Interview (and Celebration) with Natalie D. Richards

Book launches, at least in the YA book world, tend to be splashy affairs. Blog tours and giveaways. Book signings and parties. Whatever you think about authors promoting themselves, hopping up and down shouting BUY MY BOOK!! --most of us can forgive it on the day a new book is released.

It's a big deal to write a novel, to do the work it takes to get the thing onto bookstore and library shelves, and ultimately into readers' hands. It's an accomplishment worthy of celebration. 

I caught up with author Natalie D. Richards on October 6th, the launch day of her third novel, the YA thriller My Secret To Tell, fully expecting her to be busily running around. Where would the book signing be? Who was throwing her a party? 

Natalie waved off the questions. She had no particular plans. 

I shouldn't have been surprised. I knew this book had been a hard one for her to write. Not the writing itself. It was the stuff going on in her life at the time she was writing that colored the experience. Her father became ill when she was drafting the book, and he died as she was working on revisions. She pushed through the book anyway, and all the while promoting her second novel Gone Too Far. 

Disclosure: I've known Natalie for a couple of years, and I read My Secret To Tell and Gone Too Far months before they came out. These books (and her first, the best seller, Six Months Later) are page-turner-y thrillers, the kind you stay up half the night reading because you must find out WHO DID IT.  

I knew who did it (because Natalie had told me) and yet I still stayed up half the night reading each of these books because I couldn't figure out how Natalie was going to pull everything off. There's a trick to this kind of writing-- pacing, throwing out red herrings--a brilliant balancing act between leading the reader toward the likely suspects --but not being too obvious about it. 

We want to be surprised at the end of a thriller, but we also want to feel that the ending is logical and inevitable and right. 

Natalie's books always deliver. 

And damn it, I am happy that a new one has been released, and on the day of the launch I hated the idea that she wasn't celebrating, at least a little. 

So here's what we did:

First, cake. Because every book launch must have a coordinating thematic dessert to commemorate the occasion. 

(You will have to read the book to understand why I baked a bloody hand cake) 

We went out for a drink, which turned into several, because, yay! it was happy hour! 

(Bar food. The, um, pineapple infused vodka concoctions
are not shown in the picture)

We chatted about a bunch of stuff and I wrote some of it down. It would make a good interview, I thought, but now as I flip through my notes, I can hardly make sense of the scribbles.

(A sample. For tax purposes.)

Some of what I can decipher:

Me: What's the last book you read and loved?

Natalie: Jandy Nelson's I'll Give You the Sun. Oh my God, have you read it? 

Me: No, I--

Natalie: Why haven't you read it yet? You've got to read it.

Me: I will. I promise. Okay, how do you balance your writing with your other obligations?

Natalie: Ha! I don't. I'm horrible at that balancing.

Me: But you wrote three books in three years...

Natalie: four--

Me: Four! Four books in three years! How did you do that?

Natalie: I didn't sleep much. 

Me: What book saved your life when you were a kid?

Natalie: Anne of Green Gables. The world of that book was so sweet and different from my childhood.

Me: I read Trixie Belden. Did you ever read those?

Natalie: (shaking her head) Should I?

Me: No. They're only good to read when you're a kid.

Natalie: Oh, also, The Hobbit. I loved that book. 

Me: Eat your pineapple (pointing at her pineapple infused vodka drink) You have to eat your pineapple.

Natalie: (tastes it) Geez. Whew, that's strong. No. 

Me: Come on. A third book is a big %*^&% deal! You've got to celebrate a little.

Natalie: It just feels wrong. I think of this book and it gets mixed up with everything else. But if I could write a book during such an awful time and have it come out okay... Wait. It's not a trainwreck, is it?

Me: No! It's good. I like it the best of the three.

Natalie: (eating a pineapple chunk) I don't want to be negative anymore about books, about writing. You always talk about how books saved your life. Well, writing saved my life. It's hard and it sucks sometimes, but it's a gift. I'm grateful I get to do it every day.

Then my notes get totally indecipherable. 

Something something about shopping at Whole Foods? and what kind of food Natalie always orders when she goes to Chipotle? (for the record, I think I wrote: "steak burrito bowl").

