Bill Konigsberg's Blog, page 9

The Porcupine of Truth – Cover Reveal!

So here it is: I finally get to share the cover of my next novel with the world!

Meet The Porcupine of Truth, to be unveiled to the world in May of 2015.

I love this cover! I love the adorable porcupine, I love how he seems to be the center of the universe (because, alas, in some world views he is), and I love that it plays off of the icons and fonts of Openly Straight. I do believe that readers who loved Openly Straight will love this book!

But my favorite part of the cover is actually the spine of the book. Because it is awesome:

Yes, the winking porcupine. I love me the winking porcupine.

There is so much more to say about this, but let’s face it: we have a lot of time. Next month, I will share some early blurbs about the book. Early feedback has been extremely positive, and I have a feeling that this one will be talked about a lot. This book goes to some surprising places. If you enjoy books that make you laugh and cry within the same page, I think you’ll really like this one.

“From an openly straight fraud…”

Boy oh boy. The terrific, powerful emails keep pouring in. And I hope, by the way, that my answering some of them on my blog will not make those whose emails I don’t answer this way feel like theirs didn’t matter to me; they absolutely matter! If something sparks an idea I want to express to the world, I will sometimes answer on my blog. And know that I will never give away anyone’s private information… anything that might point to a person’s identity, I will change. I promise.

Here’s one I got yesterday. The subject was, “From an openly straight fraud who would like to say thanks.” My response is below.

—

Dear Bill,

I started reading Openly Straight one night in bed this summer and didn’t put it down until the sun had risen and my pillow was soaked with tears.

I wish there was a way I could articulate the full extent of how your book has changed me.   I’m a nineteen-year-old closeted (confused?) male, a sophomore in college whose greatest life achievement has been his ability to hide himself from everyone he has ever met, including himself.  Since adolescence, I had learned to live with a false sense of reality, brushing away my inner feelings the way one brushes away a recurring nightmare.

My treaty with reality began to break down last year, and your book destroyed the truce for good.  I could identify with Rafe.  We weren’t the same person, not even similar people, but we were close enough.  Past the superficial aspects (sports, boarding school), we were both overly concerned with the comings and goings in our own head, and we both fell in love with our best friend: a philosophically-inclined, straight roommate.  Rafe and I were just close enough that I had to taste reality.

I was fully prepared to go through my entire life without telling anybody my secret.  I’m hesitant, even in this essentially anonymous email (yes, I created this email address just to send you this email), to spell out what that secret is.  Part of it stems from genuine confusion; part of it comes from fear; part of it comes out of habit.  What I know for sure is that, while I act openly straight, I am definitely not 100% straight.  Probably not particularly close to 100% either.

Four weeks ago, I selfishly threw my life onto my roommate’s shoulders and told him my secret. In spite of this, he has been unbelievably supportive, even as he realized the implications of my revelation in regards to our friendship.  I had braced myself for a Ben-like backlash—there was none of that.  Yet, I’m not sure I can tell anybody else…and that, I think, is slowly eating away at my soul.

When I started writing this email, I didn’t mean (if you can believe it) to dump my life onto your shoulders as well.  What I really wanted to say was that you have written a beautiful, beautiful book.  I wanted to let you know that you have changed the course of my life (or, perhaps, simply accelerated the inevitable).  For better or for worse, time will only tell.  I can only hope that you will thoughtfully wield your power of touching other people’s souls, as I try to discover what best to do with mine.

Thank you,

xxxx

————

Hi xxxx,

Thank you for your beautiful email. I have all sorts of thoughts and comments to share. The first is, we have one thing in common: we tend to beat up on ourselves a bit. I can hear it throughout your note. To me, you didn’t “selfishly throw your life onto your roommate’s shoulders”; you let him into your life. People (the ones who count, anyway), tend to like when people they like who have kept them at arms’ length finally let them in a bit more! Like this email. You didn’t dump anything on me; you told me your story.

Along those lines, I want to challenge the idea that your roommate has been incredibly supportive “in spite of” what you told him. In fact, he’s been supportive because of it! Again, people who matter will see vulnerability and be kinder, not meaner. True, there are plenty of people who will go the other way. I’d love to say “who cares,” but of course we all care. Especially if you, like Rafe, like me, tend to spend too much time in your own head.

I fully believe what Mrs. Goldberg says in the book, when Rafe asks, “Why can’t I be bad?” I don’t have the book in front of me right now, but she says something like, “You can be anything you want, but when you go against who you are inside, it doesn’t feel good.”

I say this because it may not feel good all the time, as you’re getting honest with yourself and (maybe) with the world, but I one hundred percent believe it’s our only choice if we want to be happy. I have tried to be someone other than myself. Often I wake up with the idea that today I’m going to be more “fill in the blank.” That’s the same thing. It’s not accepting who I really am. It never works, and it may feel good to try to be someone else for a while, but in the end I always come back to the truth.

