Nicole Kornher-Stace on platonic friendships in new release Firebreak

Firebreak is a stunning new release from author Nicole Kornher-Stace. This novel will keep readers on the edge of their seats and totally immersed in a bleak future – one that isn’t all too different than the direction our society appears to be headed in. On the surface, this novel is a fun read that follows likable characters on a journey that involves friendships and serious corruption. If readers dig a little deeper and they will discover beautiful LGBTQIA+ representation.

All too often the “A/+” portion of the LGBTQIA+ community gets left out or looked over. In books and media, it’s absolutely no different. When stories are aimed at readers who are children the books are focused on building friendships or cool adventures and romance is normally left out. Aside from Princess stories where the “you need a handsome Prince” trope runs rampant.

When children reach the age where they are considered teenagers or young adults, romance is pushed or glorified at every corner. Firebreak is a very refreshing break from this forced narrative and this novel shows solid friendships and Aromantic/Asexual identities are valid and wonderful.

Firebreak author Nicole Kornher-Stace on representation, pandemic publishing and more.

Culturess got the opportunity to talk to Nicole Kornher-Stace about everything that went into the making of Firebreak. (The interview below has been edited for clarity and length.)

Culturess: How has the pandemic affected the process of creating and publishing Firebreak?

Nicole Kornher-Stace: The publishing process with Firebreak has been weird in general because Simon and Schuster has undergone a bunch of changes recently. Even pre-pandemic it was weird because my editor was let go, so honestly, there was just a lot going on.

Firebreak got pushed back by about a year, which may have had something to do with the pandemic. My sense of time right now is quite frazzled, so I can’t remember if I was told that before or after the pandemic had started. It was supposed to come out last summer, which in hindsight it’s probably good it didn’t.

When it comes to the pandemic the biggest changes are about promo, everything is now remote. This is my first major book deal with a major publisher, I’m used to publishing through indie presses. I was thinking, “Well I’m going to have to go on a book tour, what is this going to be like with my child, I have so much to figure out,” but then none of that happened

. In a way that was reassuring because logistically it would have been hard because I homeschool my kid. Overall the pandemic has certainly sucked, but having everything remote was actually quite nice for me.

Culturess: When it comes to your novel dystopian theme in particular, did you take any inspiration from our modern-day society?

Kornher-Stace: Subconsciously absolutely, everything! I absorb things and get angry about them, and then they glue themselves together and become a book.

While it is a dystopia, I wanted to write more realistic, nothing extremely over the top like you see is classic dystopian content. I wanted this to be something that is a scarily easy extrapolation from what we have now where you have corporations consolidating. Like you went from saying big 5 publishers to now big 4 publishers, which are all owned by certain companies. Firebreak takes place in 2034 and in this future, I envisioned 2 companies have bought and are now in control of everything. Now they are at literal war with each other because they are the government. You also have other things going on in this future like climate change.

A lot of this takes place in the northeast of the United States where a lot of the coastlines are completely submerged. What is left of the United States was divided among these two corporations and they’ve built giant cities to house all the displaced people who lost their homes underwater. Each city is owned by a corporation except for one and they are both fighting over it. This city was built on top of a town that used to exist which now is just refugee housing for everyone displaced by this war. The people in this place are forced to scrape together whatever they can to survive, the protagonist has 4 jobs and she does whatever she can to get by. She streams a video game and that is her main source of income.

I feel like I am drawing from a lot of things happening now. Ever since the book has become available for people to review, people will send me links to articles about things happening in our country like “Hey, this is just like your book!”

Culturess: I took the opportunity to go read your frequently asked questions about Firebreak, and I see that Mal is Aromantic and Asexual! You also speak a lot about the importance of platonic friendships on Twitter.

As a member of the LGBTQIA+ community myself, I simply love this representation, it made me happy. I have some amazing friends that I would go to the ends of the earth for and it was the same way growing up, but because I’m pansexual people have always loved to try and “read between the lines” when it comes to my very platonic friendships. It also irks me so much to any content force friends to turn romantic even when it makes no sense. Would you like to discuss this at all in relation to Firebreak? 

Kornher-Stace: Yes, absolutely! Platonic friendships are something I yell about a lot on Twitter because it’s so infuriating. For me personally, it took well into adulthood until I realized that being aromantic and asexual was even a thing. Then I was like, well now my teenage years make so much more sense.

One thing I wanted to touch upon with Mal and bring into focus is that apart from being aromantic and asexual she also has a platonic fandom crush. I want to give that space in a way that it took her seriously and didn’t make her into the butt of a joke. Like, “oh you’re ridiculous, you’re desperate, this person you’re platonically crushing on may or may not even exist. as far as you’re concerned and you’re obsessed with them why?”