Several hours past Happy Hour and we decided at the spur of the moment to go see the movie The Martian. We called an uber (my husband) and he picked us up and drove us to a nearby theater.

The movie is about Matt Damon becoming stranded on Mars and trying to figure out how to get back to earth. There's a bunch of cool special effects and stunning cinematography. 

But at the core, the story is about ingenuity and perseverance. At one point Matt solves a seemingly impossible-to-solve problem, and after he figures it out, he's happy. Even still stranded on Mars with no guarantee that he's ever going to get home, he takes a minute to celebrate. 

He says something like, "I love what I do. And you know what? I'm good at it."

Nat and I (and our uber driver) all liked the movie. We went back to my house and ate some of the bloody hand cake.

(okay. A little more than some)

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Want to know more about the lovely Natalie D. Richards and her books?

Website: nataliedrichards.com

Follow her on Facebook Author Natalie D. Richards

On Twitter: @NatdRichards 

On Instagram (where she shares fun pics of her enormous dogs) 

To buy her books on Amazon:

My Secret To Tell

Gone Too Far

Six Months Later

Story of a Book Launch (featuring fun party pics)

The party sorta ended up spinning out of my control.

This has happened to me in the past when it comes to party-planning. I start with something smallish:

Hey! Let's have a book signing for my debut novel Thin Space at my favorite local bookstore and I'll invite my family and friends to celebrate and we'll have punch and cookies, and maybe the cookies will be shaped like bare feet.

But somehow it grew bigger:

Of course I wanted to invite my Bunco group because those ladies are so much fun, and all of my daughter's friends--my key demographic readers--and my Mom, (because she is my MOM!), and my in-laws must come because they are awesomely supportive and somehow giddier than I am about this whole publishing a book thing, and then, there are the teachers and librarians who've read the book and have been thrusting it into their students' hands and now I don't even think of them as teachers and librarians anymore, but good friends who go out for margaritas and chips and guacamole with me.

Also, my book club. And my neighbors. And my husband's coworkers. And my hair stylist.

Somewhere along the way the amazing next door neighbors, who throw THE most lavish parties on the block, took over. (She's a former caterer and gourmet cook. He's a former bartender. Enough said.) She planned a menu. He stocked a full bar.

My friend from college drove 12 hours from Minnesota. My long time friend and her daughter drove 12 hours from North Carolina. She'd made these gorgeous necklaces:

(Here's my Mom, modeling one)

And brought a stamp shaped like feet and proceeded to stamp the heck out of a bunch of stuff with it.

(A napkin)

I guess I should mention here that the main character in the book walks around barefoot. Also, the thin space, supposedly, is a misty and cold place. Which inspired my in-laws to buy blocks of dry ice and set them misting around the back porch:

We drove over to the bookstore and I was getting more and more nervous... especially when I walked in the door and this greeted me:

And I got even more nervous when I saw the crowd--a panorama of This Is Your Life Meets my Bunco Group and My Mother and including some people I did NOT know!!:

 
I took a deep breath and had a profound moment of gratitude and love for all the readers in the world and for bookstores and for dear friends and for my father-in-law clapping and wearing his book cover necklace with pride.

I talked for a bit about something--who knows what. I signed books and smelled the stunning flower arrangement that my best writing friend Donna sent.

I tried not to spell anyone's name wrong and somehow ended up spelling my OWN name wrong a few times. (It's the two l's and the e that trip me up. I just keep looping letters without paying attention.) After the signing, the bookstore owner invited me to sign the Wall of Authors and my daughter noticed that there was tiny space under John Green's signature so I squeezed my name in there, making sure I spelled it correctly.

The party went on late into the night. We stuffed ourselves on gourmet food and my bartender neighbor ran around filling drinks and popping champagne and making multiple toasts to perseverance and following dreams and Harry Potter-like success.

And then we all kicked off our shoes and enjoyed each other's company and the remainder of the lovely warm summer night.

Moments of Paralysis Followed by Spurts of Manic Productivity

So. My book is coming out in 50, 49, 48, 47 days (see the handy countdown widget to the left) and I am floundering around in the dog days of summer. My to-do list is out of control. Words to write each day. Books to read. Emails to answer. Calls to make. A book launch party to plan (Sat. Sept. 7 from 2-4 at Cover to Cover Bookstore in Columbus, Ohio. Please mark your calendar).

