Gabriella Saab

Gabriella Saab is the author of The Last Checkmate and Daughters of Victory. She graduated from Mississippi State University with a bachelor of business administration in marketing and lives in her hometown of Mobile, Alabama, where she works as a barre instructor. She is of Lebanese heritage and is one of the co-hosts of @hfchitchat on Twitter, a recurring monthly chat and community celebrating the love of reading and writing historical fiction.

Saab's new novel is The Star Society.

My Q&A with the author:

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

My title, The Star Society, tells readers everything the story is about. The word “star” is, of course, a word used in association with Hollywood actors, but a red star is also a symbol of the Communist Party—something which would have provoked suspicion in 1940s Hollywood when everyone was afraid of communist infiltration, and a main conflict in my novel. The Star Society is also the name of the glamorous, exclusive parties Ada hosts for her friend group. Both the title and Ada’s Star Society gatherings reflect the overall nature of the story: something seemingly alluring and lighthearted yet, beneath it all, is it what it seems? This book, from the moment I developed it, has always been The Star Society, because the title sums up the story perfectly.

What's in a name?

My main characters are twin sisters born to a Dutch father and British mother. One is loosely inspired by Audrey Hepburn, so I gave her an “A” name: Aleida, a Dutch name meaning “noble/kind,” which I thought perfectly captured Audrey Hepburn’s nature and thus my character’s. Her twin sister is Ingrid, a name that comes from a Germanic god of peace and prosperity, and Ingrid is on a quest to establish political peace by eliminating threats of communism. Their surname is “de Vos” which means “fox.” Foxes are cunning creatures symbolizing trickery and intelligence, and these sisters are involved in their fair share of trickery and deception. Finally, when Aleida moves to America and becomes an actress, she adopts the name Ada Worthington-Fox. Ada is, again, close to Audrey and Aleida and also means “noble;” Fox is the English translation of her Dutch surname; and as for why I added Worthington, Ada explains in the book: “for no reason other than I thought it sounded delightfully pretentious.”

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

Not at all! I’ve loved Audrey Hepburn since I was a little girl, and historical fiction has always been my favorite genre. My teenage self would not be at all surprised that we wrote a book inspired by both.

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

Endings are always the easiest for me, so I would say the beginning is harder and it changes more than the end, usually. With that said, my beginnings and endings tend to stay fairly the same from start to finish—it’s the middle that always changes the most heavily. But the end is what sums up the story I want to tell, so I have to challenge myself and tell it the best I can along the way. The beginning and the middle are incredibly important to lead to a satisfactory pay-off in the end, one that hopefully lives up to my goals for the story. And I try to structure my beginnings and middles in a way that, if a reader were to re-read, they would be able to pick up moments of foreshadowing or subtle details that might not have seemed significant until they know the end.

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

It depends on the character, but I usually insert pieces of myself into them—certain traits, likes, dislikes. For example, Ada is someone who feels very deeply and processes the world through her emotions, and I do the same. I’m less like Ingrid, but when Ingrid is interested in something—for her, that’s usually something to do with politics—she learns all she can about it, and that is a trait of my own that I projected onto her.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I find inspiration in people and film, as you might have guessed by how much of an impact Audrey Hepburn has had on this book. I find stories in so many things—film and tv, people, music, travel, architecture, or even in simple, everyday moments. Inspiration can be found anywhere and everywhere.

Visit Gabriella Saab's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Star Society.

--Marshal Zeringue

Christina Kovac

Christina Kovac, author of the Watch Us Fall and The Cutaway, writes psychological suspense/thrillers set in Washington, DC.

Prior to writing fiction, Kovac worked in television news, covering crime and politics at Fox 5’s Ten O’Clock News in Washington, DC, and after that as a news producer and desk editor at the Washington Bureau of NBC News.

She lives outside Washington DC with her family. She loves morning writes with her cat on her lap, book hauls from her town library, and hiking national parks. Her favorites—C&O Canal National Park, Assateague Island, and Rock Creek Park—provided inspiration for Watch Us Fall. She’s currently at work on her third novel.

