We chat with author Erin Bow about her new middle grade novel Simon Sort of Says, which is a hilarious, wrenching, hopeful novel about finding your friends, healing your heart, and speaking your truth.
Hi, Erin! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hey! I’m happy to be at The Nerd Daily, having counted myself a nerd since before it was cool – or indeed socially acceptable. One of the great things about growing up is that I no longer remotely care if it’s cool. Indeed, I have found my fellow nerds to make a nest with – a husband that just finished reading The Murderbot Diaries to me and our kids – two teens to watch Star Trek and the Owl House and Murdoch Mysteries with and to share creative projects with – and a community of friends and fellow writers to share that geeky joy.
Other things that give me joy are my garden, my sweet dog Luna and my emotional support cat Cygnus, cooking (I miss throwing potluck dinner parties), thrift store shopping, and buying jewelry from artists.
And there is writing, of course. Simon Sort of Says is my sixth novel for young readers. I love writing. I’m always collecting shiny bits of characters and ideas and building it into strange constructions, like a bower bird if bower birds were really klutzy.
Besides my novels, I write poetry, and I write about physics as a science writer for the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. The poetry and the physics aren’t as far apart as you’d think.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
So young that I don’t remember it: my mom tells me that I used to compose lyrics and stories and demand to have them written down. The earliest documented one is “No Dogs Allowed In the Grocery Store,” a song set to the tune of “Joshua Fit The Battle at Jericho,” which I wrote when I was three.
I was always fiddling with words, and always had my nose in a book. I mostly wrote poetry, and my first literary prize was a pizza I won for best poem in junior high. I still write poetry though I hope it’s slightly better now.
But, I never met an author, and it didn’t occur to me that I could write books. I actually studied physics – experimental particle physics specifically – and I was in my thirties before I started to write novels.
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!
The first book I remember reading was the classroom reader in kindergarten. There were a series of these: they were about Sam and Ann and their dog Nip, and generally were tame stories about, say, going to the store for malt. But there was one that I think must have been a retelling of something – it had a sphynx and a riddle and a sword and the Gordian Knot. I was entranced and read ahead – and then spent days trying to hide that I’d read ahead because I was afraid I’d be in trouble. I guess I’ve always had trouble putting books down, especially if there are swords. Also, you can tell I became a genre reader early!
In my early teens I imprinted on three books: The Lord of the Rings, The Last Unicorn, and The Left Hand of Darkness. My creative imagination is still mostly defined by those – mostly genre, beautifully written, somewhat melancholy, interested in big questions of morality, by driven by ordinary hobbitish people, not great heroes.
In the last few years I’ve become obsessed with Station Eleven – I would really like to attempt a book like that, with shifting point of views, shifting voice, and a non-linear storytelling.
Your new middle grade novel, Simon Sort of Says, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
“Oh God, I can’t possibly” is exactly five words, right?
How about “a comedy about healing from trauma?”
What can readers expect?
Plotwise, Simon Sort of Says is about a twelve year old by named Simon. He’s just moved from his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, to the small town of Grin And Bear It, Nebraska. Grin And Bear It is part of the National Quiet Zone: it’s surrounded by radio telescopes, and cellphones and the internet are banned so that scientists can listen for faint signals from space.
Most seventh graders would think this was a nightmare – new town, new school, and no internet — but Simon is all for it, because he is famous for the worst thing that ever happened to him, and he’s eager to leave that fame behind. Now that no one can google him, he starts spinning stories. And when he makes a new friend who wants to give the radio astronomers what they’re looking for, he gets the chance to spin a new story on a grand scale.
The book is funny – the word “shenanigans” comes to mind – but the thing Simon is hiding is big, and really tough. The book works like a spiral: readers will figure out what happened to Simon at about the one third mark; his friends will get it at about the two-thirds mark, but it’s not till the very end that Simon will understand that he can tell the truth about what’s happened to him, without having to be defined by it.
So in between the mass emu outbreaks and that incident with the squirrel in the church there is some healing and bravery happening – the kind that will make you cry.
