Behind the Scenes with Nancy Garden

by Hannah Crawford

Welcome to “Behind the Scenes,” a new feature where we chat with our authors, illustrators, and staff about the Rainbow Rumpus comics, stories, and pictures you know and love. This month, we talked to Nancy Garden, the author of “Lissa and the Enormous Escaping Popover” , The Case of the Stolen Scarab, The Case of the Vanishing Valuables, and many other stories and books featuring children with LGBT parents.

First of all, why do you write for Rainbow Rumpus?

I'm a lesbian and fell in love with my spouse many, many years before it was possible for lesbians and gays to have or adopt kids. I've been writing about lesbian and gay kids for many years (including before it was possible to publish positive books for them). For quite a while after LGBT couples began having kids, there weren't very many books or stories for or about LGBT families with kids. Just as it's important for LGBT kids to find people like themselves in some of the books they read, I believe it's important for the kids in our community's families to see their families reflected in fiction.

My first book about kids with lesbian moms, Holly’s Secret, was the direct result of an editor asking me to write a book about a kid growing up in such a family. Luckily, her request came at a time when I'd been thinking of doing just that anyway. She didn't end up publishing the book, but another editor did.

What is your favorite character or story you’ve created?

That's kind of like asking a mother who her favorite child is. Like most parents, I like different characters differently—no one more or less than another.

One story you've written for Rainbow Rumpus is “Lissa and the Enormous Escaping Popover.” How did you get the idea for that story?

My partner (legal spouse, actually—we live in Massachusetts) and I spend a great deal of time in Maine where we love to go to a wonderful restaurant that serves tea and popovers. I tried for years without success to make popovers, but had a great deal of trouble getting them to "pop." I finally succeeded, but not by using baking powder—in fact, I never tried that, although it seemed to me that someone might if they were faced with the same problem. That, plus the fact that a lesbian couple we're close to had recently adopted two little girls, led to the story.

I just finished reading the two chapter books in your Candlestone Inn series, The Case of the Stolen Scarab and The Case of the Vanishing Valuables. How is writing a mystery different than writing another kind of story?

When I write a "normal" kind of novel or story, I usually know, in general, how the plot is resolved—how the story ends—although I don't usually know the details of how that comes about. And, of course, it is possible to write a novel or story without knowing the ending. But in a mystery, it's vital, and it's usually important to know the ending in more detail than in another kind of story. You certainly need to know who did the evil deed, and you need to know more or less how it was done. And in a mystery, you have to have a pretty good idea in advance of the steps involved in solving the mystery: the clues the solver(s) of the mystery must find and put together. If possible, it's a good idea to know about the false "clues," too—the red herrings—although often I find they're more likely to turn up along the way. They can even sometimes be things you originally thought of as clues but didn't turn out to work well in that role.

In a mystery, everything that happens must be tied to the mystery itself—into the quest for the truth. The plot is, in that sense, likely to be simpler than in a "regular" story, although in a "regular" story, there shouldn't be anything in the plot that doesn't actually move it along or delineate character. You can have subplots, depending on the age of your main character(s), but you probably won't be developing them nearly as thoroughly as in another kind of story.

How do you come up with new mysteries for Nikki and Travis (the main characters of the Candlestone Inn series) to solve?

When I first thought of the Candlestone Inn mysteries, I wrote a proposal to send to publishers to see if any would be interested. In the proposal, I listed several possible cases, describing them very briefly. I'm not sure how I came up with the specific ideas, but in general, I get ideas from anything and everything—things that I'm interested in, people I observe, things I read, objects, situations I hear about or care about, experiences I've had—just about anything. I play "what if" with these very basic ideas, asking myself questions like, "What if that dog I saw running down the street were really a weredog?" "Why does that child I saw look so scared?" "What if someone stole the beautiful necklace Sally's grandmother willed to her?" "What if that ring turns out to be magic?"

One "what if" question usually leads to another, on and on, until I have a possible plot. Of course, sometimes the questions don't lead anywhere, in which case, my idea probably won't work for a story or novel!

That's just one approach, though; many others are possible.

An important thing to remember about mysteries is that even though the plot is probably the most important element in the story, characterization and setting are very important too! The setting (the place, the weather, the atmosphere) can do a lot to enhance a mystery—look at how many mysteries take place in scary-looking houses, and how many include scenes involving dark storms with howling wind! And characters, of course, need to be as believable as those in any kind of fiction. And sometimes characters and/or their behavior can be clues—or red herrings.

Finally, any advice for kids who want to be writers?

The most important thing to do for anyone of any age who wants to write is to READ. Read anything and everything, but especially try to read the kinds of things you're interested in writing. And the next most important thing to do is WRITE. Write whatever you want—stories, poems, plays, novels, essays, nonfiction pieces—write these for yourself, outside of school if you're a kid. Keep a journal—not a diary of events, but a journal of ideas, descriptions, and possible characters. Try to write a little every day—a paragraph describing a person you saw on the bus, a brief description of a sunset or of a small child playing on a swing, or your memory of an argument you overheard.