My Q&A with Kovac:

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

I don’t like to share meaning of title—that’s for the reader to decide—but I will say I chose each word carefully, purposefully. Watch. Us. Fall. The opening line is: People still talk about what happened to Addie and Josh. Some of what they say is true, some of it not; you know how people are. Watch: this is about people in the spotlight. They’re watched and talked about. Some are famous and some will become infamous. (You know how people are.) Us: This is a book about holding onto cherished relationships in conflict with each other. Who is Us? Who will Addie choose, when the choice comes? Her best friends or Josh? And then of course there is a falling action to the plot. Thus, the Fall.

More than that, let the reader decide.

What's in a name?

As it turns out, an awful lot’s in a name. Lucy, the main narrator, a kind of witness to the destruction that Josh brings into Addie’s life, is the best friend; Lucy’s the one who loves Addie best. Her name comes from the light-bringer in Paradise Lost. In fact, one of the section titles is: O Street Lost.

Josh Egan, the son of Senator Egan, comes from a storied lineage, and Egan means “bright- eyed.” He is described in the prologue as the “golden guy with his father’s face and eyes like gas burners that made you feel seen. Not everyone wants to be seen.”

And Addie James? I have no idea where her name came from. She was just fully formed and named, the moment she stepped onto the page.

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

Not much. My teenaged self would be thrilled. My mother gave me her box of old Nancy Drew novels as soon as I could read. I stole Rebecca from her shelf when I was twelve. I loved covering crime when I covered news in the District—it’s infinitely more honest than politics. I was destined for mysteries and psychological thrillers, I think.

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

I find it all hard. I change both a lot, but the beginning I will cut down and keep cutting until I find a fast entry point.

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

None of these characters are me. Although I do have Josh Egan’s obsession with truth and terror of disinformation and this awful age of misinformation we live in. It’s our trigger. Actually, the entire reason I wrote this novel.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I get a lot of inspiration from my past work in news in the District and also from the natural world. I love hiking and climbing. I love the C&O canal and the Potomac river. When I was hiking on a barrier island along the coast of Maryland, I saw an enormous tree along a back bay, and there were four girls clinging to it and laughing and bumping up against each other. I kept thinking about those girls and that tree—and ultimately the girls became Addie and Lucy and Penelope and Estella, and I moved that tree to the banks of the Potomac (in my novel) and made it their secret place.

Visit Christina Kovac's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Cutaway.

The Page 69 Test: The Cutaway.

Writers Read: Christina Kovac (March 2017).

My Book, The Movie: Watch Us Fall.

The Page 69 Test: Watch Us Fall.

Writers Read: Christina Kovac.

--Marshal Zeringue

Cara Black

Cara Black is the author of twenty-one books in the New York Times bestselling Aimée Leduc series as well as the WWII thrillers Three Hours in Paris and Night Flight to Paris. She has won the Médaille de la Ville de Paris and the Médaille d’Or du Rayonnement Culturel and received multiple nominations for the Anthony and Macavity Awards; her books have been translated into German, Norwegian, Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian, and Hebrew.

Black's new novel is Huguette.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The title, Huguette, to me, encapsulates the book. This is Huguette's story all the way. We're with her on her journey as a young woman after Liberation in Paris, 1944 through the post war era in France to the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival in 1958.

What's in a name?

Huguette is an old fashioned French name. So many people have told me 'that's my grandmother's name' or 'my great-aunt was called Huguette'. So it's quite time specific to the post WW1 era and the 1920's, 30's when it was a popular name. We know names go in and out of fashion but so far, Huguette's name hasn't come back in style.

I discovered this name from conversations with Denise, who'd lived in Paris during the Occupation, when she talked about her best friend, Huguette. They'd worked together in a restaurant during the war. Denise told me she and Huguette shared so many experiences, confided in their fears and had become best friends. Sadly they lost touch after the war. So in honor of Denise, who has left us, I've 'found' Huguette for her.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Films definitely have and continue to influence my writing. Black and white films from the 40's are my go to. The Third Man, by Sir Carol Reed, is my favorite film. I watch it every year, and use the film in a writing class I teach to illustrate how place and setting anchor the story in Vienna and using writing techniques to translate the visual to the page.

I love watching newsreels from the time I'm writing about. In Huguette, I discovered a treasure trove in the French film archives documenting daily life in post war France.

