Rachel Robbins

Rachel Robbins received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is a tenured assistant professor at Malcolm X College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago. A visual artist and two-time Pushcart Prize-nominated writer, her paintings have materialized on public transit, children’s daycare centers, and Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. Robbins is the author of In Lieu of Flowers and The Sound of a Thousand Stars. She lives in Chicago with her husband, children, and Portuguese Water dog.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

My original working title was actually Enola Spelled Backwards, which was a nod to the Enola Gay. I thought it was fascinating that Paul Tibbets, the pilot who flew the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, named the plane after his mother Enola, who was named for the titular character in the novel Enola: Or Her Fatal Mistake, by Mary Young Ridenbaugh. I loved the self-fulfilling prophecy in that name; when it was reflected in the water over the Pacific, the nose of the plane would spell out the word alone. That’s why I also wrote the storyline of my Japanese character, a Hibakusha who has survived the bomb and must suffer its consequences, in reverse. Through his eyes, we time travel backwards, beginning with the toll the bomb has taken on his world by the end of his life, all the way back to its horrific inception.

In the end, we landed on the title, The Sound of a Thousand Stars, because it connected thematically. I liked that it was a nod to Fred J. Olivi’s famous words on the evening news after the bombing of Nagasaki: “Suddenly, the light of a thousand suns illuminated the cockpit.” It’s also apt because it’s a nod to understanding the world through numbers, and the book is inspired by my grandfather, who was always solving math riddles and quizzing us on square roots. Finally, it’s a paradox. Because there’s no sound in space, so stars don’t make sound. These scientists were driven to explore beyond the known universe—to hear things that had never been heard before.

What's in a name?

I named my protagonist Alice initially because it just felt right. Early on, there’s a character in the novel who scoffs: “I feel like Alice in Quantum Land.” And the puzzle pieces fell into place. What was Los Alamos if not a rabbit hole? I also needed to change surnames to protect my family’s privacy since in early drafts, I had used our family names. I updated Kahn to Katz, which felt appropriately erudite for a Jewish heiress to the de Young fortune. The other character is Caleb Blum, who began as Caleb Fisher. I chose Blum because I loved that it was the Yiddish word for flower since there is so much in the book about toxic oleander blooming in Hiroshima in the aftermath of the bomb. In the novel, Caleb explains that his last name was given to his family at the Romanian border by a Border Patrol Agent who had an affinity for gardening. This story is actually true. My paternal great-grandfather did not have a surname when they emigrated. They were too poor. We became the Fisher family because a Border Patrol Agent asked my great-grandfather whether he liked to fish, and not speaking a word of English, he responded in Yiddish, “Yo.” In the end, flowers seemed more poetic than fish.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

My teenage self was largely oblivious to my grandfather’s lived history and the plight of his work in defense. To me, he was my grandfather with twinkling eyes. I loved him so much. He was larger than life—a flawless being. So, the most shocking part of my book for my teenage self would be the removal of those rose-colored glasses and seeing my grandfather for who he really was—a person with ego, fear, flaws and all, who got caught up in something. I would have to reckon with his inherent faults—the same misgivings that make us human.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

I wrote a whole storyline in reverse, so I suppose I have to say endings are my thing. Starting at the end and working backwards is kind of my process. I started writing the book itself on the flight home from my grandfather’s funeral, so that’s kind of the ultimate ending because the book began with a death. For me, it was a way of processing the loss and keeping my grandfather present. I also got to know him as a young person through archival documents and interviews, and that was a bit like meeting a ghost. I started having dreams about him as a young man. That’s a beginning I could never have written from the get-go.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

My grandmother is the inspiration for my Alice character, and my grandfather is the inspiration for Caleb. But I spent so much time researching these amazing Herculean women scientists. They were called that, of course, because the term scientist was presumed to be male. And I was so taken with them—from stories about being restricted from experiments for fear of what the radiation would do to their reproductive organs, to proving useful in the end because their small hands could more effectively manipulate machine parts. So, my main character morphed from my grandmother—a philanthropist who wrote a book about the bomb and spent her life vying for a peaceful future—into a steminist scientist inspired by these lived histories. I suppose I’m in there a bit too because how could I not be? Every character is an iteration of the author, right? But I was able to maintain a distance from my own identity in the writing. It was primarily my grandparents that I envisioned coming to life on the page.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Mostly, I’m influenced by visual art since I’m also a painter. I paint large-scale murals and work with collage, so I’m inspired by enormous stories walking across buildings, like the kinds done by Vhils (a Portuguese street artist who uses a jackhammer to chip away at walls), or Blu, an Italian painter who turns whole abandoned city blocks into paintings that he then animates. Both are extremely narrative in their work. Vhils tells the story of displaced people, celebrating the portraiture of those who have been removed from their homes, be it from railway construction or gentrification. And Blu tells stories that take on everything from evolution and gun violence to corporate greed.

