If you’re reading Littsburgh right now, chances are you know Nick Courage. Since 2015, when Littsburgh launched, Nick has been helping to spread the word about local and visiting authors with event listings, excerpts, and interviews on this very site. A book marketer and publishing consultant by trade, Nick is also busy writing his own books . . . the most recent of which, Storm Blown, was just published by Delacorte Press this July (and is Random House Teachers and Librarians’ Book of the Month this month)!
“A storm-centered adventure, filled with action, danger, and life lessons, about two kids facing more than just a hurricane” (Booklist), Storm Blown is a Junior Library Guild Selection and was recently called “a must-have” by School Library Journal in a starred review (visit Nick’s site for more information + fun early buzz)!
In this interview, we’ll get to know Nick a little better and get a peek behind the curtains here at Littsburgh (“Much more than a website. It’s a home for writers, booksellers, movers and shakers, organizers, and readers” — Literary Hub . . . since we’re quoting blurbs for Nick, we figured we’d get in on the action, too).
“Beautiful, vivid writing and a power-packed plot . . . I truly loved it.” –Lauren Tarshis, bestselling author of the I SURVIVED series
So, Storm Blown is a book about a hurricane?
Yeah, I grew up in New Orleans and think about hurricanes a lot . . . and this is very much a hurricane book. It’s about action and adventure—but even more than that, it’s about empathy and how we’re all connected by these kinds of global events (I wrote more about that in the Author’s Note at the back of the book). The hurricane in it, Megastorm Valerie, is almost one of the main characters — driving the action from the first page, when it’s still just a tropical storm spinning over the Atlantic. A friend who read an early draft said Storm Blown was like “Michael Crichton for kids,” which is my favorite review so far. When I was writing, I was mainly trying to mix my love for classic children’s literature (like My Side of the Mountain) with the feel of a big summer blockbuster–so that checks out!
The cover definitely looks like a movie poster!
Delacorte did such an awesome job with that – the artist is Mike Heath and the designer is Leslie Mechanic, and it’s wild how well they captured the vibe of the book. I almost wish I hadn’t written it because it looks like exactly the kind of book I always want to read. . .
You mentioned classic children’s literature, that’s a big inspiration for you?
My Side of the Mountain was definitely a big inspiration for Storm Blown, as well as all of those other classic survivalist kid lit books. Island of the Blue Dolphins, Hatchet, Girl of the Sea of Cortez (by Peter Benchley, who wrote Jaws). I still love those books and for the past few years I’ve been tracking down first and early editions of them and my other childhood favorites to recreate my childhood bookshelf. That’s something I might write about some day — tracking down and re-reading my childhood favorites. Some hold up in 2019, some really don’t. My favorite author then and now is Daniel Pinkwater, and he was nice enough to read and blurb my last book. . . but Storm Blown owes more to My Side of the Mountain than Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, for sure.
How long did Storm Blown take you to write?
It’s hard to say because there were so many drafts – with all the writing and re-writing, probably about a year (where I was writing almost full-time). The revisions and copy-edits, once they came back from my editor, probably took another six months of on-and-off work. The book changed a lot after it was picked up by a publisher – I streamlined the plot and also added some chapters and characters. I wrote most of the first draft in the stacks at the main branch of Carnegie Library in Oakland. The revisions I more-or-less did in an attic in Shadyside. Which, coincidentally, is the name of the town where all of R. L. Stine’s Fear Street books take place!
You were writing full-time for a year and a half?
Well. . . I was writing for probably 5 – 10 hours a day, and then I had a few author and publisher clients that I was working with as a book marketing consultant. And I was keeping Littsburgh running day-to-day. You’re never writing in a vacuum, even if you’re doing it full-time. But writing and revising was the big thing.
So what does running Littsburgh day-to-day look like?
