Francisco X. Stork’s marvelous novel Marcelo in the Real World received universal acclaim when it was published late last year. It seemed to make every “Best of 2009″ list that I came across, and it was recently named a Top 10 Best Books for Young Adults by the Young Adult Library Services Administration.

The novel tells the story of Marcelo, a 17-year-old with a mild form of Asperger’s syndrome, one symptom of which is that Marcelo can hear music that no one else can hear. As the summer before his senior year of high school begins, his father, an attorney, wants Marcelo to work at his law firm–rather than with the Haflinger ponies at the special school that Marcelo usually attends. But Marcelo’s father insists he get some real-world experience. More than that, after the summer he wants Marcelo to spend his senior year at a “normal” school in the fall. None of this pleases Marcelo.

At the law firm, he meets Jasmine, a beautiful and feisty coworker who runs the mail room in which Marcelo works. He also meets Wendell, the spoiled son of his father’s law partner. What Marcelo learns during his summer in “the real world” will change his life in ways that he could never have imagined.

Francisco X. Stork recently agreed to answer some questions I had about the book, his writing process, what he’s working on next, and so much more. Enjoy!

Marcelo is a wonderful character, a normal teenage boy in almost every way except that he has a mild form of autism. Clearly, he’s on the higher functioning end of the autism spectrum, but he still has difficulty in “real world” situations.  Was it difficult to maintain his perspective consistently? How did you go about doing this?

Just before I began to write, I took a few minutes to “become” Marcelo. Once I was looking at the world through Marcelo’s eyes all I had to do was be very vigilant that I stayed there. Later, during the revision process, I would constantly ask myself: Is this something Marcelo would say or is it something I would say?

In an author’s note you discuss work you did with the Department of Mental Health when you were in college. You also mention your autistic nephew. This novel, I assume, must have been a very personal project for you?

The novel is personal in that I had to access memories and feelings from my life, but also in that it embodies a personal longing for Marcelo’s goodness and innocence.

Did you need to do any research, or could you write this novel solely based on your personal experiences?

Once I determined that Marcelo’s characteristics could be diagnosed as Asperger’s syndrome, I had to do the research. But I don’t think that research alone could ever give me Marcelo’s voice. Marcelo’s voice was a combination of personal experience, research and . . . gift.

I’m sure you’ve heard this a million times, but your book reminded me a little of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Marcelo is much more “functional” than the character in that novel, however. Have you read that novel, and if so what do you think of it?

I heard about Mark Haddon’s novel when I was about two-thirds done with Marcelo and I purposefully held off reading the book so as not to be influenced by it. Later, after I finished Marcelo, I read the book and liked it very much. The character in Mark Haddon’s book is younger and, as you say, less functional than Marcelo, but the book does an excellent job of letting us into the mind of an autistic boy.

Ideas of faith and religion run through the novel. But it’s a unique, personal kind of faith that Marcelo has. Is your faith very important to you? Were you trying to say something about religion in this novel?

Yes, my faith is very important to me. It’s what gives meaning to my life. One of the things I wanted to say about religion in the novel is that religion needs to be looked at the way Marcelo looks at it. He is interested in all religions. He is a Catholic who visits with a rabbi every week who names his dog after a Buddhist prayer. Marcelo has an innate sense of the universality of all religions.

I liked how the novel had a happy ending without being too pat and idealistic. Clearly Marcelo has many struggles ahead of him. Do you ever think about what his adult life might be like? Would you ever return to these characters in another novel?

I think Marcelo will be okay. I have a feeling he will find his own unique place in the real world where he can be who he is. I’m happy with how the book ended, but I do wonder sometimes about some of the struggles that await him.

Marcelo in the Real World is your third book. How long did it take to write? Was it more or less difficult than the earlier books?

I think the whole process of writing and revising took about three years. There were many times when it seemed as if I were just taking dictation and other times when I struggled on a paragraph for days. It was harder to write than the earlier books because it was a more ambitious and challenging book.

You have a new novel coming out soon called The Last Summer of the Death Warriors. Can you tell me a little something about it?