Visit Cara Black's website and follow her on Instagram and Threads.

The Page 69 Test: Murder at the Lanterne Rouge.

My Book, the Movie: Murder at the Lanterne Rouge.

The Page 69 Test: Murder below Montparnasse.

The Page 69 Test: Murder in Pigalle.

My Book, The Movie: Murder in Pigalle.

My Book, The Movie: Murder on the Champ de Mars.

The Page 69 Test: Three Hours in Paris.

The Page 69 Test: Night Flight to Paris.

Writers Read: Cara Black (March 2023).

Writers Read: Cara Black (March 2024).

The Page 69 Test: Murder at la Villette.

My Book, The Movie: Huguette.

The Page 69 Test: Huguette.

Writers Read: Cara Black.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lexi Alexander

A corporate communications professional by day and a romance writer by night, Lexi Alexander has found plenty of ways to put her English degree to use. Born in Romania and raised in the Motor City by a family of engineers, she loves to write characters who dream big, hustle hard, and conquer the odds. And when she’s not dreaming up romance novels and book boyfriends, she’s cheering from the sidelines of her sons’ sports games or perfecting her margarita recipe!

Alexander's new novel is Dead Set on You.

My Q&A with the author:

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

A title can make or break a book – so choosing the title for Dead Set on You was many iterations in the making. In fact, my original working title was Hating You, Interrupted, because I knew from the beginning I wanted something that telegraphed rivals-to-lovers energy (“hating you”) with a twist in the relationship (“interrupted”), plus a nod to the supernatural hiccup at the heart of the story: my heroine waking up as a ghost tethered to her former friend, now rival.

Along the publishing journey, the title changed to Dead Set on You. This was also many ideas in the making – there’s a notepad with all the scribbled options shoved into a desk drawer somewhere. As for Dead Set on You – it does so much work as a title. It signals the paranormal element, keeps the romantic tension front and center, and still winks at the rivalry at the core of the book. I’m biased but I also think it’s sharp, memorable, and gives readers an immediate sense of what kind of ride they’re in for.

What's in a name?

Evie Pope came to me fully formed—voice, name and all her quirks! “Evie” felt soft and approachable, while “Pope” had a crispness that mirrored the control and structure she clings to. What readers don’t see right away is that her name carries a personal history she’s chosen to rewrite for herself. I don’t want to spoil it, but I will say: Evie Pope is the name she claims when she’s trying to shape her life into something new. It’s simple on the surface, but the meaning underneath is more complicated—just like her. A character’s name is as part of the character as their personality and physical traits!

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

My teenage self would absolutely lose her mind knowing she’d grow up to be a published author—and it wouldn’t surprise her one bit that I wrote a rivals-to-lovers romance with a dash of the unexpected. That was my comfort zone as a reader. I devoured anything with banter, tension, and that something extra. Beauty and the Beast was probably my gateway: two impossibly opposite characters forced into proximity, challenging each other, changing each other, while being so very physically different. Belle and Beast walked so Evie and Raf could run! Teen Lexi would be thrilled that I finally wrote the exact kind of story I used to obsess over.

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

Beginnings are always the hardest for me. I usually start with the end in mind, so figuring out the exact moment where a story should begin—and where I want a reader to first meet the character—is a much trickier task. It’s not just when you introduce them, it’s how. Those opening pages are where you build the connection that convinces a reader to follow you anywhere. If you don’t get that right, the ride never takes off. So yes, beginnings get rewritten the most, because they carry the weight of the entire emotional journey that follows. It's why Dead Set on You has had at least ten first chapters!

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

I sprinkle parts of myself in all my characters. It’s never a one-to-one match, but there are bits and pieces of me scattered throughout every character I’ve ever written. Evie holds the parts of me that crave control, that want to achieve every goal, and that quietly worry about getting it right—because we don’t always. Rafael, on the other hand, reflects the side of me that wants to live fully, make moments matter, and make people feel seen. And yet he’s also wildly different from me: he’s effortlessly charming and can talk his way out of almost anything. Meanwhile, I’d be mortified to even attempt half the things he does. So they both contain pieces of me, just magnified and rearranged in ways that make them feel entirely their own.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Romance movies—especially romantic comedies—have been a huge influence on my writing. Rom-coms are my favorite way to decompress and escape into the joy of watching two people fall in love. They all have a recipe that makes them so good: the banter, the mishaps, the slow unraveling of defenses. There’s a comfort in knowing what you’re signing up for, and yet every great rom-com still surprises you emotionally. I think that blend of predictability and delight is something I’ve carried into my writing. When I sit down to watch a rom-com, I know I’ll walk away feeling a little lighter—and that’s the feeling I hope my stories give readers, too.

