Let boredom in: How Michael Buckley writes bestselling books for kids

It’s been 20 years since the first book in the bestselling The Sisters Grimm series by Michael Buckley debuted, and he’s had quite the career since then! This week, the animated TV series based on the books debuted on Apple TV, and last month, Michael’s latest book, The Weirdies, was published in print. With all that success, you’d think that he’d be on top of the world, but our conversation was much more nuanced than that, and we think you’re going to love to listen.

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Transcript

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Welcome everybody. Thanks for joining us again for another episode of the Curious Cat Bookshop podcast. And we are so happy today to be here with Michael Buckley. Hi, I'm Stacy Whitman, the founder and former publisher of Tu Books which is an imprint of Lee and Low Books. And I'm the owner of the Curious Cat Bookshop and we're at 386 Main Street in Winsted, Connecticut, which is up in the Northwest corner. If you're interested in any of our events, local or online, you can find them at curiouscatbookshop.com slash events. And if you love this conversation and wanna buy the book, please order it from us. You can order online from us at curiouscatbookshop.com or we've got the link below. So first of all, welcome to Michael Buckley. Yay. No problem. uh You're the New York Times bestselling author of The Sisters Grimm. We're going to talk about that in a moment and nerds among many others. You're also a TV writer and producer, which I didn't realize. and your new book is The Weirdies. And congratulations on this week's announcements that The Sisters Grimm is going to be an Apple TV show. Yeah, it's been a big week. We had a television toe announcement. The weirdies came out on Tuesday and my dog turned 10. There was a lot of things going on. Well, that's it's so exciting because The Sisters Grimm is one of those books that when I first became a children's book editor, it came out right about the same time I was working at Wizards of the Coast. And I actually listened to it on CD as I was driving to work. I still remember like I went back and looked at this. I'm like, what is it about a great narrator of a book that when you go back to the text, you're like-- you can just remember exactly how they said it. What's the... Ms. Mert, the caseworker. The way he said Ms. Mert just stuck with me. But I lost my train of thought. I went out of order. So in many ways that series inspired me as an editor because I was thinking I want to acquire more books like that. And at Wizards, you know, we were doing a lot of fantasy. it was a lot of fun. But That was 2005 and you've published a lot of books since then, I think it's 22 or 23. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. And tell me about like your I didn't realize that you're a TV producer. Like, are you working on also kids store kids shows? Yes, yes. But I, when I first got to New York from Akron, Ohio, I was an intern for David Letterman. And that kind of opened up a lot of opportunities. And I started pitching television shows almost immediately to places like VH1 and MTV and Nickelodeon. And the thing about that kind of career is it's real feast or famine. It's like you're either doing really well or you're not doing really well at all. So I had a lot of near misses. had to deal with Nickelodeon for a little while. I had deals with MTV. I sold MTV a game show that never aired. And I had a show at Cartoon Network a few years ago called Robotomy. And now the Sisters Grimm, I'm the EP on it and I'm in the writers room and working on a variety of other stuff. It's always been almost like my side hustle, which is an odd thing to call television producing career. But once children's books. like it's parallel tracks with your writing career, right? kind of does, yeah. But I think that the children's book thing wasn't exactly something I had given a lot of thought to when I was younger. I didn't really think I was capable of writing a book. And then when it happened, I just fell in love with it. And I realized that, first and foremost, I'm a children's book author. Awesome. That I think is... You are writing books that really understand that fourth and fifth grade reader, I think. I'm hearing a lot of parents and educators talk about how COVID affected reading and reading levels, how many kids are intimidated by big books. like 10 years ago, kids were reading those big old fantasy tomes and now they're intimidated by even graphic novels. And you say on your website that you write books for kids who don't like to read because you used to be one. So talk about that. What drew you to writing for this age group and how did you find your voice? Well, you know, as a kid, I don't remember there being a lot of books in my house. My mother read, but she read like Harlequin romances and she read, there was this humorist at the time, Erma Bombeck. Most people wouldn't remember her, she