Stephanie Kuehnert: I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone

 

Title: I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE
Author: Stephanie Kuehnert
Publisher: MTV Books
Trade Paperback: 352 pages
ISBN: 9 978-1416562696

1. First off, congratulations on the big novel sale! Give us the elevator pitch. What’s your book about?

I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE is a raw, edgy, emotional novel about growing up punk and living to tell.

Punk rock is in Emily Black’s blood. Her mother, Louisa, hit the road to follow the incendiary music scene when Emily was four months old and never came back. Now Emily’s all grown up with a punk band of her own, determined to find the tune that will bring her mother home. Because if Louisa really is following the music, shouldn’t it lead her right back to Emily?

2. Most new novelists have an interesting story to tell about their journey to publication. What’s yours? Did you use an agent? Make sure to tell us about the day you found out you’d sold a book.

Probably the agent part of the story is the most interesting and unusual part. I was getting my MFA at Columbia College Chicago and they have this annual literary fest called Story Week every spring. They invite authors, agents, editors, etc to do panels and readings and they have some of the folks meet with students. I’d met with a small press publisher and an author in the past and they’d given me great advice, so that was all I expected when agent Caren Johnson was given the first chapter of my novel. Nope, she met with me, took me to lunch, and said, “How soon can you finish? I want this.” I finished in six months, did a couple sets of revisions for her, and then she started shopping it.

The finding a publisher part was when I paid my dues. Caren shopped it for a year and it was rejected by every major adult house. We had one almost and waited for a month for it to go up the ladder only to get rejected, it was agony. Then Caren said, “Can I shop it as a YA?” Since I was about ready to give up on the book, I said, “Sure, if you’re willing to stick with it.” Caren probably had more determination than me at some points when it came to selling the damn thing.

The YA approach was the way to go. Instead of a call, I got an email. Caren sent me MTV Books’ offer and said simply, “What do you think? Call me?” I got the email while at work. I went into my co-worker’s office shaking and asked if I could use someone’s office (I have an extremely not private cube) because I thought my agent might have sold my book. I really wasn’t sure if this was the real deal or if it would have to go to other people for approval and then get shot down like the last time. I think I asked Caren if this was for real at least three times until she finally said, “Call your mom. You’re a published author.” So I called my mom, then I called my boyfriend and got voicemail, which he never checks, so I sent a text, then I called the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia (my MFA program where my closest friends still worked). I don’t think I got any work done for the rest of the afternoon.

3. Do you have another book in the pipeline? What are you working on now?

BALLADS OF SUBURBIA will be released by MTV Books in Summer 2009. It’s about a teenage girl who, after years of feeling like an outcast in her suburban town, finally finds her place among a group of punks, skaters, and other misfits who hang out at a local park, but as the teens try to cope with bad relationships and broken homes, life spirals out of control.

Right now I am toying with two different novel ideas that go back forth fighting for my attention. One is about a teenage boy trying to come to terms with his twin sister’s suicide. The other is about teenage anarchist runaway and her bartender mother.

4. What’s your writing process like? Morning writer, night writer, or something in between?

My writing process is far from ideal ever since I finished grad school and got a full time job instead of two part-time jobs. In grad school, I was able to binge write, which is how I write best, sitting down and pounding it out for six to ten hours with breaks for food. I also bartended then, so I wrote in the morning which was my preference. With my 9 to 5, I’m forced to write at night. I come home, make dinner, watch the day’s episode of One Life to Live (don’t judge me, it’s my relaxation time, plus soap operas have taught me a bit about writing), then I write for about two hours. I try to get more done on weekends. Oh and I’m way more motivated when I have a deadline. I have to set deadlines for myself or I procrastinate like crazy.

5. There seems to be an unusually high percentage of writers who own cats. Here at the The First Book, we’re doing a study to find out if there’s a direct relationship between writing success and cat ownership. Do you own a cat? If so, tell us about him or her. If not, tell us what you have against cats.

I definitely fit that stereotype. My house is run by cats. I have three and I call them my sons. I got Sidney for my sixteenth birthday. Everyone wants a car when they turn 16, all I wanted was a cat. He’s a tuxedo cat who I named for Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols. Then Lars is the baby. I got him from a shelter a year and a half ago. He’s gray and white and petite (the other two are big tomcats) and totally adorable. He’s named for Lars Frederiksen of Rancid (sense a pattern here?) because one of his gray splotches looks a little bit like a mohawk. Kaspar is my foster son. He’s my old roommate’s kitty. She moved to San Francisco a year ago into a much smaller place, so she felt it would be best if she just took one of her cats, Maukin, who all the other cats (even the baby!) beat up on. Plus Kaspar and Lars are joined at the hip, so it seemed cruel to separate them. Kaspar is gray (oddly it looks like if you mixed Kaspar and Sidney, you’d get Lars) and he’s a total alley cat who scours the sink drain for scraps. My boyfriend really wants another cat even though he’s allergic and has to take meds to deal with the cats as it is, but his dream cat is an all black cat named Danzig. It fits the theme, so someday….