Author of seven published books and more upcoming, Nancy McCabe took time out of her busy schedule to sit down and answer a few questions for us! Nancy has written five creative nonfiction works, a memoir, and now children’s novels.
An adoptive parent and former longtime gymnastics mom, Nancy has published articles in Newsweek, Salon, Writer’s Digest, The Brevity Blog, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among many others. She’s a Pushcart winner, and her work has been recognized nine times on Best American Notable Lists. She directs the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford and teaches in the graduate program at the Naslund-Mann School of Writing at Spalding University. Read more about her on her website, nancymccabe.net.
Nancy’s upcoming book, Vaulting Through Time, will be her debut in the young adult novel world. In the book, Sixteen-year-old gymnast Elizabeth finds herself catapulting through time in order to solve the mystery of her own birth and stop a fellow time traveler whose actions may prevent her from being born.
Preorder the book here and keep reading to learn more about Nancy, her writing journey, and Vaulting Through Time.
You’ve written eight books, correct? What keeps you writing? Do you find it difficult to come up with new book ideas?
I don’t have much trouble coming up with new ideas—the great challenge is finding time to pursue them all! I always have a variety of projects in different stages of development—work that’s still in the conception or research or notetaking stage, projects for which I’ve written rough drafts, projects that I’m working on revising, and books and shorter pieces that I’m putting final touches on or starting to submit. I hope to write full-time once I retire from my full-time teaching job.
Vaulting Through Time is your debut YA novel. What drew you to the genre?
As my daughter was growing up, I read lots of books to her and with her and became interested in trying my hand at picture books, early reader, middle grade, and then YA—whatever stage she was in. I also started teaching a course in writing for children and young adults, and I wrote a book (From Little Houses to Little Women) about revisiting books from my own childhood and visiting tourist sites related to them.
Along the way, I learned how much harder it is to write for young readers than it looks—but I drafted some projects that kept gaining momentum for me, including Vaulting through Time.
What was the most different thing about writing a Young Adult novel compared to your previous books?
Most of my previous books were creative nonfiction—mostly memoirs with elements of research and reporting, travel writing, and literary criticism—focused on real events. When I first drafted a middle grade novel, a writer friend told me I needed to release myself from real life and make things up. That freed me, taking me back to my years of training as a fiction writer (all of my degrees were in fiction writing).
Embracing that freedom may be why my fiction, while grounded in realism, often has fantastic elements—time travel, of course, in Vaulting through Time, supernatural elements in my adult/new adult novel Following Disasters, and my forthcoming middle-grade novel Fires Burning Underground.
What’s your favorite passage in Vaulting Through Time?
This is a hard question because I have many. I had a lot of fun recreating some famous gymnastics moments as Elizabeth chases a thief through time, my favorite being the 1962 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Prague, where during Larissa Latynina’s floor exercise, the electricity went out, and she had to perform it in the dark with occasional flashes of lightning illuminating her. But I also am attached to the passages in which Elizabeth, the protagonist, goes back to the night of her birth. Here’s a small excerpt from the first one so as not to give too much away:
I feel like I’ve shrunk and arrived in a snow globe, a quiet little world where in front of my house snow falls thickly, blowing into my face. Sleet ticks onto roofs and I’m shivering there without a coat, listening to the clatter of frozen trees, squinting at the silent, shiny street, sheeted over with ice that turns it into a slippery chute.
I don’t throw up this time, but my nausea is still cresting and receding when a girl steps out of the shadows of a fir tree next door. I move deeper into the shadows of a twin tree, sinking to the ground. I hate this weak, immobilized feeling on first arriving, like it’s all I can do to keep from passing out.
I can’t see the girl’s face, only that her belly is too large for her small frame. She’s wearing a coat with sections like a caterpillar and bell bottom pants that tent over her feet.
In Vaulting Through Time, you tackle time travel, something that a lot of writers will avoid due to its complicated nature. Why? And what was the most difficult aspect of writing a time travel book?
I’ve always been drawn to time travel because of the way it exists as a device across literary genres; it’s not just confined to science fiction. Time travel affords so many opportunities for taking a contemporary look at a historical period and for exploration of our personal pasts.
I do a lot of experimentation in my writing that I never publish or expect anyone else to read. This project started off as one of those experiments—just something fun I was writing to entertain myself. So I didn’t worry too much about whether I was going to be able to pull off the time travel till later in the process. I just focused on characters and relationships and stories and moments. Eventually, when I knew I wanted to think about publishing it, and then again during CamCat’s developmental editing stages, I undertook some huge overhauls to make sure the rules were consistent and that I’d obsessively checked over all the details of the timeline. There were frustrating stages of that process—but it was ultimately rewarding to see it all come together.
