An Interview with author Steve Berman

When I read your novel Vintage: A Ghost Story a couple years ago I was so happy to discover that there was more to GLBT YA than Geography Club and Rainbow Boys. Not that there is anything wrong with them (we have a lot to thank Brent Hartinger and Alex Sanchez for), but I think many teens are drawn to edgy writing, something out of the ordinary. We want to see young gay characters presented in a new way. Vintage is a cleverly crafted love story with a twist. It has a darker feel to it, and the 17-year-old gay protagonist is anything but stereotypical.

I've wondered why, with all the fantastical YA novels out there, there aren't more queer speculative fiction books aimed at teens. Outside of Tripping to Somewhere (Kristopher Reisz) and Baby Be-bop (Francesca Lia Block), there really isn't much. I suppose I've found my niche. Vintage deals with a dark subject; the notion that we commonly fall in love but rarely with the right person and how these mistakes are part of life. And sometimes these mistakes are tragic.

Not everyone’s familiar with speculative fiction. What does the term mean to you?

I think of any story with the fantastic, the strange, and the weird. A fairy tale is speculative fiction. So is a vampire story. Or if you wrote a steampunk novel. The atmosphere is charged with "something amiss."

When aspiring writers look to others for advice they’re often told to “write what they know” and to find “an authentic voice”. But as a writer of speculative fiction/fantasy you’re doing the very opposite, you write about the unknown. You can‘t always draw on your own experiences.

Well, it's only half-true that I cannot draw on my own experiences when writing a speculative fiction story. My latest, The Harvestbuck, involves a gay teen getting a phone call from his (straight) best friend to come get him from a lonely highway in the woods late at night. While the weirder elements of the story are pulled from my imagination, a lot in the piece is based on my past. A childhood friend's father would drive us around the Pine Barrens in his jeep. And every kid in New Jersey hears stories about the Jersey Devil. A camp counselor told me that deer running through the woods made a sound like thunder. And so forth. So I call upon these experiences, these facts, to weave together with the fantastical elements... so the story seems more likely to have happened.

Reading is a class issue, but it’s also become a gender issue. Boys lack male reader role models and when it comes to books there’s little beyond fast paced action/adventure stories and “funny” MG/YA about puberty and girls. Few of these books challenge the reader to think for himself, or teach the reader about diversity and how to be empathic, for example. Books written for girls are all about feeling, but books written for boys are all about doing. Would you agree?

That's an interesting viewpoint. I haven't read as much MG as I have YA, so I'm curious if this is actually the case. I have heard that publishers seek more fast-paced titles for boy readers because they are concerned the boy might abandon the book if he's not engaged with the story. One could say that movies aimed at males are often action-packed while those targeting women are more... introspective and romantic? I think the problem is that not every boy or girl reads like the boy or girl next door. Blanket statements smother. And, a story without some action is stagnant and one without emotions is empty.

Were you encouraged to read as a child? What are some of your early book memories?

Yeah, my parents were always reading books. I saw this as a perfectly normal pastime and I remember being taken to the library to get books. I never asked the librarian for help because I was shy and fearful that my love of scary and strange books would be mocked, so I had a tough time finding good reads. Thankfully, Roald Dahl and John Bellairs came to my rescue.

When I “came out” to my friends last year I felt an enormous sense of relief, but I also felt as though I’d lost part of my masculinity, and that being gay means “I’ll grow up to be less than a man”. I’ve noticed that many gay teens buy into all the gay stereotypes, it’s almost expected. Is this something you experienced as a teen, and what was your own “coming out” process like?

Well, I came out much, much later than you. In my mid-20's to friends and in my early 30's to my family. I often wonder why the old stereotypes still have any strength. I'm certainly not against any boy wanting to be flamboyant and feminine--I think there's a certain boldness in adopting such traits. But aren't we past the "gay boys should be shallow and interested in musicals and shopping and catty remarks" idea? Or is the media behind the times and presenting a mirage? I went to a gender-bending/queer performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Of the boys seated in the audience, I doubt any of them filled the majority of stereotypes. They were unique individuals.

I think gay teens need to have the confidence of being out without feeling they must adopt traits to appear "gay." What is masculinity and why must it be a heterosexual condition? It's an illusion of traits -- clothing styles, gestures, speech tones -- that are triggers for society but mean little about whether or not a person is strong-willed and able-bodied.

