Linda Wilgus

Linda Wilgus grew up in the Netherlands and lived in Italy, Belgium, and the United States before settling in England. A graduate of the University of Amsterdam, she worked as a bookseller and a knitting pattern designer before becoming a full-time writer. Her short stories have been published in numerous literary magazines. Wilgus shares her home with her husband, three children, and their dog.

The Sea Child is Wilgus's debut novel.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The Sea Child was not the original title of the book. It went out to publishers with the title The Sea Bucca’s Daughter which is also the title I used to query agents. I think by the time we went out on submission to publishers though everyone felt that the title may need to be changed as, even though the Sea Bucca legend from Cornish folklore is very important in the story, hardly anybody would know who the Sea Bucca was before they read it. After some brainstorming with my US and UK editors and my agent, we settled on The Sea Child and I feel it is the perfect title for the book. The title refers to Isabel, the main character, and to her connection to the sea which is such an important part of the book and a driving force in the narrative. It also hints at the magic in the story, because it raises questions for readers, namely, why is Isabel the sea child and what does this mean for the character and her journey?

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

I think my teenage self would be surprised that my dream of writing and seeing a novel published has come true, but I don’t think the story itself would be too surprising to her. I grew up in a part of the Netherlands called Twente, which has very strong folkloric tradition, and I have loved folklore from an early age. My favourite genre to read back then was historical fiction, as it is now. Plus, even as a teenager, I was a huge romantic! So to see a story that combines all these elements does fit with what I imagine my teenage self would have liked to write someday.

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

I find endings harder to write, mainly because, try as I might, I’m unable to predict how my novels will end. Before I wrote my debut The Sea Child, I wrote three other adult novels and during the writing of those I learned that for me, it’s important to draw up a structure before diving into the actual writing. But even as I wrote a structure for The Sea Child and have also written for my second book, which is coming out in Spring 2027, and for the third which I’m currently working on, I seem to be able to plan about 75% of the book and the last 25% only comes to me during the writing. Beginnings are fairly easy for me as I usually have a sense of how I want the book to open but with endings I can only hope that the puzzle pieces will fall into place by the time I get to writing them.

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

Isabel, the main character in The Sea Child definitely shares some character traits with me. Like Isabel I tend to be somewhat impulsive and I can be a bit stubborn too. And like her, I have always loved the sea and have felt connected to it in a way, albeit not in a mystical way like Isabel! I love to swim in the sea too but am by no means a strong sea-swimmer. And in other ways Isabel is very different from me. I do recognise something of myself in many of my characters but the characters are very much their own personality as well and there are many more differences than there are similarities.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Folklore and history, in particular the history of Cornwall and other Celtic cultures, are huge inspirations to me. Another inspiration is travel as I love visiting the places I write about and getting to know them by exploring their landscapes. In my books landscape plays a big role and in a way ends up being almost like another character as the part it plays in the story is so important, as is the case with the Cornish landscape and particularly the sea in The Sea Child. I love taking long hikes in the different settings I write about and getting a sense of the landscape that way. It’s one of my favourite things about writing!

Visit Linda Wilgus's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Sea Child.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nina McConigley

Nina McConigley was born in Singapore and raised in Wyoming. Her short-story collection Cowboys and East Indians was the winner of the PEN Open Book Award and a High Plains Book Award. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Orion, Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly Review, High Country News, O, Oprah Magazine, Parents, Virginia Quarterly Review, American Short Fiction, and The Asian American Literary Review among others.

McConigley's new novel is How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The book had another title while I was working on it. It was originally called The Call of Migratory Things. Which is a line from Angels in America. That play had a huge influence on me, and since my book was set in the 80’s, I loved it as a title. When I first started working on the book with my editor, she asked me about the title. And mentioned she felt it was very lyrical, and made people think of more typical immigrant narratives – a more familiar story. I agreed with her. We agreed my book wasn’t that. It was weird – so why not have a little cheekier title? We went through a list and quickly settled on How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder. It summed up the book – race, murder, a kind of how-to. And then I saw the cover image of anti-freeze and knew it was all perfect. The book is serious, but also really playful, and I think the title captures that.

What's in a name?

