A YA Theater Romance with Adib Khorram: The Breakup Lists

Marissa chats with Adib Khorram about his new YA romantic comedy, THE BREAKUP LISTS. Also discussed in the episode: the challenges of pandemic books and virtual launches, the positive influence of We Need Diverse Books, having fun mining your own experiences for fiction, showcasing the people who work behind-the-scenes in theater, identifying and consciously including themes in a book, discovering a character’s voice, making yourself laugh during the writing, researching and including disability and intersectionality representation, winning awards, and so much more!

Show notes: 

Pretty Gritty Tours: https://www.prettygrittytours.com/index.html 

We Need Diverse Books: https://diversebooks.org/ 

Agent Janet Reid’s blog: https://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/ 

The Folgers Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMwFWDIFVCU

The Happy Writer at Bookshop.org
Purchasing your books through our webstore at Bookshop.org supports independent bookstores.

Writing Mastery Academy
Use the code HAPPYWRITER at WritingMastery.com for $20 off your first year of unlimited access.

Red Herrings Society
Use the code HappyWriter at RedHerringWriters.com to try the first month for free.

Amplify Marketers
Our mission is to help your message rise above the noise so it can be heard loud & clear.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Order The Happy Writer: Get More Ideas, Write More Words, and Find More Joy from First Draft to Publication and Beyond https://bookshop.org/a/11756/9781250362377

Find out more and follow The Happy Writer on social media: https://www.marissameyer.com/podcast/

Transcript

[ADVERTISEMENT] Marissa: You have you ever abandoned a novel halfway through or struggled to finish a story that you were really excited about? You are not alone. It's estimated that 97% of writers who start a novel never finish it. Enter a game changer Jessica Brody, the author of Save the Cat writes a novel, has developed a method that will give you the best possible chance of finishing all the projects you start in the fastest, most efficient way possible, and you can master it in a matter of hours. With her on demand self paced course novel fast drafting stop stressing, second guessing, and revising endlessly. Start fast drafting and finish your first draft in record time. Visit writingmastery.com to start this course for free. When you're ready to join, get $20 off your first year of unlimited access to all writing mastery courses by selecting the annual membership and using coupon code happy writer at checkout. That's writingmastery.com code happy writer

Hello and welcome to the Happy writer. This is a podcast that aims to bring readers more books to enjoy and to help authors find more joy in their writing. I am your host, Marissa Meyer. Thank you for joining me. One quick call to action, since we have a lot of new listeners and it's been a little while since I asked. If you have not done so and you feel so inclined, we would love it if you could leave the Happy Writer podcast, a quick rating or review on your favorite podcast provider. It does help with that whole algorithm thing and making sure that other readers and writers are able to find us. So if you find this podcast to be helpful and encouraging, it would really mean a lot to us if you could help let other people know. One thing making me happy this week is I want to give a shout out to a local tour company called Pretty Gritty Tours. They do history tours and also ghost tours all around my hometown of Tacoma, Washington, and we took a tour of the Haunted Blackwell mansion for my 40th birthday a couple of months ago. And it was so great that a friend of mine, author Jamie Thomas, decided to book the mansion for this upcoming weekend. And we are going to go and have a haunted house writing retreat, which is like very fitting since my next fairy tale retelling that I'm working on has even more ghosts than the last one. So I am really looking forward to it. That was like a billion things that are making me happy. Writing retreats, haunted mansions, ghost tours, writing friends. It's a lot, but really I wanted to particularly, like I said, shout out to pretty gritty tours. I'm not on TikTok, but I have heard that they have a fantastic TikTok channel, so if you want to check that out, even if you're not local to Tacoma, I hear they do really, really great stories and videos, so the link to that will be in our show notes, of course. I am also so happy to be talking to today's guest. He's the author of the multi award winning Darius the Great is not okay and its sequel, Darius the Great Deserves better, as well as the YA novel Kiss and tell and the picture book seven special somethings. His newest YA romance, the breakup list comes out tomorrow on April 2. Please welcome Adib Khorram.

[03:49] Adib: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

[03:52] Marissa: It is my absolute pleasure. Congratulations on another fantastic novel coming out. I know you're deep in promo mode right now. Are you finding some time to enjoy this book launch?

[04:06] Adib: I am indeed. I have kind of a whirlwind, I guess, six city tour if you count my hometown of Kansas City. And so I'll get to see friends and meet readers, and this is my first proper tour since the pandemic. And so I'm really, really excited.

[04:23] Marissa: Yeah. How many books did you have that were pandemic books?

[04:28] Adib: Well, I had one that was in 2020, which was the worst. I had one that was in early spring of 2021, which was equally bad. And then I had one in March of 2022, which was really. I don't know. Some people say that's post pandemic. I definitely didn't feel like things were back to quote unquote normal in bookish events until like fall of 2022. So I say that I had like two and a half.

