A.J. Symon is the author of the new young adult novel Golden Boy. He is also a screenwriter, and he lives in Barnesville, Georgia.
Q: You’ve said you were inspired to write Golden Boy after playing fetch with your golden retriever--can you tell us more about that?
A: Yes, well, I was playing fetch. He was playing keep away. If you’ve ever tried to get something away from a dog who didn’t want you to have it, you know what I mean.
He’d come about a foot from me with the ball in his mouth, grinning. Basically, taunting me. I’d reach for the ball, and he’d shift his head out of the way just enough so I’d miss. When I lunged for him, he’d tear across the yard like a rocket.
One time, he even dropped the ball between my feet, and just when my fingers were millimeters away, he snatched it back, dodged between my legs and took off. You could almost hear him yelling, “Psych!”
After about an hour of that, I stopped and thought to myself, If that dog were human, he’d be an incredible running back.
That’s when the idea struck me. A dog becomes a human football hero.
Q: How did you create your characters Emma and Hudson, and how would you describe the dynamic between them?
A: Hudson gets his name from my own golden retriever Hudson, who I lost many years ago. The character’s sweetness and love for life is based on him and on his son Chip, who I named Emma’s big brother after.
Chip was my first service dog after I was diagnosed with a seizure disorder, and I’ve been blessed that both he and Hudson were my “heart dogs” or “soul dogs.” The best friends anyone could ever have.
I lost Chip very suddenly, and that gave me the impetus to write Golden Boy. I had all these feelings and didn’t know what to do with them. It just poured out of me. I dedicated the book to both of them.
The character of Emma came about because, if you’ll excuse me for nerding out about writing, the main character needs an arc—to learn a lesson and grow emotionally by the end of the story.
She starts at one place where she’s lacking something, and through the series of events in the story, she grows and comes out having incorporated the lesson and is no longer lacking. (If the story has a happy ending, of course.)
So, when I was thinking about who the main character would be, my first question was, how do dogs make us better people? The obvious answer was that dogs teach us how to embrace the moment, how to feel, and how to love unconditionally.
You want the biggest character arc possible, so the next question was what type of person would grow the most from that experience?
My main character had to be someone who is uncomfortable with and ashamed of their feelings and who is always worrying about the future or mourning the past, but not living in the present.
Emma would have to live in her head, be focused on numbers and science, an overachiever, sort of nerdy, awkward with people, and likely get bullied a lot.
My dog was my best friend when I was her age, and I was a big nerd, so I definitely drew upon my own experience to flesh out both Emma and her dynamic with Hudson. Hudson is the only person that Emma is really close to. He’s the only one that she lets her guard down around and cries in front of. He sees her at her worst, and he still loves her.
The closeness she has with him remains when he’s human, and that helps her see that it’s safe to come out of her shell and embrace life, embrace her feelings. Even though Emma is the one with the clicker and the treats, Hudson really trains her to be a better human being.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: I had a pretty good idea of how things would wrap up, yes. I am not one of those writers who can just sit down and start typing away with no idea of where I’m going. I have to plan it out. I have to know how each scene is going to end before I start. I create an outline of all the major beats and then expand upon each one until I see the whole thing in my head.
Of course, once I start writing, things change. I always keep an open mind if something better pops up, but when it does, then I have to go back to the outline and adjust for the changes. Because of the butterfly effect. You make one small change, and it ripples throughout the book.
Or sometimes what I wrote in the outline just doesn’t work when you get into the weeds of the manuscript.
For example, the ending came out how I envisioned it, but the way I got there changed after I wrote the first draft because my original idea just felt too dark for the tone of the story. I don’t think I can get into much more detail without revealing some spoilers, so I’ll leave it at that.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?
A: I have this naïve, Norman Rockwell fantasy of the whole family sitting around the fireplace, each person taking a turn reading aloud. We’re all so much in our own bubbles now, on our phones, consuming whatever the algorithm tells us to consume. I’d love to help people reconnect.
But most of all, I hope Golden Boy touches people’s hearts. This book was my way out of grief when I lost my dog, my best friend in the world. And I wrote it to honor the joy and unconditional love that he gave me.
My greatest hope is that through this book, I can share his golden spirit with the world so that he can continue to lift people up and make them happy.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I have an idea for a Golden Boy sequel that’s simmering very slowly, where we’ll meet all the characters one year later.
But right now, I’m working on a prequel to Golden Boy about Emma’s grandfather back when he was a teen in the 1970s. He is also a big nerd whose science project gets him into trouble, so that kind of thing runs in the family. I’m about halfway through that.
Eventually, I see five books in the series. Two prequels and two sequels with Golden Boy slap in the middle.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I would like people who’ve lost pets to know that they’re not alone. That their feelings are real and I see them and hear them. I love when people to share their stories or pictures or videos of their pets with me on my social accounts or email me. All that info is on my website ajsymon.com. So please keep them coming.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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