The names of my two main characters were very deliberate. Two white colonial women writers I grew up reading were Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer. I devoured their books. And so, I knew the mother in the book would have also read them and named her girls after them – Agatha Krishna and Georgie Ayyar. The mother’s maiden name being Ayyar, sealed the joke. I think the whole book is playing with colonialism, and the names felt like another space to play and poke at certain structures.

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

My teenage self would not have thought a teenage life was worth writing about. Growing up in Wyoming, I was always waiting for my life to begin. Which I thought would only happen if I left Wyoming. So, knowing that I am writing about Noxzema, summer camp, and Ouija boards would have made me laugh. I thought literature was only Shakespeare and Austen.

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

I wrote the bookends to my novel first – the beginning and the end. After many false starts to the book and messy drafts, I decided to structure the book within a year. I began in January 1986, and then I wrote December 1986. And I told myself every chapter in between would lead to and earn that ending. But I did mess with the prologue and Chapter 1 many times. In your mind, you think this is what people will read first, so if it doesn’t grab them, they’ll stop reading. So, I tinkered and changed things a lot. Especially in the prologue, which I know some readers hate. But is often a convention of a thriller/mystery.

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

A little bit of both. I certainly have been a biracial Indian girl growing up in Wyoming in the 1980’s. My dad is a geologist. But many of Georgie’s experiences and life are fiction. I haven’t killed anyone to my knowledge. But I see her wide-eyedness, her observations, and her feelings about race and Wyoming to be similar to mine. You get, as a writer, to create a better version or a different version of yourself. You get to make the comeback, to change the way history operated.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I think the landscape of Wyoming is my biggest influence. To live with so much open space and emptiness, perhaps contributed to the slimness of my novel. It’s spare. Also, a lot of visual artists. The Indian artists Hemali Vadalia, Renluka Maharaj, Suchitra Mattai, Maya Varadaraj, and Shyama Golden inspired me no end. I would look at their art when stuck. And much of my book was written to the Tamil musician Ganavya. Her work is otherworldly. Her voice and music were prayers to me. Also, world events. A lot happened while I worked on this book – the pandemic, George Floyd, two elections – and I wanted my art to be my activism.

Visit Nina McConigley's website.

The Page 69 Test: How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder.

Writers Read: Nina McConigley.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lynn Cullen

Lynn Cullen’s bestselling novels, including The Woman with the Cure, The Sisters of Summit Avenue, Mrs. Poe, Twain’s End, The Creation of Eve, and Reign of Madness, have been translated into seventeen languages and are the recipients of various honors, including NPR Great Read, Oprah.com Book of the Week, People magazine Book of the Week, Indie Next List selection, and Atlanta magazine Best Books of the Year. She lives in Atlanta.

Cullen's new novel is When We Were Brilliant.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I wrote my novel When We Were Brilliant in response to the deep curiosity I’ve had about Marilyn Monroe since I was a kid watching her in The Seven Year Itch. I’d wanted to write about her for decades but couldn’t find a way in that was unique. It then occurred to me that one of the many woman who photographed Marilyn might have some interesting insights. I was shocked to find that she’d only sat for one woman, Eve Arnold. In fact, Marilyn sought her out.

Eve was wary of Marilyn at first. Marilyn claimed that she could help Eve’s career, a big boast, Eve thought, coming from a starlet. But she soon found out that their collaboration was like nothing she’d ever experienced (nor would ever again in her highly acclaimed, 70-year career.) Marilyn brought out the best in Eve’s natural ability to draw out her subject, a gift that would come to allow Eve’s subjects to fully give themselves to her. For her part, Eve allowed Marilyn to show a side of herself unseen by any other photographer. In fact, you can easily pick out Eve Arnold’s photos of Marilyn from the rest of the field. Marilyn just looks different in them.

Twenty-five years after Marilyn died, Eve wrote a book about her time with Marilyn. In it, she said that they sparked off each other; together, they were brilliant. And hence the title of the novel, which, in a nutshell, summarizes the scope of my tale.

What's in a name?

