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

Garrett Curbow

Garrett Curbow is the author of Whispers of Ink and Starlight and the Daughter of Light trilogy, which was short-listed for the Publishers Weekly Selfies Award. He lives in Savannah, Georgia.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I underwent a handful of title changes before reaching Whispers of Ink and Starlight. Because the story spans different themes and hopscotches across genres, I found it difficult to settle on a collection of words that summed up the entire book. How do I convey the magical realism? The romance? The mystery?

I arrived at my title during copyedits. As I was combing through the manuscript with the imagery of whispers and ink and starlight in mind, I knew it was perfect. Historically, I’m not a huge fan of formulaic titles, like Noun of Noun and Noun, but Whispers of Ink and Starlight evoked the exact feeling I had been searching for.

“Whispers” captures the intrigue of Nelle’s magical origin, the softspoken moments between her and James, and the overall quiet nature of the novel. This is a story about people facing human problems, not fantasy kingdoms going to war.

“Ink” is a major plot propellent from beginning to end. It is both the external conflict and the basis of the entire magic system. Having “Ink” in the title felt mandatory.

“Starlight” is pretty, it is romantic, it is hopeful. Throughout the novel, there are countless references to stars and making wishes. Whispers of Ink and Starlight is a novel about dreamers, and every title iteration has focused on that starry-eyed hopefulness.

Whispers of Ink and Starlight is a title that reflects the story, showing readers exactly the type of book they are getting into, and the feelings they can hope to experience from it.

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

Honestly, I don’t think my teenage self would be very surprised by Whispers of Ink and Starlight. It is exactly the kind of book I would have read then (and now) and the kind of book I would have wanted to write.

He would, however, be surprised by some of the book’s content. I think my teenage self would be shocked to know that there are multiple descriptive sex scenes and almost every swear word in the English language in my debut novel. I imagine that, once he got over the shock, he would be proud of me for writing the story that needed to be told without any self-censorship.

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

In my experience, endings are infinitely more difficult than beginnings. When I’m cracking open a story, it can go anywhere. Because I write first drafts chronologically, I can introduce any character, any plotline, and weave it into the manuscript. Nailing down the ending is nearly impossible.

There’s so much debate on how the Egyptian pyramids were logistically built. If they were building upward, it would be almost impossible to have all the sides line up in order to have that perfect point. One theory is that the Egyptians built up and then carved down, enabling them to create a perfect prism shape.

That is how writing an ending works for me. It is the last part of the book that I write, and once it is on paper, I have to go back and rework the entire novel so the ending makes sense. Rather than a neat finish, the ending, in my experience, is yet another starting point.

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

I don’t chisel off bits of my personality and assign them to my characters, but they are intrinsically a part of me. Instead of personality traits, I give my characters feelings that I experience, like anxiety or depression. The story I’m writing comes from my heart and soul, so naturally who I am as a person influences the characters in the story. Their dreams and wishes are reflections of my dreams and wishes, even if they are not carbon copies. I write to understand the world I live in and to put that understanding on paper in hopes that others will see themselves, too. The characters I create are vehicles for that, but more importantly, they are like children to me. They came from me, but now that they exist, they no longer belong to me. They will always be a part of me because of the DNA we share, but they are their own person outside of me.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I find inspiration in actors showing minute emotions, in the lyricism and emotional impact of songs, in the color grading of films. But the greatest non-literary inspiration I have found is the world. Stepping outside with the intent to get inspired, whether I’m in a city or in nature, never fails.

I look at social interactions between people, sidewalk bricks, trees and their spidery branches, birds searching for food, the ocean and its tides, and in all of it I find a sense of peace. Of clarity. Words come to me when I remind myself that I am a tiny cog in a big machine, and my only job within it is to write.

