Meg Charlton, Voyagers

Brett sits down with debut author Meg Charlton to discuss her timely book, Voyagers. They talk about childhood friends and the life events that bond us, choosing character perspective, the human capacity to normalize extraordinary events, writing an ambiguous ending, an alien named Allen, and perhaps the most unique (?) self help book you'll ever hear.

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https://megcharlton.com/

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Transcript

Brett Benner 0:00

Hey everybody, it's Bret Benner, and welcome back to another episode of Behind the Stack, where today I am sitting down with debut author Meg Charlton for her new book, Voyagers. I absolutely loved this thing, and it is such a book that is going to cause conversations to happen. It would be an incredible book for a book club because of that. But let me tell you a little bit about Meg. Meg's work has appeared in The Yale Review, Slate, Luxe, Atlas Obscura, and Vice, and the anthology Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us. Her writing has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference and covered in IndieWire, Above the Law, and Australian National Radio's Future Tense. She holds an MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College and teaches at Sackett Street Writers. She's also the co-author of the Substack Self Helpings. She lives in New York City. So I hope you enjoy this episode of Behind the Stack Welcome back to another episode where I am thrilled to be sitting down with Meg Charlton. We have already had a morning. It's been wonderful, 'cause I started this and realized I didn't record, and she was giving us all the deets. We're here to talk about her wonderful book, Voyagers, which is just a phenomenal debut. I am so thrilled you're here, so-

Meg Charlton 1:30

Thank you so much for having me, Brad. I'm so delighted

Brett Benner 1:32

Okay, this is what I wanted to start with when we originally started, which is to say to you, you probably know this, she's probably told you, but it was so funny because I was interviewing Natalie Adler, and we got to the end, and we were just chatting together, and she said, "Can I give a shout-out to s- a book that's so wonderful?" And I said, "Sure." And she said, "It's my friend Meg Charlton, and she's coming out with Voyagers." And I was like, "One second." And I literally had it right behind me, and I turned around, and she was like, "Yes, that's the book. That's the book." But anyway, I just had to say that to you when we started.

Meg Charlton 2:02

No, I love that, and I was so delighted to see that you had Natalie on. Her interview is so wonderful. Anyone listening to this who has not listened to Natalie's interview, go back and listen to it, and also pick up her phenomenal book, Waiting On A Friend, which I have read in every version from its earliest workshop, and I feel so lucky that everyone else in the world gets to read it now too. It's wonderful.

Brett Benner 2:25

Yeah, it's awesome. All right, so back to you. What I was saying when we started originally was you had your MFA in, in writing from, from Brooklyn College, but there's very little about you, you know, on the internet, as one can dig, which good for you and your privacy and your stamp. However, I just was so curious, has writing always been your thing, or when did that start to come to fruition for you?

Meg Charlton 2:47

Yeah. So I grew up in this very literary family. My parents ran a kind of two-person book packaging business out of our apartment. When I was a little kid, like, sometimes I would answer the phone for them. I later had, like- receptionist jobs, and I would always joke that that was my first receptionist job. And so they would do books that, you know, were kind of pre-internet books. Like, they would do a list of, like, a baby name book that was just- Mm a list of names. And they did a wedding planning book that was, like, mostly blank, which my- father had this great phrase for books like that, which was that they were, quote-unquote "uncluttered by text"- which is just a wonderful euphemism for as few words as possible. They also did a book, which was actually, like, their most successful book and kind of an inspiration for some of the experiences that Anna and Alex have in Voyagers, called Knitting With Dog Hair. Which was literally about how to make a sweater out of your dog's, like, shed fur.

Brett Benner 3:52

It's so weird that wasn't a bestseller

Meg Charlton 3:54

Well, the subtitle was Better A Sweater From A Dog You Know And Love Than A Sheep You'll Never Meet. Um, this is an actual book. It was reissued, if you can believe it, for a 30th anniversary edition a couple years ago, and it was, like, joked about on- Leno, and I, like, went with my parents on Japanese television to, like, brush our dog, you know, when I was, like, five or six years old. Like it, this-- And you know, my dad took all the photos for the book, and like, my mom and I are modeling in the book. So it was this very, like, sort of wonderful, slightly kooky way to grow up. There was kind of like a Glass

Brett Benner 4:35

family quality to it.