Basically, this:
Where did the inspiration for Simon Sort of Says come from?
I was trained to be a particle physicist – one of those people smashing high-energy beams of particles into targets in order to create something new in the resulting mess. I sometimes describe my drafting process as what happens when particle physicists write novels: I have what seems like a solid idea, but it doesn’t get going until another idea hits it at full speed.
So. Before I started Simon Sort of Says, I had been tucking bower-bird scraps of a comedy set in a funeral home away for years. It had a precognition plot and an invisible talking raven named Loki, and it was reasonably solid on paper but hadn’t come to life.
Then three things happened in one week: my child had to hide in a supply closet for hours during a school lockdown; I read a long-form article about the real National Radio Quiet Zone, where cellphones are banned; and I saw this MAD magazine cartoon on school shootings. The first two, the lockdown and the Quiet Zone, collided to create the plot. The cartoon felt like a kind of permission to write something hard and healing for my kids and kids like them.
I know this kind of humor isn’t for everyone, but I have always used lightness and humor to pull myself, my kids and my readers through dark places. That’s what I hope this book can be: a light.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
My favorite character to write was definitely Simon’s best friend, Agate. She was meant to be a minor character, but she walked away with the first scene she was in, and …. here, I’ll just give you her introductory moment:
I’m halfway through my cheese-and-jam sandwich when a girl plops down cross-legged in front of me. I noticed her in homeroom this morning. Honestly, she was hard to miss: She has bright red hair, she’s fat in a “yeah, what about it” kinda way, and she’s wearing a purple hoodie that says “Truth AND Dare.”
She folds her hands in front of her. “What,” she says—declaims, really, like she’s on a stage and starting her big number—“is the most disgusting thing you know?”
Let’s talk about the gorgeous cover! What was it like seeing the cover for your new book?
I won the cover lottery, didn’t I? When I saw it I made a highly sophisticated squeaking sound and flapped my hands around.
The concept – the idea of Simon tumbling weightlessly from the past to the future, is the brainchild of Philip Buchanan, who’s the senior designer at Disney-Hyperion, and the illustration is from Celia Krampien. I love all the little details hidden in it, from the peacock to the orange ribbon to the half-mast flag.
There is truly nothing like seeing a cover, seeing your words all book shaped. It’s the first step in finding actual readers, and there’s no greater honor or joy.
Do you have any advice for those who may have set some writing resolutions for the new year?
Right now I’m breaking all of mine. I was going strong on a brand new novel idea, with word goals and set writing times both. But then I got some kind of virus, and now I am down with post-viral fatigue, and prescribing myself the potato cure. (The potato cure is being a potato until cured.) This Q&A is the biggest bit of writing I’ve done in weeks.
What I advise for myself just now that that might also be useful if you set a resolution: resolutions are great but they are there to support you – you are not there to support them.
If you slip with a resolution it’s like dropping a cane – you can pick it right back up, any time you’re ready. If your resolution is supporting that’s great. But if you have to set it down, you can, and it can be a Valentine’s Day resolution, or a spring resolution. It will be there for you – your writing will be there for you – and any day is a chance to make a new resolution, or adjust the one you have.
What’s next for you?
I don’t know if there will be much crossover audience, but I have a new book of poetry – my third – coming out in April. It’s called A knife so sharp its edge cannot be seen. It’s about science and scientists.
I have just a finished novel for adults that I hope to sell soon, and a have middle grade project on the go. And there’s that novel that I dropped …. I can’t wait to get back to it.
Lastly, are there any 2023 book releases our readers should look out for?
I would usually be all about what’s new and exciting, but I spent 2022 caring for my dying mom and my critically ill kid, and I read a lot of things that were old and comforting instead. I am totally out of the loop. I will instead recommend the best things I read last year. Some of them aren’t new, but they were all five stars reads for me:
- Barry Squires, Full Tilt, by Heather Smith
- The Locked Tomb series, by Tamsyn Muir