Visit Garrett Curbow's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lyla Lane

Sonia Hartl (AKA Lyla Lane) is the author of YA, romance, and cozy mysteries. Her books have received starred reviews from BookPage and Booklist, and earned nominations for the Georgia Peach Book Award, YALSA’s Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers, Bank Street College of Education’s Best Children’s Books of the Year, ALA’s Rise: A Feminist Book Project List, and ALA’s Rainbow Booklist, and was named an Amazon Editors’ Pick for Best Young Adult. When she’s not writing she enjoys board games with her family, attempting to keep her garden alive, or looking up craft projects she’ll never get around to completing on Pinterest.

Lane's new novel is The Best Little Motel in Texas. My Q&A with the author:

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

My title was picked by my publisher because it conveys the exact expectation for the novel. It was heavily inspired by the musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. So calling this book, with sex workers as the leads in the mystery, The Best Little Motel in Texas would immediately give people familiar with this movie an idea of the tone of the book.

What's in a name?

I picked the name Cordelia for my main character because it was an old-fashioned name that felt like dark wood walls, leather high-back chairs, and bookshelves that require a rolling ladder. It had a certain distinguished air to it that reminded me of a library that would fit nicely into a Clue-style manor. I thought it fit well with her personality and made for a funny juxtaposition against her eventual career as the madam of a senior brothel.

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

Probably extremely surprised, as my teenage self was a very moody and angsty person who preferred sad poetry and Stephen King to anything light and humorous.

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

I find endings harder to write. In the beginning, the idea is shiny and new, and I can’t wait to get those first words on the page. But toward the end, I’m dragging myself over the finish line. The ending takes a lot more revision on my part because it’s rougher than the beginning, and I typically need to draft out a sloppy end before I can step back and see if all the pieces fit together the way I wanted them to.

Visit Lyla Lane's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Best Little Motel in Texas.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kelsey Day

Kelsey Day is a young adult author and queer Appalachian poet. Their writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Orion Magazine, Freeman’s and more.

The Spiral Key is their first novel for young readers.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Every year at Lincoln Academy, a high school student named Madison Pembroke throws a highly exclusive birthday party that takes place in a virtual reality called Ametrine. The high school’s social order bends around who receives an invitation and who doesn’t. Those invitations take the form of custom-made spiral keys—sleek, shiny keys that fit into the VR consoles used at Madison’s party. Receiving a spiral key means everything, especially for the social outcasts of the school. That’s why the book is called The Spiral Key: the key initially symbolizes the promise of acceptance, friendship, desirability…but turns to something much darker as the party begins.

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

Teenage me wouldn’t be surprised, but they might be a little uncomfortable. This book draws so much from my own high school experience: the pain of social ostracization, the confusing intensity of queer friendship breakups, how life or death everything felt. I don’t pull any punches: every character is flawed in their own way. When I was a teenager, I hadn’t come to full terms with my queerness yet, so I think that aspect would be nerve wracking to read about at first, and then extremely illuminating.

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

Beginnings, definitely. Oftentimes the ending arrives for me first, and I work my way backwards. The Spiral Key has so many twists and turns, so much complex tension and terror, I needed to know the entire plot before beginning to write it.

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

I don’t relate much to the individual characters in The Spiral Key, but I do relate to the feeling of the book: the terror of loneliness in high school, the betrayal and anger following friendship breakups, feeling like you would do anything to fit in. I was a highly sensitive, anxious and depressed teenager. Bree (the narrator of The Spiral Key) is sensitive and anxious, but more than that she’s angry. That’s a big difference between us. My anxiety tunneled inwards, and hers branches outwards.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I’m constantly influenced by the political state of the world, and I’m invested in the fury, resilience, and scathing intelligence of the teenagers today who are grappling with that world. The Spiral Key is particularly concerned with the rise of techno-fascism and surveillance in the United States, and how modern technology acts on the bodies and minds of young people.

Visit Kelsey Day's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Isabel Booth

Isabel Booth is the pen name of Karen Jewell, a former trial attorney and now a writer. She holds an undergraduate degree in English, a Master’s in Business Administration, and a Juris Doctorate degree. When she’s not writing she loves to read, travel, and cook dinner for friends. She lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband.

