Terrence McCauley

Terrence McCauley is the author of The Twilight Town: A Dallas ’63 Novel. This first book in a trilogy about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has received early acclaim from authors like I.S. Berry, Meg Gardiner, James Grady and others.

McCauley has published more than thirty novels across three genres, including the acclaimed University Series thrillers, the Charlie Doherty 1930s crime novels, and two award-winning western series. He has also ghostwritten for several projects. He grew up in the Bronx, New York and now calls Dutchess County, New York home.

My Q&A with McCauley:

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

My original titles always give the reader an idea about the book and the series overall. My first techno-thriller was Sympathy for the Devil. It alluded to the sinister nature of the protagonist, James Hicks. Later books had avian themes – A Murder of Crows and A Conspiracy of Ravens that played to the dark quality of those books. Others like Prohibition and Slow Burn and The Fairfax Incident were placeholders that wound up being the final titles. The Twilight Town is also a fitting name for the first book in my JFK assassination series as it takes place in a city where the underworld meets the overworld in the months before President Kennedy’s death.

Some editors have changed the titles of many of my books during production, particularly my western novels. I never complain about a title change because I assume the editors understand what will sell. It’s ultimately their decision anyway, so I don’t fight it.

What's in a name?

The names of characters are very important to me, but they’re never set in stone. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had a character’s name in my head while thinking about a story, only for it to change as soon as my fingers hit the keyboard. It sounds odd, but my characters tend to tell me what their names are.

In The Twilight Town: A Dallas ’63 Novel, Dan Wilson was an exception. His name didn’t change from my mind to the page. I wanted something clear and recognizable that could fit in everywhere. It wasn’t too ethnic, but decidedly American. That’s what I was going for in that particular story.

But The Twilight Town characters offered me a unique challenge. It’s a novel about the JFK assassination and includes many characters from real life. I used only real names in the first draft, but decided to change them later on. I did this to avoid readers pointing out factual inconsistencies in the story. I wanted to avoid criticism, such as ‘Captain Westbrook didn’t look like that’ or ‘those two people never met in Dallas’. The book is a fictionalized account of an actual event based on a lot of research, but I changed certain names to make sure the truth didn’t get in the way of a good story.

I kept some names the same, of course, like Oswald and Ruby. They’re both pillars of the event, so I couldn’t change their names without undermining the entire story.

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

My teenage self would’ve been surprised I’d written a book at all, much less thirty of them. Back then, I wanted to be a director or a comic book illustrator. I wasn’t much of a reader of prose or books. I was more of a movie fan than a reader. A lot of the story ideas I had way back then have come to fruition as books throughout my career, so I’d like to think my teenage self would approve.

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

Neither, because I never really know where one of my books begin or end. I have an idea when I start writing it, but I don’t stress over it. I fully expect the story to evolve over time. The ending I’d planned has often turned out to be the middle of the book. The same goes for the beginning. Maybe I have to add more detail in the beginning so the story is more complete. Sometimes my beginnings and endings get discarded entirely because the story needs something different.

That’s why I don’t take the time to outline. For me, an outline becomes a document onto itself. The more time I spend writing it, the less likely I am to want to deviate from it. I have a natural inclination to make the time I put into creating something count for something. That free-wheeling preference causes me trouble sometimes, but it’s a good problem to solve.

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

Every character I’ve created and every book I’ve ever written is part of me in some way. It’s not just a product of my creativity, but often reflects where I am in my life at the time I’m writing it.

My Jeremiah Halstead westerns, for example, were written at a time when I was going through a lot of personal turmoil in my life. Unfortunately, that meant poor Jeremiah had to go through some turmoil, too.

I believe a writer’s emotions can serve the story well if channeled properly. Emotion is a variable that keeps an artist’s work from becoming formulaic and predictable. Including a bit of myself in my books and my characters is also therapeutic. I spent twenty-five years in government, so I met a lot of interesting people and saw a lot of surprising events along the way. Some of those people and events make it into my work as well.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Movies played a big part in my early creativity, which has fueled my work as a writer. My parents were classic movie fans, so I grew up watching the classics starring Spencer Tracy and Joan Crawford and Clark Gable. Even though those movies were black-and-white in the age of color television, I appreciated how scenes looked and how actors delivered their lines. Later, I was able to notice the stripped-down, gritty quality of thrillers made in the 1970s as opposed to the glitzy action-driven films of the 1980s and 1990s.

