Lightning Bugs And Aliens: A Small Town Coming-Of-Age Story was the FIRST PLACE winner for Fiction category of the 2024 IndieReader Discovery Awards, where undiscovered talent meets people with the power to make a difference.
Following find an interview with author Daniel Babka.
Wonderful News! Thank you so much. Writing is often a lonely pursuit, but it typically requires collaboration to be successful. I caught my first glimpse of Lightning Bugs And Aliens in a dream, though it took years for it to come into clear focus and become what I sensed it could be—a positive, inclusive, life-affirming story with a cautionary warning and a call to hold onto and reclaim the morality we saw as kids when doing the right thing mattered more than money.
During the on-again/off-again process of writing, I realized that if I wanted to capture the spirit of this adventure in a fresh way, it had to be told as a first person narrative within a traditional coming-of-age framework, free of stereotypes. The story had to mirror actual events and be a call to action with all five 13-years olds during the summer of 1960 on equal footing, and determined to show readers how much better we can and need to be today. It was a time before computers, cell phones, and social media and yet, I believe it’s entirely relevant.
Thanks again, Indie Reader, for all you do!
What is the name of the book and when was it published?
Lightning Bugs And Aliens: A Small Town Coming-Of-Age Story; First Edition, October, 2023
What’s the book’s first line?
During the summer of 1960, decades before the ever-present computers, cell phones and social media, five imaginative, adventurous 13-year olds roamed the town of Twinsburg, Ohio.
What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.
During the summer of 1960, five imaginative, adventurous 13-year-olds roamed a small town that had an incredible one-of-a-kind history of strange, improbable happenings going back decades. It was a time when a tsunami of science fiction movies about mutants swept across America’s drive-in movie screens. Men in suits and military uniforms broadcast Cold War paranoia about long-range Russian missiles, and tried to convince kids like the main characters, Ben and Isiah, that covering their heads and hiding under school desks would protect them from something called nuclear fallout. But Ben and Isiah didn’t buy what they were selling. Instead, the five friends began to believe in the real possibility that aliens were on their way to a world that grown-ups had messed-up in the worst possible ways. So, the boys hatch their own plan to save the town and move forward. The story connects on different levels, equal parts comforting and cautionary.
What inspired you to write the book?
I spent two decades on the back steps of my family’s tavern with a man whose mother and father were sharecroppers in Mississippi, and a grandfather who came back from two World Wars. I watched a town of 2,500 people, with a distinctive history, evolve in the late 1950s and 60s.
This compelled me to tell a story with the power to take older readers back to the clarity of vision they had when they were younger…and give newer generations a real look at life before cell phones, social media and Artificial Intelligence. As with the proverbial cycle of generational change, the young people are forced to deal with and make decisions about a world they didn’t create.
During the on-again/off-again process of writing, I realized that if I wanted to capture the spirit of this adventure in a fresh way, it had to be told as a 1st person narrative within a traditional coming-of-age framework, free of stereotypes, with all five 13-year-olds on equal footing. Uncertain at first, they become determined to go forward as brothers, step over the lines drawn by previous generations, and take charge.
What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character? Who does he most remind you of?
Ben is full of ideas, has a thirst for adventure, and a youthful determination to change the world and save his hometown from danger. He and Isiah discover things about themselves and friendship as they find their way across racial lines as their friendship keeps evolving. The story has prompted reviewers to make positive comparisons with other author’s characters, such as of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Scout Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird, Robert McCammon’s Boy’s Life, Stephen King’s Stand By Me, William Saroyan’s work, and Spielberg-esque tales like Super 8, Stranger Things and the like.
What ’s the main reason someone should read this book?
The reasons cross generational lines. Parents and grandparents will find themselves pulled back to their growing-up days, old friends, adventure, and the times when they began to question how adults looked at the world. But the older generations never really explained unfairness, and for young people, those moments present the creative roads to change.
For kids, teenagers, and younger adults, there’s the allure of an adventure, and a different kind of coming-of-age story that speaks to them. Stories are often the medium with the most staying power to shape one’s perspective on the world, free of a hundred other distractions that make it difficult to see a path forward. In a story, a young person gets a more layered look at the world the last two generations are handing over—the good and the not so good.
What motivates me, you ask?
I finished the book in the middle of a life-threatening bout with cancer from which I’m still recovering. I’m all about writing positive, inclusive, life-affirming stories, and am happy when readers see my work as a gift to be shared and enjoyed, one that asks questions, and one that brings people closer together. Relationships, finding yourself, and where to draw the line are always in the mix.
As for what is most difficult about being a writer?
More than I could say in a paragraph or two! It’s the most difficult, challenging work I’ve ever done.