John Yow

From a Q & A with John Yow, author of The Armchair Birder: Discovering the Secret Lives of Familiar Birds:

Q: What is an "armchair birder"?

A: An armchair birder is a person too lazy to get up and "go birding," which can be pretty exhausting, or a wannabe naturalist who somehow made it through school without taking any science courses, which can be pretty demanding. But really, being an armchair birder is okay. It means you're content to look at the birds that come to you, but motivated enough to take a close look. And of course, it means you're willing to read to fill in the blanks. One idea behind the book is that the natural world is close by; you don't have to go find it. Thoreau, whom I quote often, never went anywhere, but he saw everything there was to be seen.

Q: I admire your ability to pay close attention to the habits of birds in order to reveal their secret lives. What is the first step in tuning in to the birds around us?

A: The first step is getting outside your own head (or your own i-Pod or cell phone). For some of us, like me, that's easy, because what's inside of our heads is profoundly boring. Other people are endlessly fascinated by their own thoughts, feelings, relationships, and agendas, and about all we can hope for from those folks is that they do as little harm as possible.

Q: How is this book different from other birding books?

A: This is a different bird book because the concept is different. The purpose of bird "guides" is to help you identify birds you haven't seen before, and in most cases, that means helping you identify hundreds of species you will never see. That's fine. Everybody needs a bird guide. But after you've identified the species, the guidebook has done its job. My idea was to take the birds we've already identified and talk about what they're up to.

The great advantage of this concept was that it...[read on]

Visit The Armchair Birder website.

S. J. Watson

In Before I Go To Sleep, S. J. Watson's debut psychological thriller, an amnesiac who, following a mysterious accident, cannot remember her past or form new memories, desperately tries to uncover the truth about who she is—and who she can trust.

From the author's Q & A at the Guardian:

How did you come to write Before I Go To Sleep?

I was reading about a man called Henry Molaison who suffered severe amnesia following an operation he underwent when he was 27. He died at the age of 82, and for all that time could form no new memories. I was struck by the image of that old man waking up and looking in the mirror, fully expecting a 27-year-old to be gazing back at him. I realised how vital our memories are to our sense of self, and from that seed the whole novel began to grow.

What was most difficult about it?

I decided to tell the story in the first person, from the point of view of someone who has severe amnesia. That presented some tricky technical challenges, particularly as I edited the book. I had to keep a close eye on the things my character knew at any given time, and the things she didn't.

What did you most enjoy?

The whole process was...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Jonathan Watts

Jonathan Watts is Asia Environment Correspondent for The Guardian and a former president of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China.

His 2010 book When a Billion Chinese Jump tells the story of an unfolding ecological crisis as seen from the ground.

From Watts's Q & A with Sam Geall:

SG: So, could China become the world's first green superpower?

I wanted to ask that question in [When a Billion Chinese Jump]. We are heading into a difficult 30 or 40 years for our species. We are over the limit already by just about every ecological measure. And yet our population is probably going to rise by another two billion in the next 40 years. We need to get through this rough period and over that 40-year hump: after that, populations should start to fall and there should be better technology and economic models too. But now, the country that is in the best position – and the worst position – is China.

China is in the best position because its economy is growing so quickly that it does have a lot of resources. It's in the worst position because it's reached this supercharged phase of growth at a very unfortunate time in terms of the history of global development. China can't outsource its problems like other countries have been able to do. This is a country that has to reinvent itself.

The big contrast between China and the United States, particularly in renewable energy for instance, is that China is trapped by momentum, it has to keep moving forward. By contrast, the US is trapped by inertia – it's trying to protect what it already has. This is also why China is in a better position to become a green superpower.

SG: One intention of your book seems to be to introduce a note of scepticism amid much western optimism about China's ability to save the world economy.

JW: There is still a widespread assumption that one model has proven itself again and again over the past 200 years: the get-rich-first, clean-up-later model. But what worked for Britain in the nineteenth century, for the US in the twentieth century and for Japan and South Korea in the late twentieth century, may not work for China, because of scale and because of timing.

