Intellinuts

Interview with Sean Stewart

October 3, 2006

In conjunction with an article I wrote for ARGN.com on Cathy’s Book, I had the opportunity to speak with the author (via email), Sean Stewart, about the making of the crossmedia, entertaining, ARGlite, book. As you can see below, his answers overwhelm my mediocre questions with wit, good humor, storires, and excellent points. Sadly, I was unable to work a lot of the tales Stewart shared with me into the actual article, but I did want to provide the answers to those interested beyond the article and the book. -JK

1. The structure of the novel is unique, with the diary entries having headers that not only demonstrate time, but mood, mythology, and premonition. How do you feel, as the author, that they add to the story and Cathy’s world? Was there a particular reason that you chose this structure as the framework?

When building a book (or any work of art, I imagine) you sort of look for keystone elements that help define your … palette, as it were. The idea for the headers came from the T’Ung Shu originally, but I tried it for fun, liked it, and kept using it even past the part of the narrative that directly mentions that strange geomantical work…

Parenthetical add: years and years ago I was reading Women in Love and I got to thinking about the chapter titles. For a long time the average Serious Literary Novel eschewed chapter titles—they felt a little jarring, maybe: broke the suspension of disbelief a little. But Lawrence was all about them, and I found myself noticing that a chapter title like “Crème de Menthe” or “Gladiatorial” could be another nifty atistic resource to be deployed.

In a similar vein, the dedication for Resurrection Man—for a spider I killed in Texas once, and all my swallowed ghosts—not only has a private meaning for me as a dedication, it also sets the tone and mood of the book *before the book even starts.*

All of which, I guess, is a long way of saying that I have always been interested in the uses of the formal superstructure of a book to set mood & tone.

Plus, you know, it sounds cool.

2. Your previous novels have been adult, science fiction. What was the impetus for breaking your model and writing for the teen audience? Did you struggle at all with the writing process? Why did you choose a female protagonist over the more sellable male?

Well, not to argue, but Passion Play was an SF/mystery novel, Nobody’s Son a YA/Fantasy hybrid, Resurrection Man a magic realist/ghost story, Clouds End high fantasy…and most recently Perfect Circle, a book set in the present day about an aging punk who sees ghosts, was up for the Nebula SF award. In short, my habit of NOT sticking to one genre of writing has been the bane of my editors for as long as I have had a career.

I didn’t, actually, set out to write a book for a teen audience, except insofar as I wanted to write a book that my own kids would like. Nobody’s Son was written as a straight-up fantasy novel; I was shocked when it won a YA award. These kinds of distinctions are a lot more meaningful to marketers than to writers (or, I think, readers).

One of the things that was nice about the Beast was that the breadth of writing that had to be done allowed me to channel, you know, *everybody* — there was pastiche Asimov and Dostoyevsky and Iain Banks and Cormac McCarthy and many others all blenderized into that puppy.

So, short version, I never struggled with “trying to write for a teen audience” because I never tried to write for a teen audience. I tried to write a book I would like with a 17 year old protagonist, and the caveat that it should be a little less emotionally harrowing than some of my novels have been. (My eldest daughter’s pithy review of Galveston: “Too much woe, Daddy.”)

Why did we choose to write about a female protagonist? Excellent question—it has since been pointed out to us about a million times that a guy would have made the whole project a whole lot more saleable in Hollywood, etc. If you happen to have read the rest of my books, you’ll see I’ve written two other novels with first person female protagonists, and women are in major roles in most of the others. I grew up as the child of a single mom, my kids are both female, and by an amazing coincidence, my wife is also a woman.

The short answer is, Jordan and I just like stories about cool girls, and I have daughters I wanted to entertain.

3. How far beyond the book does the narrative extend? Obviously, there’s the Doubletalk Wireless site, the MySpace pages, etc. Is there more to the story out there to find? Puzzles leading to more content not contained within the book’s physical text?

The book is designed to be very much an ARG-lite. It isn’t the Beast; we have always set the goal that a reader who does nothing except read the text of the novel should have a great experience.

Having said that, there is indeed extra story hidden outside the edges of the book. There is, for instance, an entire scene that was left out of the book but exists on a cell phone message, that tells what happens to a pair of characters that disappear offstage in the book. There is a great deal of information about the many faces of Victor, Cathy’s mysterious boyfriend, including one narrative thread that is for me among the most moving things in the book. That story plays out entirely in a series of handwritten letters you can discover in the book’s evidence pack and in the archives on the doubletalkwireless site. I also wrote a short piece for Victor’s AOL page last week that I am pretty happy with.

And there is a clue embedded about the Shocking Plot Twist to come in Book Two, of course. So, as with any ARG, the audience that enjoys doing a little research will find that they know more about Cathy’s world than she does herself…and have a few things to SPEC about in terms of What Is To Come.

4. Were you able to do anything with this project, because of its hybrid nature, that you haven’t been able to do when working on ARGs, or in writing your previous novels?

One of the things that was most fun about this project, and different from what I had done before, was working with the artist on the ddodles, sketches, cartoons and paintings strewn across the text. We learned some very interesting things about how to deploy the artwork. For instance, if the text is expository, it’s ok to have Cathy interject written commentary on the page. But if the scene is carrying more emotional charge, you can put pictures in the margins without breaking the mood, but NOT words. It was also fun to pattern in various visual motifs that “sing harmony” with what’s going on in the words.

