Leon Levels Up: Q & A with author Paul Coccia

Leon Levels Up 

 (Orca Currents)

Written by Paul Coccia
Orca Book Publishers
978-1-459837355
112 pp.
Ages 9-12
RL 2.3
February 2024

Reviewed here

 

On Feburary 16, 2024, I reviewed Paul Coccia's latest novel, a hi-lo middle grade story titled Leon Levels Up. With the official launch coming soon, Paul Coccia graciously agreed to a Q & A with me about the book. This is that interview.

 

 • • • • • • •

 

Author Paul Coccia

Helen Kubiw:  Leon Levels Up is definitely a story embedded in gaming. Why choose this is as a vehicle for your plot?

Paul Coccia:  There were the inspirations of my nephew and friend to whom I dedicated the book. My friend got a rather expensive virtual reality gaming system during the pandemic (when the book idea was conceived) and I realized that during isolation, the online world and gaming allowed a lot of people to connect virtually when we couldn’t in-person. My nephew loves video games and it seemed like a story premise that would appeal to kids.
     This next reason will sound writerly in some ways, but I was thinking about the child main character and their agency. When I thought of my chubby, non-athletic Leon who (like me) is not very good at sports, I also thought about where he would feel empowered. The virtual world provided the opportunity for Leon to feel strong and do things he’d never be able to do in the real world. Thinking about why a person would gravitate to video games gave me insight into Leon’s character and how he could be an action hero.

HK:  You acknowledge help from others with the topic of gaming, but do you do any gaming or did you try gaming to understand it better?

Paul Coccia:  I’m a very casual video game player and tend toward classic big-name franchises you’d likely find on the Nintendo systems. I’ve tried and found out that the first-person perspective a lot of games (and virtual reality) use is a sure way to have my character stuck in a corner. I can’t figure it out! Give me one of those dance competition video games though and I can get that choreography down quickly though.
     I do enjoy playing video games though, especially with one of my brothers or my nephew. I find it relaxing and entertaining, but I can go long periods without missing playing them. I enjoy the interactions with them more than I do the actual games.

HK:  Though Leon Levels Up is a piece of fiction, how real is the possibility of the tech that Leon and Nico play with at Pix Grid?

Paul Coccia:  All the technology presented in the novel is already in existence.  Nanobots, for example, have existed for years. I read they were being used for medical procedures and thought that was a cool use of modern technology.
      I wanted the game to be entirely possible in terms of technology and where it is today. However, someone making a game that involves tanks of nanobots in a gel is unlikely. Besides safety, there are hygiene concerns for cleaning the tank. The big deterrent would be the cost of making it combined with very few people being able to afford it. No video game company would take this on because it would cost a fortune. Is it possible though? Absolutely! 

HK:  Do you think Nico only used Leon so that he could get Gabs to let him play Dragon Hunt? Or do you think he saw something beyond what Leon could do for him?

Paul Coccia:  This question is very insightful. Nico is a character who thinks a lot of himself. When he invited Leon to play Dragon Hunt, Nico honestly felt the only person who had the skills worthy of playing with the great Nico was Leon. Nico wanted someone on his level of gaming. Leon was the only one who could possibly match or rival Nico’s skill in Nico’s eyes. This made Leon a worthy opponent/co-gamer. I don’t think readers would be surprised I think of Nico with this level of hubris.

HK:  Too many people see themselves only in terms of others, as does Leon. So, it’s not surprising that someone like Leon sees himself as “low level” when he compares himself to someone like Nico. What would you say to teens who only see themselves in terms of others? And would this be the same thing you would tell your teen self now?

Paul Coccia:  I think comparison is natural as is wanting and liking external validation, although it is not always fruitful. If all we look for is external validation, we will always be looking for an outside source for it. Internal validation, while it can be a difficult process, is a better investment for emotional energy. You can and should also consider if the person’s opinion you value is worth valuing and why.
     For my younger self, I would advise the sooner I stopped focusing on what people who don’t matter in my life thought I should do, I’d free up a lot of time and energy. With those, I can not only do things fulfilling to me, but appreciate, admire, and celebrate others without the negative effects of comparison. I can only be the best me; I can’t be the best someone else.