Booth's new novel is Then He Was Gone.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Then He Was Gone gets right to the heart of the story: someone’s missing. Combined with the cover art, the reader knows that it’s a story about a missing child. I came up with the title after I finished writing the book. The folks at Crooked Lane Books and I played around with some other titles, but ultimately it was the publisher’s decision, and they stuck with the original.

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

My teenage reader self would be thrilled but not surprised. I was a voracious reader then, as now, and I started writing poems and stories at an early age. My teenage self might say, “Ah. Go ahead and be a lawyer if you want. But you know there’s a writer in there somewhere.”

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

I don’t find one harder than the other. I find myself mulling over ideas for a story, and then it just starts telling itself to me. I do, however, spend a lot of time coming up with the first sentence or two of the novel – something that hopefully grabs the reader’s attention right away. I was well into writing Then He Was Gone when I came up with the first two lines: “I have a picture of my little brother, Henry, that my dad took that day. He was six years old.”

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

I could probably find bits of myself and my life experiences in every character I write. Henry’s mother, Elizabeth English, is an attorney, so that’s obvious. But here are a couple of examples that are less so.

Monroe, the park ranger who leads the search for Henry, is a former Montana sheriff who’s seen it all. But here’s how he describes Moraine Park in Rocky Mountain National Park as he’s driving to the scene of Henry’s disappearance in response to a 911 call: “The first time I looked across that valley and the high peaks west of it along the Continental Divide, long shafts of light piercing through the clouds at sunset like the fingers of God, it nearly took my breath away.” I experienced that moment years ago and I’ve never forgotten it.

There is another scene in the novel where ten-year-old Nick is drawing a picture of his house in a counseling session. He draws burglar bars on all the windows and tells his counselor that he wants them put on his house when Henry comes home to keep his family safe. Some years ago, I did volunteer work in an elementary school that served low-income children. One little boy showed me a picture he had drawn of a house with burglar bars on all the windows, explaining that he would have a house someday that would keep the bad guys out. His teacher told me later that he was living in a homeless shelter. It broke my heart. Two weeks later, he was gone, never to return to that school. I can still see his face.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

So many. For this novel, the hikes that my husband and I and our two sons took in Rocky Mountain National Park over the years as the boys were growing up. And, especially, the boys themselves. They are hilarious, and you’ll find some funny vignettes in the novel about what boys can get up to.

Visit Isabel Booth's website.

My Book, The Movie: Then He Was Gone.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ahmad Saber

Ahmad Saber is a young adult author who grew up on an all-girls college campus next to a massive fort in Pakistan. He now lives in Canada, and loves Broadway (favorite show = Phantom), travel (favorite place = 4-way tie between NYC, Seoul, Paris, and Melbourne), and Taylor Swift (favorite album = folklore) He's also a self-professed Chocolate Chip Cookie Connoisseur and has crowned New York's Culture Espresso’s as the best in the world.

Ramin Abbas has MAJOR Questions is his debut novel and is based in part on his own lived experience, exploring the inherent challenges of being queer and Muslim, and the struggle to reconcile faith with sexuality.

Saber is also a medical doctor specializing in rheumatology.

My Q&A with the author:

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

My book’s title, Ramin Abbas Has MAJOR Questions, is aimed to drop the potential reader into a whirlpool of curiosity: who is Ramin Abbas? Why does he have questions? What kind of questions does he have? And why are they so… Major? Do his questions have answers? In some ways, it makes the reader come up with their own set of questions immediately. Our great hope is that the potential reader would get pleasantly curious enough to read the book description and the opening chapter, and then embark on the journey with Ramin– a closted gay Muslim teen who attends an all-Muslim school and feels that he has to choose between being gay and remaining faithful to Allah—as he explores his questions and embarks on an internal quest to find the answers.

The idea of “questions” was initially suggested by my genius agent Dan Lazar, who connected deeply with the story and hoped that readers, especially those struggling with reconciling their faith and sexuality, would remain curious about themselves and simply ask thoughtful questions. We’re not necessarily here to give answers.