The Last Summer of the Death Warriors is about two very different young men who are brought together by circumstances. Pancho Sanchez believes his sister has been murdered and is out to avenge his killer. He is brought to an orphanage in Las Cruces, New Mexico where he is given the job of assisting D.Q. (short for Daniel Quentin), a seventeen-year-old who has a rare form of brain cancer. D.Q. is highly intelligent and philosophical and is writing the Death Warrior’s Manifesto, a statement of how to live life with dignity and courage. Pancho and D.Q. travel to Albuquerque, where D.Q is to undergo experimental treatments, where Pancho hopes to finds his sister’s killer and where they both fall for the same girl. It’s a story about courage and faith and the transforming power of friendship.

Can you talk about your writing process? For example, how many days a week do you write? For how long? Do you outline your novels? And so on.

I have a day job as a lawyer. I work with a State Agency that finances developments for low-income housing. I try to write a page or an hour a day in the evening but sometimes my brain is all used up. I then wait until weekends to catch up a little. I try to write out a first draft without thinking too much about it and then I go back and revise.

What are some of your favorite books? Who are some of your favorite writers?

I like Flannery O’Connor and Annie Dillard. Don Quixote remains my favorite book. It was an inspiration for The Last Summer of the Death Warriors.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a book written from the perspective of two young women. Wish me luck!

Last week, the ALA and YALSA announced their annual book awards. You know, the Newbery, the Caldecott, and the Printz, among others. Rebecca Stead–who’s a sometimes member of my YA book club–won the Newbery for When You Reach Me. This really didn’t surprise many people, but it did seem to delight everyone. By all accounts, the book is a knockout. It’s been on my “to read” list for ages.

As a YA reader, I’m most intrigued by the Printz Award winner and honor books. The Printz honors excellence in books written for teenagers. And here are those winners (pasted, I admit, from the YALSA web site):

Going Bovine
by Libba Bray
published by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House

2010 Printz Honor Books

The committee also named four Printz Honor Books:

Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman, published by Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group.

Once Charles Darwin sets his rational mind to marry the religious Emma Wedgeworth, they both must take a leap of faith in order to build a life together.

The Monstrumologist, by Rick Yancey, published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing.

Will Henry, orphan and assistant to a monstrumologist, races against time to save his town (and himself) from the anthropophagi, a pod of monstrous creatures who prey on humans.

Punkzilla, by Adam Rapp, published by Candlewick Press.

Fourteen-year-old runaway Jamie, homeless and strung out, embarks on a harrowing journey to reach his dying brother.

Tales of the Madman Underground: An Historical Romance, 1973, by John Barnes, published by Viking Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Young Reader’s Group.

Karl Shoemaker wants to begin his senior year with a new identity separate from his counseling group, his alcoholic mother and the legacy of his dead father.

—

I’ve read none of these, but have heard great things about all of them. And of course they’ve all been added to my “to read” list. In fact, my book club just chose Punkzilla as its next selection.

I’m also intrigued by the William C. Morris Award winner and honor books. The Morris Award is given to a book written for young adults by a first-time, previously unpublished author. And here are those titles:

2010 Winner

Flash Burnout

By L.K. Madigan, published by Houghton Mifflin/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. (9780547194899).

Blake’s life is way too complicated. He’s a sophomore in high school with a girlfriend and a friend who is a girl. One of them loves him. One of them needs him. Can he please them both?

2010 Finalists

Ash

By Malinda Lo, published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. (9780316040099).

Consumed with grief after the death of her father, Ash’s only escape from her harsh life and cruel stepmother comes from re-reading the fairy tales that her mother once told her and hoping against hope that the fairies will appear to her. When the fairy Sidhean appears, Ash hopes that he will steal her away to his enchanted world; but when she meets the King’s Huntress, Kaisa, she realizes that staying in her own realm can also lead to beauty, romance, and perhaps even love.

Beautiful Creatures

By Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. (9780316042673).

Sixteen-year-old Ethan has lived all his life in Gaitlin, South Carolina, a town that hasn’t changed much since the Civil War. While coping with the loss of his mother, a father who spends all of his time in his study, and high school, his world turns upside down with the arrival of Lena, a new girl with whom he seems to share a psychic connection. As they grow closer, Ethan discovers that Lena and her family share a dark secret and that she is headed for doom on her sixteenth birthday.

The Everafter

By Amy Huntley, published by Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers (9780061776793).

