About the Interviewee: “Dan Gemeinhart lives in a small town smack dab in the middle of Washington state with his wife and three young daughters. He was lucky and grateful to be a teacher-librarian in an elementary school for thirteen years, where he got to share awesome books with awesome kids. He loves camping, cooking, and traveling. He also plays guitar (badly) and reads (constantly). His house is always a mess. He is really pretty darn happy” (Bio from the author’s website).
Find Dan Gemeinhart on the following platforms:
Dan Gemeinhart: My interest in writing goes way back to my childhood. I was (and still am!) a voracious reader. Books were my thing, and libraries were my favorite place. My family moved a lot when I was a kid, so books and libraries were my refuge and reliable constant when everything else — houses, schools, friends — were always changing and being left behind. Out of that love of stories grew my dream to someday write my own. I feel so lucky and grateful that my dream actually came true!
DG: 100%! For most of my teaching career I was an elementary teacher-librarian, so I worked everyday with awesome kids, trying to get them excited about books. I saw what they liked, what they didn’t like, what hooked them, what didn’t, and what kept them coming back for more. I think that experience — besides being the best job in the world — was invaluable in shaping me as a writer.
DG: Not necessarily directly (like explicitly basing a character on a student), but indirectly for sure. I think being around kids everyday really helped me know them and, hopefully, write them well and believably. Working with kids and kids books day in and day out was incredible training for writing my own kids books someday!
DG: Thank you! You know, voice is so important in a novel, and it is often something you struggle with and work really hard on. But, for some reason, I never struggled with Coyote’s distinctive voice. From day one, page one she just started talking in my head, and I typed in what she said. That girl was alive somewhere in my heart, and she was always ready to talk! Honestly, writing these Coyote books was a joy, and it’s been wonderful to see other folks enjoy Coyote’s company as much as I do! 🙂
DG: Partly it happens kind of by chance, just with the rhythm of the story and how things unfold, but it’s also pretty intentional. No matter the story, you want to mix things up as you go. You don’t want three sad scenes in a row, or three funny scenes, or three scary scenes, etc. That gets boring and repetitive, and the scenes/emotions will get less effective each time. It’d be like having a dish that has only spicy elements, or only salty elements, or only sour elements. You want a tasty mix! So I think about what just happened in the story, what could/should happen next, and try to give the story a good balance and give the reader a good mix of feelings and scenes.
DG: Wow, thanks! That was a tricky needle to thread, and one I worked hard to try and get right. Really, I included COVID in the background of this story (it is not a significant plot element, and this is not a “Covid book”), because I was (and continue to be) surprised by how little that crazy time period is reflected in our stories. That was a dramatic, traumatic time for the world, and one that absolutely looms very large in the lives and memories of young readers…the whole world turned upside down when they were in elementary school! Schools were closed! Parents were out of work! Masks were everywhere! Restaurants were closed! And yet, in our movies and books and TV shows, it’s rarely even mentioned. It’s kind of like we’re all pretending it never happened. Understandable, but also weird…and I don’t think it honors our young readers, who are still processing that experience. I wanted to, in some small way, say “Yeah, remember that? Wasn’t that weird and kind of scary? That really happened!” So I wove it into the background of this story, just to acknowledge and mirror the lived reality of those times.
DG: Good question! The path to publication can be grueling, long, and soul-crushing. As far as staying resilient, I guess it comes down to focusing on the important part, and the part you can control: the storytelling. You can’t control whether you get a book deal, you can’t control whether an agent or editor says yes or no to your book; all you can control is how hard you work and telling the very best story you can. So think about story, work on story, and learn about story (I’m a big proponent of writing workshops and writing conferences); put your focus and energy there, not on the book deal. Still work on getting published, sure, but don’t put your heart there.
DG: Well, I’ll always love the main trio: Coyote, her dad Rodeo, and her best friend Salvador. That squad is very dear to my heart. However, I also love Coyote’s new friend Audrey (aka Ostrich), who is not a super important character, but is fun nonetheless; and Wally, a character who does play an important role in the story. Audrey adds some humor to the story (and an important ah-ha for Coyote at the end), and Wally adds some important wisdom and perspective that Coyote really needs. They were both really fun to write.
DG: I’m glad the characters rang true for you! You know, I don’t really draw direct inspiration from real life for my characters. I kind of tell my stories and let the characters kind of rise up out of the world and journey. Who would be in a situation like this? Who would be a distinct departure from the other characters? Who could Coyote learn something different from? It doesn’t feel natural to my own process to take a person I already know and try to shoehorn them into a story, so I try to let my characters emerge kind of organically from the story itself.
DG: Expect? Probably not. But I would love to write another Coyote story! I love her: her voice, her personality, her perspective. If I get a great idea for another Coyote story, I would 100% drop whatever I’m working on and jump into it (which is basically what I did with Coyote Lost and Found). So, maybe hopefully someday, but nothing yet! We’ll see! 🙂
Jenica Delaney, Pine Reads Review Writer