Another of my favorites is Mickalene Thomas. Her collage work is so maximalist and fabulous. It’s a celebration of seeing. I love that she refuses the male gaze and depicts female subjects who possess their own sexuality and relish being seen. In many ways, my book started with similar visuals since I spent so much time painting my grandmother over and over, collaging in her letters and her fabrics, inspired by Thomas, and searching for answers as I always do in the beginning, through paint.

Visit Rachel Robbins's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Sound of a Thousand Stars.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eugenie Montague

Eugenie Montague received her MFA in fiction from the University of California, Irvine. Her short fiction has been published by NPR, Mid-American Review, Faultline, Fiction Southeast, Amazon and Flash Friday, a flash-fiction series from Tin House and the Guardian Books Network, and was selected by Amy Hempel for The Best Small Fictions (2017). She currently lives in El Paso, Texas with her family.

Montague's new novel is Swallow the Ghost.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

I like what my super-smart and talented friend and writer, Brendan Park, has to say about titles: that they should open up rather than shut down, evoke, rather than diagnose. And, actually, he suggested the title here. I had originally chosen another title, and my (also super-smart and talented) editors encouraged a change. When I mentioned that I needed a new title to Brendan, he recommended "swallow the ghost," which came from a line in the book. The specific sentence the title comes from did not make it into the final book, but I think Swallow the Ghost is a title that begins to make sense within the context of the novel and that it works on both plot and thematic levels.

What's in a name?

With almost all of my writing, I hear a rhythm in my head. I wouldn't be able to pinpoint it. It's not related to pentameters or syllables or stresses on any conscious level; but when I write a sentence, it either sounds right or wrong to me, and I'll edit over and over until it sounds "right" in my head. I have a similar relationship to names. A character name either feels right or it doesn't. Sometimes that comes immediately, but I often change them over and over as I write (which can lead to some funny "Replace All" situations down the road). My "office" is a desk a closet--not a walk-in closet, just a normal closet with the doors taken off. It has a shelf on the back wall for sweaters and such that I have filled with books. The name "Jesse Haber" came about when I looked up at that shelf and saw a book by Jesse Ball and one by Mark Haber, and put them together—mainly to survive the sentence. But this name felt instantly right and I never changed it.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

What an interesting question—I've never thought about it. But, no, I don't think she would be very surprised. She might be surprised she finished a novel, but I think the themes and subject matter would seem of a kind. Hopefully, she would see some growth from how she thought about them at sixteen though!

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

I think this might depend on the story or the book but, I have always found middles pretty difficult. I generally subscribe to the notion that if the ending isn't working, the problem lies somewhere else. I do think endings and beginnings can feel hard to change, so it's good to have a trusted reader to help you see it. There are some snake-eating-its-own-tail aspects of revision for me; I write from the beginning and at some point realize what I am doing (hopefully), so then I have to go back and incorporate what I have learned into the beginning of the book, which refines the middle and the end—again making it necessary to work on the beginning. At some point, this process ends or at least, the amount and importance of what I have to revise or refine approaches zero (if never actually getting there).

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

I think there are aspects of myself in my characters, especially major characters. It's not a one for one certainly and it's not autobiographical, but the major characters are likely guided by or interested in at least some of the questions that I have about the world and art and other people, though their path and personalities and how they go about trying to answer these questions may differ.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Well, for this book, certainly the internet, and I do think about the internet a lot. There’s infinite creativity working within the formal structures of the tweet or the Instagram story, or the Tik Tok; in the same way, for centuries, writers have been playing with the novel. For example, Alena Smith, who created the TV show Dickinson, had a number of fake Twitter accounts, including Tween Hobo: tweets in the voice of a tween who was riding the rails; also Eighties Man (self explanatory). I also had friends who were always playing with Wikipedia, and a friend who once started a crime story on Yelp. The character left reviews at restaurants that were part of the story, slightly more narrative than one would usually leave. No one really noticed but, then, he left a review where there was a shootout—and the restaurant very much noticed, and he got kicked off Yelp. So I was thinking about all these things, and the little I knew about the publishing industry from being mostly an outsider; I wrote but had not had a book published, but I followed writers on Twitter who posted about the shrinking media market, less places for reviews, the importance of follower counts in the process, et cetera. All of this was in my head when I thought about Jane and Jeremy and this Twitter mystery they created to help promote Jeremy's book.

