Charles McCarry

Charles McCarry's new novel is The Shanghai Factor.

From his Q & A with Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg for the Wall Street Journal's book blog:

Speakeasy: How did you decide on the plot for this novel?

Charles McCarry: The idea of a dangle—an asset that you dangle in front of the enemy in the hope that he will bite thinking he is doubling somebody when in fact he is being doubled— has been wandering around in my brain for while. A dangle is a bait, but it’s a poisoned bait. You’ve got the enemy in a frame of mind where he believes the agent you are offering to him will work for him, and report on the intelligence service to which he belongs.

The Chinese company at the heart of the novel, which is never identified by name, appears to have unlimited sources of cash and a willingness to do anything to achieve its goals. How realistic a view of Chinese corporate culture is this?

Well, from what I’ve heard it is quite realistic. The subtext is that the Chinese is company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of their intelligence service. That’s the explanation for its dark side. On the surface it operates like a traditional company while running intelligence operations and making money for...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Douglas Brunt

Until 2011, Douglas Brunt was CEO of Authentium, Inc., an Internet security company. He now writes full time and is currently working on his second novel. A Philadelphia native, he lives in New York with his wife Megyn Kelly and their two children.

From a Q & A with the author about his debut novel, Ghosts of Manhattan:

Q: This is your debut novel. Can you describe this experience? What was the most challenging part of the process? The most rewarding?

DB: I had an idea for the big picture of the novel from the beginning. Writing the first draft was a pleasure, and as I mentioned, became a way to relax. The hard stages were the many iterations of edits and refinements when I hadn’t yet made writing a career and didn’t have a clear path to anyone other than family ever reading it. The most rewarding part was seeing how much better the novel became after those many iterations.

Q: Ghosts of Manhattan centers around the now-defunct Bear Stearns. What kind of research did you do before writing Ghosts of Manhattan? Why did you choose to base Nick’s story in the year 2005?

DB: I read a number of books about the financial crisis, including Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin and The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis, to name two. I worked as a money markets broker for two years in my first job out of college. I also have many friends and acquaintances who work in sales and trading in New York. Many of my friends sat with me to help create a credible backdrop for the novel.

I picked 2005 because the ensuing financial crisis allowed me to address the themes of greed and hypocrisy that I was so interested in. It also let me examine...[read on]

Visit Douglas Brunt's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid's latest novel is See Now Then.

From her 2012 Q & A with Liesl Schwabe for Publishers Weekly:

In the book, the phrase See Now Then repeats, both gaining and shifting meaning as it does. How much of that reprise comes through revision?

I write a lot in my head. The revision goes on internally. It’s not spontaneous and it doesn’t have a schedule. You know how some people write every day at a certain point? I’m not like that. I carry something around for a long time. I weigh the words and the sentences. I weigh the paragraphs. The process is much more meditative for me. So, when I put something down on paper, I’ve already edited a lot. I don’t think it’s a very efficient way to work, but it’s the way I do it. I am just very careful with what I put down. You know how if you’re making a gravy or something, the recipe calls for you to simmer until it reduces by two-thirds? I seem to simmer [a book] until it has been reduced by two-thirds.

Mrs. Sweet’s children often seem frustrated by her work as a writer. What were your own experiences balancing motherhood and writing?

Children like their mothers especially to be standing still and watching them, even if they are sleeping. At least that’s how I felt. There’s nothing wrong with the self-interest of children; it’s just the way they are. The mother has to...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Nathaniel Philbrick

From a Q & A with author Nathaniel Philbrick about his new book, Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution:

Q: You are the author of In the Heart of the Sea and Mayflower, among other books. Each takes a piece of history we all think we know about and brings to life aspects that aren’t part of common lore. In BUNKER HILL you do the same. What piqued your interest in Bunker Hill?

