{Tour} The Boy Most Likely To by Huntley Fitzpatrick (Author Interview + Giveaway!)

***INTERVIEW***

Hi, Huntley! Thanks for taking the time to talk with us today. We’re excited for our readers to get to know you a little better. Let’s get started!

All my books start with a boy and a question, and TBMLT started with the character of Tim and two questions (because the character is ornery and likes to push my limits): What does it really mean to grow up and How do you figure out what is and isn’t your responsibility to fix? Both Tim and Alice grapple with those questions and, I hope, solve them to some degree, both for themselves and with each other. They seem like opposite ends of the spectrum—bad boy with a tender heart meets overly responsible girl who thinks she has a hard heart. They both have to deal with curveballs life has thrown (and keeps throwing) at them, and also with the hot attraction and growing connection between them, at a time when that connection just makes things more complicated.

I always have a lot of favorite scenes to write, but just to pick one, I loved writing Tim and Alice going to the abandoned fairgrounds. That falling in love, tingly, wary, delicious feeling of really falling for someone—and being afraid—and going for it anyway—I love writing that, and I love making sure it’s really specific to those two characters—that this is the only way it could happen for these particular people with their strengths and their weaknesses and their fears and their own brand of brave.

I love the “fresh tracks in the snow” part when I’m first setting out on a story and anything could happen—all my missteps and mistakes and do-overs are yet to happen and it could be the one story ever that’s absolutely perfect and says everything that needs to be said about Life. But, I also love the very last turn in of the last revision when I hit send and think “Boom. That was as good as you can make it. You wrote what you set out to write. “ Best advice: It’s got to be Madeleine L’Engle telling me, “You’re a writer. So write.” It’s above my computer, and I think of it every day.

When I’m home, I write at my desk which is in a corner of our bedroom. I have pictures of the ocean all over the walls facing it, so it’s almost like an ocean view. We also have French windows which look out onto our yard, so sometimes I have snow views one way (real) and summer sea the other way (painted). I answer letters at the beginning of the day, do whatever PR I need to do, then read a poem, drink coffee, reread what I wrote yesterday, and start writing. If it’s going well, I don’t even break for meals until the school bus pulls up. If it’s going badly the house gets very clean and all the laundry is done.

I’d love to have Nic from WHAT I THOUGHT WAS TRUE hang out more with Dominic (from WITWT but only briefly, and TBMLT much more). Nic needs a mentor and he needs to lighten up. Dom could help with all of those. Maybe in another story…I also think Cass from WITWT and Jase would get along. And I wonder how Spence and Tim would hit it off—it would either be insta-bond or insta-hate. I’d love to hear Gwen and Hester compare notes on Alex Robinson…I take a small bit of pleasure that Gwen being snarky to him was a little revenge for Hester even though she will never know about it.

Tim’s one of those characters who just kept beating the odds. I barely intended Samantha’s best friend to have a brother, and then I thought he’d only have a few lines, and then I thought he’d be sort of a loser all the way through. But the more I wrote him the more I cared, and the more I identified, and the more I wanted to know what happened next with him (which is always the question that keeps me writing). I kind of had a crush on him…whenever I had to write him into a scene I lit up, and his words just “came to me” which definitely causes major author swoons. He was easy for me to love, to sum it up. I hope readers feel the same way.

I’ve never been any good at surface. Small talk, glossing over, ignoring the elephant in the room… just not a talent of mine. This makes me an unfortunate dinner guest, but I hope it makes my writing more connected to life and real. Because don’t we all read for the real? For that feeling that we’re not alone with the hard stuff? When I was a teenager, and still now, I look to books to show me what is real and how its handled, both well and badly. Those are the kind of books I want to write and I look for to read.

I love your pics…love love love…my problem with casting is that I just can’t imagine them outside of my head…I have this perfect image of all the characters—if only I were one of those police sketch artists—not as in only sketching criminals, but with that talent, obv– and then had the power to bring my creations to life (actually that sounds as though it could go wrong in so many different ways). I can see Tim’s one dimple, and the way Jase stands, and Cass diving…but I can’t put any actors in as them. Same with the girls.

How did you win the Pulitzer? No, seriously, I think the question would be: who do you write for? And the answer would be: Anyone who thinks about or dreams about or remembers true love; anyone who might be lonely and wishing for their life to change; anyone looking to find themselves, or someone who could be their friend, in a book, anyone who cares about family and integrity and becoming their best self, anyone who loves books and oceans and any kind of weather, and boys and girls and men and women with their hearts open. If you like those boys shirtless, that’s a bonus.

I’m thrilled you asked me about swoon, because I consider myself a lifelong student of swoon. Seriously, I was asking my father to reread the chapters of SECRET GARDEN with Dickon in them when I was five. I’m embarrassed to say that if a book doesn’t have someone for me to swoon over, it loses points. I have basically the fictional male equivalent of a harem of swoony boys. But, to call out a few choice favorites:

Hunter in Jennifer Echols’ LOVE STORY (whether as writer/pre-med student or stable boy, he is all smarts and all swoon); Edmund and Eustace Scrubb in the Narnia Books (early crushes, but abiding); Owen Gentry in Colleen Hoover’s CONFESS (talented artist with honest soul); Sebastian in Eloisa James’ A WILD PURSUIT (there’s that stable boy thing I have going on again); Ethan in Kristan Higgins’ THE NEXT BEST THING (He’s MY best thing); Wes in Sarah Dessen’s THE TRUTH ABOUT FOREVER (I came late to this party, but isn’t Wes’ everybody’s swoony boy?); Jason Proctor in A STARBOARD SEA (it’s a literary classic to me, but I can still long for the hero, right?); Aristotle AND Dante in ARISTOTLE AND DANTE DISCOVER THE UNIVERSE (I can’t choose); Dylan in Viv Daniels’ MY ONE AND ONLY (with or without his glasses) ; Reid Alexander in Tammara Webber’s BETWEEN THE LINES books, Jace in Cassandra Clare’s CITY OF BONES books (because…Wow); West in Katie McGarry’s TAKE ME ON (or, basically any one of her heroes, omg)…okay, I’ll stop and pick myself off the swooning couch now…until the next book.

Thanks so much for stopping by, Huntley! We just keep reading and rereading your answers.