Rebecca Coffindaffer grew up on Star Wars, Star Trek, fantastical movies, and even more fantastical books. She waited a long time for her secret elemental powers to develop, and in the interim, she started writing stories about girls and magic, spaceships and stars, and weird new worlds that combine all of the above. These days she lives in Kansas with her family, surrounded by a lot of books and a lot of tabletop games and one big fuzzy dog. Crownchasers is her debut novel.
Thank you so much for taking the time to answer some questions for The Nerd Daily! Can we start with you telling us a little bit about yourself?
Absolutely! I’m Rebecca, but most folx call me Becca or Becks. I’m really excited to be here on The Nerd Daily because I’m a lifelong nerd myself. I grew up in a household covered with statues of dragons and fairies, and my mom always encouraged us to think of the world around us as magical. My dad would read us Lord of the Rings and Redwall, we watched Star Wars and Star Trek and The Dark Crystal. Science fiction and fantasy and a love of stories definitely runs in the family, and I took that and ran with it pretty early. I started writing stories of my own when I was a kid, like seven or eight years old, throwing in magic and space and all those speculative elements that I love, and I just kind of never stopped!
Now, what can readers expect from Crownchasers?
It’s a book that’s fast-paced and funny (I hope!). It takes you headfirst into a planet-hopping adventure and keeps the foot on the gas pretty much all the way to the end. Alyssa Farshot is a mashup of Kara “Starbuck” Thrace from Battlestar Galactica meets Jake Peralta from Brooklyn 99, a wiseass explorer and ace pilot who gets in way over her head when her uncle, the emperor, dies and she’s pulled back into the world of imperial space politics. I wanted to put in just a bunch of stuff that excite me—a competition, a galaxy full of fun new worlds and new alien races, spaceships that feel like characters, a lot of witty banter and action—and mix it with some bigger questions about family and responsibility and what you owe to the society you live in.
How did the idea for Crownchasers come to life?
I feel like I tend to come up with stories one of two ways: either I think up the world first or I think up the main character first. Crownchasers was definitely the latter. It started with the idea of a fast-talking, fast-flying, gender-flipped Han Solo type of character, and once I had Alyssa’s character and voice down—what she wants, what she needs, what would most challenge those aspects of her—everything else just really evolved from there. Like, what do you do with this galaxy-drifting main character who just wants to be free to explore and screw around and have fun? You have to reel her in and give her stakes and make her face some big responsibilities, so I started drawing in the lines of this galactic empire and her family’s ties to it and all the other pieces that orbit her throughout the story, literally and metaphorically.
What was the publishing journey like for this novel?
I signed with my agent a little over four years ago with a totally separate book, also a YA scifi, and we took it out on submission but it didn’t find a home. And I love that story and that world and those characters, but what we kept hearing back from editors was that they weren’t connecting with the voice. I wasn’t bringing everything I knew and felt about the main character onto the page and really bringing her to life. I’m a strongly emotional person, everything I feel comes right out of my skin, but in my writing, I was still holding the reader at arm’s length. And I kind of floundered a bit after that trying to find my footing and my writing flow, and with Crownchasers, I wanted to challenge myself to do a deep, voice-driven, first-person story to try to up my game in that respect and it’s worked out pretty well! It sold as a duology to my very talented editor Tara Weikum at HarperTeen, and the rest is history!
Do you listen to music while you write? And if yes, what’s on your playlist? (Side note: I listened to the Battlestar Galactica series soundtrack while reading Crownchasers and it was probably one of the best life choice I’ve made in a while)
Battlestar Galactica has one of the BEST soundtracks ever. Bear McCreary is a genius. I actually had a Crownchasers-specific Spotify playlist that I listened to on repeat while plotting and drafting and revising. I usually can’t listen to songs with lyrics while I’m drafting books—only while I’m brainstorming and plotting it—but Alyssa’s voice was so strong that I didn’t have any trouble getting her on the page, even with Zayde Wølf blasting in the background. I’ve actually got the whole playlist here. It’s a hodgepodge of mainly alt rock, but some standouts: “Best Friend” by Sofi Tukker was Alyssa and her engineer Hell Monkey’s theme for book one, “Jumpsuit” by Twenty-One Pilots was the very first song I put on this playlist, and “Cherry Bomb” by The Runaways is absolutely the song I’d use if I was making a movie trailer for this book.
How has the pandemic affected your writing and how have you found ways to keep your creative work going?
It’s tricky, I won’t lie. Initially I think it all just felt so overwhelming that, like many people, I just felt there was nothing left to give. The creative well was empty, thanks for playing, try again later. These days the challenge is more about finding time. Specifically, finding significant chunks of uninterrupted time to think deeply, brainstorm, really dig into the meat of a story you’re trying to tell. I have two small kiddos, I do contract copywriting work, and we’re still pretty locked down, so it’s just them and me and my spouse at home, and it’s a juggling act. We haven’t really developed a hard and fast tactic for it. I have to just take time wherever I can carve it out and try to be kind to myself when it doesn’t happen.
You can tell by reading Crownchasers that science fiction is near and dear to you. What are some of your favorite science fiction fandoms?
God, there’s so many. I have extremely early memories of watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, and like many scifi nerds in my age range, Captain Picard was my very first crush. I watched Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and more recently, Discovery and Picard. I love Star Wars, too. I used to be able to make great Chewbacca noises, so I was always Chewie when we played Star Wars. The rebooted Battlestar Galactica was huge for me, and my most recent scifi obsession is The Expanse, which is hands-down some of the best television out there right now. But there are so many others that I’ve just loved over the years: Aliens, Stargate and Stargate SG1, The Thing, SeaQuest, Firefly, Earth 2, The 4400—how long is this article? I could seriously go on for a while. I truly love everything science fiction is and can be when it comes to storytelling.
If you could write a novel set in one of your favorite science fiction fandoms, which would you choose?
STAR TREK! Ahem…I mean, I’d love to write for Star Trek I suppose… ☺ I’ve been talking about this with some other writers, but the Star Trek resurgence has been just incredible. I love both Discovery and Picard, what they’re bringing to that universe and how they’re expanding the layers within it while still holding true to the core of what Star Trek means. It would be incredibly intimidating to step into that space, but it would also be a dream come true.
2020 has been a *year*. What are you looking forward to in 2021?
Honestly, it depends a lot on how 2020 ends! It’s tough to project that far. I tenuously hope that it’ll be safer to reunite with a lot of folx that I haven’t been able to see except over video chats, to raise a glass in person and maybe dole out some hugs. I’m also excited to bring the next Crownchasers book together and start playing around in some other sandboxes and figuring out what kind of story I want to tell next. I think, though, I’m mostly just trying to be present right now because 2020 has made it almost impossible to plan long-term, so you might as well just focus on where you’re at.
And to wrap things up, can you tell us what you are currently or soon to be working on? *crosses fingers for Crownchasers 2 info*
LOL! You’re in luck—I am currently working on revising Crownchasers 2 with the guidance of my editors. I can’t get into details, of course, but the book starts out with stakes already pretty high and things only get bigger and more intense from there. The first book has a bit more caper energy, but with the second one, there are major consequences and issues at play. All the specifics, though, will unfortunately have to wait until it releases in fall of 2021!
