let's have a House Party with justin a. reynolds

Annmarie Kelly:

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I came of age with John Hughes movies. I pined over Jake Ryan in Sixteen Candles and daydreamed about my own Andrew McCarthy boyfriend in Pretty in Pink. I even wrote an entire novel loosely based on the plot of Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I am a fan.

During my own turbulent teen years when I felt like I never had the right parents or the right clothes, those films made me feel seen. They taught me that the popular kids didn't always win, parents are embarrassing everywhere and an adventure was merely a small lie or a good friend away.

However, like so much of what I grew up loving, I can't help but see those movies now through a slightly different lens. Sure, they're still part of my adolescence. I will always be nostalgic about Duckie dancing in the record store and Ferris singing Twist & Shout on that parade float.

But I'm also grateful for today's storytellers who are recasting classic teen tales with more diverse characters, less sexism and more all-around joy for everyone.

One such writer is my guest today, the indomitable, Justin A. Reynolds whose latest project House Party is a novel with not one author, but 10.

House Party offers a delightful snapshot of classmates of all shapes and sizes getting ready to say goodbye to high school and hello to life's next chapter. But not before they make their final night together, one they'll never forget.

And before we dig into the interview, here's a little more about Justin. His debut novel, Opposite of Always was a best book of 2019, translated into 19 languages and is being developed for film.

He's followed that first title with more than a half dozen other books, including several Marvel graphic novels featuring Brooklyn's Spider-Man, Miles Morales.

Justin is also the co-founder of the Cleveland Reads Book Festival for middle-grade and young adult readers and writers.

Justin A. Reynolds, welcome to Wild Precious Life.

Justin A. Reynolds:

Oh my God, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah, it's great to see you again. We often invite creative folks on the show to talk about their most recent project, but I feel like every time I turn around, your recent project is new. So, you're writing a middle-grade novel about Alien Invasion or a YA book about time travel and sickle cell disease.

Then you're over here writing Miles Morales, Spider-Man graphic novels and now you've edited a book House Party, which has like 10 different authors. You've been busy, man. I'm excited to talk about all of it.

Justin A. Reynolds:

They say you stay busy, you stay out of trouble. So, just trying to keep myself out of trouble the best I can.

Annmarie Kelly:

Well, you're making some good trouble here, I appreciate it. So, hey, to begin, why don't we, for the couple of listeners who maybe haven't had the opportunity to meet you and learn your story, I'd love you to just tell us a little about yourself, what are you about? Did you always want to be a writer, for instance?

Justin A. Reynolds:

So, definitely have always wanted to be a writer, at least as far back as I can recall. I usually tell the story about that kind of — you used that thing, it was like pale green, sometimes it was tan, maybe even pink at times.

But it was that paper where they taught you how to write capital and lowercase letters and had kind of the dash line in between the middle, so you could go up just for your lowercase letters with the two solid lines for the uppercase.

So, I wrote one of my first sentences back in kindergarten, “When I grow up, I want to be a writer,” and my mom still has it, so it's not just a figment of my imagination and it's in her office.

Since I was really small, I found such joy and refuge in storytelling, and I've been fortunate enough to be kind of guided along my life's path and now my career path by people who also have that same kind of relish for good storytelling.

So, yeah, I grew up wanting to write, my mom gets a lot of credit for that. She was a substitute teacher, usually went in for English classes. And in addition to being an educator, she was a librarian. And so, I literally grew up along with my sister at the library. And how can you not develop a lifelong passion for reading and the arts when you grow up literally surrounded by so many books.

And so, that's what we did. We weren't allowed to watch a lot of television; I think at most it was like an hour we could get in any day and a half hour of it had to be some educational program that my mom approved of. So, Reading Rainbow or whatever, I'm dating myself, but Reading Rainbow and then the other half hour is yours.

So, most of the time we either spent outside, running around the neighborhood or reading our nose in the books. And some of my fondest memories are coming home with my mom from the library with 30 books, kind of precariously stacked in our arms and just dumping them on my mom's bed.

My dad would like work swing shift back then, so he would be at work. Especially in the wintertime, we did this all the time and we'd just kind of surround ourselves in books, the three of us, my mom, my sister and myself and we'd take turns of reading to each other and just reading to ourselves. And that's literally one of my favorite moments from growing up.

