Eoin Colfer

Eoin Colfer is a former elementary school teacher whose Artemis Fowl series has become an international bestseller. The new novel in the series is Artemis Fowl: The Last Guardian.

From his Q & A with Boyd Tonkin at the Independent.

Choose a favourite author and say why you admire him/her

William Boyd... He expresses the inner working of the human mind so beautifully, it makes me want to quit.
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Which fictional character most resembles you?

The Woody Allen character in films like... 'Annie Hall'. The kind of neurotic person who has to fill the silence.
* * *

Who is your hero/heroine from outside literature?

My father. He was the first person from his [fishing] village to go to university. He taught me at school, when physical punishment was encouraged – but he refused to hit children. Then he did a doctorate and has become one of the foremost authorities on Irish medieval history.

Read the complete Q & A.

See--Eoin Colfer's six favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Richard Ford

Richard Ford's new novel is Canada.

From his Q & A with Tim Adams at the Guardian:

In the book, Canada becomes a sort of promised land, a refuge. There is a line characters cling to: "Canada was better than America and everyone knew that - except Americans." Is that how it feels to you?

I never had much conceptual idea of Canada being better. But whenever I go there, I feel this fierce sense of American exigence just relent. America beats on you so hard the whole time. You are constantly being pummelled by other people's rights and their sense of patriotism. So the American's experience of going to Canada, or at least my experience, is that you throw all that clamour off. Which is a relief sometimes.

How does that sentiment go down among American readers?

Last night, I was in New Orleans at this book party full of local oligarchs, a charity group. I was trying to tell them why I called the book Canada, and I said this stuff about America beating on you and I saw a lot of unfriendly faces in the room. There is this very strong "If you are not for us, you are against us" feeling in America just now. Perhaps there always has been. You are not allowed to complain. Or even have a dialogue. But if a novel is there for anything I believe that is what it has to induce.

I was intrigued by something in your acknowledgements, a thank you to your doctor, Jeffrey Karnes, for solving "the novelist's dilemma". Can you explain?

Jeff is the guy I go to for check-ups every year. When I was trying to finish the book I was due to see him but...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Elaine Pagels

Elaine Pagels earned a B.A. in history and an M.A. in classical studies at Stanford, and holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University. She is the author of Adam, Eve, and the Serpent; The Origin of Satan; and The Gnostic Gospels, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and National Book Award. Her latest book is Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation.

From her Q & A with Randy Dotinga at the Christian Science Monitor:

Q: The images of the Book of Revelation remain major touchstones in our culture. Why do you think that is?

A: It's very visceral. It doesn't appeal to the brain. It appeals to the bloodstream, as the Muslims say of the devil. It's a book of dragons, seven-headed beasts, monsters, whores, armies of insects fighting, angels and demons, and pits of fire.

Q: What was going on in the author's mind?

A: A lot of people say, "Is this guy on hallucinogenics or what?" But it's not an individual's fantasy. These are imaginatively transformed versions of ancient prophecies of Ezekiel, Daniel, Jeremiah, and Isaiah.

It's a book of prophecy. It's supposed to inspire people who have given up hope on any justice in the world. John wants people to hold onto that hope.

Q: He wrote the Book of Revelation at a time when there was intense debate over the future of the church and whether it was something different from Judaism. Where did John of Patmos fit in?

A: He's not somebody who'd call himself a Christian. He's somebody who's very proud of being a Jew – but one who knows who the messiah is – and sees himself in the line of the prophets.

He's a fierce, angry, conservative, passionate prophet. He's ferocious, with a kind of puritan sense of the importance of sexual purity and ethnic purity, compared to Paul, who's willing to eat unkosher food and eat with Gentiles and open up the movement to everybody. John doesn't think so.

Q: What do people misunderstand about the Book of Revelation?

A: A lot of liberal people think...[read on]

Learn how Pagels became interested in writing about the Book of Revelation.

Pagels's The Gnostic Gospels is one of Mary Beard's five best books about religious cults in antiquity.

--Marshal Zeringue

Amitav Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh's books include The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, and Sea of Poppies.

From his May 2012 Q & A at the Independent:

Choose a favourite author, and say why you admire her/him

My favourite authors change week to week. I've just finished a reading Philip Hensher's 'Scenes from Early Life', about his partner's childhood. It is distantly like Gertrude Stein's book on Alice B Toklas.
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Which fictional character most resembles you?

When I was growing up, I identified with Tintin. I love travel and he could go anywhere he wanted.
* * *

Who is your hero/heroine from outside literature?

Aung San Suu Kyi. I've written at great length about her. Her patience and her willingness to work towards compromise are great contributions to modern life.

Read the complete Q & A.

Ghosh's The Glass Palace is one of Ahmede Hussain's five top titles in recent South Asian literature.

Read Ray Taras's review of Ghosh's The Hungry Tide.

