Friday, July 31, 2020

TJ Klune

TJ Klune is a Lambda Literary Award-winning author (Into This River I Drown) and an ex-claims examiner for an insurance company. His novels include the Green Creek series, The House on the Cerulean Sea and The Exraordinaries. Being queer himself, Klune believes it's important—now more than ever—to have accurate, positive, queer representation in stories.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Titles can be tough; there have been stories I’ve written where the title was one of the first things I thought of, and stories where even after I’ve finished, I have no idea what to call the book I’ve just spent months writing. I have a book right now that I finished recently. It’s the fifth book in a series that I’ve spent years writing, and for the life of me, I have no idea what to call it, even though the four previous titles were incredibly obvious.

I didn’t have that problem with The Extraordinaries. The title is what the book is about. In this world, Extraordinaries are the superheroes that exist alongside regular people. Some are good, some are evil, but they are all extraordinary because of what they’re capable of.

It also works twofold: while describing the supers, it also works as a twist for the main character, Nick. Nick thinks he’s anything but extraordinary. In fact, he thinks he’s quite ordinary, and to him, that’s not the best thing to be. The novel follows Nick’s journey—one he thinks he needs—to change from ordinary into extraordinary. To him, the worst thing a person can be is normal, and he tries his damndest to change that. Of course, he will come to the realization that there’s honestly no such thing as “normal.” We’re all different, and those differences are something to be celebrated, even if we can’t fly or shoot lasers from our eyes.

What's in a name?

The Extraordinaries deals with superheroes, and the fanboy who loves them to the point of obsession. Even though the story deals with superpowers and seemingly impossible feats, I needed the story to be as grounded as possible. Nick thinks he is—in every meaning of the word—ordinary. Sure, he has his quirks—some of which he doesn’t quite like—but he dreams big, and his actions in the novel follow this. But his name—Nicholas Bell—is a perfectly ordinary name. Nick is, in his own way, a sort of everyman. While not exactly humble, he thinks there’s nothing that special about him, and a simple name like Nick adds to that. But, as he learns, he’s more than the sum of his parts, and there’s nothing ordinary about him, which is such a wonderful revelation for him to have.

When I first sat down to plot out The Extraordinaries, I already knew Nick’s name. It was one of the first things I decided. Four letters, one syllable, simple and to the point. It can be a little disarming for the reader, especially with all that follows in the narrative. I’m of the mind that complicated names that serve no purpose to the narrative aside from being unique can lead to being a distraction for the reader. Something common like Nick can have the reader focus on who he is as a character rather than trying to figure out what the hell his name is supposed to mean.

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

My teenage self would be stunned to read a book like The Extraordinaries. Back when I was a kid, we didn’t have positive queer representation in books. If queer characters were included in stories, we were there for one of three reasons: A) to play the over-the-top flamboyant sidekicks who were borderline offensive; B) to impart lessons onto the main characters by way of queer suffering in the form of homophobia or illness; and C) to act as a catch-all for bigotry.

We are so much more than the sum of our parts, and though it’s gotten much better in that regard, it’s still very easy to find stories where queer suffering is the point.

I didn’t want that for The Extraordinaries. I wanted to show queer kids whose queerness is part of them, but it isn’t all that they are. They are wonderfully human—some might say to a fault—and even though they are dealing with extraordinarily fantastical things, they’re true to themselves and what they’re capable of. I wanted to give a voice to people like I was at sixteen, and to make sure it was as open and honest as possible. It’s important to show the queer identity in every day life, and not have it be the only catalyst for a plot.

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

For me, endings are the easiest part. Sure, it can sometimes change on me over the course of writing a story, but I typically know the destination I’m sending my characters on, and while the ending isn’t the be all and end all when it comes to plotting, having an ending in mind always helps me tell the story I want to tell.

It’s starting that can sometimes be a problem. Even now, after having published over twenty novels, I still get nervous when I open up a new word doc, seeing that blinking cursor on a blank page. An opening helps to set the tone for what will follow, and if you don’t grab the reader in those first few pages, chances are, you might lose them before the end. Beginnings, to me, are the most important parts of a story. I’ve been fortunate enough that I rarely change endings, but I’ve rewritten the beginnings of a story for almost every book I’ve written, usually after I’ve finished the first draft. By the end, I know the voice I’m searching for, and rewriting the beginning helps me to cement that voice.