I know that it just kind of crystallized this desire to immerse myself in story. And yeah, growing up, I did a lot of other things as well, but somehow, I would always find myself writing something or other. And I have a lot of little memories of kind of people supporting me along the way and really kind of encouraging me to keep writing my stories.

Annmarie Kelly:

Isn't that funny how those early pieces of paper, I remember those, ours often had a room for a picture at the top and, I often never got to the picture because I was too busy writing in the lines all the way or they'd go to the bottom and then there'd be no picture at the top.

I also remember they had that young authors and illustrators contest at the schools and on that same paper, I wrote what I was calling a rough draft and I was working on it until the day before the contest. And I was like, “Now, all I have to do is write the final draft.” But it didn't have any more of that paper and also my parents were like, “It's time for bed.”

So, I actually found this when I was digging through my parents' house when we sold it recently, it was like they had pasted paper onto my so-called rough draft, and then I had punched holes and tied it with ribbon to make it like a real draft.

But those early interactions with books, with paper, with story, they really do flow through us to adults, don't they?

Justin A. Reynolds:

Yeah, I love, love, love the physical representation of a book. It in itself feels like art to me, just holding it, in that first crack of the spine as you’re kind of opening it for the first time and something about that and its inherent artistic value, just the way it's so carefully designed and constructed.

But yeah, in fourth grade I decided I wanted to do the same thing. And so, I cut out paper kind of to make it the size of a traditional book. And then I took cardboard, and I folded it and created a spine and also the front and back flaps.

And then I took wallpaper and also some fabric stuff from my mom's sewing kits and I made a cover, kind of a collage of color. And then I would put like a strip along the spine and I'd carefully write my name. And then I would sew the pages together and then I would kind of glue them into the book. And I even had a picture of myself on the back flap of the book. It was hand drawn.

I remember being so proud of that, I took it to school and my teacher, she saw it on my desk and she was like, “Oh, can I see this?” And she kind of flipped through it and started to read. And then she was like, “Would you mind if we share this with the class? Could we put this in our class library set?”

And I was stunned, floored because I hadn't really imagined other people would have an interest in my work to that degree.

And to see the other kids, kind of for that moment embrace it and be excited about it and kind of flip through it and pass it around, it was pretty cool. It was one of those things that I remember reflecting back years later like, “Oh, I want to duplicate that feeling.”

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah. Let someone know it's possible. That there's often this gap between me and what I dreamed. I don't know how to get from here to there, but when someone says, “Oh, one way to be a person with a book on a shelf is for somebody else to put your book on the shelf.”

Hey, so your latest project is House Party, a novel you edited for the Joy Revolution imprint headed by Nicola Yoon and David Yoon. Did I read correct? The book has 10 authors, right?

Justin A. Reynolds:

It does, 10 amazing incredible authors and people, yes.

Annmarie Kelly:

I'm really interested in how this comes together. I'm picturing you as kind of a showrunner for that novel. Was it like herding cats? I mean, I want to write about Savoy the influencer and I'm over here with my Toaster Strudel. Or did you guys all sit down and like brainstorm the story arc? What was that like?

Justin A. Reynolds:

That's a great question. First of all, I love every single person in the book, they were all hand chosen and I gave a lot of consideration to the group of people who I asked to be a part of this project. Not just about how amazing their writing is, which every single one of them is award-winning, bestselling in their own right, but also just people whose work I had admired for so long and I secretly wanted to fanboy. And some of these are some of these people, a lot of them are my friends.

And so, I just kind of guilt tripped them into the project a little bit when I had to. But also, it was just like I wanted to have fun. I think so many authors talk about their pandemic book, and this was my pandemic book. It was kind of a response to just all of the stress that the world was feeling, that I was feeling, the anxiety that we all were feeling kind of being so very isolated.

I'm a pretty social creature, and so I was like, “How do I …” for the first few months you kind of make do and you do what you can and Zooms feels like a refuge. But then it's like, “Okay, what now can I do, to try to alleviate some of this pressure that's building up inside of me.”

