Harper Stacks: Krista Taracuk on Mindy McGinnis' Heroine

The paradox of the same pronunciation of the words heroine and heroin are pivotal to Mindy McGinnis’s latest work Heroine. The author tackles the front-page headlines of the opioid crisis through the eyes of her teenage protagonist and superstar athlete, Mickey. Mickey’s physician prescribes Oxycontin to her after a severe injury sustained in a car accident and through the pages of this novel, we slowly see how Oxy consumes all aspects of her life.

In a recent conversation with award-winning author Mindy McGinnis, she stated, “It was important to me to create an addict that readers would feel empathy for, and – according to my early readers – it seems to have worked. I’ve had a lot of people tell me that they were sucked into Mickey’s slippery logic, her self-justification for always seeking out the next fix, to the point that they were almost rooting for her to get what she believed she needed…. not help, but heroin. That’s exactly the reaction I was looking for.”

Coaches hear the horror stories of their athletes who return to school after an injury or an operation and are immediately asked by other students if they have leftover drugs to sell. Emergency squads are inundated with calls for overdose victims. There’s a raging debate about how tax dollars are diverted to deal with the effects of the drug epidemic. Illicit substances can change the course of family life and the trajectory of development where addiction and dependence are prevalent; this can take the form of grandparents raising children, adjustments for teachers, and early intervention by medical professionals. Children in these situations might experience physical, emotional, psychological, and academic setbacks. Teachers are experiencing a higher rate of burn out dealing with the range of issues that are associated with children impacted by addiction and dependence. It’s even been recommended that the common citizen should carry Narcan.

So what does the opioid crisis have to do with libraries? Where do libraries fall in this issue? This book highlights the intersection where teachers, parents, educators, and students can see the impact of substance use. Reading this book helps bring about a better understanding of the protagonist’s challenges to the wide range of issues that are faced. One of the stops on the way to understanding someone’s journey with addiction and dependence involves accessing resources and knowledge. We need libraries involved in the process because they help disseminate information, share resources to the community, offer a space for forums, and provide access to those seeking information. Those with limited means and resources are utilizing the tools of the libraries more and more for those services.

Mindy McGinnis

The author states, “It’s easy to slot people into arbitrary “good” and “bad” categories, but I often tell aspiring writers to remember that no one is ever the villain in their own narrative. Everyone that makes a bad choice has a good reason (to them) why they did it. Readers find themselves sliding down the slope of self-justification along with Mickey, and that’s right where I want them to be – with her, slipping. Not judging from a safe distance.”

Thus, public and school librarians are in the midst of unusual conversations about whether staff members should be provided with the medical tool of Narcan. As staff are not trained for this mission, fear of misuse and lack of education are major concerns. Clinical studies have shown that paramedics have been using Narcan for 40 years as an assistance in reversing an overdose. Though not as dramatic as jolting awake like in the movies, the nasal dose used by non-medical personnel gives a few more minutes of life to the overdose victim before the EMTs arrived. One nasal dose of Narcan is considered the standard. Yet, this brings us to Carfentanil, a more potent form of fentanyl which is used to sedate large animals like horses, elephants, etc. Carfentanil might take 3 or 4 doses of Narcan to help the person; how on earth is a public or school library staff member supposed to know this? Having Narcan on hand falls under the Good Samaritan Act and is considered to be just another tool like a fire extinguisher, defibrillator, aspirin for heart attacks, etc. However, the impacts of the opioid epidemic are providing new challenges to citizens in jobs that require no medical training.

Thus, the realistic and well-researched novel Heroine by the ever-fascinating Mindy McGinnis is an excellent discussion starter among educators, kids, and their parents. The author states that “I’m hoping as Heroine finds more readers, that it will provide a safe space for parents and teens to talk about things like addiction through the lens of fiction, then branch out into their own realities.”

This book provides a harrowing view on the intersection where teachers, parents, students, and community members can see the impact of substance use. It is a must read for all citizens as the epidemic has started to impact each and every one of us, whether we know it or not.

Refinery 29: Mindy McGinnis: "My YA Books Aren't Here To Please Adults"

When my book A Madness So Discreet was released in 2015, I had the occasional reader ask, “Why would you write a book for teens where the main character is being sexually abused by her father?”

My answer?

Because that’s who it happens to.

While my books cover the gamut of genres, they are always looking deeply into the dark corners of our world, places that some prefer not to go. My answer to that question would set the occasional person back. Others would nod knowingly. That’s who I’m writing for.

As a former high school librarian, I fully support reading for escape. I worked for 14 years in a rural, economically depressed area — the same area I grew up in and still live in. Some of my students needed to read about fantasy and fairy tales, and were desperately looking for the happily ever after that many romances promised, but reality failed to deliver.

But others needed to see themselves in the pages of the books they read — be it an alcoholic parent, an abusive relationship, a sexual-assault survivor, or just a hardscrabble kid down on their luck looking for a way out. Where I’m from, luck runs thin, and there aren’t many ways out.

I began writing for teens in 2010 after years of handing my students books set in the glitz of big cities, often following lives of the famous or wealthy. Characters in these books had handbags that cost more than my students’ entire wardrobes, and they certainly didn’t walk to school or have to worry about not having a coat to wear when the temperatures dropped. I wanted rural kids to see themselves and their struggles in fiction, so I set out to do just that.

When I wrote The Female of the Species in 2016 — a rape-revenge, vigilante-justice story — I fully expected it to be banned. Instead, my inbox filled with upraised fists, shared experiences, and heartfelt thank yous. A woman in her forties told me that if she’d had that book growing up, she would have reported her attacker. The grit in those pages was hard for many readers, but for many more it was an abrasion they have felt before and known too well. To see it play out differently this time — and with a note of hope at the end — was a balm.

Writing Heroine, which is about the opioid epidemic, was no different.

