Laird Barron

Laird Barron, an expat Alaskan, is the author of several books, including The Imago Sequence and Other Stories; Swift to Chase; and Blood Standard. Currently, Barron lives in the Rondout Valley of New York State and is at work on tales about the evil that men do.

His new novel is Worse Angels.

My Q&A with the author:

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

So much depends upon the title; it’s a load-bearing structure. I’ve always thought so, probably because I concentrated upon poetry early in my development as a writer.

I provided the publisher with a list of alternatives to the working title; I won’t tell you what it was because writers are magpies. Worse Angels is the one the Putnam team chose. It does the job—protagonist Isaiah Coleridge has a dark past as an enforcer for the Chicago Outfit. Now he’s out and carving his own destiny. A man of contradictions, in no small part due to the fact various powers vie to influence, if not outright control him. He’s constantly pulled in one direction or another. Seeking a more righteous path, he endeavors to heed his better angels. In this instance, looking into the suspicious death of a young security officer at a stalled supercollider site. The problem is, as sinister forces impede the investigation, his darker angels have their own ideas about the manner and methods with which he should conduct himself. After all, what are our worse angels but demons?

What's in a name?

I collect names. I snatch them from movie credits and album jackets, and the masts of magazines. They go into a little folder on my computer alongside a collection of titles neck-high to a giraffe. I try to deploy them in unexpected and/or subtle ways. Sometimes it’s just a matter of enjoying the sound one makes rolling off the tongue; on other occasions, the name might imply a deeper meaning or be intended to excite a particular response in the reader. Occasionally, I lend a striking name to a relatively minor character. Why? Because I’m belligerent.

Worse Angels is chapter three in the saga of Isaiah Coleridge, which means I’ve had well over a quarter million words to develop a narrative worthy of the name. The initial process cost me a few sleepless nights and plenty of second-guessing. I wanted a strong, potent name; it also needed to derive believably from what his parents might’ve chosen. Isaiah is ancient and evocative of religious imagery. He’s not a prophet, yet occasionally experiences visions and dreams that flirt with precognition. The Coleridge surname is suggestive of the earth and also bursting from the earth due to tectonic pressure. The name is inextricably bound to the legendary poet and his Rime of the Ancient Mariner—a poem illustrative of evils both mundane and supernatural, and of curses, and comeuppance. Precisely the ingredients I wished to add to the mix of noir and mystery.

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

He’d be taken aback that his future self isn’t writing epic fantasy or baroque space opera. That kid loved crime and thrillers. He devoured westerns and pulp adventure fiction. Teenage Laird would marvel at old man Laird’s restraint in regard to vocabulary and outré elements. But he’d understand, on some level, what a long, tortuous, often thankless, path he was rooted to. He’d look back at the three novels and the hundreds of thousands of words he’d already crammed into a mountain of college-ruled notebooks, and spit a curse. How am I supposed to get there? Are my fingers going to fall off? Then he’d keep moving. All I can say is, I’m sorry, kid.

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

One thing I’ve learned after twenty years, if you’re doing it correctly it’s all of a piece and that includes the degree of difficulty. It’s almost always the same process for me—a big, convoluted Gordian knot that I chop away at until it becomes manageable or I give up.

The beginning and the end of Worse Angels came to me in dreams and at moments of sinking into sleep. The opening was a bit more fully formed. I clearly saw Coleridge and his pal Lionel in the woods with the moon shining bright as a crimson glitter ball and them digging a hole while Johnny Cash sang on the radio of Lionel’s Monte Carlo. Burying something or somebody. I was fortunate that the ending suggested itself before I got there. It coalesced as a logical conclusion to the chain of events, not only in this novel, but the two previous.

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

Coleridge and I share a few superficial characteristics because I thought it would make him easier to manage at the outset. The less heavy lifting required of my imagination, the better. So, we’re from Alaska, we enjoy boxing and the classics, and we moved to the Mid-Hudson and live near the Catskills. We share an affinity for dogs. I’ve never worked for the Chicago Outfit. I’d make a lousy private eye; the minute people started shooting at me to warn me off a case, I’d probably take the hint.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

As it happens, the majority of my inspiration, the grist for the mill, derives from music, art, and non-fiction. I write to music—in 2020 I’m still listening to 1980s pop rock, such as Blue Oyster Cult, The Police, Men at Work, and so on. I also love contemporary, trippy stuff like Lustmord, Blind Lake, and Vitskär Süden.

Watching artists paint or sculpt provides a cross-disciplinary sustenance. Same idea with listening to musicians and producers describe how they craft albums. It’s not always directly applicable to my own method of building a novel or a collection, and yet there’s always something to be gleaned.

Visit Laird Barron's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

T.R. Ragan

T.R. Ragan (Theresa Ragan) is a New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. Her exciting Lizzy Gardner series: Abducted, Dead Weight, A Dark Mind, Obsessed, Almost Dead, and Evil Never Dies, has received tremendous praise. In August 2015 Evil Never Dies hit #7 on the Wall Street Journal bestselling list. Since publishing in 2011, she has sold over three million books and has been mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, the L.A. Times, PC Magazine, Huffington Post, and Publishers Weekly.

Ragan grew up in a family of five girls in Lafayette, California. An avid traveler, her wanderings have carried her to Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, China, Thailand, and Nepal, where she narrowly survived being chased by a killer elephant.

Her new novel is Don't Make a Sound.

My Q&A with the author:

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

High Anxiety was the original title for Don’t Make a Sound, but it didn’t make the cut. This was one of the few times I’ve had a difficult time coming up with an alternative title. In the end, Don’t Make a Sound worked well since it has as much meaning for the protagonist as it does the antagonist.

What's in a name?

I find it difficult to come up with just the right name for each of my protagonists. The name must represent strength and warmth in equal measure. The name must roll easily off my tongue. A well-chosen name can help make a character come alive as I write.

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

My teenage self would be shocked to see that my future self wrote a novel. My teenage self was shy and quiet and did everything possible to not stand out. She wanted to be invisible because the world was a scary place. I would hope that the novels would inspire and empower that person to become stronger sooner.

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

Endings are much easier for me to write, whether it’s the last chapter in a novel or the last book in a series. By the end of a novel, not only do I know my characters inside and out, I know my plot. More often than not, I know how my story will end before I start writing. Once or twice I wrote the ending before I started writing Chapter One.

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

Every protagonist I write has a piece of me in him or her. I want fairness and justice in the world, and my characters want that too. Within the pages I write, I get justice. As I mentioned before, I was quite shy growing up, which I believe made me an easy target for predators. My shyness led to fear, and later, to anger. It wasn’t until my early thirties that I found a way to let go of my anger and fear, not only through the books I read, but through the books I wrote. My characters could say and do things that I could not. With every book I wrote, I grew stronger. I no longer live in fear. Just like my characters, I can do anything I set my mind to.

Visit T.R. Ragan's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eve Yohalem

After training as an opera singer, Eve Yohalem moved into the literary world first as an editorial assistant, then as the publisher of a website, then as an author of two books for young readers. She lives in New York with her husband, their two children, and pets.

