People like Barry Lyga

Barry Lyga (born September 11, 1971) is an American young adult novelist and short story writer. He lives in New York. Lyga majored in English at Yale receiving his BA in 1993. He then spent ten years working at Diamond Comic Distributors after having spent his teenage years immersed in comic books. During this period, Lyga had seen his short stories published. His book Archvillain was released in October 2013. and I Hunt Killers was released in March 2012.

The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl is Lyga's first novel and was published in 2006. The story arose from Lyga's youthful exploration of plotting and characterization he found in comic books. Lyga acknowledges that Fanboy and Goth Girl is autobiographical in that "a lot of what Fanboy describes is [what] I went through ... the book has autobiographical elements, but it also has a lot of wish fulfillment." Lyga says that "the entire book just popped into my head all at once." Touching upon the book's violent subject matter, Lyga says,"I didn't want to shy away from the violent fantasies. We're living in the post-Columbine world." The threat of violence, though, is just a threat and "the lack of bloodshed was a pleasant surprise" as one book reviewer, Spencer Korson, said .