I also thought about the internet in how we read. There are the radical differences in tone, fragments, but also there's this contingency. It’s fairly common now to read a text, and then there’s the think piece on the text, and then there’s the twitter thread on the think piece, and then maybe there’s a new think piece on the twitter thread. Along with that, there’s the whole milkshake duck of it all—that one day we’re all laughing at something online, new information comes out, and we realize we shouldn’t be laughing. So, there’s this instability that's more a part of the reading process, as I experience it, and this is mirrored by the instability of all the platforms, which are subject to the whims of a few billionaires, really. A book is never stable, the reading changes with each reader, even the same reader at different times--but this cycle on the internet, specifically, there's a Rashomon aspect about it that I thought about with this book.

Visit Eugenie Montague's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Barbara Gayle Austin

Barbara Gayle Austin writes crime fiction. She grew up in Houston, Texas, but has spent most of her adult life in the Netherlands and the UK. She now lives in Amsterdam with her two children and her dog.

What You Made Me Do is Austin’s debut novel, a thriller set in Amsterdam and a Dutch island in the Wadden Sea. The novel was longlisted for the esteemed Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger award (under the title Lowlands). Her short stories have been longlisted in the Margery Allingham short mystery competition and in the Aestas 2022 competition.

My Q&A with Austin:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

My novel is a dark psychological thriller. The original title, Lowlands, doesn’t say what kind of book it is or what it’s about.

The publisher wanted a title that would appeal to readers of thrillers, so I brainstormed with my daughter, and we suggested ten options. What You Made Me Do is a variation of one of those suggestions. The title is brilliant—it works on multiple levels. As the reader delves into the book, they will wonder which character(s) the title refers to.

What's in a name?

The novel is set in the Netherlands, and the characters are Dutch. But I wanted to avoid names that are difficult for native English speakers to pronounce. If I had known that there would be an audio edition of the book, I would have picked names that are even easier. Fortunately, Andy Arndt, who narrates the audio book, has studied Dutch. So her pronunciation is spot on.

Part of the novel takes place on Wexalia, a fictional island inspired by the real island of Terschelling—one of the barrier islands off the northern coast. Wexalia is the medieval name for eastern Terschelling. I didn’t use the real/modern name, because I changed the geography of the island to accommodate the story.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

My teenage self dreamed of writing mysteries, but she never…ever… imagined that she would be living in the Netherlands and set her debut novel there.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

I love writing both beginnings and endings. One isn’t harder for me to write than the other. But I end up changing the endings more than the beginnings because sometimes the characters take on a life of their own and defy my original plans for them. For example, in the thriller I’m writing now, there’s a murder near the end of the book. In the current draft, the character I had originally intended to be the killer becomes the victim, while the supposed victim turns into an accomplice.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

There’s a little of me in each character. I can step into their shoes and pretend to be them. I imagine how they feel and how they would react in a scene, but I promise I have never committed a murder!

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

My adopted city of Amsterdam has deeply influenced my writing. The rich history, the mix of nationalities, the canals, and the crooked houses all play a part. Not to mention the unstable wooden poles supporting the older parts of the city—a constant reminder of an invisible threat beneath the surface.

Visit Barbara Gayle Austin's website.

The Page 69 Test: What You Made Me Do.

--Marshal Zeringue

Samantha Greene Woodruff

Samantha Greene Woodruff is the author of Amazon #1 bestseller The Lobotomist’s Wife. She studied history at Wesleyan University and continued her studies at NYU’s Stern School of Business, where she earned an MBA. Woodruff spent nearly two decades working on the business side of media, primarily at Viacom’s Nickelodeon, before leaving corporate life to become a full-time mom. In her newfound “free” time, she took classes at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, where she accidentally found her calling as a historical fiction author. Her writing has appeared in Newsweek, Writer’s Digest, Female First, Read 650, and more.

