Check out our interview with S. E. McPherson, the author of "Wanted Boys."
What was your inspiration behind your most recent book?
I wrote Wanted Boys while I was rapidly deconstructing all the childhood structures of my worldview at once: religion, American exceptionalism, capitalism, etc. I watched people with power and wealth not just ignore the problems of the world but actively build more unequal systems, while those who did make positive change were those who were already dangling by their fingertips on a cliff’s edge and still reaching to grab the hand of someone who’s slipping. The Wanted Boys series became a story about trying to be the hand reaching out, trying to build life and community out of the scraps that you’ve been given — and then demanding more than scraps.
What does Reading Rainbow mean to you?
To me, Reading Rainbow means actively seeking out stories told by and about marginalized people as an act of resistance (and joy). I love, love, I love stories about love, and if I’m going to spend the dollars in my pocket and the scant minutes in my one, precious life on a story, I want it to be queer!
Why do you feel representation of a variety of people is so important when it comes to writing books?
I think books give people an opportunity to microdose empathy. Slipping into someone else’s skin for a while, experiencing what they experience, and feeling what they feel about it is an essential part of continually stretching and growing as a person, and books are an immersive way to do that. Books are also a place where some of the complexity of life’s heaviest tangles can be abstracted and shrunk into something manageable. In times when people need hope more than ever, books that make the structural enemies into something that can be battled by a protagonist, books that feature people who feel like real members of our community, books and series that eventually grant that happy ending we’re all looking for—they’re a lifeline.
Tell us a little more about the book and why you decided to write it.
Wanted Boys is about Logan Cardot, the boy who shouldn’t have been born, and Jace Evans, the boy who wants to change the world, as they struggle with their feelings for each other under a fascist regime. It’s a coming-of-age dystopian story of young men carving out a place for themselves.
I started writing it during Trump’s first term, when the ugliest parts of society boldly took center stage. I grew up femme-presenting in Abilene, Texas—a town that has held, at various points in my lifetime, the dubious honors of highest per-capita churches, highest rate of teen pregnancy, top forty highest rape rate, and most per-capita Trump voters. And I kind of thought I’d escaped it—but leaving the town didn’t leave behind small minds and their small ideas that make the world unsafe.
Wanted Boys was me working through that helplessness of realizing that not only will something bad happen to you, but the people who might protect you are in as much danger as you are. And the series became an exploration of what it looks like to grow into power within that system and try to destroy it from the inside out alongside the people you can trust and align with.
What can fans expect from your book?
Fans can expect characters are that feel real enough to reach out and touch, prose that’s easy to read because the quandaries are complex enough, and emotional stakes that hurt. They can expect fear and hope and love and people trying their best to be human in inhumane circumstances.
What’s up next for you in the bookish world?
Since the Wanted Boys series is complete, I’m releasing them rapidly: the second book, Wasted Boys, will be out November 10 this year and the third and fourth, War Boys and Wicked Boys, will be available in June and November of next year. I’m also releasing the final book in my fantasy romance Heart-Mage Trilogy, A Queen’s Lament, in March of next year, so there’s a lot to look forward to!
