[Danielle Balocca]: Hey listeners, this is Danielle. And Shelley. Shelley is a radical Dravidian and racial equity activist.
[Chelli Keshavan]: And Danielle is a community mobilizer and changemaker. And this is the Medford Bites podcast. Every two weeks, we chew on the issues facing Medford and deliver bites of information about the city by lifting the expertise of our guests.
[Danielle Balocca]: Join us in discussion about what you hope for the future of Medford. And as always, tell us where you like to eat. All right, thank you so much for being with me here today. If you don't mind just introducing yourself with your name, pronouns, and a bit about who you are.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, sure. Hi, I'm Jimmy Matichak Morris. My pronouns are he and him. And I'm an author for middle grade readers and also young adults. I'm originally from New Jersey. I grew up as the middle child of five. And so we had a very busy household. And I always knew that I wanted to do something creative, didn't quite know what that looked like. And so after many years of trying different medias and different things, I wound up being an author.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you, Jimmy. So yeah, I'm really happy to have you here and to hear more about your upcoming book. Before we do that, I'd like to ask you the question that we ask everybody on the podcast, which is, what is your favorite place to eat in Medford and what do you like to eat there?
[SPEAKER_01]: I would say Colleen's and just anything ice cream related is my favorite thing to eat there. Probably the peanut butter sundae is my absolute favorite thing there. It's so good.
[Danielle Balocca]: Today, so the college that I went to every fall, there's something called Mountain Day where they surprise you by canceling class and the president of the college serves ice cream on top of a mountain. And that's actually, yeah, it's always a nice surprise, especially if you haven't done your homework for that day. But today is Mountain Day. So we're going to go to Colleen's tonight, actually, to celebrate. So yeah, I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about kind of how you became an author and kind of what that looked like for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, sure. So as I said in my little intro, I always knew that I wanted to do something creative. So as a kid, I did art. I did a lot of drawing. I thought maybe I wanted to be a cartoonist or an animator. And I kind of went in stages. And then I did theater. I was a theater kid. And then I realized that I was way too shy to be on the stage. And so probably towards early high school, I realized that maybe I'm a behind-the-scenes person because being on stage just terrifies me all of a sudden. What else did I do? I did film. So I went to college and I studied film. And so I did a little bit of screenwriting there. And I also, I got a degree in film and then another degree in English. And so that's when I sort of started to really dive into writing and creative writing. And I think that's sort of where I hit the switch. Like, oh yes, I can be an author. I can be this sort of like, actor with words, and I can be shy at the same time. So I just write a book all by myself. I get these characters' emotions and all the things that I would do as an actor, but then I can just push it away and not watch anyone as they read it. So I think that's sort of where I wound up as an author. I think I also just always wanted to write for kids rather than adults, partially because I think I read more for kids than adults. way books I find accessible and I'm a little bit of a slow reader so I feel like I can get more reading done. I read middle grade and young adult books. And so I think I just always was interested in the media, the literature that I had growing up and I was like I want to I want to participate in that body of work. And so it's always been children's literature for me. So after college, I went to grad school at Simmons College. It's why I moved to the Massachusetts area. They're one of the few programs in children's literature and writing for children. So that's where I actually started my debut novel, My Ex-Imaginary Friend. This was 2007, so this was a long time ago. But my first class was just called, I think, Writing I. And it was taught by Joan Knowles, who's this really wonderful YA author. And her first book actually came out the year that we had her class. It was a super exciting time. And she was just a super nurturing, supportive mentor. And so I wrote the first maybe five chapters with my ex-imaginary friend in that class. And she was always so supportive, like, oh, keep going. This is really good. I want you to keep finishing it. I did, eventually. I think one thing for me for writing novels, sometimes I'll just have to walk away and then pick it up again. So I stuck with it eventually and that became my debut novel after all those years.
