Debut Author Interviews

G. Neri is the author of an illustrated novella called Chess Rumble (Lee and Low Books, Fall 2007).

• G. Neri on...Ideas
• G. Neri on...Training
• G. Neri on...Why Kids?
• G. Neri on...Setting
• G. Neri on...Query Letters
• G. Neri on...Writing Process
• G. Neri on...Dream Editors
• G. Neri on...Influential Books
• G. Neri on...Ideal Reader
• G. Neri on...What's Next?
• G. Neri on...What's Next?
• G. Neri on...Outlines
• G. Neri on...First Novels
• G. Neri on...Character's Conflict
• G. Neri on...Family Appreciation
• G. Neri on...Completion
• G. Neri on...Favorite Bookstore

Where did you get the idea for your book?

My book YUMMY is inspired by a true story. In the summer of ‘94, I was teaching workshops in a school in south-central LA. A story broke about an 11 year old gangbanger who killed a neighborhood girl and went into hiding. As the days passed, more and more facts came out about this boy, how he’s been abused since age 2, how he’d been in and out of juvie centers his whole life, how he had committed 23 felonies by the time he was 11. How the gangs used these shorties for their dirty work because they couldn’t be convicted as an adult.

Then came the stories about why he was named Yummy: for his love of sweets. More stories about how he loved the Little Rascals, his bike, Minnie Mouse. I started following the story with the kids around me. Was Yummy a thug or a victim? Who was to blame for his actions? Himself? His abusive parents? The system that kept turning him out onto the streets? His gang?

Then 3 days later, he was found dead, assassinated by another teenager in the gang he was trying to impress. Yummy had caused so much attention to be focused on his gang that he had become a liability.

I could not forget this story. The story made the cover of TIME magazine. I was a filmmaker at the time and wrote a screenplay that became a Sundance finalist. But everytime I started to think about making it, something stopped me. Film was too immediate, too graphic. The film would be rated R, so only adults would see it. And as powerful as it was, it was just too depressing.

Years passed, ideas floated around about how to tell this story the best: theater? Radio? Art installation? Interactive CDROM? Then I realized, I needed a narrator, someone who would struggle with these events as many did. A child, in the neighborhood…

Yummy became a graphic novel, a perfect synergy between the film and children’s stories I was now writing. It would hit the audience that it needed to: boys, ages 10 and up, right at the age where they were struggling with these ideas. The medium would get reluctant readers to read about serious issues not just fantasy. It would catch them off guard, plant a seed.

That’s when I knew I had a book.

What writing training have you had?

I’ve always been a storyteller. But I wrote only because I needed the story on paper first. When I was a filmmaker, I wrote screenplays because no one would get it right. Animation, the same thing. When I was an interactive media producer, I had to write the plan, the architecture of the experience so the story would have a strong through-line in this nonlinear medium. I started writing kids’ books because I didn’t think I was that good of a writer, my prose was simple, down to earth. When I started writing for teens using first person narratives, that’s when I found my voice. I can’t write beautiful prose. I couldn’t turn a phrase if it had power steering. But using a teen’s voice, particularly an inner city voice, I could tell stories rough and raw and straight from the heart.

I never thought I could write the great american novel, but the YA medium tricked. I am finishing my third book now. I am a reluctant writer writing for reluctant readers. And proud of it.

Why write for children and teens?

I write for teens because YA is all about first times: it’s everything you could possibly write about in adult fiction, with the added bonus that the main characters are experiencing everything for the first time. Its all about flying blindly and figuring out life on the run. First love, first break-up, first jobs, first driver license, first crash, first times dealing with death, divorce, hatred, first glimmer of being an adult. Everything is alive and scary, including your body. It makes writing so much more interesting and visceral. Plus, you can give the reader a glimpse into their future by showing how your characters deal with certain issues. It may give the reader some food for thought when dealing with their own crisis. Plus you don’t have to use all them high falutin’ words…you can just say it as it is.

Where is your novel set, and why there?

Yummy is set in Chicago’s largely black Southside, because it’s inspired by a true story and that’s where it happened. But this isn’t the projects, it’s a place called Roseland, which on the surface might look like a normal urban neighborhood, except folks are afraid to go out after dark due to the rampant gang activity that rule the streets. And because it’s not the projects, readers might be able to see that this story could happen in their neighborhood as well.

Describe the query letter that got you published.

Oddly enough, my successful query letter didn’t result in a sale for the book I was pushing, but it started the ball rolling and turned into a 2 book deal for 2 other books, neither of which existed at the time of the letter.

I had a multicultural juvenile biography that I sent to Lee and Low Books. What shocked me was 6 days after I sent the snail mail request, I had a snail mail answer: one page of revision notes and a request to see anything else I had. Well, of course I did the revisions which took me to the next stage: email communication and a long series of back-and-forths reworking the story.

