. So it was a huge honor to be asked to interview him on the Columbia Stage at Portland's very own Wordstock.The bad thing about being the interviewer is that I have a hard time remembering all the answers to my questions. I was too busy focusing on how I would segue to the next. And at one point, when I looked down out of the corner of my eye, I saw little white stars. You know, the kind you get when you're dizzy. It was all I could to keep talking and not think What if I pass out? But I soldiered on.
We talked about how he came up with the idea for Noise. In the books, people can overhear any man's thoughts. Patrick made the point that this generation is living their lives on live, and arguably has the least privacy of any generation every.
We also talked about the heat he got for killing off a much-loved character in the first book (no spoilers!). Patrick said he never guessed that decision, and that he cried when he wrote it, he cried when he edited, he cried when he copy edited, and he continues to cry when he reads it.
He also said that he knew the last line of each of the three books before he started writing them.
And we talked about A Monster Calls, the book he is finishing for Sibohan Dowd, the author who had four books published, most of them posthumously after she died from breast cancer at 47.
All in all, it was a great time - even if I don't remember parts of it. (And thanks to Sara Gundell, Wordstock's YA stage coordinator, for the pics.)
