Michelle Latiolais

Michelle Latiolais's new work of fiction is She.

From her Q & A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: The book takes place in Los Angeles. How important is setting to you in your writing, and could this have taken place somewhere other than L.A.?

A: Now Deborah, are you really asking me that question. As my colleague Ron Carlson says to students, “nothing happens nowhere,” and if the writing could happen anywhere, are there sentient characters on the page? Or perhaps the writing takes “place” in a deprivation chamber?

Of course, now, I suppose, we have a lot of stuff happening online, or in the ether, that place, or realm, or domain, love it, domain, technology’s feudalism!

But being serious, that is an amazing arena of freedom for some people, and for a kind of artistic collaboration, and I respect that, but I’d be lying if I also didn’t say that one of the pre-eminent reasons I go to books, serious books, is to...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Peter Rock

Peter Rock is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship. His adult novel My Abandonment won the Alex Award.

Rock's new YA novel is Klickitat.

From his Q & A with Pique Beyond the Book:

There seems to be something in the air with survivalist stories lately. Your character Audra wants to practice wilderness survival and is inspired by a writer and naturalist named Tom Brown, Jr. How did you first encounter Brown’s work and why do you think Audra is so enamored with him?

Several years ago I was working on a book, The Shelter Cycle, which was inspired by a church in Montana that believed the world might/would end in 1990, and built vast underground shelters, where they planned to live for up to seven years. I was driving around this strange landscape, above where various shelters were buried, with one of these believers, and he told me that one night, deep underground, another member of the church told him about Tom Brown, Jr., a “true adept,” and so I started reading Brown’s works. One of my contacts had even gone to the special training camps Brown runs out in the wilderness of New Jersey–part of what draws Audra, and anyone, is this sense that if we were more attuned, as animals are, to our environment, we’d be both happier and more aware of all the invisible signs around us. I myself almost got some research money to go train with Brown. His story is fascinating, too; he claims to have had various lessons and wisdom passed down to him from “Grandfather,” a Native American who took Brown under his wing, but many suspect that story is not true, so there are many haters. But Brown’s books are fascinating; I have spent an especially large time reading his books about how children might...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Peter Rock's website.

The Page 69 Test: My Abandonment.

The Page 69 Test: The Shelter Cycle.

Writers Read: Peter Rock.

--Marshal Zeringue

Adam Christopher

Adam Christopher is a novelist and comic writer, and award-winning editor. His books include Made to Kill, volume 1 in The LA Trilogy.

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

What was the genesis of  [Made to Kill]? How did you find the way in?

I really love that kind of detective fiction—hard-boiled stuff of the ’40s and ’50s—and I really love Raymond Chandler. And the idea came about—he wrote to his agent in the mid-’50s complaining about science fiction, saying, “Can you believe this rubbish?” And he wrote 140-word short story, and it was complete nonsense. But it was Raymond Chandler nonsense, so there’s still something in it. His style and voice. And I was like, “Well clearly he should have written a science fiction novel.” So I thought maybe I should be the one to write it. I wrote novelette for Tor.com [that] was the origin story of the main character, Ray, who’s the robot detective. It was so much fun to write, that style and voice, that the trilogy just kind of sprang from that. I’m not sure that I’m calling it pastiche, because I love Raymond Chandler, and there’s absolutely no way that I could ever try and emulate his style, because it’s...[read on]

Made to Kill is among Nicole Hill's top six novels that explore the stranger, more fantastical, science fictional side of Hollywood.

The Page 69 Test: Made to Kill.

My Book, The Movie: Made to Kill.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pamela Erens

Pamela Erens's new novel is Eleven Hours.

From her Q & A with Caroline Leavitt:

To me, pregnancy and giving birth were the most profound states of my being. It changed everything. And I think in Eleven Hours, you’ve captured absolutely everything about its nature. Did anything take you by surprise as you were writing? Some subliminal memory?

