Caught In Between

Edward Underhill (Photo by Karianne Flaathen)

MELISSA WHITLER | NBCU Fellow
Melissa@DallasVoice.com

Edward Underhill’s first adult novel, The In-Between Bookstore, hits shelves Jan. 14. The book follows trans man Darby, who returns to his hometown in Illinois 12 years after moving to New York City. When confronted with all the ways the town has changed, he reaches out for a constant and finds The In-Between Bookstore where he worked in high school.

Except — the store seems too familiar, as if stuck in 2009. And the teen at the register looks a lot like Darby did at 16. Is there something present day Darby can do to change the past and advise his younger self?

Ahead of the book’s release, Edward Underhill talked with Dallas Voice about his writing process and inspiration for The In-Between Bookstore.

Dallas Voice: With this being your first adult novel, what do you hope readers get out of the story? Edward Underhill: It was surprising how many people picked up my book and assumed that it would be a romance, since there’s still not a lot of queer fiction in adult spaces that isn’t romance.

It is exciting and scary to feel like there isn’t as much out there with you, but it’s finally starting to catch up. So many BIPOC writers have broken through, and I want there to be more stories that simply have trans characters in them.

It’s so recent that queer stories are mainstream, and trans stories are a smaller piece of that.

We’re finally here and getting attention, and that, in itself, is very motivating. It feels like things have just opened up so much more.

When I published my first book I was braced for online vitriol; what I wasn’t prepared for was how many people were excited about it and how many people didn’t see it as a big deal. People didn’t interact with me as if being trans was a big deal. What I want is for people to be excited about the stories and what this character is doing outside of their identity.

Was it different writing for an adult audience? It was a little different in surprisingly subtle ways. In many ways it’s the same as YA, but everyone has jobs, and the existential crises were different. Writing for young adults examines the first time you are forming your own independent personality, forming your own identity. With this particular book, it’s a similar moment in adulthood when you’re about to turn 30 and rethinking everything. It was special for me to realize I could write this book for me and my friends.

That’s what made me want to write this book in the first place. I still read a lot of YA, and, as a category, it’s been quicker to embrace more kinds of queer stories, but all of us are looking for stories that reflect our experiences.

You also have experience composing music. How is the process of writing different from creating music? With composing you are ultimately trying to find a way to add to something that belongs to someone else; it’s about adding a layer to something that is already there.

For writing, all the layers belong to you.

That’s something I love as a control freak, but it’s also kind of scary to come up with everything by yourself. When I worked in Hollywood I was with a team, so now it’s a very different process.

Writing just feels so much more internal because you’re thinking about these characters as if they’re real people and creating whole worlds around them.

How did you balance the more supernatural elements in the bookstore with reality? The speculative element came from the question, ‘If you could tell your younger self anything what would it be?’ I read a lot of people’s responses online and noticed the number of queer people answering. It prompted me to think about where I came from and what going back would look like.

Bookstores feel like they exist out of time and space, and you can find anything in there. I felt like this story was about the stories you tell yourself and the paths you take, and books are a natural place to explore that. I wanted it to not feel threatening, and bookstores have a certain sense of comfort and coziness and safety where you can explore the angsty stuff.

How did you decide to write a story that includes coming out but not be a coming-out-centered book? To me, personally, I don’t feel that interested in the coming out narrative, I don’t have anything new to add. When I was thinking about my own experience transitioning, the thing that felt the most striking was something that felt baked into that particular time.

There was this feeling that you could do that and live your life, but you had to do it as a completely clean break. There was this idea that nobody from your previous life would understand, and, personally, I let a lot of relationships fall away because it never occurred to me to keep up with them.

My life completely restarted itself, and some people would not have understood, but I don’t know that about everybody. This is what ultimately drove a lot of the tension in the book — the complex ways that we take in societal expectations and the damage that we do.

Relationship problems are the damage that’s done when you’re too scared to see the other person. In the Midwest, with the nonconfrontational attitude, it’s not as open. That’s what does all the damage, the ways that they see and don’t see each other. I was interested in the complex and nuanced ways this could play out, which is what I want to read in a trans story.

It has become a trope in queer literature for characters to make a move to a big city to start living authentically. How did you decide you wanted to write the opposite, a story of someone leaving a big city and returning to their small town? It was a very conscious decision. For me, growing up, I internalized this idea that if I wanted to be living as a trans person I needed to leave, as a big city was where those things were possible. A lot of the queer community have felt that way since that was where you saw other people being visible. I wanted to write a story that presented a different option.

In the book, Darby goes back to his hometown and confronts the experience of not being seen. There’s so much complexity there, as existing as a cis gay man is different than existing as a trans man.

This was a book where I didn’t want to make anything black and white. I couldn’t force there to be an easy answer. It was important to me to have Darby go home and be wrong about some things, to deal with his preconceived notions and how some of that was a story he told himself.

How do you make peace with where you’re from? One of the things that would have been an easy out would have been to write a different ending, but I had to do what was right for this particular character. I thought very carefully about who these people are and how their experiences shape who they become.

For more information and to order The In-Between Bookstore, go to Edward-Underhill.com/The-In-Between-Bookstore.