Adam Shaughnessy, author of The Entirely True Story of the Unbelievable
Fib, is my guest today. According to his author bio, Adam likes to tell
people that he is a superhero, a space explorer, and a pirate. None of those
things are true, but he likes to say them anyway.
Adam really has been an
elementary school teacher and a director of after-school programs. He owns and
operates Red Dragon Adventures, which provides innovative enrichment programs
for schools. The Entirely True Story of
the Unbelievable Fib: The Trickster’s Tale is Adam’s first novel.
In this middle grade fantasy,
the main character, Prudence Potts, receives a cryptic message. It leads her
and her schoolmate ABE to another world beneath their quiet town, a world
peopled with Viking gods, annoying squirrels, and an ever-expanding hen house.
According to Publishers Weekly, “Debut author Shaughnessy skillfully
weaves Norse myth, the story of Baba Yaga, and Pru’s pain over her father’s
death into an action-packed story full of heart . . . It’s a moving exploration
of the ways people can close themselves off to magic in the world, as well as
face grief scarier than any frost giant.”
Welcome, Adam!
Thanks, Linda! And thanks so much for inviting me
to visit!
I read that this story was an
outgrowth of story-generating activities you’ve done with students. Tell us
more!
That’s an excellent question to start with. Yes! My
book did begin as an enrichment activity I shared with kids. Before I ever
thought of becoming an author, I was (and am!) an educator. I spent twenty
years as a classroom teacher, camp director, and district coordinator for
out-of-school time programs.
Over the course of those twenty years I developed a
kind of children’s programming called Adventure Play. Basically, I describe it
as the child of Adventure Programming, which is an educational model that supports
teambuilding through physical challenges. Adventure Play takes that concept and
scales it down to the elementary grades. It places cooperative games and
puzzles into the context of sophisticated and interactive stories, called Adventures.
I love it because the programming engages kids with books and stories and also
encourages them to play and have fun together.
One of my earliest Adventures was called the Eye of
Odin. It was based on Norse mythology and had a group of kids travelling the
three worlds of the Norse mythical cosmos to gather pieces of a shattered rune
stone that, when reassembled, would direct them to a lost treasure. I loved the
story, and the kids seemed to enjoy it, too! Years later, when I decided to try
my hand at writing a children’s novel, I returned to the Eye of Odin. The story
changed a lot (about fifteen years had passed!) but the key elements are all
still there.
I test drove the first two chapters with an audience of overtired and hungry four to nine year olds. (Okay, they were my grandchildren.) The Entirely True Story was a marvelous cure for the crankies. A cryptic message, a feisty heroine, a mysterious man who no one else could see…my grandkids were riveted. How did you manage to build such a suspenseful opening for your story?
I’m so glad your grandchildren enjoyed the
beginning! That’s great to hear! I think that any success I had in writing an
exciting beginning also probably stems from story’s genesis as an enrichment
program. When you’re engaging directly with a group of kids there’s an
immediacy to the relationship that you don’t always have as an author. When you
have twenty or so kids in front of you, you learn pretty fast if an idea works
or doesn’t. You see what the group likes and what they don’t—what grabs their
attention. I think that experience informed my writing.
ABE is the perfect foil for
Pru. She is a rule-breaker who often acts impetuously. ABE is methodical, he’s
literal and honest. Both tend to be loners. How did you come up with these
characters?
I started with Pru, really. I knew from the start that I wanted the hero to be a girl, and I knew that I wanted her to be clever and assertive. It’s interesting you mention that ABE is the perfect foil for Pru, because that’s how he started. He’s also clever, but less assertive and less confident (in many ways). That was my starting place for the characters in draft one.
From there, Pru and ABE developed over the course
of writing many (many!) drafts. At one point, thinking about the two friends during
the drafting process, I remember jotting down a note to myself, “ABE sees the
truth of things—he sees things how they are. Pru sees how things could be.”
Once I had that notion, the two characters really came to life. In fact, I
liked the note so much Mister Fox essentially says the same thing to Pru near
the end of the book.
If a reader were to go back through the book, she
or he would see that I stuck pretty closely to the spirit of that note. ABE does see the truth of things. Though
it’s not always immediately apparent, all of ABE’s observations turn out to be
accurate. But it’s Pru who makes things happen in the book. She makes the
connections and drives the story.
