Gigi Amateau

Gigi Amateau is the author of A Certain Strain of Peculiar, Chancey of the Maury River, Claiming Georgia Tate, and 2012's Come August, Come Freedom: The Bellows, The Gallows, and The Black General Gabriel.

From her Q & A with A. B. Westrick:

A. B. Westrick: Come August, Come Freedom is the story of Gabriel, the enslaved blacksmith who organized a massive but ultimately unsuccessful rebellion in Richmond, Virginia, in 1800. What I found intriguing was the way you chose to enter into Gabriel’s story. The first line is, “Ma believed,” and the chapter unfolds to show Ma nursing him when he was six months old. Why did you choose to begin the book with Ma?

Gigi Amateau: As I read and studied about the institution of slavery during Gabriel’s lifetime, I learned (in a way that I hadn’t really integrated into my thinking about slavery before writing Come August, Come Freedom) that the crucible of slavery was the childbearing role of enslaved women. The laws governing a person’s status as free or enslaved were grounded in the concept of maternal descent—the mother’s status (not the father’s) determined a child’s status. So, the impulsion of the plot is maternal descent. Also, I wanted to create the character of Gabriel as a person who was not the first freedom fighter in his community or in his family, but one who was born into a tradition of resisting oppression and fighting for freedom. So, I surrounded him early on in the novel with men and women imagining freedom and rebelling against slavery.

ABW: The opening chapter establishes a strong sense of place—a footpath, the creek beyond the fields, an apple seedling. While it grounds Gabriel and his story, literally and figuratively, it also sets a tranquil tone for a story that’s anything but tranquil. Again, can you talk about choosing to begin the story in this place rather than in, say, a blacksmith’s shop or marketplace, or some other place that Gabriel would have frequented? You might even have chosen to begin it with the scenes that became chapter two—glimpses of slaves treated harshly and slaves dashing for freedom—but instead you chose this tranquil tone. Can you say more about that?

GA: First of all, thank you. Writing a convincing sense of place both in the countryside and in the city was important to me, as was conveying a feeling of tranquility and beauty at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end. To me, it’s valid that Gabriel would have experienced...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Gigi Amateau's website.

Read--Coffee with a canine: Gigi Amateau & Biscuit and Cola.

Writers Read: Gigi Amateau.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ayana Mathis

Ayana Mathis's debut novel is The Twelve Tribes of Hattie. From Mathis's Q & A with Jonathan Lee for Guernica:

Guernica: I don’t think it’s a secret that you’re gay, but I haven’t seen you labelled as a gay writer. Why is that, I wonder? People might say it’s because your novel is about race, and therefore the fact you’re a writer of color comes up. But actually it’s a book about sexuality, too. You paint a great portrait of Floyd, a character, creative in temperament, who is struggling in some ways with his sexuality.

Ayana Mathis: It’s difficult. I’m wary of being put in boxes. But at the same time, it’s important that I embrace my identity as a writer who happens to be gay, and in my own way I do that. In America, and no doubt elsewhere, we have such a tendency toward the segregation of cultural products. This is a black book, this is a gay book, this is an Asian book. It can be counterproductive both to the literary enterprise and to people’s reading, because it can set up barriers. Readers may think, “Oh, I’m a straight man from Atlanta and I’m white, so I won’t enjoy that book because it’s by a gay black woman in Brooklyn.” They’re encouraged to think that, in a way, because of the categorization in the media.

As for Floyd, he’s certainly a very important character in the book. I couldn’t imagine a book with this many characters in it and one of them not being gay. It would have felt like a glaring and problematic omission for me. But I also wanted to write him as a person, not just a gay person. I found his chapter one of the most difficult to write because I seemed to be tempted to write some kind of coming out story. Many people have done that far better than I ever could, and I found I was relying on reductive tropes—what I was producing was boring, predictable. I had to think about the fact that first and foremost Floyd was a guy, a guy away from home for the first time. I had to resist the temptation to...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Dan Brown

Dan Brown's new novel is Inferno.

From his Q & A with Alexandra Alter for the Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog:

This is your darkest book to date. It deals with some very grim themes, like the imminent collapse of the human species.

You can’t write about Dante without writing about darkness. Inferno is the most fascinating of the three canticles. As a thriller writer, it was the one I was immediately drawn to. I’ve written about fine arts but never about literary arts, so Dante called to me as something new, but it’s also safe solid ground for Langdon. It’s such a masterpiece. It’s like the Mona Lisa of the literary world.

