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Back to Featured Interviews >> MEET CATHERINE RYAN HYDE
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| Catherine Ryan Hyde |
People think I'm joking, but my first really influential author was Dr. Suess. There was a message behind his words. He was always stressing equanimity, dignity. Individual worth. Plus he was entertaining. I still enjoy Dr. Suess to this very day. Later, as a young adult, I read BLESS THE BEASTS AND CHILDREN. FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST. OF MICE AND MEN. The plays TWELVE ANGRY MEN and A RAISIN IN THE SUN. I think this is when I began to know that my own writing would be in defense of the social underdog.
When you were a child did you ever have moments when you decided that you were going to be a writer when you grew up?
Yes! One huge one, in my sophomore year of high school. My favorite English and Creative Writing teacher, Lenny Horowitz, told the whole class I could write. I had written an essay that was intended to be funny. Always a risk. He read it out loud to the class. Everybody laughed. He laughed. He said it was clever. Later I learned that he had gone into the staff lounge and told all my other teachers that I could write. Up to that moment, most of my experiences had involved being told what I could not do. This was my first experience with being told I had talent--any talent, for anything--and it had a profound effect on me. I’ve written about it several times, in online articles and in this blog: http://www.catherineryanhyde.com/blog/2009/4/3/i-owe-it-all-to-lenny-reprint.html
Was your first book accepted immediately? or did you experience a number of rejections?
I experienced a number of rejections. I couldn't get an agent for several years, so I marketed my own short fiction to literary and small circulation magazines. I weathered 122 rejections before placing three in the span of two weeks. I have since published over 50 stories, including many prize-winning stories, but in the process have garnered more than 1,000 short story rejections. My first novel to be marketed by an agent was WALTER'S PURPLE HEART. It was rejected about 22-24 times. Later it was sold, in the exact same form, to Simon & Schuster for six figures. And Simon & Schuster was one of the publishers that had rejected it!
PAY IT FORWARD, my best-selling book to date, was rejected by the agent I was working with at the time. If it had been just a little earlier in my career, I might have put it away in a drawer in dismay. I'm rather glad I didn't.
Do you write every day and do you have set hours that you work?
No to both questions. I know "they" always say you must do both. But I don't. After years of writing I can usually tell the difference between the days I'm going to write something worth keeping and the days it's just not happening. If it's not happening, I'll do something else. Walk the dog, balance my checkbook. Get the car serviced. All the things I know I won't do when the work catches fire again. I find it's not only a waste of time to force myself, it's also bad for my morale to turn out pages that are destined for the recycle bin. So I'm very much at the mercy of my own creative process. But there's nothing I'd rather do than write. So if I can be in front of the computer productively, I will be.
What are the topics are some of your books?
I tend to write about the tougher topics. BECOMING CHLOE is about two throwaway teens living on the street. THE YEAR OF MY MIRACULOUS REAPPEARANCE is about alcoholism. My newest YA novel, JUMPSTART THE WORLD, is about transgender. I do want to say, though, that I feel I explore these topics without sensationalism or exploitation. And my endings tend to be hopeful.
What kinds of things inspire you to write?
Human nature. I’m an insatiable student of human nature.
What gave you the idea for PAY IT FORWARD?
Because this is a long story, and because I’ve told it so many times, I have a YouTube video now to tell the story on my behalf:
http://www.youtube.com/user/PIFFvideos
Do you enjoy researching or do you prefer working totally from your imagination?
I prefer to write from my own experience whenever possible. I like to set stories in cities I’ve lived in, and give my characters jobs I’ve done. This is not so much because I dislike research, but because I find I have a different level of detail available to me that way. You knows things about a city, if you’ve lived there, that might not come out in research. That said, it’s not always possible to write what you know. So I’ve done things like observed open heart surgery and gone on a ride-along with a local Sheriff’s deputy in the name of research.
What other jobs you had before you became a writer/illustrator?
For years I worked as a dog trainer. I had my own little business, working in the clients’ homes. I was a tour guide at the Hearst Castle in San Simeon. I also worked as an auto mechanic, a baker and a pastry chef. I think I have that classic hard-scrabble writer’s resume. It reflects how many years I tried to be happy in a more stable career than writing. But in the long run I had to follow my heart.
What are you working on now? When do you expect to start submitting it to publishers?
I’m fortunate in that what I’m working on now is already under contract. My books are doing well in the UK (better than they are here, quite frankly) and my UK publisher, TransWorld (Random House) bought my novel SECOND HAND HEART as a three-book deal, adding two more unnamed (unwritten) novels. I have completed and handed in one, DON’T LET ME GO, which will be out in the fall of 2011, and I’m working on the third now. It’s a story about a young man who is forced to come home and take care of his brain-damaged older brother in the wake of the 9/11 tragedy.
When is your next book going to be in book stores?
I have two books coming out this month and next. SECOND HAND HEART will be released in the UK (but U.S. readers can order it easily online) on the 16th of September, 2010. And my new YA novel JUMPSTART THE WORLD will release on October 12th.
Has anyone ever written you a fan letter that you’d like to share?
Yes. A young man named Riley Blackwell in Birmingham, Alabama. It was shortly after the release of the book PAY IT FORWARD. He was only in the second grade at the time, but his teacher had read his class an article about the book. He wrote and said he wanted to go talk to people in nursing homes because he thought they were lonely. For years when much older people would write and say, “I want to Pay It Forward, but I can’t think of anything,” I would wonder why some things are so easy for a second-grader and so hard for grown-ups.
Very recently. It was quite brief, but still worth sharing, I think. A teenage boy wrote to me and said he read my book BECOMING CHLOE. He said it made him want to tell his friends he loved them. I thought that was just about the best compliment ever.
Is there anything about yourself that you’d like to share - hobbies, where you were born, special talents other than writing/illustrating?
I’d like to share a little about my hobbies. I love the outdoors, and I am an avid hiker. I’ve day-hiked the Grand Canyon (South Rim to river and back in one day) twice. I’ve climbed Mt. Katahdin in Maine by way of the infamous Knife Edge trail. I’ve hiked from Yosemite Valley to the summit of Cloud’s Rest (which is a couple of miles farther and 1,100 feet higher than Half Dome) and back in one day. I’ve backpacked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in three days, two nights. I also love to kayak and fish (both in fresh and saltwater), and to camp. I live fairly near Yosemite, Sequoia, King’s Canyon, the Ventana Wilderness and other great open spaces and I try to get out as much as I can. I also make home-made candles, which seems not to fit with the other hobbies. But I enjoy it, and it makes gift-giving very easy, because people like to get presents that you made yourself. I really love the outdoors.