Weina Dai Randel

Weina Dai Randel is the acclaimed author of five historical novels, including The Last Rose of Shanghai, a Wall Street Journal bestseller, and Night Angels, longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Awards. She is the winner of the RWA RITA® Award, a National Jewish Book Awards finalist and a two-time Goodreads Choice Awards Best Historical Fiction nominee. Her novels have been translated into seventeen foreign languages, including French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Hebrew.

Her new novel, The Master Jeweler, is about a gifted Chinese orphan’s dangerous quest to become a master jeweler in charge of a legendary diamond.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

The Master Jeweler follows the journey of a jeweler who searches for fame, friendship, and family from her youth to middle age. It traces her growth, her ambition, her triumphs and mistakes, and ultimately, her realization of what truly matters in life. So I was pretty sure the title should be called The Jeweler, similar to Noah Gordon’s The Physician, which I adore. Simplistic and enduring, right? But as it often happens, I miscalculated. My publisher proposed to change it during the production stage, and my first reaction was, “Impossible! It has to be The Jeweler!” But then I realized they had a point, so we brainstormed and my editor came up with The Master Jeweler. I let it sit for a few days, and eventually, it grew on me and I really like it.

What's in a name?

I put careful thought into names, especially those of the main characters. It’s important to me that each name carries cultural resonance. In The Master Jeweler, the protagonist is called Anyu, which means “peaceful jade” in Chinese. It alludes to two aspects of the character: one is that she was a precious thing to her mother, even though she was nothing to her powerful father whom she never met, and the other is that jade has significant meaning in Chinese culture, as well as in her profession as a jeweler. Another character’s name is simply called Confucius, who’s a gangster in Shanghai. This might sound odd, and the ancient teacher must be rolling in his grave, but I thought adopting a philosopher from the classical Chinese literature added a twist of subversiveness and a tease of cultural meaning. And hey, he was a gangster with consciousness.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

The teenage me would be judging the master jeweler and crying for her but also deeply admiring her. She would probably think I am pretty cool too, for understanding the mindset of a teenager, without realizing she was the inspiration for the impulsiveness and stubbornness and the relentless drive to do whatever it takes, to her detriment.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Beginnings, beginnings, and beginnings. But. To write a beginning, I must first have the ending in mind, and a general arc of the story has to be planned out before I type the first word. As I write, I keep going back to tweak the sentences and heighten the intrigue factor.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

I don’t always write myself in novels, because, you know, sometimes characters command their own universe and do whatever they want to do, but Anyu takes a piece of me – bluntness. Her speech pattern, her lack of social skills and her insensitiveness to people’s emotions were all intentional and connected to my personality. Her relationship with Esther started off on the wrong foot (pun intended!) because of her bluntness. I’m not as helpless now (hopefully), after years of stumbling and making gaffes, but I’m pretty sure, at her age, I was a terror to the people around me. The reason Anyu behaves this way? She grew up without a father, relatives, siblings, cousins, or friends. The only person in her life was her mother, so you kinda understand why she couldn’t read the room. Why do I behave this way? I have no clue, but there’s no excuse!

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Paintings. I’m not an expert by any means, but when I look at Van Goh or Klimt, I pause to think about what is timeless, what art means in our life, and what is our legacy after we’re gone.

Visit Weina Dai Randel's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Shana Youngdahl

Shana Youngdahl is a poet, professor, and the author of the acclaimed novel As Many Nows as I Can Get, a Seventeen Best Book of the Year, a New York Public Library Top Ten Best Book of the Year, and a Kirkus Best Book of the Year. Youngdahl hails from Paradise, California, devastated by the 2018 Camp Fire, which stirred her to write her latest novel, A Catalog of Burnt Objects. She now lives with her husband, two daughters, dog, and cat in Missouri where she is Associate Professor in the MFA in Writing Program at Lindenwood University.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

The title, A Catalog of Burnt Objects, comes from “objects,” scattered throughout the book. These short chapters tell the story of objects different community members lost in the catastrophic wildfire that hits Sierra in the middle of the book. The opening chapter is the protagonist, Caprice Alexander’s, object. It tells of the Talking Heads LP her grandfather gave her, and in doing so introduces us to the geography and culture of the town, as well as her gramps' important role in her life.

I had this title picked very early before the book was written because I knew the project would be about fire and what is lost and community. I know that the title doesn’t tell you that this is also a sibling story and a love story, but I hope that it is interesting enough for people to pick up and wonder about. When they start to flip through it they will see it is a story of how to come of age in a world on fire and how to have hope.

