John Corey Whaley's Blog, page 2
April 13, 2015
simonteen:
This week’s free read on Pulseit is John Corey...
This week’s free read on Pulseit is John Corey Whaley’s 2012 Printz-award winning WHERE THINGS COME BACK! Start reading now here! www.pulseit.com/where-things-come-back
Summary: In the remarkable, bizarre, and heart-wrenching summer before Cullen Witter’s senior year of high school, he is forced to examine everything he thinks he understands about his small and painfully dull Arkansas town. His cousin overdoses; his town becomes absurdly obsessed with the alleged reappearance of an extinct woodpecker; and most troubling of all, his sensitive, gifted 15-year-old brother, Gabriel, inexplicably disappears.
Meanwhile, the crisis of faith spawned by a young missionary’s disillusion in Africa prompts a frantic search for meaning that has far-reaching consequences. As distant as the two stories initially seem, they are woven together through masterful plotting and merge in a surprising and harrowing climax.
April 6, 2015
March 9, 2015
INTERVIEW WITH JOHN COREY WHALEY
THIS WEDNESDAY I’m going to be in Huntington Beach, CA with the wonderfully talented johncoreywhaley. To prepare, I asked him a couple of questions.
1. Let’s say you and I switch bodies for the day. What will I find in your refrigerator?
Almond milk. Lots of almond milk. We go through at…
February 12, 2015
February 10, 2015
zeeglur:Kristen Wiig and Maddie Ziegler, backstage at the...
Kristen Wiig and Maddie Ziegler, backstage at the Grammys
This is everything to me. Everything.
February 6, 2015
bbook:Punch-Drunk Love is such a great example of a movie that’s...
Punch-Drunk Love is such a great example of a movie that’s not really about what it’s about. It’s about love, but it’s actually about P.T. Anderson’s idea of what love is, which he tells us in the first five minutes of the movie.
Adam Sandler’s character has the conversation with the customer service guy, walks to the end of the driveway, stands there, and there’s that big, beautiful car accident and then the harmonium is dropped in front of him—that’s an analogy for everything. That all takes place in just a few minutes of screen time, but that’s what the movie is all about, and that’s what P.T. Anderson feels love is: a big, huge car accident that ends with an instrument you don’t know how to play, and the rest of the film is him learning how to play this instrument. That’s my interpretation. You meet someone and they change your world in this really almost violent way and then you have to learn the instrument of being in a relationship or being in love with them.
January 22, 2015
MORRIS FINALIST INTERVIEW with LEN VLAHOS!
As is tradition, each year previous winners and finalists of the William C. Morris Award interview the the current year’s finalists. This time around, I was lucky enough to chat with Len Vlahos, author of The Scar Boys, former rock star, and all around great guy. Here’s what happened: 1.) So, Len, you chose to write your debut novel in the form of a college admissions essay. Is there a specific reason, or reasons, you felt that this was the best way to tell Harry’s story?
1.) So, Len, you chose to write your debut novel in the form of a college admissions essay. Is there a specific reason, or reasons, you felt that this was the best way to tell Harry’s story?
When I write in the first person, I need a reason for doing so. I can’t explain why this is the case, because truthfully, I enjoy plenty of first person narratives that don’t ever explain why the protagonist is talking to the audience. But when my narrators talk, I feel compelled to give them a reason. Go figure.
In an earlier draft of The Scar Boys, Harry is actually telling his story to a police detective after he and the rest of the band have been arrested. I won’t say why. I’ll only say that the original ending didn’t work. At all. After I abandoned it, I somehow landed on the construct of the college application, though at this point, I don’t remember how or why. I just know that it resonated with me as soon as I stumbled on it.
2.) One thing I love about The Scar Boys is that Harry finds his salvation through music. I know you were in a band called Woofing Cookies when you were younger—did music have a similar impact on young Len Vlahos?
Did, does, and will in the future. Music impacts me viscerally more than any other form of art. It helps me through bad times, and lifts me higher during good times. And thanks for saying that about music’s place in The Scar Boys. More than anything else, the book, for me, is about the power of music to heal.
3.) Someone once told me that there are about five stories out there and we (writers) are all just trying to create our own unique versions of them. Where do you think The Scar Boys fits into that theory?
Hmmm…. Interesting question! It reminds me of the whole Joseph Campbell “Hero with a Thousand Faces” thing. Campbell’s theory is that all stories fit into the mold of a single story, the “monomyth.” It goes something like this: The hero starts in his ordinary world, is called to some sort of adventure, faces challenges, receives wisdom or aid from another, and returns to his ordinary world having reaped rewards or having grown in some way. Both Star Wars and The Matrix were based very specifically on Joseph Campbell. But it works for almost any other story, too, including The Scar Boys. Harry is living in his world (solitude and self-loathing), is called to an adventure (the band, the road trip), faces challenges (van breaking down, Cheyenne, Johnny), and comes out on the other end having grown. It’s actually a fun game to try to find stories that don’t fit the paradigm.
Wow.
