I love HS! When I heard the news about Break, it was basically the only thing I could think about for 2 weeks. I have a few questions: 1. How old is each character? 2. What songs/musicians influenced the series? 3. How many pages is Break? 4. Will we see t

Thank you, thank you, thank you for writing! I’m so glad you like the Hopeless Savages and that you’re excited about Break– me too! I am kind of giddy counting down to August when I can put it in people’s hands.

Here are some answers:

1) In the very first miniseries, I tried to pin the family down to actual calendar dates, with Rat being conceived around 1977, Dirk and Nikki both about 19 at the time. BUT the time-lapses in their lives and mine kind of stretched and morphed pretty soon after that, so I threw out the year entirely, and the stories are now just set in a sort of sloppy approximation of the late 90s. Their ages are pretty consistent in relation to one another, though: Dirk is about six months older than Nikki. Rat is 19 years younger than Nikki. Arsenal is 2 years younger than Rat. Twitch is about 2 years younger than Arsenal, and Zero is about 3 years younger than Twitch.  In Break, Zero is a college freshman, so about 18.

2) Phew.  The Velvet Underground, X, The Clash, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Sex Pistols, Minutemen, The Ramones, The Runaways, The Stooges, Television, The English Beat, The Jam, Kenickie, David Bowie, Patti Smith, Pixies–and all their uncles and aunties and children and cousins by the dozens. The music I’ve liked and loved has influenced the way I think about the characters and their setting, absolutely, but I’m equally influenced by watching and listening to other people loving the music they love, talking about what moves them, how they connect to any given artist or music scene.

3) Break clocks in at around 144 pages, if I remember rightly.

4) The Squalling Hooskie Ginger Kincaid will be on pages where your eyeballs can see him.  I

5) Yes. 

6) All the baddies from earlier stories have learned the errors of their ways and now do good works in animal shelters and environmental clean-ups. Or at least that is what they tell me when I call to check up on them.

7) Grans Vera Savage and Shi Tsien Li do not appear in Break. I couldn’t find a graceful way to include them. So there will have to be another story, because i want to know what they’ve been up to, too.