Steven Verrier, born in the United States and raised in Canada, has spent much of his adult life living and traveling abroad. Publications include Plan B (Saga Books, 2010), Tough Love, Tender Heart (Saga Books, 2008), Raising a Child to be Bilingual and Bicultural (Hira-Tai Books of Japan), and several short dramatic works (Brooklyn Publishers). Currently he is living with his wife, Motoko, and their five children in San Antonio, Texas. You can visit his website at www.stevenverrier.com.
Q: Have you always wanted to be a writer?
Oh, yes, at least since my teens. Early on I wrote a lot of songs and stories, and I took my first – and last – creative writing class when I got to university. Over the years I’ve written articles, plays, fiction, nonfiction … and I knew long ago that one day I’d be writing a bunch of books.
Q: Tell us briefly about your book.
The book that brings us to this interview is Plan B. It’s a coming-of-age novel about a boy whose life, through no fault of his own, seems headed into freefall. He’s a great student, a good kid … and pretty much out of nowhere an overzealous teacher and school administrators almost seem set on sabotaging him. The teacher won’t let him out of class to go to the bathroom until it’s too late, and Danny, the student, ends up peeing in the hall. From that point on he’s considered a ‘problem student,’ things just start falling apart, and it takes every bit of resourcefulness Danny can muster to keep him from being defeated.
Q: What are you working on at the moment?
My current writing project also concerns education. It’s nonfiction, though – a chronicle of experiences I had during the past year of teaching high school. Just to give you an idea of what to expect, the book, due out later this year, will be titled Class Struggle: Journal of a Teacher In Up to His Ears.
Q: The main characters of your stories – do you find that you put a little of yourself into each of them or do you create them to be completely different from you?
Whatever my intentions, key characters seem to take on aspects of my outlook or my life. I just finished writing a blog post in which I listed ten similarities between Plan B’s Danny and me. I could have listed a lot more. I’ve noticed certain similarities between Don Fisher, the protagonist in my novel, Tough Love, Tender Heart, and me – at least in terms of places we’ve been and things we’ve done. I’ve tried to live a rich and varied life, so I guess I have a decent reserve of experiences for my characters to draw on.
Q: Have you ever had a character take over a story and move it in a different direction than you had originally intended? How did you handle it?
When I’m writing fiction I seldom feel I’m the one moving the story along. Of course I plan and I edit, but as I’m working on a first draft I like to let the characters lead the way. There may be times I have words with a character if I think he or she ought to be going in a different direction, but most of the time my characters seem to know what they’re doing and I’m glad to follow.
Q: Where you have lived and what you have experienced can influence your writing in many ways. Are there any specific locations or experiences that have popped up in your books?
There are. I’ve been living in Texas nearly five years, and Texas locations provide the setting through most of Plan B. Some of Danny’s activities – while traveling, while studying … – parallel my own. In Tough Love, Tender Heart, Don Fisher, the protagonist, lives in New Jersey and travels daily to Manhattan, as I used to do. He vacations in Caracas, as I’ve done. He has words with the US Immigration Service, as I’ve done. It goes on and on.
Q: It’s one thing to write a book and another to edit it. How do you feel about the editing process? What was it like to edit your book?
Planning a book and working on a first draft are fun. Anything after that can be torture. Editing all the way from revising a rough draft to signing off on a proof is something I never look forward to doing. I have absolute tunnel vision as I edit, and my wife says I’m not much fun to be around then. Throw an editor into the mix and you can imagine what it’s like. You see something one way; he or she sees it another. You’re concerned about how well you can capitalize on your vision, and now you’ve got somebody else’s vision to contend with as well. Even so, Plan B turned out just as I wanted, and my editor, Ruth Thompson, made every effort for that to happen.
Use this space to tell us more about who you. Anything you want your readers to know. Include information on where to find your books, any blogs you may have, or how a reader can learn more about you and writing.
Stay posted to www.stevenverrier.com for further information and updates, and watch for the release of Class Struggle: Journal of a Teacher In Up to His Ears later this year. If you live in Texas, I hope to see you at one of the events coinciding with the release of Class Struggle. And if you’re in the San Antonio area, be sure to check out Write That Book! workshops at my website or at www.myspace.com/writethatbook. Thanks so much for your support.
