April Howells

With a background in magazine publishing, April Howells has built a career in global communications and employer branding. Raised in southern Ontario, she now resides on the west coast of Canada with her husband and a Greater Swiss Mountain Dog named Chief. The Unforgettable Mailman is her debut novel.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I like to believe the title sums the whole story up. Not only is it a play on words regarding Henry’s memory loss, but it also lets readers know the story will linger with them after they turn the last page. Henry is sweet and determined and unintentionally funny. He’s the type of character you root for and one you won’t soon forget.

I wrote the story off and on for years, and in the beginning the working title was much different. It wasn’t until I experienced the impacts of memory loss in my family that Henry’s character fully developed and this title came to me. I provided several alts to my publisher, but The Unforgettable Mailman was the clear winner.

What’s in a name?

Whenever I’m choosing names for characters, it’s important to me that they fit with the era they were born. ‘Henry’ was a popular name in 1885, and it stuck. I never looked into the meaning of it, though now I know it means ‘ruler of the home’. I love that it’s a name associated with influential people who have left a lasting impact in history.

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

Very! I was a voracious reader growing up, but never a writer. I loved to say that one day I would write a novel, but for a long time that was all talk. Even in my 20s, I daydreamed about writing more than I actually put pen to page.

I think teenage April would be proud to see her name in bookstores, alongside some of her favourite authors. I think she’d also be a bit surprised at the perseverance it took to develop her craft and finish a publishable novel.

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

Endings, though I can’t say too much without giving spoilers. The ending of The Unforgettable Mailman eluded me for a very long time. I wrote several different versions and none of them were right. I remember walking the dog and it finally came to me. I stopped and thought, oh yes, that’s how it ends.

Visit April Howells's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jennifer N. Brown

Jennifer N. Brown is from New York City and after falling in love with Chaucer in college, pursued a Ph.D. in medieval literature. Her dissertation and subsequent books and articles have mostly been about devotional literature and medieval women as authors, subjects, and patrons of literary culture in medieval Europe. She has taught medieval literature at several institutions, most recently at Marymount Manhattan College where she taught in the English and World Literatures department for over 15 years. She is currently serving as the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Bentley University in Boston, where she lives with her husband, two children and two miniature dachshunds: Athena and Apollo.

Brown's new novel is The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton.

My Q&A with the author:

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

This wasn’t the title I was working with when I wrote the book, that title was Remember Death, which is the English translation of Memento Mori, a medieval concept that recurs several times in my novel. However, my editor rightly felt that it doesn’t fully reflect what’s going on in the novel, so it was changed. It was hard to land on a title that referenced both timelines of my book — the Tudor English timeline of Elizabeth Barton and the modern day timeline of Dr. Alison Sage who finds Elizabeth’s book. When we landed on The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton, I was pleased that we had something that gestured towards both sides of the narrative.

What's in a name?

Well, I’m sure it doesn’t take much for a reader to see “Sage” as an appropriate last name for a professor (but is she sage? You’ll have to see). I chose Alison because it’s a name that speaks of a particular generation of women (like Jennifer does!) and also because it is a name of one of the best characters in medieval literature — Chaucer's Wife of Bath. There are also Easter eggs in the novel for some of my fellow academics in medieval studies, and some of these are in names of characters.

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

Not as surprised as my 20- or 30- or 40-something self. I really wanted to be a writer as a teenager and thought for sure that was my future. I did become a writer, but of academic work, and I think that may have surprised my teenage self more (certainly that I focused on nuns as my subject matter), but in many ways this novel is a return to what teen-Jennifer thought her life may yield.

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

I’ve only written one and a half novels and in both the beginnings came very easily, although I am a happy reviser — my favorite part of any writing process — so I don’t think anything survived the way it was originally written.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart? What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Certainly I am connected to Alison, in that she is an academic in a field adjacent to mine, my age, a mother. There is a lot about her that I don’t relate to or that is not like me, but I understood her in a very natural way. It was harder to place myself in the Tudor era and the figures that populate it. I knew quite a bit about the period and about what people said and did, but it’s one more leap to understand how they feel. For that section, especially, I looked at a lot of paintings and art from the time, surviving jewelry and clothing, letters, and recipes. I tried to construct the world as it was inhabited, and that required mostly non-literary inspiration.