[04:52] Marissa: Yeah, no, I agree. Because in early 22, we were still trying to do the whole virtual event thing, and we made it work. We did the best we could, but it is just not the same. I was just on book tour myself and I was so happy to be back in bookstores and libraries and seeing readers. It's such a totally different scenario.

[05:15] Adib: It is. And I loved the accessibility that virtual events brought. But then it went from doing like a virtual event to like twelve just for a single book, and then there was like 18 a week to try to catch. And I think a lot of people got burned out because they were desperate for any connection, as I think a lot of us were.

[05:34] Marissa: Sure. Yeah. No. For a while my publisher was doing these virtual meet and greets, so it was supposed to replicate a signing line where you get to talk to people for 1 minute, one on one. But it's all through the screen, and you're not actually signing anything. And it was like, I don't know, I wish I had some swag I could pass to you through the screen or something. It just was not the same. But I do agree with you that it was nice that at least you could see people from all over the world. And, of course, that's not usually an option at in person events.

[06:12] Adib: So there's pros and cons indeed. I think if we hadn't all gotten burned out on them, I would still be like, let's do one per book or one a year, just because I think you get to attract a crowd you don't normally get. Yeah, the energy is different, the feel is different, and I don't know that anyone ever really nailed doing them, right? And so, I don't know. I would like for someone to make a virtual book launch studio where you could book it and do, like, a really nice high production virtual launch event.

[06:46] Marissa: I think that would be the idea.

[06:47] Adib: If I ever become some sort of, like, tech billionaire, that's what I'll open up.

[06:52] Marissa: I love it. No, that's a genius business waiting to happen. All right, so the first thing that I would love to hear from you that I ask all my guests, is, I want to hear your origin story. How did you become a published author?

[07:07] Adib: Oh, my goodness. Well, I did not study writing. I did not like writing, and I didn't really like reading, either. I think, like many people did, I wrote fan fiction when I was in middle school. I had some very quality self insert Star Trek fan fictions.

[07:26] Marissa: Star Trek. I love it.

[07:28] Adib: Indeed. Yeah. My school district bought a whole bunch of new computers and had to do something with all the old ones that only ran a word processor in orange text on a black screen, like an MS Dos. And I don't know if any of your listeners know what that is. I know you and I are basically the same age, so you know what it is. All you could do was word process. And so me and my friends went after school and typed stories, but early on, I had a teacher be like, why don't you write something original? And I was like, why don't I just write nothing instead? And so I just kind of stopped writing for a while. I definitely didn't like reading very much. Growing up, I thought you had to be dead to be an author, just because that's what my school curriculum was on books to read. It was all either dogs dying or boring old white men or rich white boys in boarding schools, all by dead authors and so being like an author wasn't something I thought about or thought anyone could do. So instead, like many queer kids, I became a theater kid. I actually got my bachelor's degree in theatrical lighting design. Graduated right before the great Recession. So that was a really wonderful time to be a fresh college graduate, and finally found a job here in Kansas City, sort of theater adjacent, doing a lot of live events. And once they knew that I knew how to use Microsoft PowerPoint, they actually shifted me from lighting design, which was like my education, to graphic design, which was a fancy way of saying that we had a lot of corporate clients that made a lot of ugly PowerPoints, and it was my job to fix them. And that was, weirdly a good use of my skills, because I'm a people person. I can get along with just about anyone. Even if I loathe them, I can just grin and bear it. I ended up having a lot of time at my desk, where I was waiting for corporate CEOs to email me their PowerPoint of 300 slides at 04:59 p.m. On a Friday, so it would be ready for rehearsal Saturday morning. And I found myself getting slowly back into writing and really getting back into reading. So one of my good friends challenged me to do Nanorimo. If any of your listeners aren't familiar, that's national novel writing month, where you try to write a whole novel in the month of November. Spoiler alert. I failed miserably. I got 5000 words into it, and I was like, writing is hard. Writing a novel is really, really hard. But I'm the kind of person that I do like a challenge. And so, even though I failed Nanorimo, I kept writing. And I wrote several bad books, as many people do. Most of them centered on straight white boys, because, again, I thought that's what you were allowed to write about. And then in 2014 and 2015, I became aware of the growing we need diverse books movement, founded by Danielle Clayton and LnO and Lamar Giles and so many other amazing authors. And I was like, oh, maybe I should try writing about Iranians instead. And so in March of 2015, I sat down and started writing the book that would become Darius Segrita's not okay. I spent, like, two years revising that book because I'm a panther by nature. And so all my first drafts are deliciously messy. There was like a porta potty that fell from the sky. There was a singing shop owner, but the heart of the story was there. And so after two years of revising, I started querying agents, got one. Surprisingly fast. Given that the other books I had queried, which went nowhere, response times were very slow. Nothing ever happened, but got an agent in, I guess, April of 2017, we revised it again because my middle was soggy, and my middles are always a little soggy. No one ever tell Mary Berry about my middles. And then we ended up selling the book quite quickly, as well. I think we sold it in July of 2017. So that was really weird. So, that was in 2017, and I had kind of started writing in 2010 or 2011.