Her new novel is The Truth According to Blue.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The title is catchy, but the picture on the book jacket tells the story: two girls and a dog on a dock, scanning the water, a sunken ship beneath them. Summer fun! Adventure! Mystery! Well, yes, that’s all in the book (or at least I hope so). But Blue has type 1 diabetes, and Otis is a service dog as well as a beloved pet. If you look closely, you’ll see Otis is bowing down, which is how he alerts Blue that her blood sugar is low. He isn’t playing; he’s telling her she needs to stop whatever she’s doing and deal with it. As Blue says, Otis saves her life every day.

What's in a name?

Blue’s full name is Bluebell. I picked the name because it’s memorable and unusual and because it conveys backstory—Blue’s mother is a gardener. I also picked the name because it allowed me to write the line, “My mom named me Bluebell for her favorite flower. Since I’m not a dairy cow, I go by Blue.”

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

My teenage self would be very surprised by my novel since my teenage self wanted to be an opera singer. But teenage me wouldn’t be surprised by the characters in my novel. My sister was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when she was thirteen and I was eight, so I don’t remember a time when the disease wasn’t part of my life. Also, I’ve always loved dogs, especially German shepherds.

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

I usually find beginnings harder to write than endings, because by the time I get to the end, I’ve usually figured out where the story is headed. But with Blue, I knew the opening right away. From the moment I got the idea for the novel, I heard Blue’s voice saying “True Fact: Hundreds of years ago, a wooden ship with square sails and a cargo of gold sank near a tiny island off New York. It’s still there today.”

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 wrote my first novel, my sister said the protagonist sounded exactly like thirteen-year-old me. With Blue, my best friend said she sounds just like my daughter. That feels like progress to me!

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

My sister, for diabetes. My friends’ dogs since I can’t have one of my own (my husband is allergic). The movie Parent Trap, for the growing friendship between two kids who initially hate each other. The Master and Commander series by Patrick O’Brian for all things seafaring.

Visit Eve Yohalem's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Debra Bokur

Debra Bokur is an author, journalist, editor, screenwriter, and illustrator. Her work has appeared in a variety of domestic and international media outlets, including National Geographic Traveler, Islands, Spa Magazine, Experience Life Magazine, Natural Home, Yoga Journal, Global Traveler, and Women’s Adventure. She is a recipient of the 2015 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award.

Bokur's new novel is The Fire Thief.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Titles are often why I purchase a book (and usually a guarantee of why I’ll choose an ice cream flavor). I wanted my book title to convey a sense of darkness and mystery. I think The Fire Thief suggests both those things, while hopefully offering an intriguing hook—how does someone steal fire? My working title had been Stealing Fire, but that became refined during the process of writing.

What's in a name?

Names! I go down rabbit holes when it comes to naming characters. Choosing a name for my Hawaiian detective, who also happens to be a kahu, or spiritual leader, was a struggle. I finally settled on Kali, but only after much deliberation. In the end, it was because the commonly accepted Hawaiian definition of the name is “someone who hesitates,” while in Hindu legend, the name refers to a powerful, dark goddess. There’s also a Greek translation, where the name means “rosebud.” I liked this weird mix of meanings, because she’s complicated and layered, and all of those qualities can be found in her personality, from the gentleness of a rosebud and the ferocity of an angry goddess to the simple human quality of hesitating.

When I settled on the surname for her uncle, Police Captain Walter Alaka’i, it was because Alaka’i translates to “leader.” He’s an older family member with many more years of experience as a policeman than Kali has as a detective, and it seemed fitting; particularly given that elder members of traditional Hawaiian families are treated with respect. His first name, Walter, is the result of having known several Walters during my life; all of them were strong, trustworthy, reliable people.

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

My teenage self would hardly be surprised that I’d written a mystery novel, but maybe disappointed that it didn’t feature horses, crumbling mansions or an English village. I love those types of mysteries, but I think maybe writing them would spoil some of the pleasure and escapism for me as a reader and fan of that particular niche.

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

Writing the beginnings and endings are the easiest part of the process for me, perhaps because I start with a one-sentence thought in my head: Because X happens, it will ultimately result in Y taking place. I want to both set a mood very quickly, and drive toward a final thought. It’s all that stuff in the middle that’s the challenge.

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

Well, it’s yes and no when it comes to similarities. My lead detective practices yoga, has long hair, and shares her world with a large, part-Weimaraner dog, all of which apply to me, but that’s pretty much it. I don’t run (she does), drink coffee (never! I’m a tea addict), or have any tattoos. And physically, we’re nothing alike—I’m a short brunette with green eyes. Unlike Kali, I’m pretty disciplined about my eating habits (organic, mostly vegetarian foods), so our shopping lists would have nothing in common. I did have a Jeep with a persnickety transmission once upon a time, however, and I do prefer solitary endeavors to group pursuits. Like Kali, nature is a huge component of my life. I’ve lived in plenty of cities, including New York, Washington DC, and Edinburgh, and it doesn’t suit me—much like my detective, I need forests and wild pathways to feel whole and happy.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I’d say travel and music have been the most important non-literary influences in my work. I use music to put myself into a particular mental space. For The Fire Thief, it was Hawaiian music and nature sounds; for poetry and magical realism, it’s often classical music or a total immersion into Sigur Ros’s body of work. I believe that rhythm is an essential component of good writing, and music teaches this, along with how to organize many parts into a cohesive whole. I think that may happen naturally and subconsciously if music is playing in the background while writing.

Also, I’ve traveled for my day job as a magazine editor and journalist for over thirty years, with periods that have required up to three international trips in a single month. That’s provided me with a truly wonderful opportunity to see the world, and to be exposed to a huge variety of cultures, traditions, foods, architecture and styles. It’s also been great for allowing me to indulge in two of my favorite creative pursuits: filling notebooks by hand while on trains and planes, and observing people. I have a favorite pastime whenever I’m on assignment: I make it a point to start the day early in a café local to the destination. Armed with a pot of tea, a plate of croissants, and my notebook, I watch how people interact, how they dress and move, how they commute, what they order off the menu. This habit helps, I believe, in creating fictional characters who feel authentic and individual.

Visit Debra Bokur's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lexie Bean

Lexie Bean is a queer and trans multimedia artist from the Midwest whose work revolves around themes of bodies, homes, cyclical violence, and LGBTQIA+ identity. Bean is a Lambda Literary Award Finalist and passionate about creating honest and complex trans narratives that “transition and grow” alongside them. Their writing has been featured in Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, The Feminist Wire, Ms. Magazine, Them, Logo’s New Now Next, Bust Magazine, Autostraddle, and more. The Ship We Built is their debut novel supported with residencies at the Sundress Academy, Paragraph New York, and the Santa Cruz Bookshop.

My Q&A with the author:

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

My novel is called The Ship We Built in homage with the refrigerator box Rowan, the narrator and protagonist, guards and reimagines throughout the text. The box is both a literal box and "the box" society offers for all portions of identity, namely gender and sexuality. He draws on the box, punches holes in it, moves it between homes, calls it a "time machine," a "ship." It's up to him to reinvent the box he has been given. He is given the same challenge as a young, queer trans boy in a working class community.

It's also entitled The Ship We Built because of Rowan's understanding of ways he's allowed to connect to others - especially to girls. When Rowan develops feelings for a girl, Rowan does not think it can be "a crush" because crushes, and ultimately relationships, are only supposed to be with boys. At the same time, Rowan knows deep down that this connection with a girl in class is not a friendship either. Therefore, it's not quite a friendship or a relationship, it's a "ship." Like the box, something they have to discover the name and meaning of on their own.

What's in a name?

Each chapter in The Ship We Built is a letter attached to a balloon - a letter that is a lonely effort to befriend anyone who finds the letter. Throughout the book, Rowan tries on many names to close different letters, and even homework assignments, until he finds the name Rowan. This includes both socially gendered and gender-neutral names. But even after finding a name that he resonates with - he fears becoming unlovable because of his "choice." He ends his letters with Ellie, his birth name, when he is feeling small or like a burden to others. He closes his letters with Rowan on days he's better able to step into his own power.

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

At that age, I never thought in a million years I would fill more than 200 pages with my thoughts, let alone share the most vulnerable pieces of myself through such a public forum. The only creative writing I had done at that age was suicide notes and Myspace surveys. I wrote one or two very abstract poems, which ultimately ended up folded away in my top desk drawer.

At the same time, I think I would have really benefited from reading this book as a teenager - even if it's from a 10 year old perspective. There were many holes for representation, and what felt familiar was dramatized in the media to a point where I couldn't connect in the way I needed to.

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

The ending was incredibly hard. In the case of this book, I once thought two chapters before was the ending. Then I thought the second to last chapter was the ending. Then I found the last chapter, and left it there. This intimate writing is ultimately somebody's life - and an extension of my own. I had to pick a day for Rowan's story to end on. Had I ended it a day later or a few days later, it would have been completely different.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I didn't read very much growing up, so truthfully I found most of my inspiration elsewhere. The biggest is simply lived experience. The second would be the visual collages I made when putting together this book. I found that exportation to be especially helpful for a character who doesn't always have the words for his experiences. After that, many, many playlists, writing with crayons and gel pen, and looking a maps (including what the maps choose not to include).

Visit Lexie Bean's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Natalie Jenner

Natalie Jenner was born in England and emigrated to Canada as a young child. She obtained her B.A. from the University of Toronto’s St. Michael’s College where she was the 1990 Gold Medalist in English Literature, her LL.B. from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law, and was Called to the Bar of Ontario in 1995. In addition to a brief career as a corporate lawyer, Jenner has worked as a recruiter, career coach, and consultant to leading law firms in Canada for over twenty years.

Most recently she founded the independent bookstore Archetype Books in Oakville, Ontario, where she lives with her family and two rescue dogs.

Jenner's new novel is The Jane Austen Society.

My Q&A with the author:

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

My title The Jane Austen Society is so self-evident and obvious that some publishers who bid for my debut book wanted to keep the title “open” – but not St. Martin’s Press, whose judgement has remained unerring every step of the way. I was glad of that, because when I first sat down to write the book, the very first thing I typed was the title. I never once considered naming it anything else. I had been thinking of writing a book about an old British estate house in need of rescue; I had also just spent a year of my life aggressively rereading books by and about Jane Austen. And one day I looked up from my reading and said to my daughter, out of the blue and very simply, “I am going to write a book about a group of people who come together to try and save Jane Austen’s house.” I knew from all my reading about Austen that the first real-life Jane Austen Society had started in 1940 in England for that exact same purpose. I used that one historical fact as the launching point for exploring eight very different characters who have each suffered loss and trauma during WWII, but who bond together over Austen and books. And this is the bond that saves them.

What's in a name?

Because my book is historical fiction, my first goal with the names was to make sure they were appropriate to the time and place of England during the war (no Shawns or Sheryls here). My characters appear to me pretty instantly, fully formed in terms of both appearance (although their faces always remain fuzzy) and temperament, and their names similarly seem to pick themselves. The process is so intuitive, that it is only after the fact that I sometimes see a happy coincidence. For example, I picked the surname Berwick for the grief-stricken farmer Adam, and only later processed that this made a nice variation on the name Captain Benwick from Persuasion, another mourning and gentle soul. And I had picked the name Mimi for the Hollywood movie star character long before I had decided she would be working on trying to produce and star in a movie adaptation of Sense and Sensibility – imagine my joy when I looked up the name one day and saw it was a diminutive for Mary Ann, the name of one of the heroines from that same book.

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

I have loved Jane Austen for as long as I could read proper novels, and so I would say that, not only would my teenaged reader self not be surprised by my new novel, she would have written it herself, if she had had three decades of growing up behind her first.

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

Writing the beginning is, for me, hard in that I only write when I feel inspired, and I am superstitiously committed to keeping the first few pages of whatever I write. The Jane Austen Society is the sixth book I have written (the other five manuscripts being unpublished and firmly locked away in a drawer) and I can honestly say that the first draft of Chapter One almost always remains pretty sacrosanct for me. If I am sitting down to type Chapter One, I have committed 100% to an idea in my head—a hook or tag-line, so-to-speak—and on a creative subconscious level I am now more than ready to start to write. Endings for me are the pay-off for every word that comes ahead. It is an exhilarating downhill speed-race, sometimes 8,000 words in a day, and I don’t stop until I reach the bottom. I once threw my shoulder out typing from this behaviour; I do not recommend 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 write to get away from myself, and I do my level best while writing to disappear into an entirely imaginary world full of people who are complete strangers to me but whom I can’t wait to get to know. With The Jane Austen Society, it was only long after I finished writing the book that I could look back and see parallels between some of the characters and myself. The most obvious connections were in terms of my own emotional trauma stemming from a devastating and life-altering medical diagnosis for my husband a few years ago, and the different ways I too had coped with what I now understand is a state of “anticipatory grief” (socially “turtling,” excessive reading, being overly direct to save energy and time). I had kept working as a career coach to lawyers during my husband’s medical journey (he is currently stable due to an innovative drug regime), as well as liaising with a lot of doctors throughout North America on my husband’s behalf, and I can now also see that the doctor and lawyer characters in my book are refractions of that strong professional and ethical bent in me, a former lawyer myself.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Movies are a big influence on me generally, and have been my entire life: they really go toe-to-toe with books in terms of my great cultural passions. This was one reason I enjoyed writing the Hollywood scenes in my book. A few news events also affected the writing of this book, including all the Me Too stories from the fall before I began writing, which influenced my movie star character’s own decision to mysteriously pull back from Hollywood. Finally, my book was definitely inspired by a week-long trip I took in the fall of 2017 to Jane Austen’s former cottage in Chawton, England (now the Jane Austen’s House Museum) and the Elizabethan estate house up the lane that had once been owned by her brother (now Chawton House). With both buildings, I was greatly affected by their history and beauty, but also by the many people over the years who saw these landmarks sitting there in their midst and fought to save and preserve them, so that a tourist like me could one day visit them and draw energy and inspiration for the unknown novel ahead.

Visit Natalie Jenner's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Melanie Benjamin

Melanie Benjamin is the author of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling historical novels The Girls in the Picture, about the friendship and creative partnership between two of Hollywood's earliest female legends—screenwriter Frances Marion and superstar Mary Pickford, The Swans of Fifth Avenue, about Truman Capote and his society swans, and The Aviator's Wife, a novel about Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Previous historical novels include the national bestseller Alice I Have Been, about Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland, and The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb, the story of 32-inch-tall Lavinia Warren Stratton, a star during the Gilded Age.