In a sense...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Kathryn Stockett

Kathryn Stockett is the author of the novel The Help. From her Q & A with Elizabeth Day at the Observer:

You started writing The Help the day after 9/11. How did that affect you?

It can be really powerful to write something when you're sad. I've always felt that Aibileen [one of the main characters in the book] had this really deep sadness that I would never understand, being a privileged, spoilt little white girl. Maybe when 9/11 occurred and I was in downtown New York, maybe that's the closest I'll ever be to understanding that sadness.

As a child of divorced parents growing up in Mississippi in the 1970s, you were partly raised by a black maid employed by your grandparents.

Yes, she was called Demetrie. I started writing in her voice because it felt really soothing. It was like talking directly to her, showing her that I was trying to understand, even though I would never claim to know what that experience was like. It's impossible to know what she felt like, going home to her house, turning on her black-and-white TV. And I'm not saying I feel sorry for her, because she was a very proud woman.

Did you have to think long and hard about writing in a black voice?

I...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Ian Rankin

From Ian Rankin's Q & A with Janette Currie:

J:- The Impossible Dead is set in contemporary Scotland with much of the plot looking back to the social and political scene of the 1980s, the same time that you published your first novel, The Flood. If you could travel back in time, what advice would you give to your younger self?

IR:- Don’t drink so much. A lot of blank spaces back then where memories should be. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t remember all the domestic Scottish terrorism that was going on. A lot of the period 1980-85 seems to have passed me by.

J:- Who would you invite to your Come Dine with Me Dinner and what would you serve them?

IR :- I watch that show. I’m not a great cook but I do have a few ‘bankers’. Maybe a rich beef and wine stew. Or a chilli con carne. Plenty of good white and red wine. To start: smoked salmon. Cheese and oatcakes for afters. Around the table would be arranged Robert Louis Stevenson (so I can ask him about the first draft of Jekyll and Hyde – the one he’s supposed to have thrown on the fire), Frank Zappa (he might even play a few licks – I never got to see him in concert), and Billie Holiday.

J:- Your house is on fire! Your family and record collection are safe but you only have time to save one book – what is it?

IR:- My...[read on]

Learn about Ian Rankin's five favorite literary crime novels and the best selling book he wishes he'd written.

--Marshal Zeringue

Colin Thubron

Colin Thubron is an acknowledged master of travel writing. His first books were about the Middle East—Damascus, Lebanon, and Cyprus. In 1982 he traveled in the Soviet Union, pursued by the KGB. From these early experiences developed his great travel books on the landmass that makes up Russia and Asia: Among the Russians; Behind the Wall: A Journey through China; The Lost Heart of Asia; In Siberia; Shadow of the Silk Road; and most recently, To a Mountain in Tibet.

From his Q & A at the Guardian:

How did you come to write To a Mountain in Tibet?

Uniquely for me, it originated in mourning. With my mother's death, the last of my family had gone, and I wanted to embark on something slow and contemplative. I chose to walk to Mount Kailas, the holy mountain in Tibet. It was an irrational instinct, a kind of secular pilgrimage. I didn't even know if I'd write about it.

What was most difficult about it?

The fear of altitude sickness. I was going up to 18,600 feet.

What did you most enjoy?

The sheer beauty of the land. I was following the valley of the Karnali river in Nepal, the highest source of the Ganges; then over the border onto the plateaux of Tibet, which have a strange, empty beauty – a frozen desert three miles above sea level.

How long did it take?

The whole journey (from Kathmandu) took...[read on]

See Colin Thubron's 6 favorite books about Asia.

--Marshal Zeringue

Bernard-Henri Lévy

Public Enemies: Dueling Writers Take on Each Other and the World is a series of letters by Bernard-Henri Lévy and Michel Houellebecq. From the former's Q & A at the Observer:

Did you learn things about yourself from writing this book?