[11:22] Marissa: Okay.

[11:23] Adib: So it was, like, a lot of nothing and then a lot of something very fast, which felt very weird.

[11:29] Marissa: Yeah.

[11:30] Adib: And I kept my day job all the way up until I was laid off during the pandemic, because suddenly groups of humans were not allowed to gather together anymore, and that was, like, our entire business. And so my parents could never have predicted that my arts career was the more stable one in a mild apocalypse. But here we are.

[11:48] Marissa: Oh, that's so funny. I got to admit, I'm pretty curious about the whole Porta potty falling from the sky thing.

[11:54] Adib: Yeah. One day, I was, like, walking past construction on a high rise, and there was a crane just, like, lifting a Porta potty into the air. I was like, oh, I guess that's what you have to do if you're on a 20 story building under construction and you got to go, like, they just bring the port potty to you so you don't have to climb down 20 floors of scaffolding. And then, of course, I immediately being. I don't know that I would say dark, but I'm constantly curious about what safety rules are. And I was like, oh, I wonder if anyone's ever dropped a porta potty from height. And so I put that in a book.

[12:23] Marissa: Yeah, I love that. Do you think it was coincidental that the first book that you really started putting more of yourself into was also the first book that sold?

[12:36] Adib: I don't think it was coincidence. I do think it was a direct result of we need diverse books. Challenging publishers to pay more attention to stories of marginalized individuals and of stories that we hadn't really seen. Yeah, I don't think I would exist as an author without. We need diverse books.

[12:56] Marissa: Yeah, no, it's such a great movement. Did you feel like your writing changed at that point, or was it all just kind of this know, just learning the craft, getting better with every manuscript, et cetera?

[13:10] Adib: I would say definitely all of my manuscripts taught me something. And I would say the thing that I felt made me level up my craft was there was an agent with a blog, an agent named Janet Reed, who runs a blog. And one of the pieces of writing advice she has given over and over is to pick a book you love and copy it out yourself, word for word. And that really made me dissect the books I loved and the rhythms of the sentences, the structures of the chapters. And I felt like that really leveled up my craft. And I feel like when I started working on Darius the Great as not okay, I let myself be freer than I ever had been, which I don't know if that's a craft thing so much as that's like an opening up, a flowering of the artistic soul, as it were, which sounds so pretentious now that I've said that out loud.

[14:01] Marissa: I thought it was podcast.

[14:03] Adib: No, it just makes me sound like an insufferable MFA guy. But there's a certain amount of not caring anymore where you're just like, you know what? I'm just going to put myself and the things I love and the things that make me happy onto the page. And if publishing doesn't want it, then, whatever. I still said something that I needed to say.

[14:23] Marissa: Yeah, no. And I guess the reason I asked that is because having interviewed now hundreds of authors and talking to people about their path, their journey, it is not uncommon at all that I hear from writers who like, well, I thought I could get published with this sort of book. So I wrote that, and that didn't go anywhere. And then I thought, well, the market wants this. So I wrote that, and that didn't go anywhere. And then finally I was like, well, I'm just going to write what I want to write, or I'm going to write the story that I needed as a kid or a teenager or something that I would respond to. And then so often that goes on to be the book that got their agent or got their first book deal. And I think that what you say about, oh, the flowering of the solar, however you put it, there is something to that about being a little bit more free with ourselves and letting ourselves have more joy with writing, and writing things that we truly are passionate about, that suddenly other readers really start to respond to that.

[15:27] Adib: I definitely agree. And I think almost every writer I've talked to, and maybe this has been your experience, too, has had a moment where they're like, oh, I thought I was the only one that ever felt this way. I wrote a book about it, and it turns out lots of people feel this way, and it's a really amazing moment of human connection.

[15:46] Marissa: Yeah, no, definitely. And one of the most powerful things about books, too, that you can read a book and felt truly seen, feel like there's someone else in the universe that gets this, that has these same feelings, emotions, thoughts. And if you've never experienced that one on one with a person, to see yourself in a book can mean so much to a person.

[16:09] Adib: It really can. And in some ways, it's even more intimate than being one on one with another person, because then you're just one on one with yourself and with the text in your own little universe.

[16:23] Marissa: All right, so on that note, here we are. Book number five. Would you tell listeners, what is the breakup lists about?

[16:32] Adib: So the breakup lists is about Jackson Gaznabi, who's a queer, iranian american deaf high schooler. He's a stage manager in his school's theater program, and he's really cynical in love. His sister, on the other hand, is a serial dater. And to help her get over all of her various breakups, he makes lists of all the flaws of her ex boyfriends. He's very organized in this way. And so just to help her feel better, he'll list all the things wrong with him. Sometimes they're made up, and sometimes they're true, but it doesn't matter. Unfortunately, his sister Jasmine sets her eyes on the lead actor in the fall musical, a boy named Liam, who's also the senior swim captain and also has been, like, weirdly friendly to Jackson. And when they do inevitably break up, as always happens, Jackson has to make a breakup list for Liam and unfortunately realizes that he also likes Liam. And as always happens with theater kids, drama ensues.