Benjamin's latest novel, Mistress of the Ritz, is now available in paperback.

My Q&A with the author:

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

This title was more problematic than my others, for this very reason. We definitely wanted to have the word “Ritz” in the title, to both establish the setting and also, because the word connotes such luxury and excitement. After all, it’s even in the title of a song – “Puttin’ on the Ritz!” One of the things I’ve learned is that a title really should be short and to the point these days. For example, when we were discussing the book that became The Aviator’s Wife, I had some pretty flowery titles in mind – Between the Earth and Sky was my favorite. It’s lovely. It also doesn’t at all say what the book is about. And too, I’ve noticed that in recent years books with longer titles just don’t do as well. I think people these days have a hard time even remembering longer titles. So short and sweet it is, and finally someone said, “Well, it’s a book about an aviator’s wife, so let’s call it that.” And we did.

For Mistress of the Ritz, then, we knew we had to have “Ritz” in the title. I advocated for The Ritz in Love and War, but smarter minds convinced me that was too wordy and too vague and my novels have become known for their strong female protagonists, and we needed to make sure the title conveyed that. So the problem became how to describe this strong female protagonist. Who, exactly, was Blanche Auzello in relation to the Ritz? We went back and forth between “queen” and “lady” and “madame” – which I nixed because I didn’t want anyone to think she ran a house of prostitution! – before finally landing on Mistress. I have to admit I wasn’t in love with it at first, but I also couldn’t come up with anything better. But now, I think it’s perfect. You know this book is about a woman and the Hotel Ritz; that should be enough to draw the reader in.

What's in a name?

Obviously, in this case—and for my previous titles—the characters are actual people, so there’s no question as to names. Ask me this again with my next book, though, and I’ll have a different answer!

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

My teenaged self never imagined I’d be a writer, so very surprised. But I loved history even then, so the subject matter wouldn’t be surprising at all.

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

Oh, the beginnings, definitely! The perfect beginning is so vital to capturing the readers’ attention, so that is the most important part of the book. I have always had the ending worked out before I sit down to write (and I write linearly, from the beginning straight through to the end). Usually I even have the exact words for the ending in my head. But I don’t let myself write them until I get to the last page. There have really only been two times when I knew exactly how I’d begin the book and it didn’t change significantly—the beginning of Alice I Have Been and the beginning of The Swans of Fifth Avenue. For all the other books, I’ve changed the beginning many times.

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

I honestly don’t see myself, because again, I’m writing about real people who have lived. However, there must be something about them – even Truman Capote! – that I can very much relate to, so in that way, yes, there must be part of me in these characters. I’ve been told that by members of my family, too—that they can see me in certain aspects of these characters. I still don’t really see it, but I’ll bow to their wisdom!

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Movies, for sure. I feel as if I write very cinematically at times—not always, you can’t have an entire novel made up of sweeping, visually stunning scenes, of course. Novels are much more intimate. Still, I know that I consciously include some scenes that would make great scenes in movies in my books. As far as inspiration, though—where I get my ideas—that is all over the place. I got the inspiration for Alice I Have Been at an art museum, for example. I feel very strongly that novelists need to expose themselves to all sorts of other people’s art, not just their own, and not just literature.

Learn more about the book and author at Melanie Benjamin's website.

The Page 69 Test: Alice I Have Been.

The Page 69 Test: The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb.

My Book, The Movie: The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb.

The Page 69 Test: The Aviator's Wife.

The Page 69 Test: The Swans of Fifth Avenue.

The Page 69 Test: The Girls in the Picture.

Writers Read: Melanie Benjamin.

--Marshal Zeringue

Anna Dorn

Anna Dorn is a writer living in Los Angeles. A former criminal defense attorney, she regularly writes about legal issues for Justia and Medium. Her article on juvenile life without parole was published in American University Law Review. She has written about culture for LA Review of Books, The Hairpin, and Vice Magazine.

Dorn has a JD from UC Berkeley Law School, an MFA from Antioch University-Los Angeles, and a BA from UNC-Chapel Hill. Her debut memoir, Bad Lawyer, will be published by Hachette Books in Spring 2021.

Dorn's debut novel is Vagablonde.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Vagablonde is about a blonde criminal defense attorney who wants to be a rapper. The title—a portmanteau of "blonde" and "vagabond"—speaks to her voyeurism into cultures that are not her own in order to "feel something." I wanted to write about cultural appropriation from the perspective of the appropriator—the only perspective I can write with any degree of authenticity. It would be weird to write a novel that takes place in America and doesn’t address race in some way. So I wrote what I knew: a white woman grappling with her own complicity.

What's in a name?

I came up with my protagonist's name, Prue Van Teesen, when I was in college. She was sort of an alter ego, a bolder and less nerdy version of me. I wrote raps under the name Prue and Vagablonde. One thing I like about rap is it allows you to feel bossy and powerful. I'm naturally pretty timid, afraid of everyone and everything. Rapping allowed me to be someone else who felt self-assured.

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

Oh god my teenage self would be so shocked and appalled by the drug use. The whole book would frighten her. But she would also find it funny. She was dyslexic so she would appreciate that it's easy to read.

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

I find beginnings much easier. I typically begin writing with just an idea of a character and see where she takes me. I write the first third of the book very quickly. I tend to lose steam in the middle. The end normally comes to me in the drafting process. I like subtle, ambiguous endings that don't require much plotting.

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. Prue is probably the most similar to me, especially on the surface. We're both lawyers with artistic ambitions. We both have serious neuroses surrounding food and our hair. We both enjoy the fleeting high of drinking on amphetamines. We both can be self-absorbed and shallow. We both confuse a “good time” for “genuine connection.” We are both Virgos.

Prue is definitely cooler, prettier, and more unhinged than me. She's a very exaggerated version of a part of me.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I love this question! I try not to get too much inspiration from other books because then I end up trying to copy them. I'm very inspired by Lana Del Rey. Like me, she's an East Coast native who fled to California. Her music captures that sublime and haunting side of California I am completely obsessed with. I get a lot of inspiration from my friends, who are all geniuses. I'm active on Twitter, which at times I find shameful, but I also think it's good for my writing. I'm interested in the way language evolves and try to communicate in the simplest, most contemporary way. I like the democratizing power of Twitter, where voices you wouldn't normally hear are given a megaphone and encouraged to shout. I'm also inspired by nature—trees, the ocean, the sky. In nature, my ego dies and my thoughts relax. I remember that I know nothing and I'm not special, which opens space for clarity and perspective.

Visit Anna Dorn's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nancy Star

Photo credit: Leslie Dumke

Nancy Star is the author of the bestselling novel Sisters One, Two, Three, a Publishers Weekly top ten print book and Amazon Kindle bestseller of 2016. Her previous novels, which have been translated into several languages, include Carpool Diem, Up Next, Now This, and Buried Lives. Her essays have appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Money, and Family Circle. Before turning to writing fiction full-time, Star worked for over a decade as a movie executive at the Samuel Goldwyn Company and the Ladd Company, dividing her time between New York and London.

Star's new novel is Rules for Moving.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Rules for Moving was the title of the novel when I submitted it to my editor and I was delighted that she loved it as much as I did. We both thought it worked on multiple levels. For one thing, the main character, advice columnist Lane Meckler, grew up in a family that moved so often, her mother made up a list Lane had to memorize, called Rules For Moving (Rule Number 1: Take Only What You Love). As for why Lane’s family moved so much, that’s a mystery to her—which she will eventually figure out! There’s another layer to the title, which speaks to a feeling Lane has, that everyone around her seems to effortlessly follow agreed upon rules for how to move through life, rules she somehow never received!

Readers will find a lot of rules woven through the novel, some which seem really useful and some of which are not helpful at all!

What's in a name?

I’m all for characters with distinctive names! But I have to admit that sometimes my main characters go through multiple names before I settle on the right one. That happens because I start writing a novel before I know everything about the characters. I learn who they are while I’m writing the first draft. So at some point in the writing, that first name can feel totally wrong. Too ordinary, too breezy, ill-matched to the person. By now I can’t imagine that Lane Meckler had any other name. But here’s a secret: when I first started writing this novel, she was Nora and then, for a brief period, she was Susanna! Please don’t tell Lane! She doesn’t know!

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

As a teenager, I read a lot of psychological horror—thank you for Carrie, Stephen King, and thanks Ira Levin, for Rosemary’s Baby! But I also loved novels that mixed the funny with the serious; one of my favorites that I’ve continued to reread into adulthood was Catch 22. I also loved the unique voice of Kurt Vonnegut. And I devoured Mad Magazine! With all that going into my brain anything could have happened! Turns out Rules For Moving has many of the qualities I loved in books when I was a teenager—psychological depth, surprise, humor, and a strong narrative voice—so, No! I don’t think teenage me would have been surprised! But she would have been delighted that I ended up following my dream to become a writer.

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

I did not know how Rules For Moving was going to end. I’m fascinated by writers who do know the end of their books before they start. I’m one of those writers who, for the first draft, feels like they’re driving in the dark with dim headlights showing the way. I knew I was writing a novel about someone who felt different. I knew she seemed self-assured at work but in her real life she struggled. But the story itself, Lane’s relationship with her son Henry, who’s stopped speaking to everyone but her, her move from New York City to New Jersey and then to Martha’s Vineyard as she searches for a home, the reasons for why she turned out the way she did, and the relationship that blooms with Nathan Knapp, those all happened in the writing. I’m a big reviser, though. By the time the novel is done my intention is for it to feel like I must have known everything when I started!

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

Bits of me are in any character I write, along with tiny bits of anyone I’ve ever known or heard about or eavesdropped on. But the characters always end up taking on a life of their own. Most often it works the other way around: when I’m writing a novel, I become my characters. Rather than putting me into them, they enter me. So I imagine: what it would be like to be Lane, so intent on protecting herself, so committed to keeping her Ask Roxie fans at a distance. I had a fun inhabiting Lane, the advice columnist who wants to be left alone. And I adored spending time in her son Henry’s head. As to writing about a mother’s devotion to her child, that’s an example of somewhere i may have tucked in a little bit of myself, or at least of the self I’ve tried to be.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I worked for over a decade in the movie business in New York City. My job was to look for novels, plays and stories that had potential to be movies, and then to help adapt that material from one form (book, play, magazine article) to the other. For over ten years I read during every spare second—books, magazines, newspapers, screenplays and plays. I also went to theater several times a week and had to find time to see small independent films looking for a distributor. What stuck from that experience was a deep appreciation for the responsibility a story teller has to their audience. No one has time to be bored. Even now, when we have more time than ever, boredom is not what we’re craving. I hope when people read my novels they feel that I’ve done them the honor of making it worth their time. Life is short. Stories are everything!

Visit Nancy Star's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jordan Farmer

Jordan Farmer was born and raised in a small West Virginia town, population approximately two thousand. He earned his MA from Marshall University and his Ph.D. at The University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

His new novel is The Poison Flood.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The best titles are both literal, simply explaining something about the book, and also a metaphor. The novel contains an actual poison flood in the chemical disaster that impacts Hollis’ hometown. However, The Poison Flood is also a rather obvious metaphor I’ll leave for the readers to discover.

What's in a name? (Why did you decide to name your main character Hollis Bragg?)

I don’t typically think much about character names. I tend to just pull one out from the subconscious and it usually sticks. However, I did have some criteria concerning Hollis. I knew that the main character should have a somewhat older name, a name that felt like it was from a former generation and one that would echo a kind of disconnect from his physical youth. It also needed a regional quality that felt appropriate for an Appalachian man. Regarding a surname, I wanted a single syllable that felt right for a rock star. I thought of Johnny Cash and went from there.

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

My teenage self would be amazed that we made it this far and elated to see the novel find such a prestigious home at Putnam. Since I was young enough to understand that someone actually wrote the stories we enjoy, I’ve wanted to be a writer. Depending on the situation, I was both afraid to even fantasize that I could do it and somehow also certain I’d achieve it one day. I knew I had talent or at least the drive to work until I developed talent, but felt insecure about being from rural West Virginia. For a long time in my youth, I worried that I wasn’t born into the right kind of background to be a writer. It took finding the work of many skilled Appalachian writers to give me faith there was a place for my stories.

I hope the teenage version of myself would be proud not just of the dedication involved in sticking with it, but also in the quality of the work. It takes years to develop real skill at something artistic. I like to think a younger me would be pleased to know that we’d developed a strong narrative voice and improved our craft.

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

I don’t outline, so I go into a draft knowing that massive revisions are often just part of the process. I have this suspicion that if I did outline, it would involve a secret desire to avoid such rewrites, which I think probably must come anyway. For me, outlines stifle the spontaneous discoveries. I want moments of revelation where a character or event occurs and changes the direction of the narrative. I might have some specific scenes to write towards or themes I want to explore, but it feels too controlling, too lacking in improvisation to work in a rigid sequence.

This makes the first draft all experimentation. Change point of view, change timeframe, change tense, whatever you wanna do. No restrictions. It’s sort of like setting out to sea and trusting that you’ll find enough wind to carry you to the next port. At this early stage everything is fragments. A character, a scenario, a cultural background or theme. These things will start to coalesce and influence one another eventually, but I don’t need much to get started.

If there’s one ritual I abide by, I usually won’t begin until I hear the first line in my head. What I hear doesn’t necessarily stay the first line, but I don’t force the first sentences when writing a new story. You must be patient and wait for that moment. Something about searching for it is a poor idea. It’s sort of a subconscious gift.

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 any similarities revolve around both of us feeling physically different. Hollis suffers from severe kyphosis. My height has been left at five feet by a congenital bone disorder and I have scoliosis. While Hollis’ condition is more severe, we both reside in what I’d refer to as an unconventional body. Hollis and I are also both from small towns in Appalachia. We both make art in our own way. That’s pretty much where the similarities end. Hollis was never meant to be autobiographical. I didn’t have a desire to write a stand-in for myself, but I did want to discuss themes of alienation and artistic struggle I’ve felt. Some of Hollis’ emotions might be similar to my own past or present feelings, but I share none of his biography.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Music is a big influence, particularly on this novel. My tastes are vast. Essentially if it’s good, I wanna hear it, but I was thinking of the narrative quality and confessional nature of many country songs. The way a song like “He Stopped Loving Her Today” hides the details of a death until deeper into the track. I wanted similar layers in the novel. To show Hollis in his present state, then evaluate his past in subsequent chapters to inform how he came to be in these situations.