HK:   The hi-lo genre (high interest, low vocabulary) like that of the Orca Currents series is a popular one for older readers who may be challenged by reading. What are the challenges for you as an author to write a hi-lo novel?

Paul Coccia:  I find the length of hi-los the most challenging aspect. I find it easiest naturally to work in longer novel form. Things like word choice, sentence length, or complexity of the plot can be challenges, but they’re also incredibly rewarding when you know you’re hitting the mark. I find certain elements that make successful hi-lo books (e.g. dialogue tags like “he said”) are used more and can sound a bit clunky when writing or reading, but they are important for the hi-lo reader. Using a dependent clause as a sentence is another that technically is incorrect writing, but a hi-lo writer needs to break the rules for their readers’ success.

HK:  Leon Levels Up is a true coming-of-age story as Leon recognizes worth outside of materialism and popularity, becoming more grounded in realism as he immerses himself in the unreal. How hard is it to write a coming-of-age story in which a character must progress or develop in such a big way but in fewer pages than other novels?

Paul Coccia:  I’m a character-driven writer. It’s all about the character with me so length affecting character arc wasn’t as bad as the action was. Because Leon is running for his life quite literally a big chunk of the book, it became harder to build in situations where the character could stop and reflect. He’s too busy reacting physically to stop and have complex emotions beyond fear. In editing, I went back through to find where those moments could exist and build them out to help the reader get into Leon’s mind and understand his inferiority.
     One element of Leon that was very enjoyable to write was his age. Leon isn’t so young he is unaware of the world around him. He also isn’t too old to hide his vulnerabilities or emotions. Leon had a sweetness and sincerity to him I particularly liked writing.
 

 

HK:  I know you have a picture book coming out, and have written middle grade, young adult, and a short story as part of an anthology. Which genre was the most satisfying to write and which was the most difficult to write?

Paul Coccia:  One of the nice things about switching genres or audiences is getting to flex writing muscles I don’t always use like with articles or personal essays I’ve written for adults or the short story in Acorn Press’ The Annethology. Each project has helped me learn and deepen my respect for literature, particularly children’s literature.

     I’ve gotten a lot of satisfaction from each stab at a genre but know that my comfort zone is young adult novels.

     Picture books are a whole new challenge. They are hard! Writing them does not come easily to me. I have such admiration for picture book authors and illustrators who make it look easy. You need to be concise, choose few and just the right words, and still craft great stories and characters. They’re very rewarding, but less words do not equal less skill required. I think the opposite may be true.

 

• • • • • • •

Many thanks to Paul Coccia for being open to a Q & A, for taking the time to answer my questions, and for giving me a different perspective on a fabulous book which I had already enjoyed. Now I have more to think about, particularly, "I can only be the best me; I can’t be the best someone else." These are words to live by.

• • • • • • •

 

Great news: there's a book launch coming! 

Join Paul Coccia 

 

at

A Different Drummer Books

513 Locust Street

Burlington, Ontario

on

 

Saturday, April 6, 2024

1 PM (local time)

It's a great opportunity to pick up a signed copy of Leon Levels Up, meet Paul Coccia, and learn more about his book. 

Hope to see you there!

The Winnowing blog tour: Q & A with author Vikki VanSickle

Let's celebrate the release of Vikki VanSickle's newest novel!

The Winnowing

Written by Vikki VanSickle

Scholastic Canada

978-1-4431-4886-3

312 pp.

Ages 12+

September 2017

Reviewed yesterday here

As part of the blog tour for The Winnowing, Vikki VanSickle kindly answered some questions about her new book.  Her answers are revealing and provide background to the book's premise and her writing of it, and I am delighted to share this interview with readers of CanLit for LittleCanadians.

HK:  Using the word “winnowing”–an agricultural term for cleaning the chaff from the grain–is a brilliant term for the process to which adolescents are subjected in The Winnowing.  How did you ever come up with this term?

