The Nerd Daily recently had the pleasure of speaking with Robin Stevenson and Tom Ryan, co-authors of the upcoming YA novel When You Get the Chance. Both Robin and Tom have quite the books under their respective writing belts, and this time they teamed up to bring readers all the feels about Pride, friendship and family! We got to ask Robin and Tom all our burning questions surrounding their writing process, their must-haves on soundtracks and so much more!
Hi, you two! Thanks for joining us today! Why don’t you tell our readers a bit about yourselves?
Robin: I live on the West Coast on Canada, on Vancouver Island, with my partner and our teenage son. I’ve written 29 books for kids and teens- fiction and non-fiction, from picture books to YA novels. My picture book PRIDE PUPPY is actually coming out just a few days after WHEN YOU GET THE CHANCE- and both take place at Pride parades!
Tom: Just to be different, I live on the East Coast of Canada, in Nova Scotia, where my husband and I are renovating a rundown, probably haunted, heritage farmhouse deep in the mountains on beautiful Cape Breton Island, which is where I grew up. I’ve been writing for young readers for about a decade, and my most recent releases were the young adult thrillers KEEP THIS TO YOURSELF (which won the ITW Thriller award for best young adult novel) and I HOPE YOU’RE LISTENING (which was just nominated for a Lambda Award for best LGBTQ mystery).
Lightning round: What was the last book you read that blew you away, the last tv series you binged and the one thing you can’t wait to do once the pandemic is finally behind us?
Robin: The last book that blew me away was Raven Leilani’s LUSTER. So many incredible sentences that I just wanted to read aloud! The last tv series I binged was It’s a Sin, which brought back a lot of memories of the late 80s and early 90’s- memories of friends I lost to AIDS during those years, and memories of the indifference and outright cruelty of much of the world to the tragedy that was unfolding. And I can’t wait to hug my parents, have friends over for dinner, and take my laptop to a coffee shop (yes, I know that is three things, not one!)
Tom: I am currently inhaling UTOPIA AVENUE by David Mitchell and I am loving every single second of it. I also recently finished Maureen Johnson’s THE HAND IN THE WALL, which is the final novel in her TRULY DEVIOUS trilogy, a young adult thriller series set at an alternative boarding school in Vermont. It’s totally fresh, with a diverse and totally contemporary cast of characters, but it also manages to be a note perfect homage to the golden age of mysteries. As far as series, I just finished ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ which was just as great as everyone says, but my true television love at the moment is the BBC’s ‘Gardener’s World’ which I watch every night on BritBox, with my gardening books and seed catalogues spread out around me, dreaming of spring! My post-Covid dreams are all about travel. The minute I can safely book a trip somewhere interesting, I am ready!
Now, onto When You Get the Chance! What can readers expect when picking up this book?
Tom: WYGTC is a lot of things at once; it’s a family drama (our MC’s, Mark and Talia are cousins who haven’t seen each other in years because of a family estrangement), it’s a road trip (Mark and Talia make their way to Toronto Pride), and it’s a celebration of the LGBTQ+ community. We’ve both written several books for and about queer teens, and we wanted to write something that squeezed in as many aspects of queer culture as possible.
Walk us through the process: how did you two end up writing this novel together? What inspired you to get this story out there?
Robin: Well, Tom used to live here on the west coast and we used to hang out in person- and when he and his husband moved east, I really missed him! So I sent him a text- I think it said something like: “Hey, do you want to write a queer Canadian YA novel together?”….
Tom: Obviously I responded right away with “YES!” and within a couple of days we were on the phone brainstorming. We decided pretty quickly that the plot of the book would reflect our circumstances – my character would come from the East Coast, and Robin’s would come from the West Coast – and things really evolved from there.
Speaking of the writing process, what were the best parts and what were challenges you faced while co-writing a book? How did it differ from writing on your own?