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

Every character I write as at least a small piece of me in them, but perhaps none more so than Nick in The Extraordinaries. He is a queer kid who also happens to be neurodiverse, in that he has ADHD. I have ADHD too, and it was important to me to have positive representation about neurodiversity. There’s still—even in 2020—such a harsh stigma when it comes to mental health issues. I wanted to do my part to help normalize such things, because they need to be normalized. We need to continue to have open and honest discussions about mental health, even if it’s just to shatter the stereotypes that continue to permeate our society. ADHD—or any facet of neurodiversity—isn’t a death sentence. It doesn’t even have to define who we are as people. It’s only a small part of us, and does not make up a whole of who we are. We are more than our struggles, and the sooner others realize that, the better off we’ll all be. Mental health isn’t something to be spoken about in uncomfortable whispers. I think we’d all do well to remember that.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I think it’s a little bit of everything thrown in. Even if an author is writing science fiction and fantasy, real world issues always tend to seep in, whether one planned for it or not. The world of the last few years has been one filled with anger and strife, and that can’t not become part of a narrative, especially when writing about issues such as the queer experience. That being said, I’m always of the mind that those who are screaming their hate as loudly as they can do so because they want to drown out the voices of reason. It doesn’t work. That kind of angry fire always has a way of burning itself out, no matter how bright it can appear at first.

Some people might consider this a bit political, but as a queer man in this day and age, my existence is political, and something I believe is worth fighting for. This influences my writing, wanting to normalize the queer experience. Will I change minds? I don’t know. I don’t even know if that’s the point. All I can do is be truthful to myself and extend that truth in my works.
Visit TJ Klune's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, July 30, 2020

L. Annette Binder

photo by Gary Gartley
L. Annette Binder was born in Germany and immigrated to the U.S. as a small child. She holds degrees in classics and law from Harvard, an MA in comparative literature from the University of California at Berkeley, and an MFA from the Program in Writing at the University of California, Irvine. Her short fiction collection Rise received the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. She lives in New Hampshire.

Binder's new novel is The Vanishing Sky.

My Q&A with the author:
How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

The title — The Vanishing Sky — does quite a bit of work to bring the readers into the story, but it does so indirectly. The title doesn’t refer to the setting or the characters but instead taps into a central theme of the book — How do you grapple with the demands of a regime that you have slowly come to realize is evil? It comes from a flashback scene, which is in many ways the key to understanding the novel as a whole. In that scene, Etta Huber — the mother in the story — remembers a terrible childhood event in which she was an unwilling participant, and she grapples with her guilt and the effects of her years of silence. The vanishing sky in that moment from her childhood carries over into her adult life — and the lives of the other Germans in her town — as they struggle with the terrible things happening all around them.

An earlier title for the book was Mutti, which means “mom” in German. This title was true to the story, since Etta’s role as a mother is so central to the story, but it was problematic, too. It’s easy for non-German speakers to mispronounce, and German-speakers would likely find it strange to name a novel “Mom.” So my publisher asked me to go back and look to the story for a more fitting title. My husband, who knows the novel as well as I do at this point, suggested I look at that key flashback scene because the title was hiding in there somewhere, and he was right.

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

My teenage self wouldn’t be too surprised by the themes and the feel of the novel. I’ve always gravitated to dark stories. But I probably would be surprised by the subject matter. Both my parents were German. As a teenager, I shied away from all things German. I came to the US when I was a small child, and when my mother spoke to me in German, I always answered in English. Now I’m grateful she spent all that time speaking German and driving me to the local high school to take German classes, but it took years for me to see the value in acknowledging my roots.

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

Beginnings and endings each have their own challenges. The beginning has so much work to do —it has to draw the reader in, give the reader enough information so that things aren’t confusing — but the work has to be invisible. Endings have to leave the reader with some sense of resolution but not be so pretty that they’re tied up with a ribbon. For The Vanishing Sky, I knew how the story begins - with Max coming home broken from the front — and how it ends — on a note of hopefulness, but with only some of the characters surviving.

It was the middle of the story that was actually the hardest to finalize. I had to cut things in the middle chapters pretty relentlessly to keep the story moving, which was hard and invigorating at the same time. Structuring the novel so that it alternates between Etta’s chapters and those of her younger son Georg helped me tap into the story and kept the action going.