VVS:  I actually came up with the title long before the plot or characters, which is something that has never happened to me before. I stumbled across the word in another book and even though it's an agricultural term, it felt eerie to me. I walked around for days thinking 'the winnowing, the winnowing' and eventually ideas started to come together. The first image I had was of the kids gathering at the abandoned pool in the middle of the night for a secret meeting. I didn't even know why they were there, I just liked the image. Things started to snowball from there.



HK:  The process of winnowing comes about to help alleviate the detrimental effects of puberty, like going ACES (Adolescent Chronosomniatic Episodes) and imps (Adolescent Physical Impairments).  The coming of age that is puberty is never an easy transition for young people and this has been a common theme in your earlier novels.  Why make puberty a focus of the government’s control? 

VVS:  I'm obsessed with puberty! I have very vivid memories of that period (pun intended) and how out of control I felt. Everything was so intense. I wanted SO much to be an adult, but I also felt a deep sense of loss, as if childhood was something physical I had left behind and could never get back. It didn't help that the transition was rockier than I expected. I found a lot of solace in books, which is one of the reasons I write for this age group. It's really for my 11-year-old self. Years later as a camp counselor I worked with kids in the midst of puberty and found I was STILL fascinated by it. There's still a lot of shame, confusion, and a lack of conversation around puberty. I like to think I'm adding to the conversation in small ways.

I'm highly aware of the ways in which governments control our bodies already, mostly through health care and legislation. I'm thinking specifically of women's bodies, but this extends to children's bodies and our health and autonomy over our bodies as a human race. I don't think it's that farfetched to imagine a situation in which a government intervenes as drastically as it does in The Winnowing.



HK:  There is much discussion about natural vs. normal when someone who is Natural i.e., conceived without aid of SuperGen hormone, is made to feel abnormal.  The idea of different being worrisome is especially poignant in today’s world.  What message did you hope readers would take from this in light of our current climate?

VVS:  I want readers to think carefully about labels and what they imply. Natural vs unnatural, villain vs hero, conqueror vs refugee, all of these labels depend on the perspective of the person doing the labeling. At the beginning of the book Marivic is a black or white kind of thinker, but as the book progresses she learns to live in the grey space between these opposites. This is also part of adolescence. We teach the concept of opposites very young (think of all those board books: cold/hot, wet/dry, up/down), but as we grow up we learn about ranges, spectrums, and all the possibilities that exist between those opposites. Most importantly, we learn that these differences are okay. Adolescence is an age where people should be expanding their horizons, not limiting them.



HK:  When I saw Dr. Roddenberry’s name, it brought to mind the creator of the original Star Trek TV series, Gene Roddenberry.  Then I noticed several other characters shared surnames with key writers of speculative fiction like J. J. Abrams, William Barton and Lois Lowry.   Is it just a coincidence or did you honour more than several characters with famous writers’ names? 

VVS:  This is definitely intentional! I am a science fiction fan and I wanted to pay homage to creators who made an impact on me. Some of them (like Roddenberry and Lowry) are more obvious than others. I also like the idea of leaving Easter eggs for readers to discover throughout the book. Because there is so much secrecy and conspiracy in the book I thought it would be fun to drop hints and references here and there for the reader in a way that doesn't affect the narrative.



HK:  On your blog at www.vikkivansickle.wordpress.com you write about being a fan of The X Files TV show, even winning a story pitch contest.  The  Winnowing has so many of the elements that made the series popular: conspiracy theories, aliens, the little guy fighting nefarious plots, secret government practices.  Is there any overlap between that story pitch and The Winnowing?

VVS:  That's a great question! The pitch was a response to a scenario the moderator gave us, which was "How does Mulder find out the truth about his sister?" (I'm paraphrasing a bit here). If you're not familiar with The X-Files, Mulder's sister Samantha was abducted (potentially by aliens) when they were kids. This mystery drives him to become an FBI agent and study the supernatural and unexplained. In my pitch, Mulder is called into an FBI tribunal and discovers his sister Samantha is not only in charge of covert FBI operations, but is a double agent for the aliens. So not exactly related, but this is essentially Abrams' biggest fear come to life. I never made that connection before! The mind works in mysterious ways.