Biographies or interviews with artists fascinate me. I really crave the opportunity to hear any sort of artist talk about their process. There’s a TV show sponsored by Ernie Ball guitar strings where they talk to musicians like Buddy Guy, Mike Ness from Social Distortion and Billy Duffy from The Cult about their songwriting process and how they achieve a certain guitar tone. I’m not a professional musician, I play some bad acoustic guitar, but I love that show. I think it’s really useful to hear about how anyone creates regardless of the artform. Something about just understanding the critical decisions, or the worries of different artists can inform you regardless of how different their artform might be from yours.

Learn more about The Poison Flood.

--Marshal Zeringue

Susan Allott

Susan Allott is from the UK but spent part of her twenties in Australia, desperately homesick but trying to make Sydney her home. She completed the Faber Academy course in 2017, during which she started writing The Silence. She now lives in south London with her two children and her very Australian husband.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The Silence is a mysterious title, deliberately so, hinting at its genre. It’s the kind of title that asks the reader to figure out what it means, but at the same time it’s not so obscure that it can’t be guessed at. I think it hints at the kinds of secrets that are hidden in plain sight, that remain secret because they are too shameful to speak of, that require an unspoken complicity. Which is precisely what The Silence is about: a woman goes missing and it takes 30 years for anyone to report it, or to talk about what happened.

When I was writing, I had in mind The Great Silence as a potential title, which comes from a phrase used by the anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner to describe the way Aboriginal history was obscured by white Australian historians. My agent wasn’t keen on it at the time, and when the novel was submitted to publishers we used the working title Blind Spot. Nobody liked it much, and throughout the editing process we kicked around dozens of ideas for a new title, but we couldn’t reach a consensus. We really wanted a title that everyone loved, so it could have the same title in the UK, Australia and the U.S.

It was getting a bit desperate as we reached the final editing stage without a title, and I thought I was going to have to accept a mediocre title that nobody loved. I looked back through my list of working titles and found The Great Silence. I was sitting at a bus stop emailing my editors and agent, and the idea came to me as I was typing to simplify if to The Silence. I hit send on the email and got an email back within minutes – they loved The Silence. So did the Australian team and the Americans, the marketing and sales people. It was so obvious once we’d decided – why hadn’t we thought of it sooner? The simplest ideas are often the best.

What's in a name?

I named my protagonist Isla because of the suggestion of the word island. She is Australian-born and has British parents: an island-child. Isla’s grandmother is Irish, and as a child Isla thinks that her grandma is from a place called ‘Island’, as I did at that age. (My mother is from Kilkenny). It pleased me to give her a name that linked her to the geography of her roots, in a book about the enormous pull of home. I also think it’s a beautiful name.

For the rest of my characters, I wanted them to have names that were distinct from one another, without too many syllables, or that could be shortened. Mandy is sometimes shortened to Mand, but only by her husband; he also calls her Amanda at times, a useful shortcut as to his mood, whether he is displeased with her or showing affection. Likewise Louisa’s name is frequently shortened to Lou. I chose the name Louisa because to me it has a simple elegance, more British-sounding than Mandy to my ears, and more middle-class. Louisa struggles to adapt to life in Australia, and her English-sounding name helped me to develop her as someone who clings to her British identity in an Australian setting.

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

I think getting the ending right is the most challenging thing in writing a novel, and possibly the most important. The reader has come a long way with these characters by the time they get to the closing chapters, and they deserve a rewarding finale. An ending needs to answer the questions that the book sets up at the outset, to hold some surprises but also to have a sense of inevitability to it, so the reader thinks, ‘of course!’

In The Silence I wanted the ‘what happened to Mandy?’ question to be resolved at the same time as the questions Isla needs to answer about her family and herself, and I needed Isla to figure it all out in a way that held the tension between what she knows and what the reader knows. I was still re-writing those chapters in the very final round of edits with my publisher.

In contrast, my opening chapters didn’t need much work once I’d decided where to start. Start in the middle of things is my (borrowed) advice – throw the reader into the middle of your story, so she feels she has entered a world which existed before she joined it.

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

The character I started with in my early drafts of The Silence was Louisa, Isla’s mother, who is a British woman living in Australia, suffering terrible homesickness and unable to convince her husband that they should return home. I identified with that, having gone through something similar myself, and for a long time Louisa’s story was more central to the book. I came to the conclusion in the end that Louisa wasn’t working as a Point of View character, perhaps because she had too much of me in her. My most convincing characters are the ones who are less like me; I imagine them more fully.

Having said that, I think they all have a bit of me in them. I loved writing the chapters where Isla returns to Sydney after ten years in London, because I was able to describe the culture shock I’d experienced myself as a Londoner in Sydney, feeling that my clothes and my temperament weren’t suited to this bright, upbeat city that was so incredibly far from home.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

The Silence was inspired by my failure to immigrate to Australia in the nineties. I left and went back to London, and promptly fell in love with an Australian man who I went on to marry! So the Australian setting came out of those experiences. It felt sometimes like Australia was forcing me to make my peace with it, like it wouldn’t let me go.

I was also very inspired by the Australian films Rabbit Proof Fence and Lantana. I think if you wanted to describe my book in movie references, I’d say it’s a mash-up of those two. I watched them whenever I felt I was running out of steam and needed to remember where I was going with my book. I can’t recommend them highly enough.

Visit Susan Allott's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nancy Wayson Dinan

Nancy Wayson Dinan is a native Texan who currently lives in San Jose, Costa Rica and teaches at Texas Tech University. Her work has appeared in Arts & Letters, Crab Orchard Review, the Cincinnati Review, and others. She earned her MFA from the Ohio State University in 2013 and is a PhD student in fiction at Texas Tech.

Dinan's debut novel is Things You Would Know if You Grew Up Around Here.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The title Things You Would Know If You Grew Up Around Here is actually really important to the novel – it refers to sections of exposition throughout the story. These “Things You Would Know” are bits of trivia and facts about the Texas Hill Country, and they work into the story in a larger way. For example, one of the things that you would know if you grew up in central Texas is what purple paint blazes on a fencepost mean. They are a universal warning sign against trespassers, and it is actually against the law to cross a boundary marked with purple blazes. We get this bit of trivia through the “Things You Would Know” exposition sections, and then a few pages later, we see the main character enter a property marked with purple blazes, knowing that there are consequences for doing so. Other “Things You Would Know” sections talk about the legend of treasure in San Saba County, and folklore that has all but disappeared.

What's in a name?

My protagonist’s name is Boyd, which is an unusual name for a woman, but not an unusual name for a character in a novel about Texas. This is not much of an answer, but I don’t really know how this became her name – it just always was. When I am writing and planning, I have to invent most things, but not everything, and Boyd was one of those things that I didn’t have to invent – I knew who she was and what her name was and how she found it impossible to ignore the pain of other people. I do really like the name Boyd, however, and I think of other Texan characters named Boyd, including one of the brothers in Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing.