Lethe Press is a very “adult” publisher. What’s the biggest difference when writing for teens? I recently read a blog post by author Blake Nelson where he expresses that teen readers have become more conservative since the 90’s when his novel Girl was published and the world has “cleaned up“. I was surprised by this. Do you agree with his statement?

I don't know if YA books are so conservative. I do know that sites that sell a lot of books, Wal-mart and Sam's Club, ask that titles not have profanity or much sex. If you want to sell through those outlets, you can censor yourself. I think teens think about sex more than adults do, I know I did. If you have never had sex, you wonder about it. If you have had sex, you wonder about it even more. I think that an author owes it to his readership to be honest. If a story demands "adult" elements then you are better off with them than writing with one hand tied behind your back by the decision.

I happen to know that you like dance. There’s so much poetry and emotion in it, but I’ve yet to find a single book about boys who dance.

Yeah, I have wondered about this. So many gay youth are involved in the arts, but mediums like dance and theater are very visual and as hard to capture on the 2-dimensional page as music is. Maybe with the progression of e-books you will have more mixed media involved, but until then it's hard to express the nature of dance. I've often wanted to write a book involving ballet. Perhaps one day...

How do you feel about happy endings in YA fiction? Some adults seem to believe that teens can't handle the truth, that the world isn't always a good place. Suicide, for example, is still a sensitive topic to write about.

Well, I'm for happy endings in gay YA fiction, I'm tired of reading stories where gay kids don't win, don't prosper. I'm editing an anthology of inspirational stories for queer teens that should release next year. I understand that life is difficult and rarely fair, but we often read books for escapism. I think a better ending than the tragic one is the one neither all-good or all-bad. In Vintage, yes, the Narrator has found real love but his future won't be an easy one because he'll always be harassed by ghosts.

Steve Berman was born in Philadelphia, but grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey. He’s the author of Vintage: A Ghost Story, a finalist for the Andre Norton Award. Speaking Out (Bold Strokes Soliloquy Books) is scheduled for release in 2011.

An interview with author Andrew Smith

I first read Andrew Smith’s Ghost Medicine in 2008 and I immediately felt that his writing came from a very ”real place”. Here’s an author who takes his readers seriously, even if they happen to be young. Who understands that girls aren’t the only ones who crave intelligent stories and characters with some depth to them. Who writes boldly about pain, loss and growing up without adding heaps of sugar. I had never read anything quite like it before. If I were to write a list of books that all teen guys should read, Ghost Medicine would be top of the list. I had some questions I've been dying to ask Mr Smith, and he kindly agreed to answer them.

You’re very passionate about getting boys to read more. Did you have a male reader role model growing up?

My father was quite a reader. In every house we ever lived in, he always made one room a library, with wall-length, floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with books. When I was a kid, I just took it for granted that everyone lived that way – with houses filled with books, and little attention paid to television. When I got older, especially after settling in Southern California, I realized how wrong I was.

From a teacher’s point of view, do you believe that boys and girls learn things differently, and do you think we could benefit from being taught in separate classrooms?

There is no doubt that boys’ and girls’ brains are wired differently and they learn, process, and articulate things differently (and I am also the parent of a boy and a girl – both teens). The problem has been, at least in American schools, that we’ve been moving toward a standardized approach and assessment of all kids, so every child, despite their individual traits and abilities, is being expected to fit into a particular mold, and the system is becoming increasingly intolerant of differences among our young people. This is really sad and scary.

We do know that boys tend to achieve more and behave better in gender-segregated classes. I’m not a proponent of eliminating choice, but I would definitely like to see all schools offering the option of gender-segregated classrooms.

One of your author friends says that “boys like violence”. Do you agree with their statement, and if so, do you think we’re wired this way or do you think it’s cultural? Are we a product of nature or nurture? In Ghost Medicine, Troy kills a snake without flinching, but when he’s forced to kill a mountain lion his reaction is quite different.

Ha ha ha! I know exactly who you’re talking about, Charlie. But I’ll opt for a broader definition of “violence” in that it means something that moves, is kinetic, has energy – as opposed to necessarily being evil and harmful. In that sense, there is no difference between boys and girls. Boys and girls report enjoying action/adventure stories to the same degree. As far as “boyish” behavior is concerned, I think that almost all of it (with very few exceptions) reflects the expectations of the environment in which boys are expected to succeed – in that case, 80% is nurture, and 20% is nature.

The thing about Troy in Ghost Medicine is that if you look at those two incidents, when he kills the snake it has something to do with saving his friend. When he shoots the mountain lion, it’s more about saving himself. I think boys, by their nature, do develop a strong bond for their “team,” almost to the point of selflessness. That’s why rulers draft boys to die in their armies.

