We chat with best-selling and award-winning author Adam Rex about A Little Like Waking, which is a deeply-felt, surreal love story about a girl, a boy, a dreamer, and a dream—think You’ve Reached Sam meets The Good Place.
Hi, Adam! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Sure! I’m an author and illustrator of books for all ages, and I live with my physicist wife and son in Tucson, Arizona.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I’ve always loved stories, but I didn’t grow up thinking I was necessarily a writer. In my family my brother was the writer, and I was the artist. But I’ve always been drawn more toward illustration than fine art, and illustration is just a different kind of storytelling. In high school and college I felt more and more compelled to find the right words to go with my pictures.
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!
In that order: The Monster at the End of This Book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.
Your latest novel, A Little Like Waking, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
1) Not 2) describable 3) in 4) five 5) words.
What can readers expect?
A book that asks, “What if you discovered your life was but a dream? And you discovered it just when the dream was getting good?” Zelda makes such a discovery after meeting a boy named Langston who seems more real to her than anyone she’s ever met. So what now? If she can’t remember anything but her dream-life, does she still want to wake? And what if she’s not even the dreamer, but merely their dreamgirl?
Oh—and this is the part where I should probably say that this book is illustrated? I made something like seventy-five pages of pictures throughout.
Where did the inspiration for A Little Like Waking come from?
I’ve always been bad at sleeping but good at dreaming. Waking up a lot during the night means I remember more of my dreams than some, and a lot of them are distressingly vivid. In my dreams I sometimes “remember” I can fly, and I always think to myself, This is amazing—I’ve dreamed of flying so many times but now it’s actually happening. I’m so close to figuring it all out.
Several years back I found myself thinking about one of these dreams, and wondered for the first time what the other dream-people thought when they saw me flying. Did t cause any of them to reconsider their reality? So that was the launchpad for the story. And there’s a romance in that story, and over time I think the romance of it became something of an analog for the love I come to feel for my own characters. What kind of lives do I owe them?
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
One of the central characters is a prissy cat (it’s a dream—he can talk) and I really enjoyed writing him. He’s a bit of a jaded poet, and it’s always fun to write a character who isn’t as enchanted with your own story as you are.
What’s next for you?
I think I’ll make lunch.
Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
I’ve read Everything Sad Is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri twice in the last year. And right now I’m enjoying The Agathas by Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson.
