YA Guy Interviews... P.L. Tavormina, Author of AEROVOYANT!

YA Guy loves climate fiction (cli-fi), and P.L. Tavormina's novel AEROVOYANT is one of the most original and interesting works I've read in the cli-fi genre! (It also has a really cool cover, as pictured below.) The story of a planet not unlike ours in the early days of industrialization--and of the people who fight against the rapid rise in fossil fuel use, one of them gifted with the power to see the concentration of gases in the atmosphere--AEROVOYANT is both scientifically and narratively rich, and I highly recommend it for readers of cli-fi, sci-fi, and environmental literature.

I had a chance to catch up with the author recently, and here's how our conversation went....

YA Guy: Welcome to the blog!

P.L. Tavormina: Thanks for having me!

YAG: Let's start with some basics. How did you come up with the idea for Aerovoyant? 

PLT: So, for a little background, I grew up watching shows like The Beverly Hillbillies. You remember—this poor family struck it rich from oil on their property, and they moved to Beverly Hills, and hilarity ensued. As a country kid, I loved the whole bumpkin-meets-high-society story, and the idea of buried treasure—I loved that too. In the '70s oil was big, and we were just starting to understand that it's also hugely detrimental to the environment. So that's how I grew up—living through those decades where we collectively learned about the hazards of fossil fuels. When the Exxon Valdez spill happened (in 1989), it became clear to a lot of us that the fossil fuel industry wasn’t as interested in the environment as they ought to be.

So, I became a scientist. In some of my research, I worked on the BP spill (in the Gulf of Mexico, in 2010) and the Aliso Canyon methane leak (in Porter Ranch, California, in 2015). With methane, you can't see the leak except with infrared equipment. That gave me the idea for a character, someone who could see carbon emissions like methane and carbon dioxide, when we burn fossil fuels. My character, Myrta, sees methane, carbon dioxide, and everything else in the air that we don't see or really think about. The Combustion Industry on her planet wants her gone, in essence to hide the damage their industry does.

YAG: That is such a cool concept, and it made for a fascinating story. As a cli-fi writer, what do you think the relationship (or responsibility) of a writer is to the issue of climate change? 

PLT: The beauty of fiction is that it frames issues in creative ways, to help us think along new lines. Climate fiction can take real elements of this environmental crisis—from hurricane refugees to toxic sludge on the seafloor to drought—and place those elements in a relatable frame. 

If cli-fi writers have a specific responsibility (I think we do), it's to get people to act harder toward a better future. Our society needs a "space-race" level of mobilization to slash emissions. Most cli-fi writers agree, most of us bring our passion to our work, and many of us see our responsibility as one of clarifying the climate crisis through stories.

Independent of responsibility, cli-fi writers have an opportunity. We can bring our message at any of a number of levels, whether it's social justice, tangible impacts, or solutions. We're all in this together, and we're all fighting for the same outcome—a more livable future for ourselves and the species we share the ecosystem with.

YAG: As a fellow environmental writer, I share your feelings and convictions. Other than writing, what do you do to raise awareness about climate change? 

PLT: Whatever occurs to me, I do. 😊 When I teach, I integrate impacts of the climate crisis into my lesson plans. When there's a climate strike, I pull out my protest signs and march. Marching in a protest is always a great experience, because you meet so many people who want to protect Earth. I've also written letters to the editor, and I give talks at local libraries on climate and science. I've started bringing the issue up with strangers—saying something as simple as "climate change is real" can really bring a smile to their face and mine. It opens the lines of communication. I keep a blog at www.pltavormina.com, where I share ideas about reducing our carbon footprints. I do whatever I can to help.

YAG: That's great to hear! And what's next for you in the world of storytelling?

PLT: At its heart, Aerovoyant tells the story of a young woman and a young man embracing their strengths to make their world a better place. Having said that, the story also places Earth’s geological history and atmospheric chemistry into accessible form. The story "teaches," hopefully gently and enjoyably, about geology and the atmosphere. 

What’s next? A sequel. I'm writing the manuscript now; it's titled Telomeric. Ultimately, this story is about family. Family of origin and found family—it's a story about values, how we choose what to fight for. But there's a "science end" in the story, again, which is specifically climate impacts and sustainable technologies. 

This writerly journey has been fantastic. I'm meeting people almost daily who care passionately about Earth. The tide is turning. We're doing it—we're getting everyone on board. Look at how the crisis has made its way into Democratic primary debates, into books and movies, into public discourse. Look at the thousands of activists, young and old, turning out every day to raise awareness. There are so many reasons to hope. Human willpower is a force of nature—and what we're building is a better world. 

