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Deborah Halverson
 Martial artist. Mother of triplets. Writer. Editor. Deborah Halverson’s bumper sticker should read something like: I’m Wonder Woman on her Day Off. After ten years as an editor at Harcourt Children’s Books, Deborah jumped onto the other side of the publishing fence and became the acclaimed author of teen novels Honk If You Hate Me (Delacorte/Random House, 2007) and Big Mouth (Delacorte/Random House, 2008.) Deborah stomps over any obstacle, just like the brave and unlikely heroes in her books. Lori Polydoros caught up with this Southern California marvel on the phone and through email.
LORI POLYDOROS: As a kid, your home life was full of books. When did you first fall in love with story?
DEBORAH HALVERSON: My playroom walls were, literally, made of books, just floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that separated the kids’ room from the rest of the garage. As I grew taller, my line of sight raised past the picture books. Eureka! Spy books, true crime, nonfiction WWII, Sidney Sheldon, Tom Clancy, Agatha Christie…. That’s what I wanted to read! I had full access, and if it intrigued me, I read it.
As a result, I was exposed to a vast range of storytelling styles, voices, and genres, and I was allowed to experience the world—even the dark, scary stuff—from the safety of my home, hunkered in my dad’s brown leather recliner.
Even as a kid, you had a “you can do it” attitude. How has your internal motivator helped your career?
In my efforts to pay my parents’ gift forward to my own children, I first read Charlotte’s Web to my triplets when they were 3-1/2 years old, and now at five years old they sit for hours as I read through books written for tweens. They understand that no matter what challenges occur in the story, the main character will triumph in the end. No matter what roadblock I encounter—be it infertility or a rejection letter or that evil-eyed blank page staring me down—I push onward because I’m convinced that I will triumph in the end.
 I collected inspirational sayings in my teen years. My first novel, Honk If You Hate Me, reflects this—Mona Kent wallpapers her room with inspirational bumper stickers, and even sticks them on her shirts and around her boot-tops.
As a young adult, you interviewed with the then managing editor at Harcourt Children’s Books, Robin Cruise (now publisher of the Juvenile Book Group, Becker & Mayer!) Tell us what happened next.
Robin hired someone else, that’s what happened next! But a year later, [after I had] earned my copyediting certificate and had been writing and editing video game instructions [for a local information publisher,] my dual prowess with Donkey Kong and diacritical marks proved an irresistible combination—Robin hired me.
At Harcourt, both Robin Cruise and editor, Diane D’Andrade pushed you hard, yet became your mentors.
Robin knew my dreams were filled with characterizations and story arcs instead of commas and semicolons, so when an editorial assistant position opened up in the acquisition/developmental side of the editorial department, Robin strolled down the hall and told the editor, Diane D’Andrade, that she should hire me. Yet again, a woman who would make me prove my worth. When Diane retired two years later, I came under the wing of Jeannette Larson, now Editorial Director at Houghton Harcourt Mifflin Children’s Books. These three women helped me hone what was already within me—an appreciation for storytelling rules and a stronger appreciation for knowing when to break them.
Individual style is everything in writing, and an editor needs to be careful not to guide a writer away from that even as she helps him tighten, brighten, and grow. My mantra with writers now is “Let your hair down!” Don’t think small, don’t think safe, don’t think rules and established understandings of storytelling. Experiment and see where that takes you. Only then will you get your best writing. Just like the ladies who taught me, I push hard but try to be nice as I shove.
After you had triplets, you left Harcourt. What was hard to leave and what new adventures did you discover?
Leaving wasn’t hard in a physical sense, because I was absolutely drained from Year One with Triplets. But I did feel like I’d left my identity behind when I stopped working, that I was getting lost in the 24/7 gig that is motherhood. All those diapers (10,900 in the first year alone!)
Writing my novels gave me a mental escape when I couldn’t have a physical one. I’d spent a year before the boys were born drafting Honk If You Hate Me without telling anyone and now that I’d sold it in a two-book deal and was ready to talk, there was no one to talk to. So I would talk to myself, jabbering about characters and storylines as I pushed the triple-stroller around the neighborhood and calling my voicemail to record ideas before they slipped away. Then I’d hurry home to drop three boys into three cribs and then drop my behind into my chair, where I would disappear into imaginary worlds. I revised Honk and then wrote Big Mouth in five months while my babies napped. I was doing my other dream job, the one I never told anybody about until I did it: I was a writer. An honest-to-goodness writer! Now, the playroom I sit in with my sons has books with my name on the covers.
You say you take a normal character and shift him/her to the left, almost until they are out of focus. Why are you drawn to these offbeat personalities?
More than shifting the characters to the left, I shift the world around the characters, shoving it out of focus and forcing them (and readers) to find a new way of looking at things. I take “normal” kids and put them in extreme situations to see how they will react—and how everyone will react to them. For example, in Big Mouth, I have a normal fourteen-year-old boy taking the normal act of eating and push it as far beyond normal as he can—namely, eating 54 hot dogs (and buns!) in 12 minutes.
I surround my characters with environments that are hyperreal and characters who behave in extraordinary ways, all in an effort to blur the definition of “normal” and see what we get when it all comes back into focus. But they have their payback: I can’t plot in advance—and believe me, I’ve tried—because the characters always do something I don’t expect. I’m willing to set aside my assumptions and let the characters lead me where they will. So even as I distort their world, they’re the ones going out of my original focus, forcing me to see things differently.
You also write both girl and boy characters. How do you first channel your teen voice, and then your boy teen voice?