First of all I learned that the great egomaniac I'm supposed to be had never spoken about himself, until now. My main compulsion is secrecy. I do not regret anything that is in this book, but I would not write these things again. The right to secrecy is a human right as important as freedom of speech or habeas corpus.

Do you consider phone-hacking to be particularly egregious?

Phone-hacking is one of the most disgusting things to happen to your country for a long time. It's the very highest level of attack on human integrity. Murdoch has lost the right to be part of the democratic contract that is the basis of this country.

In France, public figures have been afforded greater levels of privacy by the press, but in the wake of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair, some journalists have said they should have delved more.

They are wrong. Not speaking of the private life of a politician until he commits a crime is a good position. Which, by the way, includes...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Chuck Palahniuk

From Chuck Palahniuk's Q & A with Euan Ferguson at the Observer:

Rather than your usual homeland settings of the Portland/Seattle area, your latest, Damned, is set a little further afield – in Hell. And you write in the voice of a 13-year-old girl. An easy job?

It sucked. It was absolutely a misery because I was writing the book while taking care of my mother who was dying of cancer. On her medication she became much more herself as a child; a child I never would have known. I was playing in effect the role of parent. It was a terrible time and perhaps that's why Madison's such a glib person. She's covering up a bunch of horrible circumstances and pain.

I thought Madison, your antiheroine, was more resilient than glib.

Well, yes, maybe. I needed to express somehow my grief at having then lost both of my parents [Palahniuk's father, Fred, and his girlfriend were murdered in 1999 by her ex-husband] and I knew that would not make a very entertaining or particularly funny book, so I inverted the situation and made it this very plucky dead child, who could mourn her parents while they were still on Earth – but still...[read on]

Damned is on the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five books on hell.

--Marshal Zeringue

T. J. English

T. J. English's latest book is The Savage City: Race, Murder, and a Generation on the Edge.

From his interview by Randy Dotinga at the Christian Science Monitor:

Q: You describe New York as "The Savage City" in your book's title. What do you mean by that?

The book deals with the period from 1963 to 1973 in which the crime rate in the city soared. And more importantly, an atmosphere of fear, paranoia and dread would come to characterize New York in many ways. This is the period in which New York began its descent into this level of darkness.

The book details quite specifically the manner in which the dynamics of race – particularly in relation to the criminal justice system – began to play themselves out in a way that it had never had before in the city's history. They created a level of turmoil, violence and hostility that was unprecedented.

"Savage City" is a sort of a play on the phrase "The Naked City" [the title of a TV series and film noir], which was about New York in the postwar era: a place that had crime and eight million stories. It was an urban jungle, but ultimately the cops were good and there was a pretty good sense of good and evil. The Savage City was a little bit darker. The issue of race – hardly evident in "The Naked City" – becomes front and center, and the police department is revealed to not be the benevolent institution that it had been perceived to be.

Q: Do TV shows and movies set in that period reflect the New York City of that time?

We all do have a cinematic vision in our heads of the New York of this era, movies like "The French Connection" and "Serpico" and a number of others that were filmed on location in the city. You can...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Charles Kenny

In Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding--And How We Can Improve the World Even More, the economist Charles Kenny argues that many people have overlooked the enormous improvements in human well-being over the last few decades.

From his Q & A with David Leonhardt:

Q. You write that Africa, like the rest of the world, has escaped the Malthusian trap. What do you mean by that?

Mr. Kenny: Parson Malthus’s miserable vision of the world was that each country’s output was pretty much limited by the amount of land available. That meant if more kids were born, the same output was spread amongst more people — so average incomes would fall. In turn, Malthus argued that would push up mortality as people died from malnutrition or famine or disease.

In Malthus’s time, output worldwide was indeed pretty much static — for most of history, global G.D.P. had expanded by much less than half a percent a year. But since then, output has exploded — everywhere. Between 1960 and 2000, only one country worldwide -– the Democratic Republic of the Congo — saw G.D.P. growth slower than 0.5 percent per year, and only 11 countries saw output grow at less than 2 percent a year.