What's in a name?

A name can say more about the people that name you than it does about who you are. We can grow into our names, or we can grow against them, and we can also choose our own names. In this book, the protagonist, Caprice is named for the “whim,” her parents had to have a second child, but I picked the name because her own ability to embrace whims and change is part of her character arc. Her brother Beckett is named after Samuel Beckett, and early in the book when Caprice meets her love interests she wonders if he is considering “what kind of people name their kids after an avant-garde playwright and a whim?”

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Beginnings because you can’t get them right until you nail the ending. I change every part of a project a lot. Revision is 99% of the job. In A Catalog of Burnt Objects figuring out where to start was one of the challenges of the project, since the story is ultimately a sibling and family story I landed with opening with Caprice’s object and following with the chapter where her brother moves home. There were versions that started with the fire and then flashed back but that didn’t work. I realized you need to love this town and family before you can really care that it is on fire.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I’m always interested in how science can provide metaphor and a framework for understanding and questioning the world. Growing up in Paradise the outdoors were my playground. I spent my days outside, in trees, in the river, in the canyon. My public school education taught me the importance of valuing people, lending a hand, and a foundational curiosity that has allowed me to keep my eyes open for inspiration in all places. I probably find inspiration most often science and nature, where questions more than answers, drive our quest for knowledge forward. I suppose that is because fiction is like that too, it invites us to question.

Visit Shana Youngdahl's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Allison King

Allison King is an Asian American writer and software engineer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In technology, her work has ranged from semiconductors to platforms for community conversations to data privacy. Her short stories have appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Diabolical Plots, and LeVar Burton Reads, among others. She is also a 2023 Reese's Book Club LitUp fellow. The Phoenix Pencil Company is her first novel.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

The Phoenix Pencil Company was pretty much always the title of the book. I think it does a good job of capturing the fantasy-aspect of the book, and of course the pencil part. It also gives a sense that this is going to follow a company, so potentially span a long period of time. Another idea I had was Pencil Hearts, which might've spoken to the emotional parts of the book more, though feels less distinctive.

What's in a name?

The name with the most significance in this book is that of Wong Yun, who is the grandmother and one of two main characters. Her name is my own grandmother's name, as a lot of the story is inspired by what she used to share with me about the pencil company my family used to run in Taiwan.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

I think she'd be surprised but pleased. Maybe mostly surprised by how I've processed a lot of the things we went through. Teenage me had never really read anything by Asian American authors either, so that might be the more surprising part.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Beginnings are harder for me. Whereas I feel like I tend to know the ending, and the whole book is working towards it, a beginning feels more flexible and open-ended. The beginning of The Phoenix Pencil Company was one of the parts I worked on with my editor the most, whereas the last sentence and scene have been the same pretty much since the first draft.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

Yes, the granddaughter character in this book in particular is very similar to me, maybe an exaggerated version of me. I purposefully gave her many of my own experiences, since the grandmother character was so different from me, growing up in a totally different time and country.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Family, anime, video games, cities, public transportation, and tea!

Visit Allison King's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

KD Aldyn

KD Aldyn lives everywhere and nowhere (home is where the Wi-Fi is). She most often wears black (and sometimes red) and sometimes dances like Elaine from Seinfeld.

Sister, Butcher, Sister is her debut.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

There are three sisters and one of them is a killer, so the title is perfect. I can say this without being boastful because the title was gifted to me by my editor and her team. It is so clever. My original title was She and when I first saw the cover I cried with joy because the publishers had incorporated that word into the Sister Butcher Sister graphic.

What's in a name?

The sisters’ names came to me in my sleep, and I built the characters from there. The name Kate suggests physicality and movement to me. Aurora sounds musical. Peggy has that kind of ragged, wayward sound to it (sorry to all the Peggy’s out there!)

The main detective’s name didn’t come so easily as he didn’t really enter the scene until much later. In fact, I kept muddling Nick Timms: one minute he was Nic, then Rick, then Nick. At various places, I called him Detective Simms instead of Timms. By the end of the writing process, he’d formed more fully in my mind.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

From the age of about twenty, I read mainly literary novels, short stories and poetry. I even enjoyed the odd romance. But I wasn’t reading or writing in the crime thriller genre.

So, when thinking about this question, I got a bit of a jolt.

When I delved further back into my memories, I found that I was quite taken with blood and guts as a teenager. I liked anything macabre and frightening.

