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If you checked in with us yesterday, you read the behind the scenes editorial perspective of Michael Hassan’s debut teen novel, CRASH AND BURN.  Today Michael responds to our notoriously strenuous, sweat-inducing Opening the Book questions…

Which was your favorite book from childhood, and what are you reading right now?

I was always into books and a real sucker for the Dr. Suess stuff, can probably still recite Green Eggs and Ham by heart, but the first book that made me want to be a writer was Les Miserables, which I would probably have  named as my favorite book, except for the Princess Bride by William Goldman, who is primarily known as a screenwriter, but has written some incredible novels.

I am currently re-reading several William Goldman novels, including Marathon Man and the Color of Light.  You can learn a lot as a writer from reading his books. .

More importantly, I am back to reading hardcovers and paperbacks after spending too long  with e-books.  While I’m a techno nut, the truth is there is nothing better than holding a real book, being able to thumb back and forth through the pages and knowing exactly where you are at any given point.

 What is your secret talent?

I play keyboards.  I am, in fact, really bad musician and have been fired from some pretty talentless bands when I was younger.  Thankfully I record nothing so no one has to know.  Until now.

Fill in the blank: _______ always makes me laugh.

Mean Girls.  I could watch this movie constantly and still laugh at every line.

Also, fart noises and Gilbert Gottfried, not necessarily in that order.

My current obsessions are…

Headphones, I have like 20 pairs.  I need loud music when I’m working.

Also, Uncharted 3D, in fact almost every videogame, movie and documentary in 3D.

Any gem of advice for aspiring writers?

Know where you are going before you start.  Make an outline and stick to it and then keep on going without looking back until you hit THE END. And then, take whatever you’ve done and put it on the highest shelf in your room for 6 weeks without looking at it.

And then make a new outline and start over with the brightest red pen you can find.

And don’t, under any circumstances, get stuck playing Uncharted 3D or watching anything else in 3D.  In fact, disconnect your television and your internet and throw away your iPads, playstations and smartphones.

Finish this sentence: I hope a person who reads my book…

Forgets that they are reading;

misses a train stop because they need to finish a chapter;

recognizes the characters so much that they find it difficult to believe that its fiction;

Buys another book the second they finish this one;

Or is inspired to write one themselves.

Tell us more about how CRASH AND BURN was born.

I was challenged by my son, who has ADD to write something that he would be willing to read.  Spending time with him and his friends, playing videogames and watching movies, I wanted to come up with a form of entertainment that they would consider to be as fast paced and captivating, something that would make them think differently, more deeply  about themselves and their world.   Using him and his friends as models, I went back in time and thoroughly researched the everyday occurrences in the world they lived in, the language they used,  the legal and illegal drugs they were experimenting with and the social interactions between them and the adults in their world.   When I realized how difficult the struggle was for most kids, I knew that I had something that I wanted to write about.

Thanks Michael!  CRASH AND BURN (which has received 2 starred reviews– from Booklist and BCCB!) is on sale in stores now.

Next in our Winter 2013 New Voices series is teen debut novel CRASH AND BURN, by Michael Hassan, a book that quite literally stopped us all in our tracks the first time we heard Michael’s editor, Jordan Brown, formally present it.  Today I’ll let Jordan’s powerful words speak for themselves…

Of all the qualities of a manuscript that get me interested in working with an author, one of the most exciting is when I feel like I’m reading the work of  someone who looks for untold stories in places where we don’t expect to find them.  Of course, the most prominent plot elements of Michael Hassan’s debut novel Crash and Burn—the story of a profoundly troubled senior who takes his school hostage at gunpoint, and the profoundly untroubled student who stops him—are, sadly, not unusual or unobvious ones.  But what is unique and unexpected about Mike’s story is the perspective from which he chooses to tell it.

Steven “Crash” Crashinsky is unlike any of the teen male characters one finds in contemporary teen literature.  He is not the brooding, complicated, brilliant outcast; he’s not the bad boy with a heart of gold; he’s not the irredeemable jerk; he’s not the heartthrob who can distill his interior struggles in a moment but is still paralyzed by indecision.  He is all of these things, and none of them.  He is the kind of male character who is remarkable only for being so typical: a teen whose self-image has been defined by his learning disabilities, whose behavior has been shaped by society’s indulgent “boys will be boys” attitude, who has realized that life’s a lot easier when you just don’t care.  He’s the kind of teen we all know, and yet the kind we don’t often find populating teen books—perhaps because he’s the kind we don’t often find reading teen books.

But he is not unreachable, as Mike’s knockout of a first novel shows us.  This is a book—one of the first I’ve seen—that speaks directly to these young men, telling a story they need to hear.  The element of the book that was paramount to both Mike and me in the editing process was keeping Crash’s voice and experiences as authentic as possible.  And thus we have a story that doesn’t pull any punches, that reads more like a chronicle than a novel, that speaks to these readers in a language they can understand.

Crash and Burn is not a book for everyone.  The truths it draws out and elucidates don’t provide many answers for the desperate struggles today’s teens experience.  But I’m a big believer in the idea that the process always starts with asking the right questions.  And Mike asks these big questions while writing a story that is hilarious and frightening and touching in turn; one about friendship and tragedy, first love and first hate; one that shows us that the untold stories can sometimes be the most important.

Thanks Jordan! And don’t forget to visit us again tomorrow for an interview with the author, Michael Hassan.