I pride myself on not pulling punches, but this was one story where I didn’t know what to strike out at. Anger drove The Female of the Species, but tales of addiction don’t have an obvious villain. Holding big pharma responsible for their role in the epidemic will be key in reality, but for fiction I needed a smaller picture, an emotional foothold rather than an agenda. As it turns out, that foothold was easy to find. Too easy.

In the late spring of 2017, I was visiting a school in southern Ohio — an area hard hit by the opioid crisis and considered by many to be the epicenter. As I spoke with the librarians and educators over lunch, they told me that their local economy was struggling. No one carried cash any longer, they paid each other in pills. If you lived there, I was told, you had a few employment opportunities — the school, the prison, the hospital, or...you sold drugs. You can guess which one paid the best.

This wasn’t said judgmentally, but with true grief. They were watching their students overdose and their own friends and families succumb. A complicated mix of sympathy and confusion clouded their words, along with a sense of urgency and need for hope. I drove home thinking of them, their students, and of the people in my own life who have been pulled into the vortex. A phrase they used at lunch stuck with me, and I’ve heard it repeated multiple times when I meet educators, reviewers, librarians, booksellers, and readers: Everyone knows someone.

That someone is an every person — not a different race, not a homeless woman on the street, not the rough guy hanging out in the parking lot. It’s the girl sitting next to you in math class, the parent who runs the carpool, or the athlete who needs to push past the pain in order to perform.

When writing Mickey, my main character in Heroine, it was important to make her goals the reader’s goals. I’ve had readers tell me they were almost rooting for Mickey to get her next fix because that is what she needed to “be well” enough to walk out onto the softball field and catapult her team into the spotlight. The slippery logic of addiction is at work in Mickey and wheedles its way into the reader as well, creating the all-important element of empathy.

I’d like to see Heroine performing in reverse to my original goals as a writer. My readers may indeed see themselves in these pages. But more importantly, I want them to see Mickey in the people around them. And if they can feel for her, maybe they can feel for them, too.

Realism is a large part of what I deliver with my writing, and Heroine is no different. There is no neat answer, no happy ending. What I bring with my fiction is what I felt was needed at that lunch meeting, and in all of our lives right now: some hope.

As with my other works, there is darkness. As with my other works, I wrote it because it’s honest about what’s happening. But in this case, it’s not just for teens.

It’s happening to all of us.

Mindy McGinnis On Local Radio WWGH 107.1 FM

“It’s Not Nancy Drew Out There": Writing Tough Topics for Teens

Rape. Murder. Suicide. Overdose. It might sound like the lead-in for a true crime show, but it’s a sampling of the traumas my students dealt with in the more than a decade that I worked in a high school library. I’m from a rural community in Ohio, graduating under 100 kids every year. The grass is green, the wheat is golden, and hometown football games are the place to be on a Friday night. While the setting may sound idyllic, our lives often aren’t.

Almost 25 percent of our students live below the poverty level. Lines at food banks are long, and often those standing in them lack other essentials as well—like a good winter coat. But class inequality and nature aren’t the only things that harm us. Sometimes we hurt one another, and often we hurt ourselves. Even though I worked in a school serving a very small community, staff and students experienced the traumas mentioned above—in some cases more than once.

Teen literature as we know it today did not exist when I was growing up, and there was a very large gap between what I read as a middle schooler before making the jump to adult titles. I often joke that I went from reading books about hiding a stray puppy in the basement so that allergic parents wouldn’t know it’s in the house to . . . Cujo.

There were a handful of authors available to me as a teen—Judy Blume, Lois Duncan, Caroline B. Cooney, and Christopher Pike, to name a few—who did push the envelope as far as content was concerned, and I am eternally grateful to them. Even so, topics such as rape or addiction weren’t something many authors were willing to address or, when they did, were handled so carefully as to render the text vague and antiseptic.

When I wrote The Female of the Species as an adult—a rape-revenge, vigilante-justice story—I got in trouble . . . with my mother. She was upset that I would talk so openly in a book for teens about consensual sex, violence, rape, and drinking. I remember defending the book by telling her, “It’s not Nancy Drew out there anymore.”

Since the publication of The Female of the Species, I have received emails, tweets, and messages from multiple girls and women letting me know how much the story resonated with them. One woman in her 40’s said that if she had read a book like it when she was a teenager, she might have found the strength and courage to report her attacker rather than accept such behavior as the norm.

Heroine, my newest release that focuses on a female athlete and the opioid epidemic, has garnered much the same reaction. Early readers reached out, thanking me for writing about addiction in a way that empathized with the user, sharing how their loved one suffers and that the book helped them understand that struggle a little bit better.

If writing about difficult topics makes it more likely for people to feel comfortable talking about them, then I consider my work a success, even if I am not a household name. I have heard from multiple parents that Heroine helped them open up a conversation with their teens about prescription drug abuse, and I know that The Female of the Species is very often a mother-daughter read.

As a librarian I became good at finding the readership for a particular book, especially for my students who were dealing with tough topics. It’s a small town, and often I knew what their story was, without them having to tell it. I could pair a teen with a title, and felt the warmth of reward when they finished it and asked for another like it. It’s an unfortunate fact that a book like Heroineor Female of the Species has elements that will resonate with so many young people. As I explained to my mother—it’s not Nancy Drew out there anymore.The truth is it never was. We just didn’t talk about it.

Libro FM Interview with Mindy McGinnis

Edgar Award-winning author Mindy McGinnis has written across multiple genres, and her newest audiobook takes on a heavy topic: a young female athlete that finds herself a victim of the opioid epidemic. I had the chance to speak with Mindy at Winter Institute about her upcoming release Heroine, out 3/12, narrator Brittany Pressley, and her favorite audiobooks.

So how did this story surrounding a female athlete and the opioid epidemic take shape?

