While the plot is not directly based on the childhood of the Quin twins, there are elements of their lives in the main characters

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Like many children of divorced parents, indie-pop duo Tegan and Sara Quin would split their time between mom and dad at Christmas when growing up in Calgary.

Their parents, however, had different levels of enthusiasm when it came to yuletide cheer.

“We’d spend Christmas Eve with my dad and Christmas with my mom and that was always really hard,” says Tegan Quin in a phone interview with Postmedia from her home in Vancouver.

“I hated that. I wanted to be with my mom because we had a huge family and she loved Christmas and she made it special. My dad hated Christmas. He didn’t get us presents. It was torturous because we adored our dad and we loved being with him. So we went and spent Christmas Eve with him and we would never have had it any other way but we would have had way more fun if we had been with my mom.”

This is reflected in Merry Christmess, the debut middle-school novel and a rare solo outing for Tegan Quin. It is the first in what will be at least a two-book series about 10-year-old identical twins Stevie and Jordan Clementine.

The plot is not directly based on the childhood of the Quin twins. The Clementines are growing up in small-town Saskatchewan rather than Calgary’s northeast suburbs. In the book, the twins’ father is a caring but Christmas-hating rock star who returns to town each year to spend time with his daughters. Their mom runs a community centre, which keeps her far too busy during the holidays to put much effort in her own family’s celebrations.

Stevie, with the somewhat reluctant help of Jordan, hatches a plan to remind her Grinchy parents about their previous love of the holidays and hopes it will lead to them all spending Christmas together. As the title suggests, it turns into a bit of a mess that will eventually include the chaotic involvement of dogs and more than a little inner-family tension.

While it’s not purely autobiographical, Quin was certainly following that old adage to write what you know.

“It’s fair to say if you’re a Tegan and Sara fan, you’ll see some Tegan and Sara in this book, for sure” Quin says. “Stevie and Jordan, the Clementines, are loosely based on portions of our lives. Our parents met in high school and got pregnant and married and divorced very quickly but co-parented really well. My dad is not a rock star but we did only see him on weekends. My mom did run a community centre for a hot minute.

“Sara and I are definitely similar to those characters. I think there is a little bit both of us in both characters. I definitely think on paper I’m more of the extrovert at times. I think there is a more refined, patient, more intentional part of Jordan that’s based on Sara and more of the act-before-you-think, sloppy-silly parts of Stevie that are based on me.”

It’s hardly surprising that Quin put twin characters front and centre. It has been the major part of her identity over a 30-year, 10-album career that has brought the duo numerous Juno wins, Grammy nominations and even a 2015 Oscar nod.

On top of that, the Quin empire has grown to include an autobiographical television series based on the Quins’ best-selling 2019 memoir, High School, which traced their origin story as queer teens growing up in Calgary in the mid-1990s. The success of that book led the sisters to pen graphic-novel prequels, Junior High and Crush, that were aimed at the eight- to 12-year-old middle-grade age group. Twins have become part of the Tegan and Sara brand by default, but Quin says there were also literary reasons to have them at the centre of the story.

“I think a lot of people are interested in twins, there is a fascination,” Quin says. “But, also, I think it’s just the human spirit: we are craving and longing for connection and I think we all want to have a mirror. I find the concept of twins and doppelgangers really fascinating and I think there is an opportunity in writing about twins to allow for a spectrum of looking at an age group. If it was just Stevie I was writing about — extroverted and outgoing and rambunctious and acts before she thinks — that would make a really amazing story. But using Jordan as the ying to her yang allows me to explore a wider spectrum of what all human beings feel, because I don’t think any of us are just one thing.

“I think the ability to write as a twin for twins allows me to explore more of the human condition and maybe give a fuller, wider net in terms of who will be interested in the book. There is other characters to connect to, but the two main characters reflect a broader spectrum than one character would. So I just honestly find it a useful tool for writing.”

Fans probably shouldn’t read too much into the fact that Tegan is the sole author of Merry Christmess. The duo continues to work together. Tegan was working on a solo album but says it has since morphed into a Tegan and Sara project. They will release new Tegan-penned single in September. Their last album was 2022’s Crybaby.

Merry Christmess is actually not Tegan’s first solo project. Earlier this summer, she made her Marvel Comics debut as one of the writers of Wiccaan & Hulking: Raid of Ultron #1. The comic focuses on Wiccan and Hulking, a married gay couple and former Young Avengers, and their families. Quin wrote about Wicaan and his twin brother Speed. She is currently on another series for Marvel as well.

Both Tegan and Sara developed the original pitch for the Clementine twins more than three years ago but when it came time to write it, Tegan had more time to devote to the project. Sara now has two children — ages four and eight-months — with her wife.  She did offer feedback, including suggesting that the fictional twins’ father be a rock star.

“She had a hand in it, so I definitely feel she was still there helping me and guiding the story in pretty specific ways,” Tegan says. “But I loved it. I loved making the decisions for myself. I loved that I had all that pressure on me. There were times I felt overwhelmed. When I got my first draft back, I was like ‘I can’t do it!’ But, yeah, I’m proud of myself and it was very empowering for sure.  I think Sara has taken this really different path than me by becoming a parent. That’s going to absolutely, and has, reshaped how we make things, how much we work, what type of work we do. That is going to reshape our lives and it’s going to make our lives completely different in ways that I had never really imagined.”

Merry Christmess is available Sept. 1.

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