Your Rosie Series launched your success as a writer; what prepared you to write a character on the Spectrum?
Thirty years working in information technology. Before that: ham radio, studying physics, hanging out with the nerds because I was two years younger than most of the kids in my class—and a nerd. Afterwards, doing a PhD and teaching in a science faculty.
So, I had plenty of material and deliberately didn’t do research on ‘the spectrum.’ I based Don Tillman (hero of The Rosie Project and The Rosie Effect) on real people I’d met on my journey, very few of whom had any diagnosis. This was partly because many of them grew up before autism/Asperger’s was widely recognized and most were ‘high functioning’ in that they had jobs or were studying in mainstream institutions.
In fact, I didn’t claim that Don Tillman had autism: I didn’t feel qualified to diagnose it. He was just a guy like a lot of guys I knew and liked and respected – within the range of difference among individuals that we live with every day. But psychologists assure me that “Don is on the spectrum’ and the autism/Asperger’s community has largely embraced him as one of their own.
I think one of the reasons the Rosie books have been so well received is that Don has come from life rather than textbooks: he’s a person, not a syndrome. Not every aspect of him is ‘typical.’ As they say, if you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism.
The Rosie Project was such a beloved book, how do you hope your fans will react to The Best of Adam Sharp?
I hope they’ll love it – be engaged, amused and stimulated. I expect some will like it more than the Rosie books and some less, but it’s the same author and I can’t change my writing style all that much! They’ll get a male protagonist, a challenging relationship or two, and hopefully a story that will keep them turning the pages and leave them with something to think about.
That said, it’s not The Rosie Project and I’m sure some readers will be surprised. We’ve gotten used to authors not straying much from a genre or a series. I like to vary the game a bit: The Rosie Project was a romantic comedy; The Rosie Effect more of domestic comedy, and The Best of Adam Sharp is a relationship drama with a touch of humor. I like to think my writing has developed, and there’s more depth to the characters, which makes Adam Sharp a bit more challenging – and hopefully rewarding.
I know that some readers who enjoyed The Rosie Project read only romance – so I’m guessing they won’t pick up The Best of Adam Sharp. Of course, I hope they’ll make an exception: one of the inspirations for the story was the fact that some readers don’t want to look beyond ‘happily ever after’. Yet that’s exactly what we have to do in real life if we want relationships to survive – for ‘happily ever after’ to be real. I wanted to put romantic love up against long-term love and explore the differences.
A lot of my readers are women – not surprising as they’re the big readers of fiction, and particularly fiction focused on relationships. But many of them gave the Rosie books to their male partners or friends and I’ve now got a strong following of men. People like Bill Gates and NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof have said positive things and encouraged other men to give the books a try. I think many of them will relate to The Best of Adam Sharp.
Finally, The Rosie Project was a popular book club book, and I had many clubs write me to say it was their most popular book ever. I think The Best of Adam Sharp will be more divisive, especially around some of the decisions that the characters make. I hope those decisions will provide plenty of material for discussion. I’d actually prefer that.
Tell us a bit about it?
Adam Sharp’s part-time piano playing leads him into a passionate relationship with Angelina. But it’s 1989, he’s only 26, he’s on a working vacation, and he’s not ready to commit. For the next 22 years, he regrets that decision. Then Angelina gets back in touch and Adam’s world is turned on its head.
It’s a book about love and how we deal with the past – in two parts. Part 1 is in the spirit of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. Part 2 is more Sex, Lies and Videotape as the main characters meet in France and do their best to sort themselves out.
Music—largely classic rock—is central to the story. I set out to write a book with a soundtrack: I wanted readers to hear the songs, in their heads at least, as Adam plays them, to add another dimension to the reading experience. And I wanted to explore the effect that music has in the lives of Adam’s generation and beyond.
And we’re finalizing a deal for the movie rights.
You worked in IT, what are three words you would use to describe that?
Verschlimmbesserung. You specified three words, but it can be done in one if you choose the right language. I’m guessing you’ve been asking for three-word solutions for years and that’s become an accepted standard without anyone questioning it. A simple change of language gives you a threefold efficiency gain. (In fact, it takes more than three English words to express this concept, so the improvement is actually greater.) Why hasn’t it been done before? Why are we still conducting our business in English when German is widely accepted as being more efficient? Simple answer: a lack of commitment to innovation and failure to reward smart people who think outside the box. Our business values state ‘We embrace creativity and innovation and encourage it at all levels’. This was one of the reasons I joined the company, but my creativity has constantly been thwarted by managers and so-called ‘business people’. If the company is not prepared to adopt German as its primary language, you can consider this my resignation letter.
Which has more power: genetics, fate, or luck?
Well, they can all deliver you the highest levels of happiness and fulfillment or kill you. So it’s a bit hard to choose. For me, fate and luck are much the same (how do you tell which one caused Angelina to walk into the bar where Adam was playing a particular song on a particular night?) and genetics is just a minor part of that bigger picture.
As a novelist, I’m more interested in the things we can control—the decisions we make. Fate, luck and genetics may set up a situation or put obstacles in our way, but I want my stories to be driven by the power of my characters and the conflicts between them and not resolved by fate or luck.
Why do you think people like to read romance? What makes you invest in a love story?
Escapism. There are few more powerful, uplifting, joyous feelings than falling in love, so it’s a natural choice when you’re looking for a fictional world that will take you away from day-to-day life. But a couple of qualifications!
1.) By ‘people’ you mean ‘women.’ Few men read romance, or at least the novels that are labeled with that genre. I’d suggest it’s because the male characters are frequently fantasy creations, which regular guys are not going to relate to. (Pick up a ‘men’s magazine,’ and it’s the same issue with the genders reversed).
2.) I don’t think of myself as a romance writer. The Rosie Project is line ball. It’s romantic comedy, which is a film genre, and, for practical reasons (date night!) has to appeal to men as well as women. It’s been nominated for a couple of romance awards, but also literary awards which don’t usually embrace romance (that’s another story). The specialist romance store in my home city of Melbourne wouldn’t stock it because they didn’t consider it a true romance. We can argue that one, but The Rosie Effect and The Best of Adam Sharp are definitely not romance – or even ‘women’s fiction.’ They’re love stories, but they’re about the complexities of long-term adult love, not just the easy part. I’d call them contemporary fiction, which leaves plenty of scope!
Investment in a story is an individual thing. Some readers simply want to escape into a world that’s more fun than the real one and they may well put the book down when it becomes unpleasant for a character they’ve identified with—or when he or she does something they don’t agree with. Others are fascinated by characters and plot without needing to identify so much—most of us don’t actually want to live in the world of the serial killer!
Love is a perennial topic, partly because most of us have experienced it, and it’s so powerful as a motivator. We do the most courageous and the dumbest things—the most moral and immoral—in the name of love. So it can become the basis of interesting characters and surprising plots.
I think readers will invest in The Best of Adam Sharp not because they want to live the characters’ lives, but because they’re interested in what they are doing and why, and what the outcome will be. There’s a component of the mystery that we get in a detective story – but here the issue is why rather than who.
What's next in your writing journey?
A romantic comedy (see, I haven’t abandoned it completely) set on the Camino de Santiago, the famous pilgrims’ walk in France and Spain. It’s a joint project with my wife, Anne Buist, also a published novelist. The title is TWO STEPS FORWARD and we’ve had a fantastic response from our first readers and a lot of interest in movie rights. It will be published in Australia in October 2017. No US publication date yet.