Music has also played an important role in my writing life. I have no musical talent whatsoever, but my grandfather used to play the piano in silent movie theaters in New York. He died long before I was born, but I grew up hearing about him and knew the importance that music could play in telling a story. That’s why each of my books has a theme song I keep in mind as I’m writing.

Oddly enough, the song almost never fits the genre I’m writing in. For example, the theme song of The Twilight Town, which is set in 1963 Dallas, isn’t a 60’s song, but a hard-edged Electric Dance Music piece called ‘King’ by GG Magree released in 2023. One wouldn’t think that kind of song has any place in a Kennedy novel, but it works for me.

Visit Terrence McCauley's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Conspiracy of Ravens.

The Page 69 Test: A Conspiracy of Ravens.

Writers Read: Terrence McCauley (October 2017).

The Page 69 Test: The Twilight Town.

My Book, The Movie: The Twilight Town.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kashana Cauley

Kashana Cauley is the author of the newly released The Payback, a student loan industry heist novel.

She is also the author of The Survivalists, which was published in January 2023 and named a best book of 2023 by the BBC, the Today Show, Vogue, and many other outlets. She’s a TV writer who has written for The Great North, Pod Save America on HBO, and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, and a former contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She has also written for The Atlantic, Esquire, The New Yorker, Pitchfork, and Rolling Stone, among other publications.

My Q&A with the author:

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

So far people associate The Payback with the James Brown song of the same name, which is correct. James Brown is singing about getting revenge on someone who crossed him, and The Payback is also a revenge story. My editor and I went through many titles, but when the book went out on submission, before it sold, its working title was Student Loan Payback. No matter how many titles my editor and I went through, I remember both of us gravitating towards the idea of payback over and over again. I like payback because it has the double meaning of what you’re supposed to do with your student loans as well as revenge, so it captures the spirit of the book.

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

Since I started writing novels at age ten, my teenage self would be unsuprised by The Payback’s general existence, but since I didn’t tell jokes then, she’d be shocked by all the humor in the book.

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

Beginnings are tougher, since I’m a write until the characters have distinctive voices person. I can only outline when I know what the characters sound like, dress, want to listen to music-wise, etc. After I get to know the characters’ voices, the endings of my books tend to announce themselves. I tinker with beginnings a lot more because I assume the reader will take any opportunity to put the book down, so my beginnings have to be airtight.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Music and movies. When I find the voice, I write while listening to songs that match that voice, which helps keep me emotionally connected to the story. And movies have taught me a lot about act structure and plotting that I tend to bring into my writing as well. Along with books themselves, Movies help me to outline books, and to think about what book pacing should feel like.

Visit Kashana Cauley's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Alie Dumas-Heidt

Alie Dumas-Heidt lives in the Puget Sound with her husband, adult kids, and two Goldendoodles – Astrid and Torvi. Growing up she wanted to be a detective and a writer and spent a few years working as a police dispatcher. Now, working is writing in her home office with the dogs at her feet. When she’s not writing she enjoys being in the forest, creating glass art, yarn crafts, and watching baseball.

Dumas-Heidt's new novel is The Myth Maker.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I think my title, The Myth Maker, is intriguing enough to catch readers attention, but does it completely spell out that this is a story about a detective on the hunt for a serial killer? I say no, but, funny enough, my agent wasn’t sure we’d be able to keep it because she did worry it gave too much away. I have old outlines and early chapters all with the title The Myth Maker and it was hard for me to consider it being called anything else. We played around with a few other titles, different ideas pulling from bits of what the killer was doing, but nothing stuck. I had an easier time changing the name of my lead character! I was thankful that a new title wasn’t part of the To Do list from my publisher during final edits.

What's in a name?

I am a little bit of a name nerd in real life. I’m that annoying friend that will gladly put lists together for anyone naming a baby, puppy, or kitten. With The Myth Maker, my lead character went through a name change between pitching to my agent and us pitching to publishers. I started to realize how many other characters in all media formats were variations of Kat and I wanted to make sure my Kathryn stood out in that crowded space instead of blending in. She went through a metamorphosis and became Cassidy Cantwell, Cas to friends, and Cassi to only one person.