You and your publisher have gone to great lengths to make sure the plot remained secret until publication day. How did you research the locations in Florence, like the Palazzo Vecchio and the Baptistery of San Giovanni, without giving away what you were working on?

It’s a double edge sword. On the good side, I now have access to people and locations that I have never had in the past. On the challenging side, if I’m trying to keep things secret, it’s impossible to talk to these specialists without them saying, “Oh my God, you wouldn’t believe who was here today and what he was asking.” So these trips usually take longer than they should, because out of ten things I see, five of them have nothing to do with the book. Five questions I ask have nothing to do with the book. I’m constantly trying to keep people guessing as to what I’m doing and I will spend enormous amounts of time looking at manuscripts and asking questions and people will say, I know...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Tricia Fields

Tricia Fields lives in a log cabin on a small farm with her husband and two daughters. She was born in Hawaii but has spent most of her life in small town Indiana, where her husband is an investigator with the state police. A lifelong love of Mexico and the desert southwest lead to her first book, The Territory, which won the Tony Hillerman Award for Best Mystery. Scratchgravel Road, the follow-up to The Territory, was released last month. Fields is currently working on the fourth book in the series, Fire Break, featuring border town Chief of Police, Josie Gray.

From the author's Q & A with J. Sydney Jones:

How do you incorporate location in your fiction? Do you pay overt attention to it in certain scenes, or is it a background inspiration for you?

I’m very conscious of writing about the region, the desert and my fictional city of Artemis [located near the Big Bend National Park in West Texas]. Each of these influences the behavior and actions of the characters in the books as I have developed them. Dust storms and mud slides, drought and hundred year floods, heat and isolation, these extremes come together inside Josie and define her in ways that she can’t describe, but that she feels at her core. She’ll never leave Artemis. She belongs in the desert.

Of the novels you have written set in this location, do you have a favorite book or scene that focuses on the place? Could you quote a short passage or give an example of how the location figures in your novels?

The first book in the series, The Territory, sets up the premise for all books to come. Following is a paragraph from that book that explains the title, and lets readers know the specific area that the series covers.

“Josie knew prosecuting crimes over international borders was mired in paperwork, frustration, and pools of money her own department didn’t have. Over the past year, as the border violence increased, the trust among the two cities’ law enforcement agencies had deteriorated. Both countries found the other’s legal system lacking. Mexico blamed the American lust for drugs and lack of gun laws, and the U.S. blamed...[read on]

Visit Tricia Fields's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: The Territory.

Writers Read: Tricia Fields (November 2011).

The Page 69 Test: Scratchgravel Road.

Writers Read: Tricia Fields.

--Marshal Zeringue

J. Sydney Jones

J. Sydney Jones's 2009 novel The Empty Mirror introduced Karl Werthen, a well-off Viennese lawyer and aspiring author who, with real-life criminologist Doktor Hanns Gross, sought to prove that the painter Gustav Klimt was innocent in a series of gruesome local slayings. In the fourth and latest novel in the series, The Keeper of Hands, Werthen, Gross and Werthen’s resourceful spouse, Berthe Meisner, are mixed up in the seemingly disparate cases of a murdered teenage prostitute and an assaulted playwright.

From Jones's Q &A with J. Kingston Pierce for Kirkus Reviews:

I’m intrigued by your use of Hanns Gross, the so-called father of criminology, as a sidekick of sorts for Werthen. Have any of Gross’ descendents contacted you with comments or complaints about your use of their famous ancestor?

No descendants, but at readings there are usually one or two professional forensics folks who have come because of an interest in Gross. I really do enjoy writing Gross—his powers of deduction are quite phenomenal, but he is such a jerk. Quite oblivious to the feelings of others. He often serves as a comic foil, but his sad relationship with his son, Otto, is a recurring leitmotif of the books, as well. I am most anxious for the future installment when Gross has a post in Prague and teaches, among others, the young [Franz] Kafka. That will be a fun adventure.

The plots of your Viennese Mysteries start with a cultural luminary or two from the city’s past, be it Wittgenstein, Mahler or Vienna’s anti-Semitic mayor, Karl Lueger. The Keeper of Hands ropes authors Arthur Schnitzler and Bertha von Suttner into its story. Why were those two of particular interest to you?

I was not very kind to Schnitzler in this novel, I fear, focusing more on his womanizing than his art. But I am a great fan of his writing, especially the novel Das Weite Land (translated as The Undiscovered Country). I remember watching a BBC adaptation of his Anatol plays just before departing for Vienna as a student, and they obviously informed—at the very least—my expectations of the city. Schnitzler was at the center of the literary Vienna of the time, and...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at J. Sydney Jones' website and blog.

