Matt Beam has taught in various capacities in Toronto, Vancouver, Guatemala, Fiji, Australia, and New Zealand and has written for newspapers that include the Toronto Star, the National Post, Toronto Life, and Toro magazine in Canada.
His first young adult novel, Getting to First Base with Danalda Chase, was published in the spring of 2005. His second novel, Can You Spell Revolution? followed in the fall of 2006. His third novel, Earth to Nathan Blue, will arrive in the spring of 2007, along with the U.S. version of Getting to First Base.
Matt Beam spoke about his writing and his concerns as a writer.
When did you decide you wanted to be a writer?
I started saying I wanted to be a writer when I was 15 years old, but apart from a few short stories in late high school, I didn't do much about it until more than ten years later, in 1998. I was a teacher in New Zealand at the time, and I had to provide a two-page piece of fiction for an assignment.
Instead of picking the story out of a collection, I decided to write my own. The resulting two-page tale was called "Frankie and Mata," and writing it for those five hours felt like heaven to me.
Within six months, I was back in Toronto, beginning to type caffeine-inspired, made-up-things on my computer, and within a year I had started Can You Spell Revolution? It is the first novel I wrote, but because of delays and sundry publishing disasters it came out as my second book.
Who would you say has influenced you the most?
That's a hard one. I'd like to say one of my heroes: Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller or Haruki Murakami. They definitely made me want to become a writer. But the fact is I'm in a completely different genre and I'm not of that generation.
There is no one specifically in young adult fiction that I feel influenced by. Some have mentioned that my voice is similar to Gordon Korman's, which I don't totally see, but feel honored by anyway. That guy is hilarious, and he sells a lot of books.
What are your main concerns as a writer?
My main concerns are plenty, from solvency to sales to recognition to status to fulfillment to ... well I could go on. But it all comes down to one thing: when I'm writing (which is actually editing 75% of the time) I'm generally pretty happy.
How have your personal experiences influenced the direction of your writing?
In many ways. My first book is about a boy obsessed with baseball, and who is beginning to become obsessed with girls. That was me in grade seven. None of my characters fully represent a specific person in my life, but they all have shades of people I know.
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