Every character in my book is based on a real person, from Marilyn to her make- up artist, Whitey Snyder, so there was never any thought given to naming them. The challenge, came instead from putting together what is known about Marilyn and Eve-- not just the events in their lives, but how they thought and acted--to tell a story that shows the real women behind their famous facades. The result is a view of Marilyn that is as unique as Eve’s photos of her. I can’t wait for readers to discover these two truly brilliant women in the pages of the novel.

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

This book is exactly what my teenaged self would have dreamed of writing…but would have never been able to pull off. It took a lifetime of hard-won experience to understand what the lives of Marilyn Monroe and Eve Arnold could say to us.

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

The first few sentences of a novel are relatively easy to write, but it’s slow-going after that as I figure out what the story is trying to say. I rewrite everything. Repeatedly. Dozens of times. I usually have an idea of the ending before I start the book but don’t write it until I come to the actual finish. It’s a sort of bait to get me through the years it takes to write a novel.

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

For differing reasons, I can relate deeply to both of my leading ladies. I did my best to inhabit them, to the point that Eve Arnold’s grandson has said that Eve, in my book, sounds like the woman he knew and loved. But with that connection came an attachment that might explain why I get so teary just thinking about Marilyn and Eve or seeing their photos. I don’t regret it—it was the cost of writing the most authentic, honest story possible—but I am a bit of an emotional wreck.

Visit Lynn Cullen's website.

12 Yoga Questions: Lynn Cullen.

My Book, The Movie: Mrs. Poe.

The Page 69 Test: Mrs. Poe.

The Page 69 Test: Twain's End.

The Page 69 Test: The Sisters of Summit Avenue.

My Book, the Movie: The Sisters of Summit Avenue.

--Marshal Zeringue

Van Jensen

Van Jensen is an acclaimed novelist, screenwriter, and comic book writer. Godfall, his debut novel, is in development as a TV series with Academy Award winner Ron Howard attached to direct. He began his career as a newspaper crime reporter, then broke into comic books and graphic novels as the writer of ARCA (IDW), Two Dead (Gallery 13), and Tear Us Apart (Dark Horse). Jensen has written world-renowned characters, including Superman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Godzilla, and James Bond. Jensen has served as a Comic Book Ambassador for the U.S. State Department, teaching refugee children to tell their stories through comics. He lives in Atlanta.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Godfall is about a god-like being falling out of the sky, so I'd say it hits the nail on the head.

Funny enough, this was a book that I took forever to generate the title. When the answer finally came, I about kicked myself that such an obvious one had been there all along.

What's in a name?

There's a thing that a lot of writers do where they use the meaning/etymology of a name to reinforce a character's personality traits. To me, that's a bit on the nose.

I think more about how a name sounds. How it feels. There's a military head in Godfall named Conover, and I chose that because it has the hard initial C, but also is unassuming. This is a guy who is tougher than he appears.

All this said, I did name my protagonist in this giant-alien story "David," so perhaps I don't mind being on the nose.

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

Godfall is set in western Nebraska, where I grew up. The giant alien lands next to a small town, which is then transformed into the most important place on earth.

My teenage self would be surprised by this because my teenage self was desperate to escape from western Nebraska. I planned to leave and never look back. Yet here I am, writing a trilogy of novels set in just that place.

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

My general approach is that I write and rewrite the beginning of a book until it feels rock solid. I always have a plan for the whole book, of course, but I want to get the voice/tone/characters/structure all locked in place, and that takes a good bit of futzing.

That serves as a bit of a foundation, and the rest of the book builds up rather easily from there, I find.

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

I didn't plan to make David, the Godfall protagonist, an avatar of myself. But most people who read the book have commented that he's a lot like me.

Generally, I think the fun of writing is exploring the vast range of human psychology and experience. At the same time, I always want to be able to relate emotionally to them. To me, that's the key in making stories sing.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I started my writing career in newspapers, spending a few years as a crime reporter. That probably had the most impact. I think I have a good handle on how police operate, their motivations. Criminals as well.

Beyond that, I try to live a life of engagement, interacting with others as often as I can, just generally being out in the world. You never know what little moment might catalyze a story idea.

Visit Van Jensen's website.

Writers Read: Van Jensen.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jacquelyn Stolos

Jacquelyn Stolos grew up in Derry, New Hampshire. She loves tromping through the forest and reading good books.

Asterwood is her first novel for children.

