Today I talk with YA author Joe Lunievicz, author of Open Wounds, about why he writes, his favorite books, and much more. Welcome, Joe!

Tell me, why do you write?

I first started writing when I was sixteen. I entered an essay-writing contest in which I wrote about my best friend who had died two years before. I had no idea that's what I was going to write about. I just did. My friend had been hit by a train while crossing railroad tracks during a thunderstorm. It had happened in the middle of the school day while he was supposed to be in class with me. I remember the day had turned to night because of the darkness of the storm-clouds. There are many questions that to this day go unanswered for me about what happened to him and why it happened. I was told of his death, along with the rest of the school during the final period of the day over the loudspeaker. Two years later I wrote about it for the first time. I had not spoken to anyone about his death. My family and his were simply in too much shock to deal with anything but their own grief.

Sitting in the classroom staring at my paper my pen started to do the talking for me. I wrote about how important books had become – how they had allowed me to escape the pain of my friend's loss for a while and cope with the loneliness of each day without him. I became the hero's of Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Boroughs, Conan and John Carter stories, able to fight off horrors and save friends from death. So I read fantasy and science fiction novels and played games like Dungeons and Dragons. It felt so good to write about what had happened and how I felt and how I was using books to help me heal. My English teacher, one of the judges, told me in private later that I had been a finalist and that she thought what I had written was a really good piece of writing. Up to that point I had no idea that I had any talent as a writer.







From that day on being a writer was all that I wanted to be. I felt the power of my thoughts flowing onto paper and it's impact on another. Many writers say they write because they have to. I write because I have stories to tell, because I like to tell them, because I want to be read. I write because writing has allowed me to expel darkness and let in light.

That's a powerful reason you started to write; it sounds like it was a form of healing. I really identify with that.

What do you love about writing? (Or about the publishing business, or both.)

I love the creation of characters and worlds. I love staring at the screen and dreaming writer's dreams of plot lines, scenes in fast-forward or in reverse. I love being read and hearing people talk about what they heard and saw and felt. I also love the tremendous satisfaction of problem solving narrative – figuring out why a scene doesn't work and then how it can work. I love doing research on my characters, their settings and environment, walking the streets they will walk; going to parks they will play in, listening to music that will be their favorites, and seeing the world through their eyes a little at a time.

What don't you like about the publishing business? (Or about writing.)

What I don't like about publishing is how cruel it can be. I went through 76 agent queries before I got my first agent. It took 25 to get the second, 12 to get the third and 6 to get the fourth. Rejection is hard to deal with under any circumstances but the kind I find most writers have to go through just to be read and maybe find someone who says, "I love this work and I think I can sell it," is brutal. Then the whole process starts all over again with the manuscript going to publishers. It's a rough business that for me has required a lot of patience, perseverance, and support to survive in. Of course in typical storyteller fashion, just as I gave up hope of ever selling a novel, I got a call from my agent to tell me Open Wounds had been sold. As Kurt Vonnegut would say, so it goes.

I hear you, Joe! I found it painful, too, to get so many rejections for Scars before it was finally published. I'm glad you got Open Wounds published!


What would you want in your ideal writing studio? What does your writing space look like now?

My ideal writing studio would have a big screen iMac with Scrivener (my favorite word processing program) loaded up and ready to go, some kirtan (Krishna Das or Dave Stringer or MC Yogi) music on the speakers, a small desk, a window that looks out onto the world, plants, hot water for tea (white, green, black, or oolong so I have a choice), honey for sweetness, a mug my son gave me for father's day, a blanket for cold days and a good chair, a bulletin board with drawings from my son and myself on it to inspire me. My desk would be neat and orderly.

My writing space right now is on a small computer desk (I wish it was bigger but there's no extra room) stacked usually with papers, bills, books I've just read and want to review, and folders I should be filing things in but haven't gotten around to yet. I have an iMac that I love – once a Mac person always a Mac person. My desk is in a turret room of our apartment – we live in a two-bedroom apartment in an old pre-war building co-op in Jackson Heights, Queens. In the room is our table on which we eat our meals. There are three facings of windows, good air circulation and sun and I look down five floors onto the street, trees, parked cars, and a building across the street. In the morning I can watch the sun come up. It's cramped, overflowing with our things, but beautiful.

Where do you write most often?

I write mostly in our "dining room" off the kitchen where my desk shares space with the table we eat on and the early morning sun peeks into. I do have a lap top and write occasionally in a Starbucks near where my son's school is but mostly I write early mornings or late at night and I like the big screen of my iMac to work on. Early (5:30am) in the morning our two dogs keep me company.

What do you think is the most important thing (or things) that makes a good book work?

