When I read your novel Vintage: A Ghost Story a couple years ago I was so happy to discover that there was more to GLBT YA than Geography Club and Rainbow Boys. Not that there is anything wrong with them (we have a lot to thank Brent Hartinger and Alex Sanchez for), but I think many teens are drawn to edgy writing, something out of the ordinary. We want to see young gay characters presented in a new way. Vintage is a cleverly crafted love story with a twist. It has a darker feel to it, and the 17-year-old gay protagonist is anything but stereotypical.
I've wondered why, with all the fantastical YA novels out there, there aren't more queer speculative fiction books aimed at teens. Outside of Tripping to Somewhere (Kristopher Reisz) and Baby Be-bop (Francesca Lia Block), there really isn't much. I suppose I've found my niche. Vintage deals with a dark subject; the notion that we commonly fall in love but rarely with the right person and how these mistakes are part of life. And sometimes these mistakes are tragic.
Not everyone’s familiar with speculative fiction. What does the term mean to you?
I think of any story with the fantastic, the strange, and the weird. A fairy tale is speculative fiction. So is a vampire story. Or if you wrote a steampunk novel. The atmosphere is charged with "something amiss."
When aspiring writers look to others for advice they’re often told to “write what they know” and to find “an authentic voice”. But as a writer of speculative fiction/fantasy you’re doing the very opposite, you write about the unknown. You can‘t always draw on your own experiences.
Well, it's only half-true that I cannot draw on my own experiences when writing a speculative fiction story. My latest, The Harvestbuck, involves a gay teen getting a phone call from his (straight) best friend to come get him from a lonely highway in the woods late at night. While the weirder elements of the story are pulled from my imagination, a lot in the piece is based on my past. A childhood friend's father would drive us around the Pine Barrens in his jeep. And every kid in New Jersey hears stories about the Jersey Devil. A camp counselor told me that deer running through the woods made a sound like thunder. And so forth. So I call upon these experiences, these facts, to weave together with the fantastical elements... so the story seems more likely to have happened.
Reading is a class issue, but it’s also become a gender issue. Boys lack male reader role models and when it comes to books there’s little beyond fast paced action/adventure stories and “funny” MG/YA about puberty and girls. Few of these books challenge the reader to think for himself, or teach the reader about diversity and how to be empathic, for example. Books written for girls are all about feeling, but books written for boys are all about doing. Would you agree?
That's an interesting viewpoint. I haven't read as much MG as I have YA, so I'm curious if this is actually the case. I have heard that publishers seek more fast-paced titles for boy readers because they are concerned the boy might abandon the book if he's not engaged with the story. One could say that movies aimed at males are often action-packed while those targeting women are more... introspective and romantic? I think the problem is that not every boy or girl reads like the boy or girl next door. Blanket statements smother. And, a story without some action is stagnant and one without emotions is empty.
Were you encouraged to read as a child? What are some of your early book memories?
Yeah, my parents were always reading books. I saw this as a perfectly normal pastime and I remember being taken to the library to get books. I never asked the librarian for help because I was shy and fearful that my love of scary and strange books would be mocked, so I had a tough time finding good reads. Thankfully, Roald Dahl and John Bellairs came to my rescue.
When I “came out” to my friends last year I felt an enormous sense of relief, but I also felt as though I’d lost part of my masculinity, and that being gay means “I’ll grow up to be less than a man”. I’ve noticed that many gay teens buy into all the gay stereotypes, it’s almost expected. Is this something you experienced as a teen, and what was your own “coming out” process like?
Well, I came out much, much later than you. In my mid-20's to friends and in my early 30's to my family. I often wonder why the old stereotypes still have any strength. I'm certainly not against any boy wanting to be flamboyant and feminine--I think there's a certain boldness in adopting such traits. But aren't we past the "gay boys should be shallow and interested in musicals and shopping and catty remarks" idea? Or is the media behind the times and presenting a mirage? I went to a gender-bending/queer performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Of the boys seated in the audience, I doubt any of them filled the majority of stereotypes. They were unique individuals.
I think gay teens need to have the confidence of being out without feeling they must adopt traits to appear "gay." What is masculinity and why must it be a heterosexual condition? It's an illusion of traits -- clothing styles, gestures, speech tones -- that are triggers for society but mean little about whether or not a person is strong-willed and able-bodied.
Lethe Press is a very “adult” publisher. What’s the biggest difference when writing for teens? I recently read a blog post by author Blake Nelson where he expresses that teen readers have become more conservative since the 90’s when his novel Girl was published and the world has “cleaned up“. I was surprised by this. Do you agree with his statement?
I don't know if YA books are so conservative. I do know that sites that sell a lot of books, Wal-mart and Sam's Club, ask that titles not have profanity or much sex. If you want to sell through those outlets, you can censor yourself. I think teens think about sex more than adults do, I know I did. If you have never had sex, you wonder about it. If you have had sex, you wonder about it even more. I think that an author owes it to his readership to be honest. If a story demands "adult" elements then you are better off with them than writing with one hand tied behind your back by the decision.
I happen to know that you like dance. There’s so much poetry and emotion in it, but I’ve yet to find a single book about boys who dance.
Yeah, I have wondered about this. So many gay youth are involved in the arts, but mediums like dance and theater are very visual and as hard to capture on the 2-dimensional page as music is. Maybe with the progression of e-books you will have more mixed media involved, but until then it's hard to express the nature of dance. I've often wanted to write a book involving ballet. Perhaps one day...
How do you feel about happy endings in YA fiction? Some adults seem to believe that teens can't handle the truth, that the world isn't always a good place. Suicide, for example, is still a sensitive topic to write about.
Well, I'm for happy endings in gay YA fiction, I'm tired of reading stories where gay kids don't win, don't prosper. I'm editing an anthology of inspirational stories for queer teens that should release next year. I understand that life is difficult and rarely fair, but we often read books for escapism. I think a better ending than the tragic one is the one neither all-good or all-bad. In Vintage, yes, the Narrator has found real love but his future won't be an easy one because he'll always be harassed by ghosts.
Steve Berman was born in Philadelphia, but grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey. He’s the author of Vintage: A Ghost Story, a finalist for the Andre Norton Award. Speaking Out (Bold Strokes Soliloquy Books) is scheduled for release in 2011.