And looking at African countries in particular, while populations have been rising, there is no significant link between population growth and income growth. Furthermore, population increases have been associated with better health, not increasing mortality — between 1960 and 2005, the proportion of children in the region dying before their fifth birthday fell from 26 to 15 percent. So, the Malthusian trap is...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Wade Davis

Wade Davis's latest book is Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest.

From his Q & A with Jeff Glor:

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Wade Davis: My interest in this story began in the spring of 1996 as I completed a 4,000-mile overland journey from Chengdu in western China through southeastern Tibet to Lhasa and on to Kathmandu. Leading that ecological survey was a good friend, Daniel Taylor. Raised in the Himalaya, son and grandson of medical missionaries, Daniel had grown up with tales of George Mallory; his father was a close friend of Howard Somervell who climbed with Mallory on Everest in 1922 and 1924. The British climbers were Daniel's heroes and role models as a boy, intrepid men who had walked off the map for hundreds of miles just to find a mountain that no European had encountered at close quarters. Their Everest was the mountain of his imagining, not the disappointing commercial scene of today.

In late fall 1997, Daniel and I returned to Tibet, intent on photographing clouded leopards, among the most elusive of the great cats. Our journey took us from Kharta south into the Kama Chu along the same trails traveled by the British expeditions of the 1920s. Compared to the British expeditions, our month-long sojourn in the Kama Valley was a trivial undertaking. Nevertheless the extremes of altitude took a toll, as did the blizzards and cold. From our camp at Pethang Ringmo, at the base of the Kangshung Face, we stared up at a mountain that has killed one climber for every 10 that have reached the summit. It is a formidable sight. Though we were standing on ground higher than any in North America, the mountain rose two miles above, fluted ribs and ridges, gleaming balconies and seracs of blue-green ice, shimmering formations ready to collapse in an instant. The thought of those early British climbers, "dressed in tweeds" as Daniel put it, and "reading Shakespeare in the snow" as they confronted such hazards, filled me with admiration, curiosity and awe.

From the start I was less interested in...[read on]

See Wade Davis's list of six notable books about World War I.

--Marshal Zeringue

Alan Taylor

Born and raised in Maine, Alan Taylor teaches American and Canadian history at the University of California, Davis. His books include The Divided Ground, Writing Early American History, American Colonies, and William Cooper’s Town, which won the Bancroft and Pulitzer prizes for American history.

From a Q & A at his publisher's website about his latest book, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies:

Q: Why did you decide to use the phrase “civil war” in the title of your new book? Most people think of the War of 1812 as a fight between the United States and England, not as a civil conflict.

A: I came to see the War of 1812 as a civil war between kindred peoples, recently and incompletely divided by the revolution. To call the War of 1812 a “civil war,” now seems jarring because hindsight distorts our perspective on the past. We underestimate the fluid uncertainty of the post-revolutionary generation, when the new republic was so precarious and so embattled. We imagine that the revolution effected a clean break between Americans and Britons as distinct peoples. In fact, the republic and the empire competed for the allegiance of the peoples in North America: native, settler, and immigrant. On both sides, the people thought of the war as continuing the revolutionary struggle between Loyalists and rebels. And the war divided the British Empire as Irish refugees fought for the United States but faced trial for treason if captured."

Q: In your opinion, why has the War of 1812 become a relatively forgotten piece of U.S. history (aside from inspiring the “Star Spangled Banner”)?

A: The War of 1812 looms small in American memory: forgotten as insignificant because it apparently ended as a draw that changed no boundary and no policy. At best, Americans barely recall the war as a handful of patriotic symbols: for inspiring the national anthem; for the victories of the warship dubbed “Old Ironsides”; for the British perfidy in burning the White House and the Capitol; and for the pay-back taken by Andrew Jackson’s Tennessee riflemen at the Battle of New Orleans. This highly selective memory recasts the war as a defense of the United States against British attacks—and screens out the many defeats suffered by American invaders in Canada.