My response was to try to watch and read things that made me feel good. And I was watching a lot of teen movies that I had grown up on, like 10 Things I Hate About You, Can't Hardly Wait.

And I love those movies so much because you know that you're going to be in good hands. You know that these kids are going to get what they want and what they deserve ultimately, but you're still mesmerized by the transformation and it's more so than them just kind of changing themselves externally. It's like the transformation as they kind of like learn things about themselves that will allow them to kind of be catapulted into the next part of their young adulthood.

And so, I was like, “I love those stories, I just want more diversity in some of those stories.” And I thought it would be kind of cool to introduce a concept in which we had 10 archetypes. So, I was the class clown, Jerry Craft is the artist, Angeline Boulley is the theater kid, Randy Ribay is the band kid and Christina Hammonds Reed and Natasha Diaz , the school editor and the popular girl.

I think everyone was like super excited about the challenge. We wanted to write these archetypes, but to show a different side of these character, a more in-depth look, give them a little bit more than that kind of that superficial glossing that you kind of have to get in an ensemble cast in a movie.

We wanted to have the same kind of verve that you feel in those movies, the same kind of movement as you kind of bound from room to room following one character, then leaving that character and following another.

And so, rather than kind of write what people would normally expect, like a traditional anthology, this was a novel in stories. We wanted to write one unified story, you need to be able to do that because all these writers like are telling amazing stories.

And so, I wanted the reader to kind of be immersed in this experience to truly feel like you're at the party with everyone and that you're having an active role in the experience.

And so, yeah, it was a lot of work, we did a lot of Zoom calls because obviously we all live all over the place but we had writers' rooms for sure. And I kind of created a whole Bible to outline and create this entire fictional city that's outside Chicago called Florence Hills and all the things about it, made up all kinds of stats and made up festivals and lots of stuff that will never, ever appear on any page, so that we could all understand the world.

And then it gave us a few characters that we could all use and share. And then we just started working together to see what made the most sense. We all kind of had our individual pitches and ideas as to what we saw our character kind of going through.

But then it was like, “Okay, how do these stories overlap? What are the interesting connections or maybe the harder to realize connections that exist and how can we make sure everyone gets an opportunity to really grow on the page, but more importantly, enjoy themselves and laugh and find love.”

As a black writer, I think sometimes it's kind of like this idea that so many of our stories are centered around trauma or focused on some negative experience and kind of learning from that and I appreciate why those books exist. We unfortunately still need them to further discussions and to hopefully move the needle in terms of empathy and compassion for one another as humans.

But I want to tell stories that just make your heart sing, that make you cry sometimes sure but with the idea, with the understanding that it's going to be okay and that there's more than just a silver lining, it's all gold. It's just a matter of allowing yourself the grace, allowing the people you love grace that you all deserve.

Annmarie Kelly:

That's glorious. I feel like that really fits in with the Yoon’s imprint. That Joy Revolution really is about what you're talking about.

And especially coming out of the pandemic when there was so much loneliness, so much self-doubt. I too am someone who feeds on the energy of other people, that's where this show was born from. I was just desperate to connect with folks who I knew were out there and you just couldn't be by them.

I know what you're saying about the way an anthology usually reads because when I first got House Party, I assumed it was 10 short stories that everyone's going to tell the story about themselves at the party.

For folks who haven't read it yet, it's out brand new this summer, but all of these kids are going to a party it's definitely got a John Hughes, like 10 Things I Hate About You, a little later 90s movie, but the same vibe. Like high school kids, it's the end of the year, they're going to a party. It's very familiar, very joyful.

But a lot of teenagers — I'm a mom of two teens right now, they missed these chapters. COVID took that away and I know for many people it's back, but it is not the same. They missed out on just this effortless making bad choices all together.

But just like you said, you're in the hands of an author. I know they're not all going to die at the end. I know that we're here, that a goat is going to poop somewhere, that someone's not going to get the girl, that there's going to be like some people meeting in the closet, but we're in good hands here.

And it did not read, I guess the word I would use like is siloed. I wasn't skipping around to find, “Oh, where's the chapter that's so-and-so.” Because it did read really interconnected. You did a great job.

