Just like
our favorite rock stars, when two visionary authors collaborate, it’s always
magic. This fall, don’t miss a dynamic new novel from Michael Kun and Susan
Mullen WE ARE STILL TORNADOES (St. Martin’s Griffin; November 1,
2016; Hardcover) – a sharply funny and tender coming-of-age romp through a
dreamy decade past, as two best friends figure out their lives—and their love.
Growing up
across the street from each other, Scott and Cath have been best friends their
entire lives. Cath would help Scott with his English homework, he would make
her mix tapes (it's the 80's after all), and any fight they had would be
forgotten over TV and cookies. But now they've graduated high school and Cath
is off to college while Scott is at home pursuing his musical dreams.
During their
first year apart, Scott and Cath's letters help them understand heartache,
annoying roommates, family drama and the pressure to figure out what to do with
the rest of their lives. And through it all, they realize that the only person
they want to turn to is each other. But does that mean they should be more than
friends? The only thing that's clear is that change is an inescapable part of
growing up. And the friends who help us navigate it share an unshakable bond.
This funny yet
deeply moving book--set to an awesome 80's soundtrack--captures all the
beautiful confusion and emotional intensity we find on the verge of adulthood.
Summary
1.
When and how did you guys decide to work on this book
together? What inspired We Are Still Tornadoes?
Michael:
Well, I’ve written a couple epistolary novels over the years – The Locklear
Letters and Everybody Says Hello. In both of them, the readers only
saw one side of the correspondence and had to use their own imaginations to
fill in the other side, which I hope was fun for them. I had the idea of
writing an epistolary novel where the reader would see both correspondents’
letters, and specifically the idea of having two friends write to each other
when one goes off to high school and the other stays home. I wanted one of the
friends to be a boy and one to be a girl, but I was worried about the
authenticity of the girl’s letters. I’ve read a few novels by male writers
where they have tried to write in a woman’s voice, and they didn’t ring true to
me. So I just kept that in the back of my mind while I worked on other
projects.
Susan: Mike called me a few years back and we ended
up talking about writing and potential projects. Mike mentioned his idea about the high school
friends exchanging letters, and he asked me to write this book with him. Given that Mike already had 8 or 9 books
published, I thought he was a bit crazy to take such a big risk on me. We
agreed to give it a shot and if it wasn’t going well, we’d be honest with each
other and go our separate ways. Luckily,
it went very well.
Michael: The book is made up entirely of the
exchange of correspondence between two high school friends in the early 1980s
when one goes off to college while the other stays home. So, for me, the
inspiration came from my own experience writing letters to friends and family
when I went to college.
Susan: The same here. I also wrote letters to friends
and family when I went off to college.
My inspiration came from many different friendships and relationships
throughout my life, from memories of my high school and college friends to
thoughts of my husband and my daughters.
It was really an emotional hodge podge for me.
Michael: What’s interesting to me is how
different that world might seem to younger readers today. There were no
cellphones. There were no emails. There were no text messages, Twitter or
Snapchat. So if you wanted to communicate with someone, you did it through
letters or through horrifyingly expensive long-distance telephone calls. I
didn’t even have a telephone my first year of college. There was just the pay
phone out in the hallway.
Susan: It’s funny to think that some young
readers might not even know what a pay phone is.
Michael: True. If you didn’t want to stand in
the hallway having a very personal conversation that anyone could hear, using a
telephone receiver that had been used by God knows how many people before you, there
was really only one other option.
Susan: Letters.
Michael: Exactly.
2.
We Are Still Tornadoes is written
in letters between the two main characters, could you share what it was like
writing these letters as co-authors and how did you guys go about it? Did
you guys take on the role of each of the characters?
Susan:
It was great writing this book together. We got along very well. We would talk
through where we were going, what the major plot points were, then I would
write Cath’s letters and Mike would write Scott’s. We would swap them back and
forth, commenting on them, making proposed revisions. It was collaborative in
that we could give each other immediate feedback on the most recent letter, but
usually we liked what the other had written and we’d just say “I loved that!”
and then move on to the next letter.
Michael:
I would agree that it was a great experience, but an unusual one. When I write
on my own, it’s not uncommon for me to write 5 or 10 pages in a sitting without
even getting up from my chair. Here, the most I could do would be to write one
of Scott’s letters, then wait for Susan to send me back the draft of Cath’s
response. So there might be days or even weeks when I didn’t write a word
because I was waiting for Susan’s contribution. And there were days or weeks
when she was waiting for mine.
Susan:
Yeah, I forget about that sometimes. I’d sometimes worry that if I didn’t hear
back from Michael right away, that meant he must have hated something I’d
written. There were times when one of us felt strongly about something the
other had written. As a first time writer, I appreciated getting feedback on
what I was writing, and I’ve known Michael long enough to respect his opinion
and trust it. But at the same time, we did have a few conversations about
things that one of us really didn’t like.
Michael: Absolutely, and we worked
through them. I do recall there was one
of Scott’s letters that Susan felt had painted her in a corner such that it was
difficult for Cath to even respond. I reworked it to give her the room she
needed. And there were a few things in some of the letters that I thought made
Cath less sympathetic than we needed her to be. I suggested revisions to a
couple of them as we worked through the book, and we worked on a complete edit
of the book at the end.
3.
Did you plot out the book before writing it, or did you
discover the plot as you wrote it?
Susan: Both. We mapped out where we wanted the book
to go at the beginning, and were open to changing things as the book
progressed.
Michael: One of the nice things about setting the book
during the year that the two characters were separated was that there were
certain points in time when we knew it would be natural to bring the two
characters back together, even if briefly, and we could use them to set the
plot – Thanksgiving, Christmas, spring break.
Susan:
Some subplots we developed along the way. And the ending was very different
than we had originally mapped out.
Michael:
That’s a bit of an understatement. It’s impossible to discuss what the original
ending was supposed to be without giving away the ending of the book, so
there’s nothing more we can really say on that.
Susan:
Are you going to answer if someone emails you after they’ve read the book to
ask you what the original ending was supposed to be?
Michael:
Nope. It wouldn’t help anyone’s enjoyment of the book to know that.
Susan:
Agreed.
4.
What is your favorite 80s movie? (If you want to cheat and
list a few, I won't hold it against you xD)
Susan: The Breakfast Club and Bull Durham. Perhaps I just revealed my own coming-of-age
story right there.
Michael:
I wish I’d answered first because it’s going to look like I’m copying you, but
it’s Bull Durham by a country mile. I
will never get tired of it.
5.
Did you both know that you wanted to be authors? How long
have you been writing?
Susan: I enjoy writing but I previously lacked the
confidence to undertake a project of this magnitude. I owe Mike quite a debt of gratitude for
asking me to write this book with him, and for creating a format which only
required me to write one letter at a time.
It worked extremely well for a first time writer, and for a working mom,
as well.
Michael: I can’t say I
even thought about being a writer until college, when I started studying
writing with Stephen Dixon. He’s a great writer and a better person. I had been
writing a humor column for our college newspaper, and he tracked me down and
invited me to take some of his classes. I owe him quite a debt. Actually,
though, I stopped writing when I went to law school. I’d tried to get some of my stories published
after college and had failed, so I decided to give up. Fortunately, I made a
friend in law school who read my short stories, liked them, and persuaded me to
start writing again. Shortly after that, I got on a hot streak and sold a few
short stories, then was offered a contract to write my first novel.
Susan: I’m curious, who
was that friend?
Michael: You know it was
you, Susan.
Susan: Yeah, I just
wanted to make you say it.
Michael: I tell everyone
how much I owe my writing career to you and to Stephen Dixon. Thanks.
Susan: You’re
welcome. And thank you for asking me to
work on this with you.
Michael: You’re welcome.
Susan: Do you think that
came across as cheesy?
Michael: Probably.
Do you care?
Susan: Nope.
6.
What authors would you say have influenced each of your
writing styles the most?
Susan: Honestly, I didn’t have any particular
author’s style in mind while I was writing.
I tried to make Cath an authentic character, and for me it was more
about trying to create Cath’s voice.
Michael:
I’m not sure you would necessarily see it in this book, but I suspect I’ve been
influenced most by Kurt Vonnegut and Truman Capote. How’s that for a mismatched
pair of authors?
7.
What's next for both of you?
Susan:
I’m headed off to my very first book signing! My youngest daughter goes to Bucknell
University, and this weekend is Homecoming Weekend. I’m doing a signing at the campus bookstore
in Lewisburg, PA. Then I have a few signings coming up in Northern Virginia,
Atlanta, and Chicago, and I’m doing a signing with Michael in Baltimore, his
hometown.
Michael:
Have a great time at Bucknell. I hope I’m not mixing them up, but that’s the
daughter who recommended that we remove something very small from one of the
most important letters in the book, isn’t it?
Susan:
Yes, it is.
Michael:
Well, please tell her that she was absolutely right, and thank her for me.
Susan:
Will do. You are so sweet to remember
that. You haven’t said what you’re
working on.
Michael:
I’m pretty far along in a new novel called The Allergic Boy Versus The
Left-Handed Girl. I know that sounds like a book about superheroes with
questionable powers, but it’s the story of a man who is trying to prove to the
world that another writer stole a book he’d written and published it to great
acclaim. And the only way he can prove it is to track down a girl he’d known
when he was younger, who seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth,
and may never have existed in the first place.
EARLY PRAISE:
“Readers
aching for a combination of the ’80s and a romance like Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor
& Park (2013) will be stoked to find this novel.” — BOOKLIST
“Sweet and heartfelt, this is one contemporary YA fans
won’t want to miss.” – BUZZFEED, 23 YA Books You Need to Read This Fall
"A love story to best friends everywhere. Smart, charming, and
delightful." – KIRKUS
"Playful banter, private jokes, dark family
secrets, and major life changes are all explored in intimate exchanges… Kun and
newcomer Mullen craft separate and authentic voices for their protagonists, [and]
the correspondence allows for a deep understanding of Scott and Cath’s
thoughts, feelings, and ruminations on the events changing their lives." –
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
MICHAEL KUN lives in Los
Angeles, California, with his wife Amy and their daughter Paige. He is a
graduate of the Johns Hopkins University and the University Of Virginia School
Of Law. He is a partner in Epstein Becker & Green, P.C., specializing in
labor and employment law. He is the author of The
Locklear Letters and You Poor Monster, among other
works of fiction and non-fiction.
We Are Still Tornadoes is SUSAN MULLEN’S first novel and first collaboration with
Michael. She is a graduate of Duke
University, where she studied English literature, and the University Of
Virginia School Of Law. She practices
law and lives in Northern Virginia. Sue
has been married to her law school classmate Kevin Mullen for 25 years, and
they have two daughters.
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