Interview with Pat Schmatz, Author of Mousetraps

Back in September, Lee Wind posted a blurb for a new young adult book called Mousetraps (Carolrhoda, 2008), by Pat Schmatz. Intrigued, I added it to my to-read list. Fast-forward a month to the SCBWI Wisconsin conference. Who’s one of the very first people I meet? Pat Schmatz. Small world!

I bought Mousetraps, Pat signed it, I read it, I dug it. I asked Pat if she’d be interested in a blog interview (my first!), and here we are. But first, a little more about Mousetraps.

Maxie’s junior year of high school begins with a surprise: Rick is back. Rick, the boy she was best friends with, before he became a bully magnet. Rick, who moved away in seventh grade after he was brutally gay bashed.

Rick wants to rekindle his friendship with Maxie, but she’s not so sure. Rick’s as much of a target as ever. And there’s something different about him these days. There’s a look he gets in his eyes sometimes, cold and hard, that scares her.

Maxie is a sensitive, yet matter-of-fact, narrator who occasionally dips into the poetic but never dives into melodrama, even when things get dark—and they do get dark. She’s a cartoonist—way back when, Rick designed crazy, Rube Goldberg-esque mousetraps, and she drew them—and her lively drawings (penned in real life by Bill Hauser) are integrated perfectly with the text.

Mousetraps also touches on nontraditional families, interracial relationships, and a bit of romance. I especially appreciated that Rick experiences homophobic bullying irrespective of his sexual identity. He’s clear proof that homophobia hurts everyone, not just individuals who are GLBTQ.

The notoriously difficult-to-impress Kirkus Reviews says of Mousetraps, “Rick and Maxie’s thought-provoking story, juxtaposed against Hauser’s renderings of Maxie’s cartoons, is unexpectedly, richly dark, with no easy answers. Both chilling and sweet.”

Now, without further ado, here’s Pat!

LC: Coming dangerously close to the dreaded “where do you get your ideas” question, I was wondering if you could pinpoint the initial germ that evolved into Mousetraps.

PS: I kind of hate to admit it, but Mousetraps started in my mind the day of Columbine. I was home for lunch and Columbine was on the news, and even as I was watching the event transpire on TV, I had an impression of Rick. From that day on, I was completely obsessed with the topic and read everything I could get my hands on, and the whole time, I had Rick’s voice in my head.

LC: Rick could have been only a martyr or psychopath; instead, he’s a fully-realized, sympathetic character. What were the challenges in shaping him without veering into Jekyll/Hyde territory?

PS: First of all, thanks for saying that about Rick. I have huge affection for that character, and he’d hate to be seen as a martyr or a psychopath. When I read news stories about school shootings, I never see those kids as one-sided, no matter how the media portrays them. I suppose that’s because I’ve known enough people, personally, who have survived these kinds of challenges that I know they aren’t one-sided, or even two-sided, and the character of Rick is a conglomerate of several kids I have known well.

LC: Since 2000, we’ve seen a number of dark teen novels responding to the Jonesboro and Columbine school massacres of 1998 and 1999 (e.g., Todd Strasser’s Give a Boy a Gun, Walter Dean Myers’ Shooter, Nancy Garden’s End Game). Mousetraps, too, could have ended in tragedy. What made you steer toward a more hopeful conclusion?

PS: I wrote six sharply different conclusions to Mousetraps over the nine years I worked on it. One editor a few years ago rejected the book, but in her editorial letter she suggested yet another option for the ending, and I gave it a try. That took me in a totally different direction.

I still see all of the conclusions as continuing to be Real and True in some sort of parallel simultaneous universes. We have crossroads moments where we can step this way or that way, and like the mousetraps, whichever direction we choose sets off an entirely new chain of events. So experimenting with the different conclusions was like imagining…what if, in this moment, this character stepped this way instead of that way? Either choice is emotionally possible, and my job as the author is to be true to the chain of events that would follow.

Finally, the ending I chose—with a lot of help and guidance from my editor, Shannon Barefield—felt right. Also, it was the clearest choice for the story that I wanted to tell, which is Maxie’s story—although of course Rick has a huge part in it.

LC: How do you think homophobia and bullying in America's schools have changed since you were a teen, if at all?

