Courtney Maum

Courtney Maum is the author of the novel, I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You, out now from Touchstone Books. The humor columnist behind the “Celebrity Book Review” on Electric Literature and an advice columnist for Tin House, she splits her time between the Massachusetts Berkshires and New York City.

From Maum's Rural Intelligence Q & A:

RI: It seems that in some European countries (France in particular in your novel) the people have a more “laissez-faire” view of adultery than do Americans. If true, to what do you attribute that?

CM: I can only speak about France, because I lived there—but one major difference is that there are far less marriages to begin with than we have in the United States. I don’t know if it’s a generational thing, but most of my French friends are in serious relationships, they have children with their partners, but no plans to marry. My own husband’s parents were never married either. There’s just more legal protection in France for common law marriages than here. So it’s possible that because marriage isn’t a given for some French people that they’re approaching the idea of what it means to be in a relationship with more flexibility. In America, in terms of matrimony, I feel like we set ourselves up to fail. When I was engaged, for example, a lot of my American friends asked, “What does it feel like to think you’ll only sleep with one man for the rest of your life?!” That’s a terrible mindset going into a marriage! Marriage is so much more than monogamy, you know? Obviously, you want to aim for monogamy—it’s a goal, but I do think that French people are a little bit more realistic and forgiving about the fact that mistakes might happen. That if you’re going to spend the next fifty years with someone, yes, there might come a moment when you get bored, restless, where you might make a mistake. But...[read on]

Visit Courtney Maum's website.

The Page 69 Test: I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You.

--Marshal Zeringue

Josh Weil

Josh Weil's new novel is The Great Glass Sea.

From his Powell's Q & A with Jill Owens:

Jill Owens: In your first book, The New Valley, you write very movingly about rural Virginia; it plays a huge part in those novellas. Place is also a huge part of [The Great Glass Sea], but it's a radically different setting. What made you want to write about somewhere so different? How do you think about place in your fiction?

Josh Weil: Those are two really important and big questions. First of all, I didn't necessarily choose to write about it. It really was something that had been in me for a long time, ever since I spent time in Russia and the Soviet Union when I was young, and then Russian club and my Russian language classes all throughout high school took over my life in a big way. So it was a place that was very present in my mind ever since I was a kid. Because of that, I always knew I'd write about the region at some point.

When I started writing, I thought it would be a short story. I wrote the opening paragraph pretty much as it is in the book now. When I started to get into the scene, I realized it was going to be something longer and put it away. But it clung to me.

It was through the landscape in my mind that the story really gripped me, more than any real understanding of the Russian landscape.It was through the landscape in my mind that the story really gripped me, more than any real understanding of the Russian landscape. In a way, it was very different from Virginia in that I didn't know the landscape as well but the place was my way in. And so a lot of it was imagining that setting. Then, of course, you start to do research. I went back to Russia to try to get some of those physical details that might have eluded me otherwise. It starts to become alive.

The idea of place and the importance of place has always been so, so vital in making the world feel real. At the same time, it's also how I often wind my way into a story. In some ways, it's a crutch for me. It's something I have to watch myself for. My writer friends who have been reading my work for 10 or 15 years always say, "I know Josh is struggling with this scene because he's writing about the clouds again." It's just a way that I can grab something that feels solid, that allows me to pull myself into the moment if I'm struggling. I go through and have to pare a lot of that out, but because of that, place is a grounding element for me.

Jill: How did you end up spending time in Russia as a child?

Weil: I was...[read on]

Visit Josh Weil's website.

Writers Read: Josh Weil.

The Page 69 Test: The Great Glass Sea.

--Marshal Zeringue

David Wellington

David Wellington is an author of horror, fantasy, and thriller novels. His zombie novels Monster Island, Monster Nation and Monster Planet form a complete trilogy. He has also written a series of vampire novels including Thirteen Bullets, Ninety-Nine Coffins, Vampire Zero, Twenty-Three Hours, and 32 Fangs. His werewolf series comprises Frostbite and Overwinter.

