Today we are very excited to share an interview with Author Derek Milman (A Darker Mischief)!
Meet the Author: Derek Milman
Derek Milman is the author of Scream All Night (HarperCollins) and Swipe Right for Murder (Little Brown / Jimmy Patterson). A graduate of Yale Drama School, Derek has performed on stages across the country, and appeared in numerous TV shows and films, working with two Academy Award-winning film directors. He lives in Brooklyn.
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About the Book: A Darker Mischief
When Cal Ware wins a scholarship to an elite New England boarding school, he’s thrilled to leave his past behind. Back home in Mississippi, he was the poor, queer kid who never fit in. But at Essex Academy, he’ll be able to reinvent himself. Or so he hopes…
But at Essex, Cal’s classmates only see his cheap clothes and old iPhone. They mock his accent, and can’t believe he’s never left the country, or heard of The Hamptons. Cal, at his breaking point, is about to give up and return to Mississippi when he learns about a secret society on campus — the key to becoming Essex royalty.
Cal knows he’s not exactly secret society material, but to his surprise, he finds an unlikely champion in the handsome, charismatic, and slightly dangerous Luke Kim. As they get swept up in the mystery and glamour of the Rush process, Cal finds himself falling in love for the first time.
But as the initiation rituals grow riskier — and increasingly nefarious — Cal must decide how far he’s willing to go, and how much of himself he’s willing to sacrifice, to save everything and everyone he cherishes most. Because nothing at Essex — not even Cal’s first love — is quite what it seems.
~Author Chat~
YABC: What gave you the inspiration to write this book?
In late 2017, a friend gifted me with a black binder containing materials depicting a year in his life in a secret society at Yale (where I’d gone to graduate school). The pages were filled with coded correspondences, drawings, diagrams, all of it outlining, in great depth, all their esoteric traditions and unusual rituals. There was a whiff of the vintage about the whole thing, since everything concerned a centuries-old secret society combing and exploring a centuries-old campus to unearth centuries-old secrets. He’d told me the society was diverse in recent years, and especially queer-friendly, and I began to imagine that a similar secret society could exist in a prep school setting.
I began to see how all the materials, and the world they described, full of catechisms, black candles, and secret ceremonies, could provide the perfect framework for an old-fashioned type of love story, but fully queer, and transported to a contemporary setting, retaining the sweep and grandeur of literary works in the classical tradition that we don’t see too much of anymore. The 2019 admissions scandals and watching corruption seep into several of our revered American institutions, helped inspire some of the darker machinations of the story, and a commentary began to emerge, during the writing process, on the American Elite and the strings they pull in their shadows, shielded by their power and wealth.
YABC: Who is your favorite character in the book?
Calixte “Cal” Ware, the MC. It was a long struggle to create him and flesh him out but it was ultimately an immensely rewarding process. It took maybe several drafts until I felt I really knew him, that he’d properly introduced himself to me, so to speak. What’s kind of surprising is, we have very different backgrounds, so it’s not like he can cleanly stand in as my author avatar, but we have a lot of other, more internal, things in common. He’s a poor kid from Mississippi with a pretty complicated backstory which gets revealed, bit by bit, as the story progresses. When he wins a scholarship to an elite prep school, Connecticut’s Essex Academy, he experiences extreme isolation, and isn’t fitting in with the prosperous and snobby student body, until he meets troubled street artist Luke Kim (who he falls in love with) and rushes a secret society that he believes will grant him the ultimate acceptance, and possibly the key to surviving Essex.
Besides all the secrets he guards, including a disability, I liked exploring his innate sweetness and guilelessness; I don’t read about too many characters like him. He has a certain way of seeing the world, given how sensitive he is, along with a sharp sense of humor and an unbridled optimism in the face of everything. He is clever and smart, simultaneously wearing his heart on his sleeve while knowing that’s gotten him into trouble in the past. He’s the most vulnerable MC I’ve ever written.
YABC: What research did you do to write this book?
I had the binder containing reams of information on this little-known, and somewhat free-wheeling, secret society, but I was able to find even more information on them by scouring the farthest recesses of the Internet and social media. I read books on Yale University and New Haven itself, the history of New England and Connecticut, (since Essex Academy, while a boarding school, is partially inspired by Yale), in order to build out the Academy itself. The main character’s dad is a “haunter” meaning he designs haunted houses, which is this whole competitive subculture, and I watched a documentary to learn more about that. I grew up in suburban New York, so any questions I had about life in the South, since that’s where Cal grew up, I asked my partner, since he’s from Alabama.
