Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

Miranda Beverly-Whittemore's new novel is June.

From her Q & A with Caroline Leavitt:

I love the whole idea of old Hollywood glamour and I bet the research was a hoot. How did you research this? What surprised you about the research (or better yet, disturbed you?)

I’ve long been obsessed with celebrity. Maybe as a little girl I wanted to be rich and famous (one of my first memories is oohhhing and ahhhing over Princess Diana’s wedding on a newsreel, projected on a bed sheet in the backyard of the British Embassy in Dakar, Senegal), but I quickly realized how unpleasant so many aspects of that life are, and the whole idea of being watched all the time still terrifies me.

Then, after my first novel came out, I was a co-producer on a short adaptation of that book to film, and had my first experience on a real Hollywood set. It was enchanting to watch the well-oiled machine that filmmaking is (especially as a writer who spends most of my time as a maker completely by myself) —everyone has their specific job, and when all those jobs are fitted together, the whole thing works. I realized I wanted to write not just about celebrity, but about a film set, and I thought there was no better witness to such a place than a child who gets to be a part of it.

In June, there are two generations of celebrities—in the modern day, two sisters, one an A-lister a la Jennifer Aniston, and the other a character based on Carrie Fisher; at the beginning of the book, you discover they’re the daughters of the movie star who is the celebrity in the book’s 1955, a matinee idol named Jack Montgomery. Having a family of movie stars across sixty years gave me the opportunity...[read on]

Visit Miranda Beverly-Whittemore's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mark Singer

Mark Singer has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1974. His new book is Trump and Me.

From Singer's Q & A with Rachel Cooke for the Guardian:

In his introduction to your book, the editor of the New Yorker, David Remnick, traces Trump’s decision to stand for president to the 2011 White House correspondents’ dinner, when Obama made jokes about him. [In a dig at Trump’s obsession with his citizenship, Obama said he was ready to make his “birth video” public; he then showed a clip from The Lion King.] Do you agree that humiliation was the spur?

It’s not clear. In terms of his ego, that would mean he felt those jokes, and I doubt he can feel anything. But if you see the video of him, he’s seething. Watch it on YouTube. It’s terrific!...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Alison Umminger

Alison Umminger is the author of American Girls. From her Q & A with Melissa Albert at the BN Teen blog:

American Girls has some of the trappings of a sunny, more traditional story—the cute famous guy, the glamorous location—but it takes a darker, unexpected path. How much of the story’s shape did you know going in?

I guess that I’m what they call a “pants-er” in that I rarely know what I’m going to write when I start a book. I had Anna and her voice in my head for a very long time, but originally she had a dead mom and a Marilyn Monroe obsession, both of which seem kind of absurd when I think about where the actual novel went. For a long time, too, I wanted her to be in love with Dex, her sister’s boyfriend, but those interactions just kept skewing creepy. The book took on a life of its own when I was writing the scene on the roof where Anna first meets her sister’s ex-boyfriend, Roger, again, and he tells her that she’s “kind of like a Manson girl.” I honestly believe there’s something outside the writer about writing, because I really did feel like the book told me exactly what it wanted to do next from that point on. My biggest concern was that in spite of the dark material, the book did not glorify or glamorize those murders, even as I sought to find...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Jennifer Gilmore

Jennifer Gilmore's new YA novel is We Were Never Here.

From her Q & A with Caroline Leavitt:

Every novel seems to spark from something that haunted the writer. What sparked you to write this?

That’s very true. I was quite sick in my twenties. What happened to me haunted and invigorated me, like our past always does. I wanted it to take place fictionally though in a time when it would be most shocking. Being sick as a young person is a strange thing, but when you are 16, as Lizzie is here, and you’re not yet comfortable in your skin, that’s a terrible thing. So what if your illness is what, in the end, gives you the power to actually be yourself? I wanted to look at that. How you get power out of being powerless.

I have to ask about the title, which I love with a passion. Can you talk about that please?

Titles are difficult. I’m so glad you like it! I was thinking about Lizzie wishing this time in her life had never happened. But if it had never happened then the wonderful things that came out of that experience—falling in love, making friends, becoming open to life, really—wouldn’t have happened either. She only realizes this later. For a long time she wishes none of it had happened, and the boy she meets has his own secrets , a past he wishes he had not been present for as well.

Illness, especially long-term or chronic, is like being in another country where you don’t know the language, and you captured it absolutely perfectly. What was it like to write about?

Writing about being sick...[read on]

Visit Jennifer Gilmore's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Andy Mozina

Andy Mozina is a professor of English at Kalamazoo College and the author of the short story collections The Women Were Leaving the Men, which won the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, and Quality Snacks, which was a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Prize.

Mozina's new book is Contrary Motion.

From his Q & A with Christine Sneed:

1. Tell us a little about your book.

Contrary Motion is about a divorced harpist living in Chicago getting ready for a principal harp audition with the St. Louis Symphony. In the months leading up to the audition, he runs a gauntlet of emotionally charged situations: his father dies; his ex-wife, whom he’s still in love with, gets engaged; his current girlfriend grows distant; his daughter starts acting out. As a pick-me-up, he starts moonlighting by performing for dying people at a hospice. It’s a lot of fun! Booklist went so far as to call it “rollicking.”

2. You have a knack for writing very funny prose. Most writers would say that it's not an easy feat. Who are some of your influences? And, just curious, have you ever done stand-up?

