Linda Kass

Linda Kass began her career as a magazine journalist and correspondent for regional and national publications. Along with her new novel, World News from Waverley High, she is the author of three previous works of historical fiction: Tasa’s Song (2016), A Ritchie Boy (2020), and Bessie (2023). A longtime civic leader, she is the founder and owner of Gramercy Books, an independent bookstore in Central Ohio. Kass lives in Columbus with her husband, Frank; they have four children, six grandchildren, and a labradoodle named Wally.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Because the setting of my novel is an urban, integrated high school, once I determined the name of the high school, Waverley High, I was set on having this as my title. To me, the high school was both a character and a place. I thought of it as an ecosystem of social bonds and individual relationships as well as a physical space, a container for my story of the late Sixties.

At some point, I began thinking that using only the high school’s name in the title would more strongly attract the YA audience (a secondary crossover audience we did aim to appeal to) rather than the primary adult audience we sought. And I had concerns that adults would see this as a book about a high school with no historical marker. So, we looked for a variation in that title presentation. I thought we should add 1969 into the subtitle, but everyone thought that made it feel like a nonfiction book. My publisher suggested the current title, World News from Waverley High, since the point of view character was a young reporter for the school paper. And she was not just looking at school news but given that the discussions in her Current History class covered the news of the day, her lens was far and wide. That new title stuck.

What's in a name?

Ironically, this is the very first sentence in my novel! And it has to do with protagonist Lena Rosen ruminating on the name of her high school, Waverley High. Why Waverley instead of Jefferson or Peabody, she asks. She looks at the root word, wave, and then she considers the definition itself: enchanting forests and rural countryside, all descriptions pointing to a peaceful, tranquil place. But that’s not the high school I’m writing about and Lena makes it very clear that this is no literal description of Waverley High. No forests or countryside, she shares, “but most of the time it is a haven, a steady respite from a lot of tumult out in the world.” So Waverley High is this place for teenagers like Lena who just want to be loved, to be seen, to fit in. And to be safe.

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

My teenage self would be shocked and thrilled to know that I returned to that state of mind and place of 1969 in a novel to be published more than five decades later. We inhabit our lives at each moment of our present experiences. In fiction—particularly the realistic fiction of World News from Waverley High—I got to inhabit that world again. While no single character reflects me or any of my then classmates, as a group they reflect all of us. And I am there, part of Lena and Jack and Derrick and Adam and…

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

I’ve written four novels, all different from one another so I find it tough to generalize. My second book is a novel in stories, so each chapter is one story that is part of a linked narrative, each with its own start and finish. Regardless of what I’m writing, when I nail my beginning, the narrative flows from there. I do an enormous amount of thinking about the story of my novel and, in general, I visualize the opening and the closing scene, or at least the point at which the story begins and the point in which it ends, and that allows me to journey freely with my characters along the way

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

A part of me lies in every character. How could it not? My life’s experience and my lens on the world meanders into the thinking and decisions that drive my characters’ words and actions, regardless of their gender or age. I inhabit each one of them, even minor characters, and unconsciously transmit myself into those who even appear to a reader to be a world apart from my personality.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

For my first novel, Tasa’s Song, I was filled with many mental pictures from my mother’s childhood in eastern Poland. My fictional character, Tasa, survives the Holocaust through music as a violin prodigy. While my writing was influenced by the classical music she would play or listen to, so did the two visual images, bookends really, that I held onto throughout the writing that helped me think of her entire coming-of-age journey: to begin, an image of her looking out her attic window at her tiny village of Podkamien, and to end, that image of the open sea on a ship heading for America.

A visual image also came into play in my fourth novel, World News from Waverley High, when I started writing: the block-long orange brick building of the high school with two floors of white- framed windows, along with what one would see and hear looking out those windows—buses arriving, cars letting students out, parents yelling after their kids not to forget their lunch, squeals of delight as teenagers reconnect after a long summer. But what really drove me as I wrote this story was the music of the Sixties, from “Everyday People” to “Spinning Wheel,” to “Give Peace a Chance.” I played the songs constantly, the lyrics helping me tell the story of that singular moment in American history when a diverse group of classmates forges friendships and debates over issues of race, politics, and belonging.

Visit Linda Kass's website.

Writers Read: Linda Kass (June 2026).

Writers Read: Linda Kass (July 2026).

