Brent Hartinger's Blog, page 14

A reader just asked me if minded telling how many publishers rejected Geography Club before it was finally published.

I don’t mind answering at all, but it’s a bit complicated, so when I give presentations, I usually just say, “38 publishers!”

Here’s the full story, which I’ve never before told in public, precisely because it is so complicated.

I wrote my first gay teen novel in 1989, right after college (I graduated young — I’m not THAT old!). The book was about a guy named Russel Middlebrook, who was a lot like Russel, and he had a best friend who was a lot like Gunnar. But there was no Min, no Kevin, and no Geography Club; the story was very different. It was about a closeted gay guy and his friendship with his gay swim coach. But it wasn’t a love story; it was a story of his coach being outed and the kid eventually coming to terms with being gay himself.

It was called Danny Britton’s Shadow. At one point, Russel’s coach tells a story about how he had always felt like he was in the shadow of the smartest, best kid in his class, Danny Britton. Until, of course, he learned that Danny Britten felt exactly the same way about him. In other words, the whole world lives in Danny Britton’s shadow, even Danny Britton! Everyone goes through life feeling like they’re not good enough.

All through the 1990s, I tried to sell this book to publishers.

Around 1995, the book won the SCBWI Judy Blume Grant for Unpublished Novels. I got a very nice note from Judy Blume herself, and the manuscript was requested by something like twenty-eight different editors. Three of them wanted to publish it and took it to the acquisitions departments at their publishing houses. But the accountants all said the same thing to those editors, “NO! There’s no market for a book about gay teens! You can’t publish it!”

I got increasingly frustrated/depressed, so much so that I eventually said, “To hell with it! I’m putting this aside and focusing on other books and my screenplays.” Around this time, I also moved to Hollywood where I had a couple of screenplays optioned and a play produced. (But none of the movies ever got made.)

Around 1998, I got a new agent, Jennifer DeChiara. She looked at all the stuff I’d written and said, “I like this Russel Middlebrook stuff best. I think I should pitch that.”

But I said, “Forget it! I’ve already tried everything. Everyone says the same thing: there’s no market for a book about gay teens.”

She said, “Trust me.”

I said, “Okay, but this manuscript isn’t as good as what I’m writing now. Plus, times have changed so much — I don’t think this book is as relevant as it used to be. Let me rewrite it.”

She said, “Just put together a proposal.”

I said, “I don’t need to write the whole book?”

She said, “No, just a proposal.”

So I wrote a book proposal for Geography Club: one chapter and a detailed outline. I did two things that I think were key to the book’s future success: (1) Danny Britton’s Shadow had been really angst-y, but I tried to make Geography Club lighter and funny, and (2) I decided that it wasn’t going to be a story of self-discovery, it was going to be, in part, a love story. Even though he was closeted, Russel was going to know from the very beginning that he was gay and that he was totally okay with it. There would be absolutely no shame or self-hatred, because that already seemed very dated to me.

Geography Club literally started where Danny Britton’s Shadow had ended.

This proposal is what my agent took out to publishers. Thirty-eight of them eventually turned it down. But in early 2001, one editor, Steve Fraser at HarperCollins, made us an unusual offer: he said he would buy the proposal for a $5000 advance (and I’d then write the book on their dime), or I could wait and submit the whole book, and if they liked it, the advance would be $10,000.

Well, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, so I took the $5000. My agent, who always had complete confidence in this book, said, “You’ll make much more than that in royalties, so don’t worry.”

I was so worried that they were going to cancel the deal that I sat down and wrote the whole book in two and a half weeks. I’ve never written that fast before, or since. The day the contract was signed, I submitted the completed manuscript.

Steve had a few (good) suggestions, but this manuscript was very, very close to the book that ended up being published. It’s the least-edited book I’ve ever written. And, perhaps not surprisingly, this is probably also why there are a zillion things I now wish I could change. (Not really. Well, sorta.)

But please don’t think Steve wasn’t enormously helpful. He just gave me his best notes in the pre-contract, proposal stage, when we’d informally chatted about the book before it was even written. For example, in the original outline, Brian Bund commits suicide at the end of the book.

Steve said, “Please don’t do that. It’s way too serious, and it will change the book into something completely different.”