Maddy is a ghost, surrounded by things she lost when she was alive. By touching these objects, she relives the episodes in her life where she lost them. Even though Maddy’s dead, she explores the lessons these objects hold — and why are they still important.

hold still

By Nina LaCour, published by Dutton Children’s Books, a Division of Penguin Young Readers Group. (9780525421559).

After Caitlin’s best friend Ingrid commits suicide, Caitlin has a hard time making sense of the loss. She finds Ingrid’s journal and slowly allows herself to read it and learn about why Ingrid felt the need to end her life. Caitlin also grapples with allowing herself to find another friend, to let in a boyfriend, and to understand why her favorite teacher is ignoring her. It is the haunting story of dealing with loss, moving on, and finding peace and hope.

—

I also want to single out the Best Books for Young Adults, a longer list of the supposedly best books written for teens in 2009. The full list can be found here. From this list, committee members name the Top 10 books. Interestingly, these lists don’t usually match the Printz list. Perhaps the commitee members like to spread the wealth. A good thing, in my opinion. Here is their list, notable because it includes the excellent Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork, a book that had been bandied about for the Printz. (Stay tuned, because I’m going to do an interview with Francisco in the near future and I will post it here on the blog.)

• Brennan, Sarah Rees. Demon’s Lexicon. Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing/Margaret K. McElderry. 2009.

• Griffin, Paul. The Orange Houses. Penguin/Dial Books.  2009.

• Herlong, M.H. The Great Wide Sea. Penguin/Viking.  2008.

• Jinks, Catherine. The Reformed Vampire Support Group. Harcourt/ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2009.

• Napoli, Donna Jo. Alligator Bayou. Random House / Knopf.  2009.

• Small, David. Stitches: A Memoir. W.W. Norton & Co. 2009.

• Stead, Rebecca. When You Reach Me. Random House / Wendy Lamb Books.  2009.

• Stork, Francisco X. Marcelo in the Real World. Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine Books.  2009.

• Taylor, Laini. Lips Touch: Three Times. Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine. 2009.

• Walker, Sally M. Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland. Lerner/Carolrhoda Books.  2009.

One of last year’s National Book Award nominees, Jumped is told from the points of view of three girls at a gritty New York City high school. There’s Leticia, who’s bitter about failing and having to retake Geometry. Then there’s Trina, proud of her good looks and artistic abilities and just a bit full of herself. Finally, there’s Dominqiue, the volatile basketball player who has been benched by the coach for bad grades. The novel takes place over the course of one day, after Trina accidentally (and innocently) cuts between Dominique and her friends on the way to class, an event which Leticia witnesses. This does not sit well with an already pissed off Dominique, and she vows to “kick that ass at two forty-five.”

Williams-Garcia is a great writer, wicked with a turn of phrase, clearly in tune with the lingo of street-smart teenage girls. Here’s this typically sharp passage from Trina’s point of view:

Feel all this love. Popular. What? So many fans. So many friends and so many who want to be me. They either caught the shaky-shake and stomp in the caf or they saw my artwork in the gallery. I need a Princess Di wave. No diamond tiara because I have my lucky gold chain and all my subjects adore me. The love keeps pouring.

Each girl comes across as a distinct individual with a compelling back story. They’re by turns likable and unlikable–all of them–and this rings true. The dilemma for Leticia is whether or not she should warn Trina about her date with Dominique’s fists, since she overheard the threat. Trina, for her part, is clueless, wrapped up in her own narcissism (as demonstrated in the passage above).

The ending came as a surprise to me, because it’s not pat and preachy, nor is it predictable. It shows how random events–the slights, injustices, and annoyances of everyday high school life–can add up to produce a potent mixture. A great, fast read that makes me want to go back and check out Williams-Garcia’s earlier work.

Next in my NBA reading project: Claudette Colvin.

On Wednesday night, the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature went to Phillip Hoose’s Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice. It was surely a special moment for the author, made even more so by the presence of Claudette Colvin herself. Was this nonfiction book the best children’s book of the year? Who knows. But I’ve decided to read four of the five nominees to render my judgment. (Since Stitches was not specifically designated as a children’s book, I’m going to skip it!) Though I don’t need anymore reading projects, on top of all the reading I do anyway, I think this will be fun and worthwhile. I’ll post my thoughts as I read each book, and then render the verdict. What will being the winner mean? Absolutely nothing, probably, unless the winner wants to slap on a sticker that says “Martin’s NBA Winner.” Somehow I think that is unlikely.