Q: Would it be fair to say that Canadian memory of the conflict is much sharper?

A: The war...[read on]

Read Taylor's list of five books about America at war in 1812.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sabrina Benulis

Sabrina Benulis graduated with a master’s in writing popular fiction from Seton Hill University. She currently resides in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania with her husband, Mike, and her spoiled cockatiel, Caesar.

Last year's Archon is her debut novel.

From her Q & A with Jessica Strider:

What drew you to writing about angels?

I always wanted to write a story that was more about angels and demons as they are truly portrayed in history and religion: powerful, otherwordly beings, that are in very many ways both similar to humans and utterly beyond us. It was that mix of beauty and ambiguous morality that attracted me. Many people do not think of angels as aliens, but in their strictest definition, they very much are.

What's special / different about your angels?

My angels are sexy, seductive, creepy and terrifying all at the same time. 'Terrible beauty' is what immediately comes to mind. The Books of Raziel really shows just how awesomely dangerous the supernatural can be. Yet at the same time, these angels can be very human. Their morality is not ours, but they can be so human--damaged, emotional, with a very mortal kind of love as the driving force behind their most sublime or terrible actions.

What made you want to be a writer?

I wanted to be a writer merely so I could share the visions of the worlds I create. For me, that's what it's all about.

Who is you favourite character in the book and why?

My favorite character in the novel is probably Troy. Sadly, she does not have a ton of 'screen time' in ARCHON, but her role expands very much in the following books. Troy is a character who comes off as typical demon--at first. Eventually...[read on]

Visit Sabrina Benulis's website, blog, and Facebook page.

My Book, The Movie: Archon.

Writers Read: Sabrina Benulis.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jennifer Egan

Jennifer Egan's books include The Invisible Circus, which was released as a feature film by Fine Line in 2001, Emerald City and Other Stories, Look at Me, which was nominated for the National Book Award in 2001, The Keep, and A Visit From the Goon Squad, a national bestseller, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and the LA Times Book Prize.

From her interview by Killian Fox for the Observer:

[A Visit From the Goon Squad] ranges backwards and forwards in time, between San Francisco in the 70s and a futuristic New York, and has a big cast tangentially connected to one another. Did it require meticulous planning?

No: the opposite, I write totally spontaneously. I actually write fiction by hand – that always seems to startle people. I think the reason I do that is to bypass the thinking part of me and get to the more unconscious part, which is where all the good ideas seem to be. I've tried working on a word processor because I would love to be faster but it just doesn't seem to work. Goon Squad took about three years to write and that's the short end. My second novel, Look at Me, took six years.

Most of the characters in the book are linked to the music industry. How much time have you spent in that world?

Not as much as you might think. People who read this book tend to think I'm a music geek – but I never really write about my own life. I did once get a journalistic assignment to write about a pair of identical-twin female rappers called Dyme, but it came to nothing – although there's a bit of their DNA in the Stop/Go sisters in the book: they also lived in Mount Vernon, and had an orange shag carpet in the recording studio that their dad built them, so I got something out of it.

But the rest came from your imagination?

I did do a fair amount of...[read on]

Look at Me and A Visit from the Goon Squad appear among Julie Christie's seven favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jodi Kantor

Jodi Kantor is a Washington correspondent at the New York Times. From a Q & A about her new book, The Obamas, with Elizabeth Day at the Observer:

One of the most interesting chapters in your book deals with the discomfort faced by the Obamas when they realised most of the staff in the White House are of African-American descent. Has their tenure improved race relations in the US?

It's way too early to tell. When I wrote the book, I felt that that question was still beyond our grasp. The question I focused on was: what is the day-to-day experience of being the first African-American president and first lady? For example, when the invitation came for Michelle Obama to appear on the cover of Vogue, her advisers were split by race. The African-American advisers really wanted her to do the cover because not that many African-American role models had done so. On the other hand, the white advisers were far more cautious because the country was in terrible economic straits and Vogue is a pure luxury magazine – the newsstand price alone is something like $5. In fact, she chose to do the cover and there was very little criticism. To me, that is one tiny look into the real mosaic of what's going on.

Have the Obamas read the book?

I don't know. I haven't heard back.

You say in your acknowledgements that you became a political reporter for the New York Times at the same time as you became a mother, did you ever find it hard to balance the two?

At one point during the 2008 campaign I got called up and screamed at by an Obama aide. It was 7pm and I'd just got home. My daughter was about two and she was sitting on my lap and she took control of the cell phone and began singing the Barney song down the phone: "I love you, you love me. We're as happy as can be." It was just surreal and kind of amazing on her part. In a way, it was the best thing to say to an over-agitated campaign aide.

Your book makes it clear the Obamas have distinct personalities – you say he's more cerebral, finds it difficult to connect with the public, whereas she's warmer and more feisty. Do you think it's the differences rather than the similarities that make their marriage work?

Absolutely. I don't think he would be president without Michelle Obama because she's the one who connects him with other people.

Can a marriage ever truly be one of equals when one partner is the leader of the free world?

The answer to that is...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Krys Lee

Krys Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea, raised in California and Washington, and studied in the United States and England. She was a finalist for Best New American Voices in 2006, and her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Narrative Magazine, California Quarterly, Pacific Ties, The Korea Times, and Asia Weekly.

Viking will release her debut short story collection Drifting House in early February.

From a Q & A at the author's website:

DRIFTING HOUSE is a beautiful collection of short stories that portray life in South Korea, North Korea, and as a Korean-American in the US. They depict a fractured world. Where did the stories come from: personal experience, observations, or something else?

The stories arose from personal experiences as well as my observations and reactions toward the societies around me. Fractured is an interesting, important word for me; being animmigrant in the United States with parents who were afraid of America lends itself to a kind of fracturing. Our house was a Little Korea, and I was fascinated by the homes of American friends that I’d visit because their way of being was so culturally different. There were other, more violent and painful fractures that influenced my life and inevitably, my stories. But my sense of story is usually more Jamesian; the autobiographical impulse is buried in character and thematic obsessions rather than in the plot.

The world around me was also a large influence. When I wrote “The Salaryman’, for instance, I was in a relationship with a Korean man who was diminishing as a personality while working inhuman hours at a Korean conglomerate. “Drifting House’ was written after I became friends with activists and North Korean defectors. I cried many times, hearing and reading stories about people I knew, before this sadness changed into anger at a regime that destroys its own people. “The Goose Father’ was also written after people I knew personally began departing South Korea, leaving their husbands behind to fund their family’s flight to an overseas education for their children. Though all sacrifice in this situation, my sympathies were with...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

David Vann

David Vann's latest novel is Caribou Island.

From his 2010 interview by Matt Scheiner:

WSJ: How did your own life experiences help to shape the narrative of “Caribou Island”?

There were two family stories in the background that were true stories. One right on the opening page is the suicide of my Grandmother’s mother on my mother’s side. It happened in British Columbia and it is unclear how it happened, because there is so much shame around a suicide, she never really talked about it and my mom’s story has shifted over the years. The other true story in the background is the murder-suicide of my stepmother’s parents. My stepmother’s father told his wife that the last 15 years of marriage had been a lie, and he had been having an affair with another woman and was moving on without her. So she killed him before killing herself, and that was always a very disturbing event for me from when I was 12.

All of the characters in “Caribou Island” seem so real and identifiable, especially the frayed relationship between Irene and Gary, the unhappily married couple of 35 years.

It wasn’t until six months after writing the book that I realized that I was Irene in many ways, and that was actually a shock to me. I have this long legacy of suicide in my family like she does, and I have some of the same views of men in my family as she does of Gary. But I also think in some ways that I am Gary, too. This book was the first time that I realized that an author is...[read on]

Visit David Vann's website.