Writers Read: Linda Kass (August 2026).

My Book, The Movie: World News from Waverley High.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sara Cooper

Sara Cooper is a novelist and an award-winning playwright-lyricist. She lives in New York with her husband John and their son Theo. Major awards include Richard Rodgers Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters (2022); ASCAP Foundation Lucille and Jack Yellen Award (2021); Grand Jury Prize, Barnstorm Media (2020); Jonathan Larson Grant, American Theatre Wing (2014).

Ravenous, her debut novel, was a Finalist for the 2025 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Ravenous is the word that I think best describes the story: our protagonist, Breigh, is ravenous for food, both because she's pregnant and because she is literally starving herself to stay thin while pregnant; she's ravenous for items, because she is a compulsive shopper and unboxer; she's ravenous because she is chronically, endlessly unfulfilled; the baby, who is a character, is ravenous because it's growing; and we are all ravenous because we, as consumers (willing or not), are trapped an endless loop of buying and overconsumption. It's a story about capitalism and what it does to our bodies and minds.

What's in a name?

I noticed a very specific trend: former classmates of mine, fellow elder millennials, who go by only their first and middle names on social media and who try to sell me things on Facebook. This really tickled me, and, thus, Breigh Marie was born.

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

Not very, I think. My work has always been weird and dark. My 9th grade English teacher made me stay after class one time because she was worried about me based on a short story I had written (it was just fiction, Mrs. M! But thank you for your concern!). So, yeah, this seems like the eventual course my fiction would take.

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

I actually tend to know both the beginning and the ending before I start to write. This is my first full-length novel, but I've spent my professional life to this point writing for theatre, and that's always been the way I work. I like to have an opening and closing image, and then I work from the outside in. I generally find myself rewriting the end a few times, but only to tighten it; the idea generally stays the same, and the it's the middle that gets the most rewriting structurally.

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

I am very, very, very different from Breigh. That being said, I suffered from fairly severe postpartum depression, so I understand and empathize with her very deeply.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Alt rock music from the 90s; that sound is at the core of my soul.

Visit Sara Cooper's website.

My Book, The Movie: Ravenous.

The Page 69 Test: Ravenous.

Writers Read: Sara Cooper.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kevin C. Morris

Kevin C. Morris's debut novel is Untamed Coast.

An engineer, writer, boater, pilot, entrepreneur, and occasional deckhand, he brings a lifelong curiosity about technology and the natural world to his storytelling.

Born and raised in Texas, Morris has made Portland, Oregon, his home for more than forty years, but spends his summers navigating the Inside Passage to Southeast Alaska—a rugged landscape that fuels both his adventures and his fiction.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Untamed Coast is set in the Alexander Archipelago of Southeast Alaska, and the setting is absolutely a main character. The story weaves three narratives across three timelines spanning eighty years, and the wild, magnificent, and dangerous place is the common thread connecting them all together. My working title was Radioville — the name of a remote island along the rugged coast where the lives of all the characters intersect.

In today’s publishing world, publishers decide titles, not authors. And as a result, titles are often more marketing devices than creative opportunities. I’m lucky to have a publisher who worked collaboratively (and exhaustively) with me to find a title that evoked the story and character of the book and was in line with my vision, while also checking the boxes on important marketing considerations such as genre appeal and target demographic expectations. As much as I was in love with Radioville, Untamed Coast does far more work setting reader expectations for a mystery/thriller in a wilderness adventure setting.

What's in a name?

For me, names are an opportunity to be creative, to encode hints about characters’ backgrounds or nature. My main character is Marconi “Marco” Franco. Marco is a grieving widower exploring the coast of SE Alaska in his boat Radio Flyer. He’s also got a lifelong passion for radio as an amateur radio enthusiast, and he is named after Guglielmo Marconi who developed the first wireless radios for transmitting Morse code. Morse code is a theme throughout the book, and I’ve even included little Easter eggs - Morse code chapter titles that readers can decipher. My female lead is Anya Baron, born and raised in SE Alaska, and a reluctant descendant of Alexander Baranov - a brutal Russian colonizer and first governor of Russian America.

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

My teenage-reader self was a science fiction and wilderness adventure nerd. My parents were both school teachers as well as private pilots, and we spent our summers exploring the western US and Canada in our pickup camper and flying light planes and boating across the Southwestern US. I carried that drive to travel and explore into my adult life, along with my passions for science, engineering, writing, and music. Untamed Coast is absolutely an expression of the interests I developed growing up. So, I think my teenage-reader self would be surprised if I hadn’t written this novel.

