Lance Rubin’s hilarious Denton Little’s Deathdate splashed onto the scene last year with the tease of a sequel. We’ve got an exclusive look at the cover of Denton Little’s Still Not Dead, along with a giveaway and a Q&A with Lance Rubin himself!
You only live once, unless you’re Denton Little. Having lived through his deathdate, Denton is now being chased by the Death Investigation Agency, unsure of when he could die, and unable to see his family ever again. Cheating death isn’t quite as awesome as Denton thought…
Denton Little’s Deathdate will release with a snazzy new paperback cover to match the new book. Denton Little’s Still Not Dead releases from Knopf Books for Young Readers on February 7 2017.
To celebrate, Lance Rubin stopped by to answer a few questions – and to give away an exclusive signed ARC of Denton Little’s Still Not Dead! Read his answers and scroll down to enter the giveaway.
Denton Little’s Still Not Dead picks up where Denton Little’s Deathdate left off. What can fans expect?
For starters, fans can expect answers to all the big questions from the first book. (I won’t say all those questions here because I don’t want to get too spoilery for those who haven’t read Deathdate yet, but just imagine all the questions you have and now imagine them being answered. That’s what this book is.) Whereas the first book dealt with death, this book very much deals with life. It has the same humor and heart as the first one, but woven into a very different story. As readers may remember, Denton’s best friend Paolo has a deathdate twenty-six days after his, so their friendship is a huge part of this book.
Also, I took a page from the “Home Alone” playbook and set this sequel in New York City. There’s no pigeon lady, though.
How has life changed for the still-not-dead Denton?
Oh man, Denton’s life has been completely flipped upside-down. He’s in a big city he doesn’t know well, he’s on the run from the DIA (Death Investigation Agency), and, oh right, he can never see his parents again. Not to mention he was fully expecting to be dead by now, so it’s a shock to have a life at all. Even though he’s grateful to be breathing, his new life is not one he understands or even really enjoys, and that’s confusing.
Will we be meeting new characters, or is the cast all the same?
The cast is about 80% the same, 20% new. Denton is back (obviously), along with other favorites including Paolo, Millie, and Veronica (Denton’s sometimes-love-interest, who also happens to be Paolo’s older sister). New characters include a couple of allies for Denton, who may not actually be allies. And Buzz Lightyear makes a cameo.
How long did the new book take you to draft? What’s different about writing a sequel from writing your first novel?
Unlike Denton Little’s Deathdate, this one was written under contract, so it definitely felt a little more pressure-cooker, which was terrifying but also helpful. I wrote the first draft in eight months, then did a few sets of rewrites over the course of eight months, after which it was pretty much done. Compare that to the first Denton, which was fourteen months of first-drafting followed by twenty months of rewriting to get to that same point, (so more than twice as long a process as this book), and you can get a sense of why, at times, it felt pretty nuts.
The wonderful part of writing this sequel was already knowing and understanding so many of the main characters going into it. The less wonderful part was having to wrap up all the ridiculous loose plot threads I’d thrown out there in the first book. So much of writing the first one was being like, “Well, I’ll figure out exactly what that means when I get to the second one.” And then I got there and was like, “Ohmigod, why did I write it like this?” I spent many hours cursing Past Me.
What else do you want people to know about Denton Little’s Still Not Dead?
I’m just truly excited for people to read it. My intention was for it to be a fun, funny, exciting, weird, moving book that honors Denton Little’s Deathdate while being fully and completely its own thing, and hopefully you will find that is the case.
Want to be one of the first people to read Denton Little’s Still Not Dead? Fill out the form below to win an advanced copy of Denton Little’s Still Not Dead by Lance Rubin. Giveaway prizes donated by Lance Rubin. Open internationally. Void where prohibited.
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