The best days are the ones when I wake up and say to myself, “Today I’m going to be the best version of me that I can be.”

I wish you the best of luck as you go through what you’re going through. It’s not easy to be different. But the truth is we’re all different in some way. That’s why so many different people – gay, straight, and every other label in the universe – seems to react to this book. We’re all different, and we’re all dealing with labels that we don’t want. It would be cool if those labels didn’t carry the power that they do, but they just … do.

Best,

Bill Konigsberg

Negative Self-Talk and Openly Straight

I love getting emails from readers. Every single one of them touches my heart. And once in a while, I get one that especially moves me. Here’s a note that I really wanted to share.

—

Dear Mr. Konigsberg

I just finished your book and I have to say, what an amazing piece of art. I honestly have to say reading your book changed my life. I’m not gay, but I think you don’t have to be gay for this book to be inspiring. When I finished this, I was overcome by happiness. I honestly couldn’t tell you why, but I think it was because of all the honest sweetness in the book. It was happy and loving and beautiful and poetic. I’m sure that’s pretty weird to think, but that’s what I felt after reading your book. Also, Rafe made me think about myself. I tend to be really harsh on myself, for no reason. I have really self-destructive thoughts and I think things about myself that aren’t exactly healthy. I think I feel this sort of guilt, like I’m not contributing to the world, like I should feel bad that I’m not suffering alongside all the sufferers in the world. Its like I’m upset that I’m so happy, and I can’t figure out why. I’ve pondered this time and time again, and have come up with nothing. This is why I love your book. It made me realize that maybe I’m the one who’s always mean to me, that I should stop trying to someone I’m not, some superficial fake person who is afraid to be themselves. So thank you, Mr. Konigsberg, for writing your book, for anyone who was struggling to except themselves, gay or not. I don’t know if I got the message I was supposed to get from your book, but the one I got was a good one at that, and I couldn’t be more elated I had the experience of reading your book. So again, thank you.

—-

Dear Reader,

If you didn’t get the intended message, I’d never admit it now, because the message you state here is so beautiful. I totally get where you’re coming from. Those voices in our heads can be terribly distracting. I’ve battled them for years. I’ll share with you a few things people have told me that have helped.

Before I do that, I want to say that you probably felt that way because of the stuff with the camera that Rafe talks about. Did you know that when I first brought up the camera (in the first line of the book), I didn’t actually know what I was doing with it? I didn’t understand how I, as an author, have trained my own camera on me for so long, and I didn’t get how that was related to the struggle Rafe was going through. So to paraphrase E.L. Doctorow, I started with nothing and learned as I went.

Here are four nuggets that have helped me battle those awful negative voices in my head. Maybe they will help you, too!

-Random acts of kindness.

Often when the voices in my head get loud and I start to get down on myself, I find that I really need to turn the voices off. The best way to do that is to focus my energy outward. About a month ago, I was having a tough day. Really tough, and it was all in my brain, me beating up me. Then I remembered a friend had told me once that the best thing to do when you’re upset is to do something for someone else. So I went to Mill Avenue in Tempe and bought lunch for two homeless people and got water for a homeless dog. And guess what? Voices gone!

-Perspective.

This is a big one. All my life I’ve taken myself so seriously, as if the things in my life matter to the universe. There’s a moment in my first novel, Out of the Pocket, where Rahim is helping Bobby, who is upset. He points at the sky, and he says something like, “Look how small we are.” It’s not that our problems and issues don’t matter; they do matter. It’s our lives. But sometimes I need to remember that in the grand scheme of things, my problem is but a tiny pebble in the ocean.

-Laughing at myself.

And this is what I’m learning right now. If I don’t take myself and my thoughts so seriously, they lose their power. I’m just a guy with a crazy brain, and you are that way, and millions of us are that way. It’s beautiful, if you think about it. My book touched you because you sensed a kindred spirit. That’s wonderful. We’re all crazy, flawed, sweet kids trying to do our best, and that’s kinda funny if you think about it.

-Xena, Warrior Princess

This is a new one. I use Xena because the person who told me this was female. She said that when her voices and self-doubt and self-flaggelation came up, she closed her eyes and summoned her inner warrior. For her, it was Xena. She imagined this strong inner part of her, and then imagined that Xena bludgeoning an actual wall with any weapon she chose. That was is the wall of negativity in her life. It taught her that even if she has some negative voices, she has a lot of strength, too. I don’t have a male Xena yet, but I have imagined myself destroying that wall with a hammer. Try it sometime. It feels good, and no one gets hurt.