In the Path of Falling Objects is an intense read, it‘s like a road trip from hell. Did you have any reservations about including so much violence in a YA novel? Have you had any negative reactions from parents/teachers/librarians, and were you ever worried about it ending up on the Banned Books list?

Actually, I was surprised with the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the book from parents, teachers, and librarians. A lot of schools have put In the Path of Falling Objects on their reading lists, especially because of its tie-in to the Vietnam War, and I’ve received numerous emails from kids all over the country who’ve done book reports on it.

I can only hope that one day a book that I write will actually end up on a Banned Books list.

The biggest complaints I have received so far, on all my books, is about animals dying or being killed, and references I’ve made to kids drinking, using tobacco, or smoking pot (things that kids never do… right?). I’ve never had a single complaint about cruelty between people, the senselessness of war, or the loss of family – but just whisper about a kid getting drunk or someone shooting a dog and certain people get really angry. I don’t get it, to be honest.

Many boys grow up without a father (or without any positive male role models), they’ve no idea what a “real“ man is. Is this something you think about as an author (and as a teacher/sports coach)?

I do think about that because my father died when I was young, so I feel like I missed out on a lot of things that he was supposed to show me and tell me, but we never had the chance. Little, dumb things, like how to gap a spark plug, and stuff like that (I am totally hopeless when it comes to doing anything with my cars). So I was always envious of my guy friends who had – and still have – their dads around in their lives.

Your characters are very complex, that‘s one of the many things I love about your writing. Troy, for example is both strong and vulnerable. Which character do you identify with the most? What were you like at 17? Growing up, what were some of the things you struggled with? My outlet (or release if you like) is writing and dance, what was yours?

I’ve answered this question differently at various points in my career as a novelist. I’d have to say that the character I most closely identify with is Jack, from The Marbury Lens. There are lots of reasons for this.

In the summer when I was 17, I got kidnapped by a complete stranger, in a situation that was very similar to Jack Whitmore’s abduction in The Marbury Lens.

My parents were both still alive at the time, and, I think, like boys are often likely to do, I never told anyone about what happened to me. At my age, and with the level of independence I had, dropping off the radar for a while went totally unnoticed by my family and friends, anyway.

Besides, like Jack, I mostly blamed myself for what happened to me. And I knew right away, too, that I was in a serious jam; and believed that I probably was not going to live through it. But, similar to Jack’s story, my abductor was careless and I managed to get away from him the morning that he was planning on transporting me to a different location.

When I went home, it was hard to pretend like nothing had changed. I was completely convinced that something had happened to my brain, and I’d never be able to see things clearly again. I stopped talking to my family and friends. I think my parents just figured this was a normal teenage phase.

So Jack has this really intense and angry voice. He is often the object of his own deepest disappointment. I think I was like that for a long time, and I’m still like that quite a bit all these years later. I looked for all kinds of outlets – I run, I do all kinds of outdoor stuff, but the thing that’s worked best for me is the writing.

The point is, and I mention this in the next question, too – about The Marbury Lens – is that too many people, I think, expect the happily-ever-after endings in literature with young adult protagonists, because it makes them too uncomfortable to imagine a world – this world – in which things don’t always get wrapped up in sweetly scented packages for kids. But there are a lot of kids out there – kids like me – who want someone to tell our not-so-cozy stories and stop pretending like we don’t exist, and what’s worse, stop making us feel like we’ve done something wrong because we didn’t “rise above” and find that happily-ever-after place.

Again, I think boys, in general, won’t talk about certain things because they’re expected – nurtured – to be quiet when it comes to things they sometimes, unfortunately, are subjected to. And, as a reflection of that, many people in “the real world” get very uncomfortable when light is shined on things they’d rather ignore.

Your upcoming novel Stick has a gay character in it. Tell me more about him. Why do you think so many straight male authors "shy away" from writing about gay teens?

There are a few gay characters in Stick. Bosten McClellan, Paul Buckley, and a homeless kid named Jericho. Bosten is one of the most important characters in the book, because he really is a catalyst for all the things that happen in it. He’s 16, lives in Washington with a very rules-oriented set of chain-smoking parents and a younger brother named Stark. When the boys’ parents discover Bosten has a boyfriend, Paul, they throw their sixteen-year-old son out of the house. Paul’s parents are even less tolerant toward their boy. As sad as those situations are, I knew a few gay kids when I was growing up who went through similar experiences (without revealing too much of the plot). My older brother (who died just a couple years after my father), William, was gay. I knew a lot of his friends, and I always had this sense of the enormity of the stories they had to tell, but it was always remarkable to me how they lived in relative silence and seclusion about the things they had to go through.