Meg Charlton 4:36

And so it was a, it was a family that I grew up in that really valued words, and- Mm you know, I grew up, like, literally the kinda kid who would read the dictionary. And that being said, I then kind of turned away from, not from writing, but I thought I wanted to do a really different kind of writing. I was really interested in film. I was always a big sort of cinephile growing up, and then worked in film for most of my career, ultimately working a lot in news and documentary. I worked at places like Vice and the Today Show, and I was the producer out there, in the field sitting next to the camera, like nodding and trying to get someone to tell their story on, on national television or on YouTube or whatever. And it was, I think, one of the best jobs you can have as an aspiring writer, is to just have a job- Yeah where you have to listen to real people talk, and where you- Mm get to have this incredible superpower of being able to, cold call somebody and have them, talk to you in this very intimate, moving way about some of the most profound experiences of their life. I've been there, like, for the birth of people's children, and it's a really remarkable thing to do. But I wanted to write sort of on the side as, as I was doing all this, as I was working in, like, TV shows and at a film studio and all this stuff, and I would sort of write little short stories on the side. And then finally in 2019, I'd already sort of had the idea for "Voyagers" and started working on it the prior year, I would say, and then applied to the Bread Loaf Writing Conference and went that summer. And I was so lit up when I came home. I just- Mm it felt so incredible to be taken seriously as a writer, to be in this community of people who all cared so much about writing and who all wanted to, like, read each other's work and talk about it, and talk about books, and talk about, like the, fixing the fiddly little problems in some sentence in a story were so exciting to me. And I really wanted to find a community like that. And so I applied to MFAs. I got in, like, the week New York City shut down, and made the kind of crazy decision to go. Because even though my parents had worked in publishing, or perhaps because they had worked in publishing, they were kind of like, "Are you sure you wanna do an MFA?

Brett Benner 6:59

Are you sure- Yeah, yeah, yeah that's a

Meg Charlton 7:00

good idea?" And I just decided, like, leap and the net will appear, and thank God it did.

Brett Benner 7:06

Wow. Wow. All right. So before we go any further, can you give a, like, a, a elevator pitch of Voyagers?

Meg Charlton 7:14

Yes. So, Voyagers follows Alex and Anna. It's really from Alex's perspective. And when they were six years old back in 1997, they meet on vacation and go missing for 36 hours. And when they return, the story they tell is kind of interpreted by the adults around them as an alien abduction. And in this kind of like late '90s X Files media environment, they become these little kind of celebrities, these little child stars. And their families are very different. They have very different reactions to their children's experience, to their children's fame or infamy as it were. But Alex and Anna remain really bonded by this experience. However, when they get into their teenage years, they start to grow apart in large part because they begin to have kind of divergent relationships to this experience, and divergent beliefs about the truth of what happened to them, and if that truth is kind of discoverable, if it matters. They have this falling out, and then they reconnect in their kind of early to mid-30s when it seems like we maybe are going to make alien contact sort of, quote unquote, "for real" when there is this signal detected at the edge of the solar system, and Alex sees Anna on TV as kind of like a talking head talking about UFOs and, and abduction. She's become sort of an experiencer advocate, which is somebody who like helps people process their contact experiences. And he reaches back out to her, and they decide to see each other again kind of at this moment of maximum chaos as the world kind of grapples with what might be coming.

Brett Benner 8:58

So good. It's so funny because I was like this couldn't be dropping at the, at the most apropos time. I mean, like space and aliens and all of this stuff is having such a moment. I mean, not only just with like this summer, just literary book like the new Stephen Raley, Take Me With You, and The Radiant Dark by Alexandra Livia, but also Disclosure Day. So this couldn't be coming out at a better time. You said you started it a few years ago, so what was it for you? What, what was the impetus for this idea?