That’s very nice of you to say! I love Stanley Elkin, Colson Whitehead, Aimee Bender, Jennifer Egan, Donald Barthelme, David Foster Wallace, George Saunders, Mary Gaitskill, Flannery O’Connor, etc.

I actually have five pretty polished minutes of stand-up ready to go. I’m waiting until I master my obliviate charm, so if my set goes horribly, I can erase it from the memories of all present, including myself. I think I’m getting close because when I use the charm on my wife, she just puts two fingers to her temples and...[read on]

Visit Andy Mozina's website.

The Page 69 Test: Contrary Motion.

Writers Read: Andy Mozina.

My Book, The Movie: Contrary Motion.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ramona Ausubel

Ramona Ausubel's new novel is Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty. From her Q & A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for the family you write about in your new novel?

A: I knew I wanted to write about money and to chase the question of what money can get you and what it can’t, so I thought about a family that went from one extreme to another—huge amounts of money and then very little.

I’ve thought about this a lot in my life (I’m betting we all do—money is both central to everything we do and completely beside the point, right? Love is all you need! Except for all the other things.).

Each of the characters in the book has a different relationship to having and not having, to their birthplace in society and the place they might occupy without the riches.

At the same time that the story is serious— about race, class, gender and the American Dream—I also really wanted to seek those issues out by way of a series of adventures.

I wanted the characters to do what I think us humans often do—run away. I wanted the running to help them see who they are when all the trapping are removed, to see what matters to them and what they want, eventually, to...[read on]

Visit Ramona Ausubel's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Daniel O'Malley

Daniel O'Malley is the author of The Rook and the newly released Stiletto.

From his Q & A with Joel Cunningham for the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy blog:

One thing I appreciated about the first book was the immense care you put into building out the world and its history, its structures and organizations, even its bureaucratic red tape. How did you get about developing all of that, and how much of it actually makes it onto the page?

I don’t start out with a fully mapped world. It’s always about answering the questions that occur to me. And every answer always leads to more questions. If this woman knew she was going to lose her memories, then how did she know? And why would she believe that? If there are supernatural government officials running around dealing with secret threats, where do they come from? How do they get identified? If they’re inhuman, where do they live? Where do they get buried? Where do they work? And who pays for all the therapy they’d need?

Once I knew that I was going to have a secret Government department, I knew that I’d need some organizational structure (that’s Government Department 101, you’ve got to have an org chart), but it’s very much about broad strokes, and filling in the detail as it comes up. So, for me it’s a combination of plotting and flying by the seat of my pants.

I write a lot of material in my first draft, it’s very much a vomiting on the page of all my ideas. Then I leave it to fester for a while, and come back and see what works. I prune, I polish, I prune, I polish, and I send it off to my editor, who gently points out that there’s still a good deal of polishing and pruning to be done. I also like to go off on tangents, to give little side stories that might not be immediately relevant to the main story, but help illustrate a theme or an aspect of the world. Sometimes those get cut, sometimes they turn out to be...[read on]

Visit Daniel O'Malley's website and blog.

Coffee with a Canine: Dan O’Malley and Sally.

Writers Read: Daniel O'Malley (April 2012).

The Page 69 Test: The Rook.

--Marshal Zeringue

Karl Jacoby

Karl Jacoby is the author of The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire. From his Q & A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did Ellis make his money, and how unusual was his story at the time?

A: I was desperate to get my hands on bank records. It’s a little suppositive. One main thing that happened in the Gilded Age was the birth of middle-class America, consumer society.

Almost everything that was emerging as a consumer item was linked to Mexico: automobiles were linked to petroleum and rubber. Electrification and the telephone were linked to copper wires…

Americans realized they were tremendously connected to Mexico. When Porfirio Diaz opens up Mexico to U.S. investment, a lot of Americans don’t understand Mexico and how to navigate there. William Ellis is a broker who helps facilitate that, selling almost a fantasy of Mexico as a land where everybody can...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Stephen King

Stephen King's newest novel is End of Watch. From his Rolling Stone interview with Andy Greene:

What do you hope people say about you after you're gone?

It would be nice if people said, "He worked hard. He left a rich legacy of novels and did the right things in the community." Beyond that, I don't expect much of an afterlife. I think there's more for singers and songwriters and musicians than writers.

You don't think people in 50 years will be reading The Stand?

That would be really nice. They might read The Shining. They might read Salem's Lot. I think horror novels and fantasy novels have a longer shelf life than other kinds of books. I think of big bestsellers from when I was a kid, like Seven Days in May and the novels of Irving Wallace. You get a blank look if you mention those names. That's what happens to most writers. People move on.

What music moves you the most?

The first thing that comes to mind is...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

P.J. Brackston

P.J. Brackston's latest mystery novel is The Case of the Fickle Mermaid.

From her Q & A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: What do you see as the right blend between the modern references and the fairy-tale era conventions in these novels?

A: I wanted to be playful with the conventions of writing historical fiction. The fairy-tale element gave me the freedom to reinvent things and change things. Or at least, that’s the way I see it!

I do write more conventional historical fiction (as Paula Brackston), which I enjoy, but with this series I wanted to be a bit more adventurous. Purposefully putting in anomalies and anachronisms is a risky strategy, but I think it can give a story a truly original and individual feel.

Also, the traditions of fairy-tales are very broad. Some are more “realistic” than others. Many are common to different cultures and languages so have fundamental differences even though the essential story is the same. I think they are...[read on]

Visit Paula Brackston's website.

Writers Read: Paula Brackston (February 2013).

Coffee with a Canine: Paula Brackston & Bluebell.

--Marshal Zeringue