It's always exciting when we interview a debut author on the Enchanted Inkpot. Today we are featuring Scott Bly, whose middle-grade novel, SMASHER, came out just yesterday! Here's what's it's all about:
And now for the interview:
Lena: Welcome to the Enchanted Inkpot, Scott, both as an
interviewee and as one of our newest contributors—and big congratulations on
your debut!
Scott: Thanks for
having me, Lena! It’s a real honor to be
included among the ranks of authors such as yourself, Gretchen McNeil and my
fellow Scholastic author Jennifer Nielsen.
Lena: I really enjoyed SMASHER. One of the things I found the most original
was the way you wove together both magical and technological elements. How did your own work with computer
technology influence the book?
Scott: I’ve spent the
last fifteen years helping people with their computer issues and dealing with
small business technology needs – everything from getting a computer virus to
identifying hacker intrusions and working with the FBI. Of course, there are lots of other little
things, too, but those are the most dramatic examples! One the most common pieces of advice that
writers get is to “write what you know." I certainly know computers. And I
wanted to give kids a way to learn about computers in a way that wasn’t
dry. So finding the most interesting
story where that could happen was a really strong motivator for me.
Lena: I saw that you began your novel in 2006 and wrote more
than nine versions. My own first novel
took ten years to write, so I’m always interested to meet others who have had a
similar experience. What stayed the same
from that first early draft? Was there a
key moment when the final story began to come together?
Even for a
long process like mine, there are times when the voice and the structure and
the pacing all line up and you just have it and it rings true. I think I just got lucky with those two.
You ask
about the final story, and I think that by the time I was most of the way
through the first draft, which in and of itself took nearly three years (I had
no idea what I had gotten myself into), the story was pretty well locked. It became a matter of cutting and cutting and
cutting. There were a few key elements
that changed, and things shifted a lot and tightened a lot, but the story
itself never really changed. Of course,
this is over nearly ten years, so who knows?
Memory is a fickle thing.
Lena: I know what you mean! Sometimes I think we authors forget what a story was like in an early draft and then when someone asks, we end up struggling to make something up.
Everyone’s path to publication is different. How did SMASHER end up being published with
Scholastic and what was the editorial process like?
Scott: Well, I had
stopped writing for quite some time after film school and a frustrating
introduction to the entertainment business.
So I started writing and playing music for a creative outlet as I got my
computer consulting business off the ground.
One of my clients referred me to my editor, Bonnie, here in LA when she
got a computer virus.
During that first lengthy
conversation she said to me, “In twenty years of unsuccessfully trying to use a
computer, you’re the first person who has been able to talk to me about this
stuff in a way I can understand. Have
you ever thought about writing a children’s book?”
So I gave it some thought and we
had a series of conversations over lunches that ultimately started to turn into
chapters. She had a very brilliant way of asking just the right questions that
would turn my entire worldview on its head and send me off into different
directions. I was really fortunate in
that she served very much as a mentor through the whole process.
Lena: Tell us about Charles and Geneva, your two main
characters. I thought they were great
foils for each other.
Scott: Thanks! I really enjoyed the dynamic between the two
of them as they in turn served as master/student then reversed roles. It was very important to me that each had a
gift that was the opposite of the other so that they would depend on one
another.
Lena: Charles is a boy from the past who is brought forward
in time. Did you have to do much
historical research for the book? What
about computer research?
Scott: The historical
research was probably more involved for me than the computer research. There were certainly some details about some
of the theoretical quantum computing and DNA encoding that I had to dig around
for, but the computer side of things was primarily stuff that I use on a
day-to-day basis. Also, I love the
magazine Scientific American, so getting to read about whole worlds of
scientific research as a layperson really informed a lot of the book's future technologies. Of course, some is completely made up, like
the AquaFase screens. Seems cool, seems
plausible, but outside of some knowledge of how researchers use lasers to cool
atoms, I have no idea if something like that could ever exist.
The
historical side, though, required research for almost every detail that made
it’s way into any draft, whether it survived to the end or not. There are actually a tremendous number of
chapters that served as episodic educational adventures that were cut from
early drafts, and those will almost all end up online in the very near
future. That represented the lion’s
share of the research that I did, and was actually a lot of fun! It’s just that about 95% of it isn’t in the
published novel.
Lena: I know that
you’ve developed children’s interactive computer games. Do you think that books and reading will
become more interactive in the future?
If so, is that a good thing?
Scott: I don’t want
to overstate the development I’ve done, but I’ve certainly been involved in the
creation of some alternate reality gaming that I have worked on with a
team. We’re gearing all of that toward
the educational market, and it’s very much a story-driven experience. But that’s more about the educational
experience, which I think has to change – we’re a couple hundred years into the
current educational paradigm of teacher in front of class, and we’re finding
that the approach is only partially successful.
Kids are driven to games because of the interactivity, the fact that
those individual small goals on the way to a larger goal – they totally hit the
pleasure/reward centers of the brain – and they’re learning the entire
time. Unfortunately, most of the skills
they’re learning aren’t particularly helpful in the real world except to maybe
a drone pilot in the military, but they are skills nonetheless. With the gamification of education taking
place right now, I think we’re going to see a dramatic rise in gaming theories
and approaches change the education landscape.
As for the
book business, I’m not so sure. The
process of reading hasn’t changed in thousands of years. There is of course, a different language in
images, and now in moving images, but that’s a different paradigm
altogether. Books may be available on e-readers
and what not, but I think that the fundamental process of being told a story is
something that human beings want at a nearly genetic level. And with reading, if the interactivity takes
you out of that experience, I think it can be a negative effect. That said, if the interactivity is a truly
organic part of the storytelling experience and can be done smoothly, without
technical glitches and the other frustrations that we all run into with
computer issues, then I think we might see a real increase in “interactivity”
as it were. Of course, I say all of that
having now positioned myself very much in the interactive space. I hope that the trend continues, but it really
depends on the successes being a transformative experience. I think Avatar is a great example from the
film world, where a 3D movie successfully accomplished what 3D is meant
for. There are a lot of films where the
3D is just an updated version of the same gimmick that we’ve seen since the
sixties or seventies.
Lena: What were you reading when you were thirteen? Do you think any of your childhood favorites
have influenced SMASHER?
Scott: I was reading
Dungeons and Dragons novels, specifically the Dragonlance books, which I
loved. And of course Lord of the
Rings. So a lot of fantasy, but not many
of the other real established names like Piers Anthony or Asimov on the scifi
side. Once I was just a bit older I
started reading Stephen King and Tom Clancy, and I think that their influence
is more obvious on the kind of writing I did in SMASHER, especially
Clancy. I really see SMASHER as a Tom
Clancy novel for kids. With magic.
Lena: I like that! Any advice for debut authors like yourself (or debut-authors-to-be)?
Scott: Eat your
vegetables and stay away from high-carb meals, especially late at night. And call your mother. She misses you.
Lena: Thanks Scott! And congrats again!
Read chapters one to three of SMASHER here!
Lena Coakley's first novel, Witchlanders, was called “one stunning teen debut” by Kirkus Reviews and won the SCBWI Crystal Kite award for the Americas. It is a 2013 MYRCA nominee and a 2013 OLA White Pine honouree. Lena is also the author of two children’s picture books and the former administrative director of CANSCAIP. Learn more about her at www.lenacoakley.com
Read chapters one to three of SMASHER here!
