It’s the end of the year, the end of a decade. And for a handful of 2018 debuts, it’s the end of the year in which our second books made their way onto bookstore and library shelves. As I wrote at the beginning of my acknowledgments for All Eyes on Us, “Writing a second novel and ushering it into the world is no easy feat (said every author everywhere).”
But it can be done! And in the spirit of the collective sigh of relief heaved by 2019 sophomore novelists the world over, I spoke with four YA authors who released their second books this year about defeating the Book Two Blues and celebrating the release of their second novels. Ranging in publication from January through October 2019, here are four sophomore titles to add to your winter reading list:
Rachel Lynn Solomon, author of You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone and Our Year of Maybe (Simon Pulse, January 15, 2019) Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound
Please introduce us to your second book!
My quick pitch for Our Year of Maybe has always been that it’s about the aftermath of a kidney transplant between best friends, complicated by the fact that the donor is in love with the recipient. It’s been almost a year since the book came out, so I memorized that a while ago and can quickly recite it when I need to. While there’s a lot of conflict inherent in that pitch, it tends to make the book sound like a medical drama, which it isn’t. The transplant happens pretty early on, and there aren’t any third-act mad dashes to the hospital. In fact, there isn’t really any drama that stems from the medical side of things, since the transplant goes smoothly and both characters (for the most part) do what they need to properly recover. The book is really about two characters who have been so reliant on each other that they don’t know what exists outside their little bubble. In a way, Sophie’s donor kidney gives Peter the chance to peek outside that little bubble and explore—though she’s the one who starts to feel left out when not all of those explorations include her.
We hear a lot about the difficulty of putting a second book into the world—and for good reason. There are so many potential hurdles, especially when it comes to second books scheduled for the year following an author’s debut: the experience of writing under contract; the pressure that comes with seeing reviews for the first book; the compressed timeframe to draft; balancing drafting with first book promotion … I could go on.
What’s one challenge you faced with Our Year of Maybe—and any tips for current debuts, many of whom will soon be sophomore authors?
My second book curse was thinking I’d escaped the second book curse. When we sold my debut in a two-book deal, I already had a draft of OYOM, and we were able to get it written into my contract that OYOM would be my book two. So I set OYOM aside for a year while I worked on my debut with my editor and toyed with a new project that didn’t end up going anywhere, and when I opened it up a few months before the draft was due, I was shocked by how much work it needed.
I’d started drafting thinking it would be a very different book from the one it ended up being. Initially, I was playing with the idea of this very selfless act—donating a kidney—turning selfish, and how the donor might turn manipulative when she wants something from the recipient. In my early drafts, Sophie was very much a villain, and after a year away from the book, I wasn’t happy with that at all. What I realized I wanted to tell was a story about a girl who gives so much of herself to someone else—including a literal physical piece—that she loses track of who she is. To me, OYOM is about a lot of things, but a central theme is how girls and women break off pieces of themselves in the hopes of gaining love, affection, attention from others. It can be a devastating cycle, and one I’ve been trapped in many times—always as the giver, the seeker. It wasn’t until I rewrote the book from scratch twice that I found the real story.
My advice isn’t necessarily to avoid taking too much time away from a project, but rather to allow yourself the time for the right story to find you. I’m so, so glad it did.
On the flip side, was there anything you found to be easier the second time around?
Reviews were a lot easier the second time around. I’m a little ashamed to admit this, but the first six months after my debut was published, I read every single review on Goodreads, positive and negative, and I also had a Google alert for the book’s title. Mainly, I was curious—having a book out in the world felt surreal, and the reviews were a reminder that there were people out there reading it and reacting to it. The thing is, though, if someone says something great about your book, there’s a good chance they’ll tag you or someone else will happen upon the review and let you know. If someone says something terrible about the book, that’s on me if I go and seek it out.
At that six-month mark, I stopped going on Goodreads every day. I stopped my Google alert. Those things definitely weren’t helping me write my next book, and they weren’t great for my mental health, either. If I ever feel tempted to check Goodreads for OYOM, I sort by 5 star reviews. I’m sure I’ll be tempted to peek for my next book, but now I have a better idea of what I can handle.
With two books now out in the world (hooray!) what’s up next for you?
My third book, Today Tonight Tomorrow, will be out from Simon Pulse on June 16, 2020! While it’s also contemporary YA, it’s a bit of a departure in tone from my first two books. It’s a rivals-to-lovers romantic comedy that takes place in twenty-four hours on the last day of senior year, and it’s my favorite thing I’ve ever written. It also functions a bit as a love letter to Seattle, and I can’t wait until it’s out in the world!
I’m currently working on my fourth YA, another rom-com scheduled for summer 2021. Thank you for having me back, Kit!
Thank you for coming back, Rachel!