wrote these books that one was called, yeah, one was called, The grass is always greener over the septic tank, and if life is a bowl of cherries, why am I always in the pits? And uh those were the books laying around the house. I devoured, like, I mean, I was reading romance novels and stuff, because I had such a hunger for it. But the truth is, like when I got to school and really well-meaning educators would put things in my hands like Old Yeller and... Little House on the Prairie, which was just something I couldn't really relate to. And they were all well-intentioned, but they bored me, to be fairly honest. And it wasn't until a school librarian in the fourth grade noticed I had never checked a book out of the school library. And she made me read The Mouse and the Motorcycle, which was, that's a turning point in my life. I've said this before, but the truth is the reason I loved it, you know, being that age and a boy, was just, one, it was really funny and two, it was a big adventure. And most importantly, it was pointless. There was no heavy handed moral lesson. Yeah. The mouse and the motorcycle wasn't going to make me a better person. And that's what I wanted. I didn't want to be preached to. I didn't want to be taught. I just wanted to sit in the window on a rainy day and pass the time with characters. And so that really started it. But again, like I said earlier, I didn't think I could write a book. mean, it always rolled around in my head, but I had undiagnosed ADD until I was in my 40s. oh So I was what they call, know, back then, you know, nobody knew what ADD was I couldn't pay attention. I was always looking out the window. I was the class clown. I would break into songs sometimes just in the hallway. you know, like I was a peculiar kid. I mean, back then they just called me a pain in the butt. Now they call it ADD. But, you know, I didn't think that I had the mental acuity to be able to sit down and write. 50, 60, 70,000 words with characters in a world I had to invent and keep track of. That just seemed impossible. So when I did move to New York, I came up with the Sisters Grimm idea and I thought this would be a really awesome TV show. And then all the people that I knew in television kept saying, you know, it would probably be an awesome book. And then that would make me angry because like, it just made me feel like, somebody was telling me to do something impossible. But then I met my now ex-wife, but my girlfriend at the time worked in publishing and she's like, people don't write books all by themselves. em There's a team of people that help you. There's editors, there's art directors, there's a whole group of people who will help and she offered to help as well. Mm-hmm. And when I realized I wasn't doing it all by myself, that's when I had the, I guess the confidence and courage to give it a shot. And luckily the first book I tried to write was the first book that I sold. I was going to ask that because like some writers, could write, Brandon Sanderson is famous for, well, I don't know if he's famous for, but I went to college with him and we knew that he had written eight books before Mistborn And Mistborn sat with his editor Moshe at Tor for like a year before Moshe read it and reached out to him and said, I'd like to publish this. And so he was writing his 12th book when Mistborn was in the editorial process. And so, Like it's such a luck of the draw depending on where you are in your writing journey. I mean, and he had, that might've been, I think that his first book was probably written in high school. So like sometimes your first book really should just be in the drawer and just use those ideas later, you know? But that's wonderful. I mean, I have to give a lot of credit to my first editor, Susan Van Metre at Abrams, who really taught me how to write. I mean, really taught me structure, which roads to go down and which ones to avoid. what I loved about her was that she wasn't like a nitpicker. big picture ideas and those notes, you know, those are the scariest notes, unfortunately, because those are the ones where you're like, well, I get to start all over. But she was really helpful in steering me into what the Sisters Grimm finally became. If I had not had her, I don't know. I mean, I'm sure it wouldn't have happened at all. Well, and what you were saying about writers don't do it alone. They also don't do it in one day. Like writing a book takes a long time and it might, you know, when you're talking about, I just got diagnosed with ADHD last last year and, I've been an editor this whole time, but, but learning how to break things down so that you don't have to try and do everything all at once was probably part of your process. as well, I imagine. You know, it's a bit of a, you know, my process is so bizarre. You know, when you get to a certain age, eventually people are like, maybe you should teach. And then I'm like, what? I have an army of teachers I retired! You know, there's no way I would want to put myself in those shoes. But, you