On a school visit to a city in Ohio that is generally thought to be one of the epicenters of the opioid epidemic, McGinnis spoke with local librarians and learned that if you lived in this city, you worked at the school, the hospital, the prison, or you sold drugs. Sadly, many opted for selling drugs.

She had been wanting to write a story featuring a female athlete for a long time–having worked in a high school library for several years, she knew that female athletes weren’t often the center of stories.

“I wanted to write about the opiod crisis and I wanted to write about female athletes and those two things are married, unfortunately, very easily,” she says. “So that’s how the whole concept came about.”

Mickey is a softball player with a bright future, and she’s the hero–the heroine–of this story. But she’s not particularly extraordinary. “I’m using this character that is in every woman,” said McGinnis. She’s not the most popular girl, she’s not the best athlete on the team even. She is very good at what she does, but she’s not beautiful, she’s not smart, she’s not perfect, she’s not any of these things.”

Mickey’s relatability is key, as the reader will watch her make small choice after small choice that will ultimately lead to addiction.

McGinnis did a lot of research before this book was written and she took it very seriously, knowing how crucial it would be to the telling of this story: “Because of the expanse of the opioid epidemic, everyone knows someone, so it was important that this was correct and people are going be able to see themselves or someone that they know.”

Unlikeable Female Characters Podcast

This week we chat with prolific and badass YA writer Mindy McGinnis (author of The Female of the Species, This Darkness Mine, Heroine, and many more) about being an unlikeable female character in small-town Ohio, writing realistically flawed teenage girls, and why you better watch out for band geeks.

YABC Teen Read Week: Mindy McGinnis →

ABC:   What book or books were your go-to choice when you were a teen?

YA as we know it didn't exist when I was a teen, so I went straight from middle grade books to Stephen King. Learned a lot, real fast.

ABC:  What do you love most about the YA genre?

What I love most about writing for teens is the constant possibilities. Adults tend to lead somewhat static lives, usually moving in the same schedule and staying within the same social circles. Teenage live is much more volatile, for the good and the bad.

YABC:   What 3 YA books would you love to recommend to our readers?

MONDAY'S NOT COMING by Tiffany D. Jackson

ANGER IS A GIFT by Mark Oshiro

THE WEIGHT OF FEATHERS by Anne Marie McLemore

Bookaxe Grill the Author: Mindy McGinnis

Teaching Tolerance: The Opioid Crisis

During an opioid overdose, the brain betrays the body. A single event—be it a rush of heroin or fentanyl or a semisynthetic prescription painkiller like oxycodone—sets off a series of repercussions: The drug travels from the bloodstream to the brain; it latches itself to opioid receptors; it suppresses the brain’s ability to control breathing rate; it blurs the brain’s recognition of dangerous carbon dioxide levels in the bloodstream; it causes the brain to cross wires in its communication with the diaphragm; and, finally, the drug causes failure in the lungs to breathe in and out as normal. The drug suffocates its user, systemically. 

The suffocating tendrils of addiction reach wide…

Writer to Writer: An Interview with Author Mindy McGinnis

WOUB: ‘Blood, Brains, and Lobotomies’ Coming to SEO History Center

A Madness So Discreet is a young adult historical fiction novel set in the late 1800s that follows the story of Grace Mae, a young woman who has been raped by her father, a well-established Boston politician, and unwillingly admitted to an insane asylum. In the book, which was written by Ohio-based author Mindy McGinnis, Grace manages to get out of the inhumane quarters of the Boston asylum she was originally imprisoned in to the Athens Insane Asylum, a humane hospital that still overlooks Athens.

On Thursday, April 19 at 6 p.m., McGinnis is coming to the Southeast Ohio History Center (24 West State Street, Athens) to give a free presentation entitled “Blood, Brains, and Lobotomies,” which will explore the history of the Athens Insane Asylum (especially as it pertains to McGinnis’ Edgar-Award-wining book,) as well as the history of the treatment of the mentally ill, a subject that McGinnis researched in great deal before writing the book. The presentation is also a part of the history center’s ongoing 2018 celebration of the Athens Asylum’s sesquicentennial anniversary.

McGinnis learned of the Athens Asylum by way of Katherine Ziff’s lauded Asylum on the Hill: the History of a Healing Landscape, which she picked up from Ziff at the Ohioana Book Fair several years ago.

“After I read the book, I knew that I wanted to set a novel there, if I could ever come up with a plot for it,” said McGinnis. “Asylum on the Hill is great, it’s a very thorough history of the asylum that dispels the many misconceptions that people have about the asylum. Those misconceptions, that the asylum is a scary place, or a haunted place, are just good fodder for bad, untrue stories. In fact, the asylum was one of the best places to be if you were mentally impaired in the early 1900s.”

McGinnis was fascinated with the hospital’s moral treatment plan, which meant providing a beautiful, inspiring grounds for patients to work and heal together. The entire asylum, although it may look stark and mysterious on the hillside overlooking the Ohio River, was actually built according to the Kirkbride Plan, which was literally an asylum building plan contingent to some very humane theories in the treatment of the mentally ill: that they needed sources of natural light and ventilation.

“It’s true that the asylum was overcrowded later on, but in the beginning, it was pretty idyllic, patients farmed and made their own clothes and food, it was a completely self-sustaining environment that gave the patients a sense of belonging and purpose, and it was also all free,” said McGinnis. “It was wonderful, but over the years people did start to abuse the asylum, like if you had an elderly relative at home that you just didn’t want to take care of anymore, you’d just drop them up on the hill. Although any asylum could be, of course, horrible, honestly the story of the Athens Asylum is one of the nicest ones you’re going to find.”

Katherine Ziff’s “Asylum on the Hill,” which played a part in inspiring Mindy McGinnis to write “A Madness So Discreet.”

