I’m delighted to bring you the May installment of Debut-to-Debut, for a book that is as hilarious and fun as it is vulnerable and boundary-pushing.
If you’re joining us for the first time, here’s what this series is all about: as a debut young adult author myself, (See All the Stars is coming August 14, 2018!), I found myself eager to start a conversation with a variety of authors in the debut year before, during, and after my own about their books, YA and the writing life more generally, and the experience of putting a first novel out into the world. I wanted their wisdom, and I wanted to share it with other authors, emerging writers, and readers. So each month, I chat with a fellow young adult debut novelist, and then I share our conversation with you. You can find all the interviews in the series collected right here.
I recently corresponded with Britta Lundin about her debut young adult novel Ship It (Freeform Press, May 2018).
From the jacket:
Claire is a sixteen-year-old fangirl obsessed with the show Demon Heart. Forest is an actor on Demon Heart who dreams of bigger roles. When the two meet at a local Comic-Con panel, it’s a dream come true for Claire. Until the Q&A, that is, when Forest laughs off Claire’s assertion that his character is gay. Claire is devastated. After all, every last word of her super-popular fanfic revolves around the romance between Forest’s character and his male frenemy. She can’t believe her hero turned out to be a closed-minded jerk. Forest is mostly confused that anyone would think his character is gay. Because he’s not. Definitely not.
Unfortunately for Demon Heart, when the video of the disastrous Q&A goes viral, the producers have a PR nightmare on their hands. In order to help bolster their image within the LGBTQ+ community-as well as with their fans-they hire Claire to join the cast for the rest of their publicity tour. What ensues is a series of colorful Comic-Con clashes between the fans and the show that lead Forest to question his assumptions about sexuality and help Claire come out of her shell. But how far will Claire go to make her ship canon? To what lengths will Forest go to stop her and protect his career? And will Claire ever get the guts to make a move on Tess, the very cute, extremely cool fanartist she keeps running into?
KIT FRICK: Hi, Britta! You come from a TV writing background (shout-out to Riverdale!) and your knowledge of the television and fandom landscapes really shines through in Ship It. I’m sure you’re being asked a ton about the inspiration behind your story, so instead I’d like to ask about your process. I gleaned from the book’s acknowledgments that Ship It was originally written as a screenplay. Can you talk a bit about how the story took shape in that form and the process of re-imagining it as a young adult novel?
BRITTA LUNDIN: Yes! I wrote Ship It as a screenplay first, imagining it as a movie. Unexpectedly, the script got a lot of attention, and one of the places that loved the script was Freeform Books, which is the publishing arm of the Freeform network. They saw the young adult novel in the screenplay and asked me if I was interested in writing a book. I’d never written a book before—I’d never written fiction outside of fanfic over the years—but I have a deep love of YA, and I was excited about the idea. So I wrote some sample chapters for them, which they loved, and we moved forward.
I am really excited that the story is coming out as a book first because you get a lot of control over your story when it’s a book that you don’t necessarily get in the more collaborative mediums of film and TV. With books, you don’t have to worry about budgets or scheduling or casting or the weather … you can just write it exactly how you imagine it. It’s very freeing! And if at any point someone decides the book would make a good movie down the line, well, I already have the screenplay written!
KIT: Ahhhh, fingers crossed! One of the things I love most about Ship It is how many boundaries it pushes within the YA sphere. For instance, one of your two point-of-view characters, Forest, is twenty-three. It’s so rare to see a protagonist over the age of eighteen in YA; in fact, it’s almost unheard of. We also get Claire’s fanfic as part of the narrative, which gives the reader an immersive inside look into her fandom and world—hence, we get oodles of on-page slash, something we also rarely (never?) see done in YA! I am a huge fan of breaking the rules. Was pushing the boundaries of the YA age category an intentional part of your creative process, or was this something that wasn’t so much on your radar because the book originated in a different genre/format altogether? Did you need to convince any gatekeepers on these fronts?
BRITTA: Haha yeah, that might have something to do with me being a bit of an outsider to the YA community. I have read YA for years, but when I started writing, I wasn’t necessarily up on what the “rules” are, per se. So I just wrote the book the way that I wrote it and waited for someone to tell me I couldn’t. It didn’t even occur to me when I made the book dual perspective that Forest was “too old” for YA, but I never had any pushback from my publisher about it. In fact, they were super excited about it.