YAG: I couldn't agree more! It was great talking to you, and I look forward to reading your next book when it's out!

PLT: Thanks once more for having me on the blog, and let's talk again soon!

Readers, here's some additional information about author P.L. Tavormina and Aerovoyant. To buy the book, see the links at the bottom of the page!

About the author: P.L.Tavormina wrote Aerovoyant in 2017 and 2018, and queried agents and presses in 2018 and 2019. She was approached by a small independent press interested in buying the rights, but she ultimately decided to self-publish and get the story out into the world. As she says, the climate crisis is now. Tavormina published Aerovoyant in late 2019 and has been thrilled to have strangers regularly reach out to say they see the world differently after reading the story. 

You can connect with P.L. Tavormina on Twitter and Instagram: @pltavormina. Her website, www.pltavormina.com, has a newsletter signup at pltavormina.com/contact/, a blog at pltavormina.com/blog/ , and occasional climate news.

Buy Aerovoyant on Amazon in print:

www.amazon.com/Aerovoyant-Industrial-Age-P-L-Tavormina/dp/1734170603

or e-book:

www.amazon.com/Aerovoyant-Industrial-Age-P-L-Tavormina-ebook/dp/B081X4T51G

YA Guy Reviews... Climate Change Books!

Here's a little known fact: YA Guy has a passion for the environment.

Well, maybe that's not such a big secret. Some of my blog posts are environment-related; my novels are set in a desert world radically altered by environmental degradation; and I'm sure if you checked my Twitter feed or Facebook page you'd find environmental stuff there too.

But did you know I've been an environmental activist for almost ten years? And that the focus of my activism has been the fight against global warming?

It's true. Ever since I saw the film An Inconvenient Truth in 2006, I've been involved in raising popular and political consciousness about the threat posed by a changing climate. I've organized and participated in marches and rallies, met with politicians, developed a regional citizens climate change network, hosted teach-ins on climate change, taught the subject in my college classes, sat on a local college board dedicated to reducing campus emissions, and done whatever else I could to highlight the issue of climate change and advocate for personal and political action to combat it. I sometimes feel I haven't done enough, but I've sure tried.

Nor do I see this side of me as inconsistent with being YA Guy. I believe (and the science backs me up) that climate change is the greatest challenge future generations will face. While my existing novels are not in any way political polemics (and none of my works-in-progress directly addresses climate change at all), I believe YA literature has a responsibility to dramatize this issue.

Lots of great YA books do just that: Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker and The Drowned Cities, Mindy McGinnis's Not a Drop to Drink and In a Handful of Dust, Sherri L. Smith's Orleans, Emmi Itaranta's Memory of Water, Saci Lloyd's The Carbon Diaries, and many more recent YA books use climate change as either a backdrop or central feature of their fictions.

A new scholarly book by Adam Trexler, Anthropocene Fictions: The Novel in a Time of Climate Change (2015), barely touches on YA (which is one of its weaknesses), but it's an interesting analysis of the emergence of climate-change fiction (which some, following the coinage of Dan Bloom, call "cli-fi," but which Trexler calls "anthropocene fiction"). Trexler asks two main questions: how can fiction help us to conceptualize and address the problems we're facing and will continue to face in a climate-changed world? And how will fiction itself be changed by the changing climate and all its ramifications? Though I take issue with Trexler's claim that there is "entirely too much science fiction" (6) among climate-change novels--as if science fiction is a poor substitute for realistic fiction rather than the thought-provoking genre it has always been--this review and analysis of anthropocene fiction is a welcome addition to the literature of (or about) climate change.

The same is true of journalist Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (2014). Klein argues that the truly inconvenient truth about climate change--something Al Gore's film refuses to admit--is that we can't meaningfully address the changing climate without radically restructuring the economic, political, and cultural underpinnings of the society that has caused the problem. In other words, so long as we remain addicted to capitalism's mantra of limitless growth, we'll never be able to resist the fossil-fuel mania that is driving anthropogenic climate change. Klein argues that local economies, democratically organized, are a necessary alternative to our current global economy, an economy ruled by corporations whose sole mandate is greater profit even at the expense of people and planet. I tend to agree with Klein; the cheery idea that we can solve the problem utilizing the same models that produced the problem strikes me as fulfilling the classic definition of insanity. Whether we as a species can actually take the radical steps Klein advocates is, of course, another matter.