HK:  There are probably quite a few YA readers who will be craving a romance between characters.  Is there a reason you chose not to include one?  

VVS:  First love and crushes are definitely a huge part of adolescence, but I think this need is very well serviced in YA and even middle grade fiction. It can be trickier for kids who are not into romance to find books that don't go down that route. I wanted The Winnowing to be another kind of love story, about the love between friends. Marivic isn't motivated by heroism or altruism- in fact she has very little interest in 'saving the world.' She wants to avenge/save her best friend, Saren. At no point during the writing process did it feel natural to give Marivic (or Abbot or Kamal) a crush–they were all far too busy!



HK:  Though you tie up all loose ends in The Winnowing, making it a perfect stand-alone novel, there are many stories within that could still be told.  Abbot’s, Kamal’s or Ren’s stories could all reveal so much more about their world.  Even a story from the perspective of the Kesla is viable.  Are there any plans for follow-up stories? If not, will you continue to write science fiction or speculative fiction?

VVS:  After doing all the world-building for The Winnowing I understand why fantasy and science fiction writers create series.  I have so much material that no one will ever see! It feels like an awful lot of work for one book. That being said, I don't have any plans for a direct sequel. At one point I conceived of a three book ARC for The Winnowing, but in the end I was more interested in telling a small, singular story (Marivic's tale) in the midst of a big, highly conceptual story (what if puberty was dangerous and controlled by the government?) I would like to explore science fiction again. I have been noodling a time travel story around in my head for ages, maybe I'll try that next!

⇲⇲⇲⇲⇲⇲

Thank you to Vikki VanSickle

for sharing her writing with us,

 in The Winnowing and in this Q & A,

 and for allowing us a glimpse into her world.

⇲⇲⇲⇲⇲⇲

You can learn more about Vikki VanSickle 

and her books and writing

at

her blog at https://vikkivansickle.wordpress.com

If you're in southern Ontario this weekend, you can purchase 

a copy of The Winnowing at the Eden Mills Writers' Festival this Sunday 

and even get Vikki VanSickle to autograph it.  Bonus!

Villains: Guest post by author Catherine Egan

I am quite thrilled to be helping author Catherine Egan launch Bone, Fog, Ash & Star, the final book of The Last Days of Tian Di series, with a review yesterday and a guest post today. Today's post, Isn't he scary? Isn't he beautiful? will be the first in her blog-series about villains. Check in at her blog for more details about these posts, including a giveaway that will accompany each.

Catherine Egan grew up in Vancouver, Canada, and wrote her first novel at age 6. It was about a group of kids on a farm who ran races. Each chapter ended with “Cathy won the race again!” Since then, she has lived in Oxford, Tokyo, Kyoto, a volcanic Japanese island that erupted and sent her hurtling straight into the arms of her now-husband, Beijing, an oil rig in China’s Bohai Bay, and now Connecticut, where she is still writing books (but Cathy doesn’t win every race anymore). Her first novel, Shade & Sorceress, won a 2013 Moonbean Children’s Book Award (Gold) and was named an Ontario Library Association Best Bet for 2012 in the Young Adult Fiction category.

You can connect with Catherine Egan through these social media links:

Website: www.catherineegan.com
Blog: bycatherineegan.wordpress.com
Twitter: @bycatherineegan
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/byCatherineEgan

Now, I welcome author Catherine Egan. 

Isn't he scary? Isn't he beautiful?

by Catherine Egan

I was sitting at the big kitchen table writing, because that’s what I like to do, and my three-year-old was sitting next to me sticking toothpicks in a lump of play-doh, because that’s what he likes to do. He showed me his creation and said, “Look, it’s a spiky monster!” Of course it was a monster. He is all about monsters. Looking over his toothpick-spiked play-doh monster with immense satisfaction, he said: “Isn’t he scary? Isn’t he beautiful?” Yes, I said, yes, he is both of those things.