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

For me, the beginning is everything. I have a vision for my characters, and I put them in an environment and in a situation that uniquely challenges them. From that point on, it’s just gravity. What would that character do in this scenario, and then what would inevitably go wrong? So, the ending ultimately writes itself. But, as a writer we have the spectacularly fun superpower of time travel. Think a scene or an ending would be more exciting or interesting if something different had happened before? No problem, just slip back a few chapters and rewrite history. So, I feel the setup is everything. Get the perfect beginning and the roadmap from there to the end just unfolds like magic.

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

In Untamed Coast, Marco is definitely (and obviously) the character that most closely resembles me. In many ways, he’s just a “me” that was dealt a different set of life circumstances, and who deals with those in (mostly) ways that I’d realistically aspire to. But he’s got some pretty major flaws as well. Other characters are riffs on that idea, but with much more varied starting points. “What would I do if I were a woman in an abusive relationship with a commercial fisherman in SE Alaska?” Still others are amalgamations of characters I’ve known or heard stories of in my travels.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

There’s a pretty solid line from my passion for boating, exploring SE Alaska, wilderness, wildlife, food, and music to Untamed Coast.

There’s a scene in the book where Marco first learns about Radioville that is based almost exactly on my own real-world experience finding Radioville while traveling SE Alaska with my wife on our boat. I like to include as much of the real world in my writing as possible. I work to make the locations, the people, the technologies, the music, the food – everything I depict – as realistic as possible so that the story comes across as authentic, believable, and relatable.

Music, in particular, plays a key role. Untamed Coast weaves three timelines: 1938, 1984, and 2017. I wanted to make the transitions as clear and seamless as possible for the reader. One of the best tools for that was music. Each timeline features music of that era, played on technology of that era. The music selections tell us something about the characters as well, and the music selections usually relate directly to what is happening in the narrative at the time. I also am personally prone to earworms, and thought it would be fun to use music references to put a soundtrack in the reader’s mind as they read different sections of the book.

Visit Kevin C. Morris's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kate Westbury

Kate Westbury grew up a voracious reader of detective fiction, and unraveling plot twists became her favorite pastime. She now puts her whodunnit obsession to good use writing historical mysteries. Beyond the page, Westbury teaches Latin and dreams of moving to an English village with crimes to solve.

Her new novel is The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The original title for this story was A Tutorial in Murder. I loved that it was a play on words (i.e. the Oxford tutorial system), but it also sounds more like an actual midcentury mystery…which probably wouldn’t draw in as many contemporary readers. My agent suggested thinking of a new title, and my critique group helped me brainstorm The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies, which my publisher loved and kept. As much as I was fond of Tutorial, the new title also better conveys the humor and hijinks and hint of romance, and I’m glad for the switch.

What's in a name?

I can either name a character immediately or after tedious research. It’s important to me that they roll off the tongue easily and are slightly unique without sounding outlandish. For first names, I often consult baby name data from whatever year that character was born, and for surnames I look more closely at that part of the country. Sometimes I look at meanings for a tie-break if I’m waffling between options, but I tend not to rely upon those too much (especially for suspects’ names because I don’t want to tip off readers). Ginevra and Sidney both happened to be names I had loved and jotted down before starting this book, and they ticked the right boxes.

The Rook is the one name which did get chosen for symbolism since it’s a codename. I liked the double meanings (chess piece and bird), as allusions to his strategic, solitary, slightly taciturn persona.

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

Teenage Kate would be enthralled with this book. It is the product of so many things I’ve loved for decades, especially in high school (mysteries, Oxford, slow-burn romance, espionage). She would also be very excited (and relieved) because I tried writing my first mystery in high school and gave up in despair over plotting mechanics. What would probably shock her is that it took eight years of writing middle grade before switching to adult historical mystery, but that early frustration and overwhelm really left me wary of tackling the genre I loved so much again.

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

I find beginnings harder because there’s so many good places one could start a story, and settling on which one is the best takes so much trial and error for me. But it’s also really satisfying to see the first chapter come to life through the extra polishing and layers created in the process. I don’t have the same emotional connection to my endings, if only because less work goes into them.