So maybe teenage me wouldn’t be too surprised at all.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

It varies. In the case of Sister Butcher Sister, the ending was harder. You see, I had these three sisters almost fully formed in my mind. The opening came easily. What I didn’t have, even vaguely, was an ending.

I knew one of the sisters was a serial killer, but I had absolutely no idea which one it would be. I was waking up at ridiculous times in the early hours of the morning, racing to the computer, hunching myself over the keyboard, desperate to find out who the killer was. I changed my mind constantly.

In the end, the right character or characters rose to the challenge and accepted responsibility. What a relief!

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

Many of my friends have said they can’t believe I could write such gruesome images and when my husband first read the manuscript, he went rather quiet. So, I am a little wary in saying I could have something in common with any of the sisters.

To be honest though, I do have something in common with each of them: Aurora’s love of music, Peggy’s relationship with her son, Kate’s fixation with her grandfather’s house.

I can even relate to the anger that simmers within the killer. However, when that simmer comes to a boil and the killing starts, I’m a world apart. Believe me!

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Inspiration is everywhere: song lyrics, an overheard conversation on a train, a beautiful painting.

But it was a dinner party conversation that got me interested in serial killers. Fueled by wine from memory, an intense debate began with friends and family, and the conversation became the spark for this novel.

Everyone seated around the table seemed to agree that the feminine makeup excluded a woman, generally, from becoming a murdering psychopath. Even those accepting the examples I put forward, said the scarcity of female serial killers was somehow because of nature. I was alone in my argument from the feminist perspective that, given the opportunity and motive, a woman could easily turn into a killing machine.

This book is, in a way, my way of rising to the challenge to [fictionally] prove a point.

Visit the Karenlee Thompson / KD Adlyn website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Laney Katz Becker

Laney Katz Becker is an award-winning author, writer, and a former literary agent. Her books include the novels, In the Family Way and Dear Stranger, Dearest Friend, and the nonfiction anthology, Three Times Chai, a collection of rabbis’ favorite stories. When she’s not writing, Becker enjoys drawing, sewing, reading, long walks, playing tennis, and canasta. She is a graduate of Northwestern University, raised her two children in Westchester County, New York, and currently lives on the east coast of Florida with her husband and their Havanese.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take the readers into the story?

I think my book title, In the Family Way, does a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to communicating what my novel is about. First, the expression itself is a somewhat antiquated euphemism for saying a woman is pregnant. And while it may not alert readers that my book is set in the 1960s, it (hopefully) is a pretty clear indicator that it’s not a contemporary novel. My working title was With Child, which I also think says “historical,” but I changed it because I really preferred the word “family.” It has a warmth to it which gives it an added bonus for readers who may be unfamiliar with the expression “in the family way;” they’d still know the book involves families and a sense of community. And since, at its heart, my novel is about the friendship between a group of suburban housewives—and an unwed 15-year-old mother-to-be—I felt family was the perfect descriptor!

What’s in a name?

It’s a Jewish custom to name babies after those who’ve already passed away, rather than someone who is still living, (which is why you don’t meet young Jewish men who share their dad’s name). Anyway…my novel is narrated by three different voices (all in the same time period) and two of the narrators are sisters and are Jewish. They’re named Lily and Rose. Their mother named them after relatives who’d died, but giving them both “flower names” was her added twist. It was a way to help the reader know a little bit about the mother, even though she has died years before the novel opens. It was also a practical decision as I felt it would help readers keep the characters straight, particularly at the beginning when everyone is being introduced. Another thing about names in my book that readers will surely realize: My chapter titles for the married women all use their husband’s first names and their married surnames—so there’s Mrs. David Berg, and Mrs. Marty Siegel, because it was 1965 which was before the women’s movement, when women/housewives didn’t have their own identities. Under each “Mrs.” name is the woman’s actual name, but it’s in smaller type and in parenthesis, appearing as (Lily) or (Rose). The type is actually helping to convey that the women are parenthetical to their husbands, and smaller in stature. (I absolutely love that something as simple as type can convey so much!)

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Beginnings are harder for me and I definitely futz with them a lot more. I think that’s especially true because I tend to write my novels in a linear order…and while I might have a pretty good idea where I’m going, I typically make myself wait until I’m at least half-way through my first draft before I allow myself to write the ending. Then I go back and pick up where I left off and start writing in order again. By the time I finish my first draft, I know my characters so much better than when I started. So, as I work my way through my second draft, I find myself reading dialogue and thinking “she would never say” or discovering actions she would/wouldn’t take. But only after writing 300ish pages do I have the confidence that I know—I truly know—exactly how a character would behave. And that means rewriting the opening. Again.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

I think there’s a bit of me in all of my characters. But in this novel I needed a strong matriarchal Jewish grandma, so I not only based her on my own Grandma Mollie, I actually named her Grandma Mollie. But I didn’t stop there. Hoping my kids and grandkids—and any other offspring who may be born after I’ve passed away—would maybe (?) have a copy of my novel, I gave my own Grandma Mollie’s backstory to the character of Grandma Mollie, assuring that future generations would know from where they come. In short, I memorialized my grandma because that’s the joy of being an author—you can do that sort of thing because you’re in charge…and unless someone like you asks me about it, no one is the wiser!

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

In the Family Way was inspired by politics, for sure. I came up with the idea after the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs decision, overturning Roe v. Wade and a woman’s constitutional right to abortion care. When that occurred, I was watching the news and saw a 20-something protestor holding a sign that said We Cannot Go Back. I scoffed, thinking she wasn’t old enough to appreciate what times were like “back then.” I did some research to fill in my own memories about women’s in the 1960s. Then I decided that someone really should write a book about it so women today would appreciate how far we’ve come, but also recognize that these days we’re on a slippery slope. And then I remembered Toni Morrison’s advice when she said “If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” So I did.

Visit Laney Katz Becker's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lorna Lewis

Lorna Lewis is gifted in turning characters’ dreams into drama and crafting stories rich with emotion while exploring the complexities of real-life situations such as marriage, infidelity, fertility struggles, betrayal, and the power of forgiveness. In addition to being an author, Lewis is also an educator. She believes in using her creativity to inspire and teach others both in the classroom and through her writing.

A native of Varnado, Louisiana, a small town much like the ones she loves bringing to life in her stories, Lewis’s southern roots influence the sense of community, culture, and warmth in her work. When she’s not writing her next novel, Lewis enjoys spending quality time with her husband and their two beautiful children, finding joy in family life, and drawing inspiration from her own experiences to enrich her writing.

Her new novel is A Sky Full of Love.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

The title, A Sky Full of Love, establishes the story's tone before the reader turns the first page. The title is soft, hopeful, and maybe a little wistful. Even though the topics of captivity and loss are heavy, most of the story focuses on the healing journey, so that’s what I wanted the title to portray. I was a little hesitant at first because it could also give a romantic feel, and even though there are romantic components to the story, it’s not a romance novel. The biggest reason I liked this title was because of the bond Nova has with her family. While in the room, Nova was desperate for some kind of connection with the people she loved. One night, as she stared into the sky, she realized that no matter where they were in the world, they were looking at the same moon and stars as she was. That was the connection. The sky, at that moment, represented love because it was as close to her family as she thought she’d get.

What's in a name?

Naming my characters is one of the most personal and time-consuming parts of the writing process for me. Nova’s name means “new,” and I chose it intentionally. After fifteen years in captivity, everything that used to be familiar to her is now new. Her daughter Skye’s name represents freedom. I feel like Nova would associate Skye with the best part of her life now, which is being free. Her sister, Leah’s, name is Hebrew, and it means “weary”. Leah, who has built her life around helping others, has her own inner battles that she works hard to ignore.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

My teenage reader self would be very surprised by my novel, and not for the reason some may think. My teenage self would be surprised that I’m a writer, period. Unlike most writers, I never had the desire to be an author. I’ve always loved reading, and I journaled a lot, but the thought of sitting and writing a novel wasn’t something I saw for myself. I think it felt too outlandish and out of reach for a girl from a small town in Louisiana to become an author.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

I find it harder to write the beginning. In my opinion, that’s the most critical part of the book. If I don’t hook my readers from the very first page, the likelihood that they’ll continue reading is very slim. Besides, by the time I’ve been with these characters for 70,000 plus words, I have a good idea of how they’ll wrap up their story.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

I see a lot of myself in all the female characters. I see myself in Nova because, like Nova, I’ve had to overcome pain that I never asked for. My mom passed when I was 13 years old, and my daughter passed when she was 18 months old. Then, a few years after my daughter, my dad passed. Like Nova, I had to learn how to exist in a world that was void of people I wasn’t ready to live without.

I see myself in Leah because, like Leah, it’s easier for me to focus on other people’s hurt, so I don’t have to focus on my own.

In Skye, I see myself as that little girl who will always wonder how life would’ve been if my mother had been there during my most vulnerable years.