know, it comes as like a, almost like a movie. in my head, I see a scene and then I'm like, I can build a lot of things around that. And it's usually there's, you probably know this, you have a zillion ideas all the time. I mean, that's one of the superpowers of what we are dealing with is that our imaginations are really, really wild. So I get ideas for books every single day. That's not even exactly. Yeah. then the question is how do you pin down the right one? which one do I think? Well, it's usually the one that's screaming the loudest in my head. That's generally the case, so I decide. And then, you know, and then I plot it out in big, big terms. I rarely really write anything down. I have a concept of, okay, this is the first act, this is the second act, here's where we're gonna start the climax. And then like just, It's really just the painstaking every day in the chair, hammering it out day by day, looking at it, realizing it's terrible, it's fine, I'll fix it tomorrow. That's how I think, yeah. Being able to let it go and move forward, I think, is a big part of being a writer and then being willing to come back to fix it later. it's a lot like being like a sculptor. I mean, especially somebody who might like make statues of famous people. It's just like, you've got the chisel and the hammer and every day you get a little closer to the person that's inside the big block of granite. So, you know, for people with ADD and ADHD, I know the term, I'm not even sure about it anymore, but I think right now it's just all ADHD and then there's little bits, little parts of it. Yeah. The I think that patience is not something that goes naturally with me, but I have learned, you know, with the help of some meditation and long walks and going to the gym every day that I have been able to put myself in the right mental space. And I also am very forgiving. I'm like, know, some days I will sit down and I'll write for seven hours and some days I sit down and I write for seven minutes. I mean, it's, it's just, that's just what the muse was going to let me have that day. And I, and there's no use fighting it. It just didn't go to. you just said that there's some days that you don't write that at the beginning of your process, you're not even writing anything down at all, but I just, I earlier this year, I talked with Lisa Mangum, who's a friend of mine, who's an editor, and she wrote this book called Write Fearless, And she was talking about how, what you're describing, it's all writing. It's all part of the process. It's all part of the writing process that whether you're actually sitting down and writing something or just kind of working things out in your head, it's all part of the process. Right. I have a lot of faith in the subconscious. I used to tell people this all the time when it was an excuse for why I wasn't writing. I'm like, I'm writing. I'm doing it right now. I was writing in the shower. I was writing at the beach. I've been doing it all day. I'm exhausted. But this is hard work. But honestly, one trick that I have that I tell people when they ask is that if I'm stuck on a section, when I go to bed, I have a little notebook and I will write down the problem in the notebook. And then I go to bed and I would say nine times out of 10 when I wake up, the answer is waiting for me That's great. Just allow your brain to work on it in the background. Give yourself some distance. I think that's the problem with with right now this kind of time in our world, where people don't have any patience with boredom. And they can't tolerate it. And I think that's why art is, you know, like making it, our boredom is a huge part of it. I mean, it's like, that being able to just be quiet and like not fill my head with music all the time and games and doom scrolling the news. And like you have to turn that stuff off and sometimes you just have to look out the window as the cars go by. And that's when the best stuff happens. It's like the quiet moments is when the heavy lifting gets done. When I was a kid, I would lay in bed and I would just, as I was trying to go to sleep, I would lay in bed and imagine stories. Like I would self-insert myself into the Dukes of Hazzard. would, you know, I decided the the Duke boys should have been my uncles, you know, stuff like that. But, those times where you're just imagining, I don't have many of those times anymore. And I don't know if that's adulthood or just lack of space from our modern life. I think that's a really great point. I think it's like we fill our days with true crime and podcasts and I mean, no offense, but I do it myself. I'm listening to the Judge John Hodgman podcast right now. And truth is, I should be like just being quiet and still, but you know. it's all it's all in balance as well as it's allowing ourselves the space for it. But back to reluctant readers, because I really think that The Weirdies really scratches that itch that it is an illustrated book. You've got a lot, a lot of pages with illustrations like every few pages there's