I think the most important thing that makes a good book work is its ability to sweep me up in its narrative so that I want to turn the page to see what happens next. I think more often than not the thing that does this for me are the characters in the book. My ability to like them and care about them keeps me turning each page. In Ghost Medicine by Andrew Smith it's the main character, Troy and his relationship with his three friends that made me want to turn the page. In Scars it was your protagonist, Kendra. I cared about her and wanted her to survive – to get out of the danger that she was in so badly I had to turn the page. In Walter Dean Myers' Sunrise over Fallujah it was the main character Robin and his friends in his unit Marla and Jonesy – and my desire to see them all live through their time in Iraq that kept me going. Characters do not have to be perfect, all good, or even be nice all the time. But I have to care about them enough to want to find out what happens to them. If I don't care about them even a little bit it's hard to keep turning the pages. It all springs from there for me.








What is your favorite type of book to read?

I love YA books, and now with a son who is 9 but reads like he's 12, I read even more just to keep up with him. I like realistic fiction, fantasy, adventure, historical, and science fiction. I also like memoirs and biographies. Right now I've been on a streak of reading a lot of really good realistic fiction but who knows what that will change in to a few months from now. I'm a yoga teacher so I also read yoga texts to help me understand the world a little better like the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and The Bhagavad-Gita.

What are some of your favorite YA books? How about picture books?

My present list of favorite YA books includes: The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud; The Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman; In the Path of Falling Objects, Ghost Medicine, and The Marbury Lens by Andrew Smith; Crossing the Tracks by Barbara Stuber; Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers; Scars by Cheryl Rainfield; and The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling.





As for my favorite picture books they include: Three Nasty Gnarlies by Keith Graves; Verdi by Janell Cannon; The Worm Family by Tony Johnston illustrated by Stacy Innerst; The Adventures of Polo and Polo The Runaway Book by Regis Faller; Chicken and Cat by Sara Varon; and Don't let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems.








Aw, thank you, Joe! I'm honored to have Scars among your favorite books. I love Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, too, and many of the other books you mentioned.


How much of yourself or your own experiences and emotions do you put in your books?

Allen Barnett, the author of The Body and Its Dangers and Other Stories, told me early on in my career after reading some of my realistic fiction, that if I wanted to write about the more serious issues of life I would have to go deeper into myself. Then the writing would ring of truth. I was young and didn't understand him at the time. I wasn't sure where I was supposed to go. Deeper? Where? What I wrote about at the time seemed true enough to me – but it wasn't.





I find that no matter what I write, whether it's a story about skeletons marching across the desert or a World War One veteran suffering from neurasthenia and the crippling loss of his leg, his arm and part of his humanity, it all comes from some part of my life experience. I write a lot about loss and how it affects each of us and my own experiences of loss have helped me to bring character's losses to life. It gives them a truer poignancy. It has helped me to go deeper and write better.








What is your favorite book that you wrote? Why?

I've written five books so far and each has a special place in my writer's heart. The first one, which is in a drawer and will probably never see the light of day again, helped me to prove to myself that I could write a novel. The second novel I finished got me my first agent but has since sat in a drawer and gathered dust next to the first novel. The third novel I wrote was a fantasy novel that although has come to an end I know it is not finished. Every once in a while this one taps me on the head and asks me to look at it one more time. One day I will. The fourth novel I finished came close to publication a few times. It's main character is close to who I am. There's a lot of me in him, him in me. Its journey has not ended yet but it sits on my shelf for now with the others. Which leaves me with my debut novel, the fifth that I've written but the first to be published. It is my favorite because it is so much the kind of novel that I like to read, filled with adventure, swordplay, captures a piece of history, and has a lot of heart.

What do you want to tell readers?

Through Cid Wymann, I want to tell readers to hope. I want to give readers what other writers gave me when I needed to believe in something bigger than the world I lived in. I want them to know that no matter what has happened to them they can still discover who they are and that they can still become whole.

That's a lovely message, and a needed one.


Where can readers find you online?

They can find me at my website lunievicz.com, on twitter @lunievicz, and on facebook. I'd love to hear from readers and am available for Skype and in person visits too.

What are you working on now? Or what's your next book that we can look for?

I'm still outlining a new book in my head, playing with the main character while I walk to work and imagining what his family is like. I know there is a yoga teacher in it and it takes place in Queens in the present day. This part of the writing process for me can take months so I'm just going with it. That's all there is until I put more of it down on paper. I'm hoping to have something finished by the end of the year but my process, with a full time job and a part time job in addition to writing is slower than I'd like it to be. Regardless, I'm shooting for 2012 for something new to be on a publisher's desk.

Good for you! Thank you for joining me today, Joe.

Thank you, Cheryl.