A revelation about how Dash may or may not have spent the summer before raises the stakes even higher in this second installment of the eerie and enthralling Black Sand Beach series, perfect for fans of Gravity Falls, Rickety Stich, and Fake Blood.
We had the pleasure of chatting with Richard Fairgray about his latest release Do You Remember the Summer Before?, as well as book recommendations, writing, and more!
Hi, Richard! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
My favorite subject. I’m Richard Fairgray (the only one in the whole world) and I’m primarily a comic creator. I’ve been publishing since I was 7 and writing stories about ghosts since I was three, but all that information can be found so many other places, today I mostly want to brag about the time I ate 13 pounds of melted gummi candy in a single day. I threw up 61 times!
How is your 2021 going in comparison to that other year?
I feel like I have some hope this year. Obviously 2020 was a struggle for everyone and in most ways I got off pretty easy. All I do is make comics so working from home wasn’t a tough transition, I just had to order a new desk and better lamps. There was a whole thing where my visa was cancelled and I had to flee to Canada, then to New Zealand, then live in a hotel room for 2 weeks without getting to even step out the door, but so many people had it so much harder than me and I’ve come out of it with a bunch of new books. This year is mostly just about playing catch up, I think. I don’t yet know when I’ll be able to get a vaccine (I’m technically a resident of nowhere right now) so I don’t think I’ll be able to get back to public appearances and cons for a while. Each morning I eat 2 pickles for breakfast and I have to hold them in my mouth while I put the lid back on the jar and close the fridge. I can now some with some pride that I can comfortably fit two entire pickles in my mouth sideways and close my lips.
Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!
Pierre: A Cautionary Tale in Five Chapters and a Prologue
When did you first discover your love for writing?
I wrote a story when I was 3 about some licensed Disney characters going to explore a haunted house. The ending was . . . gruesome. I remember getting in trouble for writing it and feeling really good about how big the reaction from my parents and teacher had been. The same teacher had yelled at me for drawing Postman pat holding hands and kissing Reverend Timms a week earlier. I guess all my artistic endeavors stem from some kind of oppositional defiance.
Do You Remember The Summer Before is the second installment in your Black Sand Beach series! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
The sequel to book 1.
But actually-
Trauma, friendship, face-swapping, ghosts, mystery.
What can readers expect?
The first book was really just a way to tease things coming in future volumes. I wrote it like a training level at the beginning of a video game. Lily, Dash and the cousins get a slight taste of the creepiness of Black Sand Beach and with the creature in the lighthouse and the Definitely Not Cow replacing Lily, then I ended it with this big reveal that Dash had been there the Summer before and just couldn’t remember it. So, now the stakes are higher, because Dash knows that something really bad must have happened to make him forget three whole months of his life. This second book gets into the characters’ heads, pushes them to darker places and puts them all in more danger, while also building on some of the other stuff going on at the beach that the main characters don’t even know about.
Can you tell us about any challenges you faced while writing and how you were able to overcome them?
One thing I’m really interested in doing with the series is giving the characters absolutely no downtime. If you pay attention to the first book you’ll see that everything is sort of happening on top of each other, then the second book starts right where the first one ended, and while it covers the entirety of the previous Summer, the current day events all happen in just a few hours. I want to never give my characters a chance to stop and second guess what’s going on. This is really hard because it means I have an entire Summer to fill. I just finished the outline for book 4 and it still only gets me through the first 11 days of their time at the beach.
Were there any favourite moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring further?
The relationship between Dash and his stepmother was really important to me. I established her as a punchline in the first book, just a cold, distant woman who doesn’t like her husband’s kid. In this second book I got to show the first Summer her and Dash (then Harry) spent together and how they became incredibly good friends. It was fun to recontextualize the relationship from the first book while also not letting a grown adult get away with holding a grudge against a 12-year old.
What’s the best and the worst writing advice you have received?
The best is to write like everyone you know is dead. Write without the fear of judgement from anyone in your life and you’ll be able to push your ideas further than ever.
The worst advice I see people giving all the time is in the form of ‘how to make money selling books.’ I think anyone who tells you to second guess your writing in order to make it more formulaic or more like something else that has already succeeded is truly terrible and destined for mediocrity. Ambitious failure is always better than moderate success or safety, especially with writing.
What’s next for you?
I’ve got a new middle grade series launching in September called CARDBOARDIA. It’s by Lucy Campagnolo and I and it’s so much fun. Basically four kids discover they can travel back and forth through boxes into a weird world made of cardboard and powered by Creative Potential.
I can’t officially announce it yet, but I’m starting work on a YA graphic novel, it’s a story about two boys falling in love through a shared love of super hero comics and being pulled apart by familial and societal expectations.
I just finished the art on the first book of my new series HAUNTED HILL, which is a rambling, episodic drama set in Hollywood, with realistic emotion and surrealist narratives. I think that’s everything that I have on right now.
Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
Comics I’ve enjoyed recently are:
- PRIMER by Jennifer Muro and Thomas Krajewski
- EVERYTHING by Christopher Cantwell and Ian Culbard,
- NUCLEAR POWER by Desirée Proctor, Erica Harrell,and Lynne Yoshii
- KILLSWITCH by Tilly and Susan Bridges, and Walter Giovani
- HOUSE OF FEAR by James Powell and Jethro Morales and Josh Jenson
- Comics I think are just great always are DAREDEVIL: YELLOW by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale
- PROMETHEA by Alan Moore and JH Williams III
- THE ALCOHOLIC by Jonathon Ames and Dean Haspiel
- JOHNNY THE HOMICIDAL MANIAC by Jhonen Vasquez