I expected a little resistance about the sexual content of the book, so when I asked my editor about it as I was writing, she basically told me to write the book the way I wanted to and they would let me know if I had gone too far. Then … they never told me I went too far. Which, now, looking back, means I probably could have put more sexy stuff in! Haha, but I’m happy with how it turned out. I originally imagined the movie as PG-13 with just enough sexy stuff to be authentic to the community, but not so much that it created a barrier to teens getting to watch the movie. I think the book might be a little bit more sexy than the movie, but it’s far more chaste than the fanfic that I was reading as a teenager!
KIT: That’s so cool! Tell us something about Ship It that isn’t apparent from the book cover or flap copy. We want the inside scoop!
BRITTA: I remember I got the original idea for Ship It the day I was headed to a Mountain Goats concert in 2014. I emailed the nugget of the idea to myself so I wouldn’t forget it, but I thought about it all through the concert. The Mountain Goats are pretty frequent tourers, and they come through Los Angeles about once a year, so when I went to see them in 2015, I had a completed screenplay that was getting interest from people. In 2016 at their show, I had just sold the script as a book. I went to see them last year, and I was in the process of doing copyedits. And this year they don’t have an LA date yet, but by the time I see them again, the book will be out, and I will be a published author! It takes a really long time to write a book and put it out in the world, but at least I can see The Mountain Goats once a year to help pass the time.
KIT: That’s so fun. 🙂 Speaking of fun, what gives you the most joy about your life as a YA writer right now? What’s bringing you satisfaction at this moment in time?
BRITTA: One thing I love about being an author is how much creative freedom you have in your work. For example, my day job is on the show Riverdale, and TV writing is such a more collaborative, team-based kind of writing. The ten writers on the show sit together every day, talk out the stories, brainstorm, write together, and essentially collaborate on every single episode of the show. In comparison, writing a book is a very solitary experience. You get a lot more freedom to tell the story SPECIFICALLY the way you want to tell it. But the flip side of that is when you run into problems, they are yours alone to solve.
KIT: So true. The publishing journey is unique for every author, but it’s safe to say that the road to book publication is filled with surprises, twists, and turns for all of us. What has surprised you most about the process of putting a first book into the world?
BRITTA: What’s been fun is that I never imagined I would be an author, so this experience isn’t colored by a lot of expectations of what the debut experience “should” be like. I’m honestly having fun talking about my book and meeting other authors and ushering my story into the world. I think there are a lot of authors who have been dreaming of this moment since they were young, so they have a lot of ideas about what it should feel like. Prior to this, my primary framework for what it feels like to be a debut author is that scene in Back to the Future when George McFly gets a box of his science fiction books in the mail. That was it. That was all I knew. Haha, so every part of this experience, from the edit letter to the pass pages to the cover design discussions to the blurb process to signing books for fans for the first time has been exciting and completely fresh to me.
KIT: I LOVE Back to the Future! I’ve probably seen it 100 times, mostly on VHS as a kid. But I digress… Drawing from your own unique experience, what advice would you to give to future young adult debut authors, or debut novelists in general?
BRITTA: I wrote a lot of scripts before I wrote Ship It, and each one was useful for developing my voice and getting better at structure and dialogue and scene work. And I think all of that was important. But what made Ship It different from the other scripts, that it got attention when the others didn’t? I think it was just deeply, deeply personal. In many ways, it feels like a story that only I could write. It wasn’t autobiographical or anything, but it came out of emotional experiences that I could speak to very specifically, and I think that’s relatable to readers. Whether they’ve been where you have or not, they can relate to a story that goes deep. So my advice to upcoming writers is to not be afraid to get personal. That’s the part of your story that will connect the most.
KIT: Thank you, Britta! Dig deep—such good advice.
Photo credit Aya Burgess
Britta Lundin is a TV writer, novelist, and comic book writer. She currently writes on the show Riverdale on the CW. Her young adult novel Ship It comes out May 2018 from Freeform Press. A longtime fanfiction reader and writer, she can track her life milestones by what she was shipping at the time. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, she now lives with her wife and their lime tree in Los Angeles.
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Kit Frick is a novelist, poet, and MacDowell Colony fellow. Originally from Pittsburgh, PA, she studied creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and received her MFA from Syracuse University. When she isn’t putting complicated characters in impossible situations, Kit edits poetry and literary fiction for a small press, edits for private clients, and mentors emerging writers through Pitch Wars. Her debut young adult novel is See All the Stars (Simon & Schuster / Margaret K. McElderry Books, August 14, 2018), and her debut full-length poetry collection is A Small Rising Up in the Lungs (New American Press, September 4, 2018).
Ship It is out now! Allow me to recommend your local indie, in addition to Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
Stop back soon for future posts in the Debut-to-Debut Interview Series. I’ll be chatting with more fantastic authors throughout the year!