A Little Something Different Took A Very Different Path To Publication

The process of writing and selling a novel is supposed to be hard. It’s supposed to take years of trial and error, submission and rejection, revision and revision, until those big fancy publishing companies put those pretty books on the shelves. Not so for Sandy Hall, the author of A Little Something Different. She whipped up the first draft of her debut novel in six days last October, and it’s in stores now, the first release from Macmillan’s crowd-sourced Swoon Reads imprint. Writers submit their romantic young adult and new adult manuscripts on the Swoon site, where it can be read by any and all who want to sign in. The books with the highest ratings make the short list for the publishers who then select which books to release to the rest of the world.

A Little Something Different tells the story of Lea and Gabe, two college students who seem fated to fall in love, from the perspective of 14 different narrators (I’d say people, but this includes a squirrel and a park bench). On her book release day, Sandy Hall took a quick break from her day job as a teen librarian in New Jersey to tell us how she came up with this crowd-pleaser.

Being a teen librarian kind of sounds like the most amazing job ever…
It is. It’s a very good job.

Which ambition came first for you, being a librarian or being a novelist?
Definitely being a librarian. I’ve been working in libraries since I was 16.

Did that then inspire you to write a YA novel?
I was always a big reader, and I remember thinking as a kid, “I love YA romance. I love these cheesy romance novels. I bet I could write one,” in that way that you think when you’re a teenager. And then I put that idea away. I really didn’t think much of it. And then I actually failed writing in college, so I remember thinking obviously this isn’t for me. Then a couple years ago I gave it another try.

Have you written other novels before this one?
Here and there. This is only the second one that I ever finished. Prior to that I’d been mostly failing at National Novel Writing Month.

Does being a librarian give you an inside track on what the kids are reading these days?
I definitely think so, because I know what goes out, I know what sits on my shelf, and I know what they’re asking for. I had a couple of kids over the years say to me, There aren’t any normal books about college. Usually the characters are in trouble or dropping out or failing. So that I always kept in mind.

What else planted the seed for the story?
I always liked multiple points of view, and I had asked one of my friends, “What kind of romance do you want to read?” She told me this whole wonderful story about a boy and a girl who lead very parallel lives and never talk to each other. I love those stories, but I’ve seen a lot of them, so I figured a way to make that different would be to tell it from everyone else’s point of view.

Have you ever witnessed a couple like Gabe and Lea, that you could tell were meant to be just by looking at them?
I’m always telling myself stories about people I see. My mom always does it too. We’ll be out to dinner and she’s like, “Look at those two people there: I bet they were arguing earlier but now they’re out making up.” I think my mom influenced that.

Did you really write this book in six days?
Yes. I wrote the first draft very, very fast. I am a crazy fast typer. What happened was, I had been plotting this out for most of October, because I wanted to do it for National Novel Writing Month. On the last weekend in October, it just so happened that I was going to have a five- or six-day weekend, from comp days and vacation adding up. There were days when I wrote, like, 10,000 words. They would just fall out of my fingers. But it was also very particularly planned. I had an index card with every scene with conversation ideas. There was a lot of planning.

You were a fan-fiction writer first. Did that help?
I used to have a lot of trouble coming up with my own characters, so I learned a lot about writing about characters that I loved by writing fan fiction. Now I can come up with my own characters. Fan fiction gets a bad rap, but it’s probably one of the best ways to test yourself and learn about other parts of writing.

Did that also make you better at writing for an audience that’s voting with their views?
Definitely. It also made me comfortable with putting my work out there like that.

What was the feedback you got from putting your work on Swoon Reads?
I got a lot of great feedback, and a lot of super thoughtful and kind feedback. The Swoon Reads community is great at “three things you did good and one piece of criticism.” That’s a thing you’re supposed to do as a teacher. It’s constructive and thoughtful and kind, even in their criticism. The biggest [criticism] was that originally I had 23 points of view, and I got it down to 14.

Was the squirrel in there from the very beginning?
Yes. The book takes place at Fake Rutgers, where I went to college. The squirrels at Rutgers are insane. They have no fear of people. I always imagine them having this other life, so that’s why the squirrel is there. They have opinions.

There’s been so much conversation about the need for diversity in YA. Did that play into your decision to make Lea Chinese?
There was no way I could write about kids going to school at Rutgers without having a ton of diversity. It’s just one of those places.

Are you going to try to publish this way again?
I’m working on something that I hope they like, and then we’ll see what happens. I’m definitely not writing as fast this time. I seem to have a lot of stuff on my plate. All of my vacation time is going to author-y stuff and not writing.

Sandy Hall is now on tour! Here are the dates, and here’s the book.