Then there’s Martha, Nova, and Leah’s mom. I think all mothers can see themselves in Martha. All she wants is for her girls to be happy, healthy, and loved properly.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Real-life situations have significantly influenced my writing. The inspiration for this book actually came from my parents. Not directly, but indirectly. Like I mentioned, my mom died when I was 13 years old. After she died, I questioned if there was a possibility that she could still be alive. What if a doctor fell in love with her and kidnapped her? Kidnapping, unlike death, doesn’t have to be a definite end to our story together. I suppose even back then, my mind created stories that helped me cope with my reality.

Years later, my dad remarried, and that thought popped into my mind again. I knew how much my dad loved my mom. How much love he still held for her all those years later. I questioned the outcome if my 13-year-old theory was accurate and my mom had escaped her captor. What would my dad do? Would he leave his wife and return to my mom, or would he choose to stay with his current wife?

Then I also thought of my mom. I questioned how hard it would be for my mom to adjust to years of isolation. A lot had changed in the 10 years that she’d been gone. As time passed, those thoughts kept coming to me, and I decided I needed to do something with them. That’s how A Sky Full of Love was born.

Visit Lorna Lewis's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Sky Full of Love.

--Marshal Zeringue

Gurjinder Basran

Gurjinder Basran is the award-winning author of four novels: Everything Was Goodbye, winner of the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and a Chatelaine Magazine Book Club pick; Someone You Love Is Gone; Help! I’m Alive!; and The Wedding. A Simon Fraser University Writer’s Studio alumna hailed by the CBC as one of “Ten Canadian women writers you need to read,” Basran lives in Delta, BC, with her family.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

The novel’s title, The Wedding, sets the stage for the reader in that this is a book about a lavish week-long modern day Indian wedding. Within the first few pages of the novel —that read like a guest list and a wedding invitation– the reader is invited to witness the secret lives of the wedding party, guests and event staff as told through their unique perspective. Weddings are always full of drama and in that spirit this novel delivers heaps of family drama, necessary comic relief and even a love triangle that keeps the readers guessing “will they or won’t they” get married. Unlike most wedding stories, this isn’t your boy meets girl, romantic comedy, it’s an episodic novel, that when taken together, not only delivers a picture of a wedding but also a portrait of an immigrant community. The Wedding is a love story about family and community and all the ways we need to love and be loved, and the title is meant to evoke the idea of love and the happily ever after we hope comes next.

What's in a name?

With fifteen different narrators, I had no shortage of characters to name so some were chosen with more purpose than others. The bride’s name is Devinder, she goes by Devi, which is meant to sound a lot like the Diva she turns out to be. The groom is often referred to by his family nick name “Baby.” It’s very common in Indian families to have funny nicknames that conjure some physical characteristic such as the case with the family friend Sonia, who is sometimes called “Mottu” to refer to her childhood chubbiness. The groom’s father, Satnam, has fallen into religion and mysticism and thus has a spiritual name and the bride’s grandmother, Darshan, the all-seeing, and all-knowing matriarch’s, means sight.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

I think she’d be pretty surprised. I was an angsty teen of the 80s. I listened to new wave, wore black most of the time and my prize possession was my Walkman and my second hand Fleuvog shoes. Though my first three books have some of that sad sensibility, this novel is sheer joy and stems from a really honest respect for my traditional Punjabi community, something which I am sad to say, my angsty teenage self didn’t have.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Writing beginnings and endings are the easy part for me, the challenge has always been connecting the dots. For this novel, I knew I wanted to start with a wedding invitation being delivered as a way to set the context for all that would happen next. I also knew that it should end with the wedding itself, but writing the middle from fifteen different perspectives and nineteen chapters proved harder than I expected. I wanted to give the reader the chance to orbit the week of wedding events, the unique lives and backstories and still feel like they were on a journey towards the wedding. This required a lot of changes and re writing on my part to make sure all the characters were linked and that every switch to a new voice or perspective made sense and offered the reader a new piece of information, or some gossip that got them closer to the big day.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

I have a fingerprint on every character, in part because I draw from my real life to inform theirs. I live in a diverse community that has a high population of Punjabi Sikhs and I love using that cultural tension in my writing. That tension is on full display in The Wedding; the characters grapple with love, tradition, religion, social media, modernity and cultural expectations.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I’m influenced by what’s happening around me including news, pop culture, and even my family. When I was writing my last draft of The Wedding, I was also helping my sister with her son’s wedding planning. But once I have a story idea, music becomes a huge source of inspiration for me and in a way serves as a way to sustain my world building. Every book I have written has a playlist and if readers are curious, they can find The Wedding playlist on my website. It’s a fusion of Punjabi and pop culture hits that serve as a soundtrack for the book.

