Poplitiko Interview Part 2

The second part of the interview I did with Richard Caldwell is now up on the Poplitiko website:

http://poplitiko.blogspot.com/2011/01/americanauts-von-allan-pt-2-of-2.html

It's a wide-ranging interview where we discuss the Direct Market, comic book stores, readership, and (of course!) Stargazer. A sample:

"Choosing girls and young women as the protagonists wasn't something that I really aimed for. It just sort of flowed, one decision leading to another. I chose to make Marie, the main character in “the road to god knows...,” female because I didn't want the story to be too autobiographical. If she had been a boy it would have been far clearer that I was talking about myself. I wanted to distance myself from that and force myself to explore her as her own character and not just a stand in for me. As I started chewing over the story that became “Stargazer,” I hit upon the idea of echoing some of the themes in “road.” Marie's struggle is really one of letting go. She realizes that she can't “save” her mom or somehow solve her mom's problems. “Stargazer” tackles the same “letting go” issue as Marni struggles to cope with her granny's death. I don't want to reveal too much of the plot, but it's no accident than Marie and Marrni share similar names and similar genders. Making Marni a young girl meant that her friends were going to be girls, too, mainly because of my own experiences with how genders don't mix all that much at that age. Added into that was the idea that I couldn't think of that many fantasy stories that dealt with younger girls as the protagonists. Even blockbusters like “Harry Potter” focus on boys and I thought it would be interesting to turn that on its head and go in a different direction character-wise."

Part One can be found at http://poplitiko.blogspot.com/2011/01/americanauts-von-allan-pt-1-of-2.html