The first germ of an idea for the Tian Di books began with Eliza (my beloved heroine) and Nia (my beloved villain) in conversation and in conflict. I knew that they were in some kind of prison, but I didn’t yet know how they got there or even really who they were. Still, much of the scene I wrote is right there, barely changed, near the end of the the first book:

“Look at you,” said Nia with an affectionate little smile, not putting down her teacup. “Adorable! A child with the barest smidgen of Magic and the sad delusion that you could last five seconds against me.” She stood up and bent close to Eliza. Eliza could smell the sugary tea on her breath. “Well, little smidgen, you’ve come running straight into the only place left where I still have power, eager as anything, and now that you’re here, what fun we’re going to have!”

Nia was wonderfully freeing to write. Every scene she was in came so easily. She could say or do anything. I wanted her to be sympathetic but monstrous at the same time, and whether or not I succeeded for the reader I can’t say, but for myself, she was pure joy to write. I felt about her just as my little boy felt about his spiky play-doh monster. Isn’t she terrible? Isn’t she wonderful?

The best villains terrify us, yes, but they beguile us too. In the ultimate Good vs. Evil story, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan is so charismatic – his rage, rebelliousness and pride providing all the best poetry – that William Blake claimed Milton was “of the Devil’s party without knowing it.” While the Emperor in the original Star Wars trilogy is perhaps the truer villain, the movies are dominated by the terrifying figure of Darth Vader, who represents not only a physical threat but a spiritual one – the dark, seductive power Luke must resist, the evil good men fall may fall prey to. Volde… sorry, He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named is and will remain the uber-villain for generations of young readers – and he is all the more horrifying because he is so deeply connected to our beloved hero Harry. They may be complex, comic, or simply terrifying, but they captivate us, these villains. Think of Lady MacBeth, unable to scrub the blood from her hands; the murderous Captain Hook, smoking two cigars at once; Dracula, the bloodthirsty (sorry) seducer, setting off a love affair with vampire literature that has lasted more than a hundred years; Bluebeard with his roomful of murdered wives; the wicked witches and vicious stepmothers that make fairytales such dark fare; the Big Bad Wolf – as primal as it gets – all those teeth! The mad, the miserable, the megalomaniacal and the vengeful – villains have a way of swaggering onto the page (or the screen) and taking over.

The villain comes along and says to the hero: OK, now you have to be the hero, because here I am. Or maybe the villain whispers in the hero’s ear: You think you are the hero, but are you, really? Deep down, aren’t you just like me? Maybe the villain says, suddenly, at some crucial point in the story: Actually I am your father / mother / sister / lover – surprise! And then you (the hero) have to figure out what to do with that tangle of love and fear, of loathing and longing. Maybe the villain just thinks you look tasty and wants to gobble you up or drink your blood, and maybe some part of you actually takes that as a compliment, which is weird, but people are  weird. Maybe the villain is so unrepressed, so powerful, gleeful and sexy and leaving destruction in his or her wake, that you wish… I mean not really but you sort of wish that you could be like that too. That you didn’t care so much. That you didn’t feel so much.

It can be simpler than all that, of course. Maybe when the Big Bad Wolf opens his jaws and you see those rows of teeth, it is like staring at death, but at a remove – because this is a book, or a movie, or maybe your grandma is telling you the story, but anyway, it’s not real. That’s what you keep telling yourself under the covers at bedtime – it’snotrealit’snotrealit’snotreal – but you see this shadow move across the wall and you think you can hear something breathing.

I don’t have any grand philosophy about villains. I just love to write them, and I love to read them, and I recognize the same shivery pleasure in my children when we read some horrible tale and they huddle saucer-eyed on either side of me. Sometimes I’ll think, hmm, maybe this is a little too much, but we get to the end and I look at them and they look at me and they whisper: Read it again.

So I do.

 * * * * * 
This is the first in a blog-series about villains – you can follow along by checking my blog http://bycatherineegan.wordpress.com next week. Each post will include a giveaway. Let me know in the comments: who are your favorite fictional villains? Choose villains from books / movies / comic books / TV – just not real life! A winner will be selected by random number generator (I’ll post a screenshot) and I will send you a book bundle – all three books in The Last Days of Tian Di series – chock-a-block with villains and their villainy.

-Catherine Egan