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 everywhere in the characters, and nowhere. Small bits of myself find their ways into the story — a character’s love of ancient languages, a glimpse of something that struck them as beautiful — but in the end the characters are nothing like me. They take on their lives and end up guiding me through their story. I’ve always thought of writers as something like ouija boards, hands on the keyboard and waiting for guidance from the netherworld. Once the characters take over, I’m no longer in the picture. At least that’s what I tell myself.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

My family background was a huge influence on this novel. My father was in the Hitler Youth, and his life was the inspiration for the characters of both Georg and Max. I researched as much as I could about my family, and then I wrote the novel as a way to imagine the answers that nobody was left to tell me.

More generally, movies and music both influence my writing. I love movies that show characters struggling with moral or existential questions — movies like Gattaca, Dark City, Blade Runner, Unforgiven, The Lives of Others. This sensibility carries over into my writing. I also feel an emotional connection to music, and particular songs — from Radiohead’s “Like Spinning Plates” to classical pieces by Streabbog — were important to me as I wrote because they transported me to a different time and place.
Visit L. Annette Binder's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Vanishing Sky.

My Book, The Movie: The Vanishing Sky.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Lydia Kang

Lydia Kang is an author of young adult fiction, poetry, and narrative non-fiction. She graduated from Columbia University and New York University School of Medicine, completing her residency and chief residency at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. She is a practicing physician who has gained a reputation for helping fellow writers achieve medical accuracy in fiction.

Kang's new novel is Opium and Absinthe.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The title Opium and Absinthe came to my mind fairly fast. The problem was--I didn't know exactly how absinthe played into the story. I was very much affected by Francis Ford Coppola's cinematic version of Dracula in the 1990s, and there was a scene between Mina and the Count drinking absinthe in a salon. It's not in the original text by Bram Stoker. But I was sort of obsessed with this spirit. First, there was the entire ritual of drinking absinthe, which seemed lovely. Then, its history among the literati and artists of the time. Also, its purported hallucinogenic qualities (it's not) and it's illegal status for some time. I just knew I wanted to include it, and so, I made it happen.

As for opium, I had researched the usage of opium during this time period for my nonfiction book, Quackery (co-written with Nate Pedersen). Not many people know that injectable morphine was really only available to the wealthy, and that it was often abused by rich, white women at the time. I wanted a character who would fall into this trap of addiction so people could see exactly how and why it could happen and be sympathetic to a character that, for many good reasons, made a lot of mistakes.

What's in a name?

My main character's name is Mathilda Pembroke, but she goes by Tillie. Throughout the novel, her name is used in both ways. But I used it as a very clear metaphor for her needing to express her individuality and her independence when it comes to demanding to be called by the name she wants--Tillie.

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

Very! I didn't like historical novels as a kid. I didn't like history. I think my teen self would say--really? Why do you love history? It's so boring! And I would reply, "Don't ignore me when I say this, but when you're my age, you'll really love it. Seeing the world through an historical lens is fantastic and fun. Also, what you get out of it is all yours. It's not reliant on a graded exam." But my teen self would have already glazed over at this point, so she'll have to realize this on her own!

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

Beginnings are the worst, because so much rides on that first page and first sentence. If you get it wrong, you won't hook your reader, and game over for the rest of the novel. I probably equally change endings and beginnings, to tell the truth. About half the time, the ending I've mapped out doesn't work and I redo it as I'm writing it. As for beginnings, if I find it boring, I know it's not going to work for anyone else either!

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

Tillie is one of those people who would be looking up etymologies, writing nonfiction novels, and losing hours upon hours learning about obscure facts on obscure things. We have a lot in common.
Visit Lydia Kang's website, blog, Facebook page and Twitter perch.

The Page 69 Test: Opium and Absinthe.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, July 27, 2020

Gretchen Anthony

Photo credit: M. Brian Hartz
Gretchen Anthony is the author of Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners, which was a Midwestern Connections Pick and a best books pick by Amazon, BookBub, PopSugar, and the New York Post. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, Medium, and The Write Life, among others. She lives in Minneapolis with her family.

Anthony's new novel is The Kids Are Gonna Ask.

My Q&A with the author:
How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

I'm slightly obsessed with book titles because they're a first look into the book and they should draw you in. With The Kids Are Gonna Ask, I wasn't convinced I liked the title, but every time I said it aloud, people loved it. They found it intriguing, and that's what this book is at its heart -- it's a mystery about family, heritage, and belonging. In fact, the only reason ts secrets get uncovered is precisely because the kids, Thomas and Savannah, start asking for answers.

