Ooooo...guys. GUYS. You're in for a huge treat today, because right here, on my humble little blog, I'm interviewing my fellow Fearless Fifteener, David Fulk, MG author of RAISING RUFUS, which is releasing June 9th by way of Delacorte Books for Young Readers.
(cue the excited gasps)
Martin Tinker may be the smartest kid in the sixth grade, but who cares? His classmates just think he’s weird. To the good folks of Menominee Springs, Wis., he’s practically invisible. Even his dad has a hard time relating to his bug-collecting, woods-exploring, maddeningly oddball ways. But when Martin accidentally unearths an ancient, frozen egg in a local quarry, he’s in for whole new dimensions of oddness.
When the egg thaws and hatches, he finds himself surrogate mom to a bright-eyed little lizard with a voracious appetite for meat and a tendency to GROW at an alarming rate. Pretty soon Martin figures it out: What he's got is a living, breathing, honest-to-carnivorous baby T. rex. Martin bonds with his prehistoric pet, but knows this outlandish creature must be kept a secret.
Teaming up with Audrey Blanchard, another misfit from school, Martin struggles to keep “Rufus” fed, entertained, and hidden from the world. But when Rufus grows to 7 feet tall—and starts getting in touch with his inner primeval predator—the secret is blown, and all Martin’s worst fears come to pass.
Somehow he will have to find the strength and self-confidence he’s never had to save Rufus (or the town?) from an unthinkable fate—and finally, maybe, win a little acceptance from his peers and his dad.
Preorder RAISING RUFUS on Amazon, B & N, Indiebound, and Porter Square Books
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Read the first chapter
Can you tell us a little bit about your background?
I suspect my journey has been a bit different from most other middle-grade authors'. For one thing, I have a Y chromosome, which makes me an outlier from the get-go. For another, I'm sure I'm quite a bit older than your typical debut novelist (I could give you a number, but then I'd have to kill you). And I never really set out to write books for kids until very recently. My previous writing has been for stage and screen.
What drew you into the middle-grade genre?
That's actually kind of interesting, because RAISING RUFUS started out as a screenplay that I developed with the help of a producer friend. But we couldn't quite get it to the big screen. It was what you'd call a "family" movie. But when I decided to do it as a book, I quickly learned that from a business standpoint, there's no such thing as a "family" novel (even though there are plenty of novels that appeal to all ages!). You have to pick an age range. So I decided middle grade would be best.
Very painful! At least in the early stages. When you're first fleshing out your story, there are so many decisions to be made, any one of which can take it in a whole new direction. And if it turns out to be not a good direction, the rewriting and rethinking process gets all the more drawn-out and frustrating. So I tend to work slowly and deliberately, trying to dodge as many of the land mines and pitfalls as I can before they gobble the whole thing up.
I like to write longhand, so I guess I would have to say my soft blue easy chair. For me, there's something about working directly on a computer that gives it too much permanence. I like to tweak and revise as I go along, and I prefer to do that on paper. So I've got a whole bunch of notebooks filled with cross-outs and arrows and scribbles all over the place, illegible to all but me. And even to me, sometimes.
Do you ever get writer's block? Any tips to get past it?
Do I ever not? It's the bane of my existence! It's that early-in-the-process paranoia again. Writing a novel is such a huge investment of time and energy, I want to feel absolutely sure I'm on a good path before embarking on it. Probably the best advice I've heard to confront it is to just start writing. Write something, write anything, even if it has no chance of becoming your next project. Get in the habit of moving thoughts from brain to page.
Who are some of your favorite authors?
Wow, so many. Since we're talking middle grade, I guess I'll stick with that. Neil Gaiman. Rebecca Stead. Sharon Creech. Avi. Kate DiCamillo is a master storyteller. For me, Gary D. Schmidt can do no wrong. He has a way of grabbing you by the heart and not letting go.
Well, I was brainstorming with my producer friend about my next screen project, and I said, "Wouldn't it be cool to have your own pet T. rex?" It clicked for us immediately, and it was off to the races.
What was the hardest part about writing this particular book?
Going from screenplay conventions to novel conventions involved a bit of a learning curve for me. In a movie script, "POV" means camera angle. In a novel, it's a character's figurative point of view. There are usually multiple character POVs in a movie, and that's the way I did my early drafts of the book―which my critique group tactfully pointed out was verboten. So I had to do a lot of reworking, which wasn't easy, but I eventually got it. I would have to say, though, that since then I've read several highly acclaimed books where the POV jumped all around―so I'm still a little suspicious of that rule.
Can you tell us a little bit about your hero?
As a committed science geek, Martin is a social misfit―partly because of the way his peers treat him, and partly because of his own social inhibitions, So when he suddenly gets hit with the challenge of raising a T. rex from birth, it forces him to approach life in a whole new way. He has to find his own inner T. rex, you might say.
Did you base your characters on anyone in particular?
Not any one particular person, but Donald, the stinker from school who torments Martin, is sort of a composite of a few guys I went to grade school with. Our class was famous for being the worst bunch of snakes ever to slither through white suburbia! (Not me, of course. I was a model child.)
Here's a minimalist answer: It will be another middle-grade story with a boy hero and a fantasy element. But no T. rexes. Dang! Now I've given away too much...
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About the author:
David Fulk is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, director, and (now) novelist living near Boston. He grew up in the Chicago area and has lived in Missouri, Louisiana, Michigan, California, Pennsylvania, New York, Texas, Belgium, India, and Wisconsin. He used to own a T. rex, but he had to return it to the pet store after it ate his labradoodle.