Our Year of Maybe is out now! Find more information from the publisher, including the book’s summary, here.
Rachel Lynn Solomon writes, tap dances, and collects lipstick in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone, Our Year of Maybe, and Today Tonight Tomorrow (June 16, 2020), all from Simon & Schuster/Simon Pulse. A longtime Pitch Wars mentor, she lives near a zoo with her husband and tiny dog.
Website | Twitter | Instagram
Adrienne Kisner, author of Dear Rachel Maddow and The Confusion of Laurel Graham (Feiwel & Friends, June 4, 2019) Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound
I don’t want to be alarmist here, but the number of birds in the world is decreasing. Actually, no, I do want to be alarmist—we should all be running around with our hair on fire.
This planet doesn’t need us. It will abide. It will clean itself of whatever toxins we create and there will be creatures who live until our sun goes nova. If humanity wants to stay here, however, we need to start looking out for these creatures. They are remarkable survivors who should be saved for their own sake. But they are also among those who sustain the ecosystem we need to survive.
That’s where Laurel gets her motivation—she loves the absolute wonder of birds. She wants humans to have a fighting chance. She is a super competitive nature photographer, because why not have a little cut-throat competition thrown in with the ecological activism? She also likes girls. High five, Laurel.
What’s one challenge you faced with The Confusion of Laurel Graham—and any tips for current debuts, many of whom will soon be sophomore authors?
I had the gift of largely writing my second book before the first one was out. I am also pretty clueless about promotion, so I can’t say that took up too much of my time. I did have a much shorter turnaround with book two, which made for a lot of long nights and weekends, but I loved Laurel and Risa and the birding. It was a challenge, but I was happy with the book it produced.
In terms of challenges, I knew how many rounds of edits it might take to get the book right. This can be daunting, knowing that there are many pairs of eyes on it before it goes out into the world. And then knowing how many eyes see it to review it. I’d tell authors to AVOID GOODREADS because that hell site can rob you of your once pleasant dreams. Similarly, avoid people who like reading your reviews and telling you about them.
I knew what to expect in the editorial process and that there are ups and downs to having a book out in the world. I think I was able to appreciate the moments of triumph (like finishing a new draft) a little more, before thinking, “Well, on to the next thing.”
Book three, Six Angry Girls, a tale of Mock Trial and political activism through knitting comes out in June 2020! And I’m back to drafting the next book, of course.
Thank you, Adrienne—can’t wait!
The Confusion of Laurel Graham is out now! Find more information from the publisher, including the book’s summary, here.
Adrienne Kisner has lived her entire “adult” life in a college dormitory working in both Residence Life and college chaplaincy. (She prefers the term “dormitory” over “residence hall.” Don’t @ her.) She went to school for a long time so that now she gets to swoop around in a fancy robe and silly hat (like at Hogwarts). She also has an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts (a place like Hogwarts). Adrienne is a birder and knitter with more heart and enthusiasm than actual skill. Her debut novel Dear Rachel Maddow won a 2016 PEN New England Susan P Bloom Discovery Award and was one of YALSA’s 2019 picks for Best Fiction for Young Adults. Her second novel, The Confusion of Laurel Graham, released in June 2019. Book three, Six Angry Girls, is due out in June 2020. She loves her current home in Boston but will always be a Pennsylvanian at heart.
Website | Twitter
Katie Henry, author of Heretics Anonymous and Let’s Call It a Doomsday (Katherine Tegen Books, August 6, 2019) Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound
Though I loved reading YA novels and watching teen comedies in high school, they always felt more like anthropology than a reflection of reality. I grew up in a proudly weird college town (Berkeley, California), went to a weird, gigantic, borderline lawless public high school (no dress code, no detention, no rules besides please “don’t burn down the place”), and had a brain that I knew was pretty weird, too.
There is so much about my young adult life that was weird and atypical and frankly a little unbelievable, and Let’s Call It a Doomsday was written in an attempt to embrace that. Ellis, my protagonist, comes from the place that I come from—hometown, school, and brain—and that means she’s weird, too. She memorizes the etymology of words she likes, tells people in casual conversation about the time Charles Dickens visited a morgue (for fun!) on Christmas Day, and carefully prepares for all the ways the world could end.
Here’s another thing that’s weird: this book about a two-girl doomsday cult and a potential impending apocalypse is the realest thing I’ll ever write.
(Also, if you happen to have read Heretics Anonymous … there’s a cameo or two!)
What’s one challenge you faced with Let’s Call It a Doomsday—and any tips for this year’s debuts, many of whom will soon be sophomore authors?
