We chat with author Natalie Leif about Take All of Us, which is a YA unbury-your-gays horror in which an undead teen must find the boy he loves before he loses his mind and body.
Hi, Leif! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Every day I wake up at 2 pm, drink an entire bottle of black raspberry sparkling water, and do ten pushups. I take my laptop to my local grocery store and sit next to the self-checkout to write ever since my local cafe banned chairs during renovations. For lunch I either have twelve Pizza Rolls or a can of spaghetti. I’m not interested in eating anything else. Once I get paid I’m planning on going immediately to the International District downtown to buy several dozen anime-themed miniature blind boxes. My main in Smash Bros is Kirby.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I’m not really sure if I’d call it a love? I love putting together miniature DIY kits and petting the cats because it’s relaxing and a fun hobby. I write because if I don’t it feels like my head is full of bees and I become haunted by visions. I’m annoyed by every aspect of it almost as much as I’m annoyed by not doing it.
That said, working at a library has also helped a lot. It’s nice to sift through stacks of returned books and media and get interesting little samples of all the stories that are out there.Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: According to my kindergarten teacher I never learned how to read. I memorized the words in all our books and recited them back by their shape and size instead of sounding them out or figuring out how letters worked. It wasn’t until several years after I’d started reading that I even learned how to spell. I’m still not sure I know how to read…
- The one that made you want to become an author: When I was 11, I went on the Neopets online forums and discovered a roleplaying group for the first time. Not knowing how roleplaying worked, I thought it was some kind of collaborative story that everyone took turns writing for. I followed up the first person’s post with a long, tense description of how their character slipped and fell on some ice. I was immediately banned from the group, and was so offended I went off and wrote my own story by myself.
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: Okay, I’ll actually give a real book for this one: Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh, and its sequel Solutions and Other Problems. Both are very high up there in terms of ‘books that changed my brain chemistry permanently and altered me as a human being.’
Your debut novel, Take All of Us, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Title
That’s
Hard
To
Google 🙁
What can readers expect?
C’mon, isn’t it more fun to go in blind? I thought kids really liked gacha and blind boxes and stuff like that…
I suppose I’d let people know right away that TAOU is definitely a younger Young Adult, before anything. I feel like a lot of people hear the word ‘YA’ and go in expecting basically Adult, but with slightly more fantasy-adventure and less sex and swearing. And those are cool, too!
But TAOU is made for kids who just went through a pandemic. Kids who are struggling to jump from Middle Grade to Young Adult, maybe, or who spent the past three years of school in a half-hearted Zoom class. It’s got 14/15-year-old protagonists who feel inexperienced and defensive and left behind. It’s about trying your best to love and support each other even when you feel like an idiot, when you’re scared of the future, and when the adults around you can’t stop letting you down.
Also, there’s cannibals and monsters in it.
Where did the inspiration for Take All of Us come from?
In January of 2020, I went to the doctor and found out I was mentally ill, but I also had a very fast resting heart rate and some other concerning physical conditions. I was given medication for the latter two and told to report back over the next few months. During that time, we would experiment with a variety of medications to find the best combination to help my body without spiralling my mental health further.
TAKE ALL OF US is about trying to monitor your heart rate, breathing, and mental illness while in the middle of a lockdown that’s shut down and isolated everything you know.
It’s also about growing up rural and lonely as a queer kid with a weak body and a scattered brain. I’m a military brat, myself, so the imaginary Kittakoop setting ended up as sort of a mishmash of Wisconsin farms, dry Texas suburbs, West Virginia mountains, Washington dollar stores, and more. It’s a dying Americana nothing from nowhere town, but maybe in the mishmash there’s the core of something true…?
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I love all the main cast! Ian has been a character in my brain at least since high school, so he especially has a sort of seniority and fineness about him. He straddles a very impressive line of being old enough to feel nostalgic and beloved to me, but he’s not so old that he’s embarrassing to remember, like crop top shirts or homophobia.
I also really like Angel. Of all the characters, she’s based the most off what I was like as a reclusive, frustrated, autistic 14-year-old who always had to be the smartest person in the room. My favorite part about her is how people so far seem very evenly divided on if they love and relate to her or completely despise her. Excellent! Keep discussing it!!!
This is your debut published novel! What was the road to becoming a published author like for you?
In a word: lumpy. I like writing, but I’ve never been very good at the querying and marketing part of it. I wrote and pitched a solid six novels before I managed to put together a query that seemed somewhat appealing. I’m not sure how I did it and I don’t think I could do it again, especially now that the system seems to have changed a lot post-pandemic, so I’m really hoping Holiday House doesn’t fire me…
What’s next for you?
A nap. Setting up events and social media marketing is really stressful, so it’d be nice to sleep in. Maybe I’ll microwave a corndog as well. There are many possibilities!
Lastly, what books have you enjoyed so far this year and are there any that you can’t wait to get your hands on?
I don’t get a lot of time at work to sit and read the material, so I’ve been reading a lot of manga and comics lately, since I can breeze through them quickly between returns. Toilet-Bound Hanako is my current favorite! Otherwise, I’ve been checking out the other debut novels this year. No spoilers, but Someone You Could Build a Nest In In looks pretty tasty…
