Looking for a beautifully written, heart-wrenching, and ultimately uplifting book to add to your TBR? Dan Clay's Becoming a Queen is a must-read stunning story about love, loss, and the ineffable power of a purple princess dress. Need some extra incentive to pick this one up? Be sure to check out this interview with the author! What makes Mark fierce? Well! What a perfect question and a particularly appropriate adjective for a character on the path to becoming a drag queen! Mark’s Jumbled Journey to Fierce-ness could very well be the alternate title. Mark would probably say he’s not fierce. He’s very interior, and gets in his own way a lot. His head has all these voices of doubt, fear, shame, and insecurity–but I think what ultimately makes him fierce is his ability to turn pain into beauty. He doesn’t necessarily get rid of all that fear, but he doesn’t let it stop him, and he learns to listen to the love. That, to me, is very fierce. If you could give Mark one piece of advice, what would it be? Mark gets a lot of advice from his older brother so he may not want any more feedback from his elders! But if I may, I’d probably tell him to think about other people as much as he thinks about himself. Is that possible for any of us? I’m not sure. But I do believe striving to give joy is the best way to get it–even if you only make it halfway there. What's the most interesting thing you learned while researching Becoming a Queen? A single question animated both the research and the writing. How do people recover from tragedy? Really, how? I am constantly amazed at what people can get through. So many lives are hit hard, upended by unexpected pain and heartbreak. How on earth do we get through it? And with so much love to spare? Becoming a Queen is my answer to that impossible question, and it mattered a great deal to me to tell it true. So I connected with and learned from families who’d experienced something similar to what Mark’s family experiences (no spoilers!). Almost to a person, they all remarked that the day started out like any other. Completely un-foreboding. “It was just a regular day.” Novels often need build-up, suspense, arcs. But life, it seemed, had no need for a narrative. And another thing from all that learning really stuck out, which is, perhaps, the hollowness of “things get better with time.” For so many, the pain stays fresh for decades. “Things” do not get better. But you, somehow, do. You get better at dealing with the things that stay bad. Learning from these families was the highest honor of the writing process, and I just hope my story does justice to their authentic experience. If you'd met Mark as a teen, would you have been friends with him and why? We would probably have been fighting for the same parts in the school musicals, so no. It would have been a full-on “nemesis” situation! What's your favorite part of being an author? Connecting one on one with readers is a gift beyond description. Much of what I write is quite personal, and a lot of it revolves around lessons that took me a rather long time to learn. When someone gets it, when it helps them in some way … well, it’s the reward of a lifetime. What a privilege to be a writer! What's the most challenging part of being an author? It requires this strange combination of urgency and patience. Urgency, because you must really convince yourself (delude yourself, even!) that the world needs your book and it needs it now so you’ve got to write it today! But patience, because this will take years. Patience especially with yourself, to explore and experiment and learn and improve. But you’ve got to have them both! Urgency without patience, you’re frenetic and sloppy. Patience without urgency, you’re lying in bed contemplating plot all day. So that is the challenge for me! Finding the equilibrium. What 3 words would you use to describe Becoming a Queen? Sad, uplifting, and full of love. ABOUT THE BOOK A vibrant and emotional novel from debut author Dan Clay about a boy who turns toward love, self-expression, and drag when the unthinkable happens, perfect for fans of Jandy Nelson and Julie Murphy. If only Mark Davis hadn’t put on a dress for the talent show. It was a joke—other guys did it too—but when his boyfriend saw Mark in that dress, everything changed. And now, fresh on the heels of high school heartbreak, Mark has given up on love. Maybe some people are just too much for this world—too weird, too wild, too feminine, too everything. Thankfully, his older brother Eric always knows what to say to keep Mark from spinning into self-loathing. "Be yourself! Your full sequin-y self.” But Mark starts to notice signs that his perfect older brother has problems of his own. When the source of Mark’s strength suddenly becomes the source of his greatest pain, the path back to happiness seems impossible. Searching for a way out, Mark slips into a dress to just, briefly, become someone else, live a different life. His escape, however, becomes an unexpected outlet for his pain—a path to authentic connection, and a provocation to finally see other people as fully as he wants to be seen. Beautifully written, heart-wrenching, and ultimately uplifting, Dan Clay's Becoming a Queen is a stunning story about love, loss, and the ineffable power of a purple princess dress.