What's in a name?

I'm also very careful about naming my characters. Most of them just need to "feel" right, need to match the concept I have in my head for that character. But I'm strategic about main character names. I chose botanical names for the mother and daughter in my last novel, Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners because that matriarch believed in symbolism and loved that her husband's family name, Baumgartner, translates as "tree gardener." In The Kids Are Gonna Ask, I named one of the twins Savannah. On the surface, it's just a pretty name. But as the book unfolds, she discovers a meaningful coincidence about her name, as well.

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

I was a teenager when Springsteen was first singing about his glory days, so no, my teenage self could not have conceived of the tools in this book--not the podcast or the social media that drives its popularity. I also doubt that the questions at the heart of the book, "Who is our father and where do we come from?" would have been as socially acceptable to pursue back then, especially since their mother was an unmarried college student when she got pregnant. Pursuing one's origin story isn't easy in 2020 by any measure, but I am grateful people on that journey nowadays have so much more support technically, culturally, and emotionally.

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

I'm terrible at both. My writer's group loves to accuse me of "pulling the punches" in my endings, and they're usually correct. I need to push myself to get an ending to its proper destination. And as for beginnings, I re-write them so often it can get ridiculous. I drafted the opening chapters to The Kids Are Gonna Ask so many times I joked I was just going to have to skip it and start the book on chapter three.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

My family is all over the pages of my books. My father, who loved nothing more than a good laugh, filled our house with people and mined every one of his guests for stories that he could later steal and re-tell. My mother, never wanting to deprive her kids of a worthwhile experience, said "yes" to our adventures far more often than "no." Material possessions weren't terribly important to my parents, but art--music, theater, storytelling, television, movies, books--were. The best way to escape chores at our house was to lay down on the couch and open a book. We kids didn't get a lot done, but my brother and I both grew up to be family- and community-minded readers, writers, thinkers. I have my parents to thank for that.
Visit Gretchen Anthony's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, July 26, 2020

Rebecca Reid

Rebecca Reid is a freelance journalist and author of the novel Perfect Liars.

Her new novel is The Truth Hurts.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I’m famously very bad at titles. I had originally called The Truth Hurts ‘Thursday House’, which is the name of the English country mansion that Drew and Poppy move in to.

My publishers came up with The Truth Hurts, and I was disproportionately excited that it had the same initials as Thursday House, which readers sometimes think was on purpose.

I think titles are extremely important – and I wish I were better at coming up with them!

What's in a name?

Usually when I write a character, their name is an easy and obvious choice. Poppy, my protagonist, was a nightmare. It was impossible to find a name which was plausible coming from her very religious and controlling mother, but also suited her as this mysterious, wild young woman.

In the end I cheated a little bit, and came up with a solution which was part of the narrative – though I can’t explain that much more without giving a massive spoiler!

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

My teenage self would have pretended she wanted to read War and Peace, but in reality she would have loved the beaches, sex scenes, fast cars, beautiful houses and great clothes that you find in The Truth Hurts.

More than anything else, my teenage self would be overjoyed to think that I was writing as a profession. I could barely have dared to dream that could happen!

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

I write in a very basic, linear fashion, as in, I start with the prologue and I finish with the final chapter, or the epilogue. Generally speaking, they present themselves fully formed. With The Truth Hurts, I had such a vivid picture of the epilogue and the prologue, that they’re in the book verbatim as I wrote the first draft.

For me the hardest part is the middle. I so often suffer from what creative writing teachers call a ‘saggy middle’, where you loose your pace. That’s where I always need the most editing.

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

Poppy was the hardest character that I’ve ever written, because she’s not at all like me. The only aspect of my personality that I lent to her is her hot temper.

Drew was an interesting challenge, as I’d always written female characters and very little in terms of men. I went to all-girl boarding school, which means I still don’t fully understand about men! I had several male friends and my husband read with a focus on him, in an attempt to not just write a female character with a man’s name.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

As well as writing fiction, I work as a journalist, so I’m constantly reading other people’s stories. The germ of The Truth Hurts came from an article I read, about a woman who found a load of photographs of her husband with an ex-girlfriend in a cupboard at their house.

I think it’s a really exciting time to be a writer, in that we are exposed to more stories than ever before. If I’m feeling creatively blocked, an afternoon reading Instagram, Reddit and local online newspapers will provide me with access to hundreds of real life stories, any of which have the potential to kick off a new story.