Woodruff's new novel is The Trade Off.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

This was not an easy book to name! From the moment I had the idea to write about a woman trying to be an investor in the stock market in the lead up to the Great Crash, I loved the title “What Goes Up.” For me it was fun and inviting but also foreshadowed the catastrophe that was coming (you know, because of the adage: “what goes up always comes down.”) But no one else liked it. They felt it sounded too rom-com for historical fiction and I saw that too. In the end, we came up with over fifty titles before we landed on The Trade Off. Two of the other finalists were Her Side of the Street and Rhapsody in Gold, but I felt that The Trade Off did just enough to play on Wall Street and hint at the fact that it isn’t going to be easy for the protagonist to achieve her goals, without giving much away.

What's in a name?

My protagonist, Bea Abramovitz’s family dynamic was based on stories I’d been told about my grandmother, Pauline. She was the only daughter of Polish immigrants who were extremely wealthy, lost everything when they immigrated, and her mother treated her like a servant and her brothers like princes. She was my favorite grandma and passed away when I was only ten, so I wanted to honor her and my grandpa Lew (who my daughter Lila is named after), by calling Bea’s parents Pauline and Lew.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

My teenage self would be surprised that I was a novelist at all. My high school pipe dream was to be a rock star, not a novelist. I sang in bands and wrote angst-ridden poetry. I also wrote an incredibly wordy children’s book for a senior project but I never thought I’d make a career out of writing. I loved to read (most writers do,) and I favored mysteries and sci-fi thrillers. When everyone else was reading Sweet Valley High, I read a series of books called Dark Forces. I devoured Nancy Drew and then graduated to Agatha Christie. I guess that explains why my pure pleasure reading is still psychological thrillers. I didn’t find historical fiction, as a reader, until I was a full-blown adult with a BA in history, and I didn’t start writing until I was in my forties.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

For The Trade Off, the whole idea hinged on the ending, so that was set from the beginning. In general, I have a loose outline for the major beats of my novels before I write them, but I let the details, and the individual scenes evolve over time (and adjust the outline accordingly). I didn’t know where we would enter Bea’s story or how the “chicken little” aspect of the novel—Bea seeing that a market crash was coming and no one believing her—would evolve. And it changed as I wrote it. The ending stayed the same, although the way it happened wasn’t what I had initially planned.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

I think of writing characters like method acting. Even when they have different personalities and life experiences than mine, I look to my own relationships and feelings to find authenticity in my characters’ reactions to events and people. So, I’m always in there somewhere.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

A recent event in the stock market sparked the idea for The Trade Off: the GameStop short squeeze of 2021, which was also the subject of the movie Dumb Money. I was fascinated that the investors selling the stock short were perceived as villains and the buyers of the stock were the heroes. This got me thinking about the complex morality of wealth, especially on Wall Street when fortunes can be made and lost in a matter of hours. Since I write historical fiction, I looked to the past for my actual story, but this more recent event is where the idea originated. More broadly, I’m a huge TV and movie person and I think there is a certain pacing that I try to achieve in my writing as a result. Probably, I write for those with shorter attention spans.

Visit Samantha Greene Woodruff's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Lobotomist's Wife.

My Book, The Movie: The Trade Off.

--Marshal Zeringue

Melody Maysonet

Melody Maysonet is the author of the critically acclaimed novel A Work of Art and has been an English teacher, editor, columnist, and ghostwriter. After growing up in Illinois, she moved to South Florida to see how much greener the grass could be ... and discovered that life is what you make of it, wherever that happens to be.

What We Wish For is Maysonet's second novel.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

My working title for a long time was Out of Mind because the main character’s mom is out of her mind, but it was also a play on “out of sight, out of mind,” as in, Layla, the main character, is trying to hide who she really is.

Then I settled on What We Wish For as the title, which is a play on the phrase, “Be careful what you wish for.” Layla thinks she gets everything she wishes for when her rich aunt and uncle swoop in to save her from the homeless shelter, sending her mom to fancy addiction rehab and moving Layla into their mansion. Layla thinks all her dreams have come true but finds out that getting everything she wished for comes with its own price tag.

The title is also a reference to hope—as in, there are so many things we wish for, and oftentimes we don’t get them, but the point is to keep hope alive. In What We Wish For, Layla longs for a better life—for herself, for her mom. She longs to be a better person, to be a better friend, a better daughter. She struggles and gets knocked down and falls backwards, but she never gives up hope, and that’s her saving grace.

What's in a name?