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

Ginevra got my snark, and Sidney my tendency to overthink everything. That being said, in some ways I feel like I met these two rather than created them, and they are by far the loudest characters I’ve ever written and sometimes beyond my control. In this book, they frequently shifted the plot from my outline, and the results were always better than whatever I had planned.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I love to create an immersive experience when I’m drafting, and for this book that brought in a lot of photographs for a mood board and 1950s music in the background (Perry Como ended up a favorite). I also love to make a book-specific playlist with tracks pulled from different scores, and for Oxford Guide I found myself consistently drawn to Daniel Pemberton’s work. I’m also a huge fan of Masterpiece Mystery, and Endeavour certainly left its fingerprints on this book.

Visit Kate Westbury's website.

Q&A with Kate Westbury.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jeanne M. Dams

Jeanne M. Dams, an American, is a devout Anglophile who has wished she could live in England ever since her first visit in 1963. Fortunately, her alter ego, Dorothy Martin, can do just that. Dams lives in South Bend, Indiana, with a varying population of cats.

Her new Dorothy Martin mystery is A Thief's Folly.

My Q&A with the author:

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

A Thief’s Folly was not my title. Readers may not realize that titles are the prerogative of the publisher. My title, Deadly Treasure, says a good deal more about the subject of the book, which concerns an object of value in the home of a good friend of the protagonist, Dorothy Martin. Jane, the friend and neighbor, has suffered a stroke and is unable to talk well enough to tell Dorothy what she (Jane) wants Dorothy to find and hide. The search takes Dorothy and Alan to Paris and ends in a death and a criminal’s reform.

What’s in a name?

My protagonist, Dorothy Martin, is named after my favorite cousin. She’s been gone for a good many years now, but I loved her dearly. To me the name suggests solid Midwestern values. Like me and my cousin, character Dorothy is from Indiana, though now living in England, as I have for many years longed to do.

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

I think she would not be surprised at all. Even at that age I’d read Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes and loved the mystery genre, including the adventures of Freddy the Pig—look him up if you don’t know him!

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

Oh, beginnings are easy! All I know when I begin is the setting and a very rough idea about the plot. I knew, for example, that Folly would feature Jane, and would be about values, what really matters. For the rest, I let the characters take over and do what they will. That may sound idiotic, but it works for me. If I get too far ahead of them and start having ideas about the ending, they firmly pull me back into control. If that sounds weird, I admit that it is, and I have no explanation of how they, creatures of my own mind, take on life and ideas of their own.

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

That’s easy: Dorothy Martin is me. Is I? Anyway, her ideas and attitudes, her background and opinions, are entirely mine. Friends say when they read her dialogue, they hear me speaking. The other characters have some things in common with me, but not a lot. Nor are they based on real people I know.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

My books are full of references to music and art that I love, but I don’t think they influence my writing much, except insofar as they have influenced me over the years and helped form my, i.e. Dorothy’s, character. Certainly my faith has influenced every aspect of my persona, including my writing.

Visit Jeanne M. Dams's website.

Writers Read: Jeanne M. Dams.

--Marshal Zeringue

Barbara O'Neal

Barbara O’Neal is the author of more than a dozen award-winning, bestselling novels, including the runaway bestseller, When We Believed in Mermaids, which has been published in 21 countries and spent many months on both the most sold and most read Amazon Charts, as well as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Washington Post bestseller lists. O’Neal is an avid traveler and passionate cook, and discovered the Oregon coast on a pandemic-era trip with her husband. She now lives on that rocky, moody coast in a quirky beach house and writes her books from a room overlooking the sea. She lives with her British husband, who has promised to never lose his accent, and their cats and dogs.

O’Neal's new novel is A Thousand Painted Hours.

My Q&A with the author:

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

It's certainly not direct, as some of my titles have been. This one is more lyrical, speaking to time and hope and place.

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

I love this question!!! My teenage self would be thrilled by this novel--it's the kind of big, sweeping book that qualified as The Real Thing when I was that age. Teenage me was already writing novels, so to find out we actually did it, and did it for an entire career, would be major. I think she'd cry tears of joy.

