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When Vincent Wu discovers his fave superhero’s secret identity—Vincent’s crush, Polly—it’s up to him and his fellow Stupendous fanboys to school the reluctant hero(ine) before the evil Professor Mayhem returns for another attack on Copperplate City. See, Polly came by her superpowers accidentally and hasn’t a clue how to use them; Vincent aims to save the day (and maybe even get a date).
That’s the gender-bending, convention-prodding premise of author Mike Jung’s debut middle-grade novel, Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities (Arthur A. Levine, 2012), a swift-moving page-turner packed with adventure, humor, and plenty of comic-book POW! As Booklist raves, “With snappy and authentic dialogue, layered plotting, full-on science, and sweet preteen romance, Jung’s boisterous debut is a winner.”
AUTHORLINK: How did Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities come about?
“. . . I realized that writing a children’s book was at the top of the scale, so I dug in.. . .” —JUNG
JUNG: To take the long view, I first got the notion of writing a children’s book in the late ‘90s when I worked as a preschool teacher—originally, I wanted to write picture books (which I still want to do, by the way). I proceeded to spend ten years daydreaming about it, and then my daughter was born. During the process of ruthlessly evaluating my priorities, I realized that writing a children’s book was at the top of the scale, so I dug in. I loved superhero stories as a kid, and I’d spent a lot of my childhood drawing superheroes and writing my own stories about them, so it was natural to turn to that world for book inspiration. Captain Stupendous soon followed.
AUTHORLINK: Captain Stupendous-as-girl is such a great twist on the superhero tale. And the boys (and Polly) ultimately make peace with that. Did you conceive the story that way? Did you or anyone else ever question those plot choices?
JUNG: The gender-bending part of the story didn’t happen right away, no. When I started writing Geeks I was immersed in thoughts of father-daughter relationships, what with my daughter having just been born, so my first ideas were about a girl discovering that her father is a superhero, and then a father discovering that his daughter is a superhero.
Neither of those ideas worked out, but they got me thinking about things like perceptions of masculinity and femininity—especially in iconic roles like that of the classic superhero, where femininity has typically been presented in an absurdly sexist way—and the difference in expectations between adults and children. It occurred to me that I could explore those things by having a young female (Polly Winnicott-Lee) forced to assume the perceptions and expectations that have been historically dealt with by an adult male of outlandishly heroic stature (Captain Stupendous).
“I’m far too deeply flawed a person to pass up opportunities to examine my biases and assumptions.” —JUNG
The feedback about that choice has been overwhelmingly positive, but I did have one friend raise an interesting objection. He said that the historical examples of women who’ve chosen to adopt the guise of men in order to evade the limitations placed on them by society might make my book psychologically fraught for some people, perhaps even ideologically repellent. I try to pay attention to feedback like that—I’m far too deeply flawed a person to pass up opportunities to examine my biases and assumptions—but he hadn’t actually read my manuscript, and in the end I thought the risk of actually treading on ideological sensitivities was low enough to proceed without caution. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but I suppose now is when I’ll find out.
AUTHORLINK: You’ve nailed the middle-school voice with Vincent and his dudes. What’s your secret to crafting authentic character voice?
JUNG: I don’t know if it qualifies as a secret, but I’ve often been told that my writing voice accurately conveys my actual speaking voice. When I was in grad school, one of my techniques for writing papers and whatnot was to record myself speaking on the topic at hand, then typing up the recording word-for-word; I also did that quite a bit during the early stages of writing Geeks.
However, the real secret is that I’ve been writing in one form or another for most of my life. Geeks is my first book, but I’ve always expressed myself more effectively in writing than by any other method. Back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I wrote a lot of letters, and I’ve been writing impromptu, not-terribly-good short stories and monologues for as long as I can remember. I took a lot of short story and playwriting classes in college, and I have a tendency to use e-mail as more of an outlet for creative expression than is strictly necessary. Now, of course, I use Facebook and Twitter as my newest vehicle for fast, off-the-cuff writing exercises. I’ve spent a lot of time practicing the act of writing, and in the end, I think that’s the only true way to develop one’s voice. You just have to write, write, write, write, and write some more.
AUTHORLINK: I understand that Vincent was not your first choice of narrator. How did the manuscript evolve from conception to publication? What were the greatest challenges? How long did it take?
JUNG: It took me two years to come up with a finished draft, and that was only because I got a request for a full from a conference critique on ten of the only fifty pages I had at the time. Yes, Polly was originally the narrator—she had a best friend named Shelley who ultimately got axed, and I still mourn some of the Polly-centric, pre-Vincent scenes that also ended up on the cutting room floor. I flailed around without a real plot for a solid year and a half, and it was only when I created Vincent’s character and made him the narrator that the plot started to really develop.
A variety of characters came and went—Polly’s friend Shelley, Vincent’s precocious younger brother, a whole slew of spandex-clad vigilantes called The Galactic Federation of Heroes, and more. The things I struggled with most were coming up with a truly satisfying ending, creating secondary characters with real dimension and life, and making sure that Vincent was an active, engaged character who experiences real change and growth over the course of the book.
Going from conception to publication took me approximately six years—I started rattling the keyboard in fall of 2006, landed my book deal in fall of 2010, and first saw my book on a shelf in October 2012.
AUTHORLINK: Talk about world-building. In Vincent’s reality, clashes between villains and the superhero are everyday occurrences, and we the readers totally buy it. How did you approach writing for “believability”?
JUNG: One of the books I read for research and inspiration was The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios. The author uses a concept he calls “the miracle exception,” meaning that each superhero actually adheres pretty closely to the laws of physics as long as you’re willing to suspend disbelief unreservedly for one thing which completely defies those laws. Using that concept as my guide, I didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about the plausibility of flying superheroes and robots made of indestructible metal—I figured readers will either accept those things or they won’t.