something for kids to look at and I really think that there's such a... in fact here's a side question for you that I didn't prepare but I'm curious have you ever-- You've never done a graphic novel have you? No, I made an effort once a long time ago, but no, I haven't made one yet. That is all the rage right now. And I really see it in our like seven, eight year old, nine year old readers that come into the bookstore who are just like, they devour them and they go back to them again and again. And also illustrated books like this, think, hook them in a way that just a big block of text right now, they just don't have the attention span for. And I don't think it's diagnosing all kids with ADHD. think like just what we were just talking about, like we've just got so much pulling our attention that they're very visual right now and the illustrations really help with that. these illustrations, by the way, the illustrator's name is Forrest Burdette and he's just a genius. I mean, these pictures are hilarious and bizarre. But none of this happened by accident. I have to give a lot of the credit to my editor, Andrea Colvin. And we had conversations when I brought her this and she said what we really need is something that is filled with illustrations and very, very visual. and not too long and really funny and full of lots of twists. And I was like, I think we can do that together. I mean, yeah, these pictures are just bonkers in here. I just got the books last week, you know, get them in and you're just so busy. You don't have time to actually sit and enjoy what you've done. And I keep looking at this. And like, this has got to be one of my favorite. I don't know if you can see it, but. Push it up with just a little bit more there. I think which page is it? I'll put it up to the screen because I think my lighting works better. Yeah, but this is page 56. It's like, it's just a little boy trying to cut somebody's hair off in the playground. it's just, I mean, it's just so horrible. There's so much--this is the kind of this is the kind of thing that a kid would just stare at though. Like look at all the things going on in this scene. It's amazing. is really what I wanted when I was 10 years old. This is it. Did you read any Richard Scarry in the 70s or 80s? I was obsessed with just poring over everything that was happening in the images. And I think kids love that of seeing a new thing every time you look at it again. But what I was going to say about this is that you've you've also got a highly stylized voice, I think that is hooking kids as well. Is this the first time you're doing this? It's kind of feels like in the vein of Lemony Snicket almost. What brought you to that voice for this particular book? You know, like, before I sat down and wrote this, I think that my career didn't feel as stable as it had. I had a series before this, it was called Finn and the Intergalactic Lunchbox. Very well reviewed. got a star review from somebody and, and, uh, I loved it. And, and it came out the day they shut the country down for COVID. Yeah. The stories I've heard is that, you know, the shipments arrived and there weren't anyone at the bookstore to even get it. So it sat out in the weather with a bunch of books. By the time the stores were open, you know, there was no point in promoting it anymore. So the second one came out. This one was called Finn in the time traveling pajamas. And same thing happened. The day it came out, the next shut down again for the second time. And then the third book came out and I think the publisher was like, no, no, you're not gonna get us again. Those poor orphan COVID books, yeah. And I also feel that there was a huge rush, and I don't mean to criticize anybody about what they love and what they like to write, but this book came out called Wonder, and it was a beautiful story. My kid had to read it seven times at school. They kept making him read it. It was the only book teachers I ever heard about, I guess. everything felt like wonder after that. Mmm. I'm writing these like very silly big adventures with a little bit of heart. You know, I've always believed that, you like you want to teach kids something and you want to make them feel something, but you want to slip that in like a secret. things weren't quite so subtle for a while. like instead of... these are--are, cookie, I wouldn't call them cookie books because there's a lot of great stuff that they're learning from it, but they don't know they're getting their vegetables at the same time. They might be cheese on top. Right. I always feel like you have to sneak the peas into the meatloaf. But for a little while, it just felt like it was just peas. So when I sat down to write this, I wasn't even sure I wanted to keep doing it. I didn't know if it was a place for me left in children's publishing. I had two hit bestselling series. That's something a lot of people can't ever get, you know, I've been blessed for sure. And I thought maybe I just maybe my time ran out. I like, sometimes I would see, like