We get a bunch of emails every day, from book publicists in New York and local organizers and authors trying to spread the word about their books and events. Some emails are from aspiring writers who need help getting started and some are from authors who want to know the best way to connect with readers. We get a bunch from authors looking for agents, or asking for advice on where to submit essays or poems, or about writing groups to connect with. My favorite emails are from authors or publishing people who’re thinking about moving to Pittsburgh — or are thinking about touring here — and are putting feelers out . . .
When I’m answering all of those emails, I try to be as helpful as possible–so that’s where I spend most of my time on the site outside of adding posts and events, in the Littsburgh inbox. I’ve worked in publishing for a long time and have a super-specific skill set when it comes to book marketing and the whole publishing process, and being able to share it with people who reach out to us–and being part of the connective tissue between authors and organizers and organizations in the city–feels like one of the best ways I can to contribute to the literary community here.
Is there one thing you’d want to tell everyone who reads this on Littsburgh?
I’ve heard from a lot of people who think Littsburgh’s a funded literary institution, that it’s a full-time job. And honestly, I really like that they think that because it means we’re doing a good job with the site. But the reality is that we’re making almost enough budget off of ad sales and donations to keep Littsburgh in the black in terms of server fees and other web stuff, like firewalls and paying to promote posts on Facebook. In terms of personal investment in the site, we’ve been a passion project since 2015 — it’s all volunteer hours on our end. But as long as people are visiting the site and talking about Littsburgh, we’re happy!
When it comes to Littsburgh, that’s what makes you happy?
Being part of our local literary conversation and bringing it to a bigger audience is the big thing. Our mission statement from the beginning was for Littsburgh to be Pittsburgh’s unofficial literary tourism bureau and it feels like we’ve gotten to a point where we’re doing that in a way that’s feeling rewarding. These days, when we go to events like Book Expo and say we’re from Pittsburgh, we’ll have editors and publicists asking us if we know about Littsburgh — which is always fun — and telling us about all the bookstores and events in the city.
The site has a pretty big readership for a hyper-local literary community, which is still the part of this whole project that surprises me the most. We have visitors from every state and even internationally, and that readership is still growing pretty steadily month-to-month . . . so just being able to connect books by local and visiting authors with a local and national readership is amazing, and our newsletter has lots of subscribers who work in publishing and are keeping an eye on the scene here in Pittsburgh, so it feels good to be helping to shine that light on literary Pittsburgh, too.
Honestly, it’s also just nice to have an excuse to work with Rachel and Katie. They may have other answers for what they love about Littsburgh — we should probably ask them about those in another Q&A — but for me, they’re definitely at the top of my list. Without Rachel, Littsburgh wouldn’t exist . . . and it’s still so wild to me that I shared an office wall with Katie at Farrar, Straus & Giroux in New York and we both somehow independently moved to Pittsburgh within a year of each other.
I know that some professors are sharing Littsburgh with their students . . .
Yeah, I’ve heard that some of the creative writing programs are using Littsburgh as a resource to show their students all the stuff that’s happening off-campus. I was really happy to hear about that, and we’ve gotten emails from high school kids who are fans of the site, too, which kind of blows my mind.
Teenagers are reading Littsburgh?
My fifteen-year-old niece’s favorite author is Nicole Krauss. It’s a brave new world out there.
Speaking of high school, how high can you ollie?
I don’t know . . . maybe a little over three feet at my best? I wrote about picking up skateboarding in my thirties for the Paris Review Daily a few years ago, and my goal then was to be able to jump over a trashcan. I never got there before my ankles started hurting enough to pick up other hobbies, though. I got into baking while I was revising Storm Blown and there are tons of pics of my tarts, eclairs, bagels, and croissants over on my website — and lots of skateboarding pics, too . . . but it’s been a while since I’ve been out skating.
Any parting words? Where can readers connect with you online?
I’m on Twitter, Instagram, and very reluctantly on Facebook. Sincerely: thanks to everyone for visiting the site and for reading this far . . . and for being a part of our journey here on Littsburgh. If you haven’t already, tell your friends about literary Pittsburgh!
Storm Blown (Delacorte Press / Penguin Random House) is available wherever books are sold.
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