One big challenge I faced with the second book is that I wrote it at a fundamentally different time in my life than my first. I’d grown as a writer and an overall human being—thank god. Some of the things I wanted to write about remained the same (religion, jokes, weird history) but the way I wanted to approach them was different (more nuanced characters, a world with realistic moral ambiguity, perhaps fewer sex jokes). I knew these were different books, with necessarily different tones and focuses. I knew my audience would go in with expectations based on my debut. I knew they might not connect with what I wanted this book to be. And I wrote it anyway.
Once you have a first book out in the world, so much of the conversation turns to expectations, and style, and branding. That can feel so stifling. The sage advice of the writing world is always to “write the next book,” and I think that’s true, but with a caveat for sophomore novelists: write the next book you want to write, even if you’re not sure it’s the one your audience is expecting.
As a person who has moved on from catastrophizing about the end of the world to catastrophizing about publishing, it was nice to know what to expect, from working with my editor to getting trade reviews to planning a launch event. For so much of my debut year, I felt like a dog with a cone on its head, losing my mind over only being able to see directly in front of me. And no matter how much you research, there’s nothing like lived experience. By the time this second book rolled around, I had baseline, personal knowledge of what was coming—good and bad. It was easier to move through the steps and to know if something was really great or a little worrying when I had something real to measure against.
Next up for me is another YA contemporary novel (hooray!), once again with the lovely people at Katherine Tegen Books (also hooray!). This one, Izzy Takes a Stand, is about a sixteen-year-old girl who stumbles into the world of open-mic stand up comedy in Chicago and quickly finds herself living a double life. It’s about the joy of performing, the power of comedy, and maybe also some female rage. I’m very excited to share it with the world in early 2021!
I’m so excited too! Thank you, Katie!
Let’s Call It a Doomsday is out now! Find more information from the publisher, including the book’s summary, here.
Katie Henry is a writer living and working in New York City. She received her BFA in dramatic writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and is a published playwright, specializing in theater for young audiences. Her plays have been performed by high schools and community organizations in over thirty states. Heretics Anonymous is her first novel and is followed by Let’s Call It a Doomsday.
Gloria Chao, author of American Panda and Our Wayward Fate (Simon Pulse, October 15, 2019) Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound
Our Wayward Fate follows seventeen-year-old Ali Chu as she navigates being the only Asian in her small, predominantly white Midwestern town. This book explores discrimination, first love, family conflict, and there are So. Many. Secrets! There is also a retelling of one of China’s four famous folk tales, The Butterfly Lovers, which is a story I (and many Chinese Americans) grew up with.
I wrote this book to explore the dangers of miscommunication, which was inspired by my own journey with my parents. Through writing American Panda and trying to understand their side, we started communicating better, and I wanted to capture what the before and after of that looks like.
What’s one challenge you faced with Our Wayward Fate—and any tips for this year’s debuts, many of whom will soon be sophomore authors?
Once reviews began rolling in for American Panda, I began having too many other voices in my head as I drafted Our Wayward Fate. I thought too much about what others might say, and it slowed the words from getting down on the page because I couldn’t see the best path forward. It wasn’t until, with time, I remembered why I started writing in the first place—to write honestly about stories that excite me—that I was able to write smoothly and focus on making this the best book I could make it based on my experiences. I don’t have any tricks, and it did take me some time, but I will say that there’s hope, and this process was not as bad as the stories I’d heard about the sophomore slump.
Because I’d gone through editing and trial by fire with the first book, writing the second book—both drafting and revising—was a lot smoother. I had a clearer sense of what I wanted the book to be and how to get it there.
Rent a Boyfriend will be released fall 2020! This book follows a college student who hires a fake boyfriend from Rent For Your ‘Rents to appease her traditional Taiwanese parents. Only, when she falls for the guy behind the role who is not ’rent-worthy, her carefully curated life begins to unravel.
I’ve absolutely loved working on this romantic comedy, and I can’t wait to share it with readers! You can find it on Goodreads here.
Eek, that sounds amazing. Thank you, Gloria!
Our Wayward Fate is out now! Find more information from the publisher, including the book’s summary, here.
Gloria Chao is the critically acclaimed author of American Panda and Our Wayward Fate. When she’s not writing, you can find her with her husband on the curling ice or hiking the Indiana Dunes. She does not regret putting aside her MIT degree and DMD to write, and she is grateful to spend her days in fictional characters’ heads instead of real people’s mouths. Visit her tea-and-book-filled world at:
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 and edits for private clients. She is the author of the young adult novels See All the Stars and All Eyes on Us (out now from Simon & Schuster / Margaret K. McElderry Books). I Killed Zoe Spanos, her third YA thriller, will follow in June 2020.
For more second book highlights and authors’ tips for battling the Book Two Blues, visit the 2018 Debut-to-Debut sophomore round-up! You can find all the interviews in the Debut-to-Debut series collected right here.