McGinnis said that her discovery of Ziff’s book came just as McGinnis was supposed to pitch another novel, so she pursued the idea of a novel set there with more intensity, devouring both The Devil In the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness and the Fair that Changed America (about American serial killer Dr. H.H. Holmes by Erik Larson) and The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness (a biography of Dr. Walter Freeman, who simplified the lobotomy procedure in the ‘50s, and who travelled around the country performing the procedure by Jack El-Hai,). McGinnis read lots of other books about the history of psychiatry, rounding out in about 18 months of research before she had even written a word of A Madness So Discreet.

The history of psychiatry is a notoriously difficult topic. From the discipline’s early struggles to be considered a hard science with the capability to confront some of the most baffling issues of the human condition to the early methods of treatment for the mentally ill that were, at best, ineffective, and at worst, terribly inhumane. Perhaps the most controversial of these methods was the psychosurgery known as the prefrontal lobotomy, which effectively cuts most of the connections to and from the prefrontal cortex in the brain. The prefrontal cortex houses one’s personality, will to live, and general executive function capabilities. Although the procedure is thought of as barbaric now, it should be noted that in 1949 Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the development of the procedure.

Although the surgery did often come at the cost of the patient’s self immediately and permanently vanishing, it was considered a true innovation at the time, and widely utilized until the introduction of the first widely marketed antipsychotic, trazodone, in the ‘60s. Trazodone, and other antipsychotics, work largely the same way on the brain that a lobotomy does, only chemically. Antipsychotics are commonly prescribed to treat everything from schizophrenia to major depression to eating disorders.

“Dr. Freeman had a bad reputation, but he was actually a very good doctor,” said McGinnis. “He really did care about his patients, about the people he lobotomized. He would follow up with his patients for 5, 6, even 20 years after the lobotomy, he really believed he was helping people. We need to remember that, at the time, lobotomies were considered very humane, as the most humane way to treat some people. Of course, you should never do something to someone against their will, as some patients were lobotomized without their permission, but it’s interesting to think that another method of treatment that is sometimes considered inhumane is still used today: electroshock therapy. And it’s still used today because it works, in small doses, much smaller than what they were doing in the ‘50s, and as a last resort for some patients.”

McGinnis ran into a bit of problem while penning A Madness So Discreet, in that for several reasons she needed to set the book in the late 1800s, but the problem being that lobotomies, (a false lobotomy is performed on Grace in the book to make her “unreturnable” to her wealthy, abusive family,) did not actually become a regular, widespread practice until the late 1940s.

Enter Phineas Gage, one of the most famous names in the history of neuroscience.

Phones Gage with the tamping iron that shattered his skull and destroyed his left frontal lobe.

On September 13, 1848, American railroad construction foreman Phineas Gage was directing a work gang south of Cavendish, Vermont, blasting rock in preparation for a Rutland & Burlington Railroad. Around 4:30 p.m. that day an explosion threw a three-foot-seven-inch, 13.25-pound tamping iron through Gage’s open mouth, destroying his left frontal lobe. Improbably, Gage survived, going on to become one of the most famous cases in the history of neuroscience. Gage experienced some marked personality changes after the accident, which changed the way that scientists of the time understood the importance of the prefrontal cortex.

“I felt like it was very possible that in the late 1800s there might have been a doctor who used Phineas Gage as his touchstone for a procedure that would be a like a lobotomy, even if lobotomies were not widespread quite yet,” said McGinnis.

McGinnis decided on Grace as her protagonist for the book for several reasons, one of them being the fact that it would allow her to explore the injustices done to women at that time in history.

“The truth is that women had very few rights in the late 1800s, and the only think it took for a woman to be sent to an asylum for the rest of her life was for a male family member to recommend it and for a circuit court judge to sign off on it, and they could be easily bribed,” said McGinnis. “During my research I read about one instance where a woman was hospitalized just because her husband had his eye on a younger woman. He already had in his possession all the land that came as a part of his marriage to his wife, and he wanted the younger woman, for one, because she was younger, and for her land, as well. It was a very simple, common thing to bribe a circuit court judge and it was a very simple, common thing for male family members to have ulterior motives in sending their wives or daughters to the asylum.”

McGinnis said that sometimes she is questioned as to why she tackles the troubling topic of rape in her book, which is specifically targeted at younger readers.

“Some people ask me why I had the father be the aggressor in an abusive relationship with his daughter in the book, and the reason is: that’s who it happens to. It happens to young girls and it’s done to them by older male family members,” she McGinnis. “And it’s very important that Grace had some type of enormous trauma in her life as she is a selective mute, which is very important to the plot of the book.”

A Conversation with Mindy McGinnis

1. Hi Mindy. As you know my first question is always the same. What have you been up to in the last year?

Lots! I’ve been promoting GIVEN TO THE EARTH, which comes out April 10th, the second and final in the GIVEN TO THE EARTH series. I also have a book releasing in January of 2019, HEROINE, which is about the opioid crisis. Lots of work has gone into that manuscript, and I’m excited to get it to the reading public. I also have a full slate of appearances scheduled for 2018, which you can view here and will be updated as more are scheduled.

2. You live in a home with lots of furry friends, can you tell us a little bit about them and how they impact your life as a writer?

I do have many fur babies. Two dogs, and nine cats. I had the normal mount of cats – 3 – and then a litter up at the family farm was abandoned by their mom and I ended up bottle feeding them. Once you connect like that, you can’t just give them away. There is always at least one kitty hanging out with me while I’m writing. They keep me warm, and sometimes entice me to nap, so I don’t know if they are actually helping or not.

3. Since you started your podcast WRITER WRITER PANTS ON FIRE, what have you learned from talking to all of the different guests you’ve had on?

That everyone’s journey as a writer is different. I love running the podcast, and I hope to continue it in the future. 

4. Though you wrote a set of companions (NOT A DROP TO DRINK and IN A HANDFUL OF DUST) how has writing the GIVEN duology been different from the rest of your standalone works?