Visit Jennifer N. Brown's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Anica Mrose Rissi

Anica Mrose Rissi is the award-winning author of more than a dozen books for kids and teens, including picture books, chapter books, middle grade, and YA. Her essays have been published by The Writer and the New York Times, and she plays fiddle in and writes lyrics for the band Owen Lake and the Tragic Loves. Rissi grew up in Maine and spent many years in New York City, where she worked as an executive editor in children’s book publishing. She currently lives in central New Jersey with her very good dog, Sweet Potato.

Rissi's new book is Girl Reflected in Knife.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I think it pulls its weight! Girl Reflected in Knife is a short, sharp, unsettling title for a short, sharp, unsettling novel. I hope readers will feel intrigued by the title and the tone it sets, even if they’re not quite sure what to expect. Likewise, I hope they’ll be intrigued by the book’s unstable narrator and her story, even as they’re not entirely sure where it might lead them.

What's in a name?

This is a question the novel poses as well, in the fragments of a dark fairy tale version of Destiny’s story that runs parallel to the main narrative, woven in throughout. Here’s a taste:

The girl’s name contained a promise—an expectation and prediction

of some larger fate, or perhaps of a path she must follow.

But how does a destiny differ from a curse?

Her mother did not name her Lucky.

So was the girl’s twisted fate her mother’s fault? This was,

after all, a fairy tale.

The girl chided herself: not that kind.

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

When I was a teenager, my passion was politics. I wanted to go to law school and become a senator or perhaps a supreme court justice—to fight for the issues I cared about and help shape a different world. My teenage self would be quite surprised to see her name on multiple book covers. I don’t even own a gavel.

But in a way, I didn’t stray too terribly far from that idea because, of course, writers are master manipulators. They control what a reader pays attention to and influence what the reader notices, hopes, and feels. A well-written story might change how a reader sees and understands the world. That’s even better than winning an argument or a vote.

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

Both the beginning and the ending of this novel went through multiple major revisions (as did everything in between—I worked on Girl Reflected in Knife for more than a decade before I figured out how to make it the book I wanted it to be) and, with my editor’s encouragement, I did something radical to the ending, which I won’t spoil here. But I will share the first chapter, which is only three sentences long.

When I found this beginning, multiple years and revisions into the process, I suddenly understood what the story was and could be in a new way. It’s an opening that still thrills me.

1.

Listen.

Be careful the story you tell yourself. It might become the one you believe.

Visit Anica Mrose Rissi's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Anica Mrose Rissi & Arugula.

The Page 69 Test: Anna, Banana, and the Monkey in the Middle.

--Marshal Zeringue

Dana Mele

Dana Mele is a Pushcart-nominated writer based in upstate New York. A graduate of Wellesley College, Mele holds degrees in theatre, education, and law.

Mele’s debut, People Like Us, was shortlisted for the 2019 ITW Thriller Award for Best Young Adult Novel and is an ALA Rainbow List Selection. Their sophomore novel, Summer's Edge, was a Barnes & Noble YA Book Club Selection and a New York Public Library Best Books for Teens title.

Mele's new novel is The Beast You Let In.

My Q&A with the author:

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

A little known fun fact is that I have never chosen my own book title. My proposed title for The Beast You Let In was Veronica, after a character whose vengeful spirit may be possessing one of the main characters! The Beast You Let In is a neat title, and I think it speaks more broadly to the themes of repressed anger, buried secrets, and how much we allow the people who surround us to influence us against our better judgment.

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

Not terribly! It’s a story about twin siblings solving a murder and dealing with a potential possession and revenge from beyond the grave. I was a huge horror fan as a teen and I probably would have inhaled this in the back of the theater during lunch period.

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

Beginnings are harder by far, because for me finding the voice is more than half the battle. Honestly if I can nail a really strong first chapter the rest almost writes itself. But easier said than done. And I always change the ending. I never get attached. Besides, it’s fun coming up with alternate endings!

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I tend to form strong connections to places, and much of my writing is inspired by setting. The Beast You Let In is largely about home, however you may personally define it— whether as a family or a community or a country—and the tension that exists when the home you love becomes a hostile and dangerous place.

Visit Dana Mele's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pamela Steele

Pamela Steele holds an MFA in Poetry from Spalding University. Her books include Paper Bird: Poems and Greasewood Creek. She has been awarded residencies and fellowships by the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in Woodside, California; the Hindman Settlement School Oak Ledge, in Knott County, Kentucky; the Jentel Artist Residency in Banner, Wyoming; and Fishtrap’s Gathering of Writers in Joseph, Oregon. She lives on a ranch in the high desert of Eastern Oregon.