[17:38] Marissa: Okay, before we go too deep into the story and craft and all this, I have to mention this wonderful side character, the best friend named Bowie, inspired by David Bowie. Please say yes.

[17:57] Adib: In many ways, yes. So Bowie is agender, asexual black child of deaf adults and is Jackson's best friend. And after they came out, they did pick their name because of their love for David Bowie and kind of the beautiful queerness that David Bowie espoused in a time when not a lot of people were doing it. So I'd say, like, their personality, not at all inspired by David Bowie, but they themselves loved David Bowie, and that's why they picked the name. Okay. Definitely the artist and not the.

[18:31] Marissa: No, I. That's kind of what I had intuited. Is that the right word? I am a huge David Bowie fan, and this character was so fun, and I just loved that little connection. It made me really.

[18:46] Adib: You know, I think, like a lot of authors, I practice my pitches or I spy on librarians or booksellers talking about my book to try to perfect the pitch, and I still haven't found one that includes Bowie in it without just wildly taking me off onto a tangent.

[19:01] Marissa: Right.

[19:02] Adib: Which is a shame, because I also love Bowie.

[19:05] Marissa: Yeah, well, yes, they're a very lovable character, and they add a lot to the character arc for our main protagonist, which is really important. But then they're just like one of those characters where you feel like even though they are not the focus of this book, they are clearly off having their own story, which is the sort of side character that we can't help but fall in love with.

[19:30] Adib: I agree. I love a best friend character, no matter the genre. I love a good best friend, and I love characters that are a universe unto themselves. I think that's what I'm really drawn to writing, and that's what I'm drawn to reading. And so I'm glad Bowie is getting that response from people because I very much wanted them to.

[19:53] Marissa: Yeah. All right. So then, to pull our attention back to more of the heart of the book, as you mentioned, it is a theater book. Jackson is the stage manager at his high school, and he and his sister both fall for the leading male lead of the fall play. And you mentioned that you yourself had some experience with theater. So how much did your experience being in theater play into this book? And more specifically, like, wanting to write a book in which the main character is the more behind the scenes guy as opposed to one of the lead actors?

[20:39] Adib: Yeah, I will say writing this book was intensely self indulgent for me because I was just putting all sorts of inside jokes and memories and pranks we played in my high school theater and even my college theater days, borrowing stories so much had to get cut out in edits because the book was like 110,000 words long the first draft, just because I just put in so many things that made me laugh, and me and my editor were like, okay, let's parrot back, find the things that serve the story and are funny. But it was really fun to go through my own memories and my friends'memories and just put in all sorts of shenanigans. Many of the things in the book are either just actual real things that have happened or only slight fabrications that are reality adjacent, as I like to think. But I was really keen to explore Jackson as a stage manager, as someone who lives behind the scenes in particular, because I think a lot of queer people, especially queer people that are multiply marginalized and queer people that live in the know. Jackson is in Kansas City just as I grew up in Kansas City. We often make ourselves smaller. We make ourselves stay behind the scenes because we're not always ready to have attention on us or because we don't feel safe to have attention on us. And I think hiding behind a role, hiding behind a job, hiding behind a curtain, is a more comfortable place, especially for younger queer people that are only just sort of coming into their own identities and their own senses of self. And on the one hand, I was also a techie. I don't know how much of it was fear of being perceived and how much of it was. I really like playing with lights, but I wanted to explore that with Jackson. And also, I think when we write for young people, I think sometimes it's really easy to tell ourselves that young people aren't actually good at things. But Jackson is, in fact, fiercely competent in a way that a lot of young people are, in fact, very competent at the things that they love. And I really wanted to get that love on the page as well.

[22:44] Marissa: Yeah, well, I thought it was interesting as I was reading it, and I don't know about you. For me, when it comes to themes and character arc, I'm not always thinking of those when I first start a project. And then it's like as I write and it kind of reveals itself that I'm like, oh, yeah, I totally did that on purpose. But for me, in reading this, it felt like there was this kind of thematic overlay with Jackson always being behind the scenes, always being behind the curtain, and kind of mirroring his character arc and how he has to kind of grow to go from being. Feeling he's invisible, pretending that he's okay with being invisible, and then slowly, over the course of the story, like being more willing to step out into the spotlight and say, you know what? I actually really want this thing and I deserve this thing. Yeah.