Meg Charlton 9:23

It was actually part of my job at Vice that made me first think of this idea. I had gone down to Roswell, um, for the UFO convention as like my very first field shoot that they sent me on. Oh. And I was so fascinated By the culture at this festival, and I couldn't stop thinking about, like, what it would've been like to grow up in that world- Mm the same way that, like, someone might grow up in a religion. Like, what if that was kind of your normal? What if that was just what was around you all the time? And so I came home and I started reading more about ufology, and I ended up reading this book called Abduction by John Mack, and he was the head of the psychiatry department at Harvard Med School, and he ended up making a study of people who had had alien contact experiences. And he wrote this book, Abduction, which is kind of a, a compilation of case studies, and I was so moved by it because he really journeys quite openly from, like, s- beginning the project with quite, as he admits, you know, quite a lot of skepticism, to a really interesting kind of belief where he kind of comes to the conclusion that, as he puts it, very reluctantly came to the conclusion that the people he was speaking with, you know, what they were describing was real, but perhaps not in the way that we typically understand reality. That, like-

Brett Benner 10:53

Mm

Meg Charlton 10:53

they were describing experiences that kind of crossed this blurry line between, like, the kind of psychic and material worlds., And that really echoed this, Carl Jung book. Carl Jung was very interested in UFOs and wrote a book about the phenomenon. But I was so moved by this idea that there are people who have these experiences, and all they have is their own memories of them, that they might have some kind of evidence on their bodies, some sort of circumstantial evidence that something had to them, but at the end of the day, all they have is kind of the eyewitness testimony of their own mind, and it seemed like such a powerful, profound, and, like, quite universal metaphor for what it means to, like, grapple with the gaps in our own memories. That, you know, we all have things we remember differently from, like, our parents or our siblings or our friends or our partners and, like, we aren't usually called to account for them in the way- Mm that a UFO experiencer is. But it's so easy, if we were, to see how there would be gaps and doubts and things that, you know, we would have to ultimately decide whose version of events to trust, like our own or somebody else's. And so it seemed just like a really powerful place to explore through character as a novelist these questions about belief and memory and narrative and what it means to sort of have a narrative imposed on your life, and how you can have sort of all the facts of a situation and yet still somehow, like, read it wrong, and that was really, really interesting to me.

Brett Benner 12:31

That sounds like a metaphor of our entire country right now.

Meg Charlton 12:33

I know.

Brett Benner 12:36

Okay, so you have- Anna and Alex, I'd read that you originally had thought of them when you started as being twins.

Meg Charlton 12:44

Yes. Yes. I mean, this book has gone through so many versions. There was a version with, like, an omniscient narrator. There was a version where the two of them would alternate narration. And so I really, like, chipped away at kind of all of the possible ways into this story, including having them be twins. And then I realized, like, fundamentally, it was just more interesting and richer if they were friends. And then once I- Hmm realized, like, I sort of don't say decided, I say more realized, which sounds very woo woo, but I sort of understood that they had to be friends, and then suddenly the whole book unlocked. Because I think that this book is also about, like, sibling relationships, but sibling relationships to me are really more constant. They're not relationships of choice in the same way. Yeah. Like, your sibling is always your sibling, no matter if you haven't spoken to each other in 15 years. But, like, is a friend still your friend if you haven't spoken in 15 years? And kind of like the ambiguity and the volition of that relationship was so much more interesting. And yeah, the whole book really unlocked once I realized that they were always meant to be best friends as opposed to twins.

Brett Benner 14:00

And what made his voice stand out more, or the thread to say this is actually the direction versus her? I mean, I'm just curious. I think I probably have an idea, but also I'm curious the decision to make him gay.

Meg Charlton 14:13

Yeah, I mean, it's funny. The, to answer the second question first, like, that never felt like a decision. It just felt like who he was, like, fundamentally. Mm,

Brett Benner 14:21

interesting.

