Episode 30: Benjamin Roesch, YA/MG Author
Benjamin Roesch joins us to talk about his debut novel—but not his first novel—published with LGBTQ+ young adult indie publisher Deep Hearts. We talk about turning short stories into a novel, coming of age fiction, and being an older debut writer.
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Transcript of Podcast episoDe 30: Interview with Benjamin Roesch, YA/MG Author
Mary: Hello, this is Mary Kole and "The Good Story Podcast," helping writers craft a good story. With me, you will hear from thought leaders related to writing, and sometimes not, about topics important to writers of all categories and ability levels. Here is to telling a good story.
Hello, everybody. Welcome to "The Good Story Podcast," with me, Mary Kole, and my esteemed guest, middle-grade and young adult writer, Benjamin Roesch. Benjamin, welcome. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Benjamin: Hi, Mary. Thank you for asking me to do this. This is super fun. So, yeah, I am Benjamin Roesch. I am a writer and a podcaster and an essayist and a musician. I live in Burlington, Vermont, where I've lived for about 20 years. A dad and a husband. I wear a lot of hats. And, yeah, I'm excited. My debut novel comes out today, right this second, which is super exciting. Not my first novel but my debut novel, and it's satisfying to be at this moment because it's the end of a long journey but also, I hope, the beginning of the next sort of chapter, if you'll pardon the phrase, of my writing life. And, yeah, that's me.
Mary: Terrible mean jokes are welcome.
Benjamin: Yeah, bring it on.
Mary: That's amazing. And congratulations. So the novel in question is "Blowin' My Mind Like a Summer Breeze," which I just think is such a cool title. It is out today, the day we're recording this, probably not the day that you are listening, from Deep Hearts YA. And you say it is your debut novel but not your first novel. So, why don't we just dive right into your journey getting to this point?
Benjamin: Yeah, cool. So I think I'm a little bit one of those slightly clichéd, like, always wanted to be a writer, you know, kind of people. And actually, just the other day, my...I have two children, and they were just out in the Midwest visiting my father, who was trying to get rid of a bunch of my old stuff. There's still, you know, stuff in the attic that's from childhood, and every time I'm there, he's like, "Here's another box of crap," you know. And he's, like, always right, and I think half of it gets thrown away and half of it gets stuffed into my suitcase. And he's always trying to foist old things upon me, and he's like, "We're sending some stuff home with the kids." I'm like, "Okay, no problem." So they show up, and they had a really cool thing that I had not seen in, you know, 30 years. And it was a short story that I had written in fourth grade, like, literally, that I hadn't thought about, you know, in a long time. And there it was...and I think I have it in the office here, but it's in this nice little blue folder, and it was typed on an electric typewriter.
Mary: Amazing.
Benjamin: It's this really, really cheesy short story about this guy, like, who's having a horrible day, and then he wakes up at the very end, and then it's all been a bad dream. So, like, perfect cliché from the first story. But no, I've always been fascinated with books. I've always thought that authors were just the coolest. I mean, I think, even when I was a kid, I thought that authors were as cool as actors and athletes. I looked up to them, and I would write them letters. And I always just thought it would be neat to be a writer, and I was always drawn towards using words and telling stories. And I have an older brother who is a visual artist and an illustrator and a painter and a teacher. And he and I used to collaborate on projects when we were kids, and we would make our own comics. And I just always liked creating stuff in that way.
And then, when I was a teenager, I became a musician too and started writing music a lot. And there was a long stretch of time where I really thought I was going to be a professional musician. I, like, created this life so that I could be a serious musician. I had a band in my early 20s and kind of, like, put everything else on hold. And I waited, you know, tables and had jobs that I could quit at a moment's notice. And so I always sort of went back and forth between fiction writing and songwriting.
And then, you know, I realized that I didn't want to stay up till 2:00 in the morning, every night, and the band kind of faded. And I'd gotten more serious about fiction. But you know, I just always thought that novels were the coolest, and it never seemed like something unattainable. I don't know why. Some people, when they hear that you write, you know, full-length books, it sounds like a trip to the moon or, you know, it sounds like impossible...like, "How could you ever write down that stuff?" And I'm just like, "I don't know." Just writing a book, it's hard, of course, and it's arduous, but the length never scared me. I always thought that I could, like, sit down and write a bunch of stuff if I just could get a good idea.
And so I started experimenting with novels in college. I wrote fantasy. I wrote detective stuff. I wrote coming-of-age, you know, fiction, really just for the fun of it. And then, I'd say in my mid-20s, I started getting pretty serious about trying to publish and trying to find an agent and getting, you know...I started to think about it more, like, you know, "How could I step more firmly into, like, the world of publishing?" And as you know, that comes with so much other stuff that, you know, some of which is antithetical to creativity, and it makes you really think about what you're in it for. At the same time, I had a career. I became a teacher. I was married, you know. I became a dad. But all along the way, I just kept writing. I kept writing books and trying to get them out there. And I had some success publishing stories and essays, and I have a blog that, you know, built up a decent following. And was always really excited about being a writer and was just kind of, like...I just sort of felt like, if I kept doing it and I kept getting better at doing it, then, eventually, something would break through at some point.
And then I'd say one big thing was that, in 2016, I decided to go get my MFA kind of on a whim, partially because I could get my school district to pay for some of it, because they would pay for you to get your master's.
Mary: Nice.