And he was so unbelievably right! Brian Bund’s suicide was a classic “deus ex machina” — a way to resolve my story that seemed profound, but was actually a total plot cheat. And tonally, it didn’t fit in there at all. I’d like to think I would have seen that on my own without Steve’s input, but I was pretty thick back then: I’m not sure I would have.

Incidentally, a side-note: the idea that an unpublished writer can submit a book proposal for a novel — especially a proposal that only includes ONE chapter! — and sell it to a major publisher is actually downright crazy. In fact, it may never have happened to anyone else in the entire history of publishing, before or since. But I’d won that award, and Steve and those other editors had read a couple of my other books, including Danny Britton’s Shadow. They knew I could write, and finish projects, so it wasn’t quite the risk that it maybe seems. And, of course, the subject matter was unusual back then — not a lot of people were writing gay teen novels because there was “no market,” remember? And the business of publishing was very, very different back then too.

The greater point is, there are rules in publishing, but there aren’t really any “rules.” Everyone’s path to publication is different (and oftentimes it’s downright crazy)

So anyway, the book was finished by May 2001, but then delayed a loooooong time. This really upset me at the time. And at the end of 2001, one of the editors at Simon & Schuster who had tried (and failed) to buy Danny Britton’s Shadow released Alex Sanchez’s Rainbow Boys. I loved the book, but I also thought, “Well, damn! That’s it, they’ve totally stolen my thunder!” Even I was thinking, “There can’t possibly be room for two gay teen novels in the world!”

I know, right? How stupid was I? (Sara Ryan also published a good lesbian-themed book around that time, Empress of the World. And I don’t mean to imply there weren’t other LGBT teen books before that, because there had definitely been a few, although most of them were long out of print.)

So anyway, about two years after the book was accepted (and almost fifteen years after I wrote the earliest draft), the book was finally published. It was March 4, 2003.

By the end of the second week, it had already gone into a third printing. It went on to sell … well, I’m not supposed to ever say exact sales figures, but many, many tens of thousands of copies.

The movie rights were almost immediately optioned (even though it would take another ten years before the movie actually got made). And I adapted the book into a stage play that’s been produced at least 15 times; I actually think the play is quite a bit better than the book, and I don’t think it’s ever not gotten a standing ovation. It often sells out too.

And my agent says that she heard from lots and lots of editors who said, “Why didn’t you send the book to me? I totally would have bought it!”

Uh huh, right.

As most of you know, I also turned the book into a series, the Russel Middlebrook Series, writing three more books: The Order of the Poison Oak; Double Feature: Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies/Bride of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies; and The Elephant of Surprise, which just came out last month.

The moral of the story? I’m not sure there is one, except that gay teen novels, which are so popular now, were a really, really hard to sell in the 1990s.

And that when it comes to publishing, there are no rules and no one knows anything at all.

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So it’s worth asking: why are so many gay teen stories about a geek-ish guy (usually the main character) in love with a popular jock (who happens to be very closeted)? From Beautiful Thing to Get Real to Dreamboy to The Perks of Being a Wallflower to many other books, movies, and TV shows, this has definitely become a gay teen storytelling trope.

And yes, this also describes Geography Club. (But for the record, since that book was written (around 1998), I’ve also written stories about far less conventional gay teen couples. A love affair with a burn survivor anyone? A freegan?)

Anyway, what’s going on with the geek/jock thing? Three things, I think:

First, it’s a classic romantic trope. From Romeo and Juliet to Titanic, having lovers be from “the opposite side of the tracks” is standard fare. Opposites supposedly attract, after all (I do think it’s true that we’re often drawn to aspects in others that we ourselves lack).

And let’s face it: romance is partly about fantasy, and having your love interest be a “popular jock” lets him be just about the most conventionally attractive kind of teenage boy there is. There’s a reason why jocks tend to be the most popular kids in school, right?

Second, a geek/love love affair allows for maximum drama. Plot requires obstacles; if everyone thinks and feels the same way, if there’s nothing to get in the way of the two lovers being together, there’s no story.

In other words, “conflict” and “drama” are why this is a romantic trope. Sometimes the “best” story is the simplest, most obvious one.