I had to figure out what daily life is like in a boarding school—since I went to a public high school. All the minutiae. How do they do their laundry? Can they run errands off campus? How do they get haircuts? I conducted interviews with recent boarding school grads, in-person, literally me in a coffee shop asking questions and writing answers in a notebook like a journalist from the 1950s! I lived on the websites of several schools in the Eight Schools Association so I could get a sense of the calendar year, their current syllabi, and what many of their buildings are named (and their function) so I could come up with similar names and functions. Over and over, I kept studying their campus maps. All that said, the secret society in A DARKER MISCHIEF, SoSE, and Essex Academy are all ultimately fictional, but were inspired by a panoply of so many different things. Getting details right was key for me.
YABC: What is your favorite writing space?
I typically sit at my desk to draft on a snail-paced, aging desktop Mac. The desk is placed against a wall with a painting over it, and no window to distract. The desk is beautiful, a mid-century modern antique that I bought in my Brooklyn neighborhood when we still had antique stores like that, around seven years ago. It’s a nice, austere corner in the apartment that engenders concentration. In later stages of drafting, I will sometimes lie or lounge in bed with a newer, much faster MacBook Air. The difference in my position, the speed of the laptop, and the size of the screen can make the story appear differently to me, visually, in the same way people tell you to change the font when reviewing and revising text, which I’ve never done before.
In very early stages, I take notes by hand in a notebook (I don’t formally outline) and I prefer to do this in public places like cafés and coffee shops—I’m lucky in that I have a plethora of all different kinds of coffee shops in the neighborhood, all with different vibes. I like the physical action of putting ink to paper, though it can be challenge, at times, to read my truly terrible handwriting. I prefer writing in Japanese Postalco notebooks, in one of my few truly pretentious-y writerly quirks, but with the arrival of a new Taiwanese stationery store in my area, I have broadened my horizon in terms of notebooks and pens, as I am completely obsessed with this store.
YABC: How do you plan to celebrate the launch of your book?
I will be signing stock, wherever I can, once the book is out. We are officially launching the book on 7/16, 6 pm, at Books of Wonder, in New York City, after people return from their July 4th festivities. I will be in conversation with author and actor Maulik Pancholy. More information on the event can be found here.
YABC: What hobbies do you enjoy?
I like going to out to dinner and to cocktail bars with friends. These days, that chills me out more than anything. I used to love to go dancing all night, but I think I’ve aged out of that. I love museums and going on weekend gallery jaunts, since it’s important to see what’s happening in the art world, as internalizing other art forms can inspire writing. I love to go biking and running. I read a lot and go to the movies. I love traveling when I can! Sometimes I just like to go up to my roof at night and gaze out at the city.
YABC: What do you do when you procrastinate?
I have this horrible new habit of addictively watching IG reels and Tik Toks when I should be working, especially late at night, many of them featuring animals, like…people’s close encounters with crocodiles or dogs that scream like a person in peril. Sometimes, I play video games. We got a PS5 last summer, and I feel like I should…use it. I take long walks if I need to figure out certain story ideas or plot points. I will watch a long movie I’ve never seen on the Criterion channel. If I’m at a stressful point in the story I will directly avoid writing it by doing laundry or cleaning some far corner of the apartment no one will ever see. Or I’ll go shopping.
YABC: What other age group would you consider writing for?
I would love to write for the adult market, and my next project is adult horror, but I have lots of different projects in the works.
YABC: What’s up next for you?
A YA mystery called Stage Fright, about a girl named Lola Dawn—the daughter of a Hollywood PA to a famous movie star-turned-wellness guru, similar to Gwyneth and Goop. After accidentally burning down her ex’s house, she has to get out of town fast and gets enrolled in a high-profile private school for influencers and celebrity children at the height of the pandemic—to ostensibly watch over the movie star’s daughter. But at a Gatsby-ish mansion party, she’s framed for the murder of the son of a movie studio exec. This is all while she’s stage managing a disastrous production of A Streetcar Named Desire.
Year of the Monster is an adult queer Frankenstein re-telling involving two twins and a strange seaside town. It’s a massively atmospheric and truly disturbing book. Johnny and the Jewels is a rom-adventure about an Italian kid from Long Island and his Jewish boyfriend, Asher, who steals a rare gem from his father’s diamond district store, so he can run away to Miami with Johnny—but instead they’re hunted down by a gang of jewel thieves while Johnny is babysitting these awful children. It’s basically Adventures in Babysitting meets Uncut Gems. I’m not sure if this one is YA or adult, it seems to be straddling a line for now.
Book’s Title: A Darker Mischief
Author: Derek Milman
Release Date: July 2, 2024
Publisher: Scholastic
Genre:
Young Adult Fiction / LGBTQ+
Young Adult Fiction / School & Education / Boarding School & Prep School
Young Adult Fiction / Romance / LGBTQ+
Age Range: 13 and up