[23:44] Adib: Normally I think that theme is something that English teachers invented to have more questions to ask on tests. This book was actually the first book, I think, where I was aware, going in what my themes were. It was, as you say, taking up space and Jackson's journey into being willing to take up space, both as a stage manager stepping into the limelight, and also as a queer, brown, disabled person taking up space in a world that's not always friendly to them. I also was aware that betrayal and sibling relationships were going to be at the forefront, which is why I picked them doing Jesus Christ Superstar and then 12th night as school plays because I was like, oh, one is about betrayal and one is about messy sibling relationships. This is perfect.

[24:32] Marissa: I love it.

[24:33] Adib: So proud of myself. I was like, oh my gosh, am I a writer that has themes now?

[24:37] Marissa: Like, who knew? You have leveled them up.

[24:41] Adib: I've been asked at school visits before, what are the themes in your novels? And I'm just like, I don't know. What do you think they are?

[24:47] Marissa: Right question.

[24:49] Adib: But this time I was like, oh my gosh, I'm on top of this one. I was really, really proud of myself. It'll probably never happen again. Every other book, I won't know what it's about. But this one, I was like, yes. Themes, motifs. I got it.

[25:00] Marissa: That's hilarious. I have had people send me, I wrote my thesis on Cinder and here's all the themes. And I was like, wow, you make me sound really smart. But I didn't know any of that.

[25:16] Adib: I'm always just like, yes, that was my intention.

[25:20] Marissa: Totally.

[25:21] Adib: With a wide eyed stare.

[25:24] Marissa: Yeah, you nailed it. 

[ADVERTISEMENT]: Do you want an encouraging writing community with critique partners twice a month, masterclasses, opportunities to be in an anthology or connect with literary agents, valuable publishing advice, and more. Then you have to check out the red Herring society. It's a monthly mastermind group hosted by savvy best selling authors Mary Weber and CJ Redwine. And by using code happywriter@redharingwriters.com you can try the first month for free and start elevating your career today. Again, that's code happywriter at Redharingwriters comarketers. 

[ADVERTISEMENT]: If you're looking to increase sales, there is a marketing agency that specializes in optimizing and advertising on Amazon. Amplify Marketing Services was founded by Franklin, who has been in the book business for more than 20 years. Amplify has promoted over 30,000 books, and they invest millions of dollars each year in Amazon ads. Head to amplifymarketers.com to explore their free articles or set up a free meeting with Franklin. That's amplifymarketers.com. All right, I want to talk about character voice, because Jackson has where it's a first person point of view. We are in his head. He has a really clear voice. And one of the things that I loved that you did that I don't think I've ever seen before is that through his internal narration occasionally you have these little strikeouts, things that he thinks and then instantly edits himself. Where did that come from?

[27:22] Adib: I think if I want to sound smart, I will say that they were inspired by a book I read many years ago by an iranian author who, because of the government censorship in Iran, was like self censoring his own book, and so sentences or words would be redacted in the text. I think maybe that was in the back of my mind somewhere, but really, I think Jackson's kind of self censoring came out of a. It made me laugh that he was constantly correcting himself if he was a little too mean. Jackson's. I think my first character that's been really kind of snarky, and I had a lot of fun with that. But I also know many queer people and many people of color and many disabled folks do have to censor themselves. They can't ever say how badly they're hurting. They can't ever say how mad they are that someone has said something. They constantly make themselves smaller and more palatable to survive in the world. And so even though it started as sort of just a fun and funny thing for me to do, I quickly realized that, oh, maybe it was, in fact, deeper than I thought it was, and maybe I was exercising some of my own demons about times that I've had to bite my tongue to get along in the world. I think a big, sort of a crystallizing moment for Jackson's voice really came in one of the early pages. And my agent, Molly O'Neill, flagged the line where Jackson was criticizing one of Jasmine's ex boyfriends and said that he had a bad man bun. And, like, it wasn't even a bun, it was more like a garlic knot. And Molly said it made her laugh out loud, and that that was voice. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I think you're right. And so whenever I was writing and needed to get back into Jackson's head, I was like, okay, a man dart. That's who he was, and that's how he sees the world around him. I do think he came out quite distinctive and endearing, even for all of his sharp edges.

[29:32] Marissa: Yeah, I think sometimes the sharp edged characters are especially endearing, because a lot of times you can't help but feel like this snark or this cynicism. It's a wall, it's a shield that is used to protect ourselves. And I think a lot of us can relate to that, I think.

[29:47] Adib: So, you know, having written, I guess this will be my third book now about queer iranian Americans. But my first book, Darius. People constantly ask me if Darius was based on me, and I'm like, no, not really. Jackson also isn't based on me, but he's uncomfortably close to teenage me in a way that none of my other characters have been. Yeah, I may be about to embarrass myself really publicly, but all for a good cause, I think.

[30:14] Marissa: Do you think that made it easier or harder to write his character?

[30:19] Adib: I think both. I'm always of the belief that no character ever really comes out of nowhere. We're always putting ourselves on the page in one way or another. And so much of being an author is being careful and being choosy about which parts of yourself you put on the page, which parts of yourself you want to share. And this one, I definitely felt I was oversharing. And so I think I did have to find moments and find ways where I could change Jackson enough that it was not just, like, autobiographical fan fiction.