I was surprised by how much I struggled to adapt to her being Cas instead of Kat, and it actually took me changing a few other things about her past and her character to make the new name stick. The other characters have names you’d run into in real life, because that’s how I wanted it to feel. I did apologize to a friend though after I realized I’d used both her name and her sister’s name as victim names. Whoopsie.

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

I was an insatiable reader as a kid and by the time I was eleven I was stealing my mom’s books off the bookshelf to fill in between trips to the library and school book orders. My mom read a lot of true crime, and I have always been interested in detective work, so those were the books I started stealing most. By seventh grade, I was alternating between things like The Outsiders, to Ann Rule, then Anne Rice. I don’t think teenage me would be surprised to know that we grew up and wrote a detective story. I was barely out of my teenage years when I started writing The Myth Maker, and I think she’d be proud to know I made this dream of being a writer a reality for us.

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

Endings! Finding the exact right moment to declare things done isn’t always as easy as I want it to be, and there were a few different endings written for this project, can’t deny that. I honestly find it easiest to write the middle when I’m starting a new story. I’ve completed two novels, and both started with middle scenes. With The Myth Maker, I wrote one of the high climax scenes first before I even knew why Cassidy and Bryan were where they were. It became a target to write the events to get Cas to that moment and figuring out what obstacles would be in her way. It’s a lot of answering the question, “Why?”

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

I tried to separate myself from Cassidy, starting with the physical traits. She’s taller than me, skinnier than me, has a different hair color. I gave her a big family, and an unsteady relationship, all different from mine, but I think every writer, subconsciously or not, ends up injecting a bit of their own personality into their characters. One area that is similar, and intentionally so, is the car Cassidy drives. We both drive Mini Coopers, although she has a Justa and I drive a Clubbie. All of that makes sense to Mini drivers, and she actually had hers first because I’ve been in love with them forever. No matter what happens in Cassidy’s future, she will keep driving her Mini.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I’ve been influenced by a lot of things with my writing - other writers, TV characters - but my childhood dream of being a police detective definitely inspired my subject matter the most with The Myth Maker. I started writing the story when it was just an idea in the mind of a 21 year old, while I was working as a 911 operator/police dispatcher. That work, and the people I met while doing it, definitely inspired the characters and even some of the interactions. While all of the story and characters are fictional, there were moments of my time as a dispatcher, small interactions between myself and the cops I worked with, that I reworked and worked into the story to create interactions from real life. They’re some of my favorite small moments, and most of them made final cuts.

Visit Alie Dumas-Heidt's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Turner Gable Kahn

Turner Gable Kahn grew up in the extra-hold-hairspray ribbon of sunshine between the Everglades and the Atlantic’s best beach. Her higher education took place along the banks of the Schuylkill, and then the Hudson. She commuted endlessly across the East River in the blood, sweat and tears of a design career, before leaving her heart on Victoria Harbor’s dance floors and the South China Sea’s cliff hikes. She now writes in the bright heat near the Singapore Strait during the school year; in the summer she greets the sunset with her family, on a back deck overlooking the Puget Sound.

Kahn's new novel is The Dirty Version.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The Dirty Version does a lot of subtle heavy lifting. It hints at what’s going on behind the scenes — both in Hollywood and in the emotional lives of the characters. There’s a cheeky nod to “dirty” in the steamy sense, but the title also points to creative compromise, blurred boundaries, and the messier corners of power and control. The story centers on a feminist author whose novel is being adapted for TV — only to find that the project has landed in the hands of a macho director who insists on “sexing it up.” He says he wants the “dirty version” of the story.

The title is also a little meta. There’s no explicit sex on the page — but that doesn’t mean it isn’t sexy. It’s all about foreplay, tension, and emotional intimacy. I wanted to write a slow burn that made space for desire without defaulting to a standard template.

I actually came up with the title at the eleventh hour. I’d been calling it Very Hands-On as a placeholder, and just before I sent out my first query, I typed in The Dirty Version instead. It stuck — and now I can’t imagine it being anything else.

What's in a name?