Steele's new novel is In the Fields of Fatherless Children.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I didn’t commit to a title until my gut told me I was in the last few days of writing a complete draft for submission. In thinking about a title, I remembered that an early reader had remarked on how biblical the story is, which brought my mind to biblical references I’d used in the story: Bethel and Thomas, for example. When I got to the point where I knew I needed a title, I ruminated on Solomon, the novel’s primary antagonist and a character I’d actually named for a long-dead ancestor. I picked up a Bible and scanned Song of Solomon for an idea and then found myself backtracking to Proverbs. When I happened upon Chapter 23, verse 10 and read it aloud: Do not move an ancient boundary stone or encroach on the fields of the fatherless . . . I knew I’d found a title that fit one of the novel’s larger themes of family relationships and abandonment: In the Fields of Fatherless Children.

Initially, the editors at Counterpoint thought the title fitting but possibly in need of shortening. I couldn’t see how that could be done and still convey meaning, but I put my trust in them. In the end, we decided stick with the title I’d originally used.

What's in a name?

Character’s names are everything. As I wrote both my novels, some characters in early drafts came off as two-dimensional— lackluster—until I dispensed with placeholder names and renamed them. When I land on the right name, I can begin to see them for who they are and how they will fit into the narrative. Their entire world begins to open.

In naming June, my main character who is a sixteen-year-old-girl in Appalachia, I though back to my childhood summers spent in West Virginia. Many of the girls I knew, including myself, had the simple, standard names of my late-boomer generation: Kathy, Donna, Pam. I wanted the novel’s protagonist to be resourceful, pragmatic and determined, with a one-syllable name that strongly grounded her. I landed on June, after June Carter Cash. The name June also easily lends itself to recognizable nicknames that telegraph endearment from the characters who use them, for example, Junebug,

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

My favorite books as a teen were Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Love Story and Mountain Man, the book on which Jeremiah Johnson was based. My current novel would probably come as a great surprise to a teenaged me, first of all because I knew I loved to write but didn’t see myself as a writer. Secondly, owing to the fact that I was raised on Goofus and Gallant of the Highlights magazines that came in the mail and as a Southern Baptist with fundamentalist grandmothers, I might not have envisioned the story at all and certainly would not have written it on paper for everyone to see. My granny once ordered Once is Not Enough from the Book-of-the-Month Club. A few pages in, she tossed it into the coal stove, completely disgusted, so I’m pretty sure she would have opinions on my book. Nonetheless, I’d like to believe I’ve done her proud.

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

I began writing this novel as a workshop prompt to put two people together in a room who don’t want to be there. It became the scene in which June prepares a body for burial. The scene doesn’t occur at the beginning or the end of the novel, but somewhere between. I was taught by Jane Vandenburg, my mentor, that you begin by writing an episode, and then another and another until you hitch onto a narrative.

I’m not very good at outlining. Once I have a few scenes and know the characters a bit better, I can begin to think about where to begin the book. Although I know what I need to do to wrap up a narrative, I never know how a book will end until just before it happens. I didn’t figure out the end of In the Fields of Fatherless Children until the day before I wrote the last two chapters. Before I submitted my first novel, I literally printed and placed the collection of episodes on the floor and crawled around to arrange them, then I wrote sensible transitions. It worked, but it was a much shorter novel.

It took me twelve years to write In the Fields of Fatherless Children. I stalled during the process of writing the last two-thirds of the book, which at that time, was strictly written in third-person POV. Once I began to hear the voices of Bethel and Granny—especially Granny—I shifted the opening chapter into first person and in Granny’s voice and immediately felt that chapter grow roots to ground the book. Just as finding the right character name is important, getting the POV right is job one.

Writing the ending chapter came easily and went through very minor revision. The previous chapter dealt with the bad guy and had freed me up some to write the final scene, which was fun to write. Grace’s first-person perspective, and the only time we hear her voice, occurred organically. I had such a feeling of elation as I saw the narrative coming to an end. Even I learned things about the characters I didn’t know or foresee.