GIVEN has been very different for the simple fact that it’s a fantasy, which is by far the most difficult genre I’ve ever attempted to write. The world building, plot, and character motivations are extremely complex, and both titles were quite the challenge.

5. You seem to enjoy genre hopping, what is one genre you haven’t written that you would like to, and why?

I don’t really know that there is a genre I want to write, but I can pretty much guarantee you’ll never see a romance from me.

6. Your books have a lot of intense an emotional scenes, what is it like for you when you finish one of those heartwrenching moments?

Honestly, they don’t feel that different from the rest. The climaxes are intense, but in order to make them work I have to put just as much effort into building up to them.

7. Can you tell us where some of the ideas from your past novels have come from?

In most cases, we writers usually don’t know where our inspirations come from. A lot of us are fortunate to just have them fall from the sky into our minds, and I don’t like to poke too much at that lovely miracle. I just accept the gifts.

8. Will you ever revisit some of the worlds you’ve created for DRINK, MADNESS, or others?

I would love to! If I were ever to revisit the world of DRINK I would probably write a prequel, showing the experiences of Stebbs and Mother as teenagers when the Shortage was occurring. I do have a sequel idea for MADNESS, but no pub date to announce as of yet.

9. What’s up for you next?

GIVEN TO THE EARTH releases April 10th and HEROINE will be coming in January of 2019!

Writer's Digest: Mindy McGinnis on Rape Culture, Universal Emotions and Strong Female Protagonists

A prolific Edgar Award–winner, Mindy McGinnis’ stories cross subgenres of young adult fiction, from fantasy to dystopian to contemporary. Her novel confronting rape culture, The Female of the Species, was named to an impressive roster of “Best Of” lists in both 2016 and 2017, including those from School Library Journal, Bustle, Mashable and Seventeen.Her short story “Do Not Go Gently,” about a teenage mother struggling to finish high school while working nights as a nurse’s assistant, won the 2017 Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Literature. A fixture at book festivals across the Midwest, she runs the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog and podcast for aspiring authors.

Your novel The Female of the Species has been celebrated for the way it addresses rape culture from the perspectives of female and male characters alike. I know most writers are driven by plot questions or characters more than themes, but I also know you have a lot of experience working with teens as an educator and librarian. How much did the message you hoped the story might send drive its creation, and did that message change at all from the story’s inception to its publication?

When it comes to message in books for teens, an author has to be careful. Teens know when they’re being condescended to, and they don’t like it any more than an adult does. For me it was less of a message and more of a story about rape culture and sexual assault—one that many, many teenage girls can relate to. So often we relive our own situations and stories over and over in our minds, trying to think of what we could have done differently, or—sadly—in an attempt to determine how much of the blame is our own. Rage takes hold—against attackers, and against ourselves. So much of The Female of the Species is about anger—at our world, and the people in it. Anger is a universal emotion, and even though the novel focuses on female anger specifically, the emotion itself is one that all readers can relate to.

What has been the most meaningful reader response to The Female of the Species?

There have been so many. I think the most impactful email I received came from a woman in her 40s, who said that if she’d had a novel like Species when she was in her teens, she would have not been silent about her assault.

Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market 2018

You’ve always written strong female protagonists—something agent wish lists noticeably call for with increasing frequency. Have you observed a shift in how those characters are received in the years since you began publishing?

The “strong female character” has now become something of a trope herself. What I like to do is explore the different ways in which a woman can be strong, so that we’re not viewing strength as a one-note trait. [Being] physically strong is only one aspect. Having the strength of your convictions, of self-worth in general, are necessary as well in order to present a well-rounded individual.

I like to tell people about a woman in my family tree I discovered who had 15 children. She buried 13 of them—giving birth to one and subsequently losing the infant as well as two older children in the same week—and lived into her 80s. She was a German housewife in the 1500s, undoubtedly tied to home and hearth, perhaps could not even read or write. Yet no one could say she wasn’t a strong female. Women have always been strong. We’re just talking about it now.

I’ve seen panel discussions debating a double standard in young people’s literature in which books with a girl on the cover are often seen as “for girls” whereas books featuring a strong male lead are more often marketed as “for everyone.” How much truth do you think there is to that, and have you noticed any shifts that make you hopeful this will improve?

I absolutely stand by the idea that there are no boy books and no girl books. What does exist is marketing, and the cover reflects who marketing thinks is the target audience for a particular book. My own team has done a great job of making my covers gender-neutral. Even though they have female main characters, a boy can carry any of my books around without having to feel self-conscious. That’s important to me, as many of my readers are male.

In your years working as a library aide, what are some books you’ve taken joy in recommending to teenage girls especially?

It always depends on the girl, and their interests. I can say the one thing I would love to see more of is sports books for girls. I only have a handful of titles that I can go to for female athletes as main characters, whereas for male athletic stories there are lots of choices.

Is It Teen Enough For You Now Episode 024: Mindy McGinnis

We recorded our interview with Mindy McGinnis on October 16th. We discuss the way McGinnis crafts full and complex characters, her use of frank and coarse language, that ending, and our ugly culture (in the person of Harvey Weinstein and other predators).

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The InkBlotters: This Darkness Mine

Mindy McGinnis has been delivering badass (sometimes unlikeable) but definitely strong female protagonists since her early works. This Darkness Mine is no different from her previous novels in that regard. Sasha Stone is the epitome of perfection: first chair clarinet player, straight-A student, and also comes equipped with a “perfect” boyfriend who’s handsome, well-dressed, and doesn’t pressure her into sex. All of this slowly begins to erode once bad-boy Isaac Harver enters the scene. Soon, she begins to feel feelings towards him that she never did and recalling events she’s never taken part of. Or has she?