First up in the reading queue: Jumped by Rita Williams-Garcia. I don’t expect this little project to be completed by the end of the year, but hopefully I’ll have waded through the nominees by the time the ALA announces their Printz winner and honor books in January.

William Trevor is best known for his lovely, brilliant, crystalline short stories. Like all of his admirers, I am a big fan of his stories and usually devour them when they appear in The New Yorker and when they are collected in book form (his most recent collection is Cheating at Canasta). As amazing as his short stories are, his novels are equally wonderful: dark slim tales wrapped in exquisite prose. The novels are tight and precise, creepy, and lovely. The first novel of Trevor’s that I read was Felicia’s Journey, and it still remains my favorite, though I certainly haven’t exhausted his output yet.

A recent re-read reminded me why I loved the novel—and reminded me why reading Trevor is as pleasurable as sitting by a cozy fire on a cold stormy night, with a cup of tea and a plate of cookies at your side. (Though, to be honest, I’ve never done such a thing. But it sounds very British or Irish, and thus very Trevor-like, since he really is a dual citizen of both countries.)

Felicia’s Journey is the dual story of two very different characters whose lives intersect with life-changing consequences for both. Felicia is a young Irish woman, part of a large family, though her mother died when she was very young. It is, at first glance, a quiet but somewhat dreary life, especially since she shares a tiny room with her great grandmother, a widow of a man who sacrificed his life for Ireland during “The Troubles.” Felicia’s father never forgets to remind her of that heritage. But when Felicia meets Johnny, a once-local boy who is taking a break from his life in England to visit his protective mother, a bright ray of sunshine breaks up her rain-soaked days, making life seem a little more magical and a lot less ordinary. Trevor conveys the pangs of first love—the euphoria, the doubt, the moony fantasizing, the dread of disappointment, the hopefulness—with heartbreaking honesty.

This we all learn though Trevor’s seamless use of flashback, for when the novel opens, Felicia is on a ferry, heading to England. She is pregnant, by Johnny, and she is both trying to find him to tell him the news as well as escape her dead-end life in the Irish village she calls home.

Mr. Hilditch, our other protagonist, is a lonely, fat, fussy “catering manager” at a factory, somewhere in middle England. He lives alone in a large house, and drives a “humpbacked green car.” He chances upon Felicia as she is wondering the city, hoping to find Johnny, who supposedly works at a nearby lawnmower factory, though this proves not to be the case. Slowly, with subtle yet menacing clues planted deftly by Trevor, we realize that Mr. Hilditch is not the sweet, innocent old man he portrays himself to be. Felicia, you see, is an ideal target for his nefarious designs: She is young, pretty, alone, and somewhat helpless, even desperate, in a land without any connections. He finds a way to worm himself into her life, offering a helping hand when she needs it most. But the reader realizes Felicia is walking into a trap, because the other girls who Mr. Hilditch has helped in the past are all dead and buried.

Since I already knew how the novel ended, the tension wasn’t as taut as it had been when I originally read it. But I read on with pleasure anyway, admiring the way Trevor wracked up the sense of dread and suspense, page by page. Will Felicia fall into his clutches? What will happen to her unborn baby? Will she find Johnny?

The other impressive thing about Felicia’s Journey—which struck me both then and now—is the way that Trevor makes you feel sympathy for Mr. Hilditch, not just Felicia. Sure, he is a sick and disturbed man, a murderer. But Trevor knows that murderers are still human beings, with complex though messed-up inner lives. He doesn’t go in for cheap psychoanalysis about why Mr. Hilditch has become the way he has become, nor does he portray Mr. Hilditch as a one-dimensional portrait of unexplainable evil. In characterizing Mr. Hilditch, Trevor shows how the disappointments and slights of his long life have added to his troubled mind, creating a potent cocktail of obsession, delusion, and violence.

I won’t spoil the ending, of course, but Trevor withholds crucial information for a long stretch of time before the reader realizes Felicia’s fate. In lesser hands, this might seem a cheap trick. But Trevor pulls it off masterfully. This is, of course, a novel about a journey. And where that journey takes Felicia is both heartbreaking, exhilarating, and ultimately revelatory.