Meg Charlton 14:22

Like, just that was this character from the earliest little kernel of this story. And I think also, like, you know, the kind of, the trope of, like, a straight woman and a gay man being friends is, like, very common, but I also wanted to, like, take that relationship really seriously and really write about their dynamic and their friendship and not, um... I don't know. It just, it was so clear to me from the very beginning that Alex was gay, and it was just a part of who he, who he was. I don't... I, it's, it's, it's funny. Like, I feel like so often in writing, these choices aren't choices, but rather, like, discoveries, and I think that was sort of the origin for that. But then I think that, the decision to settle on Alex's POV, he's a much more introspective person than Anna. Hmm. He's someone who reflects on his life with more, sometimes to a fault, like rumination. Um, and I think that I also wanted to write a story about perspective, and I realized that if I had another person who was able to say what she thought happened or if I had an omniscient narrator who was able to say what really happened, it would start to feel like withholding. It would start to feel like somebody sort of wasn't telling the reader something. And if I wanted to write about Alex or anybody trying to understand their own memory and come to sort of trust themselves, it was sort of a necessity to have the story be from a single POV, that if it moved amongst POVs, it would kind of destroy that trust on some level with the reader. I don't know if that answers your question.

Brett Benner 16:11

It does, because it makes sense to me, but it also creates a, a, a inherent tension because you're seeing things from Alex's perspective And again, when we're talking about the idea, like you said before, of memory and what i- what are people's memories and, and a memory of an experience. So you, you are really dropped in with him in terms of trying to come to this understanding and fundamentally what actually had taken place. Um, so yes, it does in terms of a narrative drive, 100%. All of that makes sense. I love that you described them, you said, "They both used to live lifes- life as the sole child in a world full of adults." Alex says, "We were both used to being talked about, but not to. We were both used to being lonely." Oh, and that was so, um, kind of haunting and, and, and like cut deep in a way. I'm so curious, are you an only child?

Meg Charlton 17:07

No. So I have a, a family structure in some ways similar to Alex. Um-

Brett Benner 17:12

Okay

Meg Charlton 17:13

I have half siblings who are, like, 19 to 22 years older than me, who I'm extremely close with- Mm but who grew up in, like, a totally different, you know, family, both sort of literally and figuratively than, than I did. Um, and I think that, I was interested in, in sort of the shades of loneliness that different kind of family structures can breed, you know? I think that-

Brett Benner 17:41

Yeah

Meg Charlton 17:41

every birth position carries a different kind of loneliness. That, like, the middle child is lonely, the eldest child is lonely. But I think that I wanted to write about, in some ways, like, the position that I grew up in kind of as like a blend of Alex and Anna, sort of both an only and a youngest. Um, and kind of the slightly, like, participant observer perspective that that tends to breed. Uh, and I think that to also answer your question about Alex, and his, his queerness, part of it was also that as I started to write him more and write his family more, I was like, "This is a character who experiences a lot of kinds of difference from his family of origin" That, this kind of preppy early aughts New York that I grew up in in many ways was, like, not a very welcoming place. Um, even though I grew up in the West Village, which is, at the, at the time, no longer was a very queer neighborhood, I went to a prep school uptown where one person coming out was, like, a huge deal. And so I also thought a lot about Alex's kind of loneliness in that experience, going through that kind of a school, that kind of environment, and how his alien abduction experience, um, you know, his loss of his eye, like all of these things would sort of compound in some ways this feeling of seeing this world at a, an ever so slightly removed from the rest, how the rest of his family had experienced it.

