Yes, it-

'Cause I just wanted it to be a story set in the '70s, um, but the adult narrator kept interrupting, you know, to say, "Well, in those days it was like that." You know? And, and, um, and I, I felt like, oh, he's kind of keeping the story from moving the way that I want it to move.

And so then I started to say, let me just give him his own section.

So he is interrupting.

You know, there, there's mostly the story set in 1974, and then four or five times the adult narrator interrupts to tell you more, uh, explicitly his thought processes.

And the problem was when I did that, and in one of the early drafts, both of them were in first person.

You needed that last feet, I think, which was perfect.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

But, um, I think Jimmy's mother said to him, "I'm, I'm not going anywhere." Um, and I think, you know, I think she must have believed it and wanted to believe it.

I, it's easy to understand how that would happen.

Um, but when she does die, um, he says it was...

My sister s- remembers it as a long, drawn-out process and that when she finally left it was a blessing because she was in so much pain.

But to Jimmy, it came like a sucker punch from the blue sky, you know, because he, he was in denial perhaps or was protected to the point where he, he really didn't know.

But what happens is that something is severed, right? This connection between him and his mother is severed and, and he spends the whole book, you know, trying to reconstruct that connection, and the, the Ouija board is, is part of that.

[laughs]

Mm-hmm

... and gotten a good job or went into a trade.

But my mother was like, "No, my kids are going to college." And, and, you know, uh, my brother went to Williams College.

My sister went to Villanova.

I went to Yale.

So, you know, her vision of the family was the vision that determined our lives.

And so I th- I think what Jimmy is discovering when his mom's gone is like, "Wow, there's nobody looking out for me," except that he then finds his way to these damaged older kids who-

[laughs]

Mm-hmm.

But, um, I think Jimmy's mother said to him, "I'm, I'm not going anywhere." Um, and I think, you know, I think she must have believed it and wanted to believe it.

I- it's easy to understand how that would happen.

Um, but when she does die, um, he says it was...

My sister s- remembers it as a long drawn-out process and that when she finally left it was a blessing because she was in so much pain.

But to Jimmy it came like a sucker punch from the blue sky, you know, because he, he was in denial perhaps or was protected to the point where he, he really didn't know.

But what happens is that something is severed, right? This connection between him and his mother is severed.

[laughs]

So I'm curious, the training that you got and the training that you may feel like was the most indispensable for the, the writer you've become.

Well, I'll just try and go in order there.

I got the bug to write in high school.

And like a lot of male writers my age, white male writers my age, before that, I wanted to be an athlete, and then I wanted to be a rock and roll guitarist.

And I was too small to be an athlete and too untalented to be a rock and roll guitarist.

But what I discovered in high school when I started writing stories was that the exact thing that was lacking when I played music, this sense of like, "I know how to do this." Like, I could play music if somebody showed me, but I was always tentative and I was always a little behind and I was not confident.

But when I started to write, I felt like, "Okay, I think I know how to do that.

Mm-hmm.

Um, what did you wanna capture about being a kid in New Jersey in the '70s?

W- well, uh, you know, we talk about childhood now and how, um, you know, in- intensely surveilled kids are and, and how the parents are always looking over their shoulder, and you can't actually ever get lost, right? Your parents can track you on a phone and, um, you know, every day you're taking pictures.

But I think that, you know, there was that strange free-range quality which, you know, I think we can romanticize, and there's some good things about it.

It probably forced kids to grow up and, and be independent.

But this book kind of also explores the dark side of that, like what happens when you're being guided by misguided people.

Um, how did you want Jay to be different from Jimmy?

So I think that is partly what the book explains.

How do we get from this boy, uh, with the Ouija board to this man who is, um, a successful writer, both as a literary novelist and then much later as a, a commercial novelist and a creator of a animated kids' TV series? And I think that, you know, for Jay, his life has gone off on a very different trajectory, and this summer is what, that he's telling about when he was 13, is the summer that explains that trajectory.

So when you have all that swirling around, how do you actually then contain all those thoughts to start writing and ma- have it make sense? [laughs]

[laughs] I mean, I, I guess you have to start somewhere is always the case.

I spent so much time trying to write the opening of the book, which, um, you know, is just about the night that Jimmy's mother dies and, and the, the way that that death is both something that everyone is waiting for in the family, um, and something that catches him completely by surprise.

It's both completely predictable and, and utterly unpredictable and, and it sort of sh- shocks him into this...

He, he just goes through, I, I think, I think this is a summer where he's basically in shock and he's wandering through the world without any real adult supervision, you know, trying to make sense of this loss.

Um, so I needed to get that part right before I could do anything else.

I think the real story about writing this was the way that I didn't know at first that it was gonna be, th- that the adult teller would be a character in a sense.

Why did you choose that?

That would be great for people to hear a bit.

Yes, this, this is Jimmy on the last night that his life is still normal.

"He was playing baseball on the night she died.

No one had suggested that he might wanna stay home that evening, keep her company, say what needed to be said.

On the contrary, both his parents had encouraged him to go to the game, to be a normal kid, to keep on living his life.

So that was what he did.

He put on his uniform, wolfed down a pork roll and cheese sandwich, and told his father he was heading to the ballpark.

I'm interested in what you wanted to explore about the way an eighth grader would grieve.