The author introduced Afghanistan veteran Jim Chapel in the 2013 novel, Chimera, and featured him in 2014's The Hydra Protocol. From Wellington's Q & A with Elise Cooper at Crimespree Magazine:

Elise Cooper: Why did you make your main character, Jim Chapel, a former Army Ranger?

David Wellington: Jim is my way of saying a thank you to the troops. They have done an incredible job. These people are not about entitlements but are extraordinarily responsible. Jim is an emblem of how much I respect and admire our soldiers. I gave him a prosthetic arm because I wanted to show the sacrifices our soldiers make as well as the advancements made on how they work.

EC: Is this plot a warning?

DW: I grew up when Russia was the enemy. Besides my own experiences I did a lot of research to make the plot as realistic as possible. I think we are seeing their true colors today. The KGB tortured people and found ways to destroy them as human beings, which is why I put in the torture scenes. I wanted to show Chapel having absolutely no control. He could not stop what these people were doing to his body. That is the difference between their actions and our actions. No US administration would do those things to another human being. I would never call what was done to the terrorists after 9/11 evil like the torture written in [The Hydra Protocol]....[read on]

Visit David Wellington's website.

The Page 69 Test: Chimera.

The Page 69 Test: The Hydra Protocol.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jeff Abbott

Jeff Abbott's latest book in the Sam Capra series is Inside Man.

From the author's MysteryPeople Q & A:

MP: Family is a major theme that runs through the story. Sam poses as an employee with a powerful family to avenge the death of someone who protected his family when he was young, and he is constantly reminded of his brother. What did you want to explore about family?

JA: My books are often an unusual mix of family drama and international intrigue. And I really think that family aspect surprises readers sometimes; I think that may have been why Inside Man was an O Magazine pick for their summer reading list. In this case, Sam’s gone undercover into this family, the Varelas, but he¹s not sure if they’re actually responsible for his friend’s death. He is surprised when he begins to care for them, and that sets up quite a challenge for him: what does he do if they are responsible? And then he’s caught up in a bigger question: what exactly is this family’s secret, what has made them so dangerous? King Lear, which I think is Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy about family, was a big inspiration to me in writing this book. Readers will see some parallels, although my story is very different in how it plays out. It was an inspiration, not a template. I wanted to explore how a family might try to stay together under pressures that could destroy them. Whether they succeed or not. . .that’s the story. Like Lear, it starts off being about revenge and ends up being about...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Jeff Abbott's website.

The Page 69 Test: Trust Me.

The Page 69 Test: Adrenaline.

The Page 69 Test: Downfall.

Writers Read: Jeff Abbott (July 2013).

--Marshal Zeringue

Maryanne O’Hara

A graduate of Emerson College's MFA program, Maryanne O'Hara was a longtime associate editor at Ploughshares magazine. Her short stories have been published in Five Points, The North American Review, The Crescent Review, and Redbook, as well as the literary anthologies MicroFiction, Brevity & Echo, The Art of Friction, and Flash Fiction: Youth.

O’Hara's debut novel is Cascade.

From her Historical Novel Society Q & A with Stephanie Renee dos Santos:

Stephanie Renée dos Santos: Why did you choose to make your protagonist in Cascade an American female painter in the 1930’s?

Maryanne O’Hara: I was originally interested in writing a short story about artists who painted for Roosevelt’s New Deal arts projects during the Depression. Then I saw a wonderful exhibit at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts: A Studio of Her Own, Women Artists in Boston, 1870-1940.” I realized I wanted to write about the particular struggles of the female artist.

SRDS: What compelled you to include and focus on art and artists in your historical novel?

MO: I’ve always been fascinated by the human impulse to create art. And I’m fascinated, too, by what cultures deem worth saving. I liked the idea of using a doomed town threatened with extinction as background for a story about an artist trying to create lasting works of art. I hoped that this juxtaposition would give readers a lot to think about.

