Nancy Springer's Blog: Last Seen Wandering Vaguely - Posts Tagged "rock-roll"
TRAUMA BEHIND THE BOOKS
Oyez, oyez, a bunch of novels of mine are back digitally! Open Road Media recently went live with them, half YA, half mass market fantasy. And regarding the YA novels, they requested the usual information: describe the book, the characters, how you got the idea, any backstory behind the title of the book or why it was written – aaaaak, for so many books? As the task was so daunting, I cheated. I tried to group the books. At first I just wrote about the horse books. But then this came up:
When my kids were in high school, one of their classmates was riding a four-wheeler along a trail when he hit a cable strung at neck height; it crushed his windpipe and killed him instantly. The cruel person who hung the cable was never caught. This incident traumatized me to my core and haunted me so much that it took two books, years apart, to exorcise it.
One was SKY RIDER, in which the dead boy reappears as an angry ghost to care for a horse that is about to be euthanized. Dusty, the girl who owns the horse,can no longer ride because of a painful back injury she sustained when her alcoholic father was driving drunk. She, her father, and the boy Skye all require healing.
The other book is TOUGHING IT. In the first draft, Tuff and his brother Dillon are riding their dirt bike up a mountain trail; Dillon is killed by the cable. For plot reasons, I later changed the cable to a gun trap. This book, again, is about grief and the healing process. And a river. The river goes on flowing.
So I ended up grouping by trauma. Another mystery book of mine, BLOOD TRAIL, is based on a truly horrific murder that stunned my community. A teen boy killed his brother with a knife, as was made all too evident by the blood trail throughout the house. I needed to exorcise the crime from my mind, and also to address the small-town reactions of denial, disbelief and incomprehension. The story is told from the point of view of Jeremy, the murdered teen’s best friend. The mystery is not who did it, but why, and it is a question without any satisfactory answer. Again, there is a river, and it goes on flowing.
And yet another trauma: SEPARATE SISTERS was written as my way of dealing with the problems of a messed up family I knew. One girl lived with her father and was a total rebel. I met her through horseback riding. She wore black skinny jeans, black paddock boots, a black Desperado hat and an austere long-sleeved shirt, sometimes with a tie, all year long, no matter how hot the weather got. I would give her rides home when she ran away from school, and she became just about the only groupie I’ve ever had. Her father would bring her to my book signings, and she would sit with me behind the table to keep me company. For hours. Her sister and mother I met at musical events at the high school; the other sister took singing lessons, wore dresses, was popular and lived with her mom. My groupie, the rebel girl who lived with her father, despised both her sister and her mother. I liked everyone in the divided family, and I wanted so badly for this family to heal that I wrote a book about an artistic sister and a brainy sister, similarly divided, who finally bridge the gap.
But the most influential trauma started way back when I was an intelligent, obedient kid who was bullied. Ever since then I have been daydreaming about a dark hero who is a poet, a musician, a visionary, and who is terribly wronged. This figure appears repeatedly in my fantasy novels for adults, but also he is Nico, the rock star betrayed by his fellow lead singer and best friend, in THE FRIENDSHIP SONG, a contemporary fantasy novel for middle-grade children. And he is Kamo in SECRET STAR, a YA novel I can’t quite call realistic because there’s so much mysticism, music and heart in it. SECRET STAR is told from the viewpoint of Tess, a teen girl who live in rural poverty, wears old jeans and Red Wing work boots, and is such a misfit she is physically endangered. This is a gritty, tough, yet lyrical book. THE FRIENDSHIP SONG's protagonist is Harper, a girl whose dad is about to marry a weird woman named Gus, who does folk art and plays a twelve-string guitar with magical qualities. Harper and her friend Rawnie worship the group Neon Shadow, and when dark, handsome Nico falls ill to the point of death, the girls venture down a twelve-string tunnel to rock&roll hades in order to save him.
Whew.
I discovered that, out of all the YA books just published, there were only a few that didn’t evolve out of some sort of personal trauma in my life. Those few include DUSSSIE, my pubescent-Medusa fantasy, and POSSESSING JESSIE, horror, and LOOKING FOR JAMIE BRIDGER, Edgar-winning mystery.
