Debut Interview: Charity Tahmaseb and Darcy Vance (part two!)

Part two of the interview with Darcy Vance and Charity Tahmaseb, authors of The Geek Girl’s Guide to Cheerleading -

jordyn: How do you two know each other and how did you come to write together?

darcy: Charity and I each signed up for a free online writing class about ten years ago. We both liked the class so much that, when it ended, each of us joined the internet writing community that sponsored the class.

The community was separated into focus writing groups and we found each other in one of those. I was a fan of her work from the very first post of hers that I read. Eventually, we became critique partners and friends, but we didn’t start writing together until about two years ago. That’s when Charity offered me the chance to help revise Geek Girls.

jordyn: Let’s talk about high school – were you the geek or the cheerleader/Gauntlet Girl? Or something else altogether?

darcy: I was kind of a hybrid geek. I was in classes with all the smart kids, so I was friends with that group. But I was also artsy and kind of hippie-ish (it was the 70’s) so I fit in with the art freaks too. My boyfriend and the boy I cheated on him with (yeah, I did) were both jocks (but in different sports) so I spent some time hanging out with those groups too.

And the church I went to was one that a lot of rich kids and preps attended. They were nice to me there – but most of them ignored me at school. I’d say I was somewhere near the middle of the social stratosphere in high school – not outcast but not teen dream either.

charity: I was a total geek, even with the cheerleading thing. I was a Girl Scout all through school, which was about the dorkiest thing you could be (at least back then). Even though I swam on the synchronized swim team, no one considered us jocks. The girls’ softball, tennis, and golf teams hated us because we dripped a teeny tiny amount of water on the floor of the girls’ locker room. Our team was called The Dolphins.

They called us whales.

Ah, high school. Where the love is.

jordyn: How did the publication process go for you ladies?

darcy: From the time we started working on the project together to the day our agent sold Geek Girl’s to Simon Pulse was really short, just about 11 months! But that’s not the whole story. Charity got the idea for Geek Girl’s way back in 2004. The book went through three revisions, a couple of rounds of trying to get agent representation, and Charity had pronounced it officially dead before she caved in and gave me a chance to help her bring it back to life.

Letting me help her was really just a decoy for her helping me though. Charity knew I loved Geek Girl’s and I hated that she had set it aside so, when my 21 year old son was diagnosed with cancer in 2007, she asked if I wanted to help work on the book with her. It was a way to keep me sane while my son was so sick. That things fell into place so quickly after that is one of those great spiritual puzzles. Was it fate? God? A big karma prize to Charity for her act of friendship? Or the result of all the hard work she had already put into the story? I vote for: All of the above.

charity: I think the publication story sometimes hides the fact that we’ve both been at this for a while. I’d written three novels before even starting on the first draft of Geek Girl’s in 2004. Darcy’s written three or so novels.

I say this all to be encouraging, actually. If you’re a writer, keep at it and keep an open mind. Sometimes the road to publication is one you never expected.

jordyn: Your book just recently came out – have you heard anything memorable back from readers?

darcy: Ahem, Jordyn, your review certainly was memorable! It had both of us grinning like fools! But really, it is an amazing experience to have people read your book and actually like it.

charity: What Darcy said! And it’s not just positive reviews (although those are great), but ones where you know the reader really “got” the book. Also, a few readers have emailed us out of the blue and that never fails to make my day (and I’m pretty sure it makes Darcy’s day, too).

jordyn: Last question: what do you think is the most difficult thing about the high school years?

darcy: When you’re in high school, there’s so much going on in your life. It’s hard not to think of the whole world just in terms of how it impacts you. And that’s okay. Mostly.

But when you’re thinking that way, it’s also hard to realize that everyone else is starting from the same place. They are all, as writer John Green paraphrases from a speech he once heard, “masters of their own skull-sized kingdoms”.

Which is a (probably) weird way of saying that kids stress so much about so many things – whether the pants they wore today are too tight or too loose, whether that zit on their chin is visible, whether that cute kid in the hallway was smiling at you or your best friend. And, if he was smiling at you, was it a Hey, you might be cool! smile, or a, Wow, what a comical loser! smile? It’s just so much overload.

And it doesn’t have to be because, like I said, most of it no one even notices – because they are so wrapped up in thinking all the same things about themselves. 

charity: Darcy pretty much covered it (ha, I love it when she goes first). My son is starting down this path right now. He’s turning thirteen this year. Like it wasn’t painful enough to go through it myself, now I have to watch my offspring do it.

This is one reason we really stress the “you don’t have to wait” theme of the book. Because you don’t have to wait – or worry about what others think.

Again, thank you so much Darcy and Charity – you ladies are awesome! Readers, be sure to get your hands on a copy of their adorkable book.

Authors’ website.