SRDS: What drew you to your specific visual art medium, art work, and characters?

MO: I never really decided that Dez would be a painter. She just kind of was one, from the start. The way Dez paints and thinks about painting is the way I write, so it was easy to substitute one art form for the other. I think that all creative expression comes forth from...[read on]

Visit Maryanne O'Hara's website and Facebook page, and view the Cascade trailer.

The Page 69 Test: Cascade.

Writers Read: Maryanne O'Hara.

My Book, The Movie: Cascade.

--Marshal Zeringue

Emma Healey

Emma Healey's debut novel is Elizabeth Is Missing.

From the author's Q & A with Kimberly McCreight:

Kimberly McCreight (KM): One of the things I most admire about Elizabeth is Missing—and there is so much to admire—is the utterly convincing voice of Maud, both in her advanced years and when she is much younger. How did you tackle the challenge of presenting a single character at such disparate times within a single narrative?

Emma Healey (EH): I’m so glad it’s convincing, thank you. I started with Maud’s voice as an eighty-year-old and found that only needed a little adjusting to take her back into childhood. The voice overall is very much based on my mother’s mother, Vera. I was very close to her and she had (ironically) a brilliant memory and had lots of stories to tell about her early life. I spent most of my school holidays with her, so remembering and sticking to the kind of words she would have used gave me a guide for Maud’s lexicon. Voice is so much about vocabulary. I do have to say though, I think writing from the point-of-view of a single character, even in two time frames, is much easier than swapping between characters. Reading Reconstructing Amelia, I am amazed at how well you alternate a first-person and third-person narrative, from the point-of-view of a teenager and a mother, as well as using Facebook statuses and text messages, all in one novel. I should be asking you how you made that work so well!

KM: Was there something that drew you to writing about a character losing her grip on reality, particularly one struggling with dementia?

EH: The initial inspiration for the book came from my father's mother, Nancy, who has multi-infarct dementia, but my aunt’s mother-in-law had suffered from Alzheimer’s for several years before that and other members of my family had had various forms of dementia. At the time, dementia wasn’t something that was being talked about so much and I was fascinated (as well as terrified and upset) by the way a person could come and go—one minute their old selves, the next in a world of their own. Their patterns of behavior could be anything from perfectly reasonable to completely bizarre and it seemed like....[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Valerie Trueblood

Valerie Trueblood's 2013 book is Search Party: Stories of Rescue.

From her Q & A with Caroline Leavitt:

Why does the very idea of a search lead to so much story?

We need so many things! A lot of life is spent in finding them. While we may not go out with a lantern like Diogenes, we do spend a lot of time searching, from babyhood on: for food, safety, a friend, work, knowledge, a place to live, a mate--and finally searching our own memories for what remains of these things when we're old. I admit this came to me just now in thinking about your question. I didn't think in these sweeping terms when I was writing the stories. A story can't be summoned that way. Mine seem to have to be found under a rock.

I also want to ask you about the title, which I think is perfect--Search Party, seems so ominous, but then there is the subhead, stories of rescue, which almost makes us breathe a sigh of relief.

You're a writer, and you're the reader we all want: someone who feels the ominousness, someone who sighs with relief--and just at the title, at that. I wish everyone read in this spirit, with this openness to what might be coming.

I do believe in rescue. The situation gets pretty desperate and now and then--perhaps rarely, but often enough that we remember the times it happened or the stories we heard of it--someone says or does something that helps, even saves. How or why this happens at times, and at others does not, is...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Anthony Breznican

"If you thought high school was hell, has Anthony Breznican got a story for you…," says some guy called Stephen King.

From Breznican's Q & A with Caroline Leavitt about his new novel, Brutal Youth:

Brutal Youth has one of the most astonishing openings I've read in a long while. Did that opening come to you originally, or did it come after you had written parts of the book?