I wanted names that carried meaning but didn’t hit readers over the head. Tash is short for Natasha — sharp, modern, unadorned. She’s someone who guards her story fiercely and doesn’t open up easily, so the clipped version felt right for her: no extra syllables, no softness. Caleb, on the other hand, has warmth and calm built into it. He’s an intimacy coordinator — someone who brings empathy, clarity, and safety into the room — and I wanted his name to reflect that grounded presence.

Together, Tash and Caleb sound like they come from totally different worlds — which, of course, they do. That contrast was intentional.

And then there’s Ram Braverman — the Hollywood director with the worst kind of creative ego. That name just wrote itself. I pictured a silver fox with a Napoleon complex, and somehow... Ram Braverman appeared fully formed. A lot of early readers told me they laughed out loud when they got to him — which I took as a very good sign.

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

Oh, very. My teenage self pictured a future writing emo, experimental capital-L Literary Fiction — stories full of difficult people in stark settings, probably with ambiguous endings and no quotation marks. And now here I am writing a contemporary romance set in South Florida, complete with lush beach scenes and behind-the-scenes Hollywood drama.

But I think she’d recognize the thread. These are still stories about people grappling with power, identity, and vulnerability — just with more heat, more humor, and a much more satisfying emotional arc than she might have imagined back then.

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

Beginnings are much harder for me. There’s so much pressure to get everything right from the first page — voice, tone, stakes, world. It’s like hosting a dinner party where the first five minutes determine whether your guests stay. Endings, for me, come more intuitively once I know where the emotional landing should be. But the beginning? That gets rewritten two dozen times, easily. I want readers to know what kind of ride they’re in for — and feel pulled in, not pushed.

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

Definitely. Tash is part me — the overthinker, the control freak, the person trying to fiercely protect something that matters. Her bond with her best friend is pulled pretty directly from my own life and my own female friendships. But Tash is also a lot more defensive than I am, and she’s much more blunt. She says the things I’d maybe just mutter in my head.

Caleb, on the other hand, is my unicorn book boyfriend — the kind of emotionally intelligent, deeply respectful, quietly super-hot romantic lead I wish more stories centered. I’m a longtime romance reader, so I built him with intention. He’s pure wish-fulfillment.

So no, they’re not me — but they come from me.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

A few big ones. First, the real-world rise of intimacy coordinators in film and television — that felt like such a fascinating cultural shift, and it gave me the idea for Caleb. Second, I’ve spent a lot of time in live storytelling spaces, and performing personal stories taught me how to pace emotional beats and pull people in through voice and vulnerability. And lastly, friendship — especially female friendship — has been a huge influence. The idea that love stories can be romantic and platonic shaped the emotional heart of the book.

Visit Turner Gable Kahn's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Miriam Gershow

Miriam Gershow is the author of Closer, Survival Tips: Stories and The Local News. Her writing is featured in The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast, and Black Warrior Review, among other journals. She is the recipient of a Fiction Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, an Oregon Literary Fellowship, and is a two-time finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Gershow is the organizer of “100 Notable Small Press Books,” a curated list of the year’s recommended books from independent publishers.

My Q&A with the author:

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

As soon as I typed the last sentence of my first draft, I knew the title of Closer would be Closer. Even if I also know that I was choosing a title that could be read one of two ways. I began saying, almost immediately: “Closer as in opposite of further, not closer as in the last person to close down the bar at night.” So why choose this title? It’s similar to when I knew in my first trimester that my son would be Eli. When you know, you know. The idea of closer - getting closer, being closer - embodies everything this story is about. This novel is the story of a community, full of people who make heedless mistakes, often at a very high cost, all in service of trying to get closer to those they love, whether that be a child, a lover, a spouse, a friend. They get it wrong more than they get it right, and that’s what interests me. Closer is different than already being close to someone. Closer is aspirational; a want for more, a want for better.

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

I think my teenaged self would be impressed that I’m still obsessed with high school. So much of the action of Closer takes place in and around West High School, involving both the kids and adults of the school. Or maybe my teenage self would be shocked that the sights and sounds of that era are still lodged so firmly in my soft palate. I also think my teenage self would be a little disappointed that I don’t have a peekaboo cover featuring a sullen, haunted teen a la Flowers in the Attic or Petals on the Wind. She’d want way more creepy grandmother, questionable brother/sister dynamics, and a fat, breakable book spine.

