of-age stories for those same readers by night. She lives in California with her family, along with a vast collection of pop-culture knickknacks and Nancy Drew books.
Bury's new middlegrade novel is We Are Not Alone.
My Q&A with the author:
How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Visit Katryn Bury's website.
This is such an interesting question, because what changed between my proposed title (Alone in the Universe) and the published title (We Are Not Alone) was as simple as the stakes. My original title told the reader a lot about how my main character, Sam Kepler Greyson, feels when the story starts. My editor thought—and now I agree—that we should tweak the title to indicate a spark of hope between how Sam feels at the beginning and the end. We’re introduced to Sam just after his best friend, Oscar, has died from cancer—but also after he goes into remission. Because he thinks that no other kid can possibly understand how he feels, he does feel very alone in the universe. But, upon finding Cat, he realizes that there may be others like him, who come to this feeling for their own reasons—and are also looking for a partner in exploring those unanswered questions in life.
What's in a name?
I spend a lot of time naming my characters, because I really want to convey their background, as well as the demographics of the location I’m writing about. Sam having two last names is important because he has two moms—and I wanted both to be represented to indicate the weight of that relationship. I also wanted a name that would reflect Sam’s identity as a culturally Jewish kid (Sam is a familial name on my married side). Kepler is a German name, where Sam’s biologically maternal family comes from, but is also a nod to the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who looked to astronomy and the stars for the answers—just like Sam. Cat’s last name is personal, because I wanted to reflect her unique heritage as someone of Chilean-Italian descent, a private connection for me as someone who saw a large section of Italians sharing my real last name become major historical figures in Chile.
How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?
My teenage self would perhaps not be surprised to read this book—especially since I experienced a loss very much like Sam’s at only thirteen years old (my best friend). However, I think my teenage self would be surprised that I was able to summon the resilience and confidence to keep writing through rejections, as I had already experienced so many as a teen sending my work out to small presses.
Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?
I find beginnings impossible because, while the story tends to play out in my head as I write, I don’t truly get to know my own characters until I’ve written a first draft. Because of this, I almost always have to re-write my whole first chapter to reflect where my character is emotionally at the start of the book. By the time I get to the end, I have a handle on what type of ending I want my character to have. With my first books, I wanted a sense of comfort and completion, because I find the solution part of mysteries to be very comforting. But, with We Are Not Alone, I wanted to intentionally leave it up to the reader to decidewhat they think happens at the end. What the reader takes from the ending is truly reflective of what kind of person they are!
Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?
I always tell the students I connect with at author visits that, if you’re a writer, you can tell your own story a thousand different ways. Because I’m someone who prefers first-person narrative, I also prefer to write from my own experience. I start with a seed—one or two things that have happened to me personally— and then I let the story grow its own way from that seed. In We Are Not Alone, the root of the story is very much based on my own feelings after my best friend died at fourteen, and then my own experience going through cancer treatment and entering remission.
What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?
I like to take inspiration wherever I find it! Often, my story ideas are born from some injustice—whether it’s something I see in a movie or show that sparks a memory—or the inequity and pain I see in the world. When my eyes and brain are tired and I need a reading break, I tend to envelop myself in stories of all kinds. For this book in particular, I think any fan of The X-Files will see a very strong inspiration there. Sam and Cat, in and of themselves, are like Mulder and Scully—one who is curious but needs evidence, and the other a true believer. Their shared favorite show is one called Otherworld—an invented story that has a very X-Files vibe to it.
--Marshal Zeringue