Pru is dealing with her
father’s death by not thinking or talking about it. Was it a struggle to weave
the theme of Pru’s grief into a story that was often humorous? How did you
balance the lights and the darks in your tale?
With difficulty! I think it was especially hard to
find that balance as a first-time writer. I think there’s the temptation when
you’re starting—even if you’re aware of the danger and specifically trying to
avoid it—to be a little emotion heavy. You want to basically wave your book at
people and say, “Look! It’s an adventure, yeah, but there’s feelings, too. Look at all the feelings!
This is depth, people!” The problem,
of course, can be that you can try so hard for depth that you really end up
with melodrama. Or is that just me?
I tried to be aware of that potential pitfall. I
hope I was successful. It certainly helped to have readers provide feedback.
They were able to see things I couldn’t.
Another thing that might have helped me balance the
emotion around Pru’s father’s death is the fact that I was writing from
experience, to a large degree. I lost my mother to cancer in 2003. Even though
I was an adult when she passed, the loss of a parent, or any loved one, is
terrible at any age. All the book’s themes that relate to Pru’s
grief—especially coming to terms with uncertainty, which is really the major
theme of the story—were personal to me. In some ways, I think that made them
easier to write. I knew the feelings that informed those themes. I wasn’t
trying to imagine them.
Mr. Fox is always startling,
always turning things on their head. And he spouts such wonderful lines, like
“answers aren’t just valuable, sometimes they’re expensive,” “questions are
like invitations, you never know where one will lead you,” and “only people who
are unsure of what they believe are able to experience magic.” What went into the creation of Mr. Fox?
Mister Fox is the one character from the original
Adventure that made it into the book. So, in many ways, he’s been with me the
longest. He’s changed a lot in fifteen years (haven’t we all?). In my original
enrichment program, he was a bit bumbling and buffoonish—not at all the
enigmatic and waggish figure he is in the book. There, he took on new life.
I mentioned earlier that the major theme of the
story is coming to terms with uncertainty. Mister Fox is the embodiment of that
theme. He is the personification of uncertainty. You’re not always sure what he
knows or what he’s thinking. Pru isn’t always sure she can trust him. And his
go-to phrases, “Don’t be so sure,” and “The truth is out there—don’t believe it,”
exemplify his personality but also his role in the story. He’s there to raise
questions and to cast doubt on certainty.
There’s one thing about uncertainty, though, that doesn’t change even when you learn to embrace it. Uncertainty is scary. That was the biggest challenge writing Mister Fox. I wanted him to be likable. But I needed him to be a little scary, too.
There’s one thing about uncertainty, though, that doesn’t change even when you learn to embrace it. Uncertainty is scary. That was the biggest challenge writing Mister Fox. I wanted him to be likable. But I needed him to be a little scary, too.
The fantasy side of your
story is set in the world of Viking myth, with borrowed bits of legends from
other cultures. What drew you to these myths? Did you do a lot of research
during your writing process? How did you adapt the original myths to your
story?
I loved myths as a kid. That’s what initially drew
me to the worlds of mythology. When I became an adult and an educator, I wanted
to share that love and those stories with young people.
Many of my early Adventures were based on myths.
Twenty years ago, though, things were a little different. Back then, kids were
generally exposed to just Greek and Roman myths. I knew from my own experience
that those stories, though wonderful, were just the tip of the ice burg. So I
was very conscious of basing my Adventures on different myths from around the
world.
Norse mythology has long been one of my favorites.
That said, I did do a lot of research in writing the book. I read and reread
the Norse cycle of myths, and I explored the scholarship around the stories. I
tried to keep my portrayals of the canonical characters and events as true to
the source material as I could. And on those occasions when I changed the story
or a character’s role, I tried very hard to keep my inventions true to the
spirit of the myths themselves.
Oddly, one of the biggest challenges in that
respect was Ratatosk. Ratatosk only gets a quick mention in the myths. He’s
described as a squirrel who carries insults back and forth between a dragon and
an eagle. As soon as I read that, I knew Ratatosk had to be in my book. He’s a
talking insult squirrel! How great is that? I basically had to create
Ratatosk’s personality from scratch, though. And one of the real challenges was
writing his insults. Actual Viking insults can be a little…lets say, “earthy.”