And those are the work-related things.

There's also life in general. Laundry to wash. Meals to plan. Tomatoes and green beans to pick from the garden. Toilets to clean. (or, not clean)

I used to pride myself on being an organized person. Oh, I was a whirling Tasmanian devil of a multi-tasker. In fact, I thrived on that kind of busy lifestyle. In my hey day I sat on numerous boards and committees. Edited a school newsletter. Taught Sunday school. Carpooled the heck out of my kids--to soccer practices and music lessons and club meetings and play dates. I also worked a couple of days a week as a Gifted/Talented teacher.

And I baked cookies.

In my spare time, I wrote novels and dreamed of the day when one of these would be published.

Now that one of them IS about to be published, I'm trying to resurrect that old multi-tasking self.

The trouble is that she sorta burned out a few years ago. What happened was my husband took job in another state and in one swoop I quit all of those meetings and committees and boards--activities that I once thought were so important--and that I mistakenly believed simply could not function without ME. (Fun fact: they all continue to function to this day without any problem at all.)

I took stock of myself then: New place. New me. A chance to decide what I really wanted to do with my time. Parent my kids. Write.

And this is what I did for the next few years.

I think I got spoiled.

Writing, it turns out, requires time and quiet and reflection. At least for me. I know that there are lots of writers who hold down full-time jobs. One writer I know has two year old twins. I honestly do not know how she does it.

But I am going to have to figure it out, because marketing a book requires time too. Lots.

How did that long-buried/burned out Super Volunteer Carpool Mom DO IT all?

I guess what I am trying to figure out is how to balance all of the things I need to do and want to do. How to spend each day productively. And at the same time how to enjoy my life (my son home from college for only a month; my daughter who is already two steps out the door). How to deal with unforeseen stuff that comes up without flipping out because it threw me off of my self-imposed schedule.

A few things I have stumbled upon that I hope will help:

1. LET STUFF GO THAT IS NOT IMPORTANT. Do I really need to clean the bathrooms? Okay. Maybe I DO need to clean the bathrooms. But I don't necessarily have to dust the whole $*%& house weekly. (People who know me are reading this and thinking: did Jody EVER dust her house weekly? No. No, I did not. But you get my point.)

2. Prioritize. This goes along with number one. Some things simply must be done on a certain day. Other things can wait until tomorrow. Or next week. My big TO-DO over the past weekend was creating an address list for my book launch party. I actually have a deadline for this because the owner of Cover to Cover wants the list by the end of the month.

3. Don't freak when a task takes longer to complete than I planned. Apparently, it takes four hours instead of one to create an address list. Who knew?

4. Look at the big picture. Take one thing at a time. These seem to contradict each other but maybe not. I read somewhere, probably in Oprah, that when you are faced with what seems like a huge task, to keep from being overwhelmed, break it down into teeny tiny pieces. Makes sense. I'll let you know if this works.

5. Let go of some preconceived idea of productivity and perfection. That hey day I was talking about when I was volunteering to run every activity and driving around town and baking cookies--it wasn't such a fun time for my family. I told myself I was doing all that for my kids (solving the problems of education in America by creating PTA meeting agendas) but one night I was tearing out of the house for yet another meeting and I realized that I had something scheduled for every night that week and would not be able to put the kids to bed. Another time my little daughter broke down in tears as I raced her from a piano lesson to a viola lesson.

6. One of my New Year's Resolutions this year is to enjoy this wild ride of a book launch. But this can be a resolution for anything and for life itself. I'm making an address list for a book launch because I have a book coming out! I should be falling on my knees and praising the gods of publishing instead of whining about staring blearily at an excel spreadsheet of addresses for four hours.

In a few weeks many of the people I love and admire most in the world, people who have supported me and cheered me on and believed in me over the years even when I had begun to doubt, will gather for a celebration. Some are coming from far away and taking time off from their own work and families. They'll stand in line and fork out ten bucks for my book.

The least I can do is throw them a cool party.

Also, I think I will bake cookies.