Interview with Dale Peck

Dale Peck at Wikipedia

Let’s get some of the typical interview questions out of the way first. When did you first know that you wanted to be a writer?

Oh gosh. When I was fifteen? When I was nine? I pretty much always wanted to be a writer.

Can you tell us a little bit about your road to publishing?

It’s pretty boring actually. I went to college and studied English lit and writing and wrote a (pretty crappy) novel, then went to writing school and wrote a better one. One of my teachers recommended me to her agent, who snapped me up and sold it even before I graduated, and the rest is history…

Tell us a little bit about your latest release. If you could only tell your readers one thing about the story that had to convince us to buy the book, what would it be?

Well, it’s called Sprout, and it’s about a high school junior named Sprout (duh, as he would say) who lives with his somewhat eccentric father in rural Kansas . He’s gay, but the only other gay guy in his school is still in the closet, so he’s romantically inexperienced, not to mention frustrated. Then he meets this kid named Ty, who’s not gay (or says he’s not gay), and, well, things happen. If I could only tell you one thing to get you to buy the book, I suppose I’d tell you that there are really juicy dirty parts since I know that’d get every teenager in America flipping pages. But I might be making that up, since, well, it’s a YA book, so how dirty could it be? Guess you’ll just have to read to find out…

What, or who, has been the greatest inspiration for your stories?

Anyone. Everyone. People you’d expect, like my family and friends, and completely random people, like someone sitting at another table in a cafe where I’m writing or some person I went out on a date with twenty-five years ago (yes, I’m that old) or a person in history. The thing about the imagination is that you can never tell what’s going to get its attention. A lot of times, it’s not what interests you intellectually or consciously, but something that gets in your brain and won’t stop buzzing around until you write it down.

Let’s hear about your family, who I’m sure are thrilled to have a published author among them!

Thrilled, huh? I guess you’ve never heard the old saying about how having a writer in the family is the worst thing ever, because they tell all your secrets in public. Actually, it’s even worse than that, because usually writers make things up but readers still think they’re writing about their own families, which means that readers think they know the truth but they really don’t. I’ll let my family describe themselves LOL.

Now for some fun facts. What’s your greatest comfort food?

Do I have to choose just one? Chocolate cake and mac-n-cheese rank pretty high up there—not together, of course, but they’re great in succession!

What are the first three things you do when you wake up in the morning?

Wow, getting personal here! Well, let’s see. I stumble to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee, and then I go to the bathroom and pee, and then I go back to the kitchen and pour the coffee that I brewed, and then I drink it.

If I came to your house and looked in your closet/attic/basement, what’s the one thing that would surprise me the most?

Probably me, because I’d be tapping you on the shoulder saying, “Excuse me, miss, what are you doing in my closet?”

Everyone asks the question about “if you could be a tree, which tree would you be?” so I want to know: If you could be a color, which color would it be, and why?

I guess I’d have to say orangey-red, because those are the colors of the two lowest chakras in some Hindu conceptions of where certain emotions or concerns are houses in the body. The lowest chakras represent sex and money—two things that have always occupied a lot of my attention.

Who is your favorite cartoon character?

Rogue, from the original X-Men back in the eighties. I’m obsessed with the idea of split personalities, and people who long for human connection but are kept from it by some force or other.

Which cartoon character is most like you?

Oh, um, hmm, I wonder? I think I’m the bastard child of Lisa Simpson and Eric Cartman.

If you could beam yourself to anywhere in the world (“Beam me up, Scotty!”), during any time in history, where and when would it be—and why?

I think I’d be like Aladdin in the original version of the story. He gets three wishes, and his third wish is always three more wishes. I’d beam myself to some point in the future (or who knows, maybe the past) where there was a time machine. That way I could visit every one of the places I’ve always wanted to see: the pyramids when they were being built and Tenochtitlan , the ancient capital of the Aztecs, and Italy during the Renaissance, and a million others…

So what’s your favorite type of music to listen to? Favorite musical artists? Do you listen to music while you’re writing?

I got into New Wave and indie pop when I was a teenager, and I’m still pretty much into various kinds of alt rock—everthing from New Order (back in the day) to Vampire Weekend, but I’ve also grown up a little (just a little) and I like jazz and a little classic. Brahms’ First Symphony is pretty amazing, and so is Porgy and Bess, but when I’m at the gym it’s probably a good guess that I’m listening to something with a beat.

Do you have any favorite T.V. shows? Movies you watch over and over again? What was the last movie you saw at the theater?

The last move I was was Public Enemies with Johnny Depp and Christian Bale, which was just okay. I’m a big TV junkie. My favorite show of all time is Roseanne, and my second favorite is Gilmore Girls (no, really, love it) and then maybe The Wire and Battlestar Galactica. But I like reality shows too, if only to laugh at how silly people are—I’ve watched every version of the Real Housewives franchise. No, really. Every single one. Those ladies are nuts!

You have the chance to give one piece of advice to your teen readers. What would it be?

Is this like, advice about life? Listen to your parents (wink, wink)! Or advice about writing? Learn as much about the world as you can, because that’s what you’ll be drawing on to write your books. Also? Don’t take advice from strangers!

One last question. What stories can we look forward to from you in the future?

In a word, scadzillions. Right now I’m working on a sci-fi trilogy with Tim Kring, the creator of Heroes. And I’ve also got a novel about an orphan in New York City that’ll be out sometime in the next year or two, and a book of short stories that’ll come out sometime after that. I want to write two sequels to my thriller/horror novel, Body Surfing, and one more sequel to my Drift House children’s series, and then I’ve got a couple more projects on the back burner. So: lots.

Again, thanks so much for joining us at TeensReadToo.com!