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

Beginnings are so easy! The unfurling of possibility! So much freedom! With a beginning, you can write a check that your narrative doesn’t have to cash (yet). The are easily hundreds of fat beginning and middle pages before I have to make good on the promises of the beginning. But of course, the ending is where you have to bring it all home. One of the biggest challenges of Closer was having to write a triple ending because I’d set up three central point of view characters, each with their own distinct conflict to be resolved. I tend to either nail the ending or the beginning in early drafting, with the other taking up my attention in revisions. But for Closer, I rewrote the beginning and one of the three endings over and over and over. Both needed recalibrating and more recalibrating, and I just stuck with 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 see myself in all of my characters! So much of my writing is an exercise in empathy: understanding why characters behave in the way they do especially when the behavior is not particularly wise or defensible. Closer is the novel of a community, and I see at least a kernel of myself in every character. Stefanie, a parent of high schooler, is fiercely devoted to her teenage son, Baz. I started writing this book when my son was eight, but now, seven years later, I have grown into a parent who is similar to Stefanie—lulled by the sweetness of boyhood but with a teenager who strains to be his own person. With Woody, the guidance counselor swept into the spotlight of the school’s current controversies, I have that urge to be seen as vital and important like he does, to be the hero of the story. With Lark, the students who struggles to find her place alongside her best friend, Livvy, as Livvy is swept up into her first love, I am forever that awkward, clingy kid, needing reassurance as the sands shift under my feet. I see each of my characters - even the secondary ones - as tapped into some vulnerability of mine. I’m often asked about characters in terms of unlikablity: are they likable? Should they be likable? But the question that’s more interesting to me is if they are credibly human? Can you feel their thumping heart on the page?

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I do not write melodrama, but I do love for a good melodrama to punch me deep in the feelings. It’s a reminder of what I want out of art and what I want others to get out of my art - to be moved. I was singularly obsessed with Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga in A Star is Born for a good couple of years. I loved the family drama, Kingdom, even though I would never ever have believed anyone who told me I’d love a show about MMA. Same with Friday Night Lights and football. I love a good cry. I am a sucker for the weepy, folky, haunting tunes of Novo Amour and Ocie Elliott. I spent more days than I’m willing to admit listening to TALK’s “Run Away to Mars” on repeat because I’d heard it on the radio and it socked me in the throat in the most pleasurably painful way.

Visit Miriam Gershow's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Local News.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sarah Strohmeyer

Sarah Strohmeyer is a bestselling and award-winning novelist whose books include the new thriller A Mother Always Knows, We Love to Entertain, Do I Know You?, the wildly popular Bubbles Yablonsky mystery series, The Cinderella Pact (which became the Lifetime Original Movie Lying to Be Perfect), along with many stand-alone novels for adults and young adults including Smart Girls Get What They Want and This Is My Brain on Boys. A former newspaper reporter, her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Boston Globe. She lives with her cat and husband in Middlesex, Vermont, where she is the elected Town Clerk. Adult children come and go.

My Q&A with Strohmeyer:

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

A Mother Always Knows relates to the beginning of the novel – in which the mother is murdered in front of her daughter while trying to flee a Vermont cult – and throughout the rest of the book, all the way to the end. Do mothers always know? Can a mother beyond the grave know? (There’s a supernatural element to the book since it involves a cult of “spiritual dowsers.”) Or, does a mother think she knows, when she really doesn’t? In the end, A Mother Always Knows is about mother/daughter relationships and how a mother’s poor decision(s) can affect her child’s future years later.

What's in a name?

This is a great question for A Mother Always Knows. For example, the protagonist’s common name is Stella, which means star. However, when Stella was living in a cult as a little girl with her mother, she was called Astraea, or “star maiden,” a goddess of justice. As a grown woman, Stella is pursuing justice for her mother whose murder has gone unsolved for twenty years.

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

My teenage self would be thrilled and, also, pushing me to go further. I pledged at age ten – the same age as my protagonist when she witnessed her mother’s demise – to become an author. And so I have. But what I’ve learned is that it’s barely enough to become a writer and be published by a major publisher. There are so many talented voices out there elevating this genre into forms not seen when I was in my teens that you have to be on your toes! So, the real fun has been the challenge of contributing to this evolution in some small way. I’m in such awe of my fellow mystery/thriller authors. They surprise me at every turn.