If you had to write a spinoff based on one character, which character would you pick?
I am actually in the early stages of working on a spinoff involving a very minor character, the younger sister of Elizabeth’s love interest, Zach. Zara finds the time watch a few years later and has her own time travel adventure.
What is your favorite thing about Elizabeth?
Elizabeth is in many ways modeled after my daughter, who was also a YMCA gymnast and was and is fierce and inquisitive and resourceful, and adaptable.
Is there anything in Vaulting Through Time you really hope young adult readers will learn or enjoy or take away from the book?
I hope readers will find the time travel aspect both fun and thought-provoking, and I hope they will enjoy the gymnastics elements. As an adoptive parent, I also really wanted to explore the complications of what it is not to know essential facts about one’s past, to have a need to know about where one came from—and to take on misconceptions and stereotypes about adoption, things like our culture’s often casual dismissal of birth parents and our lack of recognition of the loss and anguish that many experience.
Have you ever considered writing under a pseudonym, and why or why not? If you did, what name would you use?
I grew up writing stories, and my cousin and I came up with pen names: I was Cookie Caliker, and she was Candy Caliker, which I find amusing now. But in my adult life, I have never considered it. As a memoir writer, it just felt more authentic to use my own name, though I understand why some people might choose to use one for the sake of privacy. I briefly considered adding my middle name to distinguish my writing for young adult and middle-grade readers from my adult work, but after examining some pros and cons, I decided to just stick to my first and last name.
Do you listen to music when you write? If so, what is your favorite music to listen to?
I used to listen to music a lot while writing—particularly folk and bluegrass by women and classic rock. I got away from that while raising my daughter because I had to grab spare moments to write rather than long, leisurely album-length sessions. But now that she’s grown and flown, I’d like to get back to that.
What is the best compliment you’ve ever received about your writing?
Ultimately, I think we write to connect to others, so I’m always really gratified whenever anyone else tells me that they connected to some experience I wrote about—or that they appreciated language that expressed something in a way that helped them to reframe their own lives.
“Vaulting Through Time is clever, suspenseful, and big-hearted.”
Beth Ann Bauman, author of Jersey Angel and Rosie and Skate
Are there any questions no one ever asks but you wish they would? If so, what is one, and what answer would you give?
Like many writers, consciously or subconsciously, I’ve always planted Easter eggs in my work. Like in one of my first books, I named a bunch of my coworkers after characters in the Sound and the Fury, meaning it as a subtle commentary on the dysfunctional family dynamic of that particular workplace, which was in the South. Only one reader ever picked up on my naming strategy, but it was so gratifying when that happened. I was pleased when one of my friends recognized right away that a character in Vaulting through Time borrowed some dialogue and characteristics from her mother. I love those rare occasions when people notice that kind of thing and ask about it, but it’s okay if they don’t—it’s also fun having those little inside jokes with myself.
What are some of your favorite books and/or writers?
Such a hard question! I have so many that my answer is in danger of getting completely out of hand. Jane Eyre is one of my all-time favorite books, and I loved the echoes of it in contemporary novels like Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic and the way both use supernatural elements. Just to rein in my answer a little, though, I’ll mention some of my favorite books about time travel. Those include middle grade novels like Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me, Lev Grossman’s The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, Leah Henderson’s The Magic in Changing Our Stars. Also, young adult books like Jessica Brody’s fun time loop stories and Sarah Lariviere’s recent Time Travel for Love and Profit. And I’ve been very influenced by books for adults, like Ken Grimwood’s time loop novel Replay, Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Jack Finney’s Time and Again, and Audrey Niffennegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife.
Can we get a teaser for any future projects, such as Fires Burning Underground?
It’s Anny’s first day of middle school—and, after years of being homeschooled, her first day of public school ever. At her art table, a girl named Larissa asks her what kind of ESP is her favorite: telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, or telekinesis? Another girl, Tracy, asks them how they identify: gay, straight, bi, asexual, pan, trans, or confused? And thus kicks off a school year for Anny in which she’ll navigate a path between childhood and adolescence, between imagination and identity.
Where can people find you and your books?
On the publisher’s sites, of course, including CamCat and the University of Missouri Press and on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and any online bookseller!
Read more about Nancy and her books on her website: https://www.nancymccabe.net/!
Be sure to check out my book, The Registration, if you haven’t yet!
In the near-future, everyone has the legal right to murder one person in their life and while waiting in line to offer a name for The Registration, Lynell Mize hears her name called and now has 14 days to survive.
Escape With Me 