By writing BUNKER HILL, I’ve actually returned to the subject and the place where my love of history began. When I was in the fifth grade in Pittsburgh I was captivated by Esther Forbes’s historical novel Johnny Tremain. Even after I’d studied American history in high school, college, and beyond, I still found myself longing to know more about what unfolded in and around Boston during the early years of the Revolution. Before settling on Nantucket, my wife and I lived for a year in Boston, and it was while pushing my daughter’s stroller through the crooked streets of the North End that I first began to think seriously about writing about the past. And, as has been true with all my previous books, once I started researching, I quickly realized that the truth about what happened to the inhabitants of Boston during the two and a half years between the Boston Tea Party in December 1773 and the evacuation of the British troops in March 1776 was much more complex, disturbing, inspiring, and just plain interesting than I could have ever imagined.

Q: How have your past books informed your research and writing for BUNKER HILL?

My book Mayflower ends with the horrendous Native-English conflict known as King Philip’s War, which was fought a century before the events described in BUNKER HILL. Almost as soon as I started my research on this book, I began to understand that the American Revolution was as much about the unfinished business associated with that earlier era as it was about issues like liberty, freedom, and taxation without representation. For the farmers in the outlying towns of New England—the ones who fought and died at Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill—the Revolution wasn’t about their frustrations with Parliament; it was about...[read on]

Read about Nathaniel Philbrick's seven favorite history books.

--Marshal Zeringue

James Thompson

With his first internationally published novel, Snow Angels, James Thompson proved himself Finland’s best and most popular representative in the rise of Nordic noir. It was selected as one of Booklist’s Best Crime Novel Debuts of the Year and nominated for an Edgar Award, an Anthony Award, and a Strand Critics Award. His novel, Lucifer’s Tears, has received critical acclaim from all quarters, including starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Kirkus, and was selected as one of the best novels of the year by Kirkus. Helsinki White was released to critical acclaim in 2012. The fourth book in the series, Helsinki Blood, was published in March, 2013.

From Thompson's Q & A with George Ebey at The Big Thrill:

HELSINKI BLOOD is your fourth novel featuring Inspector Kari Vaara. Can you tell us a little about his background and how he has evolved over the course of the series?

Kari has had a hard go of it. He grew up dirt poor in a small town in the Arctic—the kind of poor where there isn’t always enough food—and was also sorely abused by his father. This instilled in him a desire to help those who can’t help themselves. A compulsive desire, and sometimes he goes far past what is reasonable, or even legal, to accomplish it. His first wife walked out on him. He was a beat cop in Helsinki and was shot in the line of duty while involved in an act of heroism. She was gone when he came home from the hospital.

The bullet wrecked his knee and the chief of police had to retire him or promote him, as he couldn’t continue as a patrol cop. Kari had earned his Master’s in criminal justice and met that qualification, so he was promoted to inspector. He asked to be assigned to his home town. It was a quiet job, running the small police force there, almost a form of retirement, and he stayed, perhaps not happy, but content enough, for a number of years. Then he met Kate. They fell in love and married quickly. Trouble also came quickly. A murder case resulted in a number of deaths, Kari was shot again, this time in the face. Kate miscarried twins. They decided to try for a new start, moved to Helsinki, and he worked in the homicide unit.

The national chief of police had dreams of becoming a sort of Finnish J. Edgar Hoover. He needed people to work outside the law to do it. He recruited Kari. He pushed Kari’s buttons, told him he would focus on saving women from forced prostitution in the slave trade. Kari’s compulsion to help the helpless sucked him in. But he had been lied to. His black ops were about the acquisition of wealth and power, he had inadvertently, an inch at a time, become a collaborator and he was stuck in a position he didn’t want to be in and couldn’t find a way out. I’m avoiding spoilers from this point on.

Health problems changed him and his thinking and behavior, so much so that he became a man...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at James Thompson's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Snow Angels.

The Page 69 Test: Helsinki White.

Writers Read: James Thompson (April 2012).

My Book, The Movie: Helsinki White.

Writers Read: James Thompson.

The Page 69 Test: Helsinki Blood.

My Book, The Movie: Helsinki Blood.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mary Roach

Mary Roach's new book is Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal.

From her Q & A with Molly Driscoll at The Christian Science Monitor:

Q: You warn readers in your book when things are coming that are a little unpleasant. If you're discussing these topics at events or book signings, do people get grossed out, or do they know what they're in for?