I hope this is useful! Just know you are truly not alone. And I’m so glad you loved the book! Just wait ’til next summer and The Porcupine of Truth! I think you’ll truly adore that one.

“What happens after Openly Straight?”

I’m so sorry that I’ve been so bad about blogging recently. I’ve been so busy with writing and editing and a few other projects, and I haven’t made the time. Bad author! Bad author!

One amazing thing I’ve noticed has been the incredible uptick in emails about Openly Straight. Even more than when it first came out, I seem to be getting lots of emails with questions about the book. The most common question is, “will you be writing a sequel?”

The answer to that: stay tuned. There may be some news about that in the near future!

The second most common question is, “what happens to Ben?”

A couple days ago, I got an email like that. But this one made me ponder things in a different way. I’ll explain. Let me start by sharing the email.

Dear Mr. Konigsberg,

I just finished reading your book Openly Straight and had a couple of questions. I know many people asked you what is going to happen to Ben and Rafe after the story but I’m more curious about Ben himself.

What is Ben and Bryce’s relationship like? Is it similar to Rafe’s with Ben? Is it Agape? Does it ever intersect with Eros? Does Ben and Bryce encounter similar problems like Ben and Rafe’s relationship?

I know you probably get a ton of emails everyday but hopefully, you’ll see this one.

Thank you for writing this amazing book!

Sincerely, xxxx

I read this, and immediately some questions came into my head.

1) Who gets to decide what happens to characters after a book is over?

It’s kind of like Hazel’s questions to Peter Van Houten in The Fault in Our Stars. Mr. Van Houten wrote the book, but does that mean the book is “his?” When does it become everyone’s, so that others can decide for themselves what happens after the book ends?

There are no correct or incorrect answers to these questions. To me, it’s not really for the author to say what happens after the book is over. That’s the beauty of a book. That’s what fan fiction is all about. Openly Straight ends, and to me, anyone who has read it has as much right as I do as an author to say what happens to the characters after.

2) What about stuff that happens outside of the realm of the novel? Backstory?

Same thing. If a reader believes that Ben and Bryce had a love affair and Ben is keeping it a secret, I think that’s great! Who cares what I think?

3) Do the answers to the above questions change when an author says they are going to write a sequel?

This one interests me. Let’s say I do write a sequel. Does that mean a person who imagined a different path for Rafe and Ben is now “wrong?”

I don’t think so. One of the things I explore in my next novel, The Porcupine of Truth, is how whatever one believes about God and the universe is undeniably true… FOR THEM. Meaning that Jesus Christ is absolutely the son of God … for those who believe that. Meaning that there is no God … for those who believe that. The problem comes when we start bumping into others, and telling others what must be true for them. We are in charge of our own truths.

With that in mind, I think it’s totally acceptable that some people may decide what happens after Openly Straight, and they could read a sequel and decide that I have it wrong. Why not? For them, I may not create the correct reality. I noticed that the third Bridget Jones book came out recently, and many, many fans completely rejected the plot. To them, it simply doesn’t happen that way. I think that’s just fine.

So with that in mind, here’s how I answer that email:

What is Ben and Bryce’s relationship like?

They were best friends. They had a similar sense of humor. They shared their feelings. All of this is in the text.

Is it similar to Rafe’s with Ben? Is it Agape? Does it ever intersect with Eros?



Not in the text, no. What’s your thought about this? To you, do Ben and Bryce have any eros in their relationship? If so, what happened there? I did not intend for that to be the case, but it really doesn’t matter what I intended. It only matters what your imagination comes up with!

Does Ben and Bryce encounter similar problems like Ben and Rafe’s relationship?

Again, not for me to say. It wasn’t my intention, but maybe to you, there’s a backstory there that Ben kept secret? What would that have been?

And of course, if a sequel comes, there will be answers to these questions. If the answers are incorrect to you, you know what? You’re right, and I’m wrong!

For you!

A Judy Blume Fanboy

Yeah, this was pretty surreal…

I got to take a picture with Judy Blume at the SCBWI conference after my speech! Yeah, it’s blurry, but I’ll take it! What a truly lovely person, and what an amazing gift she has given the world with her books!

Sid Fleischman Award Acceptance Speech – with VIDEO!

Yesterday was a wonderful day. I got to accept the Sid Fleischman Award for Humor for my novel Openly Straight at the annual SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) Convention at the Century Hyatt in Los Angeles.

I was soooooo nervous. I don’t generally get nervous when I speak, but this was different. There were, like, 1000+ people there. A lot of amazing and talented people were there who don’t know me, so I was anxious to make a good first impression. And, of course, Judy Blume was there, sitting right up front.

Ay yi yi!

Judy Blume!

When I was a kid, I used to take my sister’s Judy Blume novels and read them. Everything I learned about sex, love and romance I learned from her novel “Forever.” That was adorable back when I was 14, but now that I’m 43, I should probably update my knowledge base.