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

Both! (Is that a cop out?) Like my friend and fellow mystery writer Nancy Martin says, the only way to start a book knowing you’re going to rewrite the beginning to death is by lying to yourself that this time you’ll get it right from the get go. I never do. But endings are key. They’re what the readers will remember (if they get that far) and you want them to be surprised and satisfied and hopefully not pissed. It’s a tall order! I change them constantly….

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 write a character in the first person, I can’t help incorporating some of my flaws and failings, my humor and observations. But that’s about it. I’m always amused when people accuse me of putting them in my books or mistakenly assume I’m writing about myself. As any writer will attest, sitting and writing for X # of hours in a day does not make for an adventurous personal life. We have to make it up – because we’re so boring!

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

The book I’m working on now, Worst. Wife. Ever, was sparked by an article I read in the New York Times about a certain movement among conservative families. Do I Know You? was inspired by my experience on the terrorist watch list (still on there, by the way) when, detained by Scotland Yard at Heathrow, they chatted to me about “super recognizers.” We Love to Entertain was the product of my own house rehab. So I guess I’m very triggered by the crazy world around us!

Visit Sarah Strohmeyer's website.

The Page 69 Test: This Is My Brain on Boys.

My Book, The Movie: This Is My Brain on Boys.

My Book, The Movie: We Love to Entertain.

Writers Read: Sarah Strohmeyer (April 2023).

The Page 69 Test: We Love to Entertain.

--Marshal Zeringue

Julie Hensley

Julie Hensley is the author of three books, Five Oaks, Landfall: A Ring of Stories, and Viable. She is also the author of two chapbooks, Real World and The Language of Horses. A professor at Eastern Kentucky University and core faculty member in the Bluegrass Writers Studio Low-Res MFA Program, she lives in Richmond with her husband, the writer R Dean Johnson, and their two children.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The title Five Oaks is indicative of how important setting and landscape are to the story. It is the name of the family lake cottage where the current temporal frame of the novel takes place across a summer in 1988. The historical chapters all branch into that space eventually, as well. It is truly a nexus. The working title for this novel was actually The Recklessness of Water, a reference to the REM song “Night Swimming.” I changed the title to Five Oaks at my agent’s urging. I spent about a day worrying over it, but ultimately, I grew to love the new title. Both that lake cottage and the five sprawling oaks for which it is named anchor the lives and secrets of all the women in the Stone/Pritchard lineage.

What's in a name?

I found the name my narrator, Sylvie, in a cemetery. I love to walk in cemeteries, and I always make note of interesting names and play with trying to extrapolate into narrative. I liked the way the name contains both light and a mineral strength. I stole her last name, Pritchard, from one of my MFA professors, the amazing Melissa Pritchard.

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

I think teenage Julie would be shocked. I’ve always written—when I was young, I journaled and wrote poems. I devoured novels when I was a teenager, often reading one a day in the summers; however, back then, I wanted to be a scientist, specifically and ethologist. I wanted to live amongst animals and study their behavior like Dian Fossey or Eugenie Clark. Maybe being a novelist isn’t such a stretch. Writers live amongst human animals, observing and recording.

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

Honestly, it depends on the project. I feel like with short stories my endings usually feel like gifts. The entire narrative is a process of discovery, but once I’m deep in it, I feel such a propulsion toward those final lines. Five Oaks is my first novel, and it was definitely a different beast. I didn’t write sequentially in the beginning. At some point, I had to find my structure and create some scaffolding. Originally, I assumed the narrative would end at the lake, but I found I had to follow the girls back home and see how the trauma of the summer reverberated in their regular lives. For a long time, the novel began with the image of Hollis leaping off his dock and swimming across the cove toward Sylvie. Late in the process, I began experimenting with the intercalary chapters and decided to open with one of those, to let Sylvie’s musings on her sister function as a kind of prologue. I definitely wrote and rewrote the end of that last chapter many times. I don’t know if it ultimately changed more, but it certainly felt more important. I worried over it more.

