Adam Roberts

The Riddles of The Hobbit author Adam Roberts is Professor of Nineteenth Century Literature at Royal Holloway University, London.

From his Q &A with Jody “Goldberry Riverdaughter” Boyce at Legendarium:

GB: What inspired you to write this book? What do you hope readers take away from their reading experience?

Prof Roberts: I have been a reader and lover of Tolkien from a very early age. He’s one of the reasons why I wanted to become a writer myself. As an academic I have also written literary-critical or scholarly stuff on his books, although most of the criticism I read is geared to the Lord of the Rings. My starting point for this book was a desire just to look in more detail at The Hobbit, and more specifically to challenge the idea that it is somehow a ‘simple’ or even a ‘trivial’ book compared to the much larger, more involved Lord of the Rings. I don’t think that’s right. Of course The Hobbit *is* a shorter and more linear book than Lord of the Rings, but that doesn’t mean it is in any sense simpler. The riddle struck me as one of the ways I could approach the text to start to explore its complexities.

GB: What do you find most appealing about Tolkien’s writing and the world he created?

Prof Roberts: This is a hard question for me to answer — Tolkien goes so far back with me, personally, and is so intimately entwined about my own developing imagination. There’s a bad aspect to that fact: loving this writing as deeply as I do, it’s hard for me to get a critical distance upon it. Still, it ought to be possible for me to answer your question without evasion, of the ‘love is blind’ kind! So: I’d say that when I was a kid what I loved about these books was simply the transport of the imagined world, the escapism of it. Now that I am no longer a child, do not see as a child and have put away childish things, I find myself drawn (to speak very broadly) to other aspects of the work: and in particular to Tolkien’s twin concerns, which are surely absolutely central to his vision with language on the one hand, and with importance of ethical choice on the other. These things, combined with something else Tolkien understands — that even the most seemingly mundane or trivial lives have, as it were, epic underpinnings — are also core to Joyce’s Ulysses. For example.

GB: In your book, you discuss the attraction people find for riddles and mysteries and how this attraction is reflected in Tolkien’s work. How do you believe this has impacted the both the international and lasting appeal of a book originally marketed to British children?

Prof Roberts: Kids love riddles; but...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Kimberly McCreight

Kimberly McCreight attended Vassar College and graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. After several years as a litigation associate at some of New York City’s biggest law firms, she left the practice of law to write full-time. Her work has appeared in such publications as Antietam Review, Oxford Magazine, Babble, and New York Magazine online.

McCreight's new novel is Reconstructing Amelia.

From her Q & A at the Harper Library blog:

Mama Mazes: How did you learn all the latest internet “buzz” words/abbreviations used by teens and what would you recommend to adults who want to stay current with computer-speak?

Kimberly: I interviewed local teens and did extensive research online. But much of the lingo I was already using myself. Perhaps I should be more embarrassed about that.

For parents not so well versed in text acronyms, a simple Google search—“popular text abbreviations teens”—goes a long way. Be aware that there are micro-local variations, so this research might not explain the entire alphabet soup in your child’s texts, but it will be a good start.

If a Google search is beyond your skill-set, consider investing in a basic Internet how-to guide or a class like those offered by major retailers. Libraries have computers with Internet access, too, along with generous librarians. There’s also your child. If necessary, you could always condition their Internet use on showing you the ropes.

But it’s critical that we all get—and stay—“virtually” up to speed. With 95% of teens on the Internet and 70% with access via a mobile device, it’s where our children are. If we don’t understand the language they’re speaking or can’t find where they’re “hanging out” online, we can’t...[read on]

Watch the trailer for Reconstructing Amelia, and learn more about the book and author at Kimberly McCreight's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Reconstructing Amelia.

Writers Read: Kimberly McCreight.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wil S. Hylton

Wil S. Hylton's new book is Vanished: The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing Men of World War II.

From his Q & A with John Lewis at Baltimore magazine:

How many miles did you log while reporting this story, and how long did it take to complete the book?

It turned out that one missing airplane leads to all corners of the earth. I spent a total of four years searching for clues and answers, and traveled more than 60,000 miles. At one point, I joined an elite military team on a barge in the Pacific Ocean. At another, I trekked through the Micronesian jungle in search of a secret Japanese prison. I flew on the last working B-24 bomber, scuba dived on classified sites in the Palau islands, and even visited the military's human remains recovery laboratory in Hawaii, where I stood in a room filled with skeletons of American soldiers who died half a century ago. So there were a lot of miles, but never a dull moment.

What, for you, was the most difficult aspect of the story to comprehend and share with readers?