Learn about the novel Ghosh would give to his own children to introduce them to literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

William Faulkner

In 1956 Jean Stein interviewed William Faulkner for The Paris Review. The start of that interview:

INTERVIEWER

Mr. Faulkner, you were saying a while ago that you don't like interviews.

WILLIAM FAULKNER

The reason I don't like interviews is that I seem to react violently to personal questions. If the questions are about the work, I try to answer them. When they are about me, I may answer or I may not, but even if I do, if the same question is asked tomorrow, the answer may be different.

INTERVIEWER

How about yourself as a writer?

FAULKNER

If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, all of us. Proof of that is that there are about three candidates for the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. But what is important is Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, not who wrote them, but that somebody did. The artist is of no importance. Only what he creates is important, since there is nothing new to be said. Shakespeare, Balzac, Homer have all written about the same things, and if they had lived one thousand or two thousand years longer, the publishers wouldn't have needed anyone since.

INTERVIEWER

But even if there seems nothing more to be said, isn't perhaps the individuality of the writer important?

FAULKNER

Very important to himself. Everybody else should...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

John Irving

From John Irving's Q & A with Athena McKenzie about his twelfth novel, Last Night in Twisted River:

Is it true that a Dylan song was the beginning idea for this novel? How?

No, it’s not true. I had been thinking of a story about a cook and his son for more than 15 years. I knew it began in a northern New England logging camp; I knew it was a fugitive novel, that both father and son were on the run. In Jan. 2005, I was driving in Vermont to a doctor’s appointment when I heard Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue” on my car CD player; this stanza jumped out at me, though I’d heard it many times before. “I had a job in the great north woods/working as a cook for a spell/but I never did like it all that much/ and one day the ax just fell.” By the time I got to my doctor’s office, I’d thought of the novel’s last sentence; seven months later, I got the first sentence. I always work that way — back to front. The Dylan song was enhancing, but hardly the beginning idea.

Why do you start with the last line or paragraph?

In twelve novels, that’s how it goes. I write endings first, then work my way backwards through the plot to where the novel should begin. When I get the first sentence, which comes last, I can then begin writing the book. By then, I know the whole story; it is as if the story has already happened and I am simply remembering it. That way, I can concentrate on the language. I’m not distracted by what’s going to happen — I know what’s going to happen! I can just concentrate on...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Stephen King

Wallace Stroby interviewed Stephen King for Writer's Digest magazine in 1991.

Part of the Q & A:

STROBY: C.S. Forester, the British writer, once described his story-developing process as dropping assorted objects into the water of his subconscious and letting them sit there for weeks or months or years. Eventually, he said, he would feel them merge and meld and take some sort of shape until an idea surfaced and he could start writing. How does that process work for you? Is it more subconscious?

KING: Yeah, that's the way it works. Except that I have never felt like I was creating anything. Actually, when I feel that I'm creating, I feel that I'm doing bad work. The best work that I've ever done always has a feeling of having been excavated, of already being there. I don't feel like a novelist or a creative writer as much as I feel like an archaeologist who is digging things up and being very careful and brushing them off and looking at the carvings on them.

I don't work from an outline, or anything like that. It's just that these ideas will connect with me on some level. On the "Dark Tower" series, which is a sort of quest cycle, the first one was written when I was 22 and the most recent one was written when I was 42. That's 20 years later and all the connections are still there, they happen effortlessly. All this stuff is there waiting to be developed from the first book. Believe me, I remember writing the first book and I was not planning (sequels). It's just that the proper connections are there, because the story exists. Only sometimes you get a little pot out of the ground, and that's like a short story. Sometimes you get a bigger pot, which is like a novella. Sometimes you get a building, which is like a novel. In the case of "The Dark Tower," it's like excavating this huge fucking buried city that's down there. And I'll never live to do it all. (NOTE: King did complete the seven-book "Dark Tower" saga in 2004.)

The thing is, for me, I never get all that stuff out unbroken. The trick and the game and the fun of it is to see how much of it you can get. Usually you can get quite a lot.

But I love it. I mean, when the stuff just shows up at the right time. You say to yourself: "Well, I know what's gonna happen for the next 30 pages, but after that I'm fucked, I don't know." Then it's like a door opens and somebody ambles in and says: "You called for me." And I say: "I don't remember it, but come on in and help me 'cause this is where you're supposed to be. You fit right in here today. Thank you for coming." And that's it.

And they pay you for that. But it's like what they pay you for is...[read on]

Also see: Top 10 works of literature: Stephen King.

--Marshal Zeringue

Elizabeth Zelvin

Elizabeth Zelvin is a New York psychotherapist, a three-time Agatha Award nominee, and author of the mystery series featuring recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler, starting with Death Will Get You Sober. The third book, Death Will Extend Your Vacation, is now out, and “Death Will Tank Your Fish” was a 2011 Derringer Award nominee for Best Short Story.

From Zelvin's Q & A with The Stiletto Gang:

Where does your new book, Death Will Extend Your Vacation, pick up the story of Bruce Kohler?

Bruce got sober at Christmas at the beginning of Death Will Get You Sober. In fact, waking up from a blackout in detox on the Bowery on Christmas Day was his wake-up call, or as they call it in AA, hitting bottom. The short story, “Death Will Clean Your Closet,” takes place when he’s 90 days sober, which is a big milestone in recovery. He’s still in early recovery in “Death Will Tie Your Kangaroo Down.” There’s an unpublished novella (formerly a novel) that covers Bruce’s first sober summer. Death Will Help You Leave Him takes place in the fall. “Death Will Trim Your Tree” covers his one-year anniversary Christmas. And his sobriety is well established in the latest story, “Death Will Tank Your Fish.” So Death Will Extend Your Vacation tells the story of his second sober summer—long enough for him not to worry much about drinking again, no matter what’s going on, and ready for a girlfriend, if he can only get to first base with Cindy, the attractive and slightly mysterious woman who’s one of his housemates in the clean and sober group house in Deadhampton (Dedhampton on the tax map) where everybody has at least one secret. Bruce’s, by the way, is that the beautiful housemate whose body they find on the beach is the first girl he ever almost slept with when he was fifteen. Actually, he’s keeping another secret from his best friends Jimmy and Barbara, because he thinks they’d kill him if they knew. But you’ll have to read the book to spot it.

Has your writing routine changed since the publication of your first book, Death Will Get You Sober? Tell us about a typical day.

The nice thing about my typical day is that there’s nothing typical about it. I have, not one, but two careers that let me spend the day at the computer in my jammies: writer and online therapist. I usually say “sweats and bunny slippers,” but in fact, it’s usually one of a collection of ankle-length sleep T-shirts—very, very comfortable. My prime writing time is in the morning, but since the morning is my best time overall for anything that requires a lot of focus, I don’t always use it to write. I see my therapy clients regularly, but none of them is on a fixed schedule. One of the advantages of online therapy is...[read on]

The Page 99 Test: Death Will Get You Sober.

The Page 69 Test: Death Will Help You Leave Him.

--Marshal Zeringue

Meg Howrey

Meg Howrey was a professional dancer and actress. Her new novel is The Cranes Dance.

From her Q & A with Barbara Chai for the Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog:

Did you draw upon your own experience in the ballet world for “The Cranes Dance”?

I drew on some personal experience, of course, although much more so on things and people I observed. The ballet company in the novel is fictional. What I was after was a probable world, rather than an imitative one. There’s no book (or film) that can capture what it’s like to be a ballet dancer. Although dancers go through the same training, dance many of the same ballets, deal with the same issues, it’s such a private experience in many ways. I tried to press my face up as close as I could to my protagonist, Kate, and get as close as possible to how she saw herself and her world.

The book is told in a first-person, often sarcastic voice, which is somehow striking in a book about ballet.

Kate’s sense of humor fueled the book. I think many people are afraid of ballet – it seems so alien and impregnable. You have to know something very, very well to be able to mock it. The interesting thing about Kate to me was that at the same time she’s making fun of what’s going on around her, she’s basically killing herself to stay in it. Dancing is a strange drug. The things...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Patricia Hampl

Patricia Hampl's books include A Romantic Education, Virgin Time, Blue Arabesque, and The Florist’s Daughter, which received the Minnesota Book Award among many other honors.

From her ShootingStar* interview with Maureen Vance:

What writing do you consider to be of quality? What in other people’s writing strikes you, or what sort of writing do you like most to read?

I read in all the genres: I read poetry, I read fiction, short fiction, long fiction, I read a lot of nonfiction, of course: memoir, essays, research nonfiction, lots of different things. Inevitably, I probably… Well, no, I was about to say I probably read more memoir, but I don’t think I do, actually. For me, what really matters is — I know this will sound strange, because it isn’t like I exactly think of it consciously, but as you asked the question the way you did… I think that I really look for really strong sentences. I have to have a feeling that there’s somebody in the driver’s seat, that they understand… and in a way, it’s back to music again: I have to feel that they have a sense of the musicality of language: they’re not just giving me info, or even giving me feelings; I don’t want that. I want a deep engagement with language, as if you threw yourself on language because it could be your other self, and it could explain what you yourself interiorly can’t. So it’s that quality of some kind of deep, and intense, and maybe even struggl[ing] relationship with language that I love. That doesn’t mean I like only complex writing; I mean, if somebody said: “What would you like to sit and read?” I would probably reach for Chekhov. I love short stories in general. My favorite two writers in English at the moment are William Trevor and Alice Monroe, and they’re both largely short story writers.

Read the complete Q & A.

The Florist’s Daughter is on the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five top books on mothers.

"Hampl is our purest memoirist," declares Robert Wilder. "In [The Florist’s Daughter], she effortlessly (and associatively) weaves the story of her parents, herself, St Paul, Fitzgerald, her father’s sadly wonderful floral business and the deep heart of America. Her work is like a rich tapestry: one can barely find any threads of structure or shape yet all of her stories and ideas blend beautifully."

--Marshal Zeringue