Stolos holds an MFA in fiction from NYU, where she was a Writers in the Public School Fellow. Her short fiction has appeared in Joyland and No Tokens. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Asterwood is a clean, simple title and I love that. It signals the novel's setting to readers, and I'm a setting-oriented writer--it's usually the detail that comes first in the pre-draft, dreamstorm stage of my work and the detail that speaks loudest in my finished books--so it feels right. I can't take credit though! There were many placeholder titles before my brilliant editor, Wendy Loggia, suggested Asterwood.

What's in a name?

So much. The novel's protagonist, Madelyn, is named for my niece. At the time, Madelyn was the only baby in the family, so of course I had to name the child in my book after her. Books take some time to write so now, at the time of Asterwood's publication, I have a daughter of my own, another niece, three nephews, and one more niece or nephew on the way. I have some work to do if I'm going to keep up the tradition of writing each kid their own fantasy! Plus, baby Madelyn has grown into a kid with her own wonderful, distinct personality that's nothing like this imagined character. I've been thinking of C.S. Lewis's famous inscription for his goddaughter Lucy in The Lion, Witch, and The Wardrobe. Girls certainly do grow faster than books, Clive!

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

My teenage self would not be surprised at all. Asterwood is a return home for me. It begins and ends in Derry, New Hampshire, my hometown, where I spent a lot of my time having imaginary adventures in the woods behind my house as a kid. While I never found a shimmering rift in time and space that brought me to a magical forest, my afternoons under that dark canopy were wild and enchanting. Asterwood has flavors of some of the wonderful contemporary middle grade authors I've read as an adult --shoutouts to Kelly Barnhill, Grace Lin, and Colin Meloy-- but I owe its bones to the authors I read as a tween and who shaped how I experience the world. Madeleine L'Engle, Tolkien, Lois Lowry, Sharon Creech, my Gods.

On the other hand, my 20's self, who read and wrote spare, fragmented adult literary fiction set in the big cities I've lived in as a young adult, would fall over in shock.

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

Oh my goodness endings, endings, endings! Asterwood has had about three million different endings. Readers, what do you think of this one? If you don't like it, I can send along another to suit your taste. Maybe someday I'll publish a version with a choose-your-own-adventure finale.

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

Absolutely. Though Madelyn's named after my niece, she's certainly a young me: a day-dreamy, bookish kid who struggles to connect with other kids in her elementary school and thinks her nerdy dad is the bees knees. Madelyn lives in her imagination, as I did. Ha, who am I kidding, as I still do.

Horrifyingly--please don't run from me screaming and crying--Stella, the queen of the cannibals, has got bits and pieces of me too. Like Stella, I'm a woman of brutally deep convictions (I don't believe we should save forests by eating children! Do I need to say that?). My daughter was born while I was writing this novel and Stella became the place where I ruminated on the murderous strength of a young, scared mother's love.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

My calico cat Annie, who passed a few years ago, is Dots, Madelyn's loyal and beloved kitty companion. Trees and sunlight. I have often joked that I've engineered entire novels simply as an excuse to spend my time ruminating on the way afternoon light looks filtered through leaves moving in a light breeze.

Visit Jacquelyn Stolos's website.

Writers Read: Jacquelyn Stolos.

The Page 69 Test: Asterwood.

My Book, The Movie: Asterwood.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jenna Blum

Jenna Blum is the New York Times and # 1 internationally bestselling author of novels Those Who Save Us, The Stormchasers, and The Lost Family; memoir Woodrow on the Bench; audiocourse “The Author at Work: The Art of Writing Fiction” and original podcast The Key of Love. Blum is CEO and co-Founder of online author interview platform A Mighty Blaze and one of Oprah.com readers’ Top 30 Women Writers. She earned her MA in Creative Writing at Boston University and has taught workshops for Boston University, Grub Street Writers, A Mighty Blaze, and numerous other institutions for over 25 years. Blum interviewed Holocaust survivors for Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation and is a professional public speaker, traveling nationally and internationally to speak about her work.