It's very difficult for outsiders to understand the grief that haunts families of the missing. When there's no body to bury, no formal cause of death, and no explanation of what happened, the loss is hard to process or accept. In many cases, the families spend decades holding on to the possibility that the person might still be alive. This is true of soldiers in the same way it would be true of a missing child. Maybe the guy is trapped somewhere, or in a secret prison, or lost, or maybe he has amnesia. Very few MIA families have not given these questions some thought. And without giving away too much, I'll say that sometimes this turns out to be...[read on]

Visit Wil S. Hylton's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nate Kenyon

Nate Kenyon is the author of Bloodstone, a Bram Stoker Award finalist and winner of the P&E Horror Novel of the Year, The Reach, also a Stoker Award Finalist, The Bone Factory, Sparrow Rock, StarCraft: Ghost Spectres, and Diablo: The Order.

Kenyon's new novel is Day One.

From his Q & A with AJ Colucci for The Big Thrill:

DAY ONE has gotten great reviews and has been lauded for being both chilling and plausible. What inspired the story?

I’ve always been fascinated by artificial intelligence. The possibilities are nearly endless, and they include both the idyllic and horrific visions of the future. My editor at Thomas Dunne is fascinated too—he approached me first with the idea of a man commuting into New York who gets caught in the city as all hell breaks loose, and has to fight his way out. We brainstormed on this for a while, brought in another fantastic editor, Peter Joseph, for his opinions, and I ran with the concept from there. That’s where DAY ONE was born.

As an author of science thrillers, I know the genre requires an enormous amount of research. Can you tell us what subjects you investigated and some of the methods you used?

What I found scared the heck out of me. First of all, let me say that a true artificial intelligence, one that learns and thinks in a very human way, is most definitely coming—probably within the next twenty years. Many, many companies such as Google, Microsoft, IBM and others, as well as the US government, have created well-funded think tanks to build such a system. Universities are hip deep in research too. It’s going to happen, and the implications are frankly terrifying–because while billions are being spent in research, very little thinking is being done around safeguarding it.

An AI that can learn on its own and has the capability to become many times as intelligent as a human being (they call this artificial super intelligence, or ASI) might decide that humans are...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Nate Kenyon's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

My Book, The Movie: Day One.

The Page 69 Test: Day One.

Writers Read: Nate Kenyon.

--Marshal Zeringue

Scott Turow

Scott Turow's new novel is Identical.

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

You studied law and are a practicing lawyer. Was there a particular historical legal case that inspired you to become a lawyer, or that captured your imagination during law school?

Truth told, no. Like most Americans of my age, I was very impressed by the dynamic capacities of the law, demonstrated by the civil rights movement and then Watergate, animated by Sam Ervin’s mantra that no person is above the law. But the case that had the most impact on me was an imaginary one, central to a novel I failed to publish while I was a writing fellow at Stanford. The legal details I’d included in the book fascinated me, if not my would-be publishers, and clued me to how deeply interested I was in the law, which was something of a shock.

What prompted you to write your first book, at the start of your legal career?

One L was written largely by accident. I was embarrassed to tell the agent who had worked so hard to sell my unpublished novel that I was going to law school, so as a kind of sop I mentioned to her that there really were no nonfiction books about what it was like to be a law student. I wasn’t actually proposing to write that book myself, but when she presented a contract to do it, I couldn’t say no. My rejection slips, laid end to end, reached most of the way to the moon.

I’ve asked this question of Judge Richard Posner, and I thought I’d ask you the same. Besides the U.S., which other nation’s legal system do you particularly admire, and what is different and admirable about it?

Unlike Judge Posner, I don’t consider myself well-versed in the legal systems of other nations, although I’ve been lucky enough to travel quite a bit. That said...[read on]

See: Scott Turow's five best legal novels.

Read about a book that changed Turow's life.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eric Schlosser

Eric Schlosser is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness. His new book is Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety.

From his Q & A with Ed Pilkington for the Guardian, beginning with the interviewer's introduction:

For his latest book, Command and Control, the American author Eric Schlosser spent six years immersed in the world of nuclear weapons. He discovered example after example of mistakes and near misses and became deeply concerned about the state of America's nuclear arsenal.

Those concerns were brought into focus again this week, when US air force officials said officers entrusted with the launch keys to long-range nuclear missiles had twice this year been caught leaving open a blast door that is intended to help prevent a terrorist or other intruder from entering their underground command post.

Earlier this month, the two-star general in charge of US intercontinental nuclear missiles was fired, for "personal misbehaviour".

Ed Pilkington: It’s been a lively few days in the realm of nuclear weapons mishaps. As well as the incidents mentioned above, there have been a spate of inspection failures of various nuclear units. What on earth is going on?

Eric Schlosser: It looks like there's poor morale and poor leadership in the air force units responsible for nuclear weapons. People are getting sloppy – and that's not a good thing.