Then, my equally genius editor Caitlyn Dlouhy identified that in the book, Ramin has questions upon questions upon questions, his biggest one being: why does living your truth but losing everything—or living a lie and losing yourself—even have to be a choice?!

As for the process of arriving at this title, that’s a novella on its own. The book was initially called The Little Mosque in my Heart, a title to which part of me is still wedded to, but after prolonged discussions (and brainstorming well over 50 titles!) I decided to defer to the experience and wisdom of my publishing house. In the end, there was complete consensus over the official title, which we felt was more spunky and YA-appropriate with the widest potential readership. For fun and insight, here are some other frontrunners that didn’t make the final cut: Ramin Abbas is Full of Questions, Ramin Abbas is NOT Going to Heaven, Ramin Abbas Won’t Play Along.

What's in a name?

When naming Ramin Abbas, the titular protagonist, I simply wanted a relatively uncommon name used in Pakistan. Ramin is most commonly used in Iran as it’s a Persian name. In Pakistan, it is also used as a girl's name. While Ramin in the book identifies as cisgendered male, I still liked the unisex nature of his name to encapsulate his desired internal harmony with both his masculine and feminine sides. I would say it’s a strong name, even though I didn’t pick it initially because of this: Ramin can mean “someone who brings joy.” My great hope is that this fictional character can bring a lot of joy to his readers! As for simple or complicated, I think you can decide that for yourself after reading the above.

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

Oh, my teenage self would be majorly surprised! This is a book that comes from a deeply personal space and lived experience, so it is definitely a book my teenage self needed. If teenage Ahmad had found this book when he needed it most, I think his suffering would’ve felt at least 50% less lonely. But even though that Ahmad has now grown up (and is going pretty well emotionally btw!), my hope is that others like him, whether they are currently teens or adults, will find the book and see themselves in Ramin’s story.

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

It’s definitely the beginnings! I usually know the endings first, it’s just a mammoth task to then find my way to that ending. I always knew that Ramin Abbas would find his way in the end, but in order for that to have meaning and resonance, I needed to capture on the page exactly how painful his struggle of having to choose between his faith and his sexuality was.

I have definitely changed the beginnings more. To give you an idea, initially the core concept of this book started off as a gay horror story set in the remote Northern mountainous villages of Pakistan. Yeah.

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 I have inadvertently answered this question above, but yes, Ramin’s story comes from a very personal experience, though he is also quite different from me in many ways. Certainly a lot braver than teenage Ahmad ever was!

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

TV series like Love, Victor and Heartstopper (though I realize it was literary to begin with) have inspired my style of storytelling but I also didn’t want an unrealistic representation of the deeply scary challenge of coming out as gay in a religious Muslim household. Other than TV, I had an “inspiration playlist” of music that included Harry Styles, Banners, and Public. Songs like “Someone to You” and “Make You Mine” truly lit the spark of inspiration during my worst writer’s blocks.

Visit Ahmad Saber's website.

The Page 69 Test: Ramin Abbas Has MAJOR Questions.

My Book, The Movie: Ramin Abbas Has MAJOR Questions.

Writers Read: Ahmad Saber.

--Marshal Zeringue

James Cahill

James Cahill has worked in the art world and academia for the past fifteen years. His debut novel, Tiepolo Blue, was shortlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award, and his writing has been published in Artforum, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The London Review of Books, The Spectator, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Daily Telegraph. Cahill divides his time between London and Los Angeles.

Cahill's new novel is The Violet Hour.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The title threads into the story in all kinds of ways. Colour plays an important role – the main character, Thomas Haller, is a famous painter who is celebrated for his abstract canvases. At the beginning of the novel, he has just created a new series of pictures in violet. The phrase itself comes from T.S. Eliot’s poem ‘The Waste Land’ (“At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives / Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea …”). That timeless image of an evening sky is ironic, because what follows in Eliot’s poem is a bleakly realist episode: a young female typist comes home from work, bored and tired, before her boyfriend forces himself on her.

