Matt de la Peña is the author of three acclaimed novels for young adults, and has also had short fiction published in various literary journals. I’ve known Matt awhile—our friendship began when we were forced to ride around in a stretch limo together at the Rochester Teen Book Festival. Yes, sometimes this job is hell.
While on tour for Once Was Lost, I picked up a signed copy of 
Matt’s latest book, We Were Here, at BookPeople in Austin and read it on the way home. This story, about three boys who break out of a group home and embark on a journey down the California coast, moved me from page 1, when the narrator, Miguel, muses about the book he’ll someday write:
“About what it’s like growing up on the levee in Stockton, where every other person you meet has missing teeth or is leaning against a liquor store wall begging for change to buy beer. Or maybe it’d be about my dad dying in the stupid war and how at the funeral they gave my mom some cheap medal and a folded up flag and shot a bunch of rifles at the clouds.”
Later, Miguel joins up with Mong and Rondell, and together they’re three characters I’ll never forget. While traveling for OWL and doing school visits and trying to connect with bored-looking teenage boys, I kept thinking, “I wish they could be listening to Matt de la Peña instead of me.” Not that I don’t have anything to say to bored teenage boys, because I think I do and usually once I get my talk rolling they are bored no more, but We Were Here truly speaks their language. It speaks your language, too, if you’re a writer, with prose that is both immediate and poetic, clear and complex, and has real drama and humor without straining for either. Matt and I have been having an email conversation about WWH for a few weeks—edited below for your reading pleasure.
My first and most important question before we even start: how do you get the little accent mark/tilde thing over the n in Peña?
So, the tilde over the “n” is tricky on the web. It’s easy on word — you just go to special characters. But I really don’t know what to do on the web. They make it hard to be Mexican online. And when I see my name without the tilde I feel naked. And I feel like I’m disrespecting my grandma.
(Fortunately, I figured out how to do this, because of course there is an entire wikipedia entry about it. On a Mac, you do option+n then the letter you want under the tilde. /PSA) Okay, at the risk of sounding like I’m asking where you get your ideas, what was the genesis of We Were Here?
When I was writing short stories I developed a weird strategy. I’d always take two partially finished stories and throw them together, no matter how odd the fit (sort of like Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked). It usually took me in totally new directions. One time I paired a landscaping story with a story about a relationship that was messed up by a cheating dude (not based on my own experience) (well, maybe a little). It seemed to work. For We Were Here I did something similar. Main character Miguel’s crime is something I took from a college basketball teammate of mine. He came to the first open gym of the year with one of those house arrest anklets. It wasn’t until six months later that he told me what happened. It broke my heart. And I always secretly watched him when everybody was goofing off or messing with each other. He’d be laughing like everybody else, but there was always something sad in his eyes. Such a complex crime (I guess I shouldn’t give it away). So, I took his crime and made it Miguel’s backstory. I also worked in a group home for a couple years after college. Tough job, but I remember looking through all the kids’ files after they went to sleep. Heartbreaking stuff. At least in some cases. So I threw Miguel into a group home setting. And last came the trip down the California coast. Seven years ago I started a failed novel about a musician living in LA. He’s originally from Stockton in Northern California. After his old man dies he drives the coast to LA and stops at random places to hang out solo. The book died because it didn’t have enough plot. But I stole the section where he travels the coast and gave it to Miguel, Mong and Rondell. And the last thing I had to do was find the right voice. Remember that story collection we were both in, Does This Book Make Me Look Fat? That was the first time I’d ever done 1st person in YA. And I was sort of practicing the voice I eventually gave to Miguel.
Anyway, that’s a very long-winded answer to your question, I know. The point is, We Were Here is a bit of a mashup. It came from all over. But the genesis, the core story I wanted to explore, was what happens to a kid who commits the kind of crime Miguel commits. What does that do to his psyche moving forward.
Ever since you mentioned Half Baked, I am jonesing.
Sara, I want you to seriously trust me on something, okay? Häagan Dazs’ Caramel Cone. Please try a pint. This son of a bitch ice cream is so good I can’t believe it.
(Insert several-day interval during which I ignore Matt’s advice, yet do consume a pint of Everything But The, against doctor’s orders.) The case files. The scene in which Miguel reads his friends’ case files had this powerfully physical effect on me I don’t often get when reading. I had to keep putting the book down, and was talking aloud to myself: “Oh God. Oh no.” Did you know when you started the story what would be in each of the three main characters’ files? On a related note: how much do you know when you start a book? Do you have it pretty well mapped out or do you allow yourself to be surprised, and allow the story to change because of those surprises?
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