EP: Having spent most of the past seven years investigating the history of US nuclear mishaps and close shaves for your new book, does this feel to you like a case of deja vu?

ES: I'm actually surprised that these problems keep happening. In 2007, after half a dozen thermonuclear weapons went missing for a day and a half, without anyone at the air force even realizing it, secretary of defense Robert Gates took some strong action. He fired two top air force officials and made clear that mistakes in the oversight of nuclear weapons are unacceptable. That was six years ago, and the air force clearly hasn't gotten the message.

EP: What do you think we can learn from the fact that mishaps like this are still occurring? And how does it tie into the theme of your book?

ES: The command and control of nuclear weapons requires constant vigilance. These are the most dangerous machines ever invented – and any complacency about them greatly increases the danger. In the book, I wrote about "the Titanic effect", an attitude that...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Lynn Cullen

Lynn Cullen is the author of Reign of Madness, a 2011 Best of the South selection by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and 2012 Townsend Prize finalist, and The Creation of Eve, named among the best fiction books of 2010 by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and an Indie Next selection. She is also the author of numerous award-winning books for children, including the young adult novel I Am Rembrandt’s Daughter, which was a 2007 Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection and an ALA Best Book of 2008.

Cullen's new novel is Mrs. Poe.

From her Q & A with Kimberly Eve:

What made you decide to write about Edgar Allan Poe and focus on his time in New York City?

What brought me to Edgar Allan Poe? In a word: desperation. Two years ago, in the height of the Great Recession, a year after my husband had lost his job like so many others, my then-publisher turned down the manuscript I’d been working on for a year and a half. They wanted something with a more “feisty” heroine. Feisty heroines, it seems, sold in a market that was very shaky, as were most markets around the world then. The week I got this devastating news, my husband fell ill with meningitis and nearly died. When I brought him home from the hospital, I didn’t know how we were going to survive. He had a debilitating brain injury and I had no book prospect. So there I was, pacing in my office, half delirious from fear and sleeplessness, thinking ,“Feisty heroine, feisty heroine.” Suddenly into my crazed mind came the word Poe.

Not having read Poe’s work since high school, I raced to my computer to look him up. I saw that he was an orphan, very poor, and a lonely lost soul. My kind of guy to write about. But I wanted to write a novel from a woman’s point of view—and a feisty one, to boot—so I kept looking. Poe’s wife, Virginia was thirteen when he married her and didn’t seem so feisty. And then I read about his alleged affair with poet Frances Osgood during his time in New York City, just after he’d written ‘The Raven.’ Frances had been abandoned by her portrait-painter husband and was trying to support her children with writing. So here was this desperate woman trying to survive by her writing. Oh, I could so relate. And she was plenty feisty, too. So I set about telling the story of Frances and Edgar from her point of view.

Incidentally, my husband has completely recovered, thank goodness.

How much research went into Mrs. Poe? It felt so authentic. Just how did you manage it?

Frances took over the writing, it seemed, just a month into my research, so early on I was scrambling to write and research at the same time. I familiarized myself with Poe and Frances by...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Lynn Cullen's website.

My Book, The Movie: Mrs. Poe.

The Page 69 Test: Mrs. Poe.

--Marshal Zeringue

Dennis Palumbo

Formerly a Hollywood screenwriter (My Favorite Year; Welcome Back, Kotter, etc.), Dennis Palumbo is now a licensed psychotherapist and author of Writing From the Inside Out. As a fiction writer, his short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, The Strand, Written By and elsewhere, and are collected in From Crime to Crime.

Palumbo is also the author of the Daniel Rinaldi series of mysteries. The debut novel was Mirror Image, followed by Fever Dream, and Night Terrors.

From his Q & A with Sandra Parshall at The Big Thrill:

When you decided to write a crime fiction series about a therapist, did you consider using Hollywood as your setting? Why did you rule it out and place Rinaldi’s practice in gritty Pittsburgh instead?

I never considered using Hollywood, because—much like the rest of Southern California—it’s been over-used as an arena for crime fiction. On the other hand, I feel that mid-Atlantic states like Pennsylvania, and mid-sized cities like Pittsburgh, haven’t been exploited as much as they could be. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that I love Pittsburgh, and have fond memories of the kind of childhood a kid could have in a tight-knit, ethnically-diverse community like that.

Moreover, there’s the wonderful dichotomy of the “old” Pittsburgh—steel mills, smokestacks, coal barges gliding along the Three Rivers at night—in contrast to the new, gentrified Pittsburgh, with its world-class hospitals and universities, its pioneering role in organ transplants and nanotechnology. As I like to say, it’s a shot-and-a-beer town colliding with the Information Age. Blue collars being exchanged for white ones, with all the unease and uncertainty that implies. It’s a rich, complex, vibrant setting for a contemporary crime series.

