Today we are chatting with Dante Medema, author of
Message Not Found!
Read on for more about Dante and her book, Message Not Found!
Meet Dante Medema!
Dante Medema is an author of books for young readers. Passionate about stories and helping other writers, she spends entirely too much time on TikTok. She lives in Anchorage, Alaska with her husband, four daughters, two pups, and a room full of alien memorabilia—and books, of course.! When she’s not writing, she dabbles in baking, cake decorating, and reading up on enneagram personality types.
About Message Not Found:
An emotionally complex portrayal of secrets, loss, and grief from Dante Medema, Indies Introduce author of the Indie Next Pick title The Truth Project.
Bailey and Vanessa shared everything: laughter, secrets, and packets of Pop Rocks to ward off bad days. But that all changed the night Vanessa left Bailey’s, headed for home, and ended up swerving off a cliff nowhere near her house. Now Bailey, who thought she knew Vanessa better than anyone in the world, is left with a million unanswered questions, and the only person with answers is gone.
To help grieve her loss, Bailey creates a chat bot of Vanessa using years’ worth of their shared text messages and emails. The more data she uploads to the bot, the more it feels like she’s really talking to her best friend. That is, until the bot starts dropping hints that there was more going on with Vanessa than Bailey realized—a secret so big, it may have contributed to Vanessa’s death.
This compelling puzzle of a story, filled with engrossing twists and turns, is written in alternating prose and text message formats. Teens will gobble up this fast-paced page-turner.
~Author Chat~
YABC: What gave you the inspiration to write this book?
DM: A combination of a couple of things. My grandfather’s last words to me were “I’ll text you” even though he never texted. I started getting these random texts from “Unknown Sender” that just say “message not found” and it always makes me feel like he’s still here, you know? I was thinking a lot about the fact that when someone dies, they don’t just stay in your heart. They have a digital footprint too. It was a concept I was toying around with when I stumbled across an article about a woman named Eugenia Kuyda (the creator of Replika) who created a chatbot in her best friend’s likeness after they died. It was like something clicked and I was ready to write it.
YABC: Who is your favorite character in the book?
DM: I’ve tried to respond to this at least a ten times and deleted the answer. I’m going to cheat a bit and say my favorite relationship: Bailey and Vanessa. There’s something about friendships when you’re a teen that feel so much bigger. So much more connected. It’s that feeling of knowing someone better than you even really know yourself. And to lose that person… gosh. It would be horrible. I really wanted to capture that in this story.
YABC: Thinking way back to the beginning, what’s the most important thing you’ve learned as a writer from then to now?
DM: That it gets easier. When I left my very first conference, I thought there was no way I’d ever be able to remember all the things that need to go on a first page, much less a chapter. Pacing, character, setting, great style—plot!? It was so overwhelming! Years later I can look back and I just know when something isn’t working in a story even as I’m writing it. There’s an understanding that comes with practice (who knew?) and I really have critique partners to thank for that. Trading those pages and practicing really helped me.
YABC: What do you like most about the cover of the book?
DM: I’m obsessed with the cover—I literally gasped when I saw the concept art for it! Everything from the colors to the snow to Vanessa as part of the mountain landscape. And how you almost miss Vanessa there when you see it for the first time. I’m so grateful for David Curtis (the cover designer) and Jack Hughes (the artist)—they created such a beautiful design that I love showing off.
YABC: What’s a book you’ve recently read and loved?
DM: I finished Kip Wilson’s THE MOST DAZZLING GIRL IN BERLIN last night and I’m obsessed. I love a novel in verse, and Berlin is a city that holds a special place in my heart. The writing is beautiful, and it’s so atmospheric! I absolutely can not wait for everyone else to get to read it!
YABC: Which was the most difficult or emotional scene to narrate?
DM: There’s a scene where Bailey and Mason go to Vanessa’s house to get their things from her room. It wrecks me every time I read it. There’s so much weight in this moment, these two teens leaning on one another during the hardest time of their life. It’s also the first time we really see Vanessa’s parents on the page and see what their grief looks like. I’ve got four kids, so naturally this was a really difficult scene and space to put myself in.
YABC: Which character gave you the most trouble when writing your latest book?
DM: Being someone who relies heavily on plot, the characters and their arcs are pretty malleable, but I’ll say this… I’ve never written characters who changed this much from concept to finish. The original versions of them in my head shifted so much draft to draft that I felt bad for my poor editor every time I renamed someone or gave them an entirely different backstory. I mean, Bailey’s boyfriend Cade didn’t even exist until my last major revision, and now I can’t imagine a version of this book that he didn’t live in.
YABC: What is the main message or lesson you would like your reader to remember from this book?
DM: That there’s always hope. I finished writing this book during the worst days of my life, using it as a distraction. I’m not alone in this either. The last two years have been abysmal, and as a world, we’re grieving. But the thing about death and grief is that no matter what we’re left with in the wake of that loss, is that we keep living. Keep moving. And loving, and dreaming, and doing, and hoping. There’s always hope, even when it’s hard to see.
YABC: What would you say is your superpower?
DM: Oh man. Probably outlining. I feel like the prewriting phase is where I’m gold, but then everything after that is a challenge. I’m a huge fan of making sure I have it all planned out just because I know my motivation to sit in the chair when I don’t know where I’m going with a story is nil.
YABC: What advice do you have for new writers?
DM: Just keep going. There’s literally no one that tells you “hey, so you have to write a book” –it’s a thing you just feel like you want to do. And it’s HARD. So it’s really easy to stop halfway through or decide that you’re done dealing with rejection and call it quits. But there’s always something to learn. Like getting a better grasp on the market you want to write in, learning to apply that feedback instead of fight it, or crafting a better query letter. If you keep going, and keep learning, you’ll get better and eventually you’ll get where you want to be.