That's what I wondered was how much work went into that weaving together because instead of seeming lonely or competitive, this seemed really collaborative and loving. And that really comes through. I know I'm not telling you anything, but that is really hard to do what you guys did there.

Justin A. Reynolds:

Oh, my goodness. Yeah. I mean, shout out to Bria who was the acquiring editor of the project, at Joy Revolution, the head editor at Joy Revolution.

And her patience first and foremost, I think that in the beginning I always knew I wanted it to read the way it's come out, but it's a huge undertaking and I credit her so much for helping me keep things on track and keeping track of all these threads that we were weaving in and out of the story and talk about trying to make sure there's continuity. That in itself was such a big challenge.

And then you're also just trying to deal with a lot of personalities. Everyone is an amazing writer in their own right. And so, it takes a special group of people to come together to be able to kind of check your ego and say, “I just want to create the best art possible, whatever that looks like.”

And I was so fortunate to have people who not only did that but went far beyond who were willing to really give of themselves to make these stories work.

Annmarie Kelly:

Well, it's triumphant and for folks who are looking for a fun summer read or even a grad gift for, you've got kind of a graduating senior or just for the teenager in your life who's sitting around the house and even truthfully, for adults. I was definitely flashing back to some Julia Stiles type parties, but with a modern spin.

That Savoy character is still sticking out in my head. Just a character who I know exists out there on YouTube, but I hadn't really thought about what goes into making those influencer posts or how much is real.

We all know this, we all know that the breakfast you see on the internet or the video you see, we all know it's not real, but we forget when we're watching it.

And you guys did a great job of that theme of, I don't know what we put out there, the self that we put out there versus the self that we really are. I thought that that particular character and that wove through the whole House Party. It was really well done.

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So, you're also living my son's dream as a Marvel creator. So, in addition to writing your own YA books and editing other people's books together, you are also a creator of superhero graphic novels Miles Morales, Spider-Man books. How did you get into the superhero biz?

Justin A. Reynolds:

It's been great. Definitely a lifelong dream to write for Marvel, to write a graphic novel, a comic book.

Growing up comic books were a big part of my life. My mom would take my sister and I to the flea market once a month to maximize the few dollars that we had. We'd buy these mystery bags in which you didn't know what you were getting inside. You get two or three comics inside; you had no idea what you're buying for a couple bucks.

And we could barely make it to the car before, we're like ripping those things open. And it was just like the mystery part of it made it exciting, but it was just also just cool to see these stories to be able to kind of imagine this completely different world, but also have the images behind it to support it.

I always talk about this, I'm thankful that my mom has always allowed us to read what interests us and has never been like, “Well, comic books or graphic novels aren't real literature. You need to be reading this or that.”

As an educator, she could have easily said that, as a librarian you could have easily felt like that, but I feel the same way my mom does it's like, I don't care if you're reading the side of a cereal box, if it inspires you, if it makes you happy, if it gets you to read another sentence, then so be it.

And so yeah, just super happy that I had that opportunity to kind of inculcate that in our stories and the milestone kind of came about because someone at Marvel read my debut Opposite of Always, and they thought, “Oh, this voice of this anxious, earnest kid who's just so consumed with doing the right thing and trying to show up for his friends and family.”

They thought that it had a lot of kind of Miles Morales vibes to it and that the voice kind of spoke in a way that Miles might speak.

And so, they approached us and asked if I had any ideas, if I had any interest in working on Spider-Man. And I'm like, “Spider-Man has literally always been my favorite superhero, this is isn't a made-up thing.”

And then when Miles Morales came on, which a lot of people don't realize, he's been here now in the scene since the first period in the comics, like 12, 13 years now.

And ever since he burst into the scene, I was fascinated by him because he had everything that I love about Peter Parker, all the quips, all the backstory. It's really about someone who I think everyone can find something that they relate to, but especially young people where it's like you're juggling this kind of adolescence, but also this responsibility towards your family and your friends and towards your schoolwork.

And there's so many people that it feels like you're trying not to let down and all these balls are in the air and you're doing your best to juggle them and inevitably, a couple slip through the cracks, a couple fall by the wayside and you just do your best to continue keeping the rest of the balls in the air and getting the other those back up as soon as possible.

