Hi Johnny!
Hello! Thank you for having me.
Thanks so much for being on YA Bound!
No problem. I really liked your review...it was so thoughtful. So I thought this chat sounded like a neat idea. Why wouldn't I want to hang out with someone who liked my story so much? I don't do this to meet haters.
The Darling Budds serial is a fantastic read! I just had to know more about it. Ready for a question? Here it comes: What is your favorite color?
Um.
Just kidding! The real question is: have you always wanted to be an author?
God, this feels like such a corny way to begin the chat, but: yes, I've always wanted to be an author. Pretty much since I understood the concept of "author."
What inspired you to write The Darling Budds? And why in serial format?
Do you mean why this particular story? Or why a YA novel?
Both, actually!
Good Lord…! We might be here all day. Okay, well, I guess if you really want to get into it, I should start back with this dumb little fake blog I used to write. This was around 2003ish? I think? And that band The Strokes was pretty big at the time.
I listened to them!
My girlfriend and I really loved them, and one thing that was popular among Strokes fans was "secret girlfriend hoax blogs"where girls pretended to be a band member's secret girlfriend and blogged about it.
Well, you can imagine how the writing was...pretty crummy. So I had this idea that, for a laugh, I'd write one, but make it exceedingly poetic and lyrical and windswept, not just "LOL I love Nick!"
I was imagining it being the Lolita of fake Strokes girlfriend blogs...you know, like: I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, Julian, lead singer of The Strokes... Ha.
Wow.
Yeah. Seriously, this is the sort of stuff I do with my time, Trish. It wasn't even online, I'd just email it to people and they'd pass it on to friends!
Anyway, the narrator was a young girl, 19 years old, who was new in the city and had become Julian's secret girlfriend.
So my girlfriend, who was studying to be a Children's Librarian at the time, was like "This is a total YA novel, Johnny! Just take out The Strokes and it's pretty much done!" Well, I didn't do that, but it did get me thinking about writing YA, which I'd never really considered before. I was a REAL WRITER, you know? I wasn't going to write Sweet Valley High books!
And that's pretty much the absolute very beginning of the Budds...writing this weird dumb Strokes fanfic and being told it was basically YA and I should think about writing YA for real.
From there it was just coming up with a decent idea. I'm not a big IDEAS writer, I'm much bigger on characters and setting, so all I really needed was a few characters I could shake up and see what happened.
Again, my girlfriend stepped in here and suggested a teen boy and girl who are dating two other people, but these other people go away for the summer, so the boy and girl have an affair. I thought I'd just write that idea really quickly and give it to her as a joke. Like: Ha ha...I actually wrote it!
But then here we are 46 episodes later...
Ha ha!
Yeah. Oh, she also suggested the between junior and senior year setting, too, which is really integral to the story, I think.
That's such an important time...I think I'm going to set all my books in that summer, ha.
I usually set all my books at the beginning of senior year. Seventeen is the perfect age. Why is it you think you write 17-year-olds so well?
Now that's my kind of question! "Johnny, why are you so handsome?"
Seriously, though, I think that writing teens is a constant balancing act. You don't want to make them too young, of course, but a big pitfall that some writers fall into is treating their teenage characters like little adults. The truth is, teenagers are neither children nor adults, they're stuck in this awkward halfway point. They're adult-sized and they have adult emotions, but they don't know yet how to be adults. They know what they want, they just have no idea how to get what they want. Or they know how to get something, they just don't know if they want it.
To me, a big part of writing realistic teenagers is remembering that they're not adults yet. It's a matter of loving your characters enough to let them be immature sometimes, or inarticulate, or bratty.
That is one of the best ways to describe teens I've ever heard.
And I guess the other pitfall is writing idealized teens, role models that you think teenagers can look up to and emulate. I'm talking specifically about all those "snarky jaded sarcastic" girls that litter YA. I think a lot of these characters are written because the author thinks this is something teens need to read about and aspire to be, or they're written because it's what the author wishes they'd been like as a teenager. But so often it just comes across as phony and forced and tone-deaf.
One thing I really like about The Budds is how you don't just limit your palette to teens. I think it's wonderful you show adults interacting with them like "real" adults and not cliches.
A lot of YA books like to sideline the adult characters, especially the parents. This sorta goes into what I was talking about before about how it's bad to treat teens as little adults. Well, part of being an adult is that you're independent, and teenagers AREN'T independent...their lives are totally tangled up with their parents' lives, and that's a big part of the tension of being a teen. I don't want to shy away from that, it feels really unfair to the readers to create these characters who exist in a vacuum without any adults around.
I remember something a guidance counselor told me when I was 17 and feuding with my parents: "Being a teenager is the toughest time in your life; the second toughest is when you first hit middle age, which unfortunately is also about the age you are when you have a teenage child."
Damn. That's good.
And I really want my stories to reflect that. Everyone's stressed, everyone's trying, everyone's struggling, and it's all part of this big sticky web that can be miserable, but also pretty great sometimes.
