Words matter. These are the best Rick Yancey Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I always feel trepidation at the beginning of every project. I worry about so many things. Time to get it right, the skill to do it justice, the will to finish. I also worry about more mundane things, like what if my computer crashes and I’ve forgotten to back up the manuscript?
One of the joys of a really good book is that you’re so into the world of the book, you forget what you’re looking at is words on a page.
My first favourite book was ‘Are You My Mother?’ A picture book about a lost bird. After that my favourites changed almost yearly. I loved everything by Roald Dahl, but my favourite was probably ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.’ A librarian gave me a first edition of that book, which I treasure.
My foray into young adult lit was by no means planned. I wrote the first ‘Alfred Kropp’ book as an adult novel, which everyone loved but no one would publish – until I changed my protagonist from a thirty-something P.I. into a 15-year-old kid. After that, it was off to the races, and I am so glad.
I’ve always wanted to write science fiction. It was one of my first loves, and I knew if I became a writer someday I’d probably write something in the science fiction vein, but I hesitated for a long while because it’s such well-trod ground.
I’ve loved sci-fi and speculative fiction since I was a kid. It was inevitable I’d try my hand at it at some point.
‘The 5th Wave’ is sci-fi, but I tried very hard to ground the story in very human terms and in those universal themes that transcend genre. How do we define ourselves? What, exactly, does it mean to be human? What remains after everything we trust, everything we believe in and rely upon, has been stripped away?
It’s been a while since I’ve written a novel aimed at the adult market, but I never sit down and say to myself, ‘Okay, now I’m going to write something for us old folks.’ I get gripped by an idea, and I go where the idea takes me.
‘Tax Collector’ was optioned for a series with F/X, but it never happened. I guess they ran into a problem trying to figure out why someone would tune in to watch a show about a guy who works for the IRS.
I got a very late start at fatherhood. I’m a late bloomer in general. It took me seven years to get through four years of college. I was five years away from 40 before I had a family, and I had never been around kids much at all. All of a sudden, I was around three boys all the time.
I really kill myself on titles, although ‘The 5th Wave’ seems like an obvious title, doesn’t it? You don’t know how long that took me.
Great sci-fi has never shied from tackling the Big Questions, though really great sci-fi never forgets to entertain us along the way. Shock and awe applies to art, as well.