A: I was at the San Francisco Jewish Community Center and I think sometimes the audience isn't necessarily Mary Roach people but they're JCC subscribers. The guy who runs the program said he was looking at people in the audience and there was one woman who picked up the edge of her shirt and put it over her mouth or something as if she was going to throw up. So apparently there were people looking a little stricken.

Usually the people who show up at these events are people who know my work and come knowing what to expect or come on an empty stomach.

Q: Some of your questions to scientists were a little unusual. How was the reception from the science community as a whole to your investigations?

A: They were delighted. The exception being, I think Michael Levitt would rather talk about something else by now. [Levitt is an expert in gastrointestinal gas.] He was nice enough to talk to me, but I think he'd rather talk about some of his other work.

The guy, [ecologist] Dick Tracy with the mealworms and the stomach, the whole experiment was really fun. [Roach watched as Tracy tested to see if a mealworm could eat its way out of another animal's stomach.]

Even Rodriguez [the fake name of a prisoner whom Roach questioned about his smuggling of objects in his rectum] enjoyed talking about...[read on]

Learn about Mary Roach's six favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Larry McMurtry

Larry McMurtry is the author of over twenty-five novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove. His other works include two collections of essays, three memoirs, and more than thirty screenplays, including the coauthorship of Brokeback Mountain, for which he received an Academy Award.

From his Q & A with Noah Charney for The Daily Beast:

You’ve long been considered the leading writer of Westerns, or rather stories set in the old West or in contemporary Texas. But you also write excellent criticism, essays, and screenplays. Are you comfortable with your association as a writer of Westerns?

Not entirely, no. In the first place, you have to define “Western.” What is a Western? Is it anything set in the West, contemporary or otherwise?

It’s hard for many of us to imagine having written as iconic a novel as Lonesome Dove, winner of the 1985 Pulitzer Prize. How has the legacy of that book affected your career and what you have chosen to write since?

I don’t think about Lonesome Dove very much or very often. It only affected what I chose to write afterwards in terms of the other three books in the Lonesome Dove tetralogy. I would have written the rest of my books, whether or not I’d written Lonesome Dove. I’ve never re-read Lonesome Dove, or given it any real thought.

Many of your books, from Lonesome Dove to Horseman, Pass By, have been adapted for the screen. [Horseman, Pass By was adapted as Hud.] What are your thoughts on the screen versions of your work?

I’ve been very lucky to have mostly fine movies made from my work—most, if not all. I wasn’t crazy about Hud, because...[read on]

Learn about Larry McMurtry's five best travel books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lisa Black

Lisa Black spent the five happiest years of her life in a morgue. As a forensic scientist in the Cleveland coroner’s office she analyzed gunshot residue on hands and clothing, hairs, fibers, paint, glass, DNA, blood and many other forms of trace evidence, as well as crime scenes. Now she’s a certified latent print examiner and CSI for the Cape Coral Police Department. Her latest novel featuring forensic scientist Theresa MacLean is Blunt Impact.

From her Q & A with forensics4fiction:

F4F: I’m sure your day job provides plenty of inspiration for your stories. What else do you draw from when creating scenes, characters, or story ideas?

Lisa: I poach characters horribly from movies and TV–funny, minor characters, or secondary characters who interested me. Then other ideas just pop into my head and I have no idea where they come from. It’s a huge mix of various pipelines.

F4F: Crime scene investigation can be a physically and emotionally taxing profession. You’ve got the technical side nailed down but are there any topics you find emotionally difficult to write about?

Lisa: I don’t get emotionally involved in much, but there’s a few things I’m squeamish about–I can’t do anything horrible to a child or an animal unless it’s way, way ‘offscreen’. I can’t stand days of torture and buckets of blood. I’m an incredible softy when it comes to the elderly, so I can’t say much of what I’m feeling when it comes to aging parents, even though I should tap that reservoir.

F4F: In your current novel Blunt Impact, your heroine Theresa MacLean has to face some new challenges in protecting a child who witnessed the murder of her mother. Can you give us some insight on Theresa’s character (morality). What makes her tick?

Lisa: Theresa’s got a very firm sense of right and wrong, and a very firm habit of keeping her thoughts to herself. So even though she doesn’t say so, she’s a much stricter judge of other people, and especially herself, than others might guess. People make the mistake of thinking...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Lisa Black's website.

My Book, The Movie: Trail of Blood.

The Page 69 Test: Trail of Blood.

Writers Read: Lisa Black (September 2010).

My Book, The Movie: Defensive Wounds.

The Page 69 Test: Defensive Wounds.

Writers Read: Lisa Black (October 2011).

Writers Read: Lisa Black.

My Book, The Movie: Blunt Impact.

The Page 69 Test: Blunt Impact.

--Marshal Zeringue

Peter Rock

Peter Rock was born and raised in Salt Lake City. His most recent book is The Shelter Cycle, which concerns the end of the world in Montana in 1990, among other things.  His previous novel, My Abandonment, has won an Alex Award, the Utah Book Award, and been published in Germany, Turkey and France. He is also the author of the novels The Bewildered, The Ambidextrist, This Is the Place, and Carnival Wolves, and a story collection, The Unsettling.

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

What does the title of The Shelter Cycle mean?

The church, like any organization, has its own language. Periods of time are often spoken of in terms of "cycles"—e.g. a recovery cycle, a cleaning-up cycle, a settling cycle. "The Shelter Cycle" is how they refer to the period of time between 1987-90, when the shelters were being built. The effects of that effort linger on, so it's possible that this shelter cycle continues to the present day. My book dramatizes the period of the shelters' construction, and also the continuation of that energy.

It would be wrong to conceive of the shelter cycle as a purely physical effort, however; survival happens on many planes. Through high-speed chants known as "decrees," the church aspired to change the world's vibration, to balance karma, and to change bad energy to good. It is not just that emotional turmoil that we feel is similar to physical cataclysm, it is the same. So preparing the shelters and practicing survival skills were running parallel to preparations that were far less visible.

How did real people become involved with your writing of this novel, and how did they change it?

About five years ago, when I was beginning to think about taking on this project, I realized that a young woman I knew—a student at Reed College, where I teach—had been a child in the church during the time of the shelter cycle. Her father had built a shelter for seventy people. She'd graduated and moved back to Montana, and she agreed to meet with me and tell me about that time. Through her generosity, I did over thirty hours of interviewers with ex-members and true believers; in some sense, these conversations confirmed that it was a fascinating topic and also showed me how complicated a project it would be.

The first thing I realized was that the people I was talking to were really...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Peter Rock's website.

The Page 69 Test: My Abandonment.

The Page 69 Test: The Shelter Cycle.

Writers Read: Peter Rock.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nathaniel Rich

Nathaniel Rich's new novel is Odds Against Tomorrow.

From his Q & A with Noah Charney at The Daily Beast:

Your new novel, Odds Against Tomorrow, involves probability and mathematics as a driver for the plot. How did you choose that plot mechanism?

“Numbers people” turn to math for the same reasons that readers turn to literature or poetry: for consolation, beauty, mystery, and affirmation. I wanted to write about a character who uses math to make sense of the world around him. Numbers, like words, have their limitations, however, and that was to be part of the story as well.

Also, I wanted to know: what are the odds, exactly, that an asteroid will hit the planet and usher in a global dark age? That a suicide bomber will detonate himself in the middle of Fifth Avenue? That a catastrophic hurricane will bring about the flooding of Manhattan? In order to get to the bottom of these questions you need statistics and some basic calculus. Fiction allows you to follow principles to their most extreme conclusions, so I felt it was important in the novel to pursue math as one of several possible paths to enlightenment.

Describe your routine when conceiving of a book and its plot, before the writing begins. Do you like to map out your books ahead of time, or just let it flow?

I map them out rigorously, but it’s only a matter of time before I veer off the map. So by the end of the novel, when I look back at the outline, it’s as if I’m looking at the map of ...[read on]

Visit Nathaniel Rich's website.

Writers Read: Nathaniel Rich (March 2008).

--Marshal Zeringue