Outer space and public relations might seem like an unusual combination, but under Terry Fallis’ careful pen, these two elements set the stage for his hilarious third novel, Up and Down (McClelland & Stewart). The story follows protagonist David Stewart as he begins a new career in the world of international PR, after leaving his previous job on Parliament Hill. While David quickly realizes that his new post is incredibly different from his old role, he’s still unprepared for just how “out of this world” his job is going to be, until he’s assigned to his first major project: revitalizing public interest in NASA’s space program.
But while David might be somewhat caught off guard in the fast-paced PR world, Fallis spends his days as a public relations consultant, and he previously worked in Canadian politics. “I am a member in good standing of the write-what-you-know school […] and for a very long time I’ve just had this very strong interest in space,” Fallis explains. (And while this third novel focuses on Fallis’ knowledge of PR and space, his first two books, The Best Laid Plans and The High Road, centred on federal politics.)
In Up and Down, David kicks off his new job with a bold idea: a Citizen Astronaut lottery contest that would send one Canadian and one American to the International Space Station. But while the execs at David’s agency are hoping for a young, athletic, lumberjack-type to fill the Canadian space boots, they end up having their hands full with Landon Percival, who is quite the opposite from their ideal winner.
While this novel was a departure from his first two books, Fallis enjoyed getting to further explore his long-standing love of space, a passion he can trace back to July 20, 1969 and Neil Armstrong’s first steps onto the surface of the moon. Although he was only nine years old at the time, Fallis vividly remembers being at his summer camp’s nightly campfire when the camp counselors brought out a small, portable television. “With two rolls of tinfoil wrapped around the rabbit ears and endless adjustment, finally the snow on the screen parted and I could see Neil Armstrong standing on what they called the porch of the lunar module,” remembers Fallis. “And as he slowly descended the nine steps of the ladder, with each step I would swivel my head and look out the window of the lodge and see the moon hanging in the night sky over Lake Temagami, and I would swivel my head back [to the TV screen].”
But although this moment kick-started Fallis’ interest in space, meeting Marc Garneau, Canada’s first astronaut, is the “other-worldly” moment that made Fallis the most tongue-tied. “I was unable to construct complete sentences for the first 10 minutes of the interview,” Fallis says about their first of two meetings, which took place while he was still in the planning stages of the novel. Garneau graciously advised Fallis on some of the more technical aspects of his novel, including the protocol of a shuttle launch, and he also read the entire manuscript once it was completed and even added his own proofreading notes. “[Garneau] pulled out the manuscript and there were about 50 post-it notes stuck throughout it. My heart was in my throat…but it was nothing. He had proofread the manuscript, not just read it, […] and he really liked it.” Garneau’s seal of approval on the novel is now emblazoned in a blurb on the book’s cover.
Getting advice from Garneau so early in the novel’s development was essential to Fallis, due to his unique style of building an extremely detailed outline before he actually starts the writing process. Fallis says he’s always written this way, and it was likely enhanced due to his training as an engineer in university. “It’s a very engineer’s approach to writing: I need a blueprint before I build the bridge, and I need a blueprint before I write the novel,” explains Fallis. “And I think that allows me to write much more efficiently and allows me to focus all of my questionable cerebral powers on actually just crafting the words, and not being halfway through a paragraph and thinking, ‘well what’s Landon going to do at the end of this paragraph?’ If I’m thinking that, how can I be writing as well as I can?”