As a writer, an environmentalist, and a father, YA Guy certainly hopes we can.

YA Guy Presents... YA! for Nature with Sherri L. Smith, author of ORLEANS!

One of YA Guy's favorite YA science fiction novels of the past, well, forever is Sherri L. Smith's ORLEANS. (Here's my review, in case you missed it.) Today, I had the good fortune to interview Sherri for my occasional series, YA! for Nature. Here's what Sherri and I talked about:

YA Guy: Welcome to the blog, Sherri!

Sherri L. Smith: Hi YA Guy. Thanks for having me!

My pleasure. Please tell us about your book ORLEANS.

SLS: ORLEANS is set in a post-disaster New Orleans where a series of manmade and natural catastrophes have given rise to Delta Fever, a disease so deadly that the U.S. Government builds a quarantine wall from Florida to Texas and disavows that part of the country. Fifty years later, the survivors in the former city of New Orleans have gone tribal based on blood type—the last rules laid down by the CDC to stem the disease. Against this backdrop, the heroine Fen is tasked with saving the life of her tribal leader’s newborn baby after their tribe is destroyed. On the other side of the quarantine Wall, a young scientist named Daniel follows the smuggler paths into Orleans in his search for a cure to Delta Fever. Their paths cross and well, I guess you have to read the book to find out what happens next.

YAG: I know from your dedication and acknowledgments that you have a very personal connection to New Orleans and to the events that occurred when Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. Can you tell us more about that connection and how it shaped your novel?

SLS: My mother was born and raised in New Orleans. She moved up north and met my father, but in later years, she returned to the city to take care of my grandparents until they passed. She was still living in the city when Katrina hit. Faced with the option of sitting in a car in traffic during the storm or weathering it in the 100-year-old house she’d grown up in, she opted to stay. Her house was damaged, but she would have been fine if the levees hadn’t broken and the city hadn’t shut down. There she was, a diabetic running out of insulin and drinking water in a city that had been quarantined against help. The Red Cross was not allowed in to offer aid under some misguided belief that people would be forced to leave. My mom tried to drive out of the city after the storm, but her truck was caught in flood waters and she had to be rescued by someone in a passing swamp boat. All told, it took my family a week of frantic phone calls and crazy plans to drive to the rescue (if only the few open roads were not patrolled by gun-toting law enforcement). At last, the Coast Guard, of all organizations, came to the rescue and got her out of the city and onto an airplane out of Louisiana.

Needless to say, it was a harrowing time.

In the aftermath of the disaster, Fen spoke to me, and Orleans was born. This book is my response to the tragedy of Katrina all along the southern coast. To the conversations about racism and rescue that took place as we watched the city drown. To the stories of gang members turning into protectors and law enforcement going rogue. I tried to remove race as an issue in Orleans and make it about blood type—something that you cannot see. Above all, I want people to remember New Orleans and Mississippi and all of the places forever changed by a single storm.

YAG: Of the two narrators in ORLEANS—a third-person narrator affiliated with the character Daniel, and a first-person narrator representing the perspective of the character Fen—I was most drawn to Fen’s voice and vision. Where did the character of Fen come from? Why did you decide to speak in her distinctive voice?

SLS: As I said above, Fen literally spoke to me. I was driving home from work one day in the weeks after my mom had been safely brought to California, and I heard a voice say “O-Neg Davis, he beautiful.” I had no idea what that was about, but I called my voicemail and left it in a message. And that turned into the powwow scene with Fen’s O Positive tribe and the O-Negs led by handsome Davis with his agate green eyes. Her voice was so natural to the story that I kept it. New Orleans is such a stew of cultures, it made sense that the natural language would be a patois of some sort. So there is “speaking tribe,” which is the voice Fen thinks in, and then there is “proper English,” which is used by the educated, the leaders and scientists.

YAG: Late in the novel, one of the characters—a scientist who lives the life of a hermit—states: “Nature knows what to do with a poison. She dilutes it.” There are so many ways to read these lines, but given your novel’s representation of human society, one of the things they suggest is that human beings are the “poison” that Nature needs to “dilute.” What’s your feeling about this? How do you read these lines?

