERO, I explored my relationship with my father. In our movie LAKE CITY, we explored our mothers, and in this next book, I explore the relationship between brothers and sisters. There is such power in family, so many stories to tell!

I hope I get the chance to write them all. If I’m lucky, I’ll be doing this forever!

Any last words?
There’s a HERO in every one of us. Believe!

Thanks! Jackie, of Interactive Reader, will be posting her interview with Perry tomorrow, so be sure to read that, too.

The rest of today’s interesting, intriguing, inspiring WBBT interviews are:
Nick Abadzis at Chasing Ray
Carrie Jones at Hip Writer Mama
Phyllis Root at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Laura Amy Schlitz at A Fuse #8 Production (Part One, Part Two)
Kerry Madden at lectitans
Tom Sniegoski at Bildungsroman
Connie Willis at Finding Wonderland

Queenie Chan August 15, 2007

Haven’t heard of Queenie Chan yet? You will. (And it’s a very easy name to remember, no?) This year will see the release of the third and final book in The Dreaming series, plus she will be writing and drawing an original manga based on Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas. Queenie lives in Australia, and I thought it would be fun to talk to her for the One Shot World Tour: Best Read with Vegemite.

I’m unfamiliar with the Australian manga scene. Please tell us about it.
Australia barely has any manga scene—there are places like Kings Comics (and other comic book stores) and Kinokuniya that sell manga, but that’s about it. There’s a great deal of people here who read manga thanks to the internet, but generally speaking, Australia trails behind the US and the rest of the world in getting manga into bookstores. Cost is the main reason—because Australia doesn’t print its own manga and has no experience doing its own printing, the shipping costs from the US is just staggering.

There are no Australian publishers to speak of. Mostly, English-language manga is dominated by American companies like Viz and TOKYOPOP, and Australia imports manga directly from the US. There are Australian companies like Madman who is interested in printing and distributing manga, but so far the costs involved gives no real incentive to.

How did you first get interested in manga? What made you decide to pursue a career as a manga-ka?
I first started reading manga as a child in Hong Kong, and when I migrated to Australia, I continued to read it. So I grew up reading it and has familiar with it all my life. As to what made me pursue a career as a manga-ka, it was actually… unemployment. I was trained as a systems analyst in university, but had the misfortune of graduating in 2002, right in the middle of the dot com bust. I couldn’t find a job, but I’ve been drawing manga in university as a hobby, so I thought about making that into a career. Luckily, the times allowed for that. In 2004, I was able to land a job with TOKYOPOP, who was looking for international artists to start its own original manga line.

You’re upfront about not being a trained artist or writer. In your view, what are the advantages and disadvantages of working this way and learning as you go along?
Bad habits are very difficult to undo. I like the idea of teaching yourself to draw—it gives a lot more room to experiment, but I really wish at times that I went to art school. You take the long way round to get to the same level of art skill, and worst of all, you at times get into a rut that you can’t seem to get out of. For me, drawing isn’t a big priority—my interest is in story-telling, and while I like my art to look good, it’s not the main focus of my work.

The good thing about drawing without any training or even references is that you gradually come to perfect what you do. You also develop a style that’s independent of any other style out there. But it takes so much more work to put out a decent-looking picture!

In your talk “Adopting Manga: From Hong Kong to America,” you briefly discuss some of your Chinese and Australian influences. But for people unfamiliar with you, as a Chinese-Australian manga-ka, how has your heritage influenced your manga (not just in terms of inspiration, but also stylistically or thematically)? And Australia?
I don’t think there’s any particular stylistic influence happening—I may be a Chinese-Australian, but my identity isn’t that big a deal to me. If there’s anything that’s good about being bi-cultural, is that you get double the amount of inspiration to draw upon. I like to set my stories in Australia, because that’s where I live, but there’s no reason why I can’t draw a story based heavily on Chinese culture either. It’s normal for someone to use their place of origin as inspiration for their stories, so in terms of influence, that’s about it.

Is there an Australian publisher for The Dreaming, or does TOKYOPOP publish it in Australia? Does this have any impact on your storytelling?
There’s no Australian publisher for “The Dreaming”—TOKYOPOP is primarily in American publisher and my primary audience is in America and Europe. In terms of impact on the story—it’s practically zero. Hardly any of the fans I get fanmail from care that the story is set in Australia, in fact, some of them think it’s set in America (despite a shot of the Opera House on the opening page). So many fans think I’m an American. Same goes for Europeans—”The Dreaming” is also available in French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Finnish and German, and no one cares where it’s set either. So, “understanding Aussie slang” is barely an issue here. The visual differences (Australian bush, Opera House, Eucalyptus trees) barely register, so who’s taking notice of what sort of slang the characters use? “The Dreaming” uses International English too—not a single American noticed.

I don’t think the reason for this is due to the “global-ness of manga” though. It’s more so because manga is visual, and children these days grow up in a visual culture. You pick up subtleties in language when you read novels, but visual stories create a reality of their own, and the readers just accept that. When I was a 5 year-old watching Japanese anime on TV in Hong Kong, I never questioned why the characters sat on the floor with tatami mats. I just accepted that was the world that the characters lived in—I barely knew what “Japan” was at the time (in fact, I thought the characters lived in Hong Kong). I think the same thing applies here. People just read the manga, barely register that it’s set in Australia, and just take everything that happens in it as part of the logic of that imaginary world.

The Dreaming was inspired by the disappearance of a classmate of yours. On your website you say that you’re often inspired by real life events, but what was it about this event, or disappearances in general, that inspired a three volume series about a boarding school in which girls are known to go missing?
I’m afraid the real inspiration for “The Dreaming” was “Picnic at Hanging Rock”, a quintessential Australian story. It wasn’t really inspired by the disappearance of my classmate—that was just the icing on the cake. I think as an Australian, we’ve got some kind of national mythos about the bush being an inhospitable and freaky place. This is probably the part that has the most resonance with Australian readers—who also pick up the reference of “The Dreaming” to the aboriginal Dreamtime. These things just seem to go right over the heads of non-Australian readers though.

In the endnotes of vol. 1 of The Dreaming, you say that you often build longer stories off your short stories. Had you written manga with long story arcs prior to The Dreaming? What are the challenges of taking characters or events from short stories and turning them into longer stories, or simply of writing a multivolume manga series?
No, “The Dreaming” is the first long-story I’ve written. Short stories about 10-50 pages long don’t count, but truth is, it’s far more difficult to write a short manga story than it is to write a longer one. Turning a short story into a longer one is no challenge as long as you know the general story arc, but in terms of “The Dreaming”, the real challenge came in splitting a single story into 3 parts. It’s like splitting a single movie into 3 parts—that’s how I originally conceived of “The Dreaming” anyway.

Each volume has to be relatively self-contained, but if you read the story from book1 to book3, the events must be in a chronological order. When the story is a mystery, it becomes even more complicated. When and how should you reveal certain secrets? How do you stay ahead of the reader, so they can’t guess wh