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Welcome to the Tuesday Author Interview with Christina Boyd for the Who, What, When, Where, and Why.
CHRISTINA:
I connected with Megan Zalkan at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association conference in 2022. We were both finalists that year but in different categories. I have enjoyed watching her writing journey. I was so excited to see her debut novel published on December 4, 2024.
When did you first think you had a book to write, and how did you start?
MEGAN: I’ve written all of my life, off and on, but I never wrote anything novel-length until the last six years. Since then, I’ve completed, polished, and queried three manuscripts. I wrote my debut novel, The Last Road Trip, as part of NaNoWriMo 2022, but I’d been thinking about it for at least a year before that. My original idea grew from two things: watching a movie about a comet that had an unsatisfying ending and made me want to try my hand at doing better and reading about a study done examining how thousands of participants in an online roleplaying game reacted to the coming closure of the game, which is as close to studying real-time reactions to the end of the world as we can get in real life. The study found that, overall, people reacted more altruistically than expected to a coming apocalypse, and I built many of the reactions they found people experiencing into the characters in the book.
CHRISTINA: I'm impressed whenever someone can write a book for NaNoWriMo. November is a hectic month. Well done!
What comes first: plot or characters?
MEGAN: For me, it’s almost always character. I usually have a main character and a situation long before I have a plot. For the current novel, it was Lou, a shy, socially maladapted Iowa farm girl who is facing the end of the world and desperate to find her missing older brother before it happens. The book’s plot grew pretty easily from that scenario because it was very clear to me what she wanted and where she would go, but other times, I find that I’m stuck on character for a long time before figuring out all the exact steps in what happens.
CHRISTINA: Is there one of your characters you most identify with and why?
MEGAN: I identify very much with Lou, who has never quite fit into her small-town world. I was very much like her when I was a teen—stuck in a tiny town where I didn’t have a lot of peers and feeling like I was too bookish, too different from everyone else. I always felt like everyone else was better at making friends and just being comfortable in their own skin than I was. I also shared her trait of having enormous feelings and being prone to overreacting to them regularly.
CHRISTINA: This seems like a character who might appeal to many.
If you could tell your 21-year-old self anything, what would you share?
MEGAN: Start writing earlier. You’re going to get distracted and take this long break from writing in your thirties before “discovering” you have novels in you, but it would have been outstanding to start that process ten years earlier! Also, don’t date that one guy. You know who I mean.
CHRISTINA: Oh my gosh. If you see my 21-year-old self, could you tell her, too?
What is your current project or latest release?
MEGAN: My debut novel, The Last Road Trip, is the story of a sixteen-year-old girl who steals a motorbike and sets off on a desperate cross-country trip, aided by an imp who has an agenda of his own, in an attempt to find and reconcile with her lost older brother who left home after she accidentally outed him to their conservative parents years before. It’s a high-stakes, ticking-clock adventure with a lot of humor and a lot of heart.
CHRISTINA: Congratulations on your debut. I'm super excited for you.
Which of your own novels is your favorite?
MEGAN: The novel that’s currently coming out is, of course, dear to my heart, but it’s actually my third full-length novel. The very first one I wrote—a fantasy romance about a human English teacher who falls through a portal into the realm of the Fae—will always have a special place in my heart, although I doubt it will ever see the light of day on a bookshelf because I loved the story and learned so much writing it. I still think about reworking it, but I think it was mainly a learning experience.
CHRISTINA: I hope that book gets read. Crossing my fingers you can make it happen.
If you were to revise any of your books, which would you choose and why?
MEGAN: I’m currently revising my second novel, called The Afterlife and Other Problems. I queried it heavily throughout 2023 and had a lot of interest in it but ultimately realized that the middle of the book had some serious problems. I kept acts one and three and am completely rewriting the middle, which is fun but also perplexing as I’m significantly changing the plot, and it’s more complicated to do that than you think for a novel for which you want to keep the beginning and end. Lots of charts and confusion to deal with there!
CHRISTINA: That does sound like a challenge. But you can do it.
Best advice for new writers:
MEGAN: The best two pieces of writing advice I’ve ever gotten are these:
Your first draft doesn’t have to be perfect; it exists only to get your story onto paper. Just chuck it out there, and don’t worry about the quality too much the first time through. My writing friends and I call it a vomit draft.
Don’t get too hung up on writing in order. If you’re stuck on a scene or chapter but can see one later down the line clearly, write the one you have energy for and interest in. You can come back later to fill in the holes.
CHRISTINA: Ha! "Vomit draft." Vivid but clearly makes your point.
Favorite contemporary authors:
MEGAN: I love and will read anything by Rebecca Makkai Claire Lombardo, Dara Horn, Maggie O’Farrell, TJ Klune, Michael Poore, and many, many others. I’m constantly reading! I just started Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory, and I’m finishing The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez.
CHRISTINA: They say reading is the best teaching tool for writers. Good you have so many writers you enjoy.
Have you gone on an author pilgrimage or research trip? Where and what was the most memorable moment?
MEGAN: For my debut novel, I went off to spend a week in Bend, Oregon, where the second half of the book is set. I needed the time there to be sure I had the look and feel of the town correct, especially after one of my beta readers said it felt like the town I was describing was much too small to be Bend. It definitely helped!
CHRISTINA: I love Bend, Oregon. So great you were able to go there and see how it might work for your project.
Thanks so much for taking the time to answer all my nosey questions. Best wishes for the launch and the next books, too.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Megan Zalkan has a master’s degree in professional writing from Carnegie Mellon, worked as a technical writer for ten years, and is a member of the PNWA Writers’ Guild and SCBWI. She has been a grant writer, stay-at-home mom, and theater musician, and now works in geriatric occupational therapy, where she delights in hearing the stories people are still retelling at the ends of their lives. Her debut novel, The Last Roadtrip, will publish in December 2024 from Wild Rose Press.
You can connect with Megan via Social media link, Instagram: @megz_author and
Twitter: @megz_author and her Website.
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