The people in my life are a constant influence, too. Sometimes I will read back a chapter and realise that I’ve lifted elements of a friend, a co-worker or someone I knew as a child, without meaning to. Interestingly, people never seem to recognise themselves in these depictions!
Follow Rebecca Reid on Twitter.

--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, July 24, 2020

Jay Stringer

Jay Stringer was born in 1980, and he’s not dead yet. He’s the author of crime fiction, action thrillers, and dark comedies. Stringer’s work has been shortlisted for two Anthonys, the McIlvanney Prize, and a Derringer award. He is dyslexic and learned the sound of storytelling long before he could read the words. Stringer’s latest book Marah Chase and the Fountain of Youth is available now from Pegasus Books.


My Q&A with the author:
How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

The titles for the Marah Chase series have been hard. Before the first one came out, myself, my publisher, and my agent kicked around a lot of variations. How to sell the tone? How to establish a series?

It needed to sell to the reader the idea that these are like modern Indiana Jones stories, but also a bit like Mission: Impossible movies, and also that they’re diverse and inclusive, and overall fun. Giving them the Marah Chase and… titles felt like the obvious route, but do they sound too much like YA novels in the current market? I kicked around titles like Marah Chase, Gold Dogs, No More Worlds, Save The World. In the end, the obvious route felt like the right one.

This second book was written under the title Marah Chase and the Gateway to Hell. But the publisher felt --rightly, I think-- that it sounded too dark and more like a horror story. Whereas Marah Chase and the Fountain of Youth said exactly what the book was. Almost. There might be a lie in there, readers will find out….

What's in a name?

A lesson I keep failing to learn. My very first book had a protagonist named Eoin Miller, and most of my time discussing the story with readers was spent explaining how to pronounce Eoin. There are two main ways to pronounce Marah, and unfortunately, I chose the more obscure way. Most people call her Mar-a Chase. Which is fine. I accept it. But Chase herself would like people to say her name right, which is Muh-Rah, rhymes loosely with Ta Da.

I named her after one of my favourite bands. A Philadelphia rootsy rock outfit called Marah, whose 2000 album Kids in Philly has always been in heavy rotation for me. Then I found out it was a Hebrew word. So in writing the first book, Chase told me she was Jewish, and that became a very important character detail in the second book. So be careful, writers. There’s a lot in a name.

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

Almost not at all. I actually created an early version of Marah Chase when I was 20, intending to write a comic book. The teenaged version of me would be more surprised it took me so long to come back to the idea. Though I’m glad of the delay, I’m a very different writer at forty than I was back then, and Chase is a much-changed character.

The biggest surprise I think would be the way I try to push diversity in the books, casting as widely as I can when picking the characters. I was a teenager in the 90’s and, though I’ve always thought I was progressive and on the right side, the books I write now are simply more inclusive than anything I would have attempted back then.

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

I don’t worry as much about either as I used to, but a beginning takes me longer. I’m a character-based writer, I need to get inside the heads of my characters almost like a method actor. So it can take me a long time to build that character, and I’ll rewrite the opening chapter more than anything else in the book. I’ve learned to not worry too much about endings. I used to have to know what the ending was before I started, but then my best books have come when the ending was something I didn’t expect at all. So now I just focus on the character, in the moment. What does the character want? What does the character need? What’s the difference between the two? Those three questions drive the plot, and the ending grows out of asking them. Raiders of the Lost Ark isn’t a movie about the Lost Ark. It’s a movie about Indiana Jones, and how he’s lost sight of what’s important to him. The ending comes an hour after finding the Ark, because he had different questions to answer.

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

This is a difficult one to answer. Because at this stage in my career, I work as hard as I can to seek out and write about experiences different to my own. But of course, these books come out of my head, and so all of the characters have some connection to me.

Chase has trust issues. Chase makes dumb decisions and hurts people close to her without meaning to. She also, when push comes to shove, sides with the marginalised and the ignored, and hates authority. I can’t deny that we’d agree on a lot of things if we met for coffee, but we’d also manufacture reasons to fall out with each other.