Some light begins to shed when we find out that Sasha had a twin that she ultimately ended up absorbing whilst in the womb (known as Shanna). Unlike Sasha, this twin despises control and perfection and begins to wreck havoc into her life once she starts to take over Sasha’s psyche. But is Shanna real or merely a figment of Sasha’s imagination?

The book flirts with the notion of unreliable narrator, much like Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan did with Natalie Portman’s character. Is what is happening real or is it all just a sign of Sasha’s ultimate madness?

McGinnis breathes life into the “dead twin” Shanna, allowing her to be the personification of Freud’s ID (meaning being a person who only lives for their own passions and don’t allow their brain to control their emotions). Sasha on the other hand is Freud’s EGO end of this yin-yang duo, the brain and captain of the ship. But what happens when the emotion-driven Shanna takes reins of the situation and how will that effect Sasha’s “perfect” world?

This book isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s dark. It’s gritty. It’s gory. (Yes, I L-O-V-E-D it!). And just when you think you know where it’s leading you, you’re completely blindsided by yet again another improvised detour that will leave you questioning your own sanity and judgment. McGinnis delivers a punch to the gut with her sharp writing and often ruthless character interactions.

So take the plunge, cause it’s one hell of a crazy ride.

Short Q & A With the Author:

When I started reading This Darkness Mine I realized that the book was based off of the short story that appeared in Among The Shadows, entitled Phantom Heart. When did you decide to further explore Sasha’s world and what was it about this character that compelled you to do that?

Great question, thanks for noticing! Yes, DARKNESS is based on my short, “Phantom Heart.” Originally, I had no intention of taking this any further. Then my fellow editors for Among The Shadows – Demitria Lunetta and Kate Karyus Quinn – insisted that there was a whole novel there. I wasn’t sure, but I pitched the idea to my editor at Harper Collins, who was like – Yes! Write it!

Sasha Stone is the typical overachiever. Do you think that her mental illness derives from expecting perfection out of herself and the pressures that come along with that, or does she suffer from multiple personality disorder?

I worked in a public school for 15 years, and I always thought it was interesting how black and white rules and programs were. Drugs are bad. Sex is bad. Smoking is bad. Period. In some ways, we’re telling the kids that even curiosity about our “darker” inclinations are plain wrong, and need to be smothered, not investigated. Perfection is impossible, yet many strive for it. I wondered what would happen if you took an already strained teen, trying to be the “good” kid, and had her repulsed even by any interest in doing “bad” things. Would she be able to accept that such urges can be normal? Or is that so far outside of what we’ve taught her is “good” that she has to come up with an alternative explanation?

For many years I’ve been very fascinated with the creepy phenomenon of Fetus in Fetu, where a twin ends up absorbing the other twin in the womb, and in some cases doctors have later found the missing twin inside of the living twin, usually mistaken for a tumor later on in life. When did you become interested in this strange phenomenon?

It’s actually not a rare event, it’s something that usually goes completely unnoticed. I can’t remember the first time I ever heard of it, because it is pretty pervasive in pop culture, but I did have a student years and years ago who had absorbed his twin. It’s something I collected in my lint trap of a brain, and it became paired in my mind with the mirror therapy that they use for phantom limb syndrome, which is how “Phantom Heart” came about.

In the novel, Sasha is a clarinet player. Were you ever in band in high school and how did that help with writing the novel from a musician’s point of view?

You bet!!! Trombone since 4th grade!!! I tell everyone this is my band geek book. I also took piano lessons throughout most of my childhood, so music has always been a part of my life as both a consumer and a producer. This was a chance to work that into a book.

This novel was exceptionally dark. It explored the trials of mental illness as well as what it means to be a successful girl. Which actress could you see in the role of Sasha if this were to be made into a movie?

Oh, I have no idea. I don’t ever do any fan casting.

(Editor note: I asked that question because I could totally see Emma Roberts portraying stone-cold crazy bitch Sasha to perfection.)

I often use music to get into a certain mood depending what scenes I’m writing. Since your novel was about a girl who was obsessed with music, did you use music as a way to aid you in the writing of this book? And which music/artist/or song did you listen to when immersing yourself into Sasha’s world?

I actually don’t listen to music when I’m writing because while it can be helpful to get you into one mood, it can also end up controlling you mood so that when you need to flip to something else when you change scenes it can be hard. Instead I have a white noise app that I keep on while I’m writing. It’s a back ground noise that lets my creativity be in control, not someone else’s.

Mindy McGinnis On Rejection Existing At Every Level

Mindy, what was your inspiration for writing THIS DARKNESS MINE?

I went down the rabbit hole of the internet one night and learned about mirror therapy, where inverted images are used to treat itching, pain and discomfort in missing limbs. I began thinking about the issue in a less physical way, as in, what if someone believed they had they wrong heart inside of them? This idea grew and turned into a short story called "Phantom Heart" which is in the anthology titled "Among the Shadows." My fellow editors on that project, Kate Karyus Quinn and Demitria Lunetta, convinced me that there was a novel-length story there.

What do you hope readers will take away from THIS DARKNESS MINE?

That the line of what we think of as "good" and "bad" isn't something you can define by how someone dresses, the social roles they play, or how they behave only when they know someone is watching. It's the core that defines us, and you have to honestly know someone before making that judgement call.

How long or hard was your road to publication? How many books did you write before this one, and how many never got published?

I wrote 4 novels before my 5th, NOT A DROP TO DRINK landed an agent and garnered a publishing deal. Since then I've released it's sequel, IN A HANDFUL OF DUST, the 2015 Edgar Allan Poe winner - A MADNESS SO DISCREET, a rape-revenge vigilante justice story titled THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES, and the first in a fantasy series, GIVEN TO THE SEA. That sounds like a lot of success - and I remind myself that it is - but I wrote for 10 years before acquiring an agent and 3 of those 4 early novels remain unpublished, as well as a few projects I'd love to get off the ground that aren't highly marketable. Achieving publishing doesn't mean everything you produce is automatically green-lighted. Rejection exists at every level.