Benjamin: And so they helped, and I didn't really wanna study education anymore, because I love being a teacher, but I find studying education fairly laborious. So I went and got my MFA instead. I went to Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass., and had a really cool time and a very generous partner who was willing to, you know, be at home while I went to residencies twice a year. And I made a really cool community there. And it was there that I wrote the first stories that eventually became this book. So this book actually...
Mary: Oh, so they started as stories?
Benjamin: Yeah, this book took a strange journey. Some people have asked me, like, "How did you end up writing this, you know, young adult novel about a young, you know, teenage musician?" and I'm like, "You got a minute?" So, like, originally, I had this idea...I loved music, and I always liked writing about music. And I just thought the coolest thing ever would be if I could find a fictional reason to write about music and imbue it with my passion and knowledge about music but in a way that's so genuine to the story and to the characters. So I imagined this world centered around an aging blues player, this guy, whose name was Luce Cobb, and I imagined him as sort of a grizzled, alcoholic, abusive, almost a caricature, I realize now, version of, like, something you'd probably see in a movie. And I wrote this collection of linked short stories about him and his family. And one of the characters was his daughter, whose name was Rainey, and she was always there in the world. And I was psyched about the stories. I thought they were terrific at the time.
But then, as I revisited them after a couple of years, I just realized they weren't quite what I wanted to do. And I wanted to do something novel-length. And I found myself really drawn more to the female characters in the world that I'd created, and I realized that Luce wasn't quite where it was at. He was a little overblown. And so I rewrote it actually as, like, a literary adult novel, a split-perspective novel first that was between the mom in the family who's also a musician. In the book, the parents are, like, these semi-famous musicians, and they have these kids who are kind of, like, musical prodigies who play with them on the road. And so I wrote it as a split perspective between the mom, Tracy, and the daughter, Rainey. And I was psyched how that came out, but some early feedback I got on that was that, like, "Who is this for, you know? Who is the audience for this? You know, it feels kind of, like, an adult book and kind of, like, a YA book."
And then, kind of, on a whim, I just took a crack. I just thought Rainey was an interesting character, and she just kind of kept, like, you know, like, talking to me, you know. She was like, "Hey, yo, pay attention to me." And I crafted the timeline so that she and I were about the same age, and I thought, "Wouldn't it be cool to write a story about a young teen musician in the '90s when listening to music was so different than how we listen now and how I listen to music when I was a kid?" So I took a crack at writing it, and I could tell, like, almost immediately, that that was what it was always supposed to be. Just something really opened up for me when I wrote it from her perspective. And you know, that was about two years ago. And then, luckily, it got picked up by Deep Hearts, like, a year and a half ago, and then it's been this journey to, you know, do all the things that we do to edit it and get it out in the world.
Mary: A bunch of questions for you stemming off of that great description of kind of where it has come. Did you start over? So you arrived at...sorry pops, you know, we're discarding pops for the moment. So you arrived at the mom and daughter narrative that you envisioned for maybe, like, a literary fiction adult readership. Did you end up just ripping Rainey's narrative out and you had something to work with, or did you find that you had to start all over?
Benjamin: That's a good question. No, luckily, I felt like the narrative structure was fairly sound for her journey. Like, more of the work came in creating, like, a broader world for her in terms of other characters and just, like, giving her more stuff to do. Because once I took...the mom's story is actually kind of the same. The book finds this semi-famous duo, kind of in the mid-'90s where their career is fading, and you know, they used to play, like, Carnegie Hall, and they were on the cover of "Rolling Stone" in the '70s and had a hit single. Like, they were kind of a big deal, and then they sort of faded through the '80s as they played kind of blues and R'n'B. And it just didn't catch on to that audience. So now, we find them in the mid-'90s kind of at the bottom, and they're really struggling to sell albums and to pack houses, and they're playing small clubs, and they're traveling the road in this kinda crappy RV. And so I always knew that...
Mary: In the Midwest. Yeah. They're kind of, like, journeying through the Midwest at this point where we catch up with them.
Benjamin: Yeah, totally. And I always knew that was going to be the mom's arc. And at the same time, I refashioned Luce, the dad, to be, I think, a more realistic character. And so, to give him some depth but not have it be, I think, stereotypical, I had him sort of grappling with anxiety, which I sort of pulled from some family members who deal with that. And I imagined, "What if he's struggling with just dealing with his life, and what if that was an interesting conflict between him and the mom?"
So anyway, to answer your question, the narrative structure was actually fairly sound, and I was able to kind of almost pull Rainey's story out and then just expand it into more of a full-length, kind of a first half and a second half. The first half of the book takes place just in a week. The family has arrived at this Midwestern resort where they're gonna play a week-long residency, and that's where Rainey meets this girl, Juliet, who kinda changes her life and "blows" her mind. But on the second half, it's, like, the next year after they go back home.
Mary: Oh, interesting.
Benjamin: Yeah.
Mary: Interesting.
Benjamin: Yeah. Luckily, I had a pretty sound structure that I could build off of.
Mary: And I like your point about adding layers, because I think that a lot of people who start with an idea, especially maybe middle grade, like, coming of age. It's, like, Katie's summer coming of age, you know, and they want there to be enough there there to hang an entire story on, but I think the requirement really for nuanced, multi-layered young adult and middle-grade fiction is that they have friends, they have kind of romantic elements, especially for YA, depending on category, of course. But then a lot of people populate their world. Their world is just as nuanced as yours was when you were coming of age and in the '90s.