[30:54] Marissa: Sure. No. And I liked your example, your story about that one line, the man bun garlic knot, which I remember, and I also laughed out loud at that because I think it's funny how sometimes when we're trying to discover a character's voice, for me, I know there's a lot of times when there is a line, either a thought or a line of dialogue, where it's just suddenly, like, this spotlight shining on the page, like, that's them. That's who I've been looking for. And until I can find that line, I'm constantly just, like, searching and trying on different attitudes and personality quirks and blah, blah, blah. But once it clicks, then it's like, oh, there you are. And now I can hear your voice.

[31:41] Adib: I think, for me, that's something I think I borrowed from the actors that I used to work with going through theater school, even though I studied lighting design, I also had to take occasional acting courses and certainly worked with a lot of other actors and seeing their process of building a character or getting into a character, more than one person I met would have this one line that their character says, and they would walk around muttering it under their breath to sink into the character. And so maybe I did steal that from them, but I think you're right. Once you find that moment, that line, it's like a crystal, and crystals start with a single seed and then explode outward. And that's kind of how it feels.

[32:23] Marissa: Yeah. So if I'm not mistaken, I think that line comes from one of the lists, or at least I think so, too.

[32:31] Adib: Don't ask me what's in my book. I wrote it, and I've gotten everything about it.

[32:35] Marissa: I read it yesterday, and yet our memories just fade away. But I'm pretty sure it is. So talk to me about the lists and specifically, how much fun was it to create these breakup lists?

[32:48] Adib: Oh, my gosh. It was incredibly fun. As I was writing all these mean lists, I was like, oh, this is why people like writing villains so much. I think of that line from Ratatouille where ego is, like, negative criticism is fun to write and fun to read, and it kind of was. I also feel like all of us go through the world, and sometimes we meet people that either, a, they're, like, legitimately gross, or b, we just don't vibe with and we have to live with them anyway. But we're always thinking and kind of silently judging them, and I think it's like a normal human impulse that we all fight against. And it was kind of freeing, in a way, to just lean into it, that Jackson doesn't hide these, you know, sequesters them on pieces of paper that he then hides. Yeah, it was very self indulgent to just write lists of flaws for people, and sometimes it was things that annoyed me about other people in the world. Sometimes it's just ridiculous. Things like, someone's head is shaped like a Lego. It's, like, a little too big and too round, and they don't have a neck. I'm like, I don't know. I don't think I know anyone like that. But it was just, like, a funny image that came to me.

[33:59] Marissa: Yes.

[34:00] Adib: And I think. I don't know. It was really fun. And my goal with all of them is to make myself laugh out loud at least once and then also leave a breadcrumb so that if someone were to go back, they can cringe a little bit because it pokes a little bit at Jackson's own insecurities in a way that you don't realize until later.

[34:24] Marissa: Yeah, no, I did have to wonder, of course. And I'm sure you'll get this question a million times, like, how many of these were inspired by real people? And you don't have to answer that, but it is fun that it's like, the list. They're fun, but in that way that gossip is fun, where you know you shouldn't partake, you know you shouldn't enjoy it. But it's kind of irresistible at the same time.

[34:54] Adib: Yeah, it's juicy. And theater kids love drama, even if they're stage managers.

[35:00] Marissa: That's true. Talk to me about your choice to include disability representation. Jackson is deaf. Bowie's parents are deaf. There's a lot going on with sign language in the book. There's different portions of the book where Jackson can't always hear what people are saying. So you have this great little something. Something gets inserted into the dialogue, which is so wonderful for a reader coming to this, because then it's like, oh, wow, that really is how that it felt very authentic. Where did that come from? And what was some of the research that you had to do to try to make that authentic? Yeah.

[35:40] Adib: I am not a member of the deaf community, but it's one that I've always felt very adjacent to that I've had a lot of connections with both because of life experiences. Like, when I was very young, I got put in speech therapy. Turned out I had gay voice, but they thought I had a lisp and a speech impediment, so they were trying to get that out of me. But many of the other kids in the class with me were deaf, and so I got to know them that way. I have people in my life now that are deaf or that are children of deaf adults. While I've been really excited to see deaf and other disability representation increasing in y literature in particular, I think this year alone, there's two books by deaf authors about deaf characters. There's Anna Sortino's on the bright side and Sidney Langford's the Loudest Silence. But I think the intersection of disability and queerness and being black or brown is one that I didn't see explored, as I think, you know, I live with chronic mental illness and I live as a queer brown man, and none of those things are the same as living with a disability. But I felt that there were parallels that I could explore, and the fact that there were other books coming out made me feel that I wouldn't be taking up more space than I was making. So I really hoped going in, that me writing a character like Jackson would encourage others to write characters like Jackson, especially from their own experiences. But going in, I also knew I had to do a lot of research. I read a lot of books by deaf authors. One of my favorites was actually recommended to me by a deaf friend called True Biz by Sarah Novic, which I think also was like a Reese's book club pick or something. It was, like, really big. It was a great book. I watched deaf you on Netflix. That was one of my favorite things. I watched about Bella Dutt University in Washington, DC, about horny deaf kids in college, and, oh, my gosh, just like the scandals. It was like a soap opera. I was like, I don't remember college being like this for me, but I was also a nerdy theater kid, and actually one of the biggest resources ended up being TikTok. I unfortunately do have a TikTok. I spend way too much time on it, always looking at other people's TikToks and rarely posting myself. But there were a number of deaf creators, and in particular black deaf creators that I followed and that put out a lot of regular content. And I would love to say the names, but every month or so, TikTok changes how it displays the names, and so I don't know what their names are anymore. Like, I used to know their usernames and it would show, like, half the username and then half their display name, and then only display name and then display name, but also, like, random icons. So I don't know their names anymore.

