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One question I always get at school visits is: what's it like being a writer?

First off, I do have a difficult time calling myself a writer. I like the term storyteller better because I started as a visual storyteller: painter, filmmaker, animator, illustrator. The writing came by accident. As a filmmaker and animator, I needed scripts and ended up doing them because nobody else would. The idea that I would someday be a novelist? Fugehdaboudit! Me writing a 320 page book was not in the cards.

But strange things happen and unexpected doors of opportunity open when you least expect them to.

Believe me when I say that I am an accidental novelist. I was tricked into it, bamboozled, flim-flammed. There I was writing a short story-and my writer's group liked it. Only they had questions. And they wanted more answers.

Fine, fine. I could dig deeper. Sure thing, some back story here, an extra scene there... Great stuff they said. Keep going! Keep going? Why? Its good they said. We want more. Alright, so I kept writing. The short story became a longer piece and still they wanted more! What about this? And what happens when-

 
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G. Neri, Surf Mules, Putnam Juvenile, Penguin Books

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Here's something a lot of adults ask me: Why do I write for teens?  I mean, seriously, that's not like real writing, is it?

I often say the only difference between adult fiction and young adult fiction is the main character's age. You can pretty much deal with anything you do in adult fiction--from drugs and sex, to death and war, and anything else you might find in the Great American Novel... except it's fueled by the teen mind. And seeing a story through teen eyes is the key to why I write YA.

From the writing standpoint, what's great about having a teen protagonist is that often they have no framework of experience to deal with the messes I put them into. It's all about first times: the first time you feel threatened, the first time you fall in love, the first time you steal something. There is something incredibly alive about being a teen.  There's a freedom to living your life by gut instinct since you don't have experience to draw from--it allows you to take risks adults might not. And because of the youth factor, you can often recover from a blow more quickly.

So as a writer, I can put my teen characters through the ringer and know they have the resiliency to survive. It's like they are running through the forest blindfolded: they move on impulse, not logic, and pray they don't run into a tree (but usually do).  The fascinating part is seeing how they adjust and what they do to survive. To a writer, innocence fueled by testosterone is a much more exciting prospect than dealing with an adult character who has seen it all. I love getting my young heroes in trouble because nobody ever learns from success, they only learn from failure. It's called growing up.

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Ok, it's not like I woke up one morning and said "Hey, I got it! I'll write a coming-of-age story about teenage drug traffickers. You know, for kids!"

 

But life is funny this way. Things happen that you never could have predicted.

 

It all started years ago when I was a filmmaker. One day, I met a real life surf mule. He was a friend of a friend and as I started to hear tales of his adventures in the surfer run world of pot smugglers, I immediately thought: there's a movie in this.

 

His stories were so outrageous and bigger than life, the characters so vivid and unique that I couldn't stop thinking about it. Together with my friend, we started gathering these tall tales and thinking of a script.

 

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The folks at Penguin were kind enough to invite me to blog with y'all over the next five days about my new teen novel SURF MULES. So here's Part One, where you may be asking yourself: what exactly is a Surf Mule? Is this a book about Billabong wearing donkeys surfing the Pipeline??

Nope. Surf Mules is my gonzo buddy road trip tale about two California surfers on the verge of graduation who become embroiled in a world of disorganized crime. Yeah, on the surface, it's my sex, drugs and rock n roll story. But underneath, it's really about the journey from adolescence to adulthood. A coming of age story set in the world of drug trafficking surfers.

This is Logan Tom, a 17-year-old surf rat growing up in Hermosa Beach, California. He's supposed to go off to college but is having doubts about leaving the only life he's ever known behind.

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G. Neri is our guest blogger during the week of May 25th. If you have any questions for G. Neri, add a comment to any of his posts.

Here is more information on Surf Mules:

When Logan goes searching for the Perfect Monster Wave, he doesn't expect his former best friend to be killed by it. Add to this a deadbeat dad who bankrupted his family and the possibility of college going down the drain, and Logan is suddenly in a tailspin.

So when small-time dealer Broza offers Logan and his dropout pal, Z-boy, a summer job that could make them rich, it seems his problems might be solved. But between Z-boy's constant screwups, a band of Nazi surfers out for blood, and a mysterious stranger on their tail, Logan is starting to have some serious doubts about hauling contraband across country, and hopes just to make it home alive.