Her new novel is Murder Your Darlings.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Great question. I think a title needs to be both memorable and applicable, and I hope Murder Your Darlings is both. Most readers know this phrase means to cut things from a manuscript that are beloved but not essential, but what they might not know is that "murder your darlings" is the original advice to writers, given by a gentleman named Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, in 1914....and then it was appropriated, and changed, by Faulkner to "kill your darlings." When I learned this, I knew my title had to be the original Murder Your Darlings, since my thriller is after all not only about ruthless writers behaving badly but about the most extreme form of appropriation.

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

She probably wouldn't be surprised at all. We love to write about sex and death and dark things, and what makes people tick, and there's plenty of all of the above in Murder Your Darlings. I do think she would absolutely love reading it, probably would devour it in one sitting in her attic bedroom, smoking out the window.

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

Beginnings! I hate them. I rarely change them, but I don't enjoy them. The first chapter of a novel is such a workhorse: it has to draw the reader in, introduce character, main conflict, atmosphere. The exception is prologues: not all of my novels have them, but the prologues I wrote came in a lightning flash of inspiration, and they've been included in my novels verbatim from the first draft, unchanged.

An ending is a reward. I always know what the ends of my novels will be, even the last lines, and I write toward them like a swimmer pushing through choppy seas (which is all that murky middle stuff). Reaching that last paragraph, that last line, is dragging myself up onto the beach and lying in the sun.

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

I do, alas, see myself in some characters. The closer a character is to me, the harder she is to write. The characters who give me the most joy are the ones who are completely unlike myself, who appear out of nowhere and demand that their stories be told. They are to me living people, and it's my job to get them out of the ether and onto the page where others can know them as well. I got lucky with Murder Your Darlings in that not one but two of the narrators, The Rabbit and William, are those out-of-nowhere characters. (Sam Vetiver, the heroine, is pretty much an alt-me. But I love her, too!)

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

My friends. All my friends, pretty much, are writers, and even when we're not talking about writing, when we're hiking in the woods with our dogs or working together on A Mighty Blaze (our online author interview platform) or on paddleboards, it's a constant inspiration to see how they arrange their lives in order to nourish creativity.

Also nature. Writers, including myself, are often impatient creatures. We want our books to be done now, instantly, perfectly. iI you've watched anything in nature grow, you know it doesn't work like that. Often it seems as though nothing is happening--but a seed is cracking beneath the earth, a bud forming within a tree. Things take as long as they take. I try to honor the process and accept that.

Visit Jenna Blum's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Lost Family.

--Marshal Zeringue

Bruce Robert Coffin

Bruce Robert Coffin is the award-winning author of the Detective Byron Mysteries. Former detective sergeant with more than twenty-seven years in law enforcement, he is the winner of Killer Nashville’s Silver Falchion Awards for Best Procedural, and Best Investigator, and the Maine Literary Award for Best Crime Fiction Novel. Coffin was also a finalist for the Agatha Award for Best Contemporary Novel. His short fiction appears in a number of anthologies, including Best American Mystery Stories 2016.

Coffin's new novel is Bitter Fall, his second title featuring Detective Brock Justice.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I would say it does quite a bit. Bitter Fall captures both the mood and the season in which the story takes place. While I’ve had a vague idea for the titles on each of the Detective Justice novels, I wasn’t entirely happy with what I had come up with. My publishing team has been very involved in both title suggestions and cover art concepts and I must say I’m very happy with the results.

What's in a name?

Much like book titles, I think the names of characters play a vital role in how the readers see them and even feel about them. Bestowing the characters with meaningful names, something for which Charles Dickens was well known, allows the author a subliminal way to connect with the readers on a gut level. I read the name Scrooge and it immediately conjures up the image of a cantankerous old miser. Likewise, I hope my readers get what I was trying to say by naming my main protagonists Justice and Wright. In my opinion those names add just the right amount of nuance to who the characters are and struggle to be.

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

Great question. I’m not sure my teenage self, despite wanting desperately to be a novelist, would believe it. Not the subject matter, though I have always enjoyed mystery novels, and certainly not my having had ten published novels to date. I think the other thing teenaged me wouldn’t have believed is that it would take me until age fifty-two to see my first book published!