Of course, I definitely have adult characters that I've sidelined in the Budds. But when I do it, it's not JUST to get them out of the story's way...I want their absence to have consequences. For example, a big part of what's going on in Andre's life is about the fact that his Dad isn't around.
I think you balance it well…and yours is not the typical YA book
Yeah, I'm not saying that what I'm doing is the right way or even a very smart way of doing it. I'm just don't know how to do it any other way.
One of the really neat things about the Budds, though, is that all of your characters are like the main characters of their own story
That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me!
But, yeah...my goal is to make the characters be the stars of their own stories, because that's how we all see ourselves. I mean, even crazy Lucas Budd sees himself as the center of his own story, probably a political thriller about revenge from the 70s.
So I try to reflect that as much as I can in the book. However, agents and editors say that the focus of a YA novel has to be exclusively on teenagers, that I could never publish a book with a scene like the one where Detective Maglione threatens Harry Sebastian because there are no teenagers present. So...Internet it is, then!
Well, that eases us back into my earlier question about why you've chosen to publish online. Don't think I've forgotten about it!
Ha ha, I haven't. I was just building up steam. The question really needs to be answered in two parts: 1. Why did I start publishing online?, and 2. Why do I keep doing it?
The first part I can answer honestly by saying that it never occurred to me to NOT put it online. I graduated from college in 1996, and I've been doing work with the web, both professionally and personally, ever since. It's just part of the DNA of people who do a lot of stuff online: you make something, you put it online.
I did that Strokes thing, I put it online. Why not? Who the heck would publish it? And it made my friends laugh and email me back and that was enough for me. The same with when I first started writing The Budds…I was just writing it for friends and maybe friends-of-friends. A book deal was pretty far from my mind.
But now that I've got a little bit of traction, why do I keep doing it?
This is the tricky part to explain. Some people try to see it as an attempt to smash the system and thumb my nose at the publishing industry, but it's really not. When it comes to publishing the Budds, the philosophical problem isn't on the author's side...it's on the side of the editors who think that anything that's been online is unfit for publication. So I have people write to me and ask why I "chose not to publish" The Budds, when the fact is it was chosen for me the first time I pressed Publish Post in Wordpress.
Maybe that outlook will change now that ebooks are gaining traction, because the distinction between a website and an ebook is a lot less than a website and a book. But generally speaking, the publishing industry still seems to see the Internet as a sleeping dragon on top of a pile of gold. They really want that gold, but they're scared to death of that dragon.
That’s a great line…
But in truth, I don't publish online because it's easy and a great way to connect with my readers and because what I'm writing has become designed for weekly installments. I don't necessarily do it because I have problems with the publishing industry.
So the main reason you do it is that it helps you reach a much wider audience?
I'm able to reach a wider audience, yeah. And the audience that I do reach, I have a real genuine connection with. Every artist--every human, really--needs acceptance and validation, and a lot of writers get it from that feeling of accomplishment of having a real book printed by a real publishing house. And that's fine!
But I personally get my craving for validation satisfied when someone writes to me and says "I literally cried when Josephine was weeping in the car because I feel invisible and weak the same way she does."
Publishing on the web isn't for everyone, I'll be the first to admit that. But I do think it's for a lot more people than are doing it now, and I wish they'd experiment with it. Again, I'm not saying that my route is perfect. I'm just saying that it's the route that makes me the happiest.
Thank you for sharing that...I know before today you were really reluctant to get into it.
Well, I just don't want it to look like I'm spouting a manifesto or saying that people who publish other ways are dumb or misguided or naive. Because, really, the main reason I publish online is what I said at the top: because it never occurred to me not to. And not that I've done it for a while it just makes sense to keep going. Not for any political reasons, but because doing it another way seems like a huge hassle, and I'm lazy.
I don't think anyone looking at your site is going to think you're lazy! One of the biggest drawbacks to self-publishing is not having someone else to keep you in check, ike an editor. How do you get around that?
I write pretty far ahead of the serial. I'm about a month ahead right now. That gives me a lot of time to just set an episode aside and come back to it once my eyes are fresh again and I don't know what's coming.
I also have a lot of experience doing professional writing that involves turning out lean concise writing on demand, so I'm pretty good at editing and cutting down as I go. I know that nothing about The Budds implies that it's cut down, but you'd be surprised.
Also, like most writers, I have what I guess are called betas, with different levels of commitment. The first person I show it to does extensive edits and comments. Then there are a few more people I send it to after I incorporate the first person's suggestions and changes, and they catch typos and make comments or suggestions. Then, about a week before it goes live, I send it to a bunch more friends, people who have been with The Budds from the beginning. They give me much more general feedback, though occasionally I've rewritten whole scenes based on their feedback.
That shows so much commitment, both from you and your fans.
Being a beta is a great service, and I really respect the people who do it for me. I couldn't do it!
I beta. It's tough. But I care about the writers I do it for. So your fans are truly wonderful! Switching gears, how do you write David?
What do you mean?
I love how you put so much depth into him and he's not just "the gay friend"
That's a relief to hear, actually. I struggle with David.
I don't struggle with writing David or with David as a character, but I struggle with how others might see him. Gay readers are (understandably) very sensitive about depictions of gay teens.
Yes.
I don't blame them, there are some really ugly or flat or clichéd gay characters out there in YA! And I welcome their scrutiny of David.
But, especially since the story is ongoing and the resolution hasn’t been published yet, I worry that a gay reader might see David and be like "So typical...a tragic queen who falls in love with all his straight friends." And I have to admit that, seen from a distance in the middle of the story, that's a fair depiction.
But I'm really trying to make David as real as I can. I mean, you know what? People have doomed crushes on their friends. Gay, straight, male, female....it happens. (Mostly male. Ha.) But I don't want it to be "He's like this because gay people are like this." I want it to be "It's like this because David is like this, it's like this because he needs to have these doomed love affairs."
That's a good point.
I really want David to be Gay, not just "a character who happens to be gay." There's a gay sensibility, and a gay culture, and I want David to be a true member of it.
I honestly think you do very well with him.
Thank you. *wipes brow*
As a writer of contemporary YA, do you feel like paranormal and other genres aren't as real?
Oh, God...no! I mean, I feel like this is sort of a ready-made answer, but the writing, the emotion, is what's most important in any book, not the genre. Any genre, any story, is capable of being incredible if the writer approaches it with passion and genuine emotion and a new eye.
A lot of people bag on all the vampire books that are on the shelves right now, and I'll agree that a lot of them are terrible. But they're terrible because they were written by opportunistic hacks trying to be "on trend," not because they're vampire books. There are still dozens of great vampire stories yet to be told.
I read more bad paranormal books than good, but the great ones are worth digging through the pile for.
I agree. In fact, I think in a way it's actually easier to write a genuinely powerful paranormal or science fiction book, because you can externalize issues that in a contemp book would be strictly internal.
For example, in my opinion, one of the reasons that the Harry Potter series resonates with young readers is that the idea of growing more powerful and discovering new abilities as you grow older is a very effective metaphor that speaks to Rowling's audience, who are going through their own process of changing and growing and acquiring new powers: puberty. So while the students at Hogwarts are discovering magic spells, the readers can really relate to it because they're experiencing the strange new powers that you acquire as you leave childhood and become an adult.
So maybe your next serial will be paranormal?
Maybe! No matter what it is, I promise you that when I finish this beast the next story will be nothing like it. I'll get the Budds logo tattoo'd on my back and the words NEVER AGAIN underneath it.
It's not that exhausting, is it?
Not today. But ask me again Saturday night when I don't have the next day's episode edited yet and about 12 hours to get it perfect. I have a feeling that the next serial will be updated more often, but have shorter entries.
But not just because of the work load issue...also because I want to push myself to stay lean in the next one, to force myself to adopt a new way of working. I never want to stop pushing myself, you know?
Yes, definitely.
But as far as format goes, if The Darling Budds is a "prose TV show," with long separate episodes, then I think I want the next one to be a "prose webcomic." Lots of short scenes, updated a few times a week.
That is an interesting idea.
But oh my god, let's not even talk about the next one until I finish this one!
That leads me to my last question: Where do you see the Budds ending? How many more episodes do you think?
Well, I actually know precisely where the story ends and pretty much exactly how many more episodes I have left. Serializing the story like this, I have to have the plot mapped out pretty extensively or risk getting lost. (And it’s especially vital with the sort of stories I write, where a throwaway bit in one episode doesn't pay off until fifteen episodes later.)
So I know where the story's headed, and I have it plotted out by episode. Just speaking of number of episodes, we're almost exactly halfway. If I stay on schedule (I won't), I'll be done in about a year.
OMG…That IS a beast!
Though I feel, now that all the stories are set up and set into motion, we're probably 2/3rd of the way through the story from a word count perspective. The later episodes will be a little shorter as things start paying off closer to the ending.
WOW! I'm glad I didn't wait to review it!
It's really interesting writing on rails like this. On one hand, you have to stay on track, and that keeps you from going off on a tangent. But on the other hand, things work out on paper differently than they do in an outline, so you have to be pretty flexible, too.
For example, just a few months ago I realized that the story I was telling about one of the characters wasn't the story she needed to be in, so I had to root around in the outline and adjust some things to make the ending more resonant for her character.
I like that when reading The Budds I honestly don't know what's going to happen next.
Ha...well, until about episode 15 or so, neither did I!
Johnny, thank you so much for agreeing to chat with me!
Gosh, is that it? I mean, it's only been three hours.
Well, I don't want to take up too much of your time, LOL.
This has been so much fun! Thank you for having me and allowing me to bloviate all over your blog!
The pleasure has been all mine!