I always knew I wanted to start with something intense and visceral - a real grab-you-by-the-collar opening that would thrust you into a school where the danger wasn't getting a good grade, or getting a date ... It's basic survival. I'd heard this story from my own high school about a kid who flipped out in the hall after many years of being teased and tormented. He started swinging his bag in a circle, and clobbering anyone who got near. I heard one of the teachers jumped on his back, and then rode him around like it was a rodeo when even that didn't slow him down. As another kid who carried his whole locker in his book bag, I wondered: what could have made him snap? We all face hard times and feel angry and powerless, but what makes someone really lose it and switch from trying to lay low to trying to cause pain. I amped up that old legend, added what I'd consider kind of a horror element to illustrate that this was a story with fangs. But sadly, we've seen plenty of instances over the years where a kid goes over the edge and causes much more catastrophic damage.


Which, of course, leads to a structure question. Did you plan out this book or just follow the characters to see where they might lead you?

I knew I wanted to write about four main freshmen -- Davidek, a nice kid who just wants to avoid trouble; Stein, who loves trouble and fights every good fight; Lorelei, who is desperate to be liked (but doesn't like herself very much) and Green, who charms his way to safety, but loses touch with where he came from. After that, the story...[read on]

Visit Anthony Breznican's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Maya Lang

Maya Lang grew up on Long Island, New York, where she stayed up reading late at night after pretending to be interested in science during the day. The Sixteenth of June, her first novel, is a modern riff on Ulysses that you can enjoy even if you’ve never read a word of Joyce. It was selected by Bookish as one of the best novels of the summer.

From Lang's Q & A with Caroline Leavitt:

The Sixteenth of June is set over the course of a single day, much like James Joyce’s Ulysses, and so much of it pays homage to Joyce. So, my first question is, Why James Joyce? What made you decide on this structure and what were the difficulties you faced?

First, thank you so much for having me here. I always look forward to this blog and the questions you ask, so this is an honor.

I think there’s an old saying about how the writer doesn’t choose the subject matter; it chooses her. I was studying for comp exams in grad school one day when a sentence came to me out of nowhere, seeming to drop from the sky: Leopold turns the volume up as the hail comes down, so loud that Nora worries the windshield will crack and across it a giant web will bloom.

I felt like a cat that had just coughed up a hairball: What is that? Later, I realized the first word was “Leopold” and the last was “bloom.” I wondered if there could be a novel riffing on Ulysses while exploring the questions that bothered me about it. Namely, why do we revere a book that holds us at arm’s length? Do people truly love Ulysses or do they just claim to? If I, as a doctoral candidate, couldn’t get through those unpunctuated passages or follow the references, who could?

Many Ulysses references snuck into...[read on]

Visit Maya Lang's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Sixteenth of June.

Writers Read: Maya Lang.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mike Sacks

Mike Sacks' new book is Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers.

From his Q & A with Adam Resnick for Zulkey.com:

Were you always fascinated by comedy? Were you one of those kids who ran out to buy the new Steve Martin album and then imitated the skits in school? Cause I hated kids like that.

No, actually. And I'm still not like that. I love what I love, but I'm not one of those who has to watch something just because it's a comedy. In fact, most comedy really annoys me. I find it desperate and yearning. It's very hard to pull off, but when it does hit with me, I become obsessed. That would go for the work you did on Late Night with David Letterman, Cabin Boy, and Get a Life. Also, the 1980s sitcom Small Wonder, which I've read that you were responsible for. And this would also hold true for my cat, Pumpkin, whom I find hilarious. Yes, I just used "whom" to describe a cat. Anyway, Pumpkin is funny because he's very fat and he's a bit on the Autism spectrum. He frequently falls off my bed while licking his nuts. Actually, I just described me.

Do you think Ghostbusters would've been considered a classic if Bill Murray hadn't been in it? Or were the slime jokes enough?

Slime jokes were more than enough. Hated that movie, actually. Saw it opening day and was puzzled by the hysterical laughter. Ghostbusters II was brilliant, though. Especially when...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue