First Draft Episode #190: Stephanie Garber

Stephanie Garber, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Caraval series, talks about turning to writing to escape burnout and depression from her first job, persevering when even her Mom told her the writing thing wasn’t meant to happen, and the things that make her nervous about releasing Finale, the final book in her breakout series.

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• The North Texas Teen Book Festival, which Stephanie and I were both in attendance this year. On the sidelines, we made time to sit down and chat for the podcast!

• SASE: an abbreviation for 'self-addressed stamped envelope.' An SASE is an envelope on which you have stuck a stamp and written your own name and address.

• Twilight by Stephenie Meyer; The Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld; and Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr were among the first YA books that Stephanie discovered when she was rediscovering writing, while battling burnout and depression at her first job out of college

• Big Sur Children’s Writing Workshops, where Stephanie said they “eviscerated” her work—but she loved it

• Much like Anne Montgomery in the Anne of Green Gables series by L.M. Montgomery, Stephanie is a sensitive person who may or may not have ever exclaimed to be “in the depths of despair!”

• Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein, which inspired Stephanie to write Caraval (though the books are very different!)

• The Game (movie) directed by David Fincher and starring Michael Douglas, which has a passing similarity to some elements of Caraval

• Stephanie has said she wanted Caraval to feel like a Baz Luhrmann movie or a Florence and the Machine song

• The Great Gatsby, directed by Baz Luhrmann, from which we got our glorious .gif of Leonardo DiCaprio holding out a glass of champagne

• Stephanie was inspired to write Caraval after hearing the song “Centuries,” by Fallout Boy, which features the lyrics: “Some legends are told / Some turn to dust or to gold / But you will remember me / Remember me, for centuries”

• Legend by Marie Lu, which Stephanie erroneously believed was about a character named Legend (it is not). Instead of waiting for someone else to write about that kind of character, Stephanie went and did it herself!

• Jennifer E. Smith, who was an editor and still does freelance editing, in addition to being the author of The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight and Field Notes on Love, and more! (Listen to her First Draft podcast episode here)

• SCBWI, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, was one place Stephanie turned to for help editing an early version of Caraval (and the editor there told her it would never sell…)

• Prim from The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is the kind of sister character Stephanie wanted to avoid, especially when she was writing Legendary

• Stacey Lee, author of Under a Painted Sky and Outrun the Moon, is an author-friend who Stephanie counts on to always tell her the truth

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Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

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