The 5+1 Not-About-Writing Interview with Printz-Honor Author Mary McCoy
Plus, an ARC giveaway of Indestructible Object, her upcoming artists-in-love YA novel
One of the first times I met Mary McCoy was at her book launch for her debut young adult novel Dead to Me. She was wearing a form-fitting royal blue dress and holding court in the L.A. Central Library, where she also works (currently as a senior librarian in the Art, Music & Recreation Department; she’s even led seminars on playing the ukulele but more on that later).
Dead to Me, a young adult take on the pulpy and hard-boiled noir detective novel, was cool; Mary was cool, taking questions from the crowd; and it was a standout dress; all in all, very much a moment you could write about in a noir novel, “This dame had it going on.”
In the ensuing years, she’s become one of my dearest writing friends and she continues to have it very much going on. I don’t think she couldn’t if she tried. (Read that a few times; you’ll get there.)
As a Gemini-Cancer cusp sun sign (i.e., a mess but an interesting one), I can’t help but have myriad interests and Mary’s work never fails to delight my penchant for the not-same. From Dead to Me, she invented a very dangerous summer camp for her follow-up novel, Camp So-and-So and then retold the Roman political drama I, Claudius, in a Los Angeles private school in her Printz Honor-winning novel, I, Claudia.
Her fourth novel, Indestructible Object, is a Memphis-set story centered on Lee, named for the artist and Man Ray ex, Lee Miller. Lee is on a journey to understand whether love exists as she breaks up with her artist boyfriend, uncovers secrets about her parents’ ending marriage, and explores feelings for a self-possessed and magnetic musician, Risa. Memphis’s arts and music scene pulses on every page. It also features Max, a character who shares with me a love of dilettanting, finding the thing that captures his fancy and following it until something else delights him. The book is out June 15 and you can preorder it now. (Look at that cover!)
Like the Mary Oliver poem it quotes (“The Summer Day,” which ends with the question, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”), the novel forces you to consider what you’re doing with your one wild and precious life. One of the first things I did with mine after finishing the book was ask Mary some non-writing questions (and one writing one).
(P.S. As to the ARC giveway, you are entered just by opening the newsletter but for an additional entry, please leave a comment and or like this newsletter. New subscribers will also be entered, so please, tell your friends to sign up! I’ll notify the winner around mid-April.)
IMP: If you could create a concert lineup of acts but you can only include acts you've previously seen before, who would you choose and what venue would you pick?
MM: Live music has always been an important part of my life, and going without it this year has been tough. I don't know what my first post-pandemic show is going to be, but I fantasize about it all the time.
I want it to be somewhere in L.A., somewhere outdoors like The Greek Theater, and a bill that involves English bands having a lot of feelings: The Jesus and Mary Chain; James; The Cure; and then Peter Gabriel headlines, closes out the set with “In Your Eyes,” and everyone cries.
IMP: In learning the ukulele, have you discovered any songs you should not play on the ukulele?
MM: I once spent an afternoon learning to play the saxophone solo from INXS’s “Never Tear Us Apart” on the ukulele, and will allow my time could have been better spent on nobler pursuits.
That said, I am all in favor of unlikely ukulele experiments. For example, Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” should not work on the ukulele but is great.
IMP: What is an item, skill, fashion/beauty signature, or other trait unique to you that you think you will always have, no matter what? Your indestructible object if you will.
MM: I've been stealing Jean Seberg's haircut for most of the past two decades, and for the past year, I've been giving myself this haircut, mostly by instinct and feel (and by making a conscious choice not to look at the back too closely in good light... for all I know it's a mess back there). I think the French New Wave and me might be in it for the long haul.
IMP: What's a quarantine achievement you've unlocked that you plan to keep using in the after times?
MM: Before the pandemic, I always described myself as a plant killer, and more or less lived up to it. The only thing I'd ever managed not to kill was this one stubborn houseplant called a "widow's thrill." (I don't even want to think about why it's called that.)
Anyhow, last spring, one of my friends said he was going to bring me some basil and cilantro, and two kinds of chives, and I got really excited because it was still kind of hard to find those things at the grocery store. However, what he dropped off on my front porch were basil and chives and cilantro seedlings, and I thought, "Well, my friend risked COVID to bring me these herbs, so the least I can do is try to keep them alive."
I discovered that taking care of plants was fun, and I kept getting more of them, many of which did not die. This experience taught me that when you notice that you're telling yourself needlessly defeatist stories about yourself, it is worth checking to find out whether those stories are actually true.
IMP: How many things have you dilettanted this year so far?
MM: Raised bed gardening; RPG playing; tarot reading; cartooning; interactive storytelling design with Twine; writing a series of poetry about reality shows...
That’s my secret, Cap. I’m always dilettanting.
(IMP note: The cartoons here were graciously shared by Mary so you can see that her dilettanting is high-quality stuff.)
IMP: Okay, writing question. You've been to a lot of places in your story-telling -- writing an L.A. noir, inventing a strange and surreal summer camp, retelling I, Claudius at an elite L.A. high school, and now an exploration of what it means to be an artist and whether love exists. While they may seem very different, is there a throughline, to you, that connects your work and what advice do you have to share for someone else who catches a buzz off many types of stories?
MM: A decade ago, my first Twitter bio was “I write stories about girls being brave,” and I think that's still true. Most of my characters are inclined towards shittiness, but trying their asses off to be the best possible versions of themselves.
For other writers who can't be pinned down to any one genre, I think it's important to let your attention and obsessions lead you to the stories you need to tell in that moment. The stories we write are time capsules of the people we used to be, and when our stories change and grow over time, that just means that we've changed and grown, too.
Other stuff!
This GQ story by author Mary H.K. Choi (whose new book Yolk, is out now) is really beautiful and breathtaking. (And came recommended by previous interviewee, Julie Buxbaum.)
This essay, by a writer whose massively hyped debut novel was a massive failure, sounds more depressing than it is but writer or not, you probably will get something out of it.
I read Christina Hammonds Reed’s debut novel, The Black Kids, set in Los Angeles before during and after the LAPD’s aquittal for beating Rodney King. Reed catapulted me back to 1992, when I was a young teen who lived in Chicago and only caught Los Angeles burning via clips on the nightly news. The novel’s lead, Ashley Bennett, is a Black teenager from an affluent family, and she goes from partying with her friends and planning for prom to being swept up in the protests and making new connections with the Black classmates she previously maintained a distance from. It’s so worth the read.
I’ve finally had some time to read This Is Not the Jess Show, by inaugural interviewee Anna Carey, and I am so glad for that. Another ‘90s set YA novel (well, kind of), TINTJS is beyond inventive. I don’t want to give anything away, but imagine you’re a ‘90s teen, tacking up photos of Scott Wolf in your locker, and one day you start to hear chanting, your dog has been replaced with an imperfect lookalike impostor, and a shiny rectangular device with a bitten apple on the back falls out of your best friend’s backpack and she’s very shifty about telling you what it is.
This picture (above) of The Queen’s Gambit star Anna Taylor-Joy. That is all.
Most of you are probably already tuned in but here’s a link to StopAAPIHate, where there’s both news and resources for combatting hate and hate crimes against the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.