Author Talks Inspiration, Characters and Humor in Joyfully Unhinged Novel

Hot Air by Marcy Dermansky

Marcy Dermansky is my favorite author this week! She makes me laugh, she makes me think, and I now am spending time wondering what preposterous thoughts are in other people’s minds (or even my own mind) that are not shared! In Hot Air, there is a first date, a bad kiss, a hot air balloon crash, a swinger swap, a swim in a pool (a Dermansky favorite), an unplanned trip to Disney and so much more! Just like in her previous novel Hurricane Girl, Marcy Dermansky has fun with her writing and I have fun reading it … I hope you will too!

Q & A with Marcy

Your style is so unique and different from other authors and I find it to be fresh, unapologetically honest and oh, so humorous!  

Thank you so much! I think if I tried to be humorous I would fail completely. Somehow, it just happens. Often when I am in conversation with people I don’t know well I will have to add to something I said that lands wrong, say, “That was a joke.”

When did you know you wanted to be a writer? 

It was the first thing I ever wanted to be and I never really figured out how to be anything else. In elementary school, I had a teacher who had us write and bind our own books. I still have them. She typed them for us and got frustrated that mine were too long. I wrote about elephants and goldfish.

What inspired you to write Hot Air? (I read it started as a short story generated from a writing prompt so if you are willing, I would love to know what the prompt was.)

It did start as a prompt! Basically, it was a hot air balloon crashes during a first date. I added the swimming pool. I thought it would be a short story but I shared it with my agent who thought it could be a novel. I didn’t want to, but a year later I wasn’t committed to any project so I decided to give it a go.

Do you create an outline before you begin and do you know what is going to happen or do you decide as you are writing?

No outline! I decide as I go and that way I am always surprising myself.

In Hot Air you gave 4 main characters names that start with J … why? 

It just came to me. First I had Joannie and Johnny and somehow when the hot air balloon landed in the pool, the couple inside it were Jonathan and Julia. There is no deeper significance except that it pleased me. That is what I love about writing, the random ideas that come as if from nowhere and please me. And sometimes, I genuinely believe there is a greater meaning that I don’t actually know at the time.

In both Hot Air and Hurricane Girl you created a character that enjoyed swimming in the pool. Is there a significance?

There is also a swimming pool central to the novel that came before that, Very Nice. I love to swim. Swimming, to me, is an essential part of being alive and sometimes I talk to new people who don’t swim and I have to try to make sense of it.

I think the things that are important to me — swimming, cats, turkey sandwiches — find their way into whatever I am writing.

Each character in Hot Air is flawed and has egregious thoughts and behaviors (cheating, stealing, taking advantage of others). It feels like we are learning what the characters are thinking in real-time, almost stream of consciousness, and we are able to hear their internal monologues. How did you come up with this way of writing? Could all these crazy thoughts and ideas we are given the opportunity to “hear” as readers be representative of humanity?  

This is it exactly. I think this is the reason why I so often hear that my characters are unlikeable. I don’t agree. I like them. (Maybe not Jonathan.) I can’t imagine what would happen if my thoughts were made public. I think so many inappropriate things that I would never say out loud. It’s the same for my characters. In my novels, I take my readers inside their heads. That’s what I maybe love most about writing — the interior monologue.

Hot Air felt cinematic to me. I felt like I was watching each scene and hearing a narrator speak thoughts concurrently. The pool, the bedroom, the kitchen, the car, the amusement park … each location was so vivid and rich. Do you have a favorite part of the book and why?

I don’t have a favorite part exactly.

The Vivian scenes (one of the few not J characters) came late in the writing and I love how her experience enriched the story.

I might be most proud of the scenes set at Universal Studios because I have actually never been. I quizzed a friend of my daughter for information about the amusement park and then I went online and looked at pictures in Google images for convincing details.

Do you laugh while you write? (Reading this outrageous story made me laugh out loud!)

I do laugh when I write. And I sometimes smile and chew on my hair. I used to write at this communal writing space in Manhattan and sometimes in the break room, other writers would describe faces I made while writing. I never appreciated that. Mostly these days I write at home. I have an office even.

Your storytelling style is more matter-of-fact and less emotional — almost voyeuristic. Is that flat/even tone how you are as a person or are you more dramatic and expressive?  

I think I said above that sometimes I make jokes and if I am with people who don’t know me, they don’t know I am joking. So, I guess my effect must be flat, but I don’t think of myself that way. 

So much of what you write makes perfect sense, (Julia wants a daughter, Joannie wants the lousy kiss to end, Lucy wants to go to Disney World, all the J’s want a sleepover) yet it manifests as a crazy story when everything is put into practice. Do you have a process for generating the ideas or is this just how your mind works?

Sadly, this is just how my mind works. There are times when lines of dialogue come to mind and my fingers can’t type fast enough to keep up.

How did you come up with Vivian’s character?

She came late in the process. It seemed like the billionaire characters needed assistance in order to exist. At first, she was only mentioned by name and as I revised she became more and more important. Vivian as a POV  didn’t come until the second draft.

Here is a favorite writing moment. My editor Jenny Jackson had asked for a twist and I was annoyed, because I thought I couldn’t come up with a twist, not in a million years, and then I thought of one while walking down the stairs so I had to go back upstairs and write it. The twist comes with Vivian.

I love that Modern Family snuck into the novel through her character — her identification of Lily, the Vietnamese adopted child. My daughter and I watched a lot of Modern Family together.

I saw on Instagram you are an artist as well. Can you tell me a bit about your artwork?

Thank you! I started to draw and paint with my daughter when she was little. I got bored watching her do art and so I started to make my own. I was surprised that they turned out well. Now, I love to post flower paintings. I get lovely comments, sometimes people write that my paintings make them happy. I send my paintings as gifts and sometimes, after I post them, someone might write, wanting to buy it. I have sold a bunch of paintings that way.

What do you like to read and what can you recommend?

I read a lot of contemporary fiction. I only read fiction. Recently, I loved The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas, A Gorgeous Excitement by Cynthia Weiner and The Guest by Emma Cline.

How can we keep up with you and what you are up to?

Social media is probably the best way. I update my website marcydermansky.com but not that frequently. I am on Instagram at @marcybdermansky and Bluesky at mdermansky.bsky.social.

And right now, if readers do fall in love with Hot Air, I’d be super grateful for them to tell their friends and post about it. And go crazy and read my earlier novels instead of waiting for the next one. I would love that.

This story appears through BookTrib’s partnership with Book Nation by Jen. It first appeared here.