That’s exactly the kind of joke I had to cut due to time constraints yesterday.

Anyhow, it was a memorable and beautiful day for me. I really love book people, and I love my job. Not only do I get to spend my life writing books, but I get to hobnob with the nicest people I’ve ever met. You can hear, on this video, the kindness of people with their charity laughs.

Here’s the video.

2nd Edition of Out of the Pocket: Now an e-book!

The second edition of the 2009 Lambda Literary Award-winning Out of the Pocket is now available in e-book format!

The new version, released earlier this year in paperback, has a foreward by Chris Kluwe and an afterword by Jim Buzinski of Outsports, plus two new chapters by me. The e-book is priced to sell at $6.99.

Go! Get one! Now!

Walden Award Finalist

Openly Straight has been named one of five finalists for the 2014 Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award!

What an honor!

There are a bunch of things about this that make me particularly happy. One is the caliber of authors on this list. The other books are:



Eleanor and Park – Rainbow Rowell

Jumped In – Patrick Flores-Scott

The Milk of Birds – Sylvia Whitman

Winger – Andrew Smith

Rainbow and Andrew are friends, and their books are all over the place. And for good reason; they are two of the finest authors out there today — in any genre. I was not familiar with Patrick and Sylvia’s work, but I got a chance to sleuth a little bit yesterday, and both books are immediately to the front of my To Be Read pile. (And yeah, that’s a big pile).

The other thing that makes me particularly happy about this is the criteria for the award. The award committee chose books that demonstrate “a positive approach to life, widespread teen appeal, and literary merit.”

The first is meaningful to me because becoming a more positive, upbeat person has been one of my main goals the last three or four years. And the final two are meaningful because that’s the cross-section where I want to live as an author. I want to write books that have literary merit, but also a story. I want them to exercise the mind, and make people think, and I want them to make people laugh.

And the last thing that makes me particularly happy about this is that the award committee has done such a nice job in the past with this award. I saw last year’s panel at ALAN (Assembly on Literature for Adolescents), and it included three friends who are authors I particularly admire: Benjamin Alire Saenz, A.S. King, and Eliot Schrefer. Not there was the winner, John Green, for The Fault in Our Stars. Whom I also admire greatly.

So yeah, I’m thrilled. Thank you to the committee for considering Openly Straight!

Ben

I get soooo many emails asking me: what happens to Ben after Openly Straight? Do he and Rafe get back together? Will he ever come out? Is he going to be okay?

It’s no secret to those of you who visit this website regularly, or who read the comments on the “Ask Bill” page, that there’s been a significant amount of clamoring for a sequel to Openly Straight. Some of that clamoring has come with threats of bodily harm if I do not write one. Some has been kinder than that.

I want to say, up front, that it was never my intention to write more about these characters. I felt that the story was about Rafe’s personal growth, and that at the end, he’s grown in some ways. Game over. What I didn’t understand, though, is that the central romance of the novel is, for many readers, the main attraction. For those readers, the story feels … unfinished. I understand that now.

So…

There is nothing official to report, But–

I am toying around with the idea of a sequel to Openly Straight.

It would be from Ben’s perspective, and it would cover the second semester of the year at Natick.

That’s all for now. I just thought some of you would be happy to know that.

Later, people!

xo

Bill

Sid Fleischman Humor Award – The Interview

A lot of people may not know this, but I happen to be quite famous.

OK, I stole that line from Sam Malone in Cheers, or more correctly I stole that line from my husband, who still remembers that line from Cheers, and for whom the quote is highly contemporary as most of his references come from the Bob Newhart Show and Monty Python (Blessed are the cheesemakers?).

He keeps me entertained in a very 1975 sort of way. (Kids: 1975 was a time in history when your parents were, like, three years old. They did not yet have jobs or receding hairlines and they were blissfully unaware of rap as it hadn’t been invented yet.)

Anyway, I say this because so rarely do people come up to me on the street and say things like, “Hey, Bill, I read that great interview of you in the SCBWI blog. Congrats on your Sid Fleischman Humor Award. Are you that awesome in real life?”

To which I would say, “Why no, strange person who recognizes me from an interview on a blog, Not even close. Despite that, would you like to get a cup of coffee and bask in my famousness?”

To which they would say, “Gee, I’d like to, or rather, I’d like to like to, but I really don’t. Take care.”

So I am not that famous, and not that many people are clamoring to coffee-ize with me, but in the name of getting more people to want to, I post this fun interview from SCBWI’s Lee Wind about Openly Straight winning the Sid Fleischman Humor Award. Read it, enjoy it, and tell your friends, in the off-chance one of them someday would like to buy me coffee and talk about it.