Not really! I guess I’ve permanently forgotten whatever I’ve forgotten about my own childbirth experiences. I think it’s useful for writers to have highly selective memories, actually. What sticks is what’s has a certain heat to it, a resonance. It becomes usable as material, even if in very altered form. The birth in Eleven Hours resembles the ones I went through only glancingly. I tried to draw on my memory of what contractions felt like—which was difficult, as pain is hard to reconstruct when it’s over. But other than that, Lore’s labor is a complete invention: something I felt could happen in just that way.

This novel is a slim one, yet it’s so crushingly powerful, I don’t see how you could have made it longer. I’m wondering if writing it was in any way like childbirth?

Well, I did try to make the book longer! I was worried about it being too short to be considered a novel, yet it obviously wasn’t a short story. I tormented myself by looking up definitions of the novel: “over 40,000 words” “over 60,000 words,” and so forth. Every time I added material, I thought: Great! But within days I would have cut something else. And now whatever word count it came to—I no longer even know—seems utterly irrelevant.

How writing this book was like childbirth: The process...[read on]

Visit Pamela Erens's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Janet B. Taylor

Janet B. Taylor is the author of Into the Dim.

From her Q & A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for Into the Dim, and for your main character, Hope?

A: [I thought,] “I’d like to see what would happen if you took a modern teenager and thrust them into the Middle Ages, and see how they would deal with it."

As far as Hope goes, I had her in mind for a long time. I adore all those awesome kick-ass heroines in literature nowadays.

But...most of us are not sword or martial art experts, trained since birth to be killers. Many of us at that age were awkward and socially inept. Hope is all that, plus a big old bunch of phobias.

The only thing she has going for her is...[read on]

Visit Janet B. Taylor's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wesley Chu

Wesley Chu's new book is The Rise of Io, the first in a new series set in the same world as his breakthrough Tao trilogy. From his Q & A with Joel Cunningham for the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy blog:

After three books, we thought we were done with the Tao universe. Did you? When did you realize there was more story to tell?

I remember writing the The Rebirths of Tao’s epilogue and getting a little melancholy. Roen will forever be my firstborn, and I love him like I love Eva, and people who follow me on Twitter know I Dean Koontz-level love my dog. But I feel like I left him in a good place.

If you think about it, the guy had something like a thirty-five year arc in the trilogy. That’s a solid run. I’ve put him through the ringer more times than I could count. Not gonna lie; I get a really weird joy out of kicking his ass.

Way I figure, the dude deserves a break, his pizza, and an occasional cameo to yell at the kids to get off his lawn. Same with Tao. I think I explored their relationship to the fullest. It’s time to see what the other Quasing are up to.

As for realizing I had more stories to tell, the original book two for the Tao series was The Lives of Baji. That obviously never happened, but I have always wanted to continue the story from another Quasing’s point of view.

I’m really sorry that point of view ended up being Io. Oops.

What sets the Io books apart from the Tao trilogy?

Roen is by far my readers’ favorite character. He’s lovable, honest, clumsy, and sometimes dumb as a cardboard box. You never question his heart, though. He’s a solid guy who...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Sarah McCoy

Sarah McCoy is the New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author of The Baker’s Daughter, a 2012 Goodreads Choice Award Best Historical Fiction nominee; the novella “The Branch of Hazel” in Grand Central; The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico; and The Mapmaker’s Children (Crown, 2015).

Her work has been featured in Real Simple, The Millions, Your Health Monthly, Huffington Post and other publications. McCoy has taught English writing at Old Dominion University and at the University of Texas at El Paso. She calls Virginia home but presently lives with her husband, an Army physician, and their dog, Gilly, in El Paso, Texas.

From McCoy's Q & A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: Why did you decide to pair the stories of Sarah Brown, daughter of the 19th century abolitionist John Brown, and Eden Anderson, a fictional modern-day woman?

A: I’m spellbound by this interplay—by the impact of Sarah Brown on us, the contemporary Eden Andersons of today….Sarah Brown and Eden Anderson mirror each other in so many subtle ways. The beauty of their interwoven story is how readers interpret their reflection….

They differ in the way each of us differs from our neighbor, our sister, our friend, even the closest person to us. Because our life recipes are composed of different ingredients, in a different timing, and influenced by external and internal components that we might not ...[read on]

Visit Sarah McCoy’s website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

The Page 69 Test: The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico.