One of Layla’s love interests in the novel is a teenager named Gabriel. I picked that name for a few reasons. The seed for this book was planted when I was volunteer teaching at a homeless shelter and I was introduced to some new residents, including a mom and her teenage son. The kid’s name was Gabriel, and I remember wondering what his life was like. Did he resent his mom for their living situation? Did the kids at school know where he was living? I know nothing else about this real-life kid except his name, which I thought would be a good name for someone who has a positive influence on Layla. Like Layla, Gabriel lives in the homeless shelter, and to me, he’s the epitome of cool. But he’s also a sort of mentor for Layla—an angel, if you will—so I thought the name was appropriate.

Layla’s snotty cousin (who Layla ends up living with once she moves in with her aunt and uncle) is named Celeste, and I chose that name because I like how it implies something celestial or otherworldly, which plays into the theme of wishing. Celeste herself isn’t exactly angelic. In fact, she starts out pretty unlikeable, but I think she redeems herself by the end, and that plays into another of the book’s themes, which is to look beyond the surface of things.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Once I know where a book is going, the ending kind of writes itself. But the first chapter? That’s a tough one. One of my earlier drafts had Layla whining about living in a homeless shelter, and I realized that it made her unlikeable. Chapter one went through a bunch of rewrites, and now it begins with Layla sitting in an AA meeting with her mom. And yeah, they’re homeless, and yeah, her mom is struggling to stay sober, but Layla is determined to stay positive, even though all the evidence is sending up alarm bells.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

Layla is definitely based on me. Like her, I was poor growing up, and like her, I struggled in high school. I tried to project this attitude of “I don’t care what you think of me,” but I did care, and I felt very much less-than. I also wrote quite a bit of poetry when I was a teen, just like Layla, and like her, I was told by an English teacher at my school that my poems were “too filled with teenage angst.”

Layla’s mom, the struggling alcoholic, is also based on me. I’m an alcoholic, and though I’ve been in recovery for almost 18 years, I remember how awful it was to wake up telling myself I wouldn’t drink that day only to fail over and over. For years, I was a shell of a human being, but thankfully I found a way out, and for that, I am so very grateful.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

My sister Dawn Freeman is one of the coolest people I know, and she had a huge influence on me. Dawn wrote poetry in high school, which made want to write poetry. In fact, Layla’s poetry shirt is based on a sweatshirt my sister wore in high school that she’d covered in lines from her poems, each of them written in different-colored Sharpie. I’m pretty sure people made fun of that shirt, so it took a lot of bravery for her to wear it. That’s the kind of person Layla wants to be—someone brave—but she’s too embarrassed to show off her own poetry, so her shirt is covered with famous poems instead of her own.

Visit Melody Maysonet's website.

The Page 69 Test: What We Wish For.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jeffrey Archer

A matchless spinner of engrossing tales, Jeffrey Archer is a bestselling British novelist and former politician. His hugely successful body of work includes Kane and Abel, First Among Equals, and the multi-volume Clifton Chronicles.

Archer's new novel is An Eye for an Eye.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

Titles are very important. They can tempt you to read a book and they can stop you from reading a book. I spend some considerable time thinking about my titles and they rarely come easily. I think Kane and Abel, Only Time Will Tell and Not a Penny More have helped sales, so I will always take the problem of titles very seriously.

What's in a name?

Names are very important, because they set the tone of what the person is like, for example William Warwick is clearly a good and decent person, whereas with Miles Faulkner you cannot be sure and, certainly, Hani Khalil sets the tone even before you read about him.

Sometimes, just first names can give it away: Beth, Jojo and Artemisia all tell their own story, as do Jackie, Christina and Alice. Surnames are equally important and I spend some considerable time making sure a name and place are correct.

Once a year, I offer the chance, for charity, for someone to have their name in a book and that is a challenge in itself, because some want to be baddies and some want to be goodies and some don’t care. I wonder if you can spot who paid £26,000 to be in the next book.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

I loved all the Just William books and Swallows and Amazons when I was a boy so, frankly, I don’t think I would be surprised.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

I must confess I don’t find the beginnings or the endings at all difficult. It is the middles, when you must hold the readers’ interest, keeping them guessing and wanting to turn the pages. There is only one sin for a writer: boring the reader.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

Of course, one has a tendency to put characters in that you are familiar with and, certainly, in the case of my wife, Mary, she is Beth in the William Warwick series. Christina is based on a friend, as is Ross, so I advise prospective writers to write about people they know, because they will be able to describe them more easily and will know their characteristics.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I watch a lot of very bad films and television programmes and sometimes only manage twenty minutes.