I assume you don’t have a lot of serial killers and outright psychopaths as patients in your Hollywood practice. How did you develop and deepen your understanding of such people and the crimes they commit?

Well, the joke answer is, after twenty years as a Hollywood screenwriter, dealing regularly with movie producers and network executives, I already had plenty of experience dealing with psychopaths. Seriously...[read on]

Visit Dennis Palumbo's website.

My Book, The Movie: Night Terrors.

Writers Read: Dennis Palumbo.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kate Manning

Kate Manning is the author of Whitegirl, a novel (Dial Press, 2002). A former documentary television producer for public television, she has won two New York Emmy Awards, and also written for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times Book Review, among others. She has taught creative writing at Bard High School Early College in Manhattan, where she lives with her boisterous family, including a dog named Moon, who walks her regularly.

Her new novel is My Notorious Life. The novel introduces Axie Muldoon, a fiery heroine for the ages whose story begins on the streets of 1860s New York. The impoverished child of Irish immigrants, she grows up to become one of the wealthiest and most controversial women of her day.

From Manning's Q & A with Carolyn Kellogg for the Los Angeles Times:

Tell me more about the real-life midwife/abortionist Ann Lohman [who partly inspired the creation of Manning's protagonist].

She made a fortune selling euphemistically labeled "lunar tablets for the relief of female complaint." What they really did was cause a miscarriage. Women who were trying to control the size of their families, or if they had an unwanted pregnancy, they were desperate for any sort of services. She made a fortune selling these medicines. If they didn't work — they did sometimes, but they were pretty dangerous — she would perform a termination.

[The newspapers] called her "hag of misery," "evil sorceress." I kept thinking: Was she really that bad? People of her time thought that she actually faked her suicide. That she wasn't really dead; she would come back and tell her story and reveal all of society's secrets. Wealthy people who had used her services — the politicians and power brokers and their wives and daughters and mistresses — she would come and tell their stories. And I thought, "Wow, what if she did!"

What was it like looking into the medical details of the Victorian era?

I researched it a lot. I have old, decaying textbooks like "Doctor Gunning Bedford's Diseases of Women and Children," old medical manuals, advice manuals for women. I've had three children, and I've had about every sort of reproductive issue you can think of. I don't think you can have those experiences without wondering what it was like to have children in the past. There was no anesthesia. There was very little knowledge about what was going on in there. Some of the ideas just astonished me — for example, the notion of the "Milk Leg." It was thought that mothers who were pregnant, if their ankles swelled up, it was mother's milk filling them up, swelling them. I thought...[read on]

Visit Kate Manning's website.

The Page 69 Test: My Notorious Life.

--Marshal Zeringue

Suzanne Redfearn

Suzanne Redfearn graduated from California Polytechnic Institute, Pomona. Like her protagonist she is an architect and lives in Laguna Beach with her husband and two children.

Redfearn's debut novel Hush Little Baby, is now out.

From her Q & A at the Traveling With T blog:

What was the inspiration for Hush Little Baby?

A friend of mine was going through a divorce. Until she separated from her husband, the two seemed like the picture of happiness. But the story she told over drinks one night of the abuse and cruelty she endured behind closed doors was so frightening it made me wonder how many other marriages are not what they appear.

The curveball came about a month later when we went out again and my friend’s story had changed, the tale altered and now with glaring inconsistencies from the earlier version that caused an alarm to blare in my brain. What if she was making it up? Custody of the kids was at stake. Could she be setting her husband up? For over 10 years, I’d known her husband as a stand-up guy, the baseball coach who never yelled, the neighbor who happily carted your Christmas tree home in his truck, the kind of guy who always showed up and did his part. Yet, how quickly I dismissed all that based on a story over drinks; how quickly everyone dismissed it, so easily accepting that he was abusive and dangerous.

So I got to thinking; how easy it is to sabotage a life, that if my husband set out to destroy me, to preemptively strike before I realized what was going on, he could do it. He knows my weaknesses, my failings, my vulnerabilities. If he had the inclination, he could easily undermine my reputation and portray me as unstable or a bad mother, ensuring that if we divorced, he’d get custody of the kids.

My friend loves her children above all else, three beautiful boys. At the time they were 4, 9 and 12, and their futures, as well as her own, hung in the balance. To this day, nearly three years later, I don’t know if she was telling the truth or manufacturing lies. Either way, her story was a captivating cautionary tale that made me wonder how far someone might go to keep their spouse from getting custody of their kids, and then, if...[read on]

Learn more about Hush Little Baby at Suzanne Redfearn's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Suzanne Redfearn and Cooper.

My Book, The Movie: Hush Little Baby.

The Page 69 Test: Hush Little Baby.

--Marshal Zeringue