[38:28] Marissa: Oh, my gosh. TikTok. Come on. Seems unnecessarily complicated, right?

[38:34] Adib: But they were offered a lot of insights. And then also I got an authenticity reader that was a stranger to me, as well as sharing it with my deaf and deaf adjacent friends to give their feedback. Yeah, it was a lot of work, and I'm really proud of where I landed, and I hope, as I said, it will make more space for others than it takes up. But at the end of the day, also, if I got it wrong, I will take my lumps. The end of the day, it's my book and no one else's. And if I did do wrong, then it's on me and not anyone else.

[39:07] Marissa: I do want to talk a little bit about the romance. This is a romance. It is a rom.com. The love triangle in it is a little unusual, one you don't see very often, in which it is a brother and a sister who both fall in love with the same guy. What were some of the things you enjoyed about writing this kind of. You got the romance aspect and the friend aspect and the sibling aspect. But on the flip side, what were maybe some of the challenges of that?

[39:42] Adib: I will say I think, like a lot of people during the pandemic, I was pretty isolated, lonely, and in need of happiness. And romances are about people falling in love and being happy. And so I actually started working on the breakup lists during the pandemic, and I wanted to write about how love can bring out the best in you, even if you're a little bit messy like Jackson is. I don't think I went in conceiving of it as a love triangle. I think someone pointed out to me that I had written a love triangle, and I was, oh, no, I did. Not that there's anything wrong with them, but I think, in my mind, I don't know. It was, like, two separate things. Like, yes, Jasmine did date Liam, but then they broke up, and then Jackson dated him after, and so therefore, it's not a triangle, even though it very much is a triangle. And I think in some ways, that was a challenge because it's kind of a weird space. I don't know. I didn't want to get anywhere near the Folgers commercial. I don't know if you remember the weird Folgers.

[40:44] Marissa: I don't. I don't know what you're talking.

[40:46] Adib: Just if you look up the Folgers commercial, you might immediately get it. But basically, it was like a man and a woman, and the man was coming home for the holidays, and it's, like, framed extremely romantically. But then at the end, you find out the brother and sister. It's just weird and hilarious, and everyone's like, what were the people at Folgers thinking? So, anyway, a lot of people use the Folgers commercial as shorthand for brother and sister being a little too close. Sure. So I didn't want to go there. But I also know when you're queer, often your dating pool is a little smaller. And also, it can be really messy if you're attracted to someone your sibling is attracted to. And I think that also happens with, for instance, two heterosexual brothers that both like the same girl or whatever. I think it's a messy and complicated thing. And so I had to make sure that the betrayal, as it were, was never so great, that people wouldn't be rooting for the be and that they would forgive Liam for dating Jasmine and then dating Jackson. I think it's really common when you're a teenager to make a mess of your romantic life, to sometimes date people you're not really into in the hopes that someone you are into will get jealous or become available or that you date someone that you only feel a little bit for and hope that it'll blossom into feeling a lot more for. So I wanted to capture that as honestly as I could while never letting any of the characters do something that readers would find irredeemable. And I hope I landed pretty close to that spot. I know everyone kind of has their own thresholds for that, and so I'm sure some people will still be like, ew, no. But I'm pretty proud of where I landed, and I think I ran that gauntlet fairly well.

[42:29] Marissa: No, I agree. I think you did a wonderful job. I think part of it just comes out of Liam himself as a. Like, you can just tell he's so sweet, he's so genuine. He's not trying to hurt anyone. There's nothing gross or creepy about, like, you can tell he's just trying to do his best and can't help it that he's falling in love.

[42:50] Adib: Yeah. And I think that's kind of a fundamental thing about love and about being a teenager, is you can do your best and have only the best intentions and still sometimes hurt people you care about.

[43:00] Marissa: Yeah.

[43:01] Adib: And I think learning how to pick up the pieces and move on is a really crucial step in growing up.