So I tried to write his dialogue in a way that suggested Norse origins but that
was also appropriate for a middle grade novel.
I also feel compelled to mention that I take one of
the major Norse gods in a different direction in the book’s sequel, Over the Underworld. I’m actually really
excited about what happens with him. It grows very organically from how the
character is presented in the myths, but is also a new take that I think people
haven’t seen before. That’s all I can say!
You have an excellent eye! Though, to avoid any
confusion on the part of your readers who might visit my website, I should
point out that I redesigned my site recently and removed the images that
referenced Shadowmage.
Your larger point is dead-on accurate, though. One
of my biggest hopes for my books is that they become playgrounds for my
readers’ imaginations. I want them to think that these adventures could happen to them—even if only in
their play. That thinking is really built in to the very design of the book and
the presentation of the story.
Pru and ABE do, indeed, become members of the
Fantasy Investigation Bureau. As Fibbers, they help investigate a mystery that
involves magic and Norse mythology. But—and this is a point that I make in my
author visits—The Unbelievable FIB investigates other mysteries, too. There’s
always a need for more Fibbers. And one never knows where Mister Fox and the
Henhouse might land next. It might be your town…
As for Shadowmage, he is a character from another
story called Shadowmage and the Obsidian
Obelisk. This is, indeed, another case for The Fantasy Investigation
Bureau. This time, Mister Fox is investigating a mystery that involves Egyptian
mythology. Shadowmage and the Obsidian
Obelisk isn’t a book, though. It’s an Adventure Play program. This is a
program that kids could sign up for and in which they would become Fibbers and
actively work together to solve the mystery by solving codes, playing games,
and assembling clues.
I removed all reference to Shadowmage in my website
redesign because I’m currently preparing my Adventure Play work to take the
next step in its evolution. I hope to have more news about that later in 2016
or in early 2017. Until then (at least for now) I’m taking a break from my
Adventure Play activities while I work on things behind the scenes.
Will readers meet the
Shadowmage in Book Two, Over the
Underworld? Can you tell us a little about this
sequel? When will it be coming out? Can you share the new cover art?
sequel? When will it be coming out? Can you share the new cover art?
Sadly, Shadowmage will not make an appearance in Over the Underworld. The good news,
though, is that Pru and ABE will make their return!
Over the Underworld picks up about a year after the
first book ends. The Norse gods return to Middleton, but they do so for an
unhappy reason. Loki's misdeeds have grown from mischief to murder. He has
killed Baldur, favorite of the gods. By doing so, he has set in motion events
that will lead to Ragnarok, a war between the gods and giants that will destroy
their world and ours. Now Odin wants ABE and Pru to help find Loki and imprison
him before the giants can rally to his side. But the gods aren't the only ones
back in town. Mister Fox has also returned and he's brought new questions about
Baldur's death.
To answer those questions, ABE and Pru will travel
to Niflheim, the Norse underworld. There, they’ll confront the Queen of the Dead herself.
Unfortunately, they quickly find that getting into the world of the dead is
easy. It’s getting out again—alive—that proves difficult.
One of the fun things about Over the Underworld is that it’s told from ABE’s point of view. Pru
is still very much central to the story and the action. This time, though, we
see events unfold through ABE’s eyes.
I hadn’t planned this approach. The point of view
in the first draft alternated between the two friends. But as I worked on the
book, I quickly realized that this was, in many ways, ABE’s story. Book 1
really dealt with Pru coming to terms with uncertainty about the world. Book 2,
I discovered, is largely about ABE coming to terms with uncertainty about
himself.
Well, that and
stopping the end of the world.
Is there anything else you’d like
to tell our readers?
I should mention that with the release of Over the Underworld, we’re trying to set
The Unbelievable FIB books up as a series. To that end, The Entirely True Story of the Unbelievable FIB is getting a new
title and new cover (by amazing illustrator Matt Rockefeller) with its
paperback release.
On August 16th, The Entirely True Story of the Unbelievable FIB will be released in
paperback as The Unbelievable FIB 1: The
Trickster’s Tale. On September 6th, The Unbelievable FIB 2: Over the Underworld will be released!
Thank you so much for
dropping in, Adam!
Thank you, Linda. I loved your questions and thanks
so much for inviting me to stop by!