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

I’d like to think I’m resourceful like June, and I’ve certainly been called pragmatic and stubborn. I grew up with a step-father in the house, as I lost my own father when I was young, so those experiences gave me a perspective on the dynamics of June’s relationship to Isom and longing for her father. I also have a two-years younger brother that is my person and who is currently undergoing cancer treatments, which terrify me. I drew heavily on our relationship to build June’s connection to Tom.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I use music as a jumping-off place for a writing session—a sort of ritual to get me in the right frame of mind. I call it opening the wound, as crazy as that sounds, because pain is a way into the core of a narrative. Incidentally, I built a soundtrack for writing the novel that contains 60’s and 70’s music, as well as songs that deeply affect me. I can only listen to Dylan’s "You’re a Big Girl Now" once a year, tops.

As for images, I relied heavily on Roger May’s book Testify. Roger shot the cover photograph for the novel, and I gave him a nod by naming a fleeting character after him.

Early in the writing process, I knew I wanted one of Roger’s photos on the cover, and the editor agreed with my request—not a common occurrence in publishing. While there are many photographers that capture the landscape of Appalachia, geography becomes character in Roger’s lens.

The Talmud says that a lion is made of all the lambs he has eaten. With all my soul, I believe that truth extends beyond metaphorical lambs to art. I can see the influence of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road in the latter half of the novel, just as I can sense echoes of the Boxcar Children, a book my granny read to me as a child. Resourceful characters abound in both. My novel contains many echoes of art I’ve consumed, some I didn’t realize were there until the final revision process.

When the original True Grit was released in 1969, I saw it with my brother, then returned to the theater in Springfield, Tennessee several times after to watch it again. I loved the story and the characters, particularly the memorable dialog. You won’t be surprised to find an extended reference to the movie in my novel.

Follow Pamela Steele on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

My Book, The Movie: In The Fields of Fatherless Children.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lauren Reding

Lauren Reding grew up in rural Virginia. She earned a BA in English from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College and an MFA in fiction from Johns Hopkins University. Reding enjoys planting native perennials, playing video games, going for walks, and shooting the breeze.

Her new novel is The Killer in the House.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The title for The Killer in the House tells you a couple of important things. First, obviously, there’s a killer! But, to me, the bigger clue in the title has to do with the domestic setting: the house itself and the secrets inside.

In the book, down-on-her-luck Renee takes new a job as a live-in housekeeper for a wealthy family that’s also trying to get a fresh start. The father, Ed, has just been exonerated of the high-profile murder of his first wife, thanks to a sensational true crime podcast. Now, he’s excited to reunite his family and face the world again, a triumphant and vindicated man.

But from inside the house, Renee sees the secrets Ed’s family hides from public view. As she folds laundry and washes dishes, she begins to suspect that danger still threatens the family, and she can’t help but take risks (and then bigger risks) to assemble the whole story from the clues that never made it into the podcast, clues hidden inside the house’s four walls.

What's in a name?

In the real world, our birth names are a reflection of our parents and what expectations they had for us when we were born. When I name a character, I spend a lot of time thinking about that character’s parents. I figure out what generation those parents belonged to, and what kind of people they were. I think about how their values would be reflected in the name they would choose for their fictional child.

Many of the characters in The Killer in the House feel tension between their parents’ expectations and what they want for themselves, and they seek to make a name for themselves, metaphorically or literally.

A teenager in the book goes by a nickname in an effort to redefine herself as separate from her parents while another character takes...a more drastic approach.

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

Beginnings are definitely harder! The beginning of a novel has to set everything in motion: the characters’ motivations, the inevitable disasters that will strike them, and the reader’s expectations for what they hope, or fear, will happen.

The beginning of The Killer in the House went through many revisions, but I always knew how it needed to end: with our protagonist losing one option after another, until she has no choice but to face the danger head-on.

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’s a little something of me in every character I write, good guys and bad guys alike. Even though I don’t always condone what the characters do, I still have to fundamentally understand them as people. I try to find at least one motivating thing we have in common. Maybe it’s the fear of being judged by others or the desire to escape grief and loss. Maybe it’s the ambition to impress people or the desire to do the right thing. Everything else about the character can be completely different from me and my experience, as long as we share that one knowable thing.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

For this novel, I think you can guess that I did listen to a lot of true crime podcasts! I particularly appreciate the long-form investigative podcasts where journalists spend months or even years collecting interviews, scouring archives, and working tirelessly to speak for the voiceless in a thoughtful, responsible way.

I have so much respect for this kind of journalism! And I think the fictional podcasters in my book could stand to learn a little from their hardworking real-life counterparts.