SLS: That’s an interesting way of looking at it. I certainly do think that humans, along with all other life forms, are as much a boon as a burden to the planet, and Nature has its ways of culling the herd—such as disease, and our own solution, war. It’s like homeopathic medicine—there is the tipping point at which the poison is too weak to kill, but can help you build an immunity. In the case of the character in the book, he is talking about Nature’s ability to recover even after a major disaster—the oil spill from the Deep Water Horizon will have repercussions for decades, but the ocean will survive. One of the reasons it was dangerous to eat seafood in the aftermath of the oil spill was because the shellfish and bottom feeders sift through the water and act as filters. It might make them inedible, and lead to illness in both the shellfish and the creatures that eat them, but eventually the water will be filtered clean and new shellfish will be born and life will continue. That’s what is happening in the Orleans of the book, but it’s hard to take that long view when your life could end the next day.

YAG: Some readers and reviewers have termed ORLEANS a cli-fi novel. What do you think about this emerging genre of fiction?

SLS: Climate has always been a topic in speculative fiction, so I don’t know that the genre is new so much as the classification is becoming more popular now. I think it’s great if it gets people to look at books they might have missed. That said, the climate is the backdrop for ORLEANS, rather than the point of the story. So, if you are looking for eco-lit, maybe you’ll find this title, which is great—and then the characters and the drama will carry you to the final page.

YAG: Last question. You and I are fiction writers, not politicians or pundits. What’s the role, if any, of fiction in calling attention to environmental issues and problems?

SLS: Hmm. I think the job of writers, particularly speculative fiction writers, is to ask interesting questions. Like Mary Shelley—is it okay for man to create artificial life like Frankenstein did? What are the responsibilities of such actions? For Orleans—are we willing to abandon part or our nation to its own devices (which is very much what it felt like during Katrina)? If so, what are the consequences? What happens next? It’s true that writers are not politicians or pundits, but we are citizens of the world, and students of human nature. There is a reason writers become political prisoners in some societies. We ask questions. If we’re lucky, someone reads the book, thinks about it, and answers start to follow.

YAG: Thanks for being on the blog, Sherri! Readers, if you want to learn more about Sherri Smith and her writing, here’s where to go:

www.sherrilsmith.com

www.middlehundred.blogspot.com

Sherri on Facebook

Twitter: @sherril_l_smith

YA Guy Presents... YA! for Nature with Kat Ross, author of SOME FINE DAY

Welcome to YA! for Nature, an occasional series exploring environmental issues in Young Adult literature. Today, we've got Kat Ross, author of the science fiction debut SOME FINE DAY, talking about hypercanes and climate change. And at the end of the post, you'll find a great giveaway! So read on....

YA Guy: Welcome to the blog, Kat! Can you tell us about yourself and your debut, Some Fine Day?

Kat Ross: Thanks, YA Guy! Well, the story revolves around a girl who’s lived her entire life underground because Earth’s surface is ravaged by continent-sized storms called hypercanes. I didn’t make that up, by the way! A meteorologist at MIT named Kerry Emanual coined the term back in 1994. He hypothesized that such storms could be possible if the seas got really, really warm. We’re talking wind speeds of over 500 mph. Seriously.

Anyway, I won’t give too much away, but there’s plenty of lousy weather, a dash of romance, scary mutants, despicable bad guys, and krav maga fight scenes. In other words, something for everyone…

YAG: Sounds like a great book! I notice on your Twitter page you call yourself a “climate geek.” I’d love to hear the history behind that!

KR: Ah, yes. I don’t want to exaggerate. I’m not a total policy/science wonk. But I’ve followed the debate as a journalist and editor since the mid-2000s. I was in Rio two years ago when the ultra-hyped U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development went down in flames. Over the last decade, I’ve watched the predictions of very smart scientists get worse and worse, and in many cases morph from being predictions (as in something that will happen in the future) to data (as in something that is happening right now). You only have to look at Hurricane Sandy and Super Typhoon Haiyan to go, hmmmm. Something is wrong here.

YAG: So it's safe to say that your interest in climate change plays into Some Fine Day!

KR: To be honest, there’s so much terrifying stuff in scientific journals right now that I didn’t have to look very far for a white-knuckle plot. But I did know I wanted climate change to be a big part of the story. It’s just…epic. It’s different from most other challenges humanity is facing in the sense that it affects every corner of the globe and it’s basically irreversible. A lot of that carbon will stay up there for thousands of years. And I can’t help wondering, what if the worst case scenarios come true? I’m just naturally optimistic like that.

YAG: Do you think we as a nation and a world have made any significant steps in addressing the threat of climate change?  What more can or should we do?