Benjamin: Yeah. I mean, that was...I mean, yes, exactly what you just said. That's, like, exactly what I wanna say. No, I mean, I really believe that, like, the inner lives of teens are just as rich as the inner lives of adults, but I think, sometimes, the culture would have us believe that it's actually really not, that it's very simple and that kids fit into neat little boxes, and that it's all quite simple, you know. And I think that's just the adult in us looking back and being like, "Ah, can you imagine? I mean, that much free time and so much less responsibility." You know, we put our adult lens on adolescence and, "Oh, I'd kill to have life be that simple again." But if you go back and, like, really remember, like, it was so hard, and it was so complicated.
And so I love YA. I'm not, like, a voracious YA reader. Like, I'm trying to read more YA now that I've published in that space, because I wanna meet other writers, and I wanna know what's going on. But I think, sometimes, I find that, like, the peripheral characters sometimes become...I think, sometimes, it's easy to make them foil a little bit and just kind of, like, put them there as pillars and things for the protagonist to kind of bounce off of and react to. And so I really wanted these other characters in this book, the family members, the two parents and then her older brother, to have rich inner lives and to have conflicts that, you know, were interesting enough that the reader would care about what happened to all of these characters, because I think the benefit to that is you not only get, like, richer, you know, casts, I think, then, the protagonist's experience becomes actually more nuanced because you're able to see her and believe her as part of this complex world that's happening all around her. A family is the ultimate, you know, weather system. You know, it's full of storms and sunny days, and it's never all one thing. So that was really important to me, to imbue all the characters with as much richness and inner life as I could.
Mary: And you had a head start on both the mom and the dad because they had been sort of the centerpieces of projects that led you up to this.
Benjamin: Yeah, that's true. I mean, the mom character, her name is Tracy, in the book, to me, she is a really interesting character because I just think a really interesting question is, like, what do you do when your dreams don't work out? Like, what's next? Like, when you've invested everything in your life in this one thing, and you kinda made it, but now it seems like you're not gonna make it anymore, what's next? Like, you know, she didn't go to college. She didn't invest in a different career path. She doesn't have a resume beyond being a performing artist. Her husband now can't really perform with her because he's struggling, you know, with mental instability. So, what's next for her? What do you do? And now, her daughter is a teenager and doesn't really wanna play in the family band anymore. She kinda wants to have her own life and maybe not be homeschooled anymore.
And so I think Tracy's conflicts are really compelling to me because, you know, I have a teenager and I can imagine that separation of what that would feel like, how marooned you would feel, how isolated you would feel, how scared you would feel if your investments in, you know, the things you had invested in weren't as strong as you thought they were.
Mary: I love that. That's a beautiful way of putting it, and in fact, Rainey starts the book by announcing that she quits the band.
Benjamin: Yeah, she boldly, you know...kind of, in her head, she's like, "I quit," you know. She imagines this speech she's gonna give to her mom, "I don't wanna do this anymore." Like, "Your life didn't work out. Sorry, that's not how I wanna live." But actually, you know, what she ends up saying is something like, "Oh, can I maybe take a break when we get back from tour?" You know, she has trouble standing up for herself. Rainey is one of these interesting people who has grown up in the spotlight but is actually quite, like, socially awkward. And so she's quite comfortable on stage. She's grown up singing, performing, and she's quite gifted at it and has worked really hard. And she's got this incredible singing voice and talent at the piano. So she can go up there and just amaze people.
But then, when she comes off stage, she doesn't quite know what to say. And I really like that dynamic, you know. What's it like if you're more comfortable on stage than off of it, you know? You wouldn't even...you know, she doesn't have friends, so when she meets other teens, she doesn't even quite know how to make small talk, you know. Like, what's a girl like that when you drop her into a high school party? She'd never been to one before, you know? And so I thought I'd really like that dynamic. But, yeah, she starts off by sort of telling her mom that she wants to take a break from the bank, and that's, hopefully, kind of this, you know, snowball that ends up getting bigger and bigger throughout the book. I think it's important to start a book with a little bit of a bang, emotionally anyway, give us a reason to hang on and wanna keep finding out what happens.
Mary: And that's a nice counterpoint to Luce as well, who has been or become beset with this anxiety about performing.
Benjamin: Yeah. Again, I have a family member who struggles with anxiety and depression, a couple of them, actually. And I remember, when I was first trying to understand what they were going through, being just so confused by their experience and sometimes struggling to empathize even, you know, and trying to figure it out, you know. Because when someone can't do the things that they used to do and they seem different than the person they used to be, it's sort of hard to figure out what they're going through, because, you know, you can't really touch it, you can't really see it. It manifests in this very, like, ephemeral kind of way. But if you're patient and empathetic, you understand that it's super real, and to that person, it's just as real as, like, a brick wall they can't get through. You just can't see it.
And so I thought it'd be an interesting thing if you were a kid and you had this dad who was kind of a superhero. He is this incredible guitar player. He is semi-famous. People look up to him. What would it be like if, all of a sudden, he broke down in tears and couldn't even play, you know? What would it be like if you saw him in the ultimate vulnerable state and he was asking you for help? You know, how would that feel? How would you react? And so I thought, whereas the earlier iteration of Luce was kind of this grizzled, alcoholic vision of an old musician, I was like, "What if it was something way more, I think, sort of, like, I don't wanna say complicated but just a little bit, I think, messier than that, emotionally, less clear cut, harder for the characters to understand and deal with?" Because they love this man who is their father, but they're confused by what he is experiencing. And the effect on them is profound. But what are you gonna do about it?
Mary: Well, speaking of developing that empathy and trying to understand, did your teaching career influence your decision to write in the middle grade and young adult space? Is that where you draw some of these experiences and are reminded of what it is like day-to-day to be that age rather than, as you said earlier, looking back through this very sort of adult lens?
Benjamin: Yeah, for sure. I mean, when I became a teacher, I think I got into it for the reason that a lot of teachers that I talk to got into it just because they liked the subject matter. You know, most people that I would talk to that became teachers, especially English teachers, would be like, "Yeah, I love books, I love writing, and I just wanted to talk about books and writing all the time." But what you learn really quickly, I can't speak for all levels of teaching, I've only ever taught high school, but I can speak for secondary education, what you learn almost on the first day is that you are a teacher of people first, and that's actually your real job. And then, underneath that is your content and your subject area. And I think you can try to avoid the people part of it. I've seen colleagues who tried to do that, who tried really hard to not make it about the people. But it's the ultimate humanist profession.
And I sort of realized in my first couple of years of teaching, like, if I wanna be good at this job, which really I put everything into being a teacher, it took everything I had, and I was really proud to give so much to it to try to be great at it. But you realize, if you wanna be good at it, you have to be empathetic, and you have to listen, and you have to try to get to know these people who are in your classroom. You can't just force-feed them grammar rules and American classics and expect it all to be awesome, you know. You have to be patient with them, and you have to try to meet them at their level. And it took a little time to learn that lesson, but once I did, I realize that, actually, teenagers are, like, the coolest people in the world, you know.
Like, they're at this remarkable crossroads between independence and being able to do things on their own. So they're simultaneously pushing you away, but they're also desperate for help and attention and guidance. So, like, they're pushing you away and, like, grabbing you at the same time. And for some reason, I really like that push-pull experience of working with teens and trying to figure out ways to create, like, an environment in my classroom where they would feel safe enough to open up and talk about, you know, challenging ideas. And I'm lucky enough to live in Burlington, Vermont, which is really committed to social justice and issues of class and race and gender and sexuality.
And so I felt...I honestly can't even imagine being a teacher right now in some of the places in our country where a lot of legislation is making it really hard for people to have safe discussions and support kids in their classroom. It breaks my heart. It really does. Because I took a lot of pride in bringing difficult subject matter into the classroom, talking about race, talking about sexuality, talking about gender. And kids had so much to say about these topics. Like, I think that's what a lot of legislators don't get. They think that kids aren't capable of talking about this stuff, but, like, their opinions are so strong and so informed and so valid, and they need the conversation as much as we do, if not more. Kind of a long answer to your question.
Mary: Or if we don't broach it, somehow they won't think about these things, you know.
Benjamin: Yeah, yeah. If we just don't talk about...
Mary: Abstinence-only education, we've all seen how that has panned out.
Benjamin: Yeah. If we just don't talk about gay people, it's probably like they're not there, right? Yeah. And, like, that's just crazy to me, you know? So anyway, what I learned in that process is that, like, teens are really interesting. And when I got to the point in this book that I realized that I was gonna write about Rainey, I was a little bit scared because I'd never written a teen narrator, I'd never written a full-time female protagonist in a first-person voice. And so I really wondered, like, "Could I write this, you know? Could I write this in a way that feels authentic? Could I write this in a way that the reader will accept, you know?" I think one of my concerns was that somebody might read it and be like, "Oh, so obviously, this is a guy trying to write a female perspective," you know. And so I took a lot of time thinking, you know, and drawing on these experiences and trying to remember kids that I had known in the classroom who I'd gotten close with through having conversations and through sharing advice and talking about books and life with.
And you know, the book is dedicated to my wife, but it's also dedicated to my students. It's a co-dedication. It's dedicated to Red, who is this nickname for my wife, and then my students, because the book really wouldn't exist without all the kids that came through my classroom. So I feel like it's their book in a lot of ways, and I hope that some of...you know, the other day, I got, like, on Twitter a couple of former students who were like, "What?" And they still call me Mr. Roesch, which is, like, the funniest thing, you know. I'll see them out, "Mr. Roesch, you wrote a book," and I'll be like, "I'm not your teacher anymore. You don't have to call me that." But you know, they're, like, really psyched. They think it's, like, the coolest thing ever. So, yeah, my experience in the classroom was everything to the creation of this book. And you know, early readers are starting to react positively to the voice, which gives me so much confidence and joy, you know. It feels like...and it felt like a risk when I was writing it, and it feels like, you know, it's paying off a little bit because it feels like the voice is ringing true to some early readers, which is really gratifying.
Mary: Did you ever...I mean, there's a lot to be said about the current conversation in publishing about, you know, writing within your lived experience, staying in your lane. I think that's one of the more extreme ends of the spectrum of where this conversation could go. But for me, there's also this idea of, like, self-censorship, and does fear of backlash nip ideas in the bud that maybe never got to flower fully? Was there any time at which you really were forced to recommit to this idea, or have you seen any blowback yet?
Benjamin: No, I haven't. And I mean, it's something I did think about quite a bit, and I'm aware of that conversation. I think that it's an important conversation. I think it's easy to have big emotions about this topic, you know, and I think the emotions come from a really valid place. And you know, I always respect anybody's, you know, sense of where they're coming from. And all that's fine, you know. But I also know that I want to live in an artistic culture that is pretty open and free and tries to empower artists. And so I want both of those things to be true.
Like, I think a lot about my experience as a teacher. Like, when you take risks in the classroom, like, if you're gonna have a conversation about the N-word, or you're gonna have a conversation about, you know, microaggressions, or have a conversation about sexuality, and you're gonna have it in a mixed group of kids, and you're gonna be the center and the facilitator of that conversation. Like, you need to really trust yourself to be able to hold that space. And it takes a lot of confidence to hold that space because you might get contrasting ideas, kids might disagree, it might be uncomfortable, you know, it might be vulnerable.
And I think what I learned by inviting important challenging discussions in the classroom was to try to trust my barometer for what felt okay, because I think, as a teacher, like, you've got to be able to trust yourself. It's important to ask for help, of course, but when you're in there by yourself, running a class, you've got to be able to trust yourself. And I thought about that a lot as I was writing this book, you know, and I thought... I just felt like I can only control what I can control, and I feel committed to doing my very best, to going all the way to try to make this a well-rounded, thoughtful, three-dimensional character, you know. I was committed to checking in with early beta readers and getting gut checks along the way. I really tried to do my due diligence on that. All my early beta readers were female for this book. It was very important to just get that early gut check out of the way.
So I felt like I was taking some necessary steps to try to put my book in a good place, but at the end of the day, as you know, when you sit down to write, you've got to be able to trust yourself, because I think if you write from a place of fear and worry, it's gonna show in the work. And I think maybe you're, then, in danger of potentially overcorrecting or getting away from what's most important, which is the capital S, Story. And so I would always prefer to have these conversations in the context of a particular work as opposed to, you know, in a broad general sense, because I think, like, if we just force ourselves to deal with a work, I think we're maybe gonna have richer discussions. So that could be my book. It could be whatever. It could be a movie. It could be anything. But I think, these questions about representation, like, I like to have them in the context of a particular situation. I think I tend to have richer discussions about it when I'm talking about one specific work.
Mary: I mean, it could be said that the focus on labels, whether they bring something good to the table and they help underrepresented voices come to that table or whether labels are said negatively, it can be termed a little bit superficial.
Benjamin: Yeah, totally. And you know, I try to bring so much humility to any of these discussions. One of the things I learned, I'm sorry to keep talking about teaching, but I'm realizing how informative it was, is just, like, I grew up in a way where I was never really that aware of my own privilege. I never thought about it. I just had it. I think, like, a lot of people in the world do, you know. As a white male out in the world, I just benefitted from all that life, you know, gave me without me even noticing it. And Vermont, though it's a very white state, Burlington actually is somewhat diverse, and the Burlington school system, where I taught here in Burlington, Vermont, is actually more diverse than a lot of people would think. And teaching kids from all over the world, we have a big immigrant population, really, like, forced me and challenged me to, like, think about my own background in a profound way.
And I'd never even heard of the concept of white privilege until I was probably 28 or 30, you know, and I still have unpleasant conversations with people about it who don't agree with it or who don't believe in it, you know. And being able to put myself in that spectrum really changed my thinking forever. And so I always try to bring a lot of humility to these discussions because I know that I bring enormous privilege to the table wherever I go in this world. And that's always gonna be part of my experience. It doesn't mean my opinion is invalid. I hope that it's valid and it's informed, and I try to be thoughtful and listen, but I try to be humble too because I know that's a huge part of, you know, anything I have to see and say.
Mary: You are just a delight, and I really appreciate the thoughtfulness that you are bringing to every facet of this. That being said, trusting yourself and trusting in your artistic integrity, you do two things in this novel that are seen as riskier choices, right? The first would be setting it in the '90s. We tell writers all the time, the '90s are considered historical, which makes me just physically ill to even say it, because I think the '90s are the pinnacle of human civilization, but whatever, especially musically.
Benjamin: I might be biased, you know.
Mary: And then you do have...and I'm not entirely sure how much of the book is taken up with life on the road, but one of the other things that we often say is, "Ugh, road trip novels or setting something in an airplane, nothing happens. Ugh, it's just all conversation in a confined space." And I would guess that you very intentionally made those choices because you're a very intentional human being. So tell me a little bit more about those calculated risks.
Benjamin: Yeah, for sure. I've heard that same, you know, piece of advice too. You know, I've read a lot of the forums, you know. And it's still actually a little bit of a question mark for me around how modern teens will react to the book. A handful of teens have read it. Most of the early readers so far have been readers, I think, that are probably over 20. So I am excited to get into a classroom with it and read it with real-life 2022 teens.
With that said, I thought, if I was gonna set it in the '90s, I had to do it for a damn good reason. Like, I didn't wanna just do it because I didn't wanna have cellphones in the book, you know. I think you've got to do it for some reason that's based on story and character. Like, you've got to have your allegiance speak to, like, the emotional center of everything you do.
And so, with that said, like, I knew this book had a lot to do with music, and musicians are the main characters. And I see a huge difference in how I grew up listening to music and experienced music and lived with music and how we experience and live with music now. And I really wanted this character, Rainey, to have sort of a creative awakening. I knew that that was going to be part of her journey. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the kind of creative awakening that she was gonna have could only take place in the mid-1990s, and it had to do with mixtape culture that I grew up really, you know, living through and passionate about.
And so when she gets to this resort where her family is playing, she meets this girl, Juliet. And Rainey's background is listening to kinda classic music. She's grown up in a band that plays R'n'B, blues, country. She's unusual for her age group in that she's steeped in more of historical music, and that's what her family plays and listens to. She doesn't listen to the radio. She doesn't have cable, so she's not watching MTV. She's like a little bit of an anomaly in that she's 15 but she doesn't really even know who Nirvana is, even in 1995. Like, she couldn't even name one of their songs. So she's a little bit of an anomaly.
So she meets this girl who she develops a crush on and a friendship with, and after they had met for a couple of days, the girl, Juliet, gives her a mixtape. And the actual name of the mixtape is the name of the novel. That's where the name of the novel comes from. She titles the mixtape "Blowin' My Mind Like a Summer Breeze." And the tape is full of all these sounds that Rainey has never heard before. It's got Björk. It's got Tori Amos. It's got Nirvana. It's got Smashing Pumpkins. It's got Portishead. It's got all these amazing artists who not only sound different, but they're saying something different.
And when I was growing up in the '90s, I mean, maybe you know what it was like, you just didn't hear as much music. If you wanted to buy a CD, it was gonna cost you your whole allowance, and then some, and then you can, you know...
Mary: And then you better be on that Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness train for months and months to get your money's worth.
Benjamin: That's right. Like, that's your life. And at that point in time, you would live with the CDs that you bought. You might only have a stack of 20, and, like, that was your whole music library, except for the radio and MTV. And you develop this, like, deep relationship to the songs, to the artist, to the album art, to everything about it, the whole vibe. And so, when Rainey hears the songs on this tape, she not only loves them, you know, because she likes the sound of them, she has this space to kind of have her mind literally opened up by the songs and the singers themselves. You know, you've got artists, like Liz Phair, who are representing, like, female perspectives that hadn't been ever represented quite that way before, confident, sexual, Alanis Morissette. Like, nobody had ever heard, you know, female singer-songwriters talk like that and sing about that stuff, you know, quite the way they were doing it in the mid-'90s.
And I think music really had the capacity to, like, actually shift your thinking in that era. It still does, of course, but I do think there's something slightly different about it. And I think that's the difference between mixtape culture and playlist culture, I think. And you might love a new album you hear on Spotify, and you might live with it for a couple of days, but there's something else, right, down the road, and you're probably gonna forget about that thing. And it's just harder for it to hold your attention. It's harder for it to, like, permeate to get into your bloodstream and to your nervous system. And so the kind of creative awakening that Rainey has, which then starts to inform her as an artist and as a songwriter, where she's grown up mostly just playing her parent's music, she starts to write her own songs midway through this book. And that creative renaissance for her is very much sparked by this mixtape she gets. And I just didn't think that she could have quite that experience as a modern kid. I thought it had to be unique to this moment in time.
So I hope that that, like, architecture justifies setting it in the '90s, because I didn't want it to just be an astounding trip. I wanted there to be a really good reason for it to take place when it takes place. And I think there is a good reason. Whether readers take that, I don't know. I don't know if they're, like, you know.
Mary: Well, I've had J.C. Geiger on my podcast, and he did a mixtape kind of IRL marketing push, where he made a limited number of copies of this mixtape, and he had artists come together and write songs, specifically, in support of his novel. And I do think that there is something about the experience. Everything in modern culture is an experience now. When I watch Hulu, they're like, "Which ad experience would you like?" You know, everything is an experience now, but I think just the blood, sweat, and tears, the physicality of making a mixtape, you'll have to, like, sit there holding the buttons down to record from what...
Benjamin: It took forever.
Mary: You know, there is no modern analog to that, because digital is convenient, but it also removes us kind of from a sense of ownership and from a sense of the music as a physical object.
Benjamin: Yeah, that's so true. In reference to your other question about the risk of it being kind of a road trip novel, really just the first half of it is kinda like that, and it's more static than it sounds like because they're only on the road for small chunks of it. But again, I felt like if I was gonna do that, I wanted it to have some story-based interest thing. And so I thought, "What if I put these people kind of in this really crappy old RV? What if it broke down? What if, like, you know, their experience on the road was kinda not what we would imagine touring?" You know, I think we have this idealized image in our head of professional musicians and famous musicians that it's all glam and glitz, and they're in limos.
But it's, like, I don't think that's the case for most musicians. Most of them are grinding, and they're tired, and they're barely making it. And so I was like, "What if that was the road experience, was one that was actually kind of unpleasant?" So it's not this, like, "Woo-hoo, we're on the road?" It's not this, like...she wants to get off the road. Rainey just wants to be in one place. She's tired of smelling bad after the gig and not being able to take a shower. Like, she's tired of helping her dad change the tire and flag a ride at 2:00 in the morning after the gig when the RV breaks down.
You know, when she first meets Juliet at the resort, Juliet's like, "Oh, show me your tour bus." Because she has this idea, you know, and Rainey is just mortified. And the RV in the book has a nickname. It's Howard the Duck. And so when she takes Juliet to show her Howard the Duck, she's just mortified and so embarrassed to show her, this is her home on the road, and it just looks like crap. It's rusty, it's kinda mud-splattered, and Juliet still thinks it's awesome. She's like, "Whoa, you live in this? You go to California. Wow." She thinks it's really cool, but Rainey is like, "You don't even know what it's like. Like, I smell my brother's farts. He snores. Like, it's gross." You know.
So, yeah, I agree. Those are two, you know, minor risks. But again, I think that if writers make story-based choices that pay off emotionally, then we'll go anywhere. And then I think some of those "rules" start to matter a lot less to us. I think those rules and those barriers that we put up grew out of, like, I think, like, meaningless repetition that we're tired of seeing. We're tired of seeing the same things, so we say, "Oh, stop doing that. I've seen too much of it." But if you justify the story through connection, through emotion, I think we'll go anywhere as readers if you've got our heart, you know.
Mary: And there are no new choices, you know. Everything is sort of a reshuffle of stuff that has already been attempted, whether in something well known or something obscure, but it's not about nailing the one thing that hasn't been done before.
Benjamin: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I'm, like, the least trendy person around. Like, I try to stay up on what's going on, and I'm trying to learn social media and how to stay hip to this stuff, but I just feel like my allegiance is always gonna be to these characters and what helps me tell their story the best. And I feel like that's my best chance of creating an authentic connection. And then, once I've made that connection as well as I can, okay, then I have to maybe try to figure the rest of the stuff out, because I do know that, at a certain point, you know, every work of art is gonna become slightly a commodity at some point. You're gonna have to try to sell it. You're gonna have to try to package it, describe it. And I've learned the hard way that that's almost harder than writing the damn thing.
Mary: A lot of people hit that tipping point or that mindset shift, and it is an unwelcomed surprise.
Benjamin: Yeah. You know, I'm glad that I'm, you know, a little bit older as a debut writer. At first, it seemed like a disadvantage because it was, like, "Oh, it's embarrassing. You're so old." You know. Because I feel like our culture in the writing world really fetishizes youth. You see so many, you know...it's like the next big thing. But I'm finding now that I'm actually really glad that I've lived a little bit, because I feel more comfortable in my own skin. I feel, like, less prone, I think, maybe to falling prey to silly whims and trends and just trying to stay true to what I'm doing, because that's kind of what you...that's what you learn when you get older, that your best chance of life is just trying to be someone authentic, and you know, you just get too tired to play that game.
Mary: Or tired in general.
Benjamin: Yeah, absolutely.
Mary: That would be me.
Benjamin: Yeah.
Mary: This is a beautiful segue into what I wanted to ask you next, which is, you know, the big publishing business is kind of a game. You are watching these beautiful TikTok influencers who are 19 years old get these book deals based on, like, a video that goes viral, you know. It can be exhausting. And so can chasing the one version that people have in their heads of what a book deal looks like. The literary agent process, the big five publishing contract. Now, you have been on that treadmill, and you are debuting with a smaller publisher. So, can you tell me a little bit about what that process was like and also that mindset shift that I would imagine invariably accompanied it?
Benjamin: Yeah. I mean, I think this is something that every writer who wants to publish is probably grappling with on some level. I think even those that are with bigger publishers and have agents probably are still grappling with it on their own ride.
Mary: Correct.
Benjamin: But I mean, I remember, in my mid-20s, like, starting to read, and I would get the writer's, you know, guide to agents. I forget what it was called, the physical book that you would buy, you know, before it was all on the internet. That was kinda your best way. Just starting to get serious about that process. And with the novel I wrote in my mid-20s, I got really close to landing an agent, and I think I had sort of, like...I had accepted that that was the only way. I think I had ingested that message that felt really true that really you have to have an agent. Capital H, Have to Have one.
And so really I think...and I think there's probably some level of truth to that, depending on what you want your outcomes to be. And I tried for so many years, you know, and I got close a couple of times, and it was really disappointing to not get over the hump. Even with this book, you know, I tried hard to connect with agents and sent it out to a bunch, but it wasn't able to break through in that, you know. I don't blame the agents, but that's just a really hard process for anybody. It's cold. It's not a personal warm process, you know. You don't get much out of it. You get very little feedback, you know. You're literally just, like, throwing, you know, drops of water into a lake, hoping they create the right random ripples, you know.
And I remember, like, obsessively trying to, like, rewrite the first few pages of this book, and I thought...because I thought I had a good book, you know. How good, I don't know, but I believed in the book. I thought, "Man, I wrote an okay book." I'm like, "I feel really good about this manuscript." I'm like, "I think people would like this book." I like it. And I just felt, like, if I could just find the magic combination of words in the opening paragraph, that's it. That's the ticket. That's the key I don't have. And so I obsessively rewrote the opening pages, 10, 20, 50 times. I mean, I literally don't even know how many times at this point, just hoping that it would just unlock the door that would get somebody in. And it just didn't happen that way.
And then, on a whim, about a year-plus ago, a good friend of mine, who was on a similar parallel journey, got picked up by a small press. And she was in the same place. She had tried so hard to get over the hump. She had an agent, but she couldn't get her book sold. And she was this close to stop publishing and then got a call from a small press that wanted to put her book out, and it ended up working out for her. And she was so glad that she was patient, and it worked out the way it was supposed to. And then another friend of mine, similar kinda deal. She was not able to land an agent but found a small press. And I started to think, "Well, maybe I should try that path." There's a lot of cool small presses out there. Maybe I haven't given that path enough credence.
And she was actually the one...this friend of mine, you know, she was the one that mentioned, "Hey, I heard about this publisher, Deep Hearts. They publish exclusively YA with LGBTQ themes." And they seem pretty cool, and I sent them a manuscript. And they were the first one I sent it to, and they picked it up. And it was just, like, okay, like. Not that it was easy, because it was so hard, but you know, working with them has been really great. And I think I'd still like to try to attract an agent someday and have that kind of representation, because I think there's a lot of cool things that could come with it. But I'm glad that I didn't just, like, leave this book alone because I couldn't find the agent. Because this book could so easily just still be on my hard drive, and I wouldn't be having this conversation if I hadn't sort of adjusted my perspective. And it was very freeing to, like, stop that pursuit for a little while. It was like setting a bag of rocks down. It really was.
