Q: You are a (fairly) new mother—without naming names or giving out details, did you base any of the situations in Little Wonders on real life?
A: If you’re asking have I ever stomped on my kid’s Halloween costume or witnessed a Parent Association meeting meltdown—no, sorry, those are wholly out of my imagination. I have attended my fair share of Halloween parades and school festivals, but they were much less dramatic than the ones depicted. But I did recently experience a preschool graduation ceremony for my first child, and am in the potty-training trenches with my second, so suffice to say . . . certain plot points in the book are incredibly present in my life.
When you become a parent, you are dropped into an entirely new world, with a different language, different customs, and different rules. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve planned, how much you’ve read, how much advice you’ve gotten—You. Are. Not. Prepared. And as soon as you feel like you’ve found your feet, your kid grows, the rules shift, and you have to scramble to keep up.
When my first child began preschool, I was a wide-eyed doe of panic, trying to figure out how to navigate interactions with the teachers and the parents—how do you best advocate for your child? How do you set up a playdate? How do you get another parent to be friends with you? (It’s not like you can pass them a note in study hall or arrange a parental hookup on Tinder.) So everything in Little Wonders about feeling out of your depth, about trying to balance who you are with what you need to be for your child, about navigating life with a three-year-old . . . that’s all very, very realistic.
Q: Daisy has a hard time adjusting to her new life on the East Coast. Have you experienced life on both coasts? Or have you been strictly a West Coast dweller your entire life?
A: I’ve spent large chunks of my life on both coasts—having been raised in the East, plus spending the first decade of adulthood there. I moved west for work about ten years ago . . . and while it’s home now, there is always the sensation of true home being where you were raised, three thousand miles away. So I have a great deal of sympathy for Robbie and his homesickness driving him all the way back east from LA. But it’s a lot harder for Daisy, who is not a Needleton native, to feel the same sense of home. Especially when her sense of belonging to Los Angeles is so strong.
Q: Daisy is a self-declared geek, a Star Wars aficionado, and a Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master. Does geek culture play a significant role in your life?
A: Yes, geek culture plays a pretty significant role in my life—because in my day job I write for television, and very often the shows I work on are genre shows. But also because . . . I love it. Who among us doesn’t remember the thrill deep in our chests when Luke Skywalker fired those rockets and the Death Star blew up? Or when Harry Potter caught that first snitch? When you and your merry band of adventurers face your first dragon? Geek culture has become mainstream culture because these experiences—and the feelings they evoke—are universal.
My experience of Los Angeles is that it’s filled with geeks and nerds—far more so than it is with the beauty-obsessed beach dwellers that movies teach us live here. People who are so passionate about narrative, stories, world building that they’ll spend hours upon hours learning and living those worlds. And so many—SO MANY—of those nerds are women, and mothers. It was incredibly important to me that Daisy be nerdy (in fact, there was a lot more in the book about her geek cred that had to be cut because I can get really boring when I go into detail), because all too often, the depiction of moms is that they aren’t nerdy. They aren’t given permission to be passionate about anything other than their kids. Sure, the dads can have hobbies, but the moms? Maybe they get a book club. (I have nothing against book clubs. I’m in one. But I’ve also played my fair share of RPGs and tabletop games, and think they deserve equal press.)
Q: Do you feel the internet has taken over our lives to a point where it is out of control?
A: Yes and no. The internet is an amazing tool—it has taken the place of the phone book, the encyclopedia, the Thomas Guide, your French-to-English dictionary, and your high school reunion. It has become absolutely essential for modern life and, in my opinion, should be considered a public utility.
But because it is such a one-stop shop, it absolutely has the potential to take over our lives. Especially as it facilitates social interaction. Why have friends in real life when you can just talk to a wall of the likeminded reinforcing your opinions? The dopamine rush you get from “likes” is as strong as the one you can get from an addictive habit. I should know—I crave Instagram hearts with every post. Unfortunately, the only thing you can really do about it is self-impose boundaries.
Q: How do you feel the internet has changed parenting?
A: I don’t know how I would have gotten through the baby phase without it. There are so many resources available to scour in those wee small hours during feedings—parents have organized communities to offer advice, tips, and strategies. And crowdsourced parenting can be a social good—for instance, I am a member of a parenting Facebook group, and there is one woman on there who is a car seat expert. She will answer any car seat question you might have and she is a godsend!
However, it can easily—like almost everything else on the internet—turn toxic and cultish. (Mommy wars, or antivaxxing, anyone?) So, you have to tread carefully.
Q: Quinn has a run-in with an internet “Influencer.” Do you think this is a new phenomenon, or are these people just getting their celebrity in a new and different way?
A: I’ll be honest—Influencer culture kinda scares me. I know that at some point my children are going to be exposed to it, but the idea that someone with good screen presence and a camera angle that denotes intimacy will have sway over my kid is terror-inducing. But I don’t think this kind of celebrity is in any way new—people have been chasing fame for fame’s sake forever, with or without skills that warranted it. The difference is the speed with which someone can reach an audience, and how wide that audience can get.
Q: Any words of wisdom on Halloween costumes for kids?
A: Ha! Well, I do have some experience with cardboard construction for costumes, so I can give you spray painting tips. But my best advice is once your kid starts voicing an opinion, listen to what they want. If they want to be one of four hundred Elsas, let them be Elsa. If you don’t, their memory of Halloween won’t be fun and candy, it’ll be “I felt bad because everyone else had a pretty Elsa costume and I didn’t.” 