An Interview with Todd Medema
Todd Medema is the author of How To Surf A Hurricane, a heist thriller showing that stories about climate change and adaptation can be fun and hopeful. He wrote it because he believes the future doesn’t have to be a dystopia, and he got tired of only reading stories of doom and gloom.
Todd studied technology, entrepreneurship, and design at Carnegie Mellon University. He worked on self-driving cars and board games before discovering a passion for clean energy. He spent four years working on grid-scale battery storage and now offers product management consulting to clean energy companies.
Todd spends his free time playing games, climbing rocks, and gleefully riding his electric bike everywhere. He is currently working on expanding the Hurricane universe.
Tell us the story of your book’s title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?
It came from asking one of the foundational questions of the book: Climate change will mean a lot of change for humans. What’s a positive change, a hopeful lens, that I haven’t seen before?
How did it feel when you first saw your book cover? Or when you first held your book in your hands?
It felt incredible. After spending hours a day for two years writing, crafting, sculpting this idea…to finally see it as a real thing…It made me feel so proud. It made me really believe that I could do anything I put my mind to.
Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?
I guess I’ve always had a bit of a writer’s itch, jotting down short stories when inspiration struck. But the motivation to create a full novel came from something larger than myself: I’ve been working and volunteering in climate for the past decade, and a climate friend shared the Climate Stories Project with me, this idea that storytelling about climate is actually a very powerful tool to help inspire hope and action. And I thought about the stories I love, like The Martian and Ocean’s Eleven, and realized that I’d never read a climate heist…The rest is history!
What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?
Today, I’m a software product manager in clean energy, but in past lives, I was a software engineer in self-driving cars, and an entrepreneur.
Something that’s not widely known about me: I do DIY projects like woodworking on the side—not just because I enjoy the projects themselves, but also because I have a hard time sitting still and will go crazy if I don’t do something with my hands.
What was the most rewarding/meaningful part of publishing your book?
Learning. I did so much research while writing the book, and it really opened my eyes to so much more of the world. One example: Through my research, I learned about the solarpunk movement, which envisions a regenerative future interconnected with community and nature. I loved it so much that I ended up rewriting a good portion of the book to incorporate more of its ideas!
If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?
It actually DOES have a soundtrack! Check it out at HowToSurfAHurricane.com.
What is one thing you hope readers take away from reading your book? How do you envision your perfect reader?
I hope that readers will take away two things: Adapting to the future might be hard, but there will also be fun, like surfing hurricanes. And don’t wait to act! Moro didn’t cancel his dream because he wasn’t a ‘professional’ heist mastermind. You’ll learn and figure it out as you go.
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