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

Oh, beginnings are much, much harder. Beginnings are like searching for the hidden path to a magic city, and I take a lot of wrong turns before I finally find the right opening. By the time I get to the end of a book, know where I'm going, what issues need to be resolved and who has to change, so driving toward that satisfying end is often a hectic, heated sprint. Sometimes, I leave the very last scene to write the day before I mail it, when I've gone through the manuscript one more time and can clearly see everything it had to say and where the grace note might be. A great grace note is what lingers with readers for a long time.

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 lot of us in most of the characters we produce. Elsie is an artist, and hungry to serve that work at a fairly high cost. She's adventurous and passionate and yet she also really loves the people in her world. I think I am all of those things, and I also am a most passionate letter-writer!

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Everything! Everything! The weather and clouds, the forces of history, repeating and repeating, deep conversations, stumbling over strange facts, and travel for sure. I didn't realize how much I relied on travel for inspiration and keeping my mind fresh until I couldn't go anywhere during the pandemic. It's was illuminating, and I let myself claim it as something that's as much a part of me as the work itself. I will also say that movies influence me heavily. I love them and watch them, some ten times or more. (The English Patient probably planted a few seeds for this book.)

Visit Barbara O'Neal's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Thousand Painted Hours.

The Page 69 Test: A Thousand Painted Hours.

Writers Read: Barbara O'Neal.

--Marshal Zeringue

Meg Elison

Meg Elison is an author and essayist. She writes science fiction and horror, as well as feminist essays and cultural criticism. She has been published in McSweeney’s, Slate, Fangoria, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, and many other places.

Her debut novel, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife won the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award. Her novelette, The Pill won the 2021 Locus Award. She is a Hugo, Nebula, and Sturgeon Awards finalist. She has been an Otherwise Award honoree twice. Her YA debut, Find Layla, was named one of Vanity Fair's Best 15 Books of 2020.

Elison is a high school dropout and a graduate of UC Berkeley. She lives in the Berkshires.

Her new novel is Foundling Fathers.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The phrase "founding fathers" is so ingrained in our culture that a play on it seemed inevitable. I love the word "foundling" meaning orphan, meaning a child found on a doorstep or in a basket of woven rushes. Combining the familiar, powerful idea of the founders with a term that indicates some kids on their own was irresistible. It shapes expectations of the book by telling you right off that these characters aren't the legendary men you're expecting; they're vulnerable. And it's a set of words you think you know, but it makes you do a double take.

What's in a name?

I love giving a character a name that carries specific meaning that's so obvious that it's right under your nose and you might still miss it. Not must leeway on the names of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Ben Franklin, so I thought hard about what to name their mother. First off: what do you name a virginal, utterly ideal mother besides Mary? To the boys, she's Mary Libertas: the straightforward word for and goddess of liberty in Latin. The folks who gave her this name are exactly that: obvious, obsessed with the classics, and uninventive. On her government ID, however, she's Mary Himmel. Himmel is the German word for heaven, and it also raises the specter of a Jewish identity for her. Since I'm writing about a group of people who both revere and revile Jewish identity, this was the perfect level of ambiguity. How do people obsessed with genes count the inheritance of IVF babies born of a Jewish surrogate? The answer stinks to high heaven.

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

My teenage self would first of all be thrilled that I'm a novelist at all. But this wasn't what I wanted to write at that age. I imagined myself a horror author for a long time. However, my teenage self also loved The Boys from Brazil and Jurassic Park, so if I placed it in context I know she'd be pleased to know we're writing science fiction.

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

Beginning usually come to me easy, and I'm always gratified to see the world through the hole in the paper, as Stephen King put it. If I don't have a beginning, I don't begin. Endings are spectacularly hard. They don't feel good until they're right, and the path to what's right for a story (if you've done it right) is narrow. I sweat endings harder than any other part of the book, and I am much more likely to change the ending than the beginning. Sometimes I'll rewrite a beginning after I've finished, but only because the tone or register has changed. The opening image is the same, every time.

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

This book saw me writing a lot of people who I don't like, so I had to find ways to relate to them. I can admire someone's tenacity and the courage of their convctions while also understanding that their convictions are dogshit. It's also really fun to write satire about hypocrites who ignore all evidence to keep trying to create a world that will never work the way they want it to. That connects to my sense of humor, which is powered on an ongoing basis by the absurdity of this age and my misfortune to experience it.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Music is hugely influential on my work, and I make a playlist for each of my books. I also love visiting museums to get out of my own head and look at things in a different way. When I was working on Foundling Fathers, I was inundated with memes and works of art featuring the founders, because everyone knew I was working on something thematic. When I'm on my own, I like artists who manipulate the senses in an overt way, like James Turrell. It makes me really consider my perspective as the active player in the game. It's a great exercise for an author.