So, I couldn't wait to dive into Miles’ story. It still doesn't really fully compute this idea that I got to contribute to that canon, to the Spider-Man canon, but it's definitely one of the coolest things I've ever been a part of.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah, that is cool. That's very cool. I'm wondering a little bit about that process compared to when you set out to write a novel, you're in charge of the world to the extent that you can have them get on this bus or on this train, or they can wear pink, or they can yellow or green.

But when you're writing a character that is part of a larger world, there's probably some limitations. And also, with a graphic novel, you've got an illustrator, I don't know if there are limits on length or if you have to hit the door of no return or this beat here or this point there. What was it like to write within a world that existed already?

Justin A. Reynolds:

Nerve-wracking, it's different when you're like, “Okay, I need to now somehow pay respect and honor where this character has been, where these characters have been, while also still not being afraid to use my voice and kind of really push it in these other directions that I'm interested in.”

And I was fortunate enough to work with some incredible people at Marvel and at Scholastic and as we kind of put this project together, they were so supportive of my vision, and they gave me the green light to really just go for it.

And so, I kept thinking, “When are they going to tell me that's too much?” And I would say, “Oh, I get to develop like these villains, these villains are now part of the Marvel world, they get to stay there forever.”

And so, every time I got to make a character of my own, I was just kind of like a giddy kid. Like, “Oh my God, I can't believe I have this character now in the Marvel comic book, this is amazing.”

But yeah, it's definitely different than writing a novel. I do some screenwriting now, and it felt more like kind of along the lines of screenwriting in which you write this script and you are responsible as the writer for not only just the dialogue and all the tags, but even for incorporating the sound effects and anything that's happening related to text in the thing that's on you.

But you're also responsible for every single panel on that page. You have to give a description of what's happening, you're the one who's painting the picture. So, if you want Spider-Man to be perched on the tallest building in Brooklyn, you have to spell that out.

And sometimes I would use words, sometimes I would include images of my own that I was trying to use to relay to Pablo what type of art I was looking for or what I was envisioning. And then sometimes he would have notes of his own, he would give me this or that and say, “I was thinking we could kind of amp this up or like, pull this back.”

And what I realized is, as I was writing the script and as we were working together, him and I, that I needed far and far less words to accomplish what I was after because his art just spoke for itself far more eloquently than I could have with adding text to a lot of those pages.

And so yeah, it was a great partnership. We really understood each other and had kind of the same goals for the project and both felt really honored to be able to continue this Miles Morales legacy.

Annmarie Kelly:

Wow. That does sound like a lot to juggle, but the books are terrific. I can attest to that, not just as an adult reader, but as a parent who's watched my son tear through them.

So, you've written alone, you've written with other people, you've written love stories, you've written superheroes and a kid in his bathing suit. What are you working on now? What's next?

Justin A. Reynolds:

So, we're wrapping up the sequel, kind of the companion novel, the Shot Clock, Caron and I decided to create a book from that. And so, you get to follow the life of a different kid who's a big part of the first book.

And then my second installment in the, It's The End of The World and I'm In My Bathing Suit comes out, and that's called Running in Flip Flops From the End of the World, which if you ever run in flip flops, shout out to everyone who's survived that ordeal. So, those two things will be out here within the next year or less.

And then I have a couple other things kind of in the works. I'm always writing, I write a little bit every day for the most part. I don’t know if it's a gift or a curse, but I've never been a person short on ideas. And so, it's more so like, do I have the time to execute all these ideas that I have? And how do I pick which one that really sings to me?

So yeah, working on some more YA right now, my next YA hopefully. And then maybe an adult thing. And then I have a middle-grade project I'm really excited about, that I'm creating as we speak. So, it’s a lot but like I said, I like to stay busy.

I was telling this to some of my writer friends, like, “I can't imagine not working on multiple projects at the same time.” I am sometimes envious of people who do because I'm like, “Oh, that must be amazing just to be like, I'm just going to focus on this one thing and make it incredible and spend seven years crafting it.”

I secretly longed for that experience at one point in my life, but for right now, I'm just so happy I get to write what I do. And especially the books I get to write for kids to see their faces, as all these kids find themselves represented in these fun ways and they get to be kind of the hero front and center.

