From her Q & A with Sarah Miller at The Hairpin:So. I should disclose that I was a student of yours at Amherst–and, let’s be honest, your favorite. Moving on! Now. Did you sit down and say, "I'm going to write a book about a gay couple, who raise the children of one of the men's identical twin brothers in the Pioneer Valley, after that brother and his wife are killed in a terrorist bombing in Israel during the second Intifada?" and that's what happened? Or did it grow out of another idea?Visit Judith Frank's website.
I started with the twin brother and his wife being killed in a terrorist bombing (my twin sister in Israel loves this). Then I thought about how to challenge the gay brother and his partner to the max, and decided to bring two grieving children into the mix.
Once I had the premise, it didn't change–I just had to decide where to go from there. And I was aware that starting a novel with a terrorist attack was going to be challenging, because in terms of building a plot, where on earth do you go from there?
Your identical twin sister has been a good sport about your story?
She has been extremely good natured from the start about my killing off the twin. It helps that it's fiction, and it helps that these characters are men. But...[read on]
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--Marshal Zeringue