Visit Meg Elison's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Maria Malone

Born in the North-East of England, Maria Malone worked in print journalism and television news and features. She has written TV companion books, ghosted celebrity autobiographies, and is a former Yorkshire Press Awards Journalist of the Year and Feature Writer of the Year.

Malone's new Wren & Wilson mystery is Killing in the Countryside (UK title: Poison and Peacocks in the Dales).

My Q&A with the author:

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

Coming up with the title is not my strongest point and my books have different titles in the UK and the US, which makes it even trickier. Left to my own devices, poison and/or peacocks would feature in the title, since they’re central to the story – how it begins, develops and ends. However, I appreciate the title has to work in its territory.

I was asked by the publisher to submit suggestions and among my offerings was A Poisonous Affair in the Countryside. Killing in the Countryside was their preference. It’s not easy, I think, to find something that captures the quirky, slightly eccentric British core of the book for American readers.

The fictional town of Heft is a strange little corner of the Yorkshire Dales, in the habit of wrong-footing the local law enforcement, Sergeant Ali Wren and her springer spaniel partner, Officer Wilson. I hope the character of the place and its people somehow comes across.

In its favour, the title is straightforward – I mean, there is killing and the book is set in the countryside...

What's in a name?

My main characters are Sergeant Ali Wren and her dog, Officer Wilson. The names are important to me, and I spent time thinking about what would work. As the book is part of a series, the names of the principals had to work well together, and I felt ‘A Wren and Wilson Mystery’ had something about it.

Anyone reading the books will be aware of the many bird references throughout. I love birds, at home in the north-east of England, our garden has so much bird life. If you ever feel low, I recommend sitting and watching birds. The wren is a tiny bird, not in the least showy, but it knows how to make itself heard – it has a striking call. Like the wren, Ali is good at finding a way of cutting through and being heard. Her name seems to suit her.

As for Wilson, he is named after a footballer, Callum Wilson, a one-time forward for Newcastle United, the team I support. Wilson is a significant name in the club’s history – fourteen Wilsons, more than any other surname, have featured since 1892. I hadn’t before encountered a dog named Wilson and it felt proper, distinguished, perfect for a heroic service animal.

I named my fictitious town Heft because it felt appropriate to Yorkshire and its character. Best of all, it allowed me to come up with a local bakery speciality – a pie called the Hooley Heft.

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

Very, is the short answer. My favourite novel in high school was The Catcher in the Rye, a recommendation from my English teacher, Mr Rigby, a man never seen without his head buried in a book, even when walking the corridors of the school, forcing students to press themselves against the wall to allow him to pass without having to watch where he was going. For a while, I was slightly obsessed with Holden Caulfield and the phonies. I was also very taken with Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s The Little Prince, an absolute classic. Probably my favourite book of all time.

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

The beginning is much harder for me. I spend ages thinking about it and tweaking what I’ve written. The opening of the first Wren and Wilson novel, Death in the Countryside begins, ‘One of life’s little tricks, Ali suspected. You got the thing you wanted only to find it wasn’t quite what you were expecting.’ That felt just right for a police officer returning to her hometown with all kinds of preconceptions only to find the reality nothing like she’d imagined.

The ending seems to take care of itself. I don’t plot in any detail, rather I write and see where it takes me. Obviously, I’ve a rough sense of where the story is going but not how it will get there or how it’s going to end.

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, inevitably, there are elements of me in Ali. I lived and worked in Yorkshire for many years, so my experience of the region, the lovely countryside of the Dales is there. I wrote the first Wren and Wilson Mystery soon after moving back to my native north-east from Yorkshire and inevitably my feelings about coming home are an influence.

Ali’s relationship with Wilson stems from the one I had with my dog, Nell, a West Highland White Terrier. And the walks Ali does are rooted in ones I’ve done, some in Yorkshire, others in Northumberland and Cornwall.