So why is it always the jock who’s closeted and the geek who’s “out” or considering coming out? Because the popular jock pays a higher price to come out than the geek (who already has less social status just by being a geek). This all just makes sense, narrative-ly speaking.

This is also why we usually get the same second act conflict: the geek, discovering himself, decides to come all the way out, but the jock wants to stay closeted. Again, given the situation and the stakes, this just makes logical sense.

So why is the geek always the narrator of the story? I think this is simply the fact that most writers are geeks; the POV of the geek comes, uh, more naturally to us. Plus, it’s the geek who tends to be the one who changes the most, so it makes sense he’d be the narrator or POV character.

Finally, jock/geek love is a popular storyline because, apparently, it happens a lot. I can’t tell you the number of times people have said to me, “Yeah, I was out in high school, and the star quarterback got drunk and hit on me, but didn’t want anyone to know.” (I’ve also heard, a lot, “Yeah, I was a closeted jock in high school. But coming out just wasn’t an option.”)

In other words, the story reflects a pretty key truth of the gay teen experience: gay guys exist in absolutely every social strata, but the more “popular” and “conventional” you are, the less likely you are to be out. This is the start of some of the ongoing (and healthy) tension in the LGBT community between flamboyant “out-and-proud” folks and the more conventional, tend-to-be-more-closeted types.

Anyway, I love a lot of these geek/jock stories — and hey, the upcoming Geography Club movie tells this story in a way that I think is pretty fresh.

But it’s all still worth thinking about, don’t you think?

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THE ELEPHANT OF SURPRISE reviewed in Publishers Weekly Select, 4/22/13:

Brent Hartinger, Buddha Kitty Books, $12.99 paper (226p) ISBN: 978-0-9846794-5-4

Funny, openly gay high school junior Russel Middlebrook — the star of Hartinger’s Geography Club and two sequels — finds the adventure he is looking for when he falls for an anti-consumerist freegan who pops out of the school Dumpster. Through Wade, Russel is exposed to new experiences (like eating roadkill) and challenging ideas (“When you don’t spend your whole life looking at a television or a computer, you can’t help but take a good look at the world”). But just as their relationship turns romantic, Russel’s friend Gunnar suspects that Wade and his freegan friends may be taking their beliefs to a dangerous extreme. This is an unusual storyline, but, like Russel, readers may find themselves intrigued by Wade’s lifestyle and beliefs. Secondary plot lines (including one about Russel’s possible reconciliation with his first love, Kevin) support the core drama, and teens will continue to enjoy Russel’s ever-humorous narration. After eating barbecued raccoon with Wade, Russel says, “If it doesn’t sound romantic, you’ll just have to take my word for it, because it totally, TOTALLY was.”

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THE ELEPHANT OF SURPRISE reviewed in Publishers Weekly Select, 4/22/13:

Brent Hartinger, Buddha Kitty Books, $12.99 paper (226p) ISBN: 978-0-9846794-5-4

Funny, openly gay high school junior Russel Middlebrook — the star of Hartinger’s Geography Club and two sequels — finds the adventure he is looking for when he falls for an anti-consumerist freegan who pops out of the school Dumpster. Through Wade, Russel is exposed to new experiences (like eating roadkill) and challenging ideas (“When you don’t spend your whole life looking at a television or a computer, you can’t help but take a good look at the world”). But just as their relationship turns romantic, Russel’s friend Gunnar suspects that Wade and his freegan friends may be taking their beliefs to a dangerous extreme. This is an unusual storyline, but, like Russel, readers may find themselves intrigued by Wade’s lifestyle and beliefs. Secondary plot lines (including one about Russel’s possible reconciliation with his first love, Kevin) support the core drama, and teens will continue to enjoy Russel’s ever-humorous narration. After eating barbecued raccoon with Wade, Russel says, “If it doesn’t sound romantic, you’ll just have to take my word for it, because it totally, TOTALLY was.”

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They’ve turned my 2003 gay teen novel Geography Club into a movie. It’ll be released later this year, and people have already started asking me how it all happened and what I’ve learned from the whole experience.

What did I learn?

