Swoontini Interview: MIKE MULLIN

WELCOME BACK SWOONIES!

We missed you oodles last week. We had to reschedule our interview with Michelle Hodkin, but promise she’ll be here soon!

And this week, we have Mike Mullin visiting Swoontini Headquarters. He is made of so much win (and looks fantastic in the Swoontini fuzzy jammies and slippers). He also wrote one of our favorite posts ever (really, you must read it). Also? Have you read ASHFALL yet? IT IS AWESOME. And super scary.

Everyone leave Mike some love, and enter to win your own copy!

Lo & C: Hi MIKE! *high fives*
MM: Down low! Too slow!

Lo says: AWWW SNAP! My five year old gets me with that one all the time, you think I’d be prepared. So hey, when I was little, my parents used to hide the newspaper from me because I would get so terrified about the possibility of a natural disaster. True story. (1) WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR BRAIN? (sort of just kidding) and (2) Why a supervolcano versus, say, an earthquake or tsunami?
MM: PROBABLY SOMETHING TO DO WITH THAT PESKY Y CHROMOSOME! Someone should start a scientific personals ad site: “Heterogamete seeking sexy homogamete for…” But I digress. I’ve always been fascinated by disasters, but I didn’t specifically set out to write a disaster novel until I read Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything and learned about the Yellowstone supervolcano. So there was never any question of writing an earthquake or tsunami novel. Plus, both those topics have been done often in fiction, but as best I can tell, ASHFALL was the first novel set in the immediate aftermath of a supervolcano.

Lo says: OH SA-WHOON. Biology nerd jokes for the FOREVER WIN! You were one of the first people I started following on my writing twitter account. You’re just so friendly! Is twitter your favorite way to interact with other authors and readers?
MM: Um, no. Wait, was that unfriendly? I hope not. Don’t want to ruin my reputation.

I’d much rather interact with other people in person. The internet in general is annoying because it doesn’t carry emotional content well. If I make a joke at your expense on Twitter, I can’t do it with a smile and nudge, or tell whether you’re taking it the wrong way so I can make a hasty apology. (This happens way more than it should—obviously it’s one of my many character flaws.)

That’s why flamewars are so common on the internet. You can’t tell what emotional impact your comments on YouTube or Goodreads are having on the recipient, so let ‘er rip! It’s also why everyone is right on the internet—i.e. it’s a terrible medium for persuading anyone of anything. We’re persuaded largely by emotion, not by facts, and much of the subtle emotional content of our words is lost as we type them and squish them through fiber-optic lines.

Twitter is even worse than the internet at large, because it’s totally public, so I have to censor myself, and the 140 character restriction often means I have to cut qualifying words that would soften the impact of my statements there. As best I can tell, the main use for Twitter is simply sharing information with like-minded people.

Lo says: Tell us a little about Teenage Mike. What current books would he be devouring?
MM: I was a horribly awkward, nerdy teenager. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, right?

I skipped from YA to adult fantasy and science fiction about the time this picture was taken. Today I think I might have found more YA to occupy me. I’d probably be reading Grant, Shusterman, Collins, and Cashore. I would have loved Varley’s Red Thunder series as a teen (and do love it as an adult). I’d probably be reading Bear, Gibson, Brin, Benford, and Modisett. I read Asimov, Heinlein, and Zelazny as a teen, and still enjoy rereading their work.

Lo & C say: Okay, you win all of the everything YET AGAIN for that awesome picture. You’ve inspired us. Teenage Lo & Christina approve. Oh yeah, CHECK IT OUT. Don’t be jealous of my earrings, guys. Also, #biggestbracesever

 Lo says: I have to admit, I am dying to hear a little more about the job where you had to eat live termites for the resident entomologist. I am trying hard to imagine how that first conversation went down. Help?
MM: It was more of a dare than a hazing thing. But I’m a total sucker for stupid dares. And termites aren’t so bad—I’d eat them again. I imagine they may be quite good fried in a little butter.

Eating things on stupid dares seems to be a recurrent theme for me—at the Tanglewood author retreat last year a bunch of us went for a hike, and one of the participants picked a mushroom. He handed it around, saying something like, “These are really good, but also hard to distinguish from the infamous Angel of Death mushroom.” So, of course, when it reached me I bit off a chunk. Delicious—tasted a bit like licorice.