Like Ali, I’m willing to work all hours to get the job done to the best of my ability. I’ll also go the extra mile. I love that Ali is prepared to deal with the ‘non-crimes’ in Heft to keep the peace and that when she investigates the disappearance of a woman whose husband is utterly inept on the domestic front she takes pity, cooking for him, even doing his ironing.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

The starting point for Killing in the Countryside was the village in Cornwall where my sister Kathleen lives. Peacocks freely roam the streets there and often show up in her garden expecting to be fed (which they are). The birds are magnificent and loud and bossy. It’s breathtaking to be able to see them close up.

Driving through the village, it’s not unusual to find one or more of these extraordinary creatures strutting along the road. Really, they’re in charge. The book is dedicated to Kathleen with my gratitude.

My late parents, who loved reading and encouraged me to write, were an inspiration, a major influence. They still are.

Visit Maria Malone's website.

Writers Read: Maria Malone (August 2025).

Writers Read: Maria Malone.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lisa Roe

Lisa Roe graduated from the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and spent many years as an advertising creative director and copywriter in New York City before she accepted the tougher job of stay-at-home mom and turned to writing fiction—mostly to entertain her kids, but then to tell her own stories. A classic first born, reluctant empty nester, and Dr. Doolittle wannabe, Roe lives in New Jersey with her husband, David and three incorrigible dogs. Big & Lily is her second novel.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Big & Lily is the story of two very different, but very codependent sisters, Bridget (Big) Ackerman-Petty and Lily Ackerman who accidently sign up for an extreme Alaskan adventure. Choosing to use just the sisters’ names as the title draws focus to the most important aspect of the book—the sisters’ relationship. In addition, by using Bridget’s nickname “Big” (short for Big Sister), readers will quickly understand the key theme of the story—the exploration birth order theory (a fascination of mine, being a big sister myself) and its role in each of the women’s lives. Big & Lily is also a play on Big & Little, which further brings the point home.

When I first started drafting the book, my working title was Big and Lily Come to a Fork, but I soon realized that while it was clever—the sisters come to a fork both in their relationship and literally on the trail—the succinct two-name title tells readers what they need to know; this is a story of sibling love and rivalry and about how two sisters can sometimes want to kill each other but would also die for each other any day of the week.  

What's in a name?

Bridget is called “Big” throughout the book by her sister because even though they are adults, it was Lily’s childhood nickname for her. Lily was born when Bridget was eight, and just after her parents split up, sending her mother into a depression. As the eldest daughter, Bridget was tasked with filling in the maternal gaps. “Go to your Big Sister,” their mother would say. And so, when Lily could talk, she called Bridget “Big Sister,” then “Big Sis,” and finally just “Big.” And because even as an adult, Big continued to fill in the maternal gaps in Lily’s life, the name stuck.

The younger sister was originally named Lily because it sounds like Little and worked perfectly for the title. But it also conjures thoughts of a beautiful, carefree woman. And so she is, at least in her sister’s eyes.

Bridget is sandwiched between her grown kids still sleeping in their childhood bedrooms, a husband at loose ends after his recent retirement, her “challenging” mother encamped in a Granny Pod in the backyard, and an adult sister who still needs to be chased after. With all that on her plate, she doesn’t have a minute to figure out what she wants out of life.

To her, Lily has a charmed life; she’s a beauty with a handsome husband, a thriving business, no responsibilities, not a care in the world.

But Lily sees it differently; more than anything she wants the kids, the long marriage, and the “white picket fence” the life her Big Sister’s has. It’s not until they get to Alaska that they realize they are seeing each other through rose colored glasses. Now, out in the rugged terrain, with wild animals, and physical challenges, they must shake off the lifelong labels of the Big and Little sister and learn to overcome their issues and reconcile their differences if they are going to survive the wilderness, and each other.  

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

I always start a story with a basic idea for a plot. What is the story about? In the case of Big & Lily, two sisters take a trip to Alaska. Then I ask myself, what does the main character (or in this case, the two main characters) want? I knew one sister wanted to get lost as far away from home as possible. And the other wanted to get away and find herself.

Then I ask myself, how do I make it as hard as possible for my characters to get what they want? As Vladimir Nabokov said, “The writer's job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.” For Bridget and Lily there were endless emotional and physical obstacles (wild animals, treacherous trails, outdoor plumbing) to navigate in Alaska.

All to say, I always know how my stories begin and more times than not, the start of the story stays set. In addition, I like to have a general idea of which rocks to throw (aka, the middle of the book) but I do spend time figuring out how the characters are going to get out of the tree in a way that will be a satisfying ending to them, me, and my readers. Although when drafting a book anything can change (that’s the beauty and fun of writing)!  