Visit Lauren Reding's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Rob Phillips

Rob Phillips grew up in the Dallas area, where he became an Emmy-winning sportswriter covering the Dallas Cowboys for print, radio and television. He and his wife are proud parents to a spunky senior King Charles spaniel and a lively young daughter, who’s still waiting for her first stakeout. His debut novel, Stakeouts and Strollers, won the Minotaur Books/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Award.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Stakeouts and Strollers works really well as a title because it explains the book’s general premise in three words: The protagonist, Charlie Shaw, is a first-time girl dad and rookie private investigator. He’s constantly sleep deprived, a common occurrence for both roles, and he’s fairly clueless at both, at least at first. The reader instantly knows that our hero is juggling new-parent/spousal duties with solving cases. When a teenage runaway named Friday Finley shows up near Charlie’s home in search of her estranged father, the case appeals to Charlie’s newfound sense of “dadness” and triggers some tragic personal memories that he seeks to exorcise by helping this girl in need.

What's in a name?

I love it when a character’s name acts essentially as an Easter egg with subtle connections to their personality or the book’s theme. Two supporting character names have special meanings tied to the story. Inspector Dwayne Powell, Charlie’s boss and mentor, is named after Powell Street in San Francisco, the book’s primary setting. Inspector Powell has been an esteemed guardian of the city, and he knows it inside and out. Miss Finley explains in the book why her mother named her “Friday.” I’ll save it for the reader, but let’s just say Friday’s life has hardly been a weekend jaunt.

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

Teenage Rob probably wouldn’t be surprised, actually. I grew up fascinated with mystery novels, especially the hardboiled detective stories, and many were set in California: The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, Devil in a Blue Dress, Fletch, L.A. Confidential, to name a few. I always wanted to contribute something to the genre, and although I grew up in Dallas, I’ve spent a lot of time in California over the past twenty years. I decided to challenge myself to create that setting on the page.

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

Beginnings, for sure. By the time I’m halfway through the book, I usually know exactly how I want it to end, and I play out the final pages in my head like a movie scene before writing it. The start of Stakeouts and Strollers had a few different iterations, though. Obviously, I wanted to draw in the reader immediately, but I debated the best way to accomplish that. Do I establish Charlie’s home life as a doting, often bumbling new dad? Do I show his glaring lack of experience as a PI? Those lighter elements were important, but my editor and I decided to jump right in with some ominous action, flashing forward to a scene with Friday’s estranged father and the events that got him in big, big trouble. It foreshadows exactly what Charlie will be up against when he decides to take the case.

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

I see a little of Charlie in me, for sure. We’re both from Texas, we’re proud girl dads, and we both have big hearts. But in some ways, Charlie and Inspector Powell represent who I’ve always wanted to be. Charlie is an ex-crime reporter, and he’s absolutely fearless. He’s not afraid to ask tough questions, which serves him well in his new job as a PI (but also gets him in hot water with some of the book’s unsavory characters). I worked in sports media for a long time and enjoyed writing more than being a dogged reporter. With Inspector Powell, I think of Superman when I write about him. He defines the word “honorable” as a decorated veteran and investigator, a loving father and husband. He’s also Charlie’s conscience throughout the book.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

My main inspiration for this book was my wife and daughter. I started writing during the pandemic right after she was born, so some of Charlie’s experiences are based on my own. Stakeouts and Strollers is a mystery, but it’s also a love story that shows the lengths Charlie will go to help and protect those close to him.

Follow Rob Phillips on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Albertine Clarke

Albertine Clarke received an MFA in fiction from the University of Florida and studied English Literature at the University of Edinburgh where she won the Lewis Edwards Memorial prize for creative writing. Raised in London, she now lives in Brooklyn, NY.

The Body Builders is her debut novel.

My Q&A with the author:

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

My title, The Body Builders, is possibly slightly misleading, in that it makes the novel sound like it’s about body building. While the father of the protagonist is a body builder, this is more in the background than one might expect. Really the title is a pun, because there are two other varieties of body builder – the mother, who has literally built Ada’s body with her own, and the mysterious beings that provide Ada with the synthetic body. I imagine readers might find their expectations subverted, possibly frustrated, which is what I wanted.

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

I think my teenage self would not be surprised at all. The feelings I had when I was a teenager – mostly a desperate, aching loneliness – make up the bedrock of the novel. I think she would feel very seen, and I hope she would feel that someone had taken her seriously.