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

It really depends upon the book. I tend to write cinematically in that I visualize the scenes playing out in my head as I write. Usually I’ll get a strong idea for an opening scene that I hope will grab the reader by their lapels and drag them kicking and screaming into the story. The rest of the plot builds off of that initial scene. I guess if there is one aspect that I may tweak or even change entirely it is the ending. Sometimes a better ending just writes itself as the story unfolds.

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

The more I write the more I’m convinced that it’s nearly impossible to draw fully fleshed out characters without inserting, or perhaps revealing is a better word, some of yourself. One of the things I’ve learned that readers enjoy is the feeling that they are right there with my characters as they race toward danger or feel frustrated while working the case. I find giving the reader some insight into how things feel and the toll of the job by way of close third person narrative adds another dimension to the stories being told. Author Joseph Wambaugh once said something along the lines of: Don’t show the reader what cops do on the job, show them instead what the job does to cops. Wise words, despite my having butchered his quote.

Visit Bruce Robert Coffin's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Katie Bernet

Katie Bernet is the author of Beth Is Dead, a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection. She’s an award-winning creative director and a long-standing member of the DFW Writer’s Workshop. As the oldest of three sisters, she’s a diehard fan of Little Women. Beth Is Dead is her debut novel.

My Q&A with Bernet:

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

Beth Is Dead kinda says it all, and I like to joke that Jo March came up with the title. Beth Is Dead is a modern reimagining of Little Women as a mystery-thriller in which Beth March is murdered in chapter one. In the story, Jo has a book deal for which she needs an idea, and as she toys with writing about her sister’s death, she lands on a blunt, chilling title, Beth Is Dead. Before writing this scene, I had a bland working title for the novel as a whole, but when Jo had this idea on the page, I knew it needed to be on the cover.

What's in a name?

Because I wrote a reimagining of Louisa May Alcott’s story, I didn’t select the names for my characters, but I’m really fascinated by the name Beth and how it came to be a part of Little Women. Alcott’s characters were inspired by herself and her own sisters, but she renamed each of them except for Beth. Louisa became Jo, Anna became Meg, May became Amy—but Elizabeth remained Elizabeth. I think this demonstrates Elizabeth Alcott’s incredible impact on her sister. Alcott did however change Elizabeth’s nickname from Lizzie to Beth, and I suspect this had something to do with grief. Like her literary counterpart, the real Lizzie Alcott died of illness, but unlike Beth March, she didn’t accept her fate. I’ve read accounts suggesting that Lizzie raged against her untimely end. I imagine this must have been painful to witness, and I picture Louisa May Alcott choosing a softer nickname as she softened her sister into the angelic character we all know today. Coincidentally, my middle name is Elizabeth, and I hope readers will enjoy meeting my modern-day version of Beth March in Beth Is Dead.

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

My teenage self would probably be surprised that I wrote a mystery-thriller. Back then, I obsessed over literary fiction. But she wouldn’t be surprised that I reimagined Little Women, because I’m the eldest of three sisters, and sisterhood has always been one of the most important aspects of my life.

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

It’s funny—beginnings and endings aren’t the problem for me. The middle is the hard part. When I start writing a book, I almost always know where I want to open and where I’m going to close. Sometimes it changes, but with Beth Is Dead my first few and last few chapters had the least amount of revision.

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 pieces of myself in all of the March sisters, especially my own modern versions of them. As a writer, I relate most to Jo, but I aspire to be more like Beth. I don’t think she gets enough credit. In the original, she faces true horror—her own untimely death—and she still puts others before herself. I think she’s remarkable.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Beth Is Dead unfolds across two timelines, before and after Beth’s murder, and in crafting that back-and-forth, I took a lot of inspiration from The Haunting of Hill House. The TV adaptation of that story is one of the most brilliant examples of non-linear storytelling I’ve ever seen. I also drew inspiration from cancel culture. In the story, the March sisters are dragged into the spotlight when their dad writes a controversial bestselling novel about his own daughters and is subsequently cancelled. I was fueled by the tension in cancel culture—the tug between justice and harm. And of course, I drew inspiration from my own sisters especially for the more tender moments of the story.

Visit Katie Bernet's website.

The Page 69 Test: Beth Is Dead.

My Book, The Movie: Beth Is Dead.

Writers Read: Katie Bernet.

--Marshal Zeringue

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