By the way, Felicia’s Journey was made into a movie in 1999, by Atom Egoyan. And though Bob Hoskins gives a pretty good performance as Mr. Hilditch, the movie overall is not very good. Skip it–read the book!

My essay on John Donovan has been published in Tin House. Alas, the essay isn’t available online, so if you want to read it you’ll have to buy a copy. But it’s a great, very cool issue. The theme is both hope AND dread, which is reflected in the issue’s design: One side is Hope, with its own table of contents (and in which my essay appears). If you flip the magazine over and upside down, then you have the Despair side of the issue.

I also came across a great story about, and interview with, a YA writer I’d never heard: William Sleator. The story was written by the writer Nick Antosca (who happens to be a writing-world friend), and you can read it here at the Huffington Post. Sleator’s creepy, sci-fi-ish books sound amazing. How had I never heard of Sleator? Well, I am always excited to explore a new author, so I promptly went out and hunted down a few of his books: Blackbriar, his first novel, which has recently been reissued in hardcover; The Boxes (”Don’t open them!” the cover warns); and The Boy Who Couldn’t Die, about, yes, a boy who literally can’t die. As if I need more books to read. But I can’t help myself.

Otherwise, I’ve been busy working on Novel 2. I am making great progress, but the next two months I need to really bear down and get a lot of writing done. I hope to finish a draft by early next year, which means the book will come out in 2011. But at least my paperback comes out in February 2010! I’ll be sure and post if I have any paperback-related events planned.

The National Book Award nominees were announced last week. The finalists are an eclectic lot (see below). Indeed, the only book I had heard of was Stitches, which wasn’t even published as a YA novel. Is this fair? I’m all for inclusion, and “crossover” books are wonderful, but this nomination kind of irks me. It seems like this book robbed a true YA or children’s book of a spot on the list. Would a YA novel make it to the adult category? No. It would be ghettoized to its own category. So why can “adult” books invade our category? Publishers Weekly has an interesting story on this controversial nomination. What do you think? Either way, the nominees are below. I’m going to try to read them all by the end of the year.

YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE

Deborah Heiligman, Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith
(Henry Holt)
Phillip Hoose, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
David Small, Stitches (W. W. Norton & Co.)
Laini Taylor, Lips Touch: Three Times (Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic)
Rita Williams-Garcia, Jumped (HarperTeen/HarperCollins)

This week brought great news: Flux, a Minnesota-based publisher, will reissue John Donovan’s I’ll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip. in fall of 2010! Publishers Weekly broke the story, which you can read here. I’ll Get There is considered to be the first YA novel to deal with homosexuality.  It was originally ushered into print in 1969 by legendary editor Ursula Nordstrom. The new edition will include a few introductory essays as well. My essay on I’ll Get There is about to be published in Tin House. I’ll post a link or a teaser soon. Anyway, cheers to Flux for rediscovering this wonderful and essential novel.

Bennett Madison’s wonderful new novel, The Blonde of the Joke, is out and I encourage everyone to buy it and read it. Library Journal said this about it: “Off-kilter humor, moody narration, and twisted psychology make this sardonic exploration of suburbia thrilling—like pocketing lip gloss and walking right out of the store. . . . Dreamy collisions of reality and fantasy, of the nonsensical and impossible, make for a magical, slippery read.” VOYA, meanwhile, called it (I love this) a “John Hughes movie on downers.” Basically, it’s the story of a  wallflowery teenage girl named Val who is drawn out of her shell and into a life of risky shoplifting by the alluring and audacious Francie.

Full disclosure: Bennett happens to be a friend of mine. Long story short is that we sort of met when we both had stories in the (now-defunct) literary journal Rush Hour. My story would turn into the first chapter of my novel—much like Bennett’s story served as the basis for The Blond of the Joke. Bennett was kind enough to answer some questions via email. He even lets me know what his favorite blonde joke is. Enjoy!

The Blonde of the Joke started out as a short story. How much of a challenge was it to expand into a novel? Did you always envision the story as a longer piece?

Expanding a short story into a novel was really a pleasure in this case because I always had a blueprint. There was never that moment of oh shit terror that you get in almost any other project where you really just have no idea where things are going or how to get there. Obviously there were still decisions to be made and obviously the book turned out quite a lot different from the story in really substantial ways, but having the story to work from really kept me from freaking out. Writing this book was without a doubt the most fun I’ve ever had writing any novel. I hope it happens again someday.