C says: ASHFALL was named one of NPR’s top five YA books of 2011, got a Kirkus starred review and was named one of the Kirkus Best Teen Books in 2011 (not to mention the long list of other honors). Of all the things that have been said about this book, what are the 1-2 that you’ll still be smiling about when you’re 100?
MM: Here’s my all-time favorite quote about ASHFALL:  “Mullin never shies away from the truth, not once, in this book.”  Intergalactic Academy.

Lo & C: We try to post links to sites and posts that help us when writing and revising. What are some of your favorite sites to go to when you need perspective, encouragement or just a good laugh?
MM: Jody Sparks’ blog series titled “Self Deprecating Sunday” is both funny and a source of inspiration.

Literary Rambles’ “Tip Tuesday” often has great ideas for writers, plus they host the best in-depth coverage of YA agents in their “Agent Spotlight” series. [YES! We love this site. -Lo & C]

Jay Lake’s blog is notable for its extreme openness and honesty about both the writing life and Jay’s long-running battle with cancer.

And on book marketing, Caleb Ross’s blog is excellent because he actually provides data supporting his posts, unlike many of the self-anointed experts who post on marketing.

Lo says: I have to thank you for not making ASHFALL a ridiculously entertaining book with horrible science. I know that you did a ton of research – did you feel like you were able to use most of the things you wanted, or were there really cool factoids you just could not fit in?
MM: I left 99% of what I learned about volcanoes on the cutting room floor. Why? My first goal was to write an entertaining book.  I decided to make it as accurate as I could simply because I hoped that would differentiate my book from other dystopian and apocalyptic tales on the market, and because I enjoy realistic disaster stories more than fantastical ones.

I like books that give me a character I can follow and fall in love with, so I decided to write ASHFALL in a tight first person perspective. That meant that I only tell the reader what Alex knows. And Alex didn’t know or care one whit about the Yellowstone supervolcano before it wrecked his world.

For example, I learned during my research that volcanic ash weighs between 6 and 24 times as much as an equivalent depth of snow, and that as little as 3 inches of ash can collapse buildings.  So in Cedar Falls, where almost two feet of ash falls, buildings are falling down all over the place. But I never actually TELL the reader the factoid about volcanic ash, because Alex doesn’t know it. Sure, I could have placed a convenient geologist in Alex’s neighborhood, but honestly, that trope is overused in adult sci-fi. One of the things I like about YA science fiction is that authors generally trust their readers to figure out stuff like that on their own. So that, and literally hundreds of other relevant facts, got left out of ASHFALL. (If you want to learn more about supervolcanoes and the science behind ASHFALL, this page on my site is a good starting place.)

Lo & C: Ahhh! We love that answer! *re-reads* *re-reads*Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by Swoontini and answer a few questions. We think you’re awesome and hope for ALL OF THE GOOD THINGS for you. Can’t wait to read ASHEN WINTER, coming this October!
MM: Thanks for hosting me! By the time this is published, I’ll be totally done with ASHEN WINTER—the copyedits are in progress now. Look for it on October 8^th. And if you’re in the Indianapolis area on October 7^th, you’re invited to the launch party! See you then.

Lo & C: Isn’t he fantastic? We had so much fun with that one. Leave a comment to win a copy from Mysterious Galaxy! Seriously! Say hi, leave some love for Mike, share a pic of teenage you, or just help us figure out what the hell is up with Christina’s hair, and you could win!

About the author:  Mike Mullin’s first job was scraping the gum off the undersides of desks at his high school. From there, things went steadily downhill. He almost got fired by the owner of a bookstore due to his poor taste in earrings. He worked at a place that showed slides of poopy diapers during lunch (it did cut down on the cafeteria budget). The hazing process at the next company included eating live termites raised by the resident entomologist, so that didn’t last long either. For a while Mike juggled bottles at a wine shop, sometimes to disastrous effect. Oh, and then there was the job where swarms of wasps occasionally tried to chase him off ladders. So he’s really hoping this writing thing works out.

Mike holds a black belt in Songahm Taekwondo. He lives in Indianapolis, Indiana with his wife and her three cats. ASHFALL is his first novel.