And I get this feeling, there's tons of writers like me out there who are trying to find an agent and just can't get through, because it's just a numbers game, you know. It's just really hard. They have their pick of the litter every time, you know, and I think a lot of it's driven by trends and gut, And so I don't regret the time I'd spent in pursuit of that, and I'm sure I'll be back at it, you know, someday. One thing I would say to other debut writers or writers who are looking to find their way is to maybe be open to different pathways, because you never know what is gonna be the pathway for you.
And once they had accepted it, I realized that I had a decade's worth of energy that I had spent up inside of me to put into trying to help this book into the world the best way I could. I was so psyched to go through the editing process, to try to promote it and do all this stuff, and try to bring it into the world well to cover and just everything. I had, like, years' worth of, like, energy waiting to be released. So I'm psyched and proud of how it worked out. It was not what I would have predicted at all. And so, you said at the beginning, that every writer's path is unique, and man, is that so true?
Mary: So riddle me this. I am noticing that it sounds like middle grade is around the corner for you.
Benjamin: Yeah, that's right. Before this book ever got picked up, I was also at work. I write a lot. I know some people just kind of write one thing, and then they're sticking with that for a while. But I'm a quantity kind of writer. I always have been. And so I've got a bunch of books that I'm kinda sitting on, and one of them was this really quirky...I had adapted it from a picture book that I wrote years ago about this boy who moves to a new house, and he learns that there's a ghost living in his basement. And at first, he thinks it's really scary, and then he realizes that the ghost actually needs his help. And they form this kind of unexpected friendship. And I took that little seed and turned it into a middle-grade novel. Yeah, it's called "Felix and Squeak and the Ghost Who Forgot Everything." And I'm working on it with my brother, who is an illustrator. And we're gonna put it out next year, I think.
And it's something quite different, you know. It may be a bit of a risk to go from this environment to that environment. But I'm excited to be in this space. I tried to write adult fiction for a really long time. And when I started writing for young people more seriously, something opened up inside of me. I felt like writing for younger readers allow me to use my sense of humor more. I felt like I was able to relax a little bit and be myself a little bit more. I feel less self-conscious as a writer. I feel like I'm less trying to impress and more trying to just tell a fun story. So that was a huge breakthrough for me.
And I also wanna be able to write what I wanna write, you know. I feel a little bit selfish that way. I see a lot of writers who commit to a style of book and kind of ride that wave, and I don't blame them for that at all, you know. If you had the chance to just be, like, the meet-cute young adult writer and you can be a bestseller, like, why wouldn't you do that, you know? But that hasn't been my path. So I'm, like, following my whims has, you know, worked out okay, sort of, so I'm gonna keep doing it.
I am planning...I have an additional young adult novel that will be a young adult follow-up to this, and I do...that's about a boy who wants to be a chef. That'll be for a young adult audience. I'm really passionate about food and this kid's experience. But I am gonna write a sequel to "Blowin' My Mind Like a Summer Breeze" as well. I've already started outlining Rainey's next chapter. So there'll definitely be more young adult stuff, and I'm gonna stay in this space, this writing for young people space, at least for the foreseeable future, for sure.
Mary: And when you say that you're thinking of putting it out, am I hearing that that'll be self-publishing, you're gonna produce it independently with your brother, the middle grade?
Benjamin: Yeah. That's the way we decided to do it. I was on the cusp of starting the submission process with this book, and my brother was starting to create art for it. And I just had this realization that there is no way that I was gonna be able to get it accepted whole cloth the way that I wanted us to be able to do it. And I kept imagining a scenario where I maybe get it accepted but then they wouldn't like the illustrations, and I felt really committed to doing it with him. And I was really excited about the illustrations. They're so cool. They're so cool. They're, like, incredible. I can't wait for people to see them.
And so I just decided, "Screw it. Like, let's just do it ourselves." And I'd gotten some great feedback. Some fifth grade classes here in my hometown, you know, have read it and given me feedback and really liked it. So I had some authentic early beta readers that were like, "Yeah, go you," were, like, really enthusiastic about the book. And that gave me the confidence to think, like, maybe we could do it on our own.
And I feel like I've learned enough through this publishing process with Deep Hearts that I think I've learned what some of the things to do, some of the things not to do, and hopefully, maybe have built a little bit of a platform, and you know, we'll maybe have a little bit of an audience that, you know, will go on another journey with me next year. So, yeah, it was really a commitment to his art and to doing it together more than, like, a loud and proud self-publishing thing. Like, we maybe could have gotten it through another way, and there might have been another path. But I just felt really committed to it being what we wanted it to be, and I didn't wanna compromise his art at all, because I had a hunch that could happen, and so I didn't wanna take that risk. So it felt worth the risk of doing it this way to preserve what we're trying to do.
Mary: That's great. I love that you are taking different paths for different projects. You're really honing in on your own integrity as a creator and the integrity of your work and just seeing where that goes. So thank you so much for taking the time to share all of that with me and our listeners. Benjamin Roesch, author of "Blowin' My Mind Like a Summer Breeze," out today.
Benjamin: Today.
Mary: Out today. But you're gonna learn a lot through this next chapter of the ride you're on and, hopefully, apply that to your middle grade and everything that comes after. So I'm really excited to see where all that goes.
Benjamin: Yeah, me, too. I'm grateful to be on here. I love talking about this stuff, and I love meeting other people who are passionate about reading and books. And it's, you know, nice to meet a fellow kindred spirit and grateful to have access to your listeners. So I hope people check the book out, and let me know what they think if they do.
Mary: Well, great. Benjamin, thank you. Thank you to everyone listening. This has been "The Good Story Podcast." I'm Mary Kole. And here's to a good story.
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