Visit Lexi Alexander's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Matthew Pearl

Matthew Pearl’s books have been international and New York Times bestsellers and have been translated into more than thirty languages. His nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and Slate, and he edits Truly*Adventurous magazine. He has been chosen as Best Author in Boston magazine's “Best of Boston” issue and received the Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction. He lived in the Boston area for many years and now lives in Florida.

Pearl's new novel is The Award.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I like to flatter myself that I'm a title aficionado, actually, in that I put a fair amount of energy into landing what I hope is the just-right title for a project, whether it comes easily or takes longer, and I try to be a student of other titles out in the world. The title for The Award came to me once I had the plot for this novel in mind, which involves an up-and-coming writer navigating twists and turns of the literary world, including elite soirees and fancy awards, which ultimately lead into life and death stakes. It also plays on the idea that we sometimes trust books that won awards to verify we are choosing a good book to read.

What's in a name?

My protagonist David feels like he's an outsider to the literary world he dreams of belonging to, and is plagued by the idea that he will never be special enough to earn that place. So I wanted a name that, to him, has never felt like it stood out. David is a fairly common, and to my ear serious, name, so it felt right. Not that different from "Matthew," to be honest! I'm often called "Michael," don't ask me why, and I imagine my character, David, is sometimes called Daniel.

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

Actually, my self from just a couple years ago would be surprised by this novel! I've always been timid about writing about myself, in fact I think I've only done it directly once in years of writing. That reluctance goes beyond writing. Ask me "how are you?" and I stop in my tracks, plagued with uncertainty. But there was motivation for me, this time, to fight against that. I really wanted to tell a suspenseful story inside the world of writing and writers, and to do that, I had to draw from my life and experiences. Even with the process of fictionalizing, it's a new experience for me to explicitly try to extract details and feelings I've been through.

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

Great question. I am most excited about writing beginnings but find they rarely pop into existence the way I would have hoped. The Award is filled with suspense and drama, and to start the story I wanted to signal all of that to my reader. Yet, the first scene is a quiet scene, tracing a young writer and his girlfriend looking at the top floor of a house to possibly rent. Foreshadowing ended up being a great way to hook the reader even without a big bang event in the beginning, and much kind feedback I've received (luckily) confirms the beginning does its job.

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

The Award gave me an opportunity to really explore a protagonist that resembles my background and circumstances, though not in a 1:1 kind of relationship. I vaguely recall someone saying about James Joyce that Stephen Dedalus, his stand-in in two novels, was an incomplete or failed version of himself. (I can never find who said that, maybe it was a professor in a lecture I attended in college. Should have taken better notes!) In the case of David, he's more driven by ambition than I am, but shares many of my insecurities, while he is more decisive and willing to cross boundaries than I would ever be. It's fun to unleash a surrogate version of yourself into a story, and doing so allowed The Award to keep building up twists and turns.

Visit Matthew Pearl's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Poe Shadow.

The Page 99 Test: The Last Dickens.

The Page 69 Test: The Technologists.

--Marshal Zeringue

Anna North

Anna North is the author of the instant New York Times bestseller and Reese's Book Club pick Outlawed, America Pacifica, and Lambda Literary Award winner The Life and Death of Sophie Stark. She is a senior correspondent at Vox. She lives in Brooklyn.

North's new novel is Bog Queen.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I think (or hope) that the title Bog Queen is doing work on a few levels. In the most literal way, it’s letting people know that this book involves a bog and maybe some figure analogous to a queen (the actual woman who ends up buried in the bog isn’t a queen, but she is powerful for her time). I hope it also conjures a mood of eeriness and the supernatural, giving readers a taste of what’s ahead.

