We chat with author Lance Rubin about 16 Forever, which is a new YA page-turner filled with tender moments, silly banter, and lots of teenage angst.
Hi, Lance! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hello, Elise and Nerd Daily! I’ve been writing YA for over a decade now. My debut, out in 2015, was called Denton Little’s Deathdate, about a 17-year-old kid—who lives in a world where everyone knows the day they will die—whose deathdate is tomorrow, the same day as senior prom. It’s dark but also funny. Which tends to be a theme running through all my creative work. Because life is hard, but it’s also funny.
Before I was writing books, I was an actor, doing musical theatre, sketch comedy, independent films, voiceover, and a guest-starring role on a TV show called Mercy as a patient with a naked sleepwalking problem. (Don’t worry, they solved it by giving my character a dog that would bark whenever he sleepwalked!) I live in Brooklyn with my wife Katie and our two kids. I love creativity, basketball, movies, board games, and ranting like a grumpy old man about how much better life was before we were all addicted to our phones.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I loved books from a young age, to the point where I would sleep with them so I wouldn’t have to part with them at night. The movie Back to the Future also played a huge part in igniting my love for storytelling. It was a story I loved so much that I actually wanted to step inside it. I would sit on the bus in first grade staring out the window and daydreaming that I would play Marty McFly’s son in a sequel. Then the sequel came out, and Michael J. Fox played his own son. So it goes. But it was the spark that made me want to become an actor and storyteller.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: Happy Birthday, Moon by Frank Asch. Forever changed my relationship with the moon.
- The one that made you want to become an author: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I read it when I was in the midst of an existential crisis in my acting career and loved it so much it inspired me to start writing my own YA novel.
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: Those Kids from Fawn Creek by Erin Entrada Kelly. The way Kelly’s able to unlock empathy for an entire classroom of kids is astounding and magical.
Your latest novel, 16 Forever, is out January 6th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Romantic, funny, time-loopy. Grow up.
What can readers expect?
Though the book features a time loop, it’s actually inverted from the typical Groundhog Day time loop we all know so well: Every time our hero Carter Cohen starts age 16 over again, his memory is wiped clean and he’s physically and emotionally back to the beginning of 16. But everyone around him—his family and friends—remember everything, and they continue to age. So in that sense, the novel almost has more in common with a memory-erasing story like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or More Happy Than Not than it does with Groundhog Day.
The other difference is that we’re not just in Carter’s perspective; we also get the POV of Maggie Spear, who Carter was dating during his fifth loop. The book starts with the 6th loop, when Maggie is so heartbroken by Carter’s loop-back that she decides it’s too painful to be with him again, too devastated to start their relationship from scratch. We also get some chapters from the perspective of Carter’s brother, Lincoln, who was his younger brother when this all started but is now actually three years older than Carter. It’s a story about growing up, identity, connection, and love, both the romantic kind and the sibling kind. Hopefully readers will have some good laughs but also some cathartic cries too.
Where did the inspiration for 16 Forever come from?
Our culture is of course very youth-obsessed, with multiple songs titled “Forever Young” and this fear of aging baked into all of us. But when I really thought about it, being young forever actually seemed kind of horrifying. There’s this 1986 film Flight of the Navigator that I saw when I was five. The main character, 12-year-old David, falls in the forest and wakes up in the future still 12, where he discovers that his younger brother Jeff is now his older brother. I found this disturbing on a deep level, the idea of getting left behind like that. So now, many decades later, I got to thoroughly explore that feeling in this book.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
This was my first time writing a novel with multiple POVs, and it was incredibly fun. Intimidating but fun. There’s a big house party scene I especially enjoyed writing, exploring the same events from both Carter’s and Maggie’s perspectives. As a musician, it was also such a delight to write the scenes that involved Maggie playing piano and singing with her three-person band, Angry Baby. I also liked making up the name of the coffee shop where they play their first gig. You’ll have to read the book to find out what it is, though. Or I’ll just tell you now. It’s Bean-Age Dream.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
Many challenges, many drafts to get it write. Some of the hardest stuff involved the time loop and the fact that Carter has already been sixteen five times before the book even starts. Trying to make sense of what happened during those years and what was worth including in this story was tricky. You always want the process to involve some easy shortcuts, but, alas, they’re never there. Gotta just push through, writing and thinking and getting notes and writing and thinking some more, one draft at a time.
What’s next for you?
I actually just had my first solo MG book come out a few months ago—it’s called Zed Moonstein Makes a Friend, about a lonely 6th grader who makes an AI best friend with results both amazing and horrifying. I’m also drafting a new MG novel I’m excited about, but it’s in such early stages that whatever I tell you about it probably won’t be true by the time it comes out. I also write a (free!) newsletter called Slow Dopamine, about creativity, writing, and using tech mindfully.
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up this year?
Very excited about George Saunders’s new book, Vigil, coming out this month. His work is so weird, funny, and specific while also being profound. I’m also going to cheat here and name two of this year’s books that I’ve already read and loved: In Her Spotlight—Amy Spalding’s new queer romance dropping in February about a closeted Hollywood actress; it’s so charming and beautifully grounded in the world of both film and theater—and Lying, Stealing and Other Ways to Save the Planet, a YA novel out in May by Curtis Campbell that is irreverent and laugh-out-loud hilarious. All three of these authors use humor so effectively, in totally different ways, and I appreciate that so much.