The boy voice is easier for me, probably because I was such a Tom Boy. When I was growing up I hated being a girl, thanks to a neighborhood of boys who insisted that if I wanted to play a girl in our pretend adventures then I’d have to sit in a tree and wait to be rescued. So I played a boy, every time. Gender confusion aside, to channel my narrative voice—be it girl or guy—I first refuse to channel any voice at all. I draft an opening scene or two that has some tasty personality, but then I abandon that to plunge forward with no care for voice at all. I just want to get the story in place. Only when that’s completed do I go back and pretty it up, sculpting the mishmash into a coherent and distinct voice. For me, it’s story first and voice second.
You tackle unique themes in your books like eating disorders and identity issues. Describe your research process.
I did a sort of limited immersion for my first two novels. I experienced and observed things first, allowing myself to process and form opinions, and only afterward did I do book/article research, which helped me find stories within the understandings . For me, this mimics the journey my characters will take—they’ll experience or witness, then they’ll assume and act on those assumptions, then they’ll spend the rest of the book dealing with the ramifications of their actions. With Honk, I went to tattoo parlors and tattoo conventions. I looked, listened, and talked to anyone who dared stand still near me. Things caught my eye, impressions formed, and then I turned to books and articles. My impressions of the world of tattoo bumped into my memories of an infamous child named Baby Jessica, and a story about trying to live with the eyes of the world upon you gelled.
 For Big Mouth, I went to eating competitions and conducted safe eating experiments on myself to see what a body might feel like after gorging on things like hot dogs, and only after that did I read books and articles about competitive eating. This time, the things I learned dredged up memories of a high school friend who starved himself for wrestling, and I knew I had to write about boys with extreme eating behaviors. In both cases, the themes were ones I’ve wondered about my whole life, and it was a pleasure to finally explore them.
The settings in your books are so vivid. How do you create such real places?
I see setting as an actual character, acting on and reacting to the characters just as the rest of the cast does. My fascination with magical real stories like Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and Don DeLillo’s White Noise influences this. In Honk, the town suffers from a mysterious decade-long heat wave, seeming to sizzle its inhabitants like hamburger patties on a grill. That ties in with a fast-food theme that runs through the book. In Big Mouth, the school is sponsored by a ketchup company and is painted entirely, relentlessly red, spurring the students to take up mustard bottles and launch a Mustard Rebellion that has them tagging everything in sight with French’s Classic Yellow. Both settings take “personality” cues from American pop culture and have a direct hand in their story’s resolution.
You’ve just launched an online new service for writers: Dear Editor.com (http://dear-editor.com/.) You describe it as a “Dear Abby for Writers.”
The writing community has always been supportive of me, and I’ve wanted to give back in some way. It occurred to me that sometimes writers just have a quick question and want a quick answer so that they can move on. Sometimes you just have a pinpoint question and just want a pinpoint answer. With today’s technology, that’s possible. So I set out to create such a resource. And along the way, I’m having fun.
Now you teach writing classes and work with many writers as a freelance editor. What has this experience been like?
Teaching is very different from editing. Generally, an editor points out the problems with a manuscript and leaves it to the author to fix them, making suggestions about what to do but not necessarily explaining how to do it. A writer with a contract is assumed to have enough expertise to take it from there. Teaching focuses on the how and takes aim at a writer’s overall technique rather than its application in a single story. I enjoy seeing someone have an ‘a-ha!’ moment. As a teacher, I break down the craft of writing into small, tangible pieces. In my mind, stories are like human faces: while there are but five basic features—chin, mouth, nose, eyes, and brows—those features can combine for millions of unique faces. And then consider that each face can change depending on mood and circumstance!
Your triplets are venturing into Kindergarten next fall. What will you do with all your time? What is your ideal schedule?
There are definitely some rewards in doing everything with three times the intensity. Suddenly, with one snap of my fingers, all three children will disappear for six hours a day. Why, I haven’t worked during daylight hours since the boys gave up naps! I’m eager to turn in my vampire fangs for a big ol’ sunhat and write, write, write. Just think, in the evenings I’ll actually be able to talk to my husband instead of just sitting next to him, typing. Gosh, I don’t know what I’ll say.…
Tell us about your typical writing process.
I like working through the first draft of a manuscript without any input. It’s enough to have my characters bossing me around. Of course, I do want input on a manuscript when it’s done, so at that point I turn to friends who make their living telling people what’s wrong with a story and how to fix it. And then there’s my agent, Erin Murphy. She has an editorial background, so her feedback reflects not only market concerns but also a deep understanding of story.
You seem like an amazing mother and wife. How do you do it? How do you get through all the tough times?
I think what I do well is actively embracing the adventures of everyday life with my family, from making a hunt for missing library books into a pirate treasure adventure, to turning a chat with a neighbor about gluten-free foods into a dual-family picnic on the front lawn. When you see everything around you as an ingredient for new adventure, life feels incredibly full and rewarding.
Not that I’m always Pollyanna. I haven’t figured out a way to stretch 24 hours into something longer, and that maddens me. There’s not enough time in the day! Not enough to do all I have to do, and certainly not enough to do all I want to do. Which is everything! I want to write. I want to play drums. I want to surf and be a jiu-jitsu master and go hiking and bike riding and dig deep holes in the front garden with my sons. I get frustrated because I can’t do it all, and I get overwhelmed by all there is to do that I don’t want to do. But I think that’s everyone’s battle. What pulls me out of those moods is remembering what I learned from those novels in my playroom—that no matter what challenges occur in the story, the main character will triumph in the end. The adventure in between is where life is truly lived.
To find out more about Deborah, go to: http://deborahhalverson.com/.
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