Like ‘The Waste Land’, this novel is about the fragmentary, cacophonous nature of experience. It is set in the high-end world of contemporary art, but its themes are universal – loss, longing, beauty and desire. Thomas, the painter, is caught between romantic ideals and the inescapable, haunting facts of his experience. More generally, the phrase captures the novel’s interest in endings. Another character, Leo Goffman, is a real-estate tycoon in his eighties – the twilight of his existence. He spends his days surrounded by his art treasures, looking back at his life with a mixture of regret and defiance. Lorna, the third main character, is a British art dealer in her forties who has arrived at a personal impasse. Her girlfriend is about to leave her, and she’s wondering what her life will now be like. Many scenes in the story take place at the interval between day and night. There’s a pervasive mood of transition: lives entering new phases, relationships ending or reforming.

What's in a name?

Thomas Haller, the renowned abstract painter, was born in Switzerland. Haller is a common Swiss name; it’s also the surname of Herman Hesse’s antihero, Harry Haller, in his novel Steppenwolf (1927). Thomas, like Harry, is an enigma. At the beginning of The Violet Hour, he has retreated from the art world to live an outsider’s existence in the mountains above Lake Geneva. And like Harry Haller, he is conflicted – shifting between a refined version of himself and a more unruly, instinctual self. But not all of my characters’ names carry a symbolic meaning (much as I love allegorical, allusive names). Lorna Bedford, Thomas’s former art dealer and oldest friend, represents the ‘conscience’ of the story – she is the character with whom readers will perhaps identify most closely – and her name just came to me, early in the writing. It felt strong and elegant. I might have been thinking of the British literary critic Lorna Sage, but there’s no great meaning behind it.  

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

  It’s almost impossible to say. Sometimes, even now, I read my own work after an interval and find elements that surprise me. I think – I hope – that the younger James would have admired the writing style, and that he would have enjoyed the mystery and humour of the story. My younger self might have been startled by the detail and regularity of the sex scenes – startled but not put off, I suspect. The setting of the novel, in the international contemporary art world, would probably have felt strange and unfathomable. I began working in that world in my early twenties (in many ways I still do), and it has formed the backdrop to my adult life.

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

The Violet Hour begins and ends at the same time and place – a summer’s evening in London, on a quiet residential street. At the opening of the story, we see a young man emerging onto the balcony of a tower block, and then suddenly – inexplicably – falling to his death. Over the course of the story, we will learn how this random, tragic event is connected with the lives of each of the main characters. The scene, which was loosely inspired by the ancient myth of the fall of Icarus, went through a number of revisions. I wanted to create the sense of the opening shot of a film, or maybe a painting. I wrote the final scene of the novel before I’d written many of the earlier episodes – I always knew, more or less, how the story would end.

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

  None of my characters is ‘me’, but on the other hand, as a novelist, you have to inhabit the minds and personalities of the people you portray. So in a sense, you become those characters in the process of writing them. Leo Goffman, the octogenarian billionaire in The Violet Hour, lives a life that is entirely unlike mine. And in terms of his personality, there isn’t much connection (at least, I hope there isn’t) – Leo is egocentric, grasping and unrepentant. Even so, there are things that redeem him. I tend to find that even the most unpleasant characters in fiction, unless they’re cardboard cutouts, have traits with which a reader can identify.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?  

All sorts of things influence my writing, from every region of my life. One important reference is cinema, in particular film noir and melodrama. In fact, the title of the novel could be seen as an allusion to Sunset Boulevard (sunset being synonymous with the ‘violet hour’) – Billy Wilder’s classic movie about a fading Hollywood star, Norma Desmond. That film was a touchstone for the plotline and themes of my novel. Thomas Haller, the artist, is a version of Norma – imprisoned by a certain image of himself, living inside an elaborate illusion. The Technicolor films of Douglas Sirk were another important reference. Thomas is a Sirk fan, and spends hours watching those films in his home cinema. I like the way Sirk’s films combine

Follow James Cahill on Instagram.

--Marshal Zeringue