Brett Benner 19:09

It's interesting too, because just, and back to the gay thing, I also think it sets up, it's actually a great thing for this relationship because there's no question of, oh, is this going to be a romantic thing? Is this going to lean into something like that? So it really is fundamentally these two people who have this incredibly tight bond, and I- it's like I know for myself, I think for so many people, you remember those people that you were young with at some very critical juncture in your life, whether it's as children growing up or certainly I have dear friends who I remember just from high school- who you were so bonded with and went through so, such fundamental experiences that whether it was life changes or parents getting divorced or something like that, that are kind of seared into you and stick with you for so many years. And also those friends that, like you talked about, you don't speak for 10 years, but the beauty of picking up a phone and hearing that person's voice and suddenly falling into this rhythm that you have with them, and you say, you know, "Wow, it's like we were just talking yesterday," or, "It's like we just saw each other." And those, to me, like Alex and, and Anna are the gift, they're the gift relationships. They're the ones that are, you know, so special. I, I love this quote in the book that it says, um, you know, someone says, "Oh, we're just friends." And Alex says, "The phrase 'just friends' has always bothered me. It's so diminishing, as if friendship were a consolation or a reminder, inherently lesser than a romantic relationship. A friendship, in my experience, is never just anything. It contains as many multitudes as the people who make it up. It certainly did for me and Anna." I just love that so much.

Meg Charlton 20:47

No, I mean, yeah. That was, I think, something that was so important to me writing the book, and I think I really, I did want there to be kind of like no question that they were going to, like, quote-unquote, "get together." That was not what I was interested in writing about because I thought that friendship, like I wrote, I guess, contained these multitudes, contained so much. Yeah. And it's kind of our relationship that is the least defined by obligation or social code. It is a relationship which is purely based on, the joy it brings the people in it. It is not something that has any kind of, legal or biological basis. This is just pure choice. And I think that it also is both so delicate and incredibly durable. Like, friendship- Mm can last. Like you said, you cannot speak to someone for 10 years and then suddenly, you're right back in it like no time has passed. And it's hard to think of another relationship that has that sort of elasticity, and it's so powerful and, I think, really important, and I, I love friendship. I think it's an endlessly fascinating relationship and topic. And yeah, I really believe what I wrote there. Like, I don't think that it should sort of be relegated to, just friends. I think that friendship can kind of bleed into the boundaries of so many other kinds of relationships and still be considered a friendship, and I thought that was such an interesting thing to explore.

Brett Benner 22:15

Yeah, and you also do it with such a great nuance too because there, there is this moment that's talked about, and this is not a spoiler, where they kiss, where it becomes this moment of, "Is this something more?" And I remember these moments as well because as you try to define what it is between you and this other person, and, and you know, I think there's plenty... Straight people go through this too, right? Especially with guys and girls who are, and girls and girls, and guys and guys. It just happens where it's like, "I love you, and I have these feelings for you, and what does this exactly mean? What is the whole encapsulation of it and the, and the scope of it," right? And, and I think you capture it so well of kind of like- Both the confusion and also the understanding of go, "Okay, it may not be this, but it is this certainly, and I have these intense feelings for you that are boundless in some ways."

Meg Charlton 23:12

Yeah. Like, I was so interested in sort of like the erotic edges of friendship. Kind of what does it mean to have, like you said, this intensity of a connection with someone that maybe, again, sort of in this like societal conception of what a friend is- Yeah like, goes beyond the edge of that. And yet, like you and this other person know in your heart, like this isn't a sexual or romantic relationship, and yet it kind of transcends the borders of what we might kind of, again, in this very like sanitized version of what people call a friendship, might sort of seem like, quote-unquote, more than that. But like it, it isn't and it is. And I think that Alex and Anna, their exploration of that just felt very, like normal and honest and sort of like what would really happen with these two people who had these intense feelings for each other, who were trying to figure out how to express them, who were exploring, their sexuality and like this just seemed like the cultural script to follow. Like, that sort of is what we tell people to do when- Right they have this, like, boundless, intense affection for each other. It's like, "Kiss," you know? And like- Right. so they do. They, they heed the call. But like that's not what their relationship is, and yet it was the way that they found to express it in that moment.