I recently started a podcast for aspiring writers, hoping to inform authors so that they don't make the same mistakes I did when I was starting out. The podcast is free and can be found here: http://writerwriterpantsonfire.podbean.com/

What Book Hooked You? Podcast

Wattpad 4: Character Masterclass with Mindy McGinnis

Writing Fun

The Pink Moose: Interview with Mindy McGinnis →

I recently read The Female of the Species and was absolutely stunned. I gathered up my courage and reached out to Mindy McGinnis, who graciously agreed to an interview. I learned about her, and her process, and hope you enjoy it too.

TPM: Your website says you have nine cats and two dogs. As a person with two cats and six dogs, I’d like to know a bit more about your pets. Can we get names/breeds/genders?

MM: CATS

All my cats are boring, silly American shorthairs. They’re also all strays and dumps. I have a beacon buried somewhere inside my body that brings them to me. Six of the nine cats were bottle-fed (which also includes rubbing their bums to make them go to the bathroom, or else they’ll die of sepsis). Once you’ve made that kind of connection with something, you can’t “find a good home” for them.

Alicia – gray/white, often absentee. She’s my old lady, coming in at about 10 years old. She will disappear for sometimes months at a time, and come home and tell us ALL ABOUT IT.

Samuel Wilderness – possibly a MaineCoon, discovered by former students in the woods, who immediately thought I was the person to take him to. Also a bottle fed. Somewhat internet famous. #SamuelWilderness

Samhain – long-haired, pure black, difficult to photograph. Dropped in my lap by a co-worker who heard I liked black cats.

“The Kittens”

Panda – oddly-spotted killing machine, polydactyl. The hero of the abandoned kitten group who flagged down my father at the farm and looked so pathetic it sent a 6’4″ man into a panic. I was called in.

Gilly – overweight, somewhat cross-eyed, escape artist. We think she climbed out of the box and hit her head too many times as a kitten.

Norton – gray tabby, overly handsome, broken vertebra at tip of tail. He doesn’t give a shit if you like him or not.

Ginger – orange tabby, perma-freckle on nose, drools when happy. Thinks my boobs are her bedding.

Minnow – calico runt, utterly spoiled, polydactyl. Either believes that she is a human or that my boyfriend is a cat. Either way, she’s pretty sure he’s her spouse.

DOGS:

Dana “Scully” – 17-year old Australian shepherd. I was recently shaving her for the summer and found a growth on the side of her face bigger than her face (it had been hidden by her beard). Took her to the vet. They removed it. Said her heart is great, her lungs are great, her blood work is great. She came home and frolicked like a puppy. I believe she may be a horcrux.

Brutus – 8 y/o German Shepherd / Greyhound mix (seriously, you should see this guy). Adopted from pound. Boyfriend believes he’s incredibly stupid. I believe the opposite – he’s smart enough to have convinced the b/f he’s stupid, so that he doesn’t have to obey him.

If you want to learn more about ALL my animals follow me on Instagram, or better yet, support me on Patreon, where all my tiers are named after cats, and each month’s reward includes kitty pics!

TPM: You’ve written across multiple genres (which I’ll ask more about later), what is your favorite genre to read? As a teen librarian do you typically read Young Adult exclusively, or do you jump around a bit?

MM: I am constantly jumping around on what I read, both in age and genre range, as well as non-fiction. Honestly, if it’s well-written, I’ll read it. You can keep up with what I’m reading by friending me on Goodreads, or following this Pinterestpage.

TPM: You have a blog, Writer Writer Pants on Fire, which some people may not know about, but I’ve poked around. What is your favorite feature? Do you consider the blog another job, or is it a labor of love?

MM: I love my blog! Thank you for asking! Yes, I started Writer, Writer, Pants on Fireback in 2010, when I secured an agent. My original intent was to provide answers to all of the questions I had when I was an aspiring writer, and wished I had published authors I could reach out to. I started a series of interviews for that purpose, featured every Tuesday.

I do Mindy-centric posts on Mondays, typically with writing advice or announcements for my readers. On Fridays I do ARC Giveaways, and Saturdays bring the Saturday Slash, where I provide feedback on queries to followers for free.

In less-hectic times I also do Word Origin Wednesdays (etymology based) and Thursday Thoughts, which tend to be… interesting.

My newest – at the moment, favorite – feature is a podcast! I decided to move forward with this recently and have begun the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire podcast, which features one author guest per show, talking about writing, their journey from aspiring to published, and their books.

Both of these things are entirely labors of love. I’m actually losing money on the podcast right now, but I’m dedicated to doing it for a year and re-assessing goals at the end of that time.

TPM: Between writing, your blog, your pets, and your time at the library, when do you have time for yourself? How do you spend downtime that you have? Do you have any hobbies you wouldn’t mind your fans knowing about?

MM: I’m actually working full time as an author right now, having left the high school library a year ago. I volunteer once a week, though. I have TONS of hobbies. Too many, really. I do genealogy (obsessively), I also knit and garden and I work out three times a week. I did kickboxing for a few years, but I recently started circuit training so we’ll see if it kills me.

TPM: When writing do you prefer silence or background noise? If you like having background noise, is it music or just noise in general? What is your writing anthem? How do you stay focused during your process?

MM: No music. White noise. I’m positive that all my writing is just subliminal messages buried in static.

TPM: I’ve read Not A Drop to Drink and The Female of the Species. You’ve crossed from post-apocalyptic to contemporary with what seems like great ease. Is it challenging to move from one sub-genre to another? What are the most challenging aspects of going from one sub-genre to another?

