Zack Connor can read minds, but the 16-year-old’s superpower comes with a downside. Whenever he reaches into someone’s thoughts, his own thoughts are revealed.
He doesn’t know where his power comes from, and his overbearing mother, Carol, offers little beyond her tacit disapproval of his ability. She won’t even tell him much about his father, who disappeared before he was born. His only friends are his two pet doves, Danielle and Allie, who he communicates with telepathically.
Things begin to look up when Zack meets Tamika Paige, a new classmate who, like him, has unusual silver eyes. She explains what his mother can’t or won’t: Zack is among a small group pf people called Occuarians who have special powers that unfortunately also come with a downside. She tells Zack about their annual gathering, Occ-Con, which may be the answer to finding his missing father.
So opens the new young adult novel, Side Effect, by Froggy Phevoli, who uses they/them as pronouns. They grew up in Tulare and moved to San Luis Obispo at age 18 to attend Cal Poly, where they graduated in 2015 with a degree in journalism and a minor in psychology. Their hobbies include playing Pokémon, sampling and writing reviews of Mountain Dew flavors, and designing custom Converse All Stars. They currently run the Tackle Warehouse support center online chat feature, which means they spend their day writing responses to fishing aficionados’ questions about gear.
Why a young adult novel for a debut?
“I was 16 years old when I first came up with the idea,” Phevoli explained. “So it just felt natural to go for that genre since that was the phase of life I was in myself. Even though I was an actual adult by the time I was working on the later drafts, I still tried to stay true the book’s original spirit.”
The story is set in 2015. Why?
“When I wrote the first draft, 2015 was actually in the future,” they explained. “That was around 2008. … The two main reasons I never changed it later on were, one, I was worried I’d screw up the timeline of the entire story. I had already done the math to figure out things like characters’ birthdates, made sure I put the correct day of the week any time I referenced a date. If I changed the year that the book took place, I would have to do all of that all over again, and I’m not a numbers person, so the odds of making a mistake would have probably been high. Two, the world changed so much in 2020. I didn’t want to think about how COVID would affect the Occuarian Convention or anything like that. It was much easier to just keep the story in a ‘before’ time period.”
The entire premise is very clever—people with special powers that come with an unfortunate side effect. What inspired it?
“The inspiration came one day when my mom made me run errands with her,” they said. “I was absolutely bored out of my mind, so I ended up vividly daydreaming in the car while we were in between stores. At some point, I started fantasizing about what I would do if a genie or some other magical, wish-granting entity gave me one wish, but it had to be something selfish—like if I wasn’t allowed to wish for a cure for cancer, or an end to world hunger, or anything like that.
“At the time, I was going through a period of my life where I felt like I couldn’t understand anyone’s motivations,” they continued. “I was having various disagreements with various people, and it seemed like I was constantly asking ‘Why?’ and never getting any answers.”
So, the first thing that popped into their head was a wish for mind-reading powers.
“That way, I would always understand where the other person was coming from. But of course, in every story that involves granting wishes, there’s always a catch. There’s always some sort of The Monkey’s Paw situation that makes the wisher regret it,” Phevoli said. “I asked myself, ‘What would be the worst possible consequence to a mind-reading power, to the point where I wouldn’t even want it anymore?’ The most obvious response to that, in my opinion, would be if other people could read my mind too. I developed everything else about the book around that concept. Coming up with all the different ways to ruin each superpower was really fun!”
Phevoli had to create a whole new vocabulary. Occuarians are the humans with special powers and accompanying side effects while Normlings are humans without special powers. Extranorms are “normal” humans who are unaware of Occuarians, and Intranorms are “normal” humans who are aware.
“Basically, the entire theme of the book is about embracing yourself for exactly who you are, flaws and all—excluding flaws such as being evil, of course. The made-up vocabulary was less about othering people and more about just making it easier to refer to certain groups or concepts,” they said.
The book explores the discomforts of adolescence. Zack is a fish out of water, uncomfortable, insecure. Did this interest stem from Phevoli’s own adolescence?
“Yeah, teenage me was similar to Zack in a lot of ways,” they admitted. “I was very awkward and sheltered just like he is, though thankfully my parents weren’t as controlling as Zack’s mom. Everybody has insecurities, especially during adolescence, so I think that makes a character like Zack really relatable.”
Phevoli plans to expend the Occuarian universe into a series.
“There will be a prequel novel, a sequel novel, and a collection of short stories that all take place in the same universe. In regard to the short stories, some of them will be about expanding on Occuarian lore, and some of them will simply be ways to get to know some of the side characters better.” Δ
Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Volunteers 2025.