Re-reading my answer to this question makes me sound like a the king of the story nerds when I am, in fact, merely a jester. I’d like to officially change my answer to:
“Um, what?”
4.) Have you always been interested in writing books about teenagers and the teenage experience? Do you plan on letting your kids read your books when they are teens?
Most of what I had written before The Scar Boys centered around adult characters, but wasn’t very good. In fact, early drafts of The Scar Boys had a forty year old Harry alternating chapters with an eighteen year old Harry. It didn’t work. I didn’t really find my voice until I focused the story on Harry as a teenager. That said, I’m trying to sell a manuscript now that deals with both adults and kids and how their worlds collide (and includes an anthropomorphized brain tumor). Not sure if it’ll ever find a home, but I’m proud of it.
And yes, when my kids are age appropriate, I hope they will want to read dad’s work.
5.) As a follower of yours on social media, I see where you do a lot of school talks—always with a guitar in hand. Do you use music to connect to your readers and discuss your work? I can play the bongos…should I start doing that at school talks? Help me be cooler, Len.
Well, I think playing the bongos would be a safer bet for you than performing head transplants at schools, though the latter would definitely be a hit with the kids. I’m just saying.
I do bring my guitar to school events and while it’s fun to play songs from the book, it’s way more fun to get the students to come up and play. Here’s a great example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dInw-og-Dtc
6.) My favorite thing about Young Adult literature is that it’s usually, at its core, about finding one’s own identity. Your main character went through quite a traumatic experience as a child, one that he can’t seem to forget due to the physical toll it caused him. Was it important for you to explore identity, both physical and emotional, through Harry’s eyes?
Yes, very much so. It’s important to remember that the entire story is told through Harry’s eyes, so his experience and his view of the world color the narrative. I’m not saying that he’s an unreliable narrator, but his perspective is not necessarily objective. It’s not until the end — don’t worry, no spoilers — when Harry is able to see himself through the eyes of others that he realizes he’s really okay. He comes to understand that his identity is formed by so much more than the trauma he experienced and the scars he carries.
7.) Harry starts a band with his new friend Johnny, who seems to be a savior of sorts for our outcast narrator. But, Johnny’s true colors start to show as the story progresses and Harry finds himself questioning the friendship. Was this drawn from real-life experience? Do you think the nature of friendships, in general, changes as we age and find solid footing in our own respective identities?
While Harry and Johnny’s relationship wasn’t drawn from a specific personal experience, the complexity of their relationship is a very central theme of the book, and it was very deliberate. The truth is, every relationship we have in life is complex. Every person is both good and bad. Learning to love one another for not only our strengths but our flaws is at the heart of real friendship. I tried very hard to make Johnny both laudable and detestable, and or for that matter, Harry, too.
As for the nature of relationships changing as we age, I’m not sure. I think our passions burn hotter when we’re young, which makes for more intense friendships, but also allows them to blow up more easily. I feel lucky to have carried a lot of my teenage friendships into my adult years.
Lightning Round:
1) Is there a question about The Scar Boys that you haven’t been asked yet but would really like to answer?
Yes.
Q: “Hey dumb ass, did you really write a story about a kid named Harry who had something to do with a lightning bolt? Hello, Harry Potter? Couldn’t you have named him Pete or something?”
A: D’oh.
2.) What is your favorite song? Can you sing it well?
Johnny Cash and Hank Williams Jr.’s duet of “That Old Wheel.” (I know, I know, why would someone so steeped in punk rock have a country tune as his favorite song? But that’s music baby.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyaeR3eF3is
And NO ONE can sing Johnny Cash well. But that doesn’t stop me from trying.
3.) Is there a book you’ve read that you secretly (but not so secretly anymore) wish you’d written?
The politic answer here is Noggin. And it’s true. Dude, the device of the cryogenic-head-transplant thing was a brilliant way to show how people grow and change. I mean freaking brilliant! Your mind is a frightening and wondrous place. If I’m being less politic and I really stop to think about it? Well, then I wish I’d written The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I would some day love to be half that funny.
4.) And, finally, it’s a tradition here for me to make the final question all about myself. So, you’re a former rock star. You’re a former publishing exec. You carry around a guitar to promote your book. I have one thing to ask you: Do you think you’re better than me?
No. Andrew Smith thinks he’s better than you. KIDDING! I will say on a serious note that being a debut novelist in the YA world has been an incredible experience. All of the writers I’ve met — you, Andrew, Jandy Nelson, Ellen Hopkins, Sarah Darer Littman, Joelle Charbonneau, Frank Portman, Kevin Emerson, and many, many more — have been so welcoming and so supportive. It’s a wonderful community and I’m proud and kind of awestruck that I get to be a part of it.
And you know what, Len? We’re all damn happy you’re a part of it too. Congratulations. I’ll be sending victory vibes your way, pal.
For more information on Len Vlahos and The Scar Boys, visit:
www.lenvlahos.com
Follow him here: @LenVlahos
Or stalk him at his home….but you’ll probably get arrested. (Worth it).
Until next year.
Ciao.
-C.
January 19, 2015
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