And all of my books contain the same themes, I’m always returning to personal issues and motifs that are all about my own development and journey. But I don’t think a writer should reveal those things, that’s for readers to decide.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I’m dyslexic. So although I can talk for hours about literary influences --Sean O’Casey was important, as was Douglas Adams, and I’m an Elmore Leonard devotee-- my voice and tastes were formed outside of books. I learned to read through comics, and my first love was probably standup comedy. Music was very important to me, and of course, movies and television. So I think my work and voice now is my own, but there are traces of all of these things. Writers like Alan Grant and Denny O’Neil. Bands like The Replacements. A comedian’s urge to hide important heartfelt issues in a joke. Marah Chase and the Fountain of Youth is a love letter to action movies.
Visit Jay Stringer's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, July 23, 2020

Sung J. Woo

Sung J. Woo’s short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, PEN/Guernica, and Vox. He has written three novels, Skin Deep (2020), Love Love (2015) and Everything Asian (2009), which won the 2010 Asian Pacific American Librarians Association Literature Award (Youth category). In 2014, Everything Asian was chosen for Coming Together in Skokie and Niles Township. A graduate of Cornell University with an MFA from New York University, he lives in Washington, New Jersey.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The working title of this book was Shadows Deep. I still reference it in the epigraph:

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep

It’s from W.B. Yeats’s poem, “When You Are Old,” which highlights the aging of beauty (among many other things). The central theme of my book is the concept of beauty and the disturbing lengths some people will go to attain it. Early on, private detective Siobhan O’Brien discovers that the college where a female student went missing has curiously admitted an overwhelming number of attractive young women for its freshman class. Now led by an ex-runway fashion model, Llewellyn College has not only gone co-ed for the first time in its two-hundred-year history, but it seems possible that its president may have even stranger plans for her school.

I was given a two-book deal, and the second in the series was to be titled Skin Deep. But my editor and publisher thought the title Shadows Deep sounded too dark and unrepresentative of this book’s contents, and I do believe they are right. Also, it made sense, since the phrase “beauty is only skin deep” very much applies to this novel. So the second becomes the first, and all is right with the world.

What's in a name?

I’m hoping that after my book comes out, many more people will know how to pronounce the Irish name Siobhan (“show-vaan”). Back in 2009, when my first novel came out, a group of Korean adoptees in San Francisco attended my reading. Since then, I’ve wanted to write about these folks in some way, and it all just snapped into focus at the outset of this project. The thing that I love about Siobhan O’Brien is that she’s not what she appears to be. A short Asian woman who just turned forty shouldn’t have a name like that, but she does, and this juxtaposition imbues her with conflict and drama. She is an unlikely gumshoe, and that people will underestimate her gives Siobhan a great advantage.

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

My teenage self would not be the least bit surprised about this novel, because I was an avid reader of mysteries in my high school days. My favorites were Dick Francis and Robert B. Parker; for months, every week I switched between the world of horseracing and the playful quips of Spenser and Hawk. In my senior year of college, I took a year-long workshop where I began this book with Stephen Varley as my main character, a mixed-race male. But many other parts of that book made it to the final product, such as the all-women’s college and a powerful billionaire antagonist.

I must say, there’s one thing my teenage self would be surprised at – that it took me more than thirty years to finally write a mystery! I did the best I could, my teenage self, I swear.

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

Beginnings have always come easy for me. Since my first novel, what I do is write as much as I can before I get stuck. Usually this happens after about 5000 words; sometimes I get lucky and it happens around 10,000. Once I get to that point, then I sit down and try to see where I’m going. So yeah, beginnings are always easier because I’m not encumbered by anything. Also, there’s just the effervescent energy of starting something shiny and new.

Endings are actually fairly easy, too, as there’s a great degree of velocity when a book you’ve worked on for years is coming to an end. In all the novels I’ve written, I’ve never neared the finish line not knowing what it’ll be; my preparatory personality would never allow it!

What is difficult and has absolutely taken most of my rewrite time is the middle, the very dead middle. It’s at the midway point I feel most unmoored, almost adrift, afraid of what I’ve written so far and of the vast unknown ahead of me. If I could take a pill to avoid this feeling, I’d empty the entire bottle.