The title is also a reference to the Seamus Heaney poem of the same name. It’s actually not my favorite of Heaney’s bog poems (that would be “The Grauballe Man,” from which I took the epigraph for Bog Queen), but the title felt right for my book, and I liked being able to gesture at the long history of bog art and bog mythos.

What's in a name?

One of the main characters of Bog Queen, a druid living in Iron Age Britain, goes unnamed throughout the book. I didn’t make this choice consciously at the outset, but the more I wrote, the more I found other characters referring to her by her title or by terms of endearment, rather than her name. And the namelessness stuck.

The other characters in her sections, all living in England in the first century CE, have names I pulled from a wonderful database called Celtic Personal Names of Roman Britain. I find some of these names very beautiful, but I’m not sure any of them would have felt right for the druid. I wanted her to seem very modern in a certain way, and an ancient name would have cut against that. I also think it’s appropriate that, since she is at the center of the mystery of the novel, her name remains mysterious.

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

Probably not at all. I took Latin in middle school (Roman influence in Britain is a plot point in the novel) and was interested in ancient history. There’s also a young character in the novel, Ruby, who is very much based on me as a teenager (though she’s much better at Latin). A lot of my high school writing was autobiographical, and I think my teenage self would be glad I found a use for some of that.

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

I find beginnings much harder than endings. I often have an ending in mind before I start writing, but I typically have to circle around and around, trying different approaches, before I get to a beginning. In the case of Bog Queen, the first draft began with Agnes, a forensic anthropologist called to investigate a body found in a bog in 2018. It was only in the second or even third draft that I decided to start with a totally different point of view: that of the moss that makes up the bog. Luckily, a lot of readers have told me this point of view is their favorite!

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 many of my characters, especially my main characters, share aspects of my personality. With this book, I’m realizing that my protagonists often have trouble fitting into the social world or feeling at ease with other people. This is definitely a feeling I had a lot as a younger person and still experience sometimes; I think a lot of writers do. I think I keep coming back in my work to the feeling of being a little out of sync with human society, and how people handle and live alongside that feeling.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I have been very deeply influenced throughout my life by sci-fi TV: first Doctor Who and Star Trek, and later The X-Files, Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, and more. Bog Queen was heavily influenced by a series called The Kettering Incident, a sort of sci-fi thriller set in Tasmania. I love stories that imagine other worlds or other ways of seeing our own world, and the sci-fi shows of my childhood remain huge touchstones for me.

Visit Anna North's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Life and Death of Sophie Stark.

The Page 69 Test: Outlawed.

--Marshal Zeringue

P.J. Nelson

P.J. Nelson is the pseudonym of an award-winning actor, dramatist, professor, and novelist (among other many other professions) who has done just about everything except run a bookstore. He lives in Decatur, Georgia.

Nelson's new novel is All My Bones.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The title of this book is part of a quote from a Grimm Brothers story, and in the book a rare first edition of their Kinder- und Hausmärchen, published in 1812, figures heavily in the plot. But the murder mystery plot begins with the discovery of human bones in the front yard of the quasi-Addams Family Victorian mansion in Enigma, Georgia, that is The Old Juniper Bookshop. So, while the title phrase may not mean much at first glance, it is, in fact, a distillation of the entire novel.

What's in a name?

Well, this is going to sound ridiculously pretentious, but I chose the name Madeline because of Proust’s madeleines, the little French pastry that allegedly impelled him to write In Search of Lost Time (sometimes called Remembrance of Things Past). But here’s the thing, All My Bones is set in Enigma, Georgia. In the 1980s when I was writer in residence for the Georgia Council for the Arts I lived in Tifton, a larger town near Enigma, and most of the people and places in these books are odd memories of my time there. I was hoping that naming the main character Madeline, a former actor who owns and operates a rambling bookshop in a small town, would somehow magically help me to remember more about those environs, those people, those experiences. And, as it turns out, it seems to be working.

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

When I was a teenager, I thought I was going to be a poet. I only wrote and published poetry all through my teens and twenties. The fact that my bedside table was covered with mystery novels (everything from Rex Stout to Colin Wilson to John Fowles to Jorge Borges) didn’t seem to have any effect on me until I was in my forties. And then, all of a sudden, I only wanted to write mystery books. I’ve written twenty-five of them now. So far. That would really surprise my fifteen-year-old self.