Brett Benner 24:30

Yeah. I mean, we know none of us have like a, a guidebook for understanding intimacy, right? Or what is intimacy, especially at a young age, and understanding that there is a form. And intimacy doesn't... This doesn't mean sexuality necessarily. It just means that closeness. And especially when there's such an experience like they have that would kind of sear them as young kids. One of the other things you tackle on this is kind of the media's reaction to the event and how it affects both of these kids, and it's so spot on. And also how the media kind of begins to shape the narrative and, glom onto something that is digestible for people and will also propel the narrative and make the media relevant. Very much what we see today so much. But it... What's, what's cool about it is it's almost like you're taking a modern eye on something that always existed, but now we understand- Yeah what's actually going on, if that makes sense, and how they're manipulating.

Meg Charlton 25:26

Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of that was honestly born out of working in the media myself. Like, I saw what it was to speak to someone for two hours and then cut it down into, like, a 10-minute segment in which- Yeah their interview would occupy three minutes or less of screen time. And how not through any malice by the producers or the writers, but, like, how flattening that could be, and how it could winnow someone's story down, and manipulate it in a certain way to a version of events that fit the story that- Mm that segment was trying to tell. And so I was really interested in exploring that experience kind of from the inside out, and thinking about how some of these people who I interviewed would experience someone telling the story about their own life and kind of fixing it like a butterfly with a pin, and holding it down into a certain version of itself that was not entirely honest to how they experienced it. And so yeah, that sort of... And in addition to my sort of fascination with conspiracy theories and how sort of those sorts of narratives can shape real events, I was really interested in just sort of the lived experience of fame, I guess-

Brett Benner 26:45

Right is

Meg Charlton 26:45

maybe the best way to put it.

Brett Benner 26:47

And it's also, you know, some of that lived experience really comes through, not even the kids, but how the parents react to it and how the families react to it. Yes. And that I thought was so horrifying and right on, especially for Anna's mom, who- Yes wholeheartedly embraces this because she's a woman who probably has felt, I, you know- kind of success lapped her, and she wanted something more and wanted to be visible more, and this is the opportunity to use her daughter to kind of pull herself into the light, so to speak. I mean, the limelight when I say the light. Yeah. Not the beam of light.

Meg Charlton 27:23

No, definitely the limelight. You know, when we were talking before about m- sort of when they were originally siblings, originally Cindy was like both of their moms. Oh, yeah. You're right so they were both Cindy's kids, and I think that it's telling that, like, from the earliest conception of this story, like, Cindy was present. Cindy was a- Yeah character who I loved writing, in part because it was so much fun to write somebody who was so, kind of sociopathically practical, like who- Mm really just was like, "How do I get what I need to survive? And I'm not gonna think too much about, like, the sort of ethics of it. I'm not gonna think too much about how it might impact other people because I'm just gonna assume that it's gonna turn out great for everybody involved- Right because it's gonna turn out great for me." And there was a kind of like benign sociology to, to Cindy's worldview that I found really, really fun. And there's a moment in the book that I was actually, for whatever reason, just thinking about today, where they're at the re- you know, uh, spoiler alert, I guess Alex and Anna finally do reunite and they're at this retreat center, and we come into a moment- When we don't hear the, what the conversation had been previously, and we just hear Cindy say, "Well, in that case, do you have a boyfriend?" And in my mind, like, Cindy was, like, ready to set Anna and Alex up. She was like, "This is perfect. Like, they can get together." Yeah. "They're both single. Amazing." And Alex was like, "That's not gonna happen." Right. And then she's like, "Okay, onto the next." Like, immediately trying to find, like, the next angle she can play and kind of not worrying about too mu- like, too much about, like, the lost angle she was going to play originally. And that character was just a joy to inhabit that consciousness, weirdo for

Brett Benner 29:05

so long. She was the original, she was the original, uh, Kris Kardashian.

Meg Charlton 29:08

Yes. For kids. Oh my God. I mean, yes. Like, it is not an accident that they had a reality show. She would've thrived on, like, Traitors or something, you know?