Open Road Media also released about an equal number of my fantasy titles for adults. I wonder: might they, also, sort themselves into groups by trauma? Stay tuned.
When my kids were in high school, one of their classmates was riding a four-wheeler along a trail when he hit a cable strung at neck height; it crushed his windpipe and killed him instantly. The cruel person who hung the cable was never caught. This incident traumatized me to my core and haunted me so much that it took two books, years apart, to exorcise it.
One was SKY RIDER, in which the dead boy reappears as an angry ghost to care for a horse that is about to be euthanized. Dusty, the girl who owns the horse,can no longer ride because of a painful back injury she sustained when her alcoholic father was driving drunk. She, her father, and the boy Skye all require healing.
The other book is TOUGHING IT. In the first draft, Tuff and his brother Dillon are riding their dirt bike up a mountain trail; Dillon is killed by the cable. For plot reasons, I later changed the cable to a gun trap. This book, again, is about grief and the healing process. And a river. The river goes on flowing.
So I ended up grouping by trauma. Another mystery book of mine, BLOOD TRAIL, is based on a truly horrific murder that stunned my community. A teen boy killed his brother with a knife, as was made all too evident by the blood trail throughout the house. I needed to exorcise the crime from my mind, and also to address the small-town reactions of denial, disbelief and incomprehension. The story is told from the point of view of Jeremy, the murdered teen’s best friend. The mystery is not who did it, but why, and it is a question without any satisfactory answer. Again, there is a river, and it goes on flowing.
And yet another trauma: SEPARATE SISTERS was written as my way of dealing with the problems of a messed up family I knew. One girl lived with her father and was a total rebel. I met her through horseback riding. She wore black skinny jeans, black paddock boots, a black Desperado hat and an austere long-sleeved shirt, sometimes with a tie, all year long, no matter how hot the weather got. I would give her rides home when she ran away from school, and she became just about the only groupie I’ve ever had. Her father would bring her to my book signings, and she would sit with me behind the table to keep me company. For hours. Her sister and mother I met at musical events at the high school; the other sister took singing lessons, wore dresses, was popular and lived with her mom. My groupie, the rebel girl who lived with her father, despised both her sister and her mother. I liked everyone in the divided family, and I wanted so badly for this family to heal that I wrote a book about an artistic sister and a brainy sister, similarly divided, who finally bridge the gap.
But the most influential trauma started way back when I was an intelligent, obedient kid who was bullied. Ever since then I have been daydreaming about a dark hero who is a poet, a musician, a visionary, and who is terribly wronged. This figure appears repeatedly in my fantasy novels for adults, but also he is Nico, the rock star betrayed by his fellow lead singer and best friend, in THE FRIENDSHIP SONG, a contemporary fantasy novel for middle-grade children. And he is Kamo in SECRET STAR, a YA novel I can’t quite call realistic because there’s so much mysticism, music and heart in it. SECRET STAR is told from the viewpoint of Tess, a teen girl who live in rural poverty, wears old jeans and Red Wing work boots, and is such a misfit she is physically endangered. This is a gritty, tough, yet lyrical book. THE FRIENDSHIP SONG's protagonist is Harper, a girl whose dad is about to marry a weird woman named Gus, who does folk art and plays a twelve-string guitar with magical qualities. Harper and her friend Rawnie worship the group Neon Shadow, and when dark, handsome Nico falls ill to the point of death, the girls venture down a twelve-string tunnel to rock&roll hades in order to save him.
Whew.
I discovered that, out of all the YA books just published, there were only a few that didn’t evolve out of some sort of personal trauma in my life. Those few include DUSSSIE, my pubescent-Medusa fantasy, and POSSESSING JESSIE, horror, and LOOKING FOR JAMIE BRIDGER, Edgar-winning mystery.
Open Road Media also released about an equal number of my fantasy titles for adults. I wonder: might they, also, sort themselves into groups by trauma? Stay tuned.
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