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

As a Big Sister myself, I’ve always been fascinated with birth order theory and the more recent conversations around Eldest Daughter Syndrome. I’m a classic firstborn: in- charge, organized, goal-oriented, and reliable, with a skosh of perfectionism and a dash of anxiety. I wanted to write a story that let me delve deeper into the subject. I created Bridget so she could do the work for me. I let her figure out whether being a second mother to her little sister was a lifelong commitment and whether she could rewrite her narrative if the one she’d carried with her all her life no longer suited her.

Visit Lisa Roe's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jon St. Denis

Jon St. Denis (pseudonym for J. Sydney Jones) is a former journalist in Europe, filing stories from Austria, Italy, France, Greece, and Ireland. Formerly a college professor in California, St. Denis writes compelling historical mysteries with thriller and international espionage elements.

St. Denis's new novel is Killer Art.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Titles are always hard for me. Not hard to come up with, but hard to weed and finally come up with the right one. Killer Art was no different.

I am reluctant to list its initial title—so utterly bland, so non-descriptive.

Pictures at an Exhibition.

See what I mean? I just could not come up with something more specific, and besides, the music to that Mussorgsky piece sticks with me. So guilty twice: bland, non-helpful title plus plagiarism (though titles do not have copyright—in which case, why didn’t I just call it War and Peace?)

I stuck with that bland title for several months, opening the file daily to those dreary words at the top of the MS. Adding a tweak here and there to the body, wondering why it was so hard to sell this one.

Then it just came to me, something with more zip that could actually give the reader an idea what the book is actually about.

Killer Art.

Using ‘killer’ in its double meaning. Good art and literally deadly art. Which is at the very center of the novel, Killer Art. Once I was there, I also toyed with Art to Die For, but…

I immediately felt that this new title could give readers a better idea about what the novel is about, where it’s going. And publishers clearly felt so, as well. Repackaged with a new title, Killer Art sold within a couple of weeks. It didn’t hurt the book also has an AI angle to it.

What's in a name?

My protagonists in Killer Art are a youngish couple, the guy Anglo, the woman of Chinese ancestry. I wanted the male to be a largish nice guy, with professional chops as a former journalist for the New York Times. I’ve always liked the name Sam, very down-to-earth. And I gave him a family name that is a bit more distinctive: Worthing. He’s worthy, valued. My female protagonist has a first name that sounds a bit different, maybe even foreign, Vika, though she was born and raised in the US. Last name of Chen, to make it clear of heritage. And she is as equally talented as Sam, one of the youngest ever curators at MoMA.

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

My teenage self would be absolutely dumbfounded by my novel, and by my chosen career. My teenage self played golf and football, and opened books only for school reading. I was a good student, but I was not a reader. At all. When I wanted entertainment, I turned on the tube. My current self is still a bit dumbfounded at my choice of career.

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

Beginnings, for sure. Many years ago, I was what people call a pantser. Flew by the seat of my pants. No outlines. Let inspiration reign. I enjoyed the sudden inspirations that came as a book developed organically and originally in first draft. But that sort of flying blind does have drawbacks, such as completing a damn book. I am in the plotter camp now, so I know where the book is going. I can build creative juice for each new daily installment. I know how it will end. But beginnings now are hard for me as I want to draw readers in immediately. I need to create a sense of urgency or wonder or at least interest. And that sort of takes the pantser mentality. Every book is its own animal and there are no recipes to follow.

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

Actually, I was going to mention this above under the What’s In a Name question. Killer Art has a couple at the center that is somewhat drawn from my own life, a first for me. Sam has a bit of me in him, while Vika more than a bit of my wife in her.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I take inspiration wherever I can get it. With some works, such as my Viennese Mysteries series, it was most definitely history and the city of Vienna itself that inspired me. At other times I might read some news that acts as a trigger. Music helps, but as a daily inspiration, not for the entire arc of a novel. Killer Art was inspired by some of my own teaching experiences both in Europe and the US, and also by the rise of AI, of which I must admit I am no great fan. Here, AI- generated artworks are at the center of the murder mystery.

Visit Jon St. Denis's website.

The Page 69 Test: Killer Art.

Writers Read: Jon St. Denis.

--Marshal Zeringue