Some people reading just didn’t understand that, because they thought if she doesn’t like them sexually or romantic, then what is her motive? You mean being interested in them platonically and wanting to be friends and just be in their sphere of existence isn’t motive enough? That is exactly why we need more representation for aro/ace people but also just for people that value friendships.

I wanted Mal to be aromantic and asexual because I am and I tend to write things that I want to take back in time and hit teenage/young adult me with upside the head with like, “HEY, this is YOU.” Since I can’t go back in time, I’m trying to make books that people can find and resonate with now. Maybe they need to know it’s a possibility or may they don’t need explanations they just think it’s cool to have the representation out in the world.

I wanted Mal to be aromantic and asexual, and something I do that I typically tell people ahead of time, this isn’t a policy it just keeps happening this way, the words aromantic and asexual don’t appear in the book. They are organically baked into her person. You can see from looking at her actions that her platonic crush on essentially this NPC in a game she streams is a catalyst event for everything that happens in the plot. None of this would happen if she wasn’t so invested in this character, platonically. Even her friend sticks up for her on stream, like this isn’t what you are all thinking, mind your business.

On a serious note, the book that people think of as my debut book, because it was the first book people heard of from me was a release in 2015 called Archivist Wasp. When I wrote this book and tried to publish it I was getting serious pushback. Several people told me that because there was no romance teens wouldn’t have anything to relate to in it. It’s a book about ride-or-die friendships. People even gave me conditional offers, revise and resubmit with a romance. As much as I wanted an agent and needed representation, I had to stick to my guns on that because it was the whole point of the book. It’s about a friendship with the gravity and weight of a romance but it doesn’t turn into one. There is no “will they, won’t they” or any sexual tension or even any discussion on if they should or shouldn’t get together.

Eventually, I did find a great home for this book and when it was released it got overwhelming reader feedback. People told me how they never read a book that was such a good representation of all the relationships they have. Readers had never seen anything like this book before because there is a serious lack of representation. It upset me a lot because other aro/ace authors and even just authors who want to write friendships have reached out to me and asked how in the world I got something like this published because nobody will even touch their book because it doesn’t contain romance.

Culturess: It’s absolutely heartbreaking people are asking you and others to change your genuine feelings and write romance into somewhere that it just doesn’t belong. It’s difficult to hear people are just totally getting invalidated in that way.

Kornher-Stace: Yes it’s really hard. Now one of the things I am trying to do is clear a path for other writers who are trying to do the same thing. People keep sending me excerpts of these rejection letters saying they need to add a romance or a love triangle and it’s just infuriating.

Let these people tell the stories they want to tell and let them express their feelings in a way that is genuine to them. I already have my foot in the door just a tiny bit so now we need more and more books so others can be like, “well this book sold!” So this is why I just yell and yell on Twitter about this. It’s so frustrating.

Culturess: Do you have anything else you are working [right now] on that you want readers to know about?

Kornher-Stace: Yes, I have a middle-grade book coming out in July. I went from having no books be released since 2018 to 2 books come out nearly on top of each other! I wrote this book for my kid, the protagonist is 11 and he was 11 when I wrote it. This main character has anxiety, and I was tired of seeing anxiety being depicted in fiction as the shy kid because it’s so much more than that.

My kid is the most people person in my household, there is nothing shy about him. If he is anxious about something he will get irritable and hyper-focused, among other things most of which just aren’t depicted as anxiety. It took me a long time to even realize what was happening because the media paints a totally different picture.

Culturess: What is the name of this book?

Kornher-Stace: Jillian vs. Parasite Planet!

Nicole Kornher-Stace talks about the importance of platonic friendships and asexual/aromantic representation in her new release Firebreak.

After talking with Nicole Kornher-Stace about Firebreak a few things were glaringly obvious. Books need way more aro/ace representation and more kick-ass platonic friendships. However, a bigger issue seems to be within the industry as a whole. So often adults tell children/teenagers to focus on themselves and being young, yet it seems some of those same people are pushing romance narratives on the same audience.

Another issue is the talk of discrimination as well, if agents and publishers are blocking books written by (and for) the aro/ace community they are also invalidating an identity and that is extremely wrong. Fortunately, readers have books like Archivist Wasp and Firebreak from Nicole Kornher-Stace who is a wonderful trailblazing aro/ace author.

With June being Pride month, this is the perfect time to go support the LGBTQIA+ community, and what better place to start than with Firebreak! By buying this book readers are supporting the LGBTQIA+ community by supporting an aro/ace author but also showing the Industry that the aro/ace community is valid and loved. Supporting books like Firebreak will show there is a place for solid friendships in the young adult category.

Firebreak is a fun and thrilling read that is an absolute must-have in 2021. Nicole Kornher-Stace also told Culturess she loves seeing her books in the wild, so when you pick up a copy (and you must!) be sure to share photos and tag her on Twitter!