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

I’ve called Five Oaks a work of autofiction, and I think that label fits. I used to spend my girlhood summers at my maternal grandparents’ cottage on Lake Hamilton in Hot Springs Arkansas. Their cottage was called Five Oaks. The current temporal frame of my novel is closely based on my own tenth summer when my own oldest sister began sneaking out with an older, local boy. Courtship stories from both sets of my grandparents and my parents are woven into the historical chapters. In many ways, this book is about memory and family lore.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Well, my working title was pulled from REM’s album Automatic for the People. Tonally, that album influenced the work—it feels full of nostalgia. So many of the songs feel like coming-of-age songs.

When I was in high school, I saw the movie Man in the Moon and had a strong, emotional reaction to it that I didn’t quite understand. It actually got me thinking back to my tenth summer, thinking about how my sister and I, despite our difference in age, were living out secret separate/parallel versions of coming-of-age stories that summer.

I’m also really interested in the theory from Family Systems Theory that secrets can be passed down, generation to generation, without ever being explicitly revealed. I believe we live around the previous generation’s secrets, that they affect the decisions we make and the relationships we form. This idea is something I explore in nearly everything I write.

Visit Julie Hensley's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Weina Dai Randel

Weina Dai Randel is the acclaimed author of five historical novels, including The Last Rose of Shanghai, a Wall Street Journal bestseller, and Night Angels, longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Awards. She is the winner of the RWA RITA® Award, a National Jewish Book Awards finalist and a two-time Goodreads Choice Awards Best Historical Fiction nominee. Her novels have been translated into seventeen foreign languages, including French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Hebrew.

Her new novel, The Master Jeweler, is about a gifted Chinese orphan’s dangerous quest to become a master jeweler in charge of a legendary diamond.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The Master Jeweler follows the journey of a jeweler who searches for fame, friendship, and family from her youth to middle age. It traces her growth, her ambition, her triumphs and mistakes, and ultimately, her realization of what truly matters in life. So I was pretty sure the title should be called The Jeweler, similar to Noah Gordon’s The Physician, which I adore. Simplistic and enduring, right? But as it often happens, I miscalculated. My publisher proposed to change it during the production stage, and my first reaction was, “Impossible! It has to be The Jeweler!” But then I realized they had a point, so we brainstormed and my editor came up with The Master Jeweler. I let it sit for a few days, and eventually, it grew on me and I really like it.

What's in a name?

I put careful thought into names, especially those of the main characters. It’s important to me that each name carries cultural resonance. In The Master Jeweler, the protagonist is called Anyu, which means “peaceful jade” in Chinese. It alludes to two aspects of the character: one is that she was a precious thing to her mother, even though she was nothing to her powerful father whom she never met, and the other is that jade has significant meaning in Chinese culture, as well as in her profession as a jeweler. Another character’s name is simply called Confucius, who’s a gangster in Shanghai. This might sound odd, and the ancient teacher must be rolling in his grave, but I thought adopting a philosopher from the classical Chinese literature added a twist of subversiveness and a tease of cultural meaning. And hey, he was a gangster with consciousness.

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

The teenage me would be judging the master jeweler and crying for her but also deeply admiring her. She would probably think I am pretty cool too, for understanding the mindset of a teenager, without realizing she was the inspiration for the impulsiveness and stubbornness and the relentless drive to do whatever it takes, to her detriment.

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

Beginnings, beginnings, and beginnings. But. To write a beginning, I must first have the ending in mind, and a general arc of the story has to be planned out before I type the first word. As I write, I keep going back to tweak the sentences and heighten the intrigue factor.

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 always write myself in novels, because, you know, sometimes characters command their own universe and do whatever they want to do, but Anyu takes a piece of me – bluntness. Her speech pattern, her lack of social skills and her insensitiveness to people’s emotions were all intentional and connected to my personality. Her relationship with Esther started off on the wrong foot (pun intended!) because of her bluntness. I’m not as helpless now (hopefully), after years of stumbling and making gaffes, but I’m pretty sure, at her age, I was a terror to the people around me. The reason Anyu behaves this way? She grew up without a father, relatives, siblings, cousins, or friends. The only person in her life was her mother, so you kinda understand why she couldn’t read the room. Why do I behave this way? I have no clue, but there’s no excuse!

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Paintings. I’m not an expert by any means, but when I look at Van Goh or Klimt, I pause to think about what is timeless, what art means in our life, and what is our legacy after we’re gone.