Read "The Story Behind the Story: The Silence,” at The Rap Sheet.

The Page 69 Test: The Empty Mirror.

The Page 69 Test: Requiem in Vienna.

The Page 69 Test: The Silence.

--Marshal Zeringue

Glenn Frankel

Glenn Frankel is director of the School of Journalism and G.B. Dealey Regents Professor in Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.

His new book is The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend.

From the author's Q & A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: What first intrigued you about The Searchers, and why did you decide it would make a good subject for a book?

A: I was always intrigued by The Searchers since I was a boy and I saw it for the first time on the big screen. It was a very unsettling, exciting, challenging film. I saw a lot of Westerns as a kid, and it was the only one that stuck with me. In college, Andrew Sarris taught it at Columbia—he held it up as an example of great filmmaking. I always thought that it was a great American story. When I came back to the U.S. in 2006, I was looking for an American book. I came back to The Searchers. I thought I would undertake a “making of the movie” book. I knew there was something called the “captivity narrative.” I had no idea that The Searchers was loosely based on a true story. It opened up an entire area of research work.

Q: What surprised you most in the course of your research?

A: A couple of things. One was that it turns out to be easier to research Cynthia Ann Parker and Quanah Parker in 19th century Texas than to research John Ford in Hollywood. That was because John Ford didn’t leave much in the way of writing, or explanation of his work. I was putting together pieces of the puzzle. And Texans are so in love with their history that there are so many places [to do research]. It was surprising and interesting. Another thing—you can see all these places. Monument Valley—you can see where Ford filmed. In Texas, you can see…Palo Duro Canyon. In Oklahoma, you can see Quanah Parker’s Star House. As a journalist/historian—I’m not sure which I am at this point—it’s important for me to...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Glenn Frankel's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Searchers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Carter Malkasian

Carter Malkasian spent nearly two years in the Afghan district of Garmser, in war torn Helmand province as a political officer for the US Department of State. For the last decade, he has studied war, and written about it, and worked in war zones, including long stints in Iraq's Al Anbar province. The author of Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare (named by Foreign Affairs as one of the ten books to read on counterinsurgency) and A History of Modern Wars of Attrition, he has also served as the director of the stability and development program at the Center for Naval Analyses. He has a Ph.D. in history from Oxford University. His new book is War Comes to Garmser: Thirty Years of Conflict on the Afghan Frontier.

From his Q & A with John Kael Weston for The Daily Beast:

What’s your inspiration for [War Comes to Garmser]?

I spent 18 months, in two separate deployments, in Al Anbar, Iraq. When I got back, I always meant to write a book but never found the time. I wrote several short articles and a few research studies but nothing more. It is one of my biggest regrets. The memories faded. The details went grey. When I got home from Afghanistan, I was determined to take the time to write something.

The book follows in the footsteps of Jeffrey Race's War Comes to Long An. Fluent in Vietnamese, Race told the story of a single province in Vietnam over a twenty-year period. His work offered a window into the ground truth of the Vietnam War. War Comes to Long An has a bright red cover, printed by the University of California Press. If that doesn’t scream radicalism, I don’t know what does. That book—tattered and worn—has found its way into my backpack in far off places for the past six years. I hope that War Comes to Garmser can also give the broad view of a small place, and maybe offer similar kinds of insights.

Why did you spend two years in Garmser, and how does this little district fit into the larger strategic picture?

War Comes to Garmser tells the story of the district of Garmser from the 1960s to 2012. Garmser has about 150,000 people, mostly living along the Helmand River in a fertile strip no more than 10 kilometers wide and 7 kilometers long. It is tribal, Islamic, and hot—Garmser means "hot place" in Persian. Pakistan is just a five-hour drive across open desert. For over thirty years, Garmser has been part of larger conflicts that have engulfed Afghanistan as a whole: first, the jihad and the ensuing civil war, then the Taliban, and finally the British and American intervention.

Garmser is...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Reed Farrel Coleman

Reed Farrel Coleman's new Moe Prager novel is Onion Street.

From his Q & A with Thomas Pluck at The Big Thrill:

Hi, Reed. For readers who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Moe Prager, give us the lowdown on him, and what he’s up against in ONION STREET.

Moe is both what you’d expect from a hard-boiled ex-cop turned PI and nothing you would expect from one. He’s a deep thinker and has a longstanding struggle with the subjects of God and religion. He has aged through the course of the series and undergone all sorts of growth, change, and tragedy. I thought it was a good time to tell the story of how he went from being an aimless college student in the late ‘60s to a cop. And that’s where we find Moe in ONION STREET. Unlike in the earlier books, this is Moe with no law enforcement experience. We watch him come to grips with the harsh realities of crime.

With the Moe Prager novels, you dive into the past with great realism. When I read THE JAMES DEANS I thought you’d written it in the early ’80s. It really sparked my nostalgia for dirty old Times Square. For ONION STREET you go deeper into Moe’s past, into the turbulent late ’60s. What draws you back, do you see us making the same mistakes, or is it just a richer canvas?

I grew up in the ‘60s, but I wasn’t yet a man. Oddly, in recounting it, I was shocked to recall just how many earth shattering events happened in such rapid succession. In the first six months of 1968 alone there was the Tet Offensive, the Pueblo incident, Martin Luther King Jr and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. However, what people forget or people who didn’t live through it tend not to realize is that...[read on]

Visit Reed Farrel Coleman's website.

The Page 69 Test: Redemption Street.

The Page 69 Test: Empty Ever After.

My Book, the Movie: The Moe Prager Mystery Series.

The Page 69 Test: Innocent Monster.

Writers Read: Reed Farrel Coleman (October 2010).

The Page 69 Test: Hurt Machine.

--Marshal Zeringue

Joanna Hershon

Joanna Hershon is the author of Swimming, The Outside of August, and The German Bride. Her writing has appeared in One Story, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Post Road, the literary anthology Brooklyn Was Mine, and was shortlisted for the 2007 O. Henry Prize Stories.

Her new novel is A Dual Inheritance.

From Hershon's Q & A at Details:

Details: What inspired this story?

Joanna Hershon: The initial seed came from my father's best friend from Harvard, a freshman roommate. They remain really close. I grew up with him as kind of an uncle figure—he has amazing charisma and an incredible life story. Their friendship has always fascinated me, but I didn't set out to write a book about them—and that's definitely not what the book is about— I just started thinking about that time in life and that era.

Details: Your male characters are very convincing. Why do you think you write so well from a male perspective?

Joanna Hershon: I feel like I have these connections aesthetically with men. The character of Ed…was like some part of myself. He's so, so not me, yet I'm able to kind of access this guy. He's completely unabashed in his desires and that's really fun as a writer: someone who's completely himself and not trying to be anyone else.

Details: Was it important for you to write a book with a wider reach both thematically and geographically than anything you'd written before?

Joanna Hershon: I don't think I was saying, "Okay I want to write a novel about the larger world," but [after] following these stories, that's just what happened. What's interesting about...[read on]

Learn more about the author and her work at Joanna Hershon's website.

The Page 69 Test: The German Bride.

My Book, The Movie: The German Bride.

Writers Read: Joanna Hershon.

The Page 69 Test: A Dual Inheritance.

My Book, The Movie: A Dual Inheritance.

--Marshal Zeringue

Julie Klausner

Julie Klausner's new book--her first for young adults--is Art Girls Are Easy.

From her Q & A with Claire Zulkey for WBEZ:

How hard or easy was it to switch gears into YA writing? What challenges did it pose?

It's completely tough to write a book, period. But switching gears into fiction was absolutely challenging, if only because I had to make sure I wasn't using my own voice the whole time when I was writing—whether it was in the description or in the dialogue. I don't have a lot of experience writing fiction. Part of that is because I have such a loud nonfiction voice. I am who I am. Another element of the challenge of having to sit down and make sh*t up is imagination. As I grow older, I become more and more fearful that I have little to no imagination. The kind of abilities I had as a little kid to just play and make things up as you went along. So, I had to get past that fear to crack the story, and then to write in the voices of the kids I invented. But as far as it being a challenge from a YA perspective, I honestly have to say that I just tried to be true to the material, and I didn't think of the audience as being below or necessarily less sophisticated than somebody I would usually write for. I didn't dumb down my prose—or, I tried not to.

You don't have to give us details (but feel free to), but how much of the book was inspired by your own young adulthood?

I absolutely relate to the main character in the book. I was a very emotionally intense adolescent, very interior. I was eaten alive by my own passions, which were equal parts artistic drive and sexual madness. That's where I drew the inspiration for Indigo's tumult. Her conflict is more internal than it is a concrete struggle with her best friend. She does have some love affair gone sour stuff with her best friend Lucy, but the main plot exists within Indigo, I think. As far as the setting, I did go to a Fine and Performing Arts sleepaway camp, but...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue