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Nuts & Bolts: John Scalzi

August 4, 2008 This week's Nuts & Bolts interviewee is author John Scalzi, who just added Zoe's Tale (Tor, August 2008) to his acclaimed Old Man's War series.

Genreville: Where did you get the idea of revisiting the events of The Last Colony from Zoë's point of view, and what attracted you to that idea?

John Scalzi: It was a convergence of a few factors. The first was that Tor and I had discussed me writing something in the "Old Man's War" universe that would be "YA-reader friendly" -- not a Young Adult book in itself, but something that could be given to YA readers without much of an issue in terms of language, sexual content and so on. As we were discussing this, I was getting feedback from Last Colony readers, and they were interested in learning more about Zoë. So it seemed like a good way to make both my publisher and readers happy.

As for revisiting the timeframe of Last Colony, one motivator was that there were a couple of plot points it turns out I didn't explain sufficiently well, and this gave me a chance to deal with those. Also, simply as a story, it made sense: It was a dramatic time in Zoë's life -- there was a lot to work with in terms of the character.
 
GV: What challenges did you face when pitching, writing, and promoting the book?

JS: I faced no challenges in pitching the book. Tor wanted another "Old Man's War" book, preferably timed to the paperback release of The Last Colony, so they were happy to have me get working on it.

The major writing challenge in the book was in writing a character who is a teenage girl, which is something I've never been (and who I didn't understand very well when I was a teenage boy, I regret to say). The first few passes at the character weren't very good; they sounded like a man in his late 30s pretending to be a teenage girl, which is as bad as it sounds. Fortunately my wife and a number of female friends helped drag my brain into the right place by being merciless in their critiquing of the voice, and in helping me keep it there. As a result I think Zoë is one of my best characters to date.

In terms of promoting the book, the challenge will be in expanding the audience, and in particular getting the book into the hands of readers who are Zoë's age. I wrote the book to be a stand-alone story, so new readers can dive right in, but the real challenge will be convincing folks who don't usually take the trip to the Science Fiction aisle that it's worth the walk. This is where booksellers and YA librarians will be critical, so I hope to be doing outreach to them for this book.
 
GV: How did it inspire or discourage you? How is that experience affecting your current and future projects?

JS: Once I got Zoë's voice down, it was inspiring in the sense that for the first time, here was a protagonist in my book who was not some direct variation of me -- this was a character who has a life experience unlike one that I had had. Creating that character and writing her to my satisfaction was gratifying, since it meant that I could write protagonists that weren't just like me in some direct fashion. Once you can manage that, all sorts of opportunities open up, in terms of characters and books, that you didn't have before. I don't doubt it will make a difference in what and how I write going forward.

Next week's Nuts & Bolts will feature Penguin publicist Valerie Cortes discussing the promotion of Charles Stross's Saturn's Children (Ace, July 2008).

Posted by Rose Fox on August 4, 2008 | Comments (3)