The Page 69 Test: The Baker's Daughter.

Coffee with a Canine: Sarah McCoy and Gilbert.

The Page 69 Test: The Mapmaker's Children.

My Book, The Movie: The Mapmaker’s Children.

Writers Read: Sarah McCoy (May 2015).

--Marshal Zeringue

Margaret Dilloway

Margaret Dilloway has been a writer ever since she learned how to write. In high school she was a California Arts Scholar in creative writing and she won a National Council of Teachers of English writing award. She practiced writing in a variety of forms, such as being a theater critic and a contributing editor for two weekly newspapers, doing technical writing, and writing plays, before publishing three critically acclaimed books for adults: How to Be an American Housewife, The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns, and Sisters of Heart and Snow. Her research for Momotaro: Xander and the Lost Island of Monsters included a trip to Japan and a samurai sword-fighting class. Dilloway lives in southern California with her husband, three children, and a goldendoodle named Gatsby.

From Dilloway's Q & A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: Sisters of Heart and Snow follows women in two different time periods. How did you come up with the idea for the book and for its structure?

A: My mother was from a samurai family so I knew I wanted to write something along those lines. I looked up "samurai women" and found Tomoe Gozen, who lived in the 12th century, and wanted to write about her. She was a female captain, said to be the best archer in Japan, an incredible swordswoman, and...[read on]

Visit Margaret Dilloway's website and blog.

Coffee with a Canine: Margaret Dilloway and Gatsby.

My Book, The Movie: The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns.

The Page 69 Test: The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns.

My Book, The Movie: Sisters of Heart and Snow.

The Page 69 Test: Momotaro: Xander and the Lost Island of Monsters.

My Book, The Movie: Momotaro: Xander and the Lost Island of Monsters.

Writers Read: Margaret Dilloway.

--Marshal Zeringue

Yona Zeldis McDonough

Yona Zeldis McDonough is the author of novels such as A Wedding in Great Neck and You Were Meant for Me as well as dozens of books for children. She is the editor of and a contributor to The Barbie Chronicles: A Living Doll Turns Forty, as well as All the Available Light: A Marilyn Monroe Reader.

McDonough's latest novel is The House on Primrose Pond.

From the author's Q & A with Caroline Leavitt:

Q: Why did you choose New Hampshire as the location for your novel?

A: I have set my past six novels in and around New York City. This was less an active decision and more of a default position. Setting in a novel should function almost as a “character”, and to make that “character” come alive, you have to know it well—the sights, sounds and smells of a place. Since I was raised in New York and have lived here for most of my life, writing a New York setting came effortlessly to me. But recently I began to chafe at that very ease and wanted to push my own boundaries. I turned to New Hampshire because it’s a state I have come to love. My husband is from Portsmouth, NH and we have visited and spent time there during the course of our marriage. And for many years, we rented a cottage in an enchanted, lakeside spot and that is where I chose to set The House on Primrose Pond. I knew the place intimately, and so I could write about it with confidence and with passion. I wanted the place to come alive to the reader, and in order to make that happen, it had to be fully, gloriously alive to me.

Q: The story is mainly told from a single point of view, with one exception. Care to comment?

A: The story is mostly Susannah’s: how she copes when she loses her husband in a bicycle accident, how she feels as she attempts to rebuild her life in a new place. But the character of Alice, the elderly neighbor who at first offers friendship but later seems almost a threat, needed some greater explanation and I could only do that if I wrote a couple of chapters from her point of view. Without a glimpse into her heart and soul, Alice’s behavior toward Susannah and more importantly her daughter Calista, could seem questionable, and even malign. I did not...[read on]

Learn more about the author and her work at Yona Zeldis McDonough's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Yona Zeldis McDonough & Willa and Holden.

Writers Read: Yona Zeldis McDonough.

The Page 69 Test: The House on Primrose Pond.

My Book, The Movie: The House on Primrose Pond.

--Marshal Zeringue

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