I am thrilled to have had the opportunity to chat with author David Yoon about his upcoming YA novel Super Fake Love Song. Sunny Dae is a total nerd who loves to make DIY live action role play videos with his friends. But, when the cool new girl (Cirrus) mistakes Gray Dae’s rock and roll bedroom for Sunny’s, Sunny ends up weaving an elaborate web of lies to make Cirrus believe that he is the front man of a rock band. We chat with David Yoon about writing, books, music, and all things Super Fake Love Song.
Hi David – I really enjoyed reading Super Fake Love Song! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Aw thank you! I had a ton of fun writing it. So about me: I’m the author of Frankly In Love, which came out last year and went on to hit the NYT bestseller list, win an APALA Honor, California Book Award, and Morris Honor. It’s been quite a ride! I’m also married to Nicola Yoon, who was the first black woman YA author to hit #1 on the NYT bestseller list and is my favorite writer anywhere. She and I started our own imprint recently called Joy Revolution that’s dedicated to love stories starring people of color—we’re super excited about that. We met during the MFA program at Emerson College in Boston. Go Lions! I’m pretty sure it’s lions?
If you could only pick 3 songs to describe the tone of Super Fake Love Song, what would they be?
The Hand That Feeds by Nine Inch Nails, for Gray’s (Sunny’s older brother) angst. Where Is My Mind? by the Pixies, for Sunny’s general state of discombobulation. Modern Romance by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, for Cirrus’s melancholy nomadic state of mind.
How did you come up with the name of Gray’s band (The Mortals)?
I was thinking a lot about the metaphysical poets one day, and how obsessed with mortality they were. All their poems revolve around the fact that life is short, one day we will all die, and therefore we should get as much booty as we can in the meantime. It’s a philosophy that’s hilarious and sad at the same time. Gray’s unofficial motto is a Byron quote—Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that reflects his awareness that fame and popularity are fleeting things. After all the likes come and go, only the self remains.
Also, I thought it would be pretty funny to have Sunny steal his brother’s rockstar identity by adding im to mortals to make the pathetically lazy fake name of Immortals for his pretend band.
What or who inspired Sunny’s love of LARPing and Dungeons & Dragons?
I used to play D&D when I was in junior high. It was great—me, my two friends, and my older brother as the dungeon master, all sitting around a darkened pool table with stuff that felt like real arcana: weird dice, figurines, books with cool monsters. This was way
before the internet, MMORPGs, and the mainstreaming of nerd culture by stuff like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. It was truly nerdy activity that we couldn’t really talk about outside our little circle. But I have to admit that that secrecy gave our gaming a cool clandestine, underground feel that I’m nostalgic for.
Never got into LARPing, though. We would make merciless fun of those Society for Creative Anachronism dorks “fencing” in the park, probably because we secretly envied them for just being themselves, haters be damned.
What was your favorite chapter to write in Super Fake Love Song and why?
Probably the chapter Kerrang, where Cirrus unexpectedly drops by Sunny’s house, forcing him and his unwilling co-conspirators Jamal and Milo to fake their way through an impromptu performance despite barely knowing how to play music at all. It’s chock full of nerdsweat and cringey antics and gibberish—I think I was wincing while I wrote it. But cringey humor is the best humor, because it shows people at their most vulnerable, and this chapter brings Sunny right to the brink.
What is the main message that you want readers to take away from Super Fake Love Song?
Laugh! I want readers to laugh a lot, and laugh out loud! Seriously though, the book’s main message is that we’re all faking it ’til we make it to some degree. We code switch constantly depending on who we’re talking with: teachers, parents, spouses, children, friends, crushes. We constantly take on different personas depending on the context—even more so on Instagram or TikTok or Discord. This neverending shapeshifting begs the question: what is our true self? Does that even exist?
There’s no real answer—I think—aside from do the best you can with what you got. So in the meantime, laugh! I was hell-bent on making this my funniest book ever, because after a year like 2020 I figure we could all use something frothy and light. And when Neal Shusterman (who I admire the hell out of) told me on a panel that Super Fake Love Song made him laugh out loud so often his family wondered what was wrong with him, I felt truly seen.
What advice would you give to aspiring novelists?
I always quote the great Margaret Atwood: Read, read, read, and write, write, write. This means read everything you can get your hand on, especially things you think you might not like (boys, this means you must read books about girls). Then, write as often as you can about whatever your heart desires. Reading gives you models to imitate, like figure studies for artists, and writing gives you room to then invent your own unique models.
Crucially, writing also has the benefit of building a body of work that will make you well prepared for when an agent asks the terrifying question: Send over some of your stuff. If you don’t write, you won’t have stuff to send. So write!
And one final bit of advice: finish what you start. At least get to the end of a first draft.
If you’re having trouble, do NaNoWriMo in November—I did that once and it really worked.
Do you think that you and your wife (author Nicola Yoon) will ever co-write a novel in the future?
Absolutely! We might even be working on one right as we speak! 🙂
What are you currently reading, and do you have any book recommendations for us?
I’m reading You Should See Me In A Crown by Leah Johnson, and it’s perfectly charming and nimble and funny. Always nice to see POCs freely living their lives and falling in love.
Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston blew me away with its virtuosic wit. The upcoming Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean is The Princess Diaries but in Japan, and it’s every bit as awesome and sweet as you’d think it would be.
Kingdom by Jon McNaught is a gorgeous meditation on the beauty of the mundane impeccably done in high comic book form.
I will also forever recommend Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson. It’s the American history and social studies lesson you never learned in school but really should have, and once you read it it’ll absolutely change the weather inside you (to quote the New York Times review).
During the challenging times of coronavirus, what are some things that you and your family are doing to help you stay positive?
Avoid the news! Except for the announcement of the 95% effective Moderna vaccine, of course. That’s great news. Otherwise, avoid it. The news hijacks your focus onto things you have no control over.
Focus instead on what you can control. You can tidy up your space and make it perfect. You can hang out with your family and see how silly you can get. You can play lots and lots of video games, or spend the extra cash to rent an entire season of Harvey Girls in HD. Or go for long walks and take bad macro photography of local flora and fauna with your phone. You can meditate and keep a journal. You can make a video game about your dad dying of cancer. You can cook until you can’t stand cooking, and then splurge on a fancy dinner delivery. You can exercise, cut back on things like drinking and doomscrolling, and you can do all the stuff you used to do when you were a little kid, like listen to an entire album with your eyes closed or blow dandelions or study ants.
And you can always read, read, read, and write, write, write.