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

I find beginnings easy, and endings almost impossible. It’s like a romantic relationship. The beginning is the fun part, and the ending is where you have to think about what you’ve done, and how it relates to the world. I changed the ending of The Body Builders several times, and each change retroactively changed the emotional balance of the entire book. Ultimately, I landed on something quite elliptical. In my short stories I change the endings a lot.

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

Ada is me, but she’s a drastically extrapolated version of me. I have struggled with my mental health throughout my life, but I’ve been lucky to be surrounded by people who have wanted to help me and have succeeded. Ada does not have that privilege. She’s marooned inside herself, with far fewer links to the concrete world, and far stranger things are happening to her.

In terms of plot, basic points map on to my life – my parents’ divorce, and a relationship with an older man – but I wanted to challenge myself to use my imagination, which is partly why I used speculative elements. I think it’s important to do the work of translating experience into metaphor or representation. There has to be a reason for something to be a novel, rather than a memoir or an essay. I think all fiction draws in one way or another from the authors life; it would be difficult to write something completely random, and why would you want to do that, anyway?

However, fiction has to be a dialogue between individual and universal experience, and imagination often forms the bridge between the two.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I watch a lot of sci fi movies. Blade Runner, Minority Report, The Matrix, and 2001: A Space Odyssey all have played their role in building my aesthetic sense. I would love the novel to be adapted into a movie.

Follow Albertine Clarke on Instagram.

--Marshal Zeringue

Dan Buzzetta

Dan Buzzetta is an attorney who has litigated civil cases for three decades. Since 2014 he has been a partner in the New York office of Baker Hostetler LLP. Born in Brooklyn, NY, Dan was raised on Staten Island, NY, and later attended Tufts University and Fordham Law School. His series is inspired, in part, by a fascination with all things mafia and an actual case where he worked closely with the Department of Justice and FBI. After several years, Buzzetta's team succeeded in recovering over $240 million on behalf of thousands of innocent investors swindled by foreign nationals. He is a graduate of Tufts University and Fordham Law School. In his spare time, he enjoys traveling and skiing with his wife and three children. He is also a volunteer firefighter in his hometown of Colts Neck, NJ.

Buzzetta's new novel is The Winter Verdict.

My Q&A with the author:

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

If the title of my novel, The Winter Verdict, was a worker whose job is to describe the story I’ve written, he or she would best be described as someone who does half-the-job very well. Truth to tell, I had another title in mind, but my publisher and editor preferred The Winter Verdict. The title succeeds in season-setting; my legal thriller takes place at a ski resort in the dead of winter with snow-capped mountains and tall pines on summit ridges standing sentinel over a bucolic wintery village. But the word Verdict isn’t to be taken literally. There’s little court room drama, no recanting witness, and those looking for an edge-of-your-seat climax waiting for a jury to return a verdict would be better served reading To Kill a Mockingbird. Instead, the word Verdict refers to the decisive actions taken by the protagonist to prevent a shadowy international conglomerate from potentially endangering the lives of millions.

What's in a name?

The lead character’s wife in the Tom Berte Legal Thriller Series is named Brooke Berte. That wasn’t her given name when I started writing the first book in the series, The Manipulator, in the summer of 1992 in between my first and second years of law school. (Author’s note, after writing the first three chapters, the draft sat for some twenty-eight years until 2020 when I dusted off those three chapters, rewrote them, and continued writing until I finished the manuscript in late 2021). In 1992, I chose Elise as the character’s name which was the name of a young woman I was dating at the time. But by 2020, I was married to a different woman whose name was not Elise. When I told my wife that I was going to continue using the name Elise for the female lead, she was indifferent to it. But as time went on and her book club friends read an early beta version of the manuscript and learned how I came upon the name, I received strong hints that I’d be wise to change Elise’s name. And thus Brooke was born. A new name for a character I created decades earlier. So what’s in name? Continued marital harmony two decades after I said “I do.”

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

I’m happy to report my teenage self would not be surprised by my new novel. For starters, I knew at a young age I wanted to be an attorney. I also loved reading thrillers as a teenager and around that time I developed a fascination with organized crime and the mafia. Therefore, it’s not terribly surprising I’ve written two legal thrillers or that the subject matter of the mafia made it into my first book, The Manipulator, and echoes of it can be found in my latest novel, The Winter Verdict, the second book in the series.