Brett Benner 29:17

Oh my God. Yeah, 100%. Yes, yes. I love that you just referenced The Traitors, so good. Okay. Two things. One is, so this signal starts, which kind of sets off so much of this chain of events, which you had talked about it when you talked about the premise of the novel, but I also loved all this because I found it fascinating the public's reaction to this signal and what it potentially meant, and what it meant for people if the idea of contact with aliens, and how it throws everything into hysterics. And this is not spoilers, but it ups the ante because GPS is failing, and there's certain things that have to be shut down because of this signal, and they're not sure what it is. But kind of this rampant uncertainty of what happens next. I loved how you did this, and I loved this- element of it which kind of is a menacing underscore to the whole thing, driving it forward.

Meg Charlton 30:11

Thank you. Yeah, I mean, the signal was something that was really born out of, in a lot of ways, like all of our experience of COVID, but also just the kind of incredible, like, human capacity for both panic and, clinging with white knuckles to normalcy. Like- Hmm that both of those impulses are so strong, and I was so interested in, like, exploring how people would freak out, and then how some people would, like, not freak out at all, even in the face of, like, mounting evidence that perhaps they should be. And those kind of twin impulses were things that I really wanted to look at. And I also was so interested in how quickly we sort of normalize and metabolize extraordinary things, like pandemics, like- Yep um, climate change, like, like AI agents, like these things that in another, like 30 years prior, 40 years prior, would've seemed like science fiction, how easily and rapidly human beings are just sort of like, "Well, this is normal, and actually now I'm just worried- about, like, how it's gonna affect my job interviews." Like it all suddenly comes back to the most microscopically personal concerns and these very, like, practical logistical concerns. And that kind of incredible, both admirable and horrifying ability that humans have to, like, make it all about us was something- Right. that I really wanted to look at in how it would relate to kind of the most extraordinary event that I could ever imagine, which is, contact with an actual alien intelligence, like literally- Yeah coming to Earth. And so that event kind of being put through that, like, algorithm of reactions was really exciting for me to explore and to think about all the different archetypes of different kinds of people and how they would react.

Brett Benner 32:08

Yeah. You described it as, and I loved this, living with the extraordinary and the awful at the same time, and I kept thinking of that while we were all watching, you know, you're watching what's happening in Gaza or s- for example, and we're watching- Yeah the space exploration happen, which was so incredible, and this duality happening at the same time. It's so true. All right, so we need to talk for a moment about Alan- Yes who is an alien character that Alex creates post-event, and these two kind of run with it, who is interspersed throughout the novel kind of his story. You can talk about him for a second. I'd love to.

Meg Charlton 32:43

Yeah. I mean, Alan was... Here's a little sort of behind the scenes. Alan was a discovery I made when I was in the MFA with Natalie. When we had our very first workshop- For my novel, for what was then Voyager, it was back in 2020, and everyone read it and they were like, "I don't believe they were ever abducted by aliens. Like, I don't buy it." And I was like, "How do I make this seem plausible? How do I show people that, you know, this is like a genuine mystery in their lives that they're encountering?" And somehow, Alan appeared as like the solution to this, as a way to kind of both show how close they were to create this kind of like shibboleth between the two of them, and also to kind of introduce this like magical element to the book, this kind of like comedic, fanciful element. Like I described it to somebody as kind of like Cabin in the Woods, where it's like Alan is in like a workplace comedy, alongside the events of the novel. And I also... alan occupied that position, but I also wanted to sort of think about how these imaginary characters concocted by two al- also imaginary people in this book could sort of play with ideas of reality and of what is real and what isn't, and sort of the line between like stories and truth. And also as a way to talk about human beings and Earth, and to think about occupying this outside alien perspective on things that we might think of as sort of unremarkable or sort of so natural that we wouldn't even comment on them, but like Alan would, you know? Mm. And I loved occupying the head space of this kind of weird, tender, like worker drone who is kind of infatuated with human beings, and that was such a fun spaced plan.

Brett Benner 34:41

Which is considered like a low job.