PS: When I was a teen, this stuff wasn’t called “homophobic,” or even “bullying.” We all just knew that some kids were mean, and some kids got picked on. Now that we have words for it, and we use them, I’d like to think things are at least potentially different. Kids actually know to say things like, “the biggest homophobes are usually gay themselves,”—that was a comeback and a concept that didn’t exist when I was a teen. Also, people like Maxie’s uncles do exist, as out gay fully-functioning adults, and they not only can help kids maneuver their way through this stuff but are visible as role models. Bullying still happens, probably as bad as ever, but I do think the kids who are getting bullied have a better chance to get support and backing. Even if an individual kid isn’t getting adequate protection, s/he can find the concept of support on line, in books, and even on the news. That’s a big plus.

LC: Did you envision Mousetraps as an illustrated novel from the beginning?

PS: Not at first, but the better I got to know Maxie, the more I saw her drawings in my head. For a while I was hoping to have Mousetraps be a graphic novel but I didn’t have the skills to do the drawings myself. The design team at Lerner worked with me on the current form, sort of a hybrid.

LC: Please tell us about your path to publication and about your first two books, Circle the Truth (Carolrhoda, 2007) and Mrs. Estronsky and the UFO (Blue Works, 2001).

PS: Mrs. Estronsky is a middle-grade novel about a girl who sees a UFO with her piano teacher. I sent that one out, time after time, using Writer’s Market as a guide. Of course I was thrilled when Windstorm Creative picked it up for their youth division, Blue Works.

Meanwhile, I became involved in the Minneapolis writing community, which led me to Andrea Cascardi of Transatlantic Literary Agency. I sent her the manuscripts for both Mousetraps and Circle the Truth, a younger YA about a boy in a blended family who, as he questions truth and reality in his life and his home, finds that those lines keep shifting. Andrea agreed to represent me, gave me some terrific editorial advice on the manuscripts, and then started to send out the revised versions. Each manuscript went to a number of houses over a three-year period before Carolrhoda made an offer on Circle, and then contracted for Mousetraps as well.

LC: How did you stay positive through the long submission process?

PS: It wasn’t so much a matter of staying positive, as staying busy. I started Circle the Truth immediately after finishing the first draft of Mousetraps, so my focus was there. Also, I was getting enough positive feedback—nice rejection letters, a Minnesota State Arts Board Grant, and the huge boost of getting Andrea as my agent—to keep me rolling.

LC: You grew up in rural Wisconsin and live there today. In what ways does that setting and culture manifest in your books?

PS: Mrs. Estronsky and the UFO is completely grounded in rural Wisconsin. I wrote it when I was living in California and was incredibly homesick for the upper Midwest. As a child, I spent a lot of time alone outdoors and I still tend to see the world through that lens. Although the next two books both take place in urban settings, weather and season play a definite emotional role in each story. Also, all three books take place in the upper Midwest, which certainly has a particular cultural flavor.

LC: Can you expand on that, for readers who have never had the pleasure of living in the upper Midwest?

PS: I find the upper Midwest—both rural and urban—to have a particular kindness, something almost like innocence. That’s not quite the right word, but it’s a related concept…and so characters with a gentle sort of progressive political sensibility, like Maxie’s parents and the Unks, and Toby’s family in Circle the Truth, can be found everywhere. Also, the region tends to be very weather-focused, even in the cities, and many people are involved in outdoor sports like ice fishing or skiing. And of course, there is always the snow that must be moved one way or another, and people have different ideas about how that should be done. I don’t know if that particular discussion is peculiar to the upper Midwest, but it seems like snow blowers are more universal, for instance, on the east coast.

LC: Mousetraps and Circle the Truth have a very different feel. Maxie narrates Mousetraps in matter-of-fact first person, while Circle the Truth is told in a more lyrical third person voice. What do you find to be the challenges of writing in first versus third person? How do you decide which to use?

PS: I tried both books in both first and third person, and in each case tried to find the voice that best suited the story. I find first person much more difficult in general. Crazy-making, actually, because the narrator is so strictly limited in what s/he can perceive and how those perceptions can be expressed. But it does allow for a more natural voice, and I like that.

LC: Who are your favorite/most influential authors?

PS: S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders is my most influential book, and my most loved. Other influential books include A Wrinkle in Time by L’Engle, Henry 3 by Krumgold, The Forgotten Door by Key, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Lee.

As a kid, I loved everything by Beverly Clearly, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Jim Kjelgaard, and Mark Twain. As an adult, my favorite authors include Markus Zusak, Anne Patchett, Stephen King, Kate DiCamillo, and E.L. Konigsburg.

LC: What can we hope to see from you next?

PS: I’ve been working for several years on a YA novel called Bluefish. I haven’t hit it quite right yet, but I think I’m getting there. I also have an as-yet untitled adult novel and a picture book in the works.