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

Neither. I’m not sure if the way I write novels is unique to me, but I always know how I’m going to start a novel and how it will end. It’s the middle part that is literally a work in progress with the story unraveling as I write. My middle son often jokes that my life would be a lot easier if I story-boarded the entire storyline from start to finish, and he’s probably right. But I can’t do it. I like to create as I write. It’s certainly messy, and I often find myself twisted in knots and facing an irreconcilable plot point (until I get an epiphany on how to untangle it), but it’s also so much fun to let the story come to me and to create it on the fly. So often I get to an end of a chapter and I’m excited to know what happens next because I genuinely have no idea until I figure it out. When I come up with an idea and can’t wait to start writing again, I know I’ve hit on a winning plot point.

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

When I look at myself in the mirror, I hope Tom Berte is staring back at me. Although Tom is an imperfect character, he’s guided by a steadfast and immovable commitment to family, to justice, and to doing what’s right, no matter the cost. Tom recognizes that maintaining his true north often requires making tough choices, with blurred ethical lines and shades of black and white morphing into deep hues of gray. And although the “means” matter, and Tom would never do anything to jeopardize his family, well-being, or the oath he took when he became an attorney, he is committed to doing what is necessary for justice to prevail in the “end” so good triumphs over evil.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I like to joke that I majored in TV and movie-watching in college. I love movies and shows about the mob (The Godfather, Goodfellas, The Sopranos), and I love watching thrillers and suspense movies such as the Mission Impossible franchise, Gone Girl, The Woman in Cabin 10, Michael Clayton, A Few Good Men and, of course, the venerable legal thriller, My Cousin Vinny.

Visit Dan Buzzetta's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr.

Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr. is an advocate, educator, author, and Kentucky Teacher of the Year. His work is focused on advocating for LGBTQ+ rights and creating inclusive spaces for students, especially within the context of Appalachia. He is the author of Tore All to Pieces, a fragmented novel about a small town in Appalachia and the interconnectedness of our identities, as well as Gay Poems for Red States, a bestselling collection of narrative poetry about his childhood growing up queer in Appalachia.

My Q&A with Carver:

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

Tore All to Pieces was the first title I gave this novel. Then I worried it wasn’t à la mode, and for a brief moment I renamed it Held by Fire and Flood. That title felt more fashionable. But the original kept resurfacing symbolically in the text as the characters showed me who they were. Tore All to Pieces is a key. It tells the reader, over and over again, in recursive patterns, across many lives, in many time periods, what it means to be whole.

What's in a name?

Last names matter a great deal in eastern Kentucky. I populated Mosely with many of the last names I heard growing up: Carroll. Slone. Spurlock. I imagined the same early settlers who came to my Martin, Kentucky also made it as far as the imaginary Mosely, Kentucky. While many of the place names are invented—Battersburg, Fox Creek—some of them are the same waters flowing through my own Appalachia: Cow Creek. Beaver Creek. When I am imagining Mosely, sometimes I feel that if I can have a character drive over just one more hill, or across one more curvy mountain road, then maybe they will find their way home.

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

He’d faint on the spot. In many ways, this world was outside his imagination. Gay and trans folks at the Dairy Queen? Never. As Fenton Johnson’s gay Raphael Hardin says to his Kentucky mother in Scissors, Paper, Rock about his childhood silence around his queerness: “What words could I have used?” But just as some of this world would feel impossible, much of it would feel intimate, as permanent as the hills themselves. I’d like to think he’d be comforted and excited. I’d like to think he’d feel hope.

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

Endings are easier for me because I recognize when they’re happening. An ending declares itself: we feel the growing spiral find its end. But beginnings are more complicated for me because the backstory, the context, the life of a character or a place will begin to unfold in my mind. To do it justice, I often have to return to where I started.

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

It depends on the character. Some of them I admire so deeply because they remind me of people I admire, people I study. As a general rule, the meaner a character, the more they remind me of me. I only write characters I love. Even the awnry ones. The lazy ones. The violent ones. Loving myself—as a fat gay sissy from up a holler—was a hard-won fight. But, by God, I won. So sometimes I start with myself and imagine different choices, different opportunities, different problems. I’ll end up with a deeply flawed character who, in many ways, is me.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I don’t know if we’re allowed a one-word answer, but if I could, I’d just write “women.” My whole life has been held up by women who keep finding ways to make life better for others—who have taught me love, endurance, strength, and courage. Who show up. Who aren’t afraid to feel, even when experience has shown them the cost.

Visit Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr.'s website.

--Marshal Zeringue