Gregory Galloway: the whodunit may seem old hand, but with his debut novel, Gregory Galloway gives the form a 21st-century spin

Interview, March, 2005 by Carolyn Murnick

As Romeo, Juliet, and the cast of The O.C. could no doubt attest, few times in life are fraught with as much drama, angst, and self-discovery as adolescence. But fortunately for writer Gregory Galloway, such is the stuff good books are made of. His first novel, As Simple As Snow (out this month from G.P. Putnam's Sons), draws upon the 42-year-old's own recollections of his teenage years: "I remember that particular time as very complicated and very odd."

Part mystery, part romance, and part coming-of-age narrative, As Simple As Snow is the story of Anastasia Cayne, a curious young girl with a penchant for goth fashions and obituary writing who disappears from a small town the week before Valentine's Day. As her classmates work to piece together what happened, codes and patterns begin to emerge in the text, including musical clues hidden in the mix CDs Anastasia makes for the novel's unnamed narrator.

To aid in the reader's own detective work, Galloway created a website for the book (assimpleassnow.com), offering a video clip and links in addition to song lists, band information, and the jacket art for Anastasia's mixes. "You really have to listen to the music in the book to completely understand what happens," explains Galloway. "1 wanted to provide another path for people to explore."

The son of a juvenile-probation officer in Keokuk, Iowa, Galloway too suffered the slings and arrows of suburban adolescence. "In junior high I had guys trying to throw me down the stairs because they had gotten in trouble with my dad." He stayed in his home state just long enough to earn an M.F.A. in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, then left to begin a series of career moves ranging from production assistant to Internet consultant.

Now settled in New Jersey and at work on his next book, Galloway is quick to observe that even his own teen angst carried kernels of prescient truth: "When I was in high school I wanted to write a novel," he recalls. "Now later in life this idea struck me, and I ran with it."

Carolyn Murnick is a New York City-based writer.