Visit Gurjinder Basran's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Simon Tolkien

Simon Tolkien is the grandson of JRR Tolkien and a director of the Tolkien Estate. He is also series consultant for the Amazon series, The Rings of Power. He studied Modern History at Trinity College, Oxford and went on to become a London barrister specializing in criminal defense. He left the law to become a writer in 2001 and has published five novels which mine the history of the first half of the last century to explore dark subjects – capital punishment, the Holocaust, the London Blitz and the Battle of the Somme. The epic coming-of-age story of Theo Sterling, set in 1930s New York, England and Spain, is being published in two volumes, The Palace at the End of the Sea in June, and The Room of Lost Steps in September.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

I had no title for my book all the time I was writing it, and last year I started to get worried that I would have to make do with something generic that didn’t do justice to the story. I wanted a title that would be lyrical and mysterious, but would also make sense when the reader sees it appear as a phrase in the text. A tall order! And then, just when I’d started to despair, I found 'the palace at the end of the sea’ buried on page 164! It’s an image for how Michael, the father of Theo, the hero of the story, saw Ellis Island at the end of his family's long hard voyage across the Atlantic from Poland at the end of the 19th century. The huge redbrick and limestone hall glittering in the sunshine is the gateway to a new life in America, a world where the Manhattan skyscrapers hold the promise that anything is possible. But Michael’s dreams disintegrate in the Great Depression, and Theo realizes the hollow irony of his father’s vision when he too passes Ellis Island on a boat leaving New York at the end of Part One. The title thus encapsulates the themes of hope and loss, illusion and disillusion, that are at the heart of the novel.

What's in a name?

A great deal! My hero, Theo’s name points in two directions. His fervently Catholic Mexican mother, Elena. speaks to him in Spanish and pronounces his name Tay-oh, but for his fiercely patriotic American father, Michael, it is Thee-oh. She has given him the name in honor of Saint Theodore of Amasea martyred in the fourth century, but for Michael the connection is to Theodore Roosevelt, the famous president whose unbridled energy embodies the American dream in which he so fervently believes.

And Theo’s last name, Sterling, is Michael's invention - 'a solid name that people can rely on in business'. But Michael is the son of Jewish immigrants who cut him out of their lives when he married the gentile, Elena, and in the first chapter, Theo’s grandfather tells Theo that his true name is Stern, meaning star in Yiddish - ‘for the star that guides us.’

Theo’s names and his lost name symbolize different identities and callings that exert competing gravitational pulls on his developing personality as he grows from boy to man.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

I think ‘astonished’ would be an understatement. I was a very confused and under-confident teenager and fifty years on, I find it hard to connect with who I was then. There is nothing autobiographical about this novel but I do think that Theo’s coming-of-age story is in part an attempt to build a bridge across time to my other troubled lost self.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Beginnings! In the new era of e-book sampling, it is vital to draw the reader into the story from the first sentence of the first page. So, Kidnap, the first chapter of my book begins: “He was eleven when he was taken,” and soon the hero, Theo, is being pulled along through the busy New York streets by a grandfather whom he has never met, on his way to an encounter with a Jewish heritage that he never knew he had. I want the reader to be absorbed and to care from the outset, and that can be hard to achieve, requiring careful construction of action and character development. But the endings of my novels almost write themselves. I know what is going to happen, and I write the last pages in a creative burst, so as try and achieve the climactic feeling that the reader is expecting and is entitled to.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

I have been writing novels for twenty-five years and I think that the creative area where I have made most progress is in character development. The men and women that populate The Palace at the End of the Sea and its sequel, The Room of Lost Steps, are as real and multi-dimensional to me as people I have known in my own life. The essence of their independent existence, their realness is paradoxically that they are entirely fictional, but as I think of them now, I do see that some of them have characteristics that I recognize in myself or that I aspire to. And I think that the strongest link I have to my hero, Theo, is a refusal to give in and an almost irrational belief that a full life depends on taking up challenges instead of evading them - and damn the consequences!

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Songs: a half century ago, my father played me a song called "Brother Can you Spare a Dime." It tells the story of a man who worked hard to build a dream, only to see it turn to dust in the Great Depression. The song made a great impression on me, just as it does on my hero, Theo, who feels when he hears it that it is telling the sad story of his own father, whose business was like a tower built "up to the sun, brick and rivet and lime,” that now is “done”.