“I focused my efforts on how people (especially kids) would think, feel, and act in a world where those things did exist.”
—JUNG
Instead, I focused my efforts on how people (especially kids) would think, feel, and act in a world where those things did exist. How would the existence of a superhero affect a city’s law enforcement activities? What would the city leadership do in the event of a supervillain attack? In what ways would the existence of real superheroes infiltrate pop culture, school district policy, the news media, social services, and peer pressure among kids? Not all of my initial concepts made it into the final book—for example, I originally made the Copperplate City police force utterly incompetent, because the existence of an invincible superhero would render them irrelevant. However, just considering things on that level helped me feel confident in the quality and believability of my world-building, no matter how implausible the fantasy-based elements may be.
AUTHORLINK: And for all of the larger-than-life superhero/sci-fi/otherworldliness in the book, there’s plenty of sincere adolescent angst and awkwardness—boy/girl relationship weirdness, divorced parents weirdness, social hierarchy weirdness. Did you plan to strike that fantasy/reality balance, or did it emerge organically?
JUNG: I wanted to strike that balance all along, but it definitely didn’t emerge organically. An early version of the manuscript was all goofy humor and superheroic action, with very little insight into the reality of the characters’ daily lives. A later version (which I’d revised for an agent) addressed the nonfantastical elements of the characters’ lives much more, but in a very stiff, nonintegrated way—the tone of those passages radically differed from the tone of the fantasy passages. It took working with Arthur [esteemed publisher Arthur A. Levine of the eponymous imprint] to bring those two sides of the book together in a cohesive and comprehensive way, and we did a lot of work on developing the characters, creating authentic relationships between them, and having the story’s fantasy elements relate to and illuminate the emotional and psychological elements.
AUTHORLINK: So tell us about the path to publication and that fateful heads-up that Arthur A. Levine—Arthur A. Levine!—wanted to acquire. Um, happy dance, I presume?
“. . . it was quite shocking to get a friend request from THE Arthur A. Levine (as opposed to Arthur A. Levine the dogwalker,. . .”
—JUNG
JUNG: Happy dance, indeed! Arthur and I first got acquainted on Facebook, and, yes, it was quite shocking to get a friend request from THE Arthur A. Levine (as opposed to Arthur A. Levine the dogwalker, or Arthur A. Levine the air-conditioning repair specialist). Apparently, he’d seen my Facebook interactions with Lisa Yee, thought I was funny, and wanted to get acquainted. At some point, he saw something I’d posted about my manuscript and requested it. I was still unagented at the time, and I remember chatting with a few trusted friends and asking, “WHAT DO I DO WHAT DO I DO WHAT DO I DO?” They told me not to be an idiot and send him the manuscript, and thankfully I did.
A few months later, I got to meet Arthur in person at the SCBWI summer conference in Los Angeles. I was standing at the back of the giant ballroom during an agent panel when someone sidled up to me and gently elbowed me in the side. When I turned to look, there was Arthur, with a conspiratorial grin that might have made onlookers think we were old friends, sharing an inside joke from years gone by. I was tremendously flattered by the easy friendliness he shared with me, and we hit it off immediately. I was enrolled in the intensive he was teaching at that conference, so I also got an extended glimpse of Arthur in professional mode—I was dazzled (if unsurprised) by his editorial acumen. The man knows how to see right into the heart of a written page.
The next week, my agent, Ammi-Joan Paquette, called to let me know that Arthur wanted to acquire my book. He did so, and collaborating with him on the publication of Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities has been the single greatest experience of my professional life. Arthur is one of my favorite people in the world. I’d fight an angry grizzly bear to the death with nothing but my bare hands if he needed me to.
AUTHORLINK: The illustrations rock. Were you allowed (or did you even want) much input into the art and choice of artist?
JUNG: I didn’t have any input into the choice of artist, and most of the illustration work was done before I got to see it, which was all just fine with me. I’m a believer in getting out of the way when there are people involved who know how to do their jobs, and both Arthur and Scholastic art director Phil Falco are among the best in the world at what they do.
“. . . when Arthur told me the book would be illustrated, I was just excited to know that an artist would be contributing her or his vision to my story.”
—JUNG
My focus was very much on the writing, so when Arthur told me the book would be illustrated, I was just excited to know that an artist would be contributing her or his vision to my story. When I saw the cover for the first time, I knew Arthur and Phil had found exactly the right artist—Mike Maihack’s style is a perfect fit for this book. I did get to review the first complete set of sketch art, but Arthur, Phil, and Mike did such a superb job during the preliminary phases that I really didn’t see any significant issues. They’d already thought of everything.
AUTHORLINK: So what’s next?
JUNG: I’m working on a proposal for a middle-grade novel rooted in Korean mythology. In some ways it’ll be very different from Geeks, simply because I’m interested in pushing the envelope of my creativity; trying new things and tackling new challenges is essential for creative growth. I also have an essay in the Dear Teen Me anthology, available now from Zest Books, and I’ll have an essay in Break These Rules, an anthology edited by Luke Reynolds that’ll be published by Chicago Review Press in fall of 2013.
Susan VanHecke is an author and editor of books for adults and children. Her titles for young people include Raggin' Jazzin' Rockin': A History of American Musical Instrument Makers (Boyds Mills, 2011), Rock 'N' Roll Soldier (HarperCollins, 2009), and An Apple Pie For Dinner (Cavendish, 2009). To find out more about Susan and her books, visit www.susanvanhecke.com and www.susanvanheckeeditorial.com.