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

The hard part about a beginning is, you know, beginning. Once I write the first sentence, the rest of the book emerges more or less without much involvement from me. My best course of action is to try to stay out of the way as much as humanly possible and let the book write itself. But with every book so far, I’ve gone back to the first page—or sometimes even the entire first chapter—and rewritten. Sometimes the first page thinks it knows where it’s going, but the last page proves that thought wrong. Sometimes the rest of the book just wants a slightly better introduction. And sometimes I’m just…what’s a better word than “fussy”?

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

Supposedly someone asked Shakespeare which of his characters was most like him, and he said something like “They’re all me! How could they be anyone else?” I see his point. I can only write what I know. I can guess what other people are like, what they’d say, what they’d think, but it would always be from my point of view, so it’s always really my interpretation of my observations. This is, oddly, especially true for Madeline Brimley, the main character in All My Bones. I am Madeline. She is me. And if that’s not the case, my wife of nearly thirty years (a writer and actor herself) is always happy to tell me. In detail.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Music always influences me. My father was a symphony French horn player; my mother sang on the radio when she was a kid. I’ve been in a dozen bands, and I listen to a remarkably wide panoply of recorded music: Thomas Tallis, Mozart, Prokofiev, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, The Incredible String Band, Doc Watson, Bob Dorough, Blossom Dearie, Jacob Collier, Dodie, the Chieftains, Del McCoury—and that’s just this morning. I’m also constantly inspired by certain film and television experiences. Recently The Residence on Netflix knocked me out. The writing is spectacular and the character of Cordelia Cupp (played by the remarkable Uzo Aduba) is my favorite detective in decades. But I also believe, and there are plenty of people who agree with me, that every significant experience in life can be supported and probably explained by a corresponding quote from The Andy Griffith Show. For example, Opie raises baby birds and eventually has to let them go. When he does, Opie says, “Cage sure looks awful empty, don’t it, Pa?” And Andy says, “Yes, son, it sure does. But don’t the trees seem nice and full?” Tell me that’s not a great thing to say to every parent who ever had to let a child go out in the great wild world.

Read more about All My Bones at the publisher's website.

My Book, The Movie: All My Bones.

The Page 69 Test: All My Bones.

--Marshal Zeringue

Rebecca Armitage

Rebecca Armitage is an author and journalist, who likes to write about royals.

As a journalist, she has written stories about the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the coronation of King Charles III, the exile of Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan, and the abdication of Denmark’s Queen Margrethe.

As digital editor for the ABC’s International news team, she has covered several US elections and travelled to Israel to cover the war in Gaza.

Armitage lives in Hobart, Tasmania, with her husband and a poorly behaved German Shorthaired Pointer named Chino. The Heir Apparent is her first novel.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The title, The Heir Apparent, tells you a lot about what you can expect to find within these pages, but it's also deliberately confusing because female heirs to the British throne are almost never called called 'the heir apparent'. Instead, they're called 'the heir presumptive'. To be the heir apparent means that the crown belongs to you. No one will ever have a better claim to the throne than you. It's almost always a phrase used in reference to men. But to be 'heir presumptive' means you're a woman who has made it to the head of the line because there are no men left. The crown always holds out hope that a boy will come along and supersede her - even if it's physically and legally impossible.

The Heir Apparent is about a wayward British princess called Lexi who is estranged from her royal relatives and living in obscurity in Australia. But a skiing accident kills her brother and father, and makes Lexi the future monarch. Her grandmother, the Queen, decides to dispense with tradition and call Lexi 'the heir apparent' because she's tired of royal women being back-up options when there are no men left to reign. She wants Lexi to know that nothing stands between her and the throne - except for Lexi herself, who's not at all sure she wants this responsibility.

What's in a name?