However, when I watch something wonderful, like The West Wing, Call my Agent or the German film The Lives of Others, I learn from the skill of the writer and the translation of the actor, in the hope it will help my own work.

Visit Jeffrey Archer's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Elom Akoto

Elom K. Akoto immigrated to the United States from Togo (West Africa). He earned a bachelor’s degree in Education and a master’s degree in TESOL (Teacher of English to Speakers of Other Languages). He is the founder of Learn and Care, a nonprofit organization that aims to promote Literacy and Adult Education, not only among immigrants but also among Native Americans who missed the opportunity to earn a high school diploma. The program offers ESL, literacy, GED preparation classes, and more. He self-published two ESL workbooks: Ideal Companion, ESL level 1 and Ideal Companion, ESL level 2. He teaches French in a high school and ESL at a community college in Omaha, Nebraska, where he lives with his family.

Akoto's debut novel is Blindspot in America.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

The final title of my debut novel, Blindspot in America, was not the original title I gave it. I was unhappy when my publisher decided it was best to find a new title for the book because of how cliché In the Dream of America would appear to potential readers. The publisher then included me in the task of finding a new title. After tossing words around, Blindspot in America seemed to fit the story better, as it depicts how prospective immigrants’ conception of America excludes or instead omits some crucial aspects and realities of their future adopted country. Those aspects and realities constitute the spots they didn’t see in their dream of America.

What's in a name?

I was looking for an uncommon name for the protagonist of my novel, and Kamao came to me quickly. Although it doesn’t mean anything, to my knowledge, it sounded like a good name for an intelligent, idealist African young man immigrating to the United States.

Brad and Lindsey McAdams are good names for a wealthy, influential, conservative US senator and his more down-to-earth, well-mannered daughter.

Nana, a name attributed to a “chief,” “king,” or “royalty” in Ghana, is most fitting for Kamao’s father. This well-respected and wealthy academic also happens to be the health secretary.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

Referring to what Toni Morrison said about writing a book that one wants to read but hasn’t been written, I would have loved to read Kamao’s story if it had been written by someone else when I was a teenager because it would have allowed me to discover another side of America that I didn’t know about racism, discrimination, the influence of class, and power.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Surprisingly, I had little trouble writing this novel's beginning and ending. They were the two most important parts I settled with quickly and relatively easily. Once I knew and liked how the story started and ended and felt comfortable with them, I thought it would be a good story. The part that I had to rewrite mostly was the middle part, the story's evolution, and the plot's details.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

Kamao appears knowledgeable and idealistic, and I see myself posing those attributes a bit.

Besides those, I don’t feel like I have much in common with other characters, many of whom are immigrants from different parts of the world I’m only familiar with through my research and readings.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

My experience as an immigrant in America has tremendously influenced my writing. What I dreamt about the US was not what I’ve experienced in my almost twenty years in this country. There are some things I went through that felt senseless and nearly inhumane, but I also always believe in America’s promise of freedom and opportunity for all. I think I’m an example of the story of my novel because I’m becoming a published author today, besides the struggles that I knew. Although it is not given nor a guarantee, the opportunity is always there, somewhere in this country, for every individual to achieve their goal and potential.

Visit Elom Akoto's website.

My Book, The Movie: Blindspot in America.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tess Callahan

Tess Callahan is the author of the novels April & Oliver and Dawnland. Her essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Writer’s Digest, National Public Radio, Agni, Narrative Magazine, AWP Notebook, Newsday, The Common, the Best American Poetry blog, and elsewhere. Her TEDx talk on creativity is titled, “The Love Affair Between Creativity & Constraint.” Callahan is a graduate of Boston College and Bennington College Writing Seminars. A certified meditation teacher, she offers meditations on Heart Haven Meditations and Insight Timer. She curates Muse-feed.com, a toolbox for aspiring writers. A dual citizen of the United States and Ireland, she lives in Cape Cod and Northern New Jersey with her family and number one life coach, her dog.