Jeff Abbott

From author Jeff Abbott's interview by Paige Crutcher:

AUTHORLINK: As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

ABBOTT: I wanted to be a marine biologist or an astronomer, which is weird, because I was never that good at science. I was more just curious about the world. When I was about ten I decided I wanted to be a writer and I never really wavered from that ambition, even if it was a secret one.

AUTHORLINK: What do you believe makes a great story? Is there an element that you believe must be present?

ABBOTT: Conflict. And it seems so obvious but I meet a fair number of aspiring writers who think conflict is unnecessary, or worse, somehow beneath them. There has to be powerful internal and external conflict facing your protagonist for readers to care about reading your story.

AUTHORLINK: JT Ellison has called you “a writer’s writer.” Will you share a little about your writing process?

ABBOTT: It is not really a glamorous process. I think first of either an interesting situation or a character; either can come first. And then I start to wonder, what happens next? I'll scribble some notes, maybe write down some ideas for scenes. If I let the idea brew long enough, one of two things happen: I decide I don't want to write it, or I do. Then I will sketch out the major scenes of the book — the critical turning points, the biggest moments of choice for both the protagonist and the antagonist. With those as a framework I can start to write. Often towards the final part of the book I'll craft a careful outline to make sure I'm resolving everything in a way I like, giving the reader the emotional payoffs for the rest of the story.

AUTHORLINK: Characters are often the heart of a story, and in your novels suspense acts as its own character. How do you create such authentic anticipation?

ABBOTT: Well, I think you have to...[read on]

Visit Jeff Abbott's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Trust Me.

The Page 69 Test: Adrenaline.

Writers Read: Jeff Abbott.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sarah McCoy

Sarah McCoy's new novel is The Baker's Daughter.

From her Q & A with Lisa See:

Lisa: [The Baker's Daughter] moves back and forth between two vastly different settings: present-day America on the Tex-Mex border and Nazi Germany at the end of World War II. What inspired you to pair the two?

Sarah: It does seem obscure, and that’s why I found their association so captivating. I spent a portion of my childhood in Germany where my dad, a career military officer, was stationed. My husband also grew up in Germany, speaks fluent German, and worked there during his summers in college. When we moved to El Paso, the local magazine asked me to write a feature article on the German community. “There’s a German community?” I asked. Yes—a thriving one. Way out on the corner of Texas, barely clinging to the edge of the United States, is a sizable German air force base. Apparently the Luftwaffe has trained fliers in the United States since 1958. In 1992, they consolidated their troops at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, just up the road from El Paso.

Not long after that article ran, I went to a local farmer’s market and met an 80-year-old German woman selling bread. I was completely smitten by her, and all that I imagined she might have experienced in her life. While picking out my brötchen, I asked how she came to be in El Paso. “I married an American soldier after the war,” she told me. Voila! Elsie, my 1945 protagonist, was born. My memories of living and traveling in Germany served as my imaginative landscape and fueled my...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Sarah McCoy’s website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Sarah McCoy's The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ben Kane

Ben Kane's books include The Forgotten Legion,  The Silver Eagle, and The Road to Rome. He lives in North Somerset, England.

From his Q & A with Boyd Tonkin at the Independent:

Choose a favourite author, and say why you admire her/him

Rosemary Sutcliff. I was probably no older than nine or 10 when I read 'The Eagle of the Ninth' and it had a huge influence on me; it's one of the reasons I ended up writing about Rome. I was so struck by her imagery of Hadrian's Wall and the wilds of Scotland, and the idea of the soldiers disappearing there.
* * *

Which fictional character most resembles you?

Probably Romulus, the main character in my first trilogy ['The Forgotten Legion Chronicles']. Everyone who writes probably puts a lot of their own feelings and beliefs into their characters.
* * *

Who is your hero/heroine from outside literature?

Ellen MacArthur. Because she had an ambition to do something completely out with her life experience, and she went and....[read on]

Visit Ben Kane's website and blog.

Writers Read: Ben Kane.

My Book, The Movie: The Forgotten Legion trilogy.

The Page 69 Test: The Road to Rome.

--Marshal Zeringue