You write convincingly from the point of view of teenage girls. How do you do it so well?

Thank you! I hope I do it well; I really have no idea. I guess I really don’t think girls are any different from boys, or rather, you have to look at a character as an individual rather than a gender. Maybe there are some intrinsic differences in the ways men approach the world versus the way women do—I don’t know—but I’m not writing from the point of view of “women” or “men.” I’m writing from the point of view of a specific character, which is a lot different.

I’ve talked to other writers who totally disagree with this: who believe that the gender of a character fundamentally changes the way you should think and write about her. I think that’s kind of crap, though. I mean, I act ladyish in some ways and manlyish in other ways. If someone wrote a book about me and made me watching football because that’s the way a man behaves, they would be getting me all wrong cause I can’t imagine why anyone thinks football is exciting. If you deal with the character in an honest way I think you can’t go wrong regardless of gender.

That said, my next book is about a straight guy and it’s been really hard. I’ll probably have to do a pass at the end just to make sure all the talk about boobs and pussy is convincing. I don’t know why I still haven’t written a book where I myself am the main character. I keep meaning to.

There’s a lot of shoplifting in this novel. Did you do any research on the tricks of the trade? Any “hands on” research?

I know a lot about shoplifting because I worked at the Gap for a lot of high school. I never shoplifted very much myself, though. Stores rely on people’s sense of guilt to keep them from stealing and it usually works. In order to shoplift well you have to believe you deserve it, and I grew up Catholic.

Val’s brother, Jesse, is sick and dying, yet the reader never learns what disease he has, nor does Val seem to know. Why did you leave that out?

A lot of people had a problem with the fact that I never address exactly what Jesse’s problem is. I think they want me to be like, “He has AIDS, wear a condom!” or whatever, even though he doesn’t and that would make no sense.

I didn’t get into it for a lot of reasons: first of all, I wasn’t that interested, and I figured if I wasn’t interested it would be hard to make anyone else care. But more importantly, the book takes place in a sort of skewed universe where you really can just be dying of boredom. What matters most is Val’s perception of her brother’s illness. So much of what happens in the book is driven by Val’s perception of her world, rather than the other way around. There are a few parts where I talk about how the mall rearranges itself for her, and I actually think other things are rearranging themselves for her as well.

Anyway, to really answer your question, I secretly think he’s probably a drug addict but I didn’t want to divert the attention there and make it a book about someone whose brother is a drug addict because to me that just wasn’t the point.

Late in the novel, Val has a chilling exchange with Max. She asks him, “Don’t you have parents?” He responds, “No one has parents around here.” Indeed, that seems to be true in this novel. Or, if they are around, they are big messes. Was this parental absence true of your upbringing, or is it particular to this fictional world? Why are the parents so absent in this novel?

I think I write about people with no parents because I grew up with an abundance of parenting, as did most of my friends. I actually have really great parents who are nothing like any of the parents in this book, but sometimes it was annoying. They were the parents who really did call to make sure someone was going to be home for the party.

So it’s partially just my own wish-fulfillment fantasy about what it’s like to be this weird feral teen. But also it gets back to the idea of unreality in the book: I’m not that interested in what it’s like to be a real teenager. I don’t know and I don’t care anymore! I’m more interested in this, like, idea of teenage. I like to imagine this mythical kingdom of teenagedness that exists. That kingdom is ruled by James Dean and Kim Kelly and there are no parents.

Francie is a fascinating character. Did you know girls like her growing up? What does the future hold for a girl like Francie?

I didn’t know anyone exactly like Francie growing up, although there were a few girls I knew in high school and especially college who lent parts of themselves to Francie: the way she talks, the way she looks, the way she dresses, the way she smokes. All the superficial stuff came from blondes I have known, but I think her toughness and her anger is all her own. (A lot of people who have read the book have said she’s an unlikable character but to me she’s hugely charming—I don’t know what that says about me.)

Although I didn’t know anyone exactly like Francie, I had a couple of friends who sort of filled a Francie’s role while I was in high school without being quite so badass or outrageous or ambitious as Francie. But It’s just like, you meet this exotic person who you think is just going to change everything—who does change everything—and then you realize that she’s just a normal person and you’re actually almost kind of pissed off about it, which makes you sort of hate her.