My Q&A with Callahan:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

During a weeklong family reunion on Cape Cod, a stretch of beach the characters refer to as Dawnland, two brothers convene at their father’s house with their wives, teenage children, and deeply held secrets in tow. Dawnland is the Wampanoag and Wabanaki name for the northeastern seaboard, the place of the first sunrise, a symbol of hope and renewal. The father figure in Dawnland, Hal, finds this indigenous name more fitting than Cape Cod, especially now that most of the cod have been fished out. Like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the title establishes the setting as central to the story while also acting as a metaphor. The primal forces of nature collide with the unresolved past of the characters and, kaboom! In Dawnland the natural world is a reckoning force. Hope is born of hard-won realizations. ‘Dusk Land’ would be a different novel.

What's in a name?

Dawnland’s central character, April, is named for the month she was born in, “like a date received stamp,” she says. Her parents, who play a peripheral role in the backstory, are emotionally tone deaf. Self-worth is a challenge April meets head-on in Dawnland. Can she step into her own power? I chose Oliver’s name both for its consonance with April, sharing the “L” and “R” sounds, as well the musicality offered by those long, luscious vowels. Oliver is a musician. April’s volatile teenage son Lochlann, who hides beneath layers of armor, is a ‘lock” she longs to crack. It turns out she needs Oliver’s musical magic to do so.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

Young Tess would be quite shocked to see some of her own ancestral dynamics—patterns of avoidance and deference, the weight of unworthiness—laid bare in Dawnland. Part of her would say, “Thank God my family is nothing like this.” Another part would see down through the ancestral line to patterns of addiction, not so much to substances (although one character, Al, is fond of booze), but to habits of mind, default modes of helplessness and despair. The characters in Dawnland are forced to reckon with their own forms of autopilot and embrace the possibility of radical agency. I think teenage Tess would find her head spinning. It’s quite a ride!

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Beginnings are pure joy. I love the headlong dive into a story. Dawnland opens with April’s teenage son, Lochlann, falling off a skiff into the ocean at night. He symbolizes everything that can be lost through avoidance and noncommunication. I enjoy exploring where a mysterious opening scene will lead me. Endings often remain a mystery well into the writing. I tend to compose the way a goose migrates, one flap at a time. The goose may not have a mental picture of where it is going, but its inner GPS knows when it has arrived. From the get-go, I sensed the fate of these characters. Getting there was a line-by-line act of trust.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

A reader asked me recently how I could have come up with a character like Al, a carousing hard-drinking sportswriter who she said, “is nothing like you.” I assured her that I am in touch with my inner loose cannon. I once heard Milan Kundera say in an interview that his characters start where he leaves off. That feels right to me. April, Oliver, and the whole crew each represent some unlived, unexpressed part of me. I’ve taken my own proclivities and let them play out to their worst-case scenarios. By letting the characters suffer the full fallout of their choices, they reveal to the reader, and to themselves, who they are. In life and in fiction, our most daunting challenges show us what we’re made of.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

The dynamic topography of Cape Cod greatly influenced the writing of Dawnland. Having vacationed here for 25 years and lived here part-time for the past eight, I have witnessed firsthand the spectacular power of the sea, the erosion of dune cliffs, and the fall of beachfront homes into the ocean. Stellwagen Bank off the tip of Cape Cod is a summer feeding ground for whales and other mammals. A growing seal population has led to the recent return of the area’s apex predator, the great white shark, a development which Cape Cod has embraced as a sign of a healthy ecosystem. All of this plays into the events of Dawnland, in which intimate encounters with marine life play a pivotal role.

Learn more about the novel and author at Tess Callahan's website.

The Page 69 Test: April and Oliver.

The Page 69 Test: Dawnland.

My Book, The Movie: Dawnland.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mansi Shah

Mansi Shah writes novels centering Gujarati characters that speak to generational differences across the Indian diaspora, and she's the author of the acclaimed novels The Direction of the Wind and The Taste of Ginger. Shah was born in Toronto to Indian immigrants, raised in the midwestern United States, and is now based in Los Angeles. She left her long-time career as an entertainment attorney in Hollywood to travel the world and write full time. She loves to cook and is often experimenting on new culinary creations that blend Indian flavors with other cuisines.