KR: Yeah, that’s a big one. President Obama put out a climate action plan to cut CO2 by 17 percent by 2020, and he’s cracking down on new power plant emissions, which is good. Scientists say we need to keep warming under two degrees by 2020 to avoid catastrophic impacts--that’s the magic number. Unfortunately, it’s looking pretty unlikely this will happen. A lot of countries are backsliding on their promises. One of the biggest things governments need to do is a real no-brainer: stop subsidizing fossil fuels. The U.S. alone hands out between $14 and $52 billion to the oil and gas industry per year. Basically they’re being rewarded for trashing the planet.

YAG: Last question. You and I are fiction writers, not politicians or pundits. What’s the role, if any, of fiction in calling attention to environmental issues and problems?

KR: Oh, I so agree with that! Writing something preachy or "message-oriented" is--and should be--a death knell. If I want soapbox opinions or boatloads of data, I’ll go to a news site. When I read fiction, I want to be entertained. I want great characters. I want detestable villains, and plot twists that make sense but totally blindside me. I want to feel like I’m in a world that’s more vivid than my own, that I’m tasting, smelling, feeling everything along with the characters. I want humor and I want heartbreak.

But as the author, you can aim for all that and you still get a million choices. Setting is a huge one. So mine happens to be set in a future time where the seas have risen 60 meters and a lot of species are extinct and life is pretty rough. If someone reads my book and it makes them worry or even get mad at the politicians who are sitting on their asses, that’s sure okay by me too.

YAG: Thanks for being on the blog, Kat! Readers, if you want to learn more about Kat and Some Fine Day, here’s where to go:

Kat’s website: http://katrossbooks.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/katrossauthor

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kat.ross.3382

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18666113-some-fine-day

And for a chance to win one of three e-ARCs of Kat's SOME FINE DAY, check out the Rafflecopter giveaway below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

YA Guy Writes... Cli-Fi!

Back in 1973, when YA Guy was … well, considerably younger, I read a book titled Dar Tellum: Stranger From a Distant Planet, by James R. Berry. It tells the story of a boy who communicates telepathically with an alien (Dar Tellum), and it’s got lots of appealing sci-fi elements for younger readers. From the perspective of today, however, what’s most striking about it is the central conflict:

“It seems that the planet Earth was right in the middle of a big crisis. Dozens of cities were in danger of becoming flooded. Already one city in some eastern country was almost covered with water. And the reason for this flooding was that the oceans were getting higher.

From what I understood, and I’m sure there are gaps here and there, the smoke from cars and factories goes into the air. A part of this smoke called carbon dioxide gets into the atmosphere of Earth. It lets the sun’s heat in, but it won’t let much heat out. This carbon dioxide makes a kind of one-way lid on Earth. Heat in, but not much out.

And this extra heat was warming up the north and south poles. So the ice was melting and the oceans were getting higher.”

Yes, folks, there it is, in a children’s book from the early seventies: global warming.

Dar Tellum, in other words, is an early example of what’s come to be known as “cli-fi”: fiction having to do with climate change. Some (though not all) cli-fi is also sci-fi, and (as a science fiction writer myself) that’s the kind I prefer.

A gentleman by the name of Danny Bloom (@polarcityman on Twitter) introduced me to the genre of cli-fi. I hadn’t known it was a genre beforehand.

Which is odd, since my own debut novel is cli-fi.

Survival Colony 9 is set in a future where war and environmental catastrophe have turned the world into a desert. Though I didn’t set out to write a book about climate change--and though the book is certainly no polemic--it’s impossible for me to imagine the story without that desert setting, which possesses not only visual but thematic significance. In fact, the setting was the first thing that came to mind when I started the story way back when, and everything else grew from it.

There are lots of great YA sci-fi cli-fi novels out there. Here’s a sampling of new and forthcoming titles (listed alphabetically):

Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis (@MindyMcGinnis)

Orleans by Sherri L. Smith (@Sherri_L_Smith)

Rootless by Chris Howard (@chrisH0WARD)

SeaBEAN by Sarah Holding (@SeaHolding)

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi (@paolobacigalupi)

Some Fine Day by Kat Ross (@katrossauthor)

Starvation Ridge by Risa Stephanie Bear (@risa_s_bear)

Wasteland by Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan (@KimKlavan)

It's great to know there are so many others exploring climate change in their writing. It's great to be part of a movement.

And my hat's off to writers like James R. Berry, who planted the seed so many years ago.