Movies: The 1984 movie, Another Country, was a major inspiration for the English boarding school in Part Two of my novel. The film vividly conveys the oppressive isolation of a traditional world in which bullying is enshrined in the rules, and the vivid visceral scenes helped me to picture Theo’s school experience in which he must decide whether or not to conform. Colin Firth’s portrayal of the communist boy, Judd, in the movie was also useful to me in developing the character of Esmond, the charismatic Marxist schoolfriend of Theo, who has a profound effect on Theo's life both at the school and afterward.

Visit Simon Tolkien's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jesse Browner

Jesse Browner is the author of the novels The Uncertain Hour and Everything Happens Today, among others, as well as of the memoir How Did I Get Here?

He is also the translator of works by Jean Cocteau, Paul Eluard, Rainer Maria Rilke, Matthieu Ricard and other French literary masters. He lives in New York City.

Browner's new novel is Sing to Me.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

My working title for Sing to Me was The Ruined City, but I got a lot of pushback for that from my early readers because, while it was a literal description of the novel’s main subject, it failed entirely to capture the story’s ultimately hopeful, optimistic thrust. It was also a very one-note title, whereas Sing to Me works on such a broad spectrum of meanings and intimations, at least one of which I can’t tell you because it’s a major spoiler. But song in general is woven into every aspect of the book – as incantation, as lullaby, as prayer, as a secret language of love and as the enigma of intercultural communication. My wife, my other early readers, my editor and I all came up with a wide and ridiculous variety of alternate titles – which is a very typical part of the process – but everyone agreed that Sing to Me struck precisely the right tone between lyricism and mystery.

What's in a name?

In choosing names, I was constrained by the cultural and linguistic identities of my characters, almost all of whom are ethnic Hittites or Luwians. Now, the words “Hittite” and “Luwian” are never uttered anywhere in the novel, nor are the characters even aware of their own ethnicity, so in truth I could have named them anything I wanted. But there’s a pretty large body of Hittite personal names available in the archeological record, so there was no reason not to make the effort to ensure historical accuracy, to the extent that’s even possible with a civilization that vanished more than 3,000 years ago. I also wanted names that a reader could grow accustomed to and pronounce easily, so they would become familiar and reassuring, rather than alien and exotic. And because my young protagonist is so brave and good, he is named for a great Hittite king, while his beloved sister is named for the Hittite goddess of the sun.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

My younger self would in no way be surprised by this book. I read a lot of science fiction as a teenager, and although there is absolutely nothing sci-fi about Sing to Me, they have a lot of tropes in common: apocalypse, the conundrum of communicating with aliens, vulnerability in the face of a superior and threatening culture, hero journeys. On top of that, even in adolescence I was fascinated with the ancient world and the evolution of languages. But what I remember most about how I read in those days is that often, after I’d finished doing my homework, I would get into bed with a new book and read all night until I’d finished. I’ve always wanted to recreate that feeling of total immersion for my readers, which is why most of my novels are short enough to read in one, intensive sitting.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Beginnings are always much harder, especially in literary fiction, where characters must develop and come alive starting with nothing, and (in my case at least) the plot is a function of character development. So by the time I get towards the end the book essentially writes itself, but the first third almost always has to be discarded and rewritten because that’s the part where the characters are still inchoate, evolving puppets.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

I suppose there’s a lot of me in every character, but I’d be hard pressed to pinpoint what it is. If I had to take a stab at it, I’d say my characters have all my flaws, insecurities and doubts, but I have none of their ingenuity, perseverance or courage. I’d love to be more like them, because they’re generally more capable than I am of solving the riddles that continue to stymie me. That said, neither they nor I ever end up with hard answers to our questions, but they, at least, tend to point themselves in the right direction.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I did a lot of food writing early in my career, and old habits die hard, so there’s usually some element of cooking and feasting in my books, fiction and non-fiction alike. I even wrote a history of hospitality in Western civilization. I also spent thirty years working as a translator in the United Nations Security Council, so human stupidity and political futility always seem to creep in, somehow. But ultimately, I have to say that I don’t fully recognize the distinction between literary and non-literary, because I approach every topic and achieve any understanding I may have of the world through the lens of storytelling. By the time I get through with it, everything comes out of the pipeline as literature, for better or for worse.

Writers Read: Jesse Browner (January 2012).