Lexi's full name is Princess Alexandrina. I chose this as a little nod to Queen Victoria, who was born Princess Alexandrina Victoria. When she became queen at 18, she decided to go by her middle name because it was considered much more British than Alexandrina. There are a lot of parallels between Lexi and Queen Victoria. They were both born to be mere decorative accents to their families and were never, ever meant to rule. But the men in their families kept dying or failing to produce sons, and they both kept rising through the line until the crown was theirs for the taking. The key difference between Victoria and my fictional character is that Lexi is scared of the power dangling right in front of her.

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

I think my teenage self would be absolutely thrilled that I grew up to write a book, which was my secret dream. As a kid, being published seemed like something that happened to other people, so I pursued a career in journalism instead. I've always been too practical for my own good. My teenage self was also in a hardcore literary phase, reading Sylvia Plath and long, dense Russian novels for fun, so she might also wonder why we've written about something as frivolous as royalty. But she really needed to loosen up and have a bit more fun, so I'm not too worried about her opinion!

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

I find the beginning and the end very easy. I always know exactly where a character will start and where they will end up. The tricky part for me is what journey they will take to get from Point A to Point B. The middle therefore changes a lot, but the destination almost always stays the same.

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

I am definitely all my characters. The villain of this book, Prince Richard, is a greedy, jealous, scheming social climber who is addicted to attention, luxury and relevance. But we all have that meagre, nasty creature inside us. My main character, Lexi, is brave and smart, she's complicated and makes a lot of mistakes, but is constantly striving to do the right thing. She's who I aspire to be in my best moments. They might be living in palaces, draped in jewels and ermine, but they're human beings and I borrowed heavily from myself in filling out their souls with weaknesses and strengths.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

The news is a big one for me. As a journalist working in international news, I have to keep across every country constantly, so I am immersed in all the dramatic, wonderful, awful, confronting things that are happening on the planet. But now and then, I'll be working on a news article, and I'll think to myself, 'hmm this would actually make a really great novel.' All my ideas are news stories that are planted in my brain like seeds, and eventually they sprout as novel-length stories.

Visit Rebecca Armitage's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Brionni Nwosu

Brionni Nwosu is a writer, educator, and joyful creative based in the vibrant city of Nashville, where she lives with her husband and their three children. After more than a decade teaching students and mentoring teachers, she shifted her storytelling craft from a side passion to center stage. A 2021 We Need Diverse Books mentee under Rajani LaRocca, Nwosu writes bold, heartfelt fiction that explores connection, purpose, and what it means to live a life well.

Her debut novel is The Wondrous Lives and Loves of Nella Carter.

My Q&A with Nwosu:

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

I think The Wondrous Life and Loves of Nella Carter does a lot of work right away. It signals that the book is a sweeping, emotional story, centered on one woman’s very long journey. “Wondrous” captures the feeling of seeing the world through Nella’s eyes as she moves through different eras. And “loves” lets readers know this book is not just about time travel—it’s about the relationships that shape her and the people she carries with her.

What’s in a name?

Nella was always her name—that part came baked into the idea. But her full name, Nella May Carter, is deeply personal. “Carter” is my son’s name, and “May” comes from both my daughter and my grandmother, Bessie Mae. I liked the idea of anchoring this large, time-spanning story with names that come from my own family.

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

My teenage self would be shocked—in the best way. She would think we would be a lawyer by now, but this is better. Instead of picking through contracts for tiny details, we get to make everything up. I think she’d be proud that I wrote the kind of story I would have loved but never thought I’d get to see. She would also laugh because I was the kid whose punishment one time was not reading books for a week, so writing a whole novel feels like something she would have dreamed about and be proud she did.

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

Beginnings can be harder to land the right note, tone, and promise for the reader. I tend to overwrite until I get the tone right, and then I go back and cut a lot. Early in my writing career, I came across First Line Frenzy with Rebecca Hayman, and I know how important the first line is to hooking a reader. I like endings that mirror the opening, showing both the character's change and a neat summary of the overall story. For The Wondrous Life and Loves of Nella Carter, the prologue and ending of the book are nearly identical from the first draft. Honestly, I have more trouble with all the things in the middle, making sure the logic is correct and makes sense, than anything.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters?