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

This is a tough question – I am trying to remember the kinds of novels that I wanted to write when I was a teenager. Like a lot of writers, I knew very early in my life that I wanted to write books, and I think now about my teenage notebooks and dreams. I know that I read a lot of Tamora Pierce, Jude Deveraux, and Jane Austen – books that don’t seem to have a lot in common on the surface. But at the core of all of these writers’ works are strong women, and all of them also have a thread of romance. I think that Boyd is a stronger character than she knows, but I don’t think that I focus on her romantic relationship here, and I think that that would surprise my teenage reader self. I also think that it is something I’d like to remedy in the future – it’s a very satisfying thing when there is a human connection between characters. As far as my teenage reader self’s surprise, I think, too, that just the fact that there will be a book in the world would be surprising – this book is honestly the culmination of a lifelong dream.

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

For me, this depends on the individual project. For this book, I definitely found it harder to write the ending. There is a subplot in the final third of this book that I realized I wanted to spend much much more time with, and so that is the project I am working on now. The result of expanding that subplot is that part of this book feels less finished than I would like, as one of the main characters doesn’t have her resolution yet. I really like writing beginnings – I write so many of them. But I write very few endings, and they are definitely more challenging. It is almost like a puzzle that you need to solve as a writer – how do I get all of these people finally together and into one cohesive moment of resolution? How do I handle these arcs so that that moment is emotionally resonant?

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

Definitely each of my characters has an aspect of my own personality, though I don’t think any of them are really me. For Boyd, who is empathetic to the point of needing to be isolated, I definitely thought about how other people’s pain really affects me, to the point where sometimes I am not able to function. But Boyd’s character is definitely an exaggeration of this worrying about what other people are thinking or feeling.

As I am reading this question, I realize how productive it might be to write a character that I don’t identify with at all. I think of Elena Ferrante’s Lila in her Neapolitan novels, and how Lila seeks out conflict, how comfortable she is with it. And I wonder what would happen if I were to think about a character who did not actively avoid conflict, and how compelling such a character might be.

Visit Nancy Wayson Dinan's website.

My Book, The Movie: Things You Would Know if You Grew Up Around Here.

--Marshal Zeringue

Catherine Ryan Hyde

Catherine Ryan Hyde is the author of more than 40 published and forthcoming books.

Her new novel is Brave Girl, Quiet Girl.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I really ask only one thing from a title, and that’s to represent the emotional heart of the story. I never questioned the title of Brave Girl, Quiet Girl. I never tried on other titles. From the moment Molly began chanting the phrase to the found baby girl, as they are hiding in a hole under some flattened cardboard boxes beneath a freeway overpass, I knew it had the right feel. And when Molly gets stressed nearly to the breaking point and the toddler starts chanting the same phrase back to her to calm her… well, that’s what I mean by the emotional heart of a story. If you listen, as the author, you can hear it beating.

I’ve noticed that people who haven’t read the book are curious about the title. There are two girls on the cover, one big and one little. People express curiosity about which girl is the brave girl, and is that same girl the quiet one? They reflect on whether they themselves feel brave, or tend to be a quiet person.

So my work here is done.

What's in a name?

I don’t think I’ve ever named a character by knowing a great deal about the meaning of the name I chose. I don’t have a formula for what sounds strong, what sounds sensitive. I try on names until a character comes to life. Until she (or he) jumps up and says, “There you go. I can work with that.”

Then again, the fact that I don’t think consciously about the tone of a name or what it represents doesn’t mean I’m not doing that assessment on some level. I could be an idiot savant of character names.

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

Not even a little bit. She was reading books about the underdog all along. About characters at the margins of society. People you might not be brave enough or open enough to spend time with in real life. She was always on the hunt for humanity in unexpected places through literature.

I’m sure she’d read every one of the 40 books I’ve written since and say, “Yeah. That sounds about right.”

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

Endings are always harder. Because endings have to satisfy. Beginnings don’t have to satisfy. They can ask questions but not have to answer them. They can make promises that the poor middles and endings have to keep. It’s always easier to lay out a conundrum than it is to resolve it.

That said, I tend to begin with a pretty good idea of what I intend to convey, and that helps. I’m not suggesting that I find them inordinately hard at this point. But beginnings? They’re about as hard as slipping on an icy sidewalk.

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

I understand how they feel. Then again, I’m working on the assumption that if you go just a bit deeper into any human being you’ll reach a place where we all understand each other. We all want to love and be loved. We all want to feel safe, and we want our loved ones to be safe. There’s a level at which human emotions are pretty universal stuff. But please believe me when I say I am making these people up. They’re not me. They’re not anyone I know. They are exactly who they are.

Visit Catherine Ryan Hyde's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Gail Godwin

Gail Godwin is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the bestselling author of many critically acclaimed novels, including Violet Clay, Father Melancholy's Daughter, Evensong, The Good Husband and Evenings at Five. She is also the author of The Making of a Writer, her journal in two volumes (ed. Rob Neufeld). She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts grants for both fiction and libretto writing, and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Gail Godwin lives in Woodstock, New York.

Her latest novel is Old Lovegood Girls.

My Q&A with the author:

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

“Old” means it started in the past. “Girls” means it is about women.

“Lovegood”? Is it a place, a state of mind, an institution? Does “Lovegood” signal that irony and satire are at play here? Well, let those suggestions flit through your mind, but Lovegood is also the actual name of the founder of Lovegood College. Horace Lovegood wanted “a learning place for young women where they can partake of the same substantial branches of learning that their brothers consider a birthright.”

Lovegood College opened its doors in 1872. My two girls are roommates for a single semester in 1958. Though one of them has to drop out of school to run the family’s tobacco plantation, they have formed a bond that will take them through decades of a fast-changing world. Inspired by their Lovegood English teacher, they will both become writers. But for very different reasons.

Old Lovegood Girls was first a story called “Old Lovegood Girls.” It appeared in The Iowa Review in the Winter issue of 1986. It was written in the first person about a girl who went to Lovegood College. It was a singular school. Lots of study, lots of silence, lots of tradition and strict rules. It was a bittersweet story of a girl finally meeting her father who rescues her from her awful life and sends her to Lovegood because he knows she’ll be safe there. The father will soon commit suicide.

In the novel, the dorm mistress tells the new dean of the college, “The secret acronym for Lovegood’s extraordinary endowment fund is G.E.T. as in ‘get.’ Gratitude, Enclosure, and Tradition.” I went to a junior college much like Lovegood. It was called Peace College.

Someone at my publishers gently suggested I might consider calling this novel The Lovegood Girls. Possibly because “old” might put off readers? No, it had to stay as it was. Only once in my writing life have I been talked into changing a title. Unfinished Desires (2010) was supposed to be The Red Nun. I tell the whole story of my cowardice in Publishing: a Writer’s Memoir (2015).

What’s in a Name?

I spent more time figuring out a name for Feron Hood than I have ever spent on any character in any book I have written. She’s one of the girls in the title. She comes out of a troubled past, she’s elusive, suspicious and critical of others but most of all of herself; she is competitive, anti-social, and loath to show emotion, but steadfast in her lifetime friendship with this one person: Merry Jellicoe, her Lovegood roommate.

“Why would anyone name a child Feron?” Merry’s young brother asks. “It sounds like Feral.”

That was it. I had almost settled on “Ferris,” the name of the artist who made me an icon of Elijah and his raven, but then I, too, realized that “Feron” brought to mind a suspicious wounded animal. Also it shares a syllable with “talon.”

Feron herself does not know why she is named Feron. She asked her mother who said it may have been after some movie star. But her mother was a habitual liar.

I chose “Hood” for its suggestions of hooded, undercover, hard to know.

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

She would love the cover art’s evocation of a handsome school and bright fall weather. She would read the jacket copy and think, “Oh, good. It’s about friends who last for decades and who are both writers.” The two things she wants most are to be a writer and have a long-lasting friend.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings?

Endings often lead me down false paths or baffle me or I shortchange them. My agent and my editor have steered me more than once out of unsatisfactory or inconclusive endings.

I can be rapturous about beginnings. I see them in detail. With Old Lovegood Girls, I knew they would meet in the room they were to share at the college. At first I had Feron enter and discover Merry checking herself in the mirror. But that’s something I might do, it’s not Merry’s style. I changed it so that Merry is looking out of the dorm window, figuring out where her home is. Her little brother, knowing she suffers acutely from homesickness, has lent her his precious Army compass and taught her how to take bearings so she will always know where she is in relation to her home.

I knew that the book would end with the death of one friend and I knew which one it would be, but meanwhile I had to discover what it was that made each one essential to the other during the course of those many years.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Or are they a world apart?

Many of my novels got their start from a personal story, but they usually transform themselves into imagined story by the end. Others, especially the later-in-life novels, are imagined from the start: Flora (2013), Grief Cottage (2018). They are completely about other people.

Old Lovegood Girls was deeply influenced by a real junior college I went to, by the mood and essence of the place.

In hallowed halls removed from strife
Where they may seek the mental life

As it is sung in the novel’s school pageant. Since I was there, at the real place, much (except for the Greek columns on the original building) has changed. It is a co-ed university of many buildings now, complete with a new name.

The two girls, Feron and Merry, are based on nobody. Though I am more of a Feron than a Merry.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Personal experiences, family matters, slippery moral dilemmas, “what if?” musings. Once I dreamed the opening words of a novel, The Finishing School (1984.) That novel was also influenced by an upstate NY farming community, to which I had recently relocated. I moved my characters into the 250 year old Dutch farmhouse I was renting at the time, put in a grand piano, and lived the whole novel in a sort of waking dream.

The prod that sparked Old Lovegood Girls was the 1943 movie Old Acquaintance. Two longtime friends become writers. The Bette Davis one is the dedicated artist and well- respected writer. The Miriam Hopkins one, married with a family, becomes envious of her childhood friend and decides to “be a writer” herself. She becomes a huge commercial success. The movie was reimagined in 1981 as Rich and Famous, with Jacqueline Bisset as the serious writer and Candice Bergen as the splashy one. I was unsatisfied with the either/or dichotomy. I wanted to imagine two lifetime friends, both writers, not in competition, because as competitive Feron remarks, “How can it be a competition when only one person is competitive?” Before I was done with my drafts and revisions, I had written a moral tale as well, about values, memories, and secrets.

Visit Gail Godwin's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Roxana Robinson

Roxana Robinson is the author of ten books - six novels, three collections of short stories, and the biography of Georgia O’Keeffe. Four of these were chosen as New York Times Notable Books, two as New York Times Editors’ Choices.

Robinson's latest novel is Dawson's Fall.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Dawson’s Fall gives the reader the name of the main character and a straightforward indication of the plot: we know that something bad will happen to him. Dawson is the protagonist, who happens to be my great-grandfather. I like the way “Fall” suggests not only physical descent but also moral and metaphorical ones: Adam’s Fall, and the Fallen Archangel, the Fall of the Roman Empire. It carries the idea of falling as being both catastrophic and inevitable. The word “Fall” also implies height: you can’t fall unless you are higher than. So the title informs the reader that this was someone who had attained a certain height, a place from which it would be dangerous to fall. So the two words carry within them ambition, precariousness and calamity.

What's in a name?

Names are very important: the way they look, the way they sound. (I like the fact that the two words in Dawson’s Fall sort of rhyme.) And of course the atmosphere they create. The title is often the last part of the book that I write. I usually have a working title, often one word, or the name of a character. Summer Light was called Lily’s World, as a working title, after a character who was then renamed. Once I wrote a whole book about a character nicknamed Fancy, I forget what her real name was. My editor read the book and said, “I have to tell you that you must change the name of the main character.” I was indignant and said, “Of course I will. I would never write a book about someone named Fancy.“ It seemed so obvious to me that it would be changed. That was Sweetwater. But I never know the real name of the book, the title, until it’s finished. It’s only then that I know what it’s about.

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

My teenage self would be very surprised by this novel. Writers must first separate themselves from their family, their origins, their world, in order to take charge of themselves. Then they often write themselves back into their origins, and explore them. When I was a teenager I was busy separating myself from my family – but this book investigates my own origins, my family, and by extension, my country. It’s set in South Carolina, after the Civil War – two things I knew nothing about as a teenager.

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

I almost never change the beginning of a book once it’s begun. I don’t think I’ve changed the first sentence ever. The endings are more fluid and difficult. Twice I’ve been asked by editors to write more, after what I thought was the end of the book. The request puzzled me, because I thought that everything was very clear: it was obvious what happened. Once my editor said, “You may think it’s clear, but at the Christmas party I heard someone from Marketing arguing with someone from Publicity over just what happens at the end of the book.” So I thought, okay, it’s not clear. I wrote another chapter. That was Cost.

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 all writers are in their characters, a pattern announced by Flaubert, telling the world that Madame Bovary was he. The great writers occupy their characters absolutely. Certainly in some ways I was very far from Conrad, my twenty-six-year old Marine lieutenant, returning from Iraq, but I found myself inhabiting his life and mind as I wrote the book. I came to identify with him very closely, finding things in his world and his choices that were familiar or appealing to me. The 80-year old neurosurgeon, the fifty-year old Confederate captain, I inhabit all of them. I come to think their thoughts as I write my way through their lives. But I have connections to each of them, portals into their lives. Sometimes these are personal, familial, sometimes they’re quite distant from me. And sometimes I’ll write something – a short story, or a scene – that is unabashedly true, a piece of memoir. But I won’t tell you which they are.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

If you mean was there anything that informed me other than literature before I started writing in the first place, the answer is no. Literature was the only thing that made me want to write.

But I’ve been moved to write things because of non-literary things. Dawson’s Fall came upon me because of two things I inherited: a small piece of mahogany, labelled, in my grand-mother’s neat script, “A piece of pew from St. Michael’s, before the restoration.” The other was a hank of her hair, long, thick and honey-colored. She had been famous for her hair, which reached to her ankles. For some reason I ended up with a faded purple box, with a switch of her hair coiled inside. It was so tangible, so richly a part of her, and I was so clearly a part of her, that it haunted me. The two things had something to do with this book.

Learn more about the book and author at Roxana Robinson’s website.

My Book, The Movie: Dawson's Fall.

The Page 69 Test: Dawson's Fall.

--Marshal Zeringue