Actually I think an important stage in any intense friendship or relationship is when you get past the point of being amazed and dazzled by the other person, and then past the point where you feel like you practically are the other person, and you reach a point where you’re almost astonished by the total strangeness of the other person, and by proxy everyone else in the world. How you deal with that makes a big difference and I think it’s in a lot of ways what this book is about.

What are you working on now?

Not telling, but I think it will be out from HarperCollins next year! It’s sort of about mermaids, but not really. It’s slightly more fantastical than this one but has a lot of the same themes and elements. Like I said earlier, the narrator is a dude who loves boobs.

Who are your favorite authors, YA or otherwise?

I love Lorrie Moore, Amy Hempel, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mark Doty, Lynda Barry, CP Cavafy, Mary Gaitskill, Edith Wharton, Alan Moore, Louise Fitzhugh, Tom Spanbauer, Ben Neihart, Daniel Pinkwater, Chris Claremont, Anton Chekov, Mary Robison, Dodie Smith, Alan Hollinghurst, Cookie Mueller, Angela Carter, and a lot of other people. I tried to read Pynchon for the billionth time on vacation and I still can’t get into him, so I guess you can put Pynchon on the list of people I don’t like that much. (Although he can be funny.)

I think Francesca Lia Block deserves special mention because it was reading the Weetzie Bat books that made writing for young people seem like a totally legitimate and awesome thing to do.

What’s your favorite blonde joke?

Courtney Love.

I recently reread Open Secrets by Alice Munro for the fifth time. Yes, I know, that sounds excessive, but it is a remarkable book, one of my all-time favorites. Each time I return to it, I discover new pleasures and remember why I always go back to it. Actually, I’ve reread almost all of Munro’s books, but Open Secrets has to be my favorite. There’s not a dud in the entire collection.

Perhaps I return to Open Secrets with such fondness because it was the first book of hers that I read, way back in 1994. I bought it in hardcover, eager to discover what all the fuss was about. Munro was one of those writers who critics raved about. I saw—but mostly ignored—her stories in The New Yorker (which I started reading regularly at about the same time). I wasn’t necessarily skeptical, but I doubted she’d be a writer who would have much of an impact on me. She was a woman, from Canada—how good could she be?

I must admit, I didn’t really “get” the stories at first. “Carried Away,” the opening story, is brilliant, but it has a very sophisticated structure, and though I loved segments of the story—I can never forget the description of the accident at the piano factory, or that glass of wine Louisa has each night—I didn’t understand what it all added up to. Five times later (actually, I’ve probably read it more than that), I still don’t, but that’s the beauty and joy of Munro’s stories: they’re mysteries, never meant to be solved. But pondered over and over again, they yield truths about life, human nature, love.

I soon warmed up to Munro’s subtly radical structures, relishing every story, with their unexpected turns (“A Real Life”) and their almost-macabre comedic touches (“Open Secrets). I also couldn’t believe their breadth. I’m not the first person to ever note that Munro can pack entire novels into 30 pages. Just read “The Albanian Virgin” or “A Wilderness Station” to see Munro at her most brilliant—expansive yet compact, historical but personal.

“Open Secrets” was probably my favorite at the time, because I am sucker for “vanishing” people stories. Indeed, a friend read the story and said it reminded him of one of our favorite movies, Picnic at Hanging Rock. I still love that story, and “The Jack Randa Hotel,” too. But over the years—over the multiple readings—I grew to love every story, even “Vandals,” the last story. Like another disturbing story in an earlier collection, “Fits,” I still haven’t quite figured out what Munro is trying to say with this story. But that is why I keep going back—the stories are so rich, each rereading is a reward.

I must admit that Munro is one of those writers I read to get my own writerly juices flowing. I don’t dare try and ape her—I have plenty of failed short stories that I had hoped were “Munro-esque” moldering in my files—but the pleasure I take in her work reminds me why I write.

I have a galley of Munro’s newest work, to be published in November. It’s called Too Much Happiness. Fitting, I think, because that is what her stories give me. After the publication of her prior book, The View from Castle Rock, Munro said it was her last. But thankfully it wasn’t. And here’s hoping she keeps writing her vibrant short stories for many years. I’ll need more books to read—and reread.