Shah's new novel is A Good Indian Girl.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

A Good Indian Girl is the perfect title for this novel and really sets the tone for the story. Coupled with the cover, which features an Indian woman with a smirk, the reader can intuit that this is going to be a story that challenges the stereotypes of what is expected of a “good Indian girl.” The story starts off with Jyoti, who is a 42-year-old woman who finds herself divorced and estranged from her parents after she was unable to conceive the child that her husband so desperately wanted. She’d given up her chef career to focus on having children, so she approaches the second half of her life having lost everything that she thought she was supposed to have at that stage of her life. With no obligations, she spends the summer in Italy with her best friend, Karishma, a fellow social outcast from their conservative Gujarati community. Through the experiences of Jyoti and Karishma—and a lot of pasta and Chianti—the story changes the narrative of what type of life a good Indian girl should have, and is grounded in the universal themes of reinventing ourselves after loss, learning to live for ourselves, and the significance of found family.

What's in a name?

Jyoti Shah is the quintessential Gujarati American woman, so I had to make sure she had a quintessential Gujarati name. In my novels, I showcase names from the Indian diaspora, and in A Good Indian Girl, I wanted to make sure I highlighted a name that is often mispronounced in North America in the hopes that others with the same name might have a slightly easier road ahead if more readers are exposed to it. And her last name Shah, which is the same as mine, was chosen not because she and I are similar, but because in the Indian community, the last name is often a signifier of the caste and region of India that a person comes from. Shah is an incredibly common last name in Gujarat, and many of the cultural aspects of my life—and Jyoti’s—are specific to that subset of Indians, so that is why the majority of my protagonists throughout my novels have the last name “Shah.”

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

I don’t allow myself to start drafting until I have a clear sense of the beginning and ending scenes. In a story about a chef in Tuscany, I knew I had to start the story with the reader being able to taste the food, and the truffle gnocchi dish described on the first page is from an actual restaurant in Florence and sets the tone for the mouthwatering story ahead. Given the focus on food in this novel, I made sure to include recipes for the Indian-Italian fusion dishes that Jyoti creates. I won’t give away the ending to this story, but so far, in all the novels I’ve written, my ending scene has remained unchanged from the first draft to final publication.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

Jyoti was an interesting character to write because while we have cultural aspects in common, the essence of her personality and life experience are not the same as mine. At her core, Jyoti is a people pleaser. She spent most of her life doing what she thought would make others happy: her husband, her parents, her community. She never stopped to think about what she wanted, including whether she wanted children for herself or to give up her career, or whether she just subjected herself to a decade of torture trying to conceive to satisfy the dreams of someone else. I haven’t struggled with people pleasing to the extent that Jyoti has, and wouldn’t say that trait is part of my core personality, so it was very interesting to get into the mindset of someone who is driven by different goals than I am. While I have never been a chef, I do share of love of cooking with Jyoti, and those aspects of the story were incredibly fun for me to write because, as authors, we get to live out other lives through our characters and words—without the late restaurant hours.

Visit Mansi Shah's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Asha Greyling

Asha Greyling lives in Maryland with her furry four-footed muses, Gwin the terrier and a guinea pig who thinks she’s a cat. She likes nothing more than swinging in the playground (unless the local children scare her off), collecting acorns, or sitting down with a good book.

Greyling's new novel is The Vampire of Kings Street.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

I think The Vampire of Kings Street is a very posh, elegant title with a bit of punch. It’s the kind of title that screams elite society – and then throws in a vampire. I think it does a great job setting up the historical vibe of the book, while suggesting darker undertones.

What's in a name?

One of my favorite characters in this book is Evelyn More, the vampire. I remember it jumped out and surprised me when I realized the name sounds like “evermore.” I love Edgar Allan Poe’s writing, so this interesting twist on “Nevermore” from a vampire’s perspective—being bound to this worldly existence evermore, instead of nevermore—I just couldn’t resist.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

Sadly, not surprised at all. My teenage self was singing musical numbers from Sweeney Todd in the shower.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

The middle is the hardest for me. I reach a point where I’m thinking, is this really that good? Will anyone enjoy reading this? I have to go back and review, and get my energy back from reading what’s come before to assure me that yes, this book is worth writing.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

I think every character I’ve ever written has a little of myself in them. For me, writing is like acting. If I can feel it, I can write it.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Computer games! Movies! Music! Music especially helps me visualize the story. I feel like I owe a lot of this book to the music I was listening to at the time, like The Razor Skyline’s “Vittoria” and—on a more classical note—Laura Wright’s beautiful rendition of “Canon in D.” Give those songs a listen—you might be inspired, too!

Visit Asha Greyling's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Vampire of Kings Street.

My Book, The Movie: The Vampire of Kings Street.

--Marshal Zeringue