7 Questions with Megan Angelo
Social media has inarguably impacted the world in which we live. Megan Angelo’s debut novel, Followers, provides a stunning and — this honestly isn’t overselling it — brilliant exploration of this complex concept.
We were so enamored with Angelo’s novel that we wanted to get to know her a little bit better. She was kind enough to answer our questions so our readers could get to know her before they dive into her new novel.
1. What's your favorite drink?
I stole this drink from my friend Stephanie when we were out to dinner one night and never looked back: a Tito's vodka martini, extra extra dirty (or filthy, if you have the guts to look a waiter in the eye and say that, which I do not).
2. Where and when do you write?
Because I have very young children and I'm at home with them, my schedule is really erratic. I write during the little chunks of time that two of them are at school and the other one is napping. I write at nights, on the weekends, in the middle of the night. I write in the pickup line, sometimes.
It's hard not to get frustrated at not having a more civilized schedule. But on the other hand, this part of my life has made me really efficient and has forced me to take space from my work, too, which I think is important.
3. What does your prewriting process look like?
I usually keep a long, neverending note on my Notes app for each idea I'm working on, just for stray thoughts, lines of dialogue, whatever, and I do a lot of outlining and some early drafts of things longhand in notebooks.
I also use Pinterest for keeping track of my research—both images and articles that I want to refer back to.
Sometimes I cast my characters and keep pictures of actresses on the boards, too. But that can be tricky because then sometimes a character will surprise me and do something that makes me be like, "Oh, Gina Rodriguez would never!" And I have to recast.
4. What's up next?
Man, I wish I could tell you for sure.
I'm in that jittery about-to-go-on-sale phase where it's like, will this book do well enough that I can sell another?
But I am currently working on two books simultaneously. Because my writing time is so limited, I can't afford to just thrash and moan when I hate whatever project is in front of me, which frequently happens. So I started these two in tandem—that way I can switch off whenever one of them is annoying me.
One book is about three moms who all go to the same barre studio who find out it isn't quite what it seems, and are recruited to avenge a wrongdoing that has deep roots in the history of women, especially the relationship between white and nonwhite women, and intelligence forces in America. (Yeah, I know—that description really takes a turn, doesn't it? We'll see if I pull it off.)
The other book is set half in 1999, and half now. It's about lifelong best friends who sort of ruined the life of their third friend when they were all teenagers and they thought she was lying to them and had invented a person — think Catfish in the AOL Instant Messenger age. When the so-called invented person suddenly shows up in the lives of the best friends, who are now thirty-five, they have to reckon with what they did to this girl and figure out who in the world this person is.
5. The premise of Followers was exceptionally distinctive. How did you come up with the idea for this novel?
The short answer is: a little at a time.
The concept of writing something half in the future and half in the present, but treating it almost more like a historical novel than a sci-fi one, came to me when I was writing in my journal and realized my kids and grandkids probably won't be able to read the cursive that I write everything in, since cursive has been phased out of schools. That inspired me because it felt like a more personal way of demonstrating the distance between generations than a hard sci-fi take would, and that's what I was interested in: actually zooming in to see what the future would feel like, on the ground, for real people who are just like we are now.
The actual women came later—these worlds felt so big, it took me a long time to figure out who should live in them. I have a background in entertainment journalism and blogging, but have been trying to cross over and write creatively for years, so Orla is a saltier version of who I was sometimes in my twenties. Floss and Marlow came to me quickly after Orla, and then I could see what all of them would do to each other and how it would illustrate this future.
6. There would certainly be bad things about the loud internet going quiet (as it did when “the spill” first struck) – I, for one, would wish that I had a hard copy of all of the shit I’ve pined (but never made) on Pinterest – but I can’t help but think that there would be good things about it, too. What do you think?
I like how you said that—loud going quiet—because I think that's very much what it would feel like.
If you separate out the actual data dumps of the Spill, would there be good things about the Internet crumbling for a second? Yeah, I think so.
I mean, I try not to be cynical and I try to remember that the ease with which we can connect with people we actually know and care about in real life is the greatest part of the Internet, and one that we'd all miss. But what I'm always craving even as I'm on my phone ALL the time—it gets especially disgusting when you have a book coming out, I think, because of course I want to know what every single person on Instagram thinks about it—is just a reminder of what my brain felt like without the constant clutter of notifications and feedback. I do miss that, and it's a lot of what I'm trying to recover with that book set in 1999 I'm working on.
To be honest, it was easier to invent a post-Spill world where the Internet had been taken away than it is to actually use my brain to remember what I was like, and what life was like, before I knew this level of connectivity.
7. One of the things that was difficult for us as we read this book was *Spoiler Alert* how quickly Orla forgave Floss in the end. Why did you decide to make Orla almost supernaturally forgiving? How did she, as a character, have the strength to see past what Floss had done to her so quickly?
*Spoiler Alert*
Ah, yes! I think this is gonna be the book club brawl moment, based on the takes I've seen online. Thank you for asking me about it.
To be totally honest, I didn't think the ending was going to be as controversial, because I thought the reader was going to feel like I had tortured them for so long with all these ideas and twists that by the end, they'd just be happy to get out alive. But here's the thing with Orla's forgiveness: I forced myself to really look at it as if forty years had passed. That's the key.
If Floss came back two years, five years later, would Orla let her in?
No way.
But I tried to look at it through Orla's eyes all those decades later, and this is what I came up with: Of course Floss was never a good friend. Of course what she did was absolutely monstrous. But I think Orla can think that and also realize that if Floss hadn't done what she had done, Orla would not have the life she was ultimately meant to have. She wouldn't have gone to Atlantis, met her husband, had her sons, made peace with her ambitions, found her place. I think she can hold these two ideas in her head at once, and once she sees that Marlow is all right, the enormous relief of that is enough to tip the scales in favor of not holding a grudge.
There's also the fact that Marlow and Floss are daughter and mother—a packaged deal—and Orla wants to continue to be in Marlow's life, now that they've reconnected.
Again, I felt like with every turn in this book, I had to take these crazy heightened situations and force the characters to react as real people. And while I think the drama of having Orla send Floss out to sea would have matched the circumstances, it's not what I thought the complex person that is Orla would do, after a lifetime of turning these few crazy years of her youth over in her head.
In the end, Orla has achieved a life of satisfaction, whereas Floss is still haunted by always wanting more, more—and when you recognize that you are the happier person, the person who is more at peace, I think it's always easier to forgive.
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