Writers Read: Jesse Browner.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jessica Guerrieri

Jessica Guerrieri (pronounced grrr-air-eee) is a writer and novelist who lives in Northern California with her husband and three daughters. With a background in special education, Jessica left the field to pursue a career in writing and raise her children. With over a decade of sobriety, she is a fierce advocate for addiction recovery.

Her award-winning debut book club novel is Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea sets the tone before the first page. The cover’s striking image—water as both refuge and threat—mirrors the novel’s emotional stakes. The title speaks to being trapped between two impossible choices, something my protagonist, Leah, knows all too well. On the surface, she has it all: a handsome husband, three daughters, and a fresh start in a sleepy coastal town. But beneath that facade, she’s quietly unraveling—gripping tightly to the illusion of control, one drink at a time.

The "devil" can be read as addiction, guilt, or the crushing expectations of motherhood. The “deep blue sea” is both literal and symbolic: the beach town where Leah lives and surfs, and the murky depths of her own emotional landscape. It also hints at the secret she’s keeping from the O’Connor family—one that shadows her every move. And Leah’s not the only one caught in this tide. Both Christine and Amy find themselves navigating impossible choices of their own, their quiet crises rippling beneath the surface until they can no longer be ignored.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

Not surprised at all. My teenage journals are packed with poetry and emotional angst—raw, unfiltered expressions of someone already trying to escape herself. That deep ache to numb, to disappear, to feel something other than what I was feeling—it was always there. So no, it isn’t remotely surprising that drugs and alcohol eventually appealed to me. What would surprise my younger self is that I survived long enough to write about it—and that I found a way to turn all that pain into something honest, and healing.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Both are equally hard—but for different reasons. They’re the parts of the story I spent the most time with, and they carry the most weight. The beginning has to earn the reader’s trust and attention from the very first page. I experimented with several different openings, including a flashback to when Leah first met her husband. Ultimately, I wanted to anchor the reader in the emotional undercurrent of her life, not just the chronology. Getting the hook right took time, revision, and a willingness to throw out what wasn’t working—even when it had been there from the start.

The ending was its own kind of reckoning. I made a profound change there, one that my editor gently but wisely guided me toward. I had to let go of the ending I thought the story needed and instead land in a place that felt earned, honest, and emotionally true.

So while I may have revised the beginning more often, it was the ending that required the biggest leap of faith.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

Leah isn’t me—but we’ve definitely walked the same roads. I’m in recovery, too, and I wrote parts of this novel while still grieving and raw. So while the specifics of her story are fictional, the emotions behind them are deeply real. I poured the sharp edges of my lived experience into her—not to write a memoir in disguise, but to offer a story that feels lived-in and unflinching.

Leah is messier than I am, more secretive, more self-destructive. But I understand her. I love her. And I wrote her to reflect what it means to want desperately to be a good mother, even when you don’t yet know how to be good to yourself. Like me, Leah is also privileged in many ways. That mattered to me. I wanted to show that addiction doesn’t always look like rock bottom from the outside—it can exist even when all the ingredients for a perfect life seem to be in place.

Her obsession with pointing the finger is something I was guilty of in addiction. That used to be me. Thankfully, it isn’t anymore. Sadly, I also didn’t inherit her bohemian surfer vibe. But the internal battles? Those, I know by heart.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

A local artist, Emily Dilbeck, was my creative muse for this book. She introduced me to her materials and process, and I was struck by how closely her approach to making art mirrored my own writing practice—intuitive, layered, and often born from emotion rather than logic. Watching her work reminded me that creativity doesn’t always have to begin with a plan; sometimes it starts with a feeling.

Music was another major influence. I had a very specific playlist I listened to on repeat while writing this novel. Songs like "Coastline" by Hollow Coves, "Exile" by Taylor Swift and Bon Iver, "Song for Zula" by Phosphorescent, "Ophelia" by The Lumineers, and "Wildfire" by Cautious Clay helped me stay emotionally tethered to the story’s tone and rhythm. Each track became a kind of emotional shorthand for the scenes I was writing.

I also took two writing retreats to Half Moon Bay to immerse myself in the world of the book. The first was in 2020, during lockdown, when the idea had just begun to form. I asked my husband if he could hold down the fort with our young kids while I escaped to the coast for two days to write. The second was years later, for my final round of edits before the manuscript went to print. That time, I brought along one of my closest friends—also a writer—and we worked side by side, talking through scenes and soaking up the atmosphere of the very town that inspired the novel’s setting. The coast gave me space to listen to myself, and in many ways, the story was born there.

Visit Jessica Guerrieri's website.

--Marshal Zeringue