The story starts when I graduated from college and decided to try to make a career writing novels and screenplays. It was the early 90s, and one of my first books was a young adult novel about a gay teen named Russel Middlebrook and his misfit friends. It was an extremely personal topic for me, because I had been a gay teenager, and I had also co-founded one of the United States’ very first gay teen support groups, in 1990.

For ten years, I (and later my agent, Jennifer DeChiara) tried to sell the book to publishers. A lot of editors wanted to buy it, but ultimately I heard the same thing over and over again: “I really like this, but the accountants at my publishing house tell me there’s no market for a book about gay teenagers.”

In early 2001, a brave editor at HarperCollins named Steve Fraser bought the book, even over the objections of the accountants there, who were just as certain as everyone else that the project would flop.

The book finally came out in early 2003. Two weeks after it was released, it had already gone into a third printing. In other words, all those accountants and all those publishing houses who said there was no market for a book about gay teens? They didn’t know what the hell they were talking about.

Because the book was a hit, I was given the opportunity to write lots of other books. I even turned Geography Club into a series, the Russel Middlebrook Series.

Better still, we had a lot of movie producers interested in developing the first book as a feature film or TV series. Different companies optioned it and took it around Hollywood. But this was long before Glee, and time and again, the answer was, “We really like this, but there’s no market for a movie or a TV show about gay teenagers.”

It got to the point where the producer said to me, “I literally think this thing has been rejected by every studio, network, and financing company in town.”

But two producers, Frederick Levy and Bryan Leder (and later, their producing partners Michael Huffington and Anthony Bretti) wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. And finally, ten years after the book was published, they got the movie made — with pretty much a dream cast too (including Hairspray’s Nikki Blonsky, Suburgatory‘s Ana Gasteyer, Glee‘s Alex Newell, The Lying Game‘s Allie Gonino, Scott Bakula, and a bunch of up-and-coming young actors).

Even better, the finished movie’s really good (I saw it last week; you can see the trailer if you scroll down and look to your right). There’s even talk of doing the sequel as a movie too should the first movie prove to be a hit.

So what’s the take-away from all this? Listen to your heart, not the nay-sayers? Never give up your dreams?

Maybe, but the fact is, if certain people hadn’t been willing to move heaven and earth for me and my projects at key points in my career, my book and the movie never would have happened, and right now I’d probably be asking, “Would you like fries with that?” That’s kind of sobering when I think about it.

But if I’ve learned anything at all over the years about selling books and making movies, it’s this: there are really only two ways books get published and movies ever get made:

(1) Create a book or movie project that everyone thinks will make them a lot of money. This is a lot easier said that done, since you never know what other books and movies will be flops and hits right around the time your project is being pitched. Talent counts for something here, but I think this is mostly just timing and luck.

(2) Create a book or movie project that at least few people feel really passionately about — so passionately that they’ll keep working on it even as everyone else tells them they’re crazy, that it’s certain to flop, and that they’re wasting their time.

Basically, the choice is: go with your brain or go with your heart.

On one hand, going with your heart is trickier: do you really want to devote years of your life to a project that a lot of editors and producers won’t even want to read? On the other hand, it’s a lot easier than trying to predict exactly where the crazy pop culture market and zeitgeist are headed. All you have to do is ask yourself: what exactly do I personally feel the most passionate about? What project would I desperately like to see that doesn’t already exist?

If you’d asked me my opinion earlier in my career, in the midst of all the rejection for Geography Club the book and later the movie, I would have said, “Do strategy number one! Go with your brain! Write that zombie-vampire book! There at least you have a chance for success! Strategy number two is for suckers and fools!” (And then I would have added, “Would you like fries with that?”)

But I’ve been in the business for a while now, and I’ve seen editors and producers get very excited about my work, only to lose interest when the project didn’t turn out to be an instant hit or get immediate financing.

I also think it’s very interesting the only movie projects I’m associated with that are actually getting made – Geography Club and another film I wrote that will hopefully be out next year — are the passion projects. In other words, strategy number two.

There’s another benefit to choosing strategy number two: you’re working with people who aren’t just in it for the money. They’re in it for the passion. Which means — at least in my experience — they’re far less likely to be jerks. Since you end up so intimately involved with these folks, and since your words and your career are so closely associated with them, this not a small thing. I’m very proud to call these colleagues my friends.

The screenwriter William Goldman once famously said about Hollywood, “No one knows anything,” and it’s probably the most accurate thing ever said about that town (it’s completely true of New York publishing as well).

No one knows anything. Sometimes a project flies high, sometimes it completely flops (and usually it lands somewhere in that infuriating middle area in between).

And no matter what anyone says, no matter how much money they spend or who is involved, no one can predict for sure which projects will be successful and which not. That’s what makes a career in the arts so frustrating — and also so magical.

Making movies and publishing books are ultimately businesses: they exist to make money. As a result, a lot of the people in those industries like to talk like success is all about the brain. They want to believe they have some control over the money they’re spending.

Do they? Maybe. But in my case, success turned out to be all about the heart.
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For me, writing is all agony, start to finish. I love having written, but I absolutely hate writing. It destroys me, just completely slays me.

But my process goes something like this. And, interestingly, while it’s never “easy,” it goes from most to least difficult the closer I am to finishing.

First, whether it’s a screenplay, play, or book, I outline. This is just me writing a bunch of notes. But here’s where I figure out if there’s even a story here worth telling. I never stick to my outlines, but I always write some kind of one, and I think it saves me months of time. I’m much less likely to write myself into a corner, and I don’t need to write unnecessary stuff so I can “discover” my story. I think, in general, it also makes the whole thing much tighter and move faster.

But God, it’s hard. I mean, you’re literally creating something out of nothing. There! Is! Nothing! Harder! In! The! World!

Then I write a first draft. I sort of go manic for this, trying to finish it as quickly as possible — two months, tops. This is really hard too, because even though you have a story, you don’t have any of the character details or the world-building or the voice. Insanely difficult for me. Once again, you’re creating something out of nothing.

Once I’m done with the first draft, I revise and refine for weeks, until I’m finally satisfied that it is a “story” of some kind — that it deserves to be told. Then I let my partner read it, and I hate him for a while for not thinking it’s brilliant and I shouldn’t change a word. Then, of course, I rewrite it based on his feedback. This is all difficult, but it’s getting a little easier, because now at least I know the voice, the general story, the theme.

He reads it again, I rewrite it again. At this point, I’ll give it to my early readers as well. When they don’t love every precious word, I hate them for a few days too. Then I rewrite yet again based on their notes.

Finally, if it’s a book, I send the book to my editor (if it’s under contract, which it hopefully is). At this point, the book is usually in pretty good shape. But it’s never “perfect.” I think every book I’ve ever written has had at least one major flaw that no one until now was able to see. But fortunately, my editor was. So I rewrite it again for him or her.

Sometimes I might do a second major rewrite for an editor, but this is pretty rare. In fact, I can’t ever remembering doing it, but it must have happened at least once. And, in fairness, I have had a number of books lose their first editor at some point in the publishing process. That usually means the new editor comes in and has another round of notes — and sometimes those notes are the opposite of the first editor’s notes. That’s enough to make you feel a little insane, and start to suspect the way a person reacts to a book, even a very good editor, is all completely subjective and random. But it’s usually best not to dwell on that too long, because down that road lies madness. No, truly, I’m not kidding.

After that comes tinkering, polishing, copy-editing, tweaking, stuff like that, until the book is more or less ready to meet the world.

Weirdly, even after the book has been type-set and bound into ARCs (advance reading copies), I always find lines and sentences where I think, “What?! That’s horrible! How did I not see earlier how bad that sentence is?!?!” There’s literally something about seeing a book type-set that lets you appreciate it with new eyes.

If the project is a play or a screenplay — not a book — the process is a little different in that there are many, many more people you have to please: producers, directors, the office receptionist who all have notes. The final process here is usually a series of readings, where you hear the work being read out loud by actors. But it’s a lot like the ARC stage in books.

As I said, none of this is ever “easy.” But eventually the project does get done.
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So I was just rereading an interview I did back in 2007, and I learned something about myself that I had totally forgotten! Russel (the fictional character from my Russel Middlebrook Series) was every close to being seriously injured in a fire.

Here’s the story:

Interviewer: Is the obvious correlation with your books that you are Russel?