[43:06] Marissa: Yeah, no, definitely. All right. I know we're running out of time, but just quickly, if possible, I have to ask. So your debut novel, Darius the Great, is not okay. It won, like, a gazillion awards. It was really well received. How did that so early in your career impact you as a writer? Was it like, oh, great, now I've got this wonderful recognition and this boost of confidence, or did it kind of swing the other way? And you were like, oh, now there was this pressure and impostor syndrome. And where did you fall on that spectrum?

[43:45] Adib: I would say I experienced the full gamut of every emotion any human has ever experienced, ever over the course of about a year after the book came out and then won some awards. On the one hand, to have your first book do really well, you're like, oh, no, have I peaked too early? Is this all I will ever be known for? And I think that takes up a lot of room in my mind. But I think of an interview that Patrick Stewart once gave where he said that if all he was ever remembered for was playing captain Jean Luc Picard, that was a legacy he was comfortable with leaving. And I was like, you know what? That's a good mentality to have. I will now adopt that mentality. And so I do feel like if all I'm ever known for is Darius, then I'm proud to have left that mark on the world. At the same time, it can be frustrating to write something that I'm really proud of that I think is craft wise, better, because I've been doing this for. This will be six years of being a published author. For me to think that it's better, to think that it's funnier, to think that it's sharper, to think that it's smarter and it's still not get the same reception that can be kind of disheartening. But then there's also the really practical element of, from a business standpoint, having a book that did well, helped pay a lot of bills. And knock on wood, it's going to stay in print for a long time and earn royalties. And even if my other books flop, Darius might keep selling copies for a long time yet. And so there's a certain security in that that I feel very fortunate to have. And I know how very lucky I am to have that security. And at the same time, also, Darius is going to be six years old this year, and I'm like, in a lot of ways, a different person. In fact, next year will be seven years. And I once read that every seven years. Seven years is how long it takes for basically every cell in your body to die and have a new replacement. So I will literally just be a different collection of cells than the one that wrote Darius the great is not okay. And so that feels a little weird, too, to be asked to talk about a book that I wrote before the pandemic, when I was just a different human being. And then I have to remember what it was like to be that adid. So that can be challenging at times, but also really kind of defying at times to go back and remember who I was and where that book came from.

[45:59] Marissa: Yeah, no, that was all really well said, and I think it's good to have kind of that balanced perspective. Yeah, no, I appreciate your thoughts there. Are you ready for our bonus round?

[46:09] Adib: I love a bonus round.

[46:10] Marissa: What book makes you happy?

[46:14] Adib: Oh, I just reread it again. I think for the third or fourth time, it's anytime I'm a little bummed or anytime I can't remember how to write a book, I read it. It's called Wraith, a buff male nanny by Rebecca Weatherspoon. And it's exactly what it says in the title. It is adult romance. I don't encourage any young people reading it to go in would. For me, it would be definitely like four chili peppers out of five in the steam level.

[46:46] Marissa: What are you working on next?

[46:48] Adib: Oh, my goodness. Well, I have a picture book called Bijan always wins coming out in July. And I have my first adult romance called I'll have what he's having coming out in August. And so I'm actually right now working on my second adult romance, which will be out in 2025.

[47:07] Marissa: Oh, I love that. Some genre switching.

[47:10] Adib: Indeed. I have a lot of plates spinning. I had to after I got laid off from my day job. I'm like, how can I become a full time writer now?

[47:19] Marissa: Suddenly we're motivated. Lastly, where can people find you?

[47:24] Adib: The easiest place is definitely adibkoram.com. A d I b k h o r r A m I have a newsletter that I send out every month, once a month unless I have like a special edition because I have a book coming out and that's definitely the best place to keep track of my news. I'm on Instagram at adeeb Koram and on TikTok at Adib Koram, which annoys me because there is no adeb Koram on TikTok. They just wouldn't let me have that. I just feel like that's homophobia. I'm also on blue Sky. I think I was the half of writer Twitter that went to blue sky instead of threads. And so I'm at adeeb koram there as well. And I'm actually on Tumblr at Adeeb Koram. But most of my Tumblr is talking about Star Trek or the untamed, which is actually probably the best experience you could possibly have on social media.

[48:14] Marissa: Awesome. Adeeb, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me.

[48:17] Adib: It's been a delight and it made me very happy.

[48:19] Marissa: Oh good readers, I hope you will check out the breakup list. It comes out tomorrow. Of course we encourage you to support your local indie bookstore, but if you don't have a local indie, you can also check out our affiliate store. That is@bookshop.org slash shop Slash Marissamayer. We have a special episode next week in which Joanne and I are going to be answering your questions all about the publishing process and what happens after you get an agent and your book gets sold. If you're enjoying these conversations, please subscribe and follow us on Instagram at Marissa Meyer, author and at Happy Writer podcast. And please don't forget to leave us a rating or review. Until next time. Stay inspired, keep writing, and whatever life throws at you today, I do hope that now you're feeling a little bit happier.