Meg Charlton 34:44

Oh, yeah. Oh my God, it's a terrible job. Like- Yeah. Alan, yeah, to be clear, let me give a summary. Like Alan works, he's the sort of an alien that Alex and Anna make up when they're kids, and he is a researcher at the Earth Studies Institute studying humans, which is considered like the worst job you can have. The hot job is the cetacean division, studying like dolphins. And in his species perception, like the Earth is mostly water, like that's where the action is, you know? Like you wanna be studying those aquatic species, and, uh, humans are seen as like the low-hanging fruit. There's so many of us, like they're... We're so kind of like easy to catch. Like it's just not seen as that interesting. And Alan ends up studying humans and, yeah, like I said, becoming sort of infatuated with them, like finding a great deal of joy and fascination in this species that the rest of his planet considers to be like incredibly overstudied and, and dull, and kind of a one-way path to like an unworkable career.

Brett Benner 35:49

Yeah. I'm so curious, without spoilers, I have to ask you, in writing this, because there is intentionally, there's a vagueness that exists towards the end of this, which is why this is, like, a great book for book clubs and discussions, 'cause everyone is gonna come at this with a different thing, right? But I'm so curious for you, in writing it, did you know or do you know what actually happened definitively in your mind? And without saying- I- you know, you're not giving it up or anything up, I'm just so curious.

Meg Charlton 36:21

No, I won't say anything. I do, but I really wanted it to be ambiguous. Like- Yeah Joan Lindsey, who wrote Picnic at Hanging Rock, like, famously- Mm-hmm did write an ending. Like, you can read it. There is an actual ending that's like, "This is what happened to the girls." But, like, she omitted it from, um, the original edition of the book, and I don't know actually if that was a decision by her or her editor, but, like, I, I think there's a lot of power in, like, knowing exactly what happened and then being like, "But I'm not gonna say it."

Brett Benner 36:54

Yeah,

Meg Charlton 36:55

sure. I think, you know, I, I wanted to leave it ambiguous for, for readers, but also, like, not completely ambiguous. Like, the worst case scenario for this book to me was ending it with just, like, "I guess we'll never know." Like, "I guess we'll never find out what really happened." You know, like, I needed to give some answer about what really happened. And, um, yeah, the absolute worst case was, like, if, if it ended with, like, complete ambiguity. I can't face Goodreads if that's how I end this book. Right. You know? Like, I can't do it.

Brett Benner 37:30

Right.

Meg Charlton 37:30

Never. And

Brett Benner 37:31

so- Never. You shouldn't anyway. Never. But no, never. Right. I know.

Meg Charlton 37:34

I know.

Brett Benner 37:35

Right.

Meg Charlton 37:35

But yeah. I was like, "I have to, I have to give something," but I wanted the ending to still have that feeling of mystery. Like, I still wanted, you know, the ultimate conclusion to feel kind of alien and, and trippy and uncertain. Like, I wanted, I wanted to retain the unknown, like the sort of, the U in UFO is the most interesting thing to me, like this idea of the unidentified. Um, and I wanted the ending to still maintain some of that kind of awe and, and wonder.

Brett Benner 38:10

Okay. Well, when we stop this, I'm gonna ask you point blank, 'cause I'm gonna tell you what I think and what my impression was, but I don't wanna give it up on this 'cause I don't wanna give anything away. And I'm not even gonna do, like, a spoiler section, if you wanna know, keep going. I don't wanna do that. So I'll wait till we're finished. This has been so fantastic. I'm so excited for you and your debut. Everybody, please go out and get the book. Buy independent if you're able to buy independent. Congratulations, and thank you again for being here today.

Meg Charlton 38:38

Oh, thank you, Brad. It was such a joy talking to you.

Brett Benner 38:41

Thank you again, Meg. And if you liked this episode or other episodes you've heard of Behind the Stack, please consider liking and subscribing so that you never miss an episode. And what would be really helpful to me is if you can go to your podcast platform of choice and give the show five stars. That way, more people will be able to find the show, and I can continue to bring you conversations like this one. I'll be back next week with another episode, but until then, you can always find me at Instagram, YouTube, and Substack at Brett's Book Stack. And as always, thanks for listening