Brent Hartinger: Let’s just say I understand Russel. Russel is a bit my alter ego. He’s certainly got my sensibility of life and my sense of humor, but he’s always seemed to be outside of me. When the first book came out, I got a review and they said… they liked the book, it was a good review, but they said, ‘Russel didn’t sound like a 16-year-old’ and they quoted one line and said, ‘A sixteen-year-old would not say this.’ And I read that line and I thought, ‘What did they mean? Russel did say that!’ Because, in my own mind, he’s like a real person, like he really exists. And then it was like, ‘Oh right, I made him up! He’s not actually real.’ I tell my writing students if you don’t believe your characters are real, nobody else will either. I’m ordinarily down to earth in most respects, but you create these characters and they become real people, like people that exist and you just haven’t seen them lately. They are exactly as real to me as other people I see in person.

So, between books, you think, ‘That would be an interesting situation for this character…’

Yeah, frequently, frequently I do. And I’ll make a little note. When I was writing The Order of the Poison Oak, I heard a guy on NPR talking about being a burn survivor and I thought, ‘Well, that would be really interesting if Russel became a burn survivor.’ Because what the guy on the radio [who was straight] was saying sounded a lot like a gay teenager, how he felt judged, and he felt different, and nobody understood, and he didn’t fit in, and I was really struck by how much I identified with him and how much he was describing my own teen years. So I told my partner Michael, and he said, ‘You are not making Russel a burn survivor! You’re just not going to do that. That would be too serious.’ And then I thought, well, what if Russel goes to a camp for burn survivors, and Michael OK’d that, so that’s how it actually ended up. And then I was at a conference last year, sitting next to another writer who’d been invited to the conference too, and he’d written a book called The Burn Journals. His name is Brent Runyon. He set himself on fire when he was a teenager, and he wrote a book about it, and he said he originally got the idea for the book because he did something for NPR and then he was contacted by an editor, who asked him to write a book. And it occurred to me that, ‘Yeah, you were the guy I heard all those years ago.’ And it was him! It was so cool. I was able to tell him how he literally inspired my book.

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I was especially pleased to read the review of my latest book The Elephant of Surprise over at AfterElton.com, because it’s been the first piece to touch on the issue of race and diversity in the book.

One of the main characters in the book — the love interest — is African American. Here’s what the critic said:

I also continue to admire and celebrate the series for its matter-of-fact approach to diversity. Especially this book. It never feels shoehorned in or written with capitol letter PURPOSE. It’s a simple reflection of the world we live in, by people who notice and simply don’t care all that much.

For example, because a sentence like that requires one, Wade is African-American. He’s also a bit of a cypher in the beginning, gradually revealing himself to Russell and to us. We’re drawn in because Russel is drawn in. First physically, then emotionally.

Readers will, no doubt, clue me in to other fiction novels that accomplish the same feat, but it’s the first time I can recall ever having read the candid thoughts of a gay white male regarding his attraction to a black male that wasn’t loaded down with stereotyping and racial junk. Russel briefly wonders to himself what it would feel like to kiss a black person but dismisses this as an errant thought and simply pursues the object of his affection without reservation. This stuck me as quietly, but thrillingly revolutionary.

I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether or not this reviewer is right about my approach to diversity. But I can say emphatically: this was definitely my intent. If it’s a big deal, it’s because it’s a small deal.

I don’t give myself too much credit for including diverse leading characters in my books: blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, Asians, burn survivors, deaf people, the parentless, the disabled. These choices were partly conscious on my part, but I’ve mostly just been reflecting my own personal reality — now, when I was a teenager, and (especially) all the times I’ve worked with actual teenagers.

Nutshell? Teens don’t look and act like they (mostly) do on television.

But even so, I’m not a member of any of those above groups. And when I write about them, I admit to feeling a little nervous. I’m gay, so I know about stereotypes, about how certain characters are almost always portrayed a certain way, how the stories often seem to go the same cliched direction. I know how frustrating that feels.

I also think I know why it happens: writers think they’re being “truthful,” writing about how these characters “really are.” But writers are sometimes lazy. Sometimes, consciously or unconsciously, we just repeat or recycle the media tropes and cliches we’ve all seen so many times.