Every kid deserves to be the hero of a story and to have who they are and how they identify, validated as important and meaningful and not just be the sidekick or the comic relief, but the adventurer, the explorer, the person pushing the momentum of the story forward.

And so, I feel super lucky to get to write those stories and I take that responsibility seriously.

Annmarie Kelly:

That's lovely. Every kid deserves to be the hero of a story. That's totally, totally true. Well, we'll be on the lookout for all of those things. Man, you wrote so many things, we haven't gotten to talk about them, but we need to sail to a close here.

So, I'm going to just end with some fan favorites. We always end with a couple, just multiple choice quick questions so that people can get to look at the guy behind the books. You ready?

Justin A. Reynolds:

Sure. Let's do it.

Annmarie Kelly:

Just pick one here. Coffee or tea?

Justin A. Reynolds:

Do I really have to pick one. Is this one of those things where you really have to commit?

Annmarie Kelly:

There's no point system, there are no judges, it's free form.

Justin A. Reynolds:

Okay, good. Alright, cool.

Annmarie Kelly:

But tell me about your relationship to coffee or tea here.

Justin A. Reynolds:

I saw you writing numbers down, I didn't know if you were about to give me a score. So, I’m going to say that I love coffee, during COVID, I got COVID, it made me literally sick at the idea of coffee all of a sudden … after having literally survived on it for the decade before.

And so, that was a big, weird adjustment. It's slowly starting to come back, I can now enjoy some coffee occasionally again, but I really switched over to matcha during that time and that became my go-to drink.

I love tea, some jasmine tea, green tea, black tea. It doesn't matter, I just love tea.

Annmarie Kelly:

Nice, nice. Alright. Another one. Mountains or beach?

Justin A. Reynolds:

I'm inclined to say beach. I love anywhere I can be near a body of water, especially a moving body of water and just listen to the water rolling, it's always been something I've found relaxing.

And plus, at the beach, people expect to do three things: either running around the beach, throwing a ball around, splashing the water or whatever or taking a nap or reading a book. So, you can't go wrong with any of those options.

Annmarie Kelly:

I hear you there. Dogs or cats?

Justin A. Reynolds:

Dogs for sure. I find cats a little unsettling, they're a little creepy. I think I was scarred growing up, there was a couple cats that were cats of my parents' friends who were so sneaky. Literally one of the cats was named Bandit, so that tells you everything you need to know.

And you'd just be like sitting on the couch as a single digit kid, like nine, eight. And then you'd see the curtains behind the couch start to move and all of a sudden, this cat is lunging at you, with bad intentions.

And so, I think it's been hard ever since. I think I've been scarred. I don't want to say all cats are the same. I know a lot of you have good hearts, but I got to go with dogs.

Annmarie Kelly:

Sure, sure. Fruit Loops or Cap’n Crunch?

Justin A. Reynolds:

Fruit Loops, although I'm going to be honest. So, Fruit Loops for sure, the whole time I was writing the Opposite of Always, it was like Fruit Loops is like the best cereal ever. And then at that time, second tier was like Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

I will say I have been on … just letting you in on the inside of my world here, I have been on a Cap’n Crunch Berries journey here recently. And Cap’n Crunch it's just delicious, I mean, I like Corn Pops. Honestly, if it's something you pour milk into, I'm probably about it on some form or fashion. And I do have a pantry full of cereal boxes, so it's kind of pick your poison, every morning.

Annmarie Kelly:

I hear you. Growing up we were just all Cheerios all the time. And every once in a while, as an adult, I will walk in, they had like two boxes of cereal for five bucks the other day and I legit grabbed Honeycomb and Lucky Charms because I had to remind myself, I was allowed to.

Every once in a while, I'm just like, I tiptoe in, and I pretty much ate the whole box of Honeycomb by myself. I don’t think my kids had any.

Justin A. Reynolds:

Yes. I hope so. Treat yourself. I mean, they can get their own for themselves, that's fine.

Annmarie Kelly:

Okay. Last few here. Are you a risk taker or the person who always knows where the Band-Aids are?

