Introduction: About You

3 Little Known or Interesting Things About You

1 I am little known.

2 I am interesting.

3 I formerly made half my living as a painter.

Hogwarts House and/or Camp Halfblood Cabin (If you have not been sorted or if you have not taken a quiz, I have linked them for you.)

Gryffyndor, Poseidon.

If you or one of your books was the answer on jeopardy, what do you imagine/wish the question would be?

Contestant: Let’s try 2020 Middle Grade novels for 400–

Alex: The novel which made me, Alex Trabek, want to learn to surf so I could be cast as The Big Kahuna in the movie version.

Contestant: What is Summer and July?

Alex; You are correct! 

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

I was afraid to get rid of a ratty old couch because I had written so much sitting on it. Fortunately the IKEA couch which replaced it seems to have an equal amount of mojo! What are the chances of that?

What is the first book that made you cry?

I’m an easy cry. I cry at everything I write. I was crying on an airplane reading Dan Gemeinhart’s The Good Dog. The plane landed and I tweeted this fact, then Dan said he’d been crying reading my Echo’s Sister while I was crying reading his book. 

Does writing energize or exhaust you? 

Writing definitely energizes me. It gets me out of bed, it’s my purpose, and sometimes it carries me.

About Your Books

Tell us about your book(s)-length of time it took to write, journey, publishing, release dates, etc.

The novel that got me a book deal with Harper was the fourth novel I wrote, and the second for children. That book was Train I Ride, about a girl who turns 13 while riding a train from LA to Chicago, and who has nobody in the world but the strangers she meets on train. The next was Echo’s Sister, inspired by the cancer journey of my younger daughter Harmony, who took her last breath of this world in May of 2018 at the age of 9. Coming in June 2020 is Summer and July, which I describe as the story of a crush between a gothic girl and a surfer girl who help each other through a difficult time in each other’s lives. After that is a book called Thirty Parks, about a girl whose father takes her on a tour of all 30 Major League Baseball parks in a desperate attempt at repairing their relationship. I’ve got three more in the works for the years ahead!

Favorite line or quote from one of your books.

Since I’ve been talking about my forthcoming Summer and July, I’ll say what gothic girl Juillet says in narration on her last day:

Fine then. Bring me my wave.

Describe the character that is most like you. 

There’s something of me in every character, something that makes them relatable to me. I most resemble the father in Echo’s Sister because it is a novel informed by the lives of my family. I was asked once if I ever got bummed out when I get to the end of writing a novel and I realize that the characters aren’t real, and I answered that I didn’t think that’s true. How can someone who changes us forever be described as not real?

Advice

Do you have any suggestions to help me become a better writer? If so, what are they?

I’d say trust the muse, write what she asks you to write. Read everything aloud multiple times. Storytelling is an oral tradition, so everything should be written for the ear. If it doesn’t sound right it needs to change on the page.

Leave us with some wise words. What advice would you give the readers of this interview?

I’ve spent most of my life as a cautionary tale for others, so I’m not a source of wisdom. But my daughter Harmony is my teacher. 3 days before her last breath she said “this isn’t real.” She’s put me on a path of curiosity, reading books on physics and consciousness, trying to understand what she meant and what she experienced. I suspect I won’t have answers until I take the journey she did.

Leave some links for us to follow you and buy your books:

My website is PaulMosierWrites.com, and my blog is NovelistPaulMosier@wordpress.com. On Instagram I am paul_mosier. My novels can be purchased anywhere books are sold, but I always encourage people to buy from their local independent bookstore! Thanks for the great questions!