[Danielle Balocca]: I really enjoyed that novel. I also love YA and read books for younger people and I feel like that book For me, it felt like a really digestible way to think about mental health for kids and maybe in a way they maybe aren't understanding it at the time. I don't know, do you want to say a little bit about what the book's about?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so my best imaginary friend is about an 11-year-old boy named Jack. who used to have an imaginary friend, and then he kind of grows out of him, and the imaginary friend, George, is this part walrus. He just disappears. And then Jack's family begins to disappear in more real-world ways, like his father walks out on the family, and his mother's having some mental health issues, and so she kind of drops Jack off at his aunt's house, and she disappears, and he realizes that maybe Everyone is disappearing on me, and so maybe to make sense of it, I need to find my former imaginary friend. And he can give me peace and family and just comfort. And so he kind of goes on this journey to find his former imaginary friend, who is meanwhile sort of out on his own, wondering what is the point of an imaginary friend without a person to imagine them. And so it alternates points of view between the two as they find one another and then I guess find themselves also.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I feel like there's kind of two important ways to read that book, like as a child and also as a parent, like my son's name is also Jack, so it's kind of fun, but like, but also like, you know, there's like very sad parts to the book, but sort of like I think forgetting as an adult that kids do have like an important perspective and understanding and like sometimes It feels like there's no way to like bridge what a child understands with what an adult understands. So it's like a nice reminder like I think there's like some scenes like between the cousins that are also really nice in that book where they're sort of supporting each other in a very sweet way, but yeah, I really enjoyed it. Yeah, and I work in mental health as well. So it's like always nice to be able to have like something to reference or like get people to say like, yeah, this could help you to think about what you're going through. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I definitely wrote, I feel like I wrote all of my books for myself or for the younger version of myself who, you know, is experiencing issues with mental health and didn't have the words to articulate them. And what we'll get to foresee from that is also a little bit of me figuring out like what I could have used as a child. And so, I definitely try to touch upon some heavier subjects, but I also like to talk about humor, which in My Ex-Magic Friend, the character of George, who's the part of Walrus, is very funny, very optimistic, and so I hope that they create a balance so that it's not all just a sad book. There's hope, there's humor, there's heart.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. Yeah, it's nice to hear kind of what you hope for people to take. Yeah. Yeah. Great. And so I just wonder if, too, like, it sounds like any kind of creative career could be tough, right? Like, there seems like there could be some important supports in your life, like people that are, like, things that help to support your work, but also maybe some things that have felt hard or, like, barriers to your work. I wonder if you could share that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of support, my family, my husband, So supportive, he's read every draft. I'll like change a few sentences and then I'll send him a text and be like, can you read these two sentences and tell me which one is better? He's read everything that I've read. So I would say that he's my biggest support. I did, I dedicated the first book to him because of that. Just reading any, any word that I've read and supportive, but also firm, constructive, you know, when needed. So I think that's been really helpful. I think one of the things that's really hard, but one of the holdups, probably myself, is sometimes, like if I'm not, some people, some authors are like, oh, you need to write every day, and I don't necessarily do that. When I'm in the zone, I can do that, but sometimes, I'll miss a day or a week or longer, and then I start to get in my head, and I'm like, oh, I'm not an author. What am I doing? What's wrong with me? And so I feel like when I get in my head, that's one of my biggest holdups, is just not being able to push myself out of that. And I feel like that's another way that my husband has been really helpful, because I'll just be on the couch, wrapped up in a blanket, being like, oh, I'm done. I'm not an author to be like, okay, let's sit by the computer for five minutes with a word doc, or he'll encourage me, he'll let me have the space to be dramatic and say that I'm quitting, but then he'll be like, all right, let's Let's think, do you actually want to quit? Because I'll support you if you do. But would you like to just sit with the computer for five, ten minutes? He's a good balance and a good support.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I wonder too, are there any YA authors that you kind of draw creative inspiration from?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I love a lot of authors. I wrote down a lot of those songs, because I always forget when I ask. But I love especially queer authors. There's been so much more queer literature lately, which is really great. So Adam Sass is someone, he wrote Surrender Your Sons, which is about, it's a YA, and it's parents, or mother sends her kid to a conversion camp, and the kid has to then sort of escape the conversion camp. So it's intense, but it's really good. And then at the same time, he also wrote one called The 99 Boyfriends of Micah Summers, and that's sort of a YA, Cinderella, rom-com type of book. It's very queer, very good. One of the best books that I've read lately, I think, is We Deserve Monuments by Jazz Hammons. Let's see what other authors do I have. Adam Silvera. I'm trying to think now.
[Danielle Balocca]: Is that the Dante and Aristotle author?
