Meet The Authors Showcase Edition #2 (2 of 3)

A new showcase with @AdamCavelle, author of Silver Lake

1) what inspired the idea of your story?

A: I had this idea of Ian as a young adult in my head without much of a story behind it. I liked the idea of who he was and what he was doing in his early 20's and I wanted to figure out how he got there. I reached out to Cavelle, whose writing I had seen a little of and enjoyed, and asked her if she wanted to write a very, very long story about a couple of kids growing up together.

C: Adam approached me with the idea of writing a different sort of love story that centered around two kids in a small town. I loved the concept, especially taking a more 'real' approach to something that has been done over and over again, and I was fully on board. We had talked for a little bit about the things we wanted to see and the things we knew we wanted to avoid and the rest was surprisingly really easy. Our ideas just naturally blended together and we had the entire first book (and a lot of the timeline for the following books) down pretty quickly in the 'bare bones' phase of writing.

2) what is something you struggled constructing with your story?

A: I'm not entirely happy with the amount of representation of non-white characters in the story in its current form (namely that there really aren't any). That's something I struggle with and have been seeking advice about: making sure my work, including Silver Lake, is inclusive.

C: I agree with Adam regarding the inclusivity, we are also working to include some LGBTQ representation as well. Outside of that, there were a couple of topics we covered within the first novel that we had discussed several times before writing and again after it had been written. I don't want to give away any spoilers, so I'll avoid outright saying what they were, but they're real situations that many people, including teens, are forced to deal with. We didn't want to sugarcoat the experience as we felt that would almost be a disservice. We wanted our characters to be as real as possible and that included their reactions to these experiences and how it impacts them throughout their lives moving forward. That said, we also wanted to avoid being too graphic and the topics becoming more 'shock value', than a means of opening up a valuable discussion. Finding that middle ground was a bit of a struggle and something we still discuss whether we properly hit the mark.

3) what did you enjoy writing most of your story?

A: Talking about music! We shared a lot of music back and forth as we planned and wrote. It was fun to go back and listen to all the classic rock, the old metal and the 90's rap. And posting it on Wattpad, adding playlists between chapters has been so much fun.

C: Yes, the music! Music is big in both of our lives and I constantly have it playing while I'm writing. I have playlists for every stage of Taylor and Ian's lives on my phone. There has been more than one time that I've heard a song come on the radio that reminded me so much of Taylor or Ian, that I immediately had to go and write. My other favorite part was just exploring our characters through different phases of their lives. We got to see them as innocent kids struggling with the awkwardness of growing up and then as they make their way out into the world as adults and what that looked like through each of their eyes. It has been cool just to see them grow and change. It allowed me to explore things I never really was able to with other characters.

4) what's the overall response of your story from your readers?

A: It's been really, really good! Being able to read comments from readers feels almost like getting to read the story out loud to a friend and hearing them react with gasps and laughter. It really just feels so good to have people finally reading this story we've worked so hard on for a few years and seeing people enjoy it, whether through commenting, voting or sending us direct messages has been amazing.