Interview with Author Susan Beth Pfeffer

About Susan Beth Pfeffer

Born in New York City, and raised on Long Island, Susan Beth Pfeffer moved to Middletown, NY immediately following the publication of her first children’s book, Just Morgan, and continued to live there as she wrote another 74 books for kids and teens.

Among her many titles are Kid Power (winner of the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award and the Sequoyah Children’s Book Award), About David (winner of the South Carolina Young Adult Book Award), The Year Without Michael (also winner of the South Carolina Young Adult Book Award and selected as one of the American Library Association 100 best books for young adults published in a 25 year period), and the popular Portraits Of Little Women series.

In the winter of 2005, having nothing better to do, Susan wrote the manuscript that became her 74th book, Life As We Knew It. After 40 years, she became an overnight sensation. Life As We Knew It was her first New York Times best selling title. It was named the young adult selection for One Book New Jersey 2009, and won the 2009 Garden State Teen Book Award. It is also the first winner of the Truman Readers Award.

Following the success of Life As We Knew It, Susan has written a companion novel, The Dead And The Gone, writing about the same natural catastrophe that is the backdrop for the first book, while focusing on completely different characters. The third book of the trilogy, and Susan’s 76th title, This World We Live In, is scheduled for publication in spring of 2010.

Interview with Susan Beth Pfeffer

How long have you been writing?

I wrote my first book that got published, Just Morgan, during my senior year in college, so I’ve been a professional writer my entire adult life. It was slightly fluky that it got published, but since my dream had always been to be a writer, I just took it from there. My 76th book, This World We Live In, the third in the Moon Crash trilogy, will be published in 2010, and I realized, since Morgan was published in 1970, that will make me a four decade writer.

I remember reading your book “What Do You Do When Your Mouth Won’t Open” when I was young. It enjoyed a prominent position in my book collection for years because I really enjoyed the plot and its well defined characters. However, that was the last book of yours that I read until I recently reviewed “The Dead and the Gone.” How do you think your writing has changed and developed over the years, from your older realistic fiction books to your newest science fiction fantasies?

Writing fiction was a natural evolution for me. There were two themes I consistently returned to, solving problems, and families in crisis. What Do You Do When Your Mouth Won’t Open, like much of my middle group fiction, is problem solving base. Reesa is phobic about speaking in public, but a situation arises where she has to. Can she learn to cope with her phobia?

I was looking through a list of your other books, and they all almost all realistic fiction. What motivated you to jump into the science fiction genre with “Life As We Knew It”?

My young adult books are more family in crisis based, and actually I didn’t think of Life As We Knew It as science fiction when I wrote it. To me it was a family in crisis book, with a really really big crisis. It wasn’t until it got shortlisted for some science fiction awards that I discovered it was thought of as science fiction. A very pleasant surprise, as far as I was concerned.

What do you think about the reader response to “Life As We Knew It” and “The Dead and the Gone” compared with your many other books for young adults?

I knew while I was writing Life As We Knew It, that it was something special. It was so much fun to write, and it was so involving for me. I had fantasies about it being used for book discussion groups, because it seemed like such a discussable book (these fantasies, I’m delighted to report, have come true). But the response to it has been so much greater than I ever dreamed of. A lot of that is because of the internet. Life as We Knew It got a whole lot of blog reviews (it still gets them). There is an audience for young adult science fiction that I never knew existed before.

Because of its success, I got to write The Dead And The Gone, which takes the same catastrophe but focuses on a teenage boy and his family in New York City. And I just finished This World We Live In, which brings me back to Miranda’s diary, but includes characters from The Dead and the Gone in it. Since I love learning what happens next, it’s been even more fun for me to write these books.

What gave you the idea to write about the moon being knocked into a closer orbit around earth?

I got the idea for Life As We Knew It from watching a not particularly good movie called Meteor one afternoon. It got me thinking about what it would be like to be a teenager living through a worldwide catastrophe. I then worked through two separate issues: what was the catastrophe and who was the teenager. I spent about three weeks thinking things out, and then I began to write. I decided on moving the orbit of the moon a little closer to earth because I’ve always been intrigued by the fact that the moon controls the tides.

In addition, I wanted a rolling catastrophe. I wanted things to get worse, then worse some more, and then when you think they can’t get any worse, oops, they do. I’m not a big drama writer, so I didn’t want any big drama scenes. Just the little stuff, which always intrigues me, but doesn’t always get discussed in end of the world stuff. How do you do the laundry, that kind of question.

I think my favorite passage in “The Dead and the Gone” is where Alex makes three lists: “What I Know,” “What I Think,” and “What I Don’t Know.” The characters in the Moon books are exceptionally strong and resourceful. Did you model them on real life people, or did you make them up completely?

My characters tend to come from the story I want to tell, and not vice versa, although bits and pieces certainly come from people I know (or me). I’m a stockpiler, so it seemed natural to me to make Mom one in Life As We Knew It. I whine and complain all the time, so Julie in The Dead And The Gone whines on a regular basis. But no one would believe characters if they were always brave and noble, especially not in a world where everything they counted on vanishes from their lives. Trust me, if I got stuck in the world I created, I’d be whining like there was no tomorrow.

Do you have any advice for any aspiring young writers out there?

I get asked occasionally to give advice to aspiring writers, young and old, and my suggestions are pretty simple. I think the most important thing is to figure out what themes you like the best, and write the stories that best explore those themes. Writing should be fun, not homework. Even rewriting can be fun, if you think of it as solving a problem. I’m my first and best audience, because I tell myself the stories I most enjoy hearing. And I’ve been doing that now for just about five decades!

Books For Sale would like to thank author Susan Beth Pfeffer for taking the time to give such great answers to the interview questions.

Please stop by Susan Beth Pfeffer’s blog for the latest news about her writing projects.