Around the same time, I met a writer who had won the Lee and Low’s New Voice Award that year. I had had an idea about turning an old screenplay I had written into a picture book MS, and Lee and Low seemed like a good place to send it. I vaguely remember not wanting to overload the editor I was communicating with (because I was so close with the juvenile biography), so I sent PB to the New Voices contest. Well, in the four months waiting for a decision on both fronts, I had the even better idea of turning that PB into a YA graphic novel and went ahead and wrote the script for it.

Soon, I received a request from the editor. They loved my PB story but felt it was too serious for a PB and wondered if I’d be interested in turning it into a YA book. I said I would and here it is: the graphic novel script. Well, that became my first book sale YUMMY, and a few months after that, my editor asked me if I’d be interested in taking a stab at a subject matter she’d been wanting to do for years. Of course I said yes, I’d give it a shot. I knew if she liked it, it’d be a guaranteed sale and I wanted to do something for her for taking a chance on YUMMY. Well, that one became my 2nd book CHESS RUMBLE. Both will be coming out next year.

And the funny thing is, I never did sell that juvenile biography…

What is your writing process?

The best process I have only works for first drafts. Normally, I might sit and write my self out, meaning write until I run out of ideas. But in an experiment on my latest novel, inspired by the “write a novel in 30 days” challenges, I decided to finish my draft before I left for vacation. I basically had 39 days and figured out that I needed x number of pages to finish. And I simply did the math. It came out to 1.5 pages a day (single spaced). When I saw that, it suddenly seemed do-able. 1.5 pages, no problem! But the beauty of it was, once I got started, the writing came easier and easier. Why? Because after I finished 1.5 pages, I forced myself to stop. Even if I had another 3 pages in me. The result was, my mind kept working after I stopped, writing those next pages in my head. When I sat down the following day, the next 1.5 pages were already worked out in my brain. And the more I wrote, the further I got in my head, the faster that 1.5 pages came out. Soon, I was finishing my assignment in 30 minutes or less. I was the most fun I’d ever had writing—easy, playful, no stress.

While this process doesn’t work for rewrites, I will follow this method from now on with all my first drafts.

How did you choose your editor and was he or she the “dream editor” you wanted?

My editor, Jennifer Fox at Lee and Low is my dream editor. She picked me from the slush and had revision notes to me a week after I sent her my story via snail mail. She always answers my emails the same day with really long, extremely thoughtful replies. I cannot recall ever having disagreed with her (and I will bow to NO idea unless it is better than my own). She has the magic touch in her editorial skills—able to identify the issue without telling me the solution, but in such a way that the solution comes easily to me. She is constantly making me a better writer and we push the story higher and higher with each round of talks. She had never done a graphic novel before, but allowed me to educate her by having her read what I thought were great graphic novels, until our tastes completely converged. She has included me in every step of the way with our illustrator, from choosing him to allowing me to give editorial comments on everyone of the 700 or so drawings in my graphic novel.

She then asked me to write her pet project—a book she’d been trying to get off the ground for years—without a single suggestion of story, character or format, just a notion that there was a great story to be had about the world of inner city chess and troubled teens. And she encouraged me as the story grew from a picture book to something completely new and untested: a free verse illustrated novella.

If that’s not a dream editor, I don’t know what is.

What books had an impact on you when you were growing up?

The books that affected me the most were books about epic journeys that tested loyalties and friendships. The Lord of the Rings. The Phantom Tollbooth. James and the Giant Peach. They took me to incredible places far away from my own reality. They were all coming of age stories in a way and with those characters, I grew up and became a man. Even though my own stories are vastly different than those, they do inform the writing. My stories are quests on a much smaller scale, but quests in real life are just as dangerous than those to be found in Middle Earth.

If you had an ideal reader, who would that be and why?

My ideal reader is someone who doesn’t. My books are universal, but for me, reaching reluctant readers, especially male urban teens, would be the tops. I’d like to think I’m writing stories about teens who haven’t been represented in books before or much. I’ve already had the reaction of shock and surprise from teens hearing voices like their own that they’ve never seen in a book before. For me, that’s the best.

What’s next after your debut novel?

Already delivered my second book, Chess Rumble, which will come out shortly after my debut project. And I just turned in my third book, which is my first legitimate YA novel called Surf Mules. I hope that makes sense. Now there will be massive rewriting to do, I’m sure. But I am already starting a few new ideas and we’ll see where they take me.

What’s next after your debut novel?

My second book, CHESS RUMBLE, will also be coming out with in a year. It is an odd bird— an illustrated free-verse novella. Can’t really compare it to anything out there, but the design team is having fun with my text, so I am eager to see what it becomes.

