~Author Chat~
YABC: What gave you the inspiration to write this book?
When my service dog of almost ten years died, I was paralyzed with grief. His name was Chip (he’s the son of the real Hudson after whom I named the character in Golden Boy), and Chip and I were inseparable. He helped me do everything. He was my constant companion. More than anyone else in my life, there was always Chip right there with me with a huge, joyous smile on his face.
Just seeing the light and the joy that emanated from Chip’s face lifted my spirits no matter how I was feeling. That’s why I absolutely love the Golden Boy cover illustration. The people at Simon & Schuster did such an incredible job capturing that feeling of joy. I was blown away when I saw it. I was like, It’s Chip! It’s him!
I lost Chip very unexpectedly and quickly. He had a form of cancer that by the time symptoms show, it’s already too late. He was diagnosed with it one day and gone the next. It was that quick and that sudden. I was lost.
I had no idea what to do with all of that grief, so I just started writing. I’d had the idea for Golden Boy rolling around in my head for years and years. In fact, the very first screenplay I ever wrote (which didn’t sell) was a similar idea about a dog who becomes a human football star. The spark for the idea came when I was playing what I thought was a game of fetch with my dog at the time, but my dog was playing keep away. The way he darted and dodged and ran circles around me, I thought “That dog would be an amazing running back if he were human.” I’d always loved the idea and knew it could work, but I never knew how to execute it.
But when Chip died, I picked the idea back up and decided it should be a book for young people instead of a screenplay. I wanted something that felt classic, timeless, and heartwarming. At the time, everything I read or watched on TV seemed so dark and cynical. It just made me feel worse. I think that I ended up writing the story that I, myself, needed to read.
So I poured all of my feelings about Chip into Golden Boy. It’s not a memoir of Chip, it’s a fictional story that gives people that same feeling of joy and happiness that Chip always gave me. Something that makes people laugh and lifts them up. It’s Chip’s beautiful golden spirit. It just makes people happy.
YABC: Is your main character like you?
Yes, Emma and I are similar in two ways. The first is that I had very, very few friends when I was young, and I was picked on a lot. Pretty mercilessly, the way the kids in the book pick on Emma. I was socially awkward and a very easy target. I was skinny and wore huge glasses. I was very self-conscious and nervous and unsure. My sister was several years older, and my parents were pretty much absorbed in work – this was back in the seventies and eighties when kids were left to fend for themselves all the time, so I was an only child for all intents and purposes. I really had no one in my life to show me how to relate to people, and most of the people I did come into contact with were kind of cruel.
My one savior was animals, especially dogs, and my dog was my best friend. He loved me no matter what, was always thrilled to see me when I came home, followed me everywhere, played with me, kept me company. I could relate to him without needing words. We just understood each other. And that’s exactly how Emma feels about her golden retriever Hudson.
The second way Emma and I are alike is that we both love science. I am not the genius she is, but I love reading about science, watching documentaries like Nova and Cosmos. Anything to do with black holes, the universe, the multiverse, physics, stars, string theory, gravity, genetics. All of that kind of thing just fascinates me. It sets my imagination going, and as you can see, it informs my fiction.
