Your Biggest Fan follows a 53-year-old AP Literature professor writing to a pop music idol whose music resonates with his life and he feels she is the only one who really understands him. What inspired the original and fascinating idea at the center of the book?

I think our culture demands far too much of its celebrities.  We don’t just rely on them for entertainment; we want them to raise our children, tell us which breakfast cereal to buy, and provide psychological support for all our emotional needs.  So while other books have certainly been written about celebrity obsessions, I wanted to add this layer to the discussion–it’s not just that we idolize celebrities too much; we demand that they be responsible for making our lives fulfilling, even though they obviously have no power to do so.  In terms of the whole English teacher thing: I’m an English teacher myself, and some of our current pop stars are supremely literary—especially the amazing pop star my novel happens to be based on.  So it’s not much of a stretch to imagine a slightly loopy English teacher who is convinced that said pop star is speaking to him on such an elemental level.      

What research did you do for this novel to ensure that you captured the essence of the story’s theme?

I listened to an absurd amount of music!  It’s funny to think of this as “research,” because the word conjures up images of dusty old libraries or science labs.  I did most of my “research” in my car on the way to work—blasting my stereo at top volume!  If only research could always be so much fun….

Is there anything about the narrator that came from yourself or your life experiences? 

I like to think of myself as a relatively sane human being, and my narrator is clearly not.  But other than that, he’s my doppelganger, my double.  He’s a different version of me, just one that happens to be a little more bonkers.

What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?

If YOUR BIGGEST FAN becomes a runaway bestseller, I was toying with the idea of writing a novel about an author who becomes such a huge celebrity that people are always stopping him on the street, asking him what breakfast cereal to buy or hitting him up on advice about how to raise their children!  But in all seriousness, as anyone who has read my first novel can tell, I’m a huge fan of unreliable narrators.  I’ve started working on my second book, which features a narrator who is even loopier than the one in YBF.  Still plugging away—stay tuned!   

Author Links: Amazon | GoodReads

Original source: https://literarytitan.com/2024/09/20/relatively-sane/