Most of us personally know people of different races and different cultures. But the sad truth is that most of our experience with other races and cultures still comes from movies and on television. How many times have I personally encountered a black drug dealer? Maybe once or twice. How many times have I seen one on television? Waaaaaay too many to count.

So when a writer sits down to write a black character or a drug dealer, it’s hard not to be influenced by all those media portrayals. It ends up being a very vicious cycle.

So how do you break it? First, by being aware of it. And then, by trying to forget all about it.

Ironically, that’s the approach I took with my characters as well. When Russel first meets Wade (the African American character), he’s definitely aware of his race. (Russel being Russel, he’s even aware of the racial stereotypes in his own mind and feels bad about them.)

But as Russel gets to know Wade better, his race mostly disappears. It’s always part of Wade, but an increasingly smaller part.

Russel wasn’t aware of this, but I, the writer, was. In my experience, this is exactly how things work in real life.

That said, when I was writing Russel’s initial thoughts about all this, I did worry I might offend someone.

I think it’s okay to feel nervous. Writing diversity is risky. No one’s going to criticize you for not including a black character (unless you’re Lena Dunham writing a buzzy, break-out show). But they might criticize you — strongly — if you get something wrong. Even if it’s only their opinion, and others feel otherwise, that stings.

But here’s the key: it’s hard to criticize honesty. Write the truth. Ignore what you’ve seen on television and in the movies. Write from your own life experience (and your research).

A character can be racist and offensive, but a book or story can’t be, not if it’s being honest.

And on an even happier note? What happens to Russel and race in The Elephant of Surprise is exactly what’s happening to society: race is sometimes a big deal at first. But after a while, it simply becomes matter-of-fact.

On this same topic of diversity in books, Malinda Lo posted some great advice this morning, and I’ve written about the subject before myself.

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From Kirkus Reviews:

In Hartinger’s (The Order of the Poison Oak, 2005, etc.) newest YA installment in the Russel Middlebrook series, Russel finds his wishes for adventure unexpected granted in the form of a counterculture-loving, dumpster-diving new guy.

While instant messaging his boyfriend—Otto, who’s 800 miles away but a great friend—Russel suddenly realizes they’ve become just friends. Otto understands that Russel wants more than text on the screen, so they decide to break up. This is just what Russel needs: an opportunity to forsake love and welcome adventure. Yet not 24 hours after breaking up with Otto, and despite his claims against love and guys, Russel finds himself guiltily, and weirdly, attracted to Wade, a tight-shirt–wearing, beefy, black 19-year-old who pops out of a dumpster. Wade is a “freegan” living off society’s refuse and discarded consumerism, though he’s not a bum or homeless. Rather, he’s smart and invigorating—just the kind of adventure Russel has been looking for. But perhaps too much of one. In true-to-character, first-person prose, Hartinger reveals the psychological and social conundrums of a lovesick, somewhat self-involved gay boy in high school. Teenage readers, homosexual or not, will find the confident, slang-heavy prose easy to understand, especially since Russel and his friends’ mindsets are warmly personal yet identifiable. When Russel’s life doesn’t go exactly as he expected, Hartinger shows how “the planet exploded, and the sun winked out, and gravity stopped working, and our entire solar system was sucked into a big black hole.” Along with the edifying main plotline, which will appeal to readers of any age, the well-conceived subplots won’t disappoint young readers looking for the juicy gossip that runs through the series. With Russel, there’s always drama—real and perceived—but definitely no lack of love.

Fans of the series will revel in this smart, quirky YA novel that’s ripe with substance beyond the surface.

BUY OR SAMPLE THE BOOK HERE

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I hope you’ll download or pick up a copy of my latest book (and book #4 in the Russel Middlebrook Series), The Elephant of Surprise. I’m very pleased with it, and I hope you will be too. (This and The Order of the Poison Oak are my two personal favorites in the series.)

Incidentally, if they don’t have it at your bookstore or library, request it. Libraries will almost always order it on your behalf, and hey, it’s a sale for me either way.

What’s the book about?

Well, as readers of the Russel Middlebrook Series know, I’ve tried to do something completely different with each new book: new story, new characters, new themes. I always want to keep what people liked about the earlier books, but try to add new surprises and interesting new experiences for my characters.