Tom: The best parts were definitely our planning sessions on the phone. After every few chapters we’d get on the phone to touch base and discuss next steps. When I lived in Victoria, Robin and I would meet for coffee or a beer every few weeks, and when I moved back to the East Coast we both missed that, so this ended up being kind of a substitute for those hangout sessions. The only real challenge is that although I’ve always been a plotter, I tend to write out of order, jumping around between chapters. Because we were writing one chapter at a time, in order, I had to train myself to stay on the tracks. It ended up being pretty straightforward though, and it definitely helped that I could send it away to Robin and forget about it, only to get back a fresh new chapter in a couple of weeks!
Robin: I so enjoyed the phone calls where we brainstormed ideas and talked about these characters. And I loved that I only had to write a couple thousand words at a time, and then send it across the country to Tom and wait to find out what would happen next in the story. It was like reading a novel as well as writing one. In my own novels, I usually begin with a ton of excitement and energy, but eventually I hit a mid-book slump that I have to push through—I lose confidence in the story and start to overthink everything. With this book, it was pure fun from start to finish.
There are a lot of great scenes in the book, but can you share your favorite(s) with us? The ones that you fought nail and tooth to be included in the final draft?
Robin: There wasn’t really any fighting required! But I am very fond of the scenes where Talia is talking with Paige. I loved writing those scenes.
Tom: My favourite scene has to be the one where the car breaks down and they end up at the roadside diner and meet Shirley and Babs.
Paint us a picture: if When You Get the Chance were to become a movie, which three (or more!) songs would have to be on the soundtrack and why?
Tom and Robin: Modern Love by David Bowie, Closer by Tegan & Sara, and of course, Dancing Queen by ABBA! (Give the book title a second glance if you’re wondering about the last one!)
How did you celebrate Pride during the pandemic? And what are you looking forward to the most once Pride is once more a thing we can all go out to celebrate?
Robin: I missed Pride so much last year! It was extra hard, I think, because this book was originally going to be released in May 2020, and Tom and I had planned to spend Pride month doing all kinds of fun promotional stuff together- in person! On the road! Pride tour! And of course, none of that could happen, and then the book was delayed for a year. But the people I really felt badly for were the young people who might have been going to their first Pride, and who were cut off from their supports by the pandemic. I did a few virtual visits and talked about the history and meaning of Pride with students, and of course my partner and I hung flags in our living room windows- a rainbow flag and a trans pride flag. I now have a gorgeous stained-glass Progress flag that my partner gave me for my birthday last fall, so that one will hang all year round!
Tom: We had such huge plans for Pride 2020! My husband and I spent Pride Month driving across country and then quarantining deep in the countryside, so it was a very quiet Pride. However, we did manage to have a few two-person dance parties, and our dog has a special rainbow collar that we save for Pride events, and he got to wear that a few times. Honestly, the thing I’m looking forward to the most once we get back to some version of ‘normal’, is wandering the streets of Halifax during Pride week, watching people finally getting together to celebrate community once again.
With When You Get the Chance releasing soon, are you already working on another project? If so, can you share a few tidbits about it with us?
Tom: I have been working on a new YA novel for the past 18 months and I am at the very end of the process (and ready to be finished!) It’s a thriller set in the 1980s, and I love it a lot, and that’s about all I can say about it without giving too much away. I hope I find a publishing home for it soon so I can start screaming about it!
Robin: Too many! I have a middle grade novel that I am currently revising, a YA novella about a couple of queer ghosts that I want to turn into a novel, and a messy first draft of an adult mystery. I also just signed two contracts for middle-grade non-fiction projects…and I really want to write another picture book as well.
Last but not least, do you have any bookish recommendations for our readers?
Tom: I am really, really excited about THANKS A LOT, UNIVERSE, the debut from Nova Scotia writer Chad Lucas. It’s a middle grade novel with a gay MC, and it is getting raves. I’ll be helping Chad launch it in early May. I also recently read and loved Kathleen Peacock’s amazing YA thriller YOU WERE NEVER HERE – a must for thriller fans!
Robin: I just read and loved Ivan Coyote’s REBENT SINNER- I would actually recommend everything they’ve written. Another recent book I loved is FRYING PLANTAINARA HOSSAIN IS HERE, by Sabina Khan, which touches on so many issues that are close to my heart.