other authors and realize that, you know, a lot of them only wrote maybe one or two books their whole life. Yeah, I'm not seeing them anymore. And I was just like, maybe maybe it's over. And em I I started writing this actually collaboratively with two other authors. One is named Adele Griffin, the other one is Julia DeVillers. And they were like, oh, let's write this together and see what we can do with it. And I'd say we were about 10 days into it. They read what I had submitted and they were like, no, you can do this one on your own. I'm not sure where that narrator came from. I was always fascinated with, you know, the Addams family was a huge thing for me growing up, The Munsters-- Yeah, I loved that anything where the kids didn't fit in. And then but I also loved that the narrator is sort of spilling so much of her personal life into it, which I had never seen before. And I thought, that's hilarious that she keeps talking about her ex-boyfriend and what a terrible person he is and how she's trying so hard. Well, and this is very much a little bit of an allegory about poor little rich kids not getting enough love as well. But that's the peas that are just kind of slipped in there with hilarious moments of kids who just do not understand the world. And listen, I believe that, you know, the way the world is set up right now, the rich need some serious mocking and I'm going after them the best I can. So yeah, everybody in the book is completely out of touch with everything. They've lived this fabulously wealthy life. In the second book, they talk about they had somebody on the staff at the house whose job was just to take the blame for things that went wrong. That sounds about right. Like, feel like you're taking a seed of reality and taking it, and that's what hyperbole is, is taking it to the nth level of, you start with this normal thing that you're, you you would think about human behavior and then you just kind of add layers on top of it. And that's what makes it hilarious. Yeah, honestly, I think the narrator makes me laugh harder than what the quote is. Yeah. And how I can't wait for people to read the second one and see how it all wraps up. There's a special secret about her that is revealed. So I was looking on your website and The Weirdies in audiobook has a different illustration. that just a did it come out in audiobook first? or in a-- with an Audible original. Audible came to me and asked me if I had anything that they could have just for themselves. And through the negotiating of that, we were given the rights to publish it. Oh, okay, so the print book came out later? Yeah and Kate Winslet! Kate Winslet was the narrator for the first two, and then there's four of them altogether. And the second two are narrated by Helena Bonham Carter. yeah, they... Yeah, I thought it was. right. I especially enjoy how I had to explain the change in the narrator. It's a little bit of a Single White Female joke where Kate has been pretending to be Helena the whole time. So... Well, I'm really looking forward to that. yeah, doing it as an audiobook was interesting. I have so much respect and loyalty to indie bookstores that, you know, I wasn't sure whether doing an audiobook was the right thing. I mean, so many of the stores in this country have been my cheerleader, have put me on their shoulders and carried me around. And I never want to jeopardize that relationship or feel like disloyal. So doing something outside of that realm where we're not dealing with an independent bookstore just felt wrong. And it took me a long time to finally say, okay, this is probably something they might not even want. Because to be honest, I feel like this the book is, is a little edgy and dark and funny. I had a kid read it not too long and his review was that it was spicy. And I was like, like the best review I'll ever get. So, you know, like the very fact that it's a book and it's real in my hand is a surprise. I didn't honestly think, I didn't think Audible would want it. I didn't think Little Brown would want it. I didn't think any kids would read it. So I just thought it was something I did for myself. sometimes the best books come from that what I was going to say about... Sorry, now Jiji has decided that she's going to head bonk. Is that the curious cat? Yeah, this is Jiji. She has to be here all the time when I'm here at the desk and she needs to head bonk the microphone. So if you get bonking noises, that's her head. Jiji... But no, I was going to say audiobooks actually... Back to our conversation about reluctant readers, I think audiobooks are wonderful for reluctant readers. I was wearing a shirt yesterday from Libro.fm that says, read while driving. Because like I said, I read The Sisters Grimm originally on audiobook. It really, whether it's an adult who's just trying to do other things while they're reading and getting more reading in, or a kid who... might not read the best way on paper. I think that audiobooks are amazing and the narrator can really make or break your book