Visit Weina Dai Randel's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Shana Youngdahl

Shana Youngdahl is a poet, professor, and the author of the acclaimed novel As Many Nows as I Can Get, a Seventeen Best Book of the Year, a New York Public Library Top Ten Best Book of the Year, and a Kirkus Best Book of the Year. Youngdahl hails from Paradise, California, devastated by the 2018 Camp Fire, which stirred her to write her latest novel, A Catalog of Burnt Objects. She now lives with her husband, two daughters, dog, and cat in Missouri where she is Associate Professor in the MFA in Writing Program at Lindenwood University.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The title, A Catalog of Burnt Objects, comes from “objects,” scattered throughout the book. These short chapters tell the story of objects different community members lost in the catastrophic wildfire that hits Sierra in the middle of the book. The opening chapter is the protagonist, Caprice Alexander’s, object. It tells of the Talking Heads LP her grandfather gave her, and in doing so introduces us to the geography and culture of the town, as well as her gramps' important role in her life.

I had this title picked very early before the book was written because I knew the project would be about fire and what is lost and community. I know that the title doesn’t tell you that this is also a sibling story and a love story, but I hope that it is interesting enough for people to pick up and wonder about. When they start to flip through it they will see it is a story of how to come of age in a world on fire and how to have hope.

What's in a name?

A name can say more about the people that name you than it does about who you are. We can grow into our names, or we can grow against them, and we can also choose our own names. In this book, the protagonist, Caprice is named for the “whim,” her parents had to have a second child, but I picked the name because her own ability to embrace whims and change is part of her character arc. Her brother Beckett is named after Samuel Beckett, and early in the book when Caprice meets her love interests she wonders if he is considering “what kind of people name their kids after an avant-garde playwright and a whim?”

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

Beginnings because you can’t get them right until you nail the ending. I change every part of a project a lot. Revision is 99% of the job. In A Catalog of Burnt Objects figuring out where to start was one of the challenges of the project, since the story is ultimately a sibling and family story I landed with opening with Caprice’s object and following with the chapter where her brother moves home. There were versions that started with the fire and then flashed back but that didn’t work. I realized you need to love this town and family before you can really care that it is on fire.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I’m always interested in how science can provide metaphor and a framework for understanding and questioning the world. Growing up in Paradise the outdoors were my playground. I spent my days outside, in trees, in the river, in the canyon. My public school education taught me the importance of valuing people, lending a hand, and a foundational curiosity that has allowed me to keep my eyes open for inspiration in all places. I probably find inspiration most often science and nature, where questions more than answers, drive our quest for knowledge forward. I suppose that is because fiction is like that too, it invites us to question.

Visit Shana Youngdahl's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Allison King

Allison King is an Asian American writer and software engineer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In technology, her work has ranged from semiconductors to platforms for community conversations to data privacy. Her short stories have appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Diabolical Plots, and LeVar Burton Reads, among others. She is also a 2023 Reese's Book Club LitUp fellow. The Phoenix Pencil Company is her first novel.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The Phoenix Pencil Company was pretty much always the title of the book. I think it does a good job of capturing the fantasy-aspect of the book, and of course the pencil part. It also gives a sense that this is going to follow a company, so potentially span a long period of time. Another idea I had was Pencil Hearts, which might've spoken to the emotional parts of the book more, though feels less distinctive.

What's in a name?

The name with the most significance in this book is that of Wong Yun, who is the grandmother and one of two main characters. Her name is my own grandmother's name, as a lot of the story is inspired by what she used to share with me about the pencil company my family used to run in Taiwan.

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

I think she'd be surprised but pleased. Maybe mostly surprised by how I've processed a lot of the things we went through. Teenage me had never really read anything by Asian American authors either, so that might be the more surprising part.

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

Beginnings are harder for me. Whereas I feel like I tend to know the ending, and the whole book is working towards it, a beginning feels more flexible and open-ended. The beginning of The Phoenix Pencil Company was one of the parts I worked on with my editor the most, whereas the last sentence and scene have been the same pretty much since the first draft.

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

Yes, the granddaughter character in this book in particular is very similar to me, maybe an exaggerated version of me. I purposefully gave her many of my own experiences, since the grandmother character was so different from me, growing up in a totally different time and country.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Family, anime, video games, cities, public transportation, and tea!

Visit Allison King's website.

--Marshal Zeringue