With this latest book, Russel gets involved with a mysterious (and handsome) guy who’s a member of a group called “freegans” — another secret society, if you will. Freegans are actually a real-life group of environmentalists who give up all their possessions and live on the streets, foraging for food and other necessities. I remember reading about them years ago. And the more I researched them for this book, the more interesting they became. It’s a totally different kind of life – and as Russel learns in the book, it’s a pretty fascinating one, and in some ways, even a very romantic one.

And dramatically speaking, there’s nothing like a character who makes your main character question everything about his life. That’s the function Wade (the freegan) has with Russel in The Elephant of Surprise.

And, of course, it’s worth mentioning that I finally wrap up the Russel/Kevin storyline once and for all!

What if I haven’t read the other books in the series? Do I need to have read the other books for this one to make sense?

Absolutely not. Like all the books in the series, it’s a stand-alone story. But there’s also an over-arching story, so reading all the other books hopefully makes that part of the story more enjoyable.

Since it’s been a few years since the last book came out, I also made a point to include a synopsis of previous events.

When is The Elephant of Surprise set?

That sounds like such a simple question, doesn’t it? The truth is, I had to give that a lot of thought. The books are set in the present, and the events of the Russel Middlebrook Series take place over the course of a single year (so far). But the books themselves were written over a twelve-year period. And in those twelve years, things have changed a lot. For example, when I wrote Geography Club in 2000, it was unusual for a school to have a gay-straight alliance, especially outside of the big cities. That’s a lot less true today. Technology has changed a lot too: teenagers didn’t all have cell-phones back then.

In the end, I decided for myself that the books take place around 2007-2008. But that’s just a technical issue for me, the writer. If I did my job right, the reader won’t even notice.

Interestingly, the whole reason I wrote Geography Club in the first place was because I was frustrated by the fact that all the gay teen stories I knew about were angst-y and serious. I sometimes like stories like that, but it was really important to me that Russel have a sense of humor – that these books be funny, that they capture the humor of being a gay teenager. I also wanted Russel to be totally accepting of the fact that he’s gay. I wanted his story to begin where a lot of the existing gay teen stories back then were ending. In fact, my first draft of the book (written in about 1991) was all about Russel coming to terms with the fact that he was gay. Once I’d written it, though, I realized that the end was where the story was just starting to get good! So that is literally where I started my next draft.

The point is, I think those choices I made way back in the 90s hopefully make all the books, even the earlier ones, seem more contemporary and a little less dated than they would’ve otherwise.

What else do you think when you read the earlier books in the Russel Middlebrook Series?

Oh, like most authors, I sometimes look at my earlier work and see all the things I desperately wish I could change. Also like most authors, I believe that the work I’m doing now is the best I’ve ever done. But I understand the novels are moments in time – both in my history and in the history of the world. And maybe some of those earlier books have an innocence or an authenticity that would be destroyed if I went back and made changes.

All that said, I’m proud of the fact that The Order of the Poison Oak is clearly the fan favorite, Double Feature was quite a critical success and won some awards, and Geography Club got turned into both a play and a feature film. So all three books found their niche, and a life bigger than I could’ve hoped for. Here’s hoping something similar happens to The Elephant of Surprise.

One thing I wish I had done: spelled Russel’s name the more traditional way. It’s a perfectly legitimate spelling, but ninety percent of people get it wrong!

Nah, I take that back. I like Russel exactly the way he is.

Will there be another entry in the series?

I’d love to write one, and if this one is a success, I’m sure I will. The current plan is for it to be set five years in the future (basically, the present) with Russel in college.

And if Geography Club the movie is a success, who knows? There’s already talk of doing The Order of the Poison Oak as a movie.

I already have another movie in the works, based on a screenplay I wrote. It’s completely different from Geography Club, and if all goes as it should, it will be hitting theaters in 2014.

BUY OR SAMPLE THE BOOK HERE!

 

THE ELEPHANT OF SURPRISE

By Brent Hartinger

Buddha Kitty Books

Paperback, $12.99: 978-0-9846794-5-4

E-book, $7.99: 978-0-9846794-6-1

March 30, 2013

Ages 13 & up
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