as well. There was a book that came out roughly the same time as the Sisters Grimm that I really wanted to love. It was a steampunk fantasy. Like they were flying to the moon in the ether, you know, that kind of thing. And the audiobook narrator, I'm almost positive was an American trying to put on a British accent. Oh, no. And it was terrible Yeah. And so I was like, oh, this is a book that I'm to have to read on paper because I can't with a bad narrator. And this was, you know, 2005 was before all the like apps for reading and stuff like that. So I'm getting an echo because of her. So I think since then, the audio book producing companies have really invested in people like Kate Winslet, Helena Bonham Carter, like real actors who know how to pace a book, who have the right accent for whatever you're going for. I think they're doing a great job. It's funny when Audible asked me who I wanted to read it, I didn't think that Kate Winslet was on a list. I mean, that's crazy. I was like, well, I can get my brother Jeff to do it. uh That's how I felt. So yeah, I think these audiobook production companies really stepped it up. I was stunned and she was so great. She did an interview where she talked about how much she liked it. I think her kids were fans of the Sisters Grimm, which is how she came to it. then Helena has just been a marvelous person to step in and take over. She's just as funny. Both of these women who are probably not known for their comedies are deceptively hilarious and very, very talented. And so, you know, fingers crossed that that kind of approach continues because I think I'd like to do more audiobooks of maybe other kinds of stories. Yeah, exactly. We've already, she's decided that it's now, do you see what she's doing? No, that's a, you're not paying enough attention to me. You now need, she'll grab my hand and be like, no, that's what the hand needs to be on top of me. Shall we ask Jiji a few questions to make her feel like she's part of this? I think that's all my questions except for I have one last question. And I'm trying this out in the last couple of episodes because a friend who does a poetry podcast said that he always got the best answers from the poets that he was interviewing. So he wants to, he wanted to know what's your weirdest or most unexpected obsession? This will definitely embarrass some people, but I am obsessed with professional wrestling. My father introduced it to me when I was very little. There was a show that he watched pretty religiously called Georgia Championship Wrestling, and this is like rasslin'. Hahaha! You know, it just was something that was on all the time growing up. And, you know, I went through this stage where I was embarrassed about it and, like, oh, this is, this is ridiculous. And there was definitely some time in the WWF before it became the WWE where some of the characters are just ridiculous. It's like, like there's like, he's the bad guy because he works for the IRS. I mean, that's like a, that's a wrestler. Yeah. He was called IRS. And like, so it was always like a job. that they would turn them into a good guy or a bad guy and like the baker, the barber, kind of silly stuff. But as I've gotten older, I realized that it doesn't matter that it's not real, that there is theater going on and storytelling that is planned out long in advance with a big room of writers. And I don't know, I love the theatrics of it. Like I've always enjoyed a big spectacle. Like one of my favorite rock bands is Kiss. And it's not because Kiss is good. In fact, I would say Kiss is probably not great, but oh, what they created. You know, that's worth celebrating. And I love like big explosions and people doing backflips and impossible moves and acrobatics and the storylines. I mean, they had this storyline recently called the Bloodline, where a bunch of people who are all from the same family got together in a group and just dominated the whole show for almost five years. that kind of stuff, it marvels me that It was so enticing and gripping to me that I kept watching it. And when I say this, people laugh at me, but I'm like, this is like Emmy-- This is Emmy-worthy television. You know, it is a bit like a soap opera. And but with lots of violence. So but yeah, I think people would be surprised to know that not only do I really enjoy wrestling, I know a lot about it. That's awesome. So we'll wrap up with Jiji finally deciding to leave the mic. So I guess that's time to that's her signal that it's time to end. So the new book is The Weirdies, and you can pick it up from us, curiouscatbookshop.com and where can people find you online? Well, mostly you can find me on Instagram. I'm at @whatsupbuckley But I also have a website, it's a dusty relic of the past, but michaelbuckleywrites.com. And I'm on the TikTok, @whatsupbuckley there as well, on the Tikki Tokki. But yeah, I think if you really wanna reach me and learn more about what I do, Instagram is the best place to go. Perfect. Thank you so much. Bye everyone. Thanks for having me.