As far as the authors and writing about gay teens is concerned, I have a few ideas. First, from my own perspective, I only write about things that I know. I know what it’s like to be a kid with an older brother who’s gay, so it wasn’t difficult to write about, and, I think, treat the subject fairly. Second, I think a lot of people are afraid to deal with sexuality and male teens unless they confine their story arcs to nailing the hot and unattainable girl. It’s also why we see so few novels that deal with sexual abuse against boys. These are things that make some people very uncomfortable, so they’d rather not deal with it, or, if they do, then they reduce their depictions to stereotypes of gay boys, or to survivors of sexual abuse who grow and triumph and heal beautifully. This is the problem (and the complaint) that a few people have with The Marbury Lens: that Jack is so damaged by his abduction (which, again, some people find to be very disturbing), and, in the end, he never gets over it and is “all better” again, and the psychological consequences result in breakdowns in his healthy relationships with people who love him. That’s what really happens to boys in the real world.

Name 3 books that left a lasting impression on you.

Only three??? First, I’d like to say Thank You for not asking me about my “favorites.” I don’t have a favorite anything. But these are three books that definitely have a permanent spot on the shelf in my head:

In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway

Eagle or Sun? by Octavio Paz

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy

And lastly, why do you write? And why should teens write?

I’ll be honest. This was a tough question. At the risk of sounding conceited, I think I write because I get a sense of satisfaction with the way I put words together on a page. I like what I do. I never actually intended to seek publication. I did it on a kind of whim and sold the first book I ever tried to have published (Ghost Medicine). To be honest, again, there was a big nagging part of me that was afraid of having people read my book, and it’s been that way with every book I’ve written. So, it’s a really personal thing with me.

I don’t think that teens, necessarily, should write. But they definitely shouldn’t be discouraged from doing it, either. And in the past 30 years or so, with the changing political and economic stresses on the world, I think young people are being pushed into – and, sadly, buying into – the rush-rush techno/science/big bucks/don’t let the Chinese get ahead of us mentality that devalues artistic creativity in favor of having a global-economic-competitive advantage. One day soon, I hope, people will begin to reevaluate this notion and maybe wake up to the idea that creative thought and originality of voice are the foundation to solving every problem we will ever face.

Andrew Smith is the author of Ghost Medicine, In the Path of Falling Objects, The Marbury Lens (out this fall) and Stick (out fall of 2011). He lives in California.

Books I Have Loved

Books help us grow. They teach us invaluable life lessons, offer comfort and joy, a place to hide and heal for those who need it. Books make us think and feel, and sometimes even question our own beliefs. Books don’t necessarily offer instant gratification, like so many young people are used to these days. Reading takes time, but a good book has the power to make hours and days disappear. A book is like a movie that’s only showing in your head, it feeds our imagination, helps us see things in a new light. Reading is magical.

Books I have loved.

Andrew Smith - Ghost Medicine

Adam Rapp - 33 Snow fish

S.E. Hinton - Rumble Fish

Andreas Steinhofel - The Center of the World

J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye

Aidan Chambers - Postcards From No Man’s Land

Sonya Hartnett - Surrender

Suzanne Kingsbury - The Summer Fletcher Greel Loved Me

James Howe - The Watcher

Celia Rees - The Wish House

Bookish

Sometimes I really miss my mum. It's rare, but it happens. Yesterday was one of those days. I found myself remembering her large collection of books, how the bookcase and shelves would cover the entire wall in the living room. She kept her most expensive books, the heavy coffee table ones with glossy pages and beautiful colour photos behind glass doors on the third highest shelf. On a Sunday afternoon she’d sit in her favourite armchair with a book in one hand and a glass of red wine in the other. She’d have a relaxed, almost soft look on her face and it was like seeing her through someone else’s eyes. Maybe that’s who she was when we weren’t around? I remember her taking me and my sister to the library to get our own library cards and having a lively discussion with the librarian about children’s literature. We’d browse the shelves and carefully select three books each, nervously eyeing our mum whose voice seemed to fill up the entire room. Didn’t she know you’re supposed to whisper? I realise that being immersed in a book and teaching her English classes may have been the only times when mum was truly happy, and I wonder how she feels now that her job and passion has been taken away from her.