Carol Plum-Ucci is the author of the new young adult novel Insane Possibilities. Her other books include The Body of Christopher Creed. She lives in New Jersey.
Q: What inspired you to write Insane Possibilities, and how did you create your character Toby?
A: I had a friend who had to be in a rotating Stryker bed once, and it's always stuck with me as being particularly scary!
When I visited her, I kept my questions to myself, though my writer's imagination was going wild. “What if there’s a fire?” and “What if an immobilized person started seeing drawers open and close by themselves and things skirting across the floor?”
It took me some years but I finally used the immobilization creepy factor. That was the inspiration for the concept.
For the plot, the inspiration was political. Those looking can see it pretty clearly in the subplot.
Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: I'm not sure how I pick titles. Some I have to work at; some just come to me while walking from one room to the other. But oftentimes, I get a feeling like this is the perfect title.
I had that feeling this time. Toby has to figure out who pushed him down a well and put him in immobilization for seven weeks in the height of summer. All the possible suspects look like insane choices in one way or another.
Q: Did you know how the story would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: This time, I did know how the story would end, but often, I don't know until around chapter 10. I'm not bothered by my not-knowing because I feel like if I don't know, the reader definitely can't know. Some quick minds could guess ahead of time, I suppose, but it's still a page-turner.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?
A: Two things. First, I love to weave the natural and the supernatural together as seamlessly as possible. To me, they share the same reality and I like to get others thinking like that, too. It's cathartic.
Second, in the subplot, Toby's father keeps warning, thanks to his social media involvement, that we have turned into a nation of liars and how this has happened.
I'd like to influence people to be very careful today, in this age of deception, what they believe and why. We all need to remember that we don't know the complete argument until we've faced down the counterargument.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: While not writing fiction, I write Biblical studies for a company on the West Coast, and I'm busy with that.
Per fiction, I've been working on a book for the read-aloud age group about a K9 dog who protected the White House. If I get a green light (I haven't yet!) I'd like to write about many police dogs for young readers.
I got interested while feeling a bit unsafe in our ever-changing nation and wanted to view things that made me feel safe. It was a joy to find many videos of police dogs! I feel it will be of interest to very young children that we are being helped and protected by animals who have talents that we don't.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: One of the reasons I chose suspense writing in fiction is that I was raised in a funeral home on a barrier island. It was windy! Our house was very musical and sunny during the day, but I have ADHD and was constantly waking up in the middle of the night as a child.
So, when people say "how did you become a writer?" I answer, "In the middle of nights between third and sixth grades." If I could determine that there was a "guest" down in the funeral home, I would stare at my doorframe, afraid to blink.
It set me on a spiritual journey to discover where these people go after death, what with their families being so sad and all. That positive note probably affected my fiction writing as much as anything.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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