MM: I’ve written in quite a few genres, from post-apoc with Not A Drop to Drink and it’s sequel, In A Handful of Dust, and then to A Madness So Discreet, which is a Gothic historical set in an insane asylum (it won the Edgar Award in2015, *cough*), then to contemporary with The Female of the Species and most recently, high fantasy with Given to the Sea. My upcoming release, This Darkness Mine is another contemporary thriller, and I have the sequel to Given to the Sea (Given to the Earth) releasing in April of 2018. After that I will have a survival tale coming from Harper Collins in the Fall of 2018. It’s untitled as of yet, but my working title for it is Drunk Hatchet With A Girl.

It’s not challenging to switch genres as much as it is to be working in multiple ones at the same time. For example, I was doing copy edits on a historical, while doing structural edits on a contemporary, while drafting a fantasy. That was definitely not easy, but you learn to compartmentalize.

TPM: The Female of the Species is written from three different points of view, Alex, Peekay, and Jack. Was it different to move between their perspectives? What about the change from male to female?

MM: I only wrote one section per day, so that voice got to take over entirely. Then I’d palate cleanse and come back the next day to whoever was up to bat. Peekay was the easiest to write because she used humor as a coping mechanism, and she’s as refreshing for readers as she was for me as a writer.

Jack is actually the first male POV I’d ever written. It was important to me to have a very real, flawed boy in this book, but to also have him be a good person. It’s a feminist book, but feminism isn’t anti-male. It’s anti-harming-women. Plenty of men fall into that category, and Jack needed to be one of them. I had multiple male beta readers go through it with me, and would send texts to male friends asking about things like locker room talk and masturbation, and they’re all cool enough to just answer me, which is awesome.

TPM: How do you mentally prepare yourself to write a book with such a dark premise? Where did the inspiration for Alex come from?

MM: I’m basically always thinking worst-case scenario. People ask me all the time how I put myself in the right frame of mind to write such dark fiction, and I’m like, “Dude, I always think like this. I walked into this room and ascertained the best place for me to sit in case there’s a fire. That’s how I operate.”

I was in college when I ran into the inspiration for SPECIES. I never had cable television growing up, so my freshman year in a dorm I was suddenly mainlining all kinds of things, but especially true crime. I watched a mini-doc about a girl who had been raped and murdered in a small town, but there wasn’t enough evidence to convict. Even so, everyone knew who did it. I was watching this becoming more incensed, and realized, that if I were capable of it, I could easily find this town, find that mine, and take care of things myself. Then I thought it was probably time to turn off the TV.

TPM: When I read books like this, it effects my mood as well as my internal psyche and I have to take breaks to remember to look on the bright side of things. Does writing such a storyline have the same kind of effect on you?

MM: Actually, writing A Madness So Discreet was more difficult for me, mostly because I wrote it in three weeks. It was a deep, dark dive into the world of insane asylums and I couldn’t come up for air if I wanted to hit my deadline. SPECIES I wrote a chapter a day, and always had Peekay to look forward to as a brightener. Honestly it wasn’t that bad.

TPM: While Alex is the main character, I felt like I saw a lot more of Peekay, and I feel like she has the most growth throughout the book. Was there ever a struggle to tell the story from Alex’s point of view? Was Alex or Peekay’s point of view easier to write?

MM: Alex wasn’t easy to write. She didn’t want to be written and didn’t want poking and prying. Peekay was so easy. She just had a lot to say. So yeah, I did have to struggle to MAKE Alex open up, and Peekay was a breeze.

TPM: I feel like there is a lot to be said about Alex, with her dark tendencies, working at an animal shelter and being so loving could seem out of place. Only Peekay really got to see this side of her. Is there a reason that you let the reader see this bright side of Alex? Were you worried that Alex would be seen as a villain instead of the hero?

MM: I wasn’t worried about how people see her, other than I didn’t want anyone thinking she’s a psychopath. A true psychopath has a complete lack of empathy for other humans. Alex has the opposite problem – she feels too much for others, leading to a protective nature that escalates into violence. The tenderness for animals definitely exists for that reason, to show that she has empathy and compassion.

TPM: Branley as the “popular hot chick” seems to meet most high school stereotypes. By the same manner, Jack, as the all around jock, does as well. It seems most people want to move away from stereotypical characters, but you seem to have embraced them. Was this planned from the beginning, or did they develop this way on their own?

MM: That’s exactly the point – those stereotypes exist, so write them. Then make them people. Sure, you hate Branley in the beginning, but does anyone, really, by the end? Jack, of course, was planned to be who he is. But Branley surprised me, much in the same way she surprised Peekay when she showed up at her house and she found out she had a St. Bernard… because honestly only really patient people own Saints.

TPM: There’s a lot of talk about sexual assault in the book. From Anna’s death, to the police officer that comes to school, we kind of see a theme building from the beginning. When Peekay’s assaulted, after the police officer had been at the school, why didn’t she report it? Was this a statement about the reluctance of victims to speak up? Do you think the book would have ended differently if Peekay reported the incident?

MM: Impossible to say, because that’s not the book I wrote – make sense? Her friend Sara exists as a voice to say, “Hey, you need to speak up… but we also need to talk about Alex.” The reader needs to draw their own conclusions about what would have, could have, should have happened.

TPM: In the book, Peekay tells Jack that Branley is a Golden Retriever and Alex is an Irish Wolfhound. With all the possible breeds out there, why would you choose to describe Alex this way?

MM: Because everyone loves a Golden Retriever. Look at advertising. They’re the All American Dog. An Irish Wolfhound is odd, out of place, awkward… but beautiful and different and unique.

TPM: Was the end of the book the ending you expected? I don’t want to spoil anything, just want to know if every one’s fates were planned before you finished writing, or if it developed this way.

MM: I never know how my books are going to end. I write them from beginning to end without knowing what will happen next. I was definitely wondering, as things escalated, what I was going to do. When it happened I definitely sat back and said, “Well, that makes sense.”