And my third book, and first real legitimate novel, SURF MULES, is being read by 5 great editors as we speak and will hopefully find a home in the next month or so. SURF MULES was actually the first to be started of the 3 and has been gestating for a long time. Only with this one do I feel like I can call myself a writer.

So now, what’s really next? Now I get to really explore for the first time in a while and try out different ideas I have. But it’s exciting because I have so many different formats to work with (graphic novel, free-verse, picture book, novel) that I can let the story tell me how it wants to be told. I am playing with a lot of different stories at the moment, so now is when writers can have fun, exploring, researching, seeing what sticks to the wall…

Do you outline before writing?

No. I start a story with a scene, a place, and a character. It grows from there. As I write, I let the characters take me where they want to go. My job is to get out of the way, to act like a documentary filmmaker capturing events as they happen. The story starts to form. I try not to force it, just let the story play itself out. After the first draft, I go back and try to pull the book out of the mess I’ve created. Restructure, combine characters, eliminate scenes and create new ones. Only for the 3rd pass do I write an outline. And really, it’s an outline to help sell the story. But it’s in that outline that I realize what the story is really about. That outline makes me bring certain themes to the foreground, punching up the story until it has resonance. Then hopeful, I have a book worth reading.

Was this the first full-length novel you wrote, or rather the first that you sold?

Actually, my 3rd book is the first full-length novel I ever wrote. The first was a graphic novel, the second, a free-verse novella with pictures. I truly think that were it not for writing books for teens, I never would have written something so long. The idea of writing “The Great American Novel” seemed so remote, it was laughable. But somehow, as I saw others do it, I started to do it too (but first only as an exercize). Now that I’ve done it, it seems anything is possible. Though, in the future, all my books will be under 200 pages!

What drew you to the conflict you created for your main character?

The conflict of my main character Roger is one will all have these days: fighting through the soundbites and B&W portrayals of the media and politicians to get at the truth. Everyone has an opinion these days and there are plenty out there willing to exploit an issue for their own gain. In this story, an 11-year-old kid kills a neighborhood girl and he himself is later killed by the gang he tried to impress. Was the kid a thug or a victim? Was he responsible for his actions or are others to blame?

The lesson the main character learns is that life is not black and white. The world is full of greys. Good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things. We must dig deeper for the truth and decide for ourselves before casting judgement on anyone, be it a killer, a politician or ourselves.

Now that you’re under contract, does your family better appreciate your writing?

They are starting to. My wife recently read my novel and free verse novella. One made her cry, the other impressed her tremendously, even though she was not the type for this book. She is starting to see that this is for real, that I actually might be a writer, and not a “writer.” My mom recently looked at my new website, and for the first time, saw me as the real deal. “Are you my son?” she asked surprised at everything that has been happening.

Of course, they all have doubts because it has been so long since I made my deals, they have no real proof yet. I keep saying to everyone, it’s coming, you’ll see….

I can hardly wait to give them a real live book to hold in their hands. Then I can say “Oh me? I’m a writer. Look, here’s my book!”

How did you know you were “done” with your book and ready to submit it?

Sometimes you are your own worst critic. With my newest book, Surf Mules, I worked it to death. By the 3rd draft, I was trying to make it brilliant; I must have written the first chapter 60 times in an effort to make it so good, you had to read the whole book. But I got too close to it. So close, I could not tell what was good or bad about it anymore.

I was toying with putting it away. My critique group told me I was full of it and it was ready to go out. I hemmed and hawed. I literally couldn’t read it. I was talking to an agent but was putting him off till Surf Mules was perfect. But another client convinced me it was better to show him now and revise with his fresh eyes because clearly, I would never finish it on my own.

Everyone was convinced it was great except me. I agreed to show it to the agent, but upon finally reading it before sending it off, I swear I thought the first half was dreck. I gave it to him anyways.

But the agent loved it. Loved it so much, he thought he could sell it as is. He had a handful of notes that were totally do-able. I did them in 5 days. Then he sent it off to five of the best editors in the biz. That’s how good he thought it was.

So now I am waiting to see. He thinks it’ll go fast, but what do I know? I’m just a writer.

Do you have a favorite bookstore?

Good question. I have two, one for each place I’ve truly lived. In Venice Beach, my fav, right off the sand and the famous boardwalk, is one of the last truly independent bookstores—Small World Books and the Mystery Annex. It’s a writer’s and reader’s dream shop, hidden away behind a restaurant. It’s been there since the ’70s and has the most fabulous collections of books—real books, not the garbage you see in most Borders. Great fiction, mystery, graphic novels, art books…you name it, they got it. With cats wandering the aisles too.

My other favorite is in Tampa, where I live now. Inkwood Books is also the last indie holdout, and resides in a lovely old wooden house with a porch. Great selection and staff, lovely and relaxing. If you are ever in any of these cities, check ‘em out!