Obviously the cross-media storytelling that is fundamental to ARGs is not something I’ve had the chance to mess with in a book before. Conversely, what the book brings is a certain *permanence* to the ARG experience. I don’t know about you, but I often find it frustrating to tell someone about the Beast or I love bees, only to have them get all excited and say, “how can I play?” …after which I have to say, “Uh, you can’t, it’s over. You can look at the skeletal remains, though!” After which I direct them to ARGN or UF to check out whatever might be happening in the space, but it’s not quite the same. The relative permanence of the book means that, for those of us interested in ARGs, we have a thing we can point to and say, “Start here!” knowing that the barrier to entry is low (get a book from a bookstore or library) and that they can have a pretty good experience even if they come to it a year after launch.

5. I hate to bring it up, but so much has been said about the promotional deal struck with Cover Girl makeup - the major news media, consumer advocacy groups, and even community forums have all jumped on the topic and are waving your book around in the air, both as an example of fortuitous marketing timing, and villainous targeting of childhood purity.

Has it been difficult for you to see your book placed in the middle or were you expecting such inquiry?

Jordan and I sat down to work on the book in the summer of 2002. By 2003 it was done and printed with evidence and drawings and stuff. Then we spent the better part of two years trying to convince the publishing industry that they TOTALLY wanted to publish this extremely strange non-traditional book that cost enormously more to make than regular books but that you couldn’t actually charge more for. We got many many many versions of the “Whoa! We LOVE this! But, uh, it’s too risky. Still, good luck!” speech.

Finally late last year Running Press agreed to buy the book for a very small sum, with the intent of doing a small print run on which they didn’t expect to make money, but the project was cool and maybe it would pay off after all. I have been publishing books for 15 years, and have a good idea what happens to novels that come out with those expectations. At the same time, P&G called out of the blue because a VP there had seen and loved one of the mock-ups. He said, “Everyone should read this! What can we do to help get the word out about it?”

P&G’s interest dramatically changed the way the publishing industry as a whole treated the book, and for that we are grateful.

To answer your question, it didn’t surprise me that there would be a bunch of different opinions about the P&G connection, particularly before the book came out. When people actually read the book, I suspect they will be surprised to see how few P&G references there are. In the text of the book, I believe Cover Girl is mentioned exactly once.

Anyway, I don’t wish to be the lady that protests too much: readers will make up… come to their own conclusions. Jordan comes from the world of games and movies, where cross-promotion is pretty standard. What he says is that whether you’re making the Sistine Chapel or E.T., someone always pays the bill for art, and that at the end of the day, the audience is going to judge it by the same fundamental yardstick it always has: did it entertain me, delight me, move me–or did it suck?

We’ve tried very hard not to suck.

–a little step sideways…. At the end of the AI campaign, one of the players wrote on the CM board that he’d had the extraordinary good fortune to be present for two truly revolutionary social moments. He had been at Woodstock, and he had played the Beast.

Like, whoa.

I think all of us who were there at that moment, and those who have come later to ARGs, know what he meant. You can feel the excitement of the opportunity—and the responsibility that comes with it. I’m on record many times as saying that I feel as if I fluked into the movies in 1910. We have a chance, here—and I specifically don’t mean “we” as in 42, but rather “we” as in all of us together, the ARG community—we have been privileged with an opportunity to help define the voice of this age of the world. To me, building on that chance is good. Putting out work with ARG elements and getting lots and lots of people to see it, experience it, and talk about it is good. Getting the suits in publishing and entertainment to sit up and take notice is good—and believe me, they are taking notice. Jordan just spent a week in New York talking to publishers and the presidents of publishing companies, and they are electric with excitement about this project.

And none of that will matter much if we suck.

So those of us who write and draw and compose and design better work like hell on that “entertaining and delighting and moving the audience” part.

6. One of the “many faces of Victor” is Evan Chan. Coincidence, or a wink to The Beast?

Wink.

You will note that the long suffering Evan Chan, hydrographic engineer, is also encountered in Chancellor Palpatine Spaceport in YODA: DARK RENDEZVOUS. Coincidence? You be the judge…

7. The illustrations in the book are fantastic, and from what I understand, were created for the book by the designers of EDOC Laundry (Shane Small, Cathy Brigg), which, on occasion, has been tied to some of your friends at 42 Entertainment (being the brainchild of Dawne Weisman). Was turning Cathy’s Book into the interactive, fantastically illustrated, novel that it is, another example of the Jordan Weisman Circle of Awesome (JWCoA)? (and is there any opportunity for me to solicit totally awesome diagrams and pictures from the JWCoA for my PhD thesis?)

Yeah, the initial impulse to do Cathy’s book came from Jordan. We talked it over and I wrote a novel about this girl named Cathy whose father was a painter of birds. Jordan tapped an artist working for another one of his companies to do the art. Her name was, spookily, Cathy, and even more spookily, her father was a painter of birds….

8. Were there real-life inspirations for your characters? If so, could you share?

Well, my daughters have a cameo in the Musee Mecanique.

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