Justin A. Reynolds:

I know where the Band-Aids are just because of my nursing background, but I'm definitely a risk taker. I'm probably not the ideal patient anyway, so it's like I know where the Band-Aids are, but I probably won't let you bandage me, but I definitely will be out there taking a mitigated risk, so yeah.

Annmarie Kelly:

Alright, this is a fill in the blank. If I wasn't working as a writer and had a little magic, instead I would be a?

Justin A. Reynolds:

I would be one or two things, either a chef, because I just love cooking. And I would love to live in some remote place and all of my ingredients are just things that I'm foraging and gathering together. I watch a chef's table and I'm like, “Oh my God,” I'm drooling, like I want that experience.

And I just think that food, obviously, we all need it, but beyond that, it's such an immersive social experience that I think that it's incredible. And you feed someone, automatic, I think you become their best friend.

And then I would want to be some type of painter or maybe an installation artist, something like that. The thing I love about — I do a little bit of painting and sketching now, I really picked it back up during the pandemic because I live in my brain so abstractly with these story ideas that they might take 18 months, two years, three years before they actually become a physical manifestation.

And so, that whole three years people are like, “Are you really working? Are you sure you're doing things? This looks like you're watching shows on your laptop or something.” And I'm like, “No, I promise you, I'm working.” I mean, I'm watching shows on my laptop, I won't lie, but I'm also working, that's also part of the work.

And so, it's nice sometimes to have something that you can start and be finished within a couple days, a month or whatever and to be like, “Okay, here's some little bit of immediate gratification that being a novelist does not unfortunately provide.”

Annmarie Kelly:

Totally true. It's a glacial pace for the novel.

Justin A. Reynolds:

It is.

Annmarie Kelly:

But for a painting, you could actually see it in a shorter period of time, perhaps.

Okay, last two here. What is your favorite ice cream?

Justin A. Reynolds:

Oh, so this is super-hot take, I'm not a huge ice cream person by nature. But I will say over the last couple of years I've been dipping my toes into the creamery section there of the freezer aisle. I feel like I'm so basic now for saying this.

Growing up I would always like Oreo Blizzards from Dairy Queen, but now I'm more refined, I'm more mature. So, now, I like Jeni's Brambleberry Crisp because my taste stuff have been so elevated and so yeah, definitely goodbye to the Oreo Blizzards and hello mature Justin eating Jeni's.

Annmarie Kelly:

Nice, Nic Stone calls that bougie ice cream, by the way.

Justin A. Reynolds:

It is bougie ice cream. I wish I could deny it, but you got to treat yourself, we're all working hard out here, we got to treat ourselves to things when we can.

Annmarie Kelly:

Absolutely. Okay. Hey, last one. If we were to take a picture of you really happy doing something you love, what would we see?

Justin A. Reynolds:

I mean, reading, but I don't know if my face is happy when I'm reading, so let me think of something different. I'll say, riding my bike or my one wheel around the neighborhood. Especially at night when the roads are kind of quiet and you get to just turn up the speed and just see all these things, see your neighborhood in a totally different way, literally a different light.

And it makes me so happy just to feel that wind blowing against me. Just it's a reminder of how simple the smallest things can be.

Annmarie Kelly:

Absolutely. Well, with the breeze on your face. Justin A. Reynolds we'll say thank you for being here today. You dedicated a recent book saying, “To every kid who ever wondered if you have what it takes, you do.”

[Music playing]

Thank you for your unfailing belief in us in the next generation. We are better off because of the stories you write.

Justin A. Reynolds:

I appreciate it so much. Thank you so much, that means a lot. And I appreciate you having me on, I've been a longtime fan of the show.

Annmarie Kelly:

Thank you. Folks, Justin A. Reynolds' latest project is House Party, you can find it and a whole bunch of other titles at an Indie Store near you or your library.

And everyone listening, we're wishing you love and light wherever the day takes you, be good to yourself, be good to one another, and we'll see you again soon on this wild and precious journey.

Wild Precious Life is a production of Evergreen Podcasts. Special thanks to executive producers Gerardo Orlando and Michael DeAloia, producer Sarah Willgrube and audio engineer Ian Douglas.

Be sure to subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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