[SPEAKER_01]: Adam Silvera wrote More Happy Than Not. I think he wrote a blurb for Dante and Aristotle. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Yeah. What else has he written? He wrote They Both Died. Any one who's emerging in the queer author field, I just really love to be immersed in those books.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. And obviously, there is a queer theme to For Sooth. So what do you want us to know about your new book?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so For Sooth is about 13-year-old Calvin Conroy. He is a theater kid. He wants to be a star on the stage. He has some anxiety, some stage fright, and in the middle of the school show, he gets caught up, and he can't remember his lines, and he starts to sort of have this nervous panic attack, and he ends up falling off the stage, and his mind ruining the entire school show. And so, that's the prologue of the book, and after that, the rest of the book is him trying to repair his reputation, trying to prove that he is an actor and a good friend and he didn't ruin the show, also while sort of encountering or realizing that he's experiencing his first gay crushes, while living in a Catholic religious home and thinking that like, wait, this is impossible, what's going on? And so it's somewhat of a love triangle, while also very much about theater kids and resilience and overcoming stage fright and realizing maybe that your mistakes are not quite as bad as they are in your mind.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, and there's the, like, female best friend character.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like something that... Yes, so his best friend is named Kennedy Carmichael, and she is Perhaps a more talented actress, we'll say, and she was the star of the show that he fumbled. She was Cinderella. And so she decides to apply to this acting school in New York City, and she gets in. And so at the beginning of the summer, she reveals that she's going to be leaving. he realizes that nobody looks at him without Kennedy, because he's always sort of in the back of her spotlight. And so he decides that he's got to convince her to stay. And so he gathers the rest of his friends together to make a movie that's going to be so amazing. It's going to convince her, oh, wow, I was wrong to leave. And so throughout the story, they're making this film, which is Well, not very good. But they really think it's going to just convince her that this is where it's at.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I liked that it was, I mean, I remember like 13 is what, like 7th or 8th grade?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, 7th. So in the book they've just finished 7th grade and they're in the summer right before 8th.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I remember seventh grade is like one of the worst years of my life socially. Like that, I feel like that really brought out that anxiety and worry about friendships, like this person is the most important person to me in the world and if they leave then I'll be like, what would that mean for me? And I really like that like some of the book is written like through text messages or unanswered text messages, I really like that part. There's a lot of unanswered texts in the very dramatic case. Yeah, it felt like it really evoked a lot of feelings from middle school, which for better or worse, but I feel like that's a powerful book that can do that for sure. Yeah. And there was also like a religious component, right, to his sort of identity formation in the book.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so growing up, I grew up in a Catholic, more conservative household too, and so there's a little bit of my sort of anxieties of being religious and gay. So there was a lot less media, I would say, when I was growing up, you know, when I was about this age. I didn't really know that being gay was even a thing, and so I experienced I feel like really intense crushes, but didn't know that I was experiencing crushes. So I thought they were like really explosive friendships. awkward, uncomfortable, confusing friendships. And so I had several of these before I even saw a gay character or knew what that was. I feel like I kind of figured things out a little bit more in high school, but I didn't actually come out or finalize my coming out until after college. There's definitely a little bit of my upbringing in this book as like denial and confusion and just fear about what is going on. I don't understand this friendship or why it's going in this direction when that doesn't feel right.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, yeah. And there's a lot of kind of like complexity to like all the family relationships, like the two different Like the two boys in his life, and then Kennedy, and I also love the older sister character. Sort of just like, I feel like she's a really important character for Calvin. It's very sweet. I don't want to give away too much of the plot.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I feel like there's a lot of my sister in that sister character. And I dedicated this book to my sister. Hopefully she's not listening until she reads the book. Yeah, there's definitely a lot of that. Like there's teasing between the siblings until maybe it's not time to tease. So I think that's what I was going for with that relationship.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, and I wonder kind of what you hope for people to take from this book, either parents or youth that are reading it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. So I feel like, again, I wrote this book for me or for someone like me, and so I would like someone who reads this book, especially a young reader, to take away, you know, oh, I'm not alone. There's kids like me who are having these thoughts that are confusing and that things are going to be okay.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I liked that, I mean, I'm not going to say too much, but there were some like kind of, not surprises, but I kind of like a book where you can look back at the opening scene and have a different understanding of it by the end.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I did. and plant some seeds in them for a while that are addressed later throughout especially.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, great. Anything else you want to say about the book or maybe where we can find it when it comes out?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so it comes out November 7th, which is Tuesday. You can find it anywhere that books are sold, Barnes & Noble, a local bookshop. If they don't carry it, you can ask them to carry it. There's a website called bookshop.org where you can I think that's where you can kind of buy from your local bookstore, but it's online. Also, Amazon, if that's where you want to get books, that's fine. It's there as well. Yeah, and I'm also doing an event on November 11th. It's a Saturday at 3. It's an acting at the Silver Unicorn, which is a local acting bookstore. It's very cute. So I'll be doing an event there. I don't quite know what it's going to look like yet. I have to plan that in the next few months. But there will be an event. I'll be there. I can sign. Great.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I've had a lot of luck at Porter Square Books requesting books, and they seem to get them in pretty quickly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they do. I think they have signed copies of my ex-imaginary friend there. I'll try to get some signed copies of her suit as well.
[Danielle Balocca]: Great, yeah. So anything else you want to plug? So it sounds like you have two events. The book's coming out. Can we find your first book at all the same?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, so you can find my first book at all those same places as well. Check it out at your local library, it would be great. Yeah, I think that's it. We'll see, depending on how sales are. I'm hoping to write a sequel at some point, but we'll see. It'll depend on how the first one does. But there are some, I won't say anything, but there are some unanswered questions, I think, that could be addressed in a sequel.
[Danielle Balocca]: I know I've been, well, I read the Heartstopper series, and then, yeah, and they made a Netflix show about it. But I feel like that's one that's been, it's been fun to follow them as they get older in that story. So it'll be interesting to see Calvin in high school. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me and good luck with the book.
[Unidentified]: Thank you so much.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. The Medford Bites podcast is produced and moderated by Danielle Balacca and Shelly Casherman. Music is made by Hendrik Irenys. We'd love to hear what you think about the podcast. You can reach out to us by email at medfordpod at gmail.com, or you can rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Thanks so much for listening. Guys, what's the name of the podcast? Never Bites. Never Bites. Good job.