I see pieces of myself in Nella—mostly her curiosity and her desire to understand people deeply. She pays attention to small gestures and quiet moments, and that’s how I move through the world, too. She keeps stepping into new worlds, new relationships, and new versions of herself, even when she’s afraid. But overall, Nella is her own person. She’s not a stand-in for me; she’s someone I learned from.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Music is a big one. I build playlists for every book, and certain songs help me capture a scene's emotional tone. Visuals matter too—images from art, photography, and film help me anchor the mood, and pictures of actors and stock images help me to imagine characters. For Nella’s book, I found myself drawn to historical paintings, old photographs of New Orleans and Paris, and even fashion references.

Visit Brionni Nwosu's website.

Writers Read: Brionni Nwosu.

The Page 69 Test: The Wondrous Life and Loves of Nella Carter.

My Book, The Movie: The Wondrous Life and Loves of Nella Carter.

--Marshal Zeringue

Cindy Jiban

Cindy Jiban lives in Minnesota, where she was awarded a 2023 emerging fiction writer fellowship through the Loft Literary Center. Jiban holds a Ph.D. in educational psychology; before writing novels, she was an educator and researcher who published frequently, particularly focusing on how students learn to read.

Like the main character in her debut novel The Probable Son, Jiban has taught in middle schools and is raising two sons. She was born and raised in the Seattle area but has now lived with her family in St. Paul for over twenty years.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I love that my title is essentially a very-distilled elevator pitch. Someone is only probably the main character’s son. The title could refer to the boy Elsa has been mothering for thirteen years, or it could be about the familiar boy who just walked into her life and made her realize she can’t bury her secret suspicions forever.

The title is also a variation on a biblical story about a prodigal son. Elsa is firmly not religious – she teaches math and thinks about probability instead of faith – but the title activates the idea of a long-missing son re-entering a family. That this might occur brings a mixture of hope and dread, and it helps to propel readers into the thick of this story.

What's in a name?

The name Elsa invokes an animated ice princess focused on the need to let it go, and that became intentional. My main character has a lot that she struggles to let go, and her childhood memories circle back to the ice and snow on a Minnesota section of the Mississippi River.

The boy she is raising is called Bird, a nickname that suits the quiet of his personality. But the real and secret reason Elsa calls him this comes from a classic children’s book, from a bird who walks around asking a heartbreaking question.

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

She would not be surprised that the novel exists, that it is contemporary realistic fiction, or that it offers propulsion and a satisfying twist. But I think she would be indignant that it came so late. I am 55 years old as I debut, and I know she would have liked to see me go for it when I was decades younger. I owe her an apology for both my pragmatism (other careers offer health insurance!) and my lack of confidence.

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

Beginnings are by far the hardest for me.

There are two kinds of beginnings, both hard. One is about first setting words on the page in a committed start to a first draft. What makes that hard is the foreclosure on other ideas: can I set aside the others to fully choose this one?

The second beginning is about deciding where and how to start the reader’s experience of the story. Could I start them any closer to the main action, or do I need that central piece of backstory first? Am I making the right promises, if I start with this focus and this tone? So far, I’m someone who needs to write the whole story before I can figure out where it’s telling should begin.

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

Like Elsa, I have taught middle schoolers by choice, and I am raising two amazing sons. But Elsa has at her core a defining experience that I have not had, and that makes her think about decisions very differently than I do. In writing her, I found that asking what I might think or do in a situation she faced was not helpful in finding Elsa’s thinking. Instead, it helped me to remember the gap between most readers’ version of reasonable and Elsa’s.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Looking back, I know what contributed inspiration to the premise of The Probable Son, in particular.

There’s a stunning This American Life episode (#360) where two adult women learn they were accidentally switched at birth and then raised in the wrong families. One of their mothers turns out to have quietly suspected this all along, which…wow.

Second, a 2018 documentary called Three Identical Strangers follows 19-year-old boys who accidentally find one another. The triplets were separated at birth and raised in separate families, none with any idea of the others’ existence. (Parent Trap, anyone?)

Imagine, in either case, learning you have immediate family you never knew about – and how that might affect the family you do know. I remained fascinated with this idea as my own (definite) sons entered their teen years. Those are the years when you begin to wonder whose child this strange kid actually is. But what if I literally weren’t sure he was mine?

Visit Cindy Jiban's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Probable Son.

--Marshal Zeringue