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

None of my characters are wholly me, but no doubt they are all a piece of me, or if not my actual self then my striving self. Like Siobhan’s doggedness – I have some of that, but I wish I had more. And even in villains like Victoria Wheeler, the ex-fashion model president of the college who is obsessed with beauty, I see my vanity amplified. So much of writing is wish fulfillment, where we authors get the chance to live lives we’ll never lead. But all of those fantasies have roots in reality, and the people, too.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

No question that films have inspired me more than any other medium, since like novels they are fully-realized stories with a beginning, middle, and end, but recently I’ve been inspired by art. There’s a term called ekphrasis, whose meaning is “the use of detailed description of a work of visual art as a literary device.” And I’ve done just that with my next novel, which incorporates the works of Dina Brodsky. Flash fiction that I’ve written ekphrasistically--see here, here, and here--are integrated into the book.

Learn more about the book and author at Sung J. Woo's website.

My Book, The Movie: Skin Deep.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, July 22, 2020

Timothy Jay Smith

Timothy Jay Smith has traveled the world collecting stories and characters for his novels and screenplays which have received high praise. Fire on the Island won the Gold Medal in the 2017 Faulkner-Wisdom Competition for the Novel. He won the Paris Prize for Fiction for his first book, A Vision of Angels. Kirkus Reviews called Cooper’s Promise “literary dynamite” and selected it as one of the Best Books of 2012. Smith was nominated for the 2018 Pushcart Prize for his short fiction, "Stolen Memories." His screenplays have won numerous international competitions. He is the founder of the Smith Prize for Political Theater. Smith lives in France.

My Q&A with the author:

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

When I had the basic premise of the story—an arsonist threatening a Greek island village—the title came fairly easily to me. (The titles for my other novels have as well.) Anyone browsing books would likely guess it’s about a fire on an island. Why a fire or which island? The subtitle that my publisher added—A Romantic Thriller—conveys the idea that there’s an element of suspense, but nothing too dark.

What's in a name?

I pay a lot of attention to names. I always look them up to learn their origin and meaning. If the meaning is completely wrong, then I usually opt for a different name. Fire on the Island is inspired by real people and places. In real life, one of the principal female characters was introduced to me many years ago as the ‘the real Shirley Valentine’—a bored British housewife who travels to Greece and falls in love with a Greek fisherman, which is essentially what Shirley has done in my book. In the book, her granddaughter, Athina (meaning: goddess of warfare and wisdom) is a firebrand feminist, so the name suits her. If I need a name for a scurrilous priest, it’s always Father Alexis, an unsavory priest from my childhood. So there’s a lot in a name, but it comes from many places.

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

Not much. By my teenage years, I already had the travel bug, and Greece was one of the countries I knew I wanted to visit. (I actually moved there the month I turned 21 to start my first job after college.) I had always been an avid reader and writer. I wrote my first stage play when I was ten and started my first novel when I was twelve. As a teen, I already knew that I was gay, but it would surprise me that I am writing so openly about it because I grew up in a very repressive atmosphere. For any “extras” in life, I’d started working when I was twelve, so the teenage me might be surprised that I had managed to travel the world and write about exotic places.

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

I don’t start a new work until I have a core story (maybe no more than a logline), a main character, and can visualize both the beginning and ending. That gives me the emotional arc of the story. (I wait until I start writing to discover my characters’ secrets and personal arcs.) Once I’m into the writing, things might shift a bit. In another book, A Vision of Angels, I added a prologue to ramp up the tension from the beginning. In Fire on the Island, I always knew the book would open and close with Dingo, the dog.

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

Most of my characters are pieced together from people I’ve met, including myself. In Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, there’s a scene where Harry, his protagonist, enters the Magic Theater and sees different attributes of himself in the many mirrors that are hanging everywhere. In my mind’s reconstruction of that scene, the mirrors shatter, scattering across the floor, each piece reflecting different aspects of Harry’s personality; or more broadly, aspects of all our personalities. I pick and choose the pieces I want, and inevitably, a lot of those pieces come from me. That’s why I always say, there’s a lot of autobiography in all my stories.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I’ve always been a political animal. Since high school, which for me coincided with the civil rights and the anti-Vietnam War movements, I’ve been keenly aware of issues of social justice and equity. I pursued a career in international development motivated by that awareness. As a writer, when I start a new piece of work, I first ask myself what’s the issue I want to write about, and then I craft a suspenseful plot to illuminate that issue without it being heavily message-laden.

When I started Fire on the Island, Greece was in the throes of a major financial crisis, and the influx of refugees was clearly becoming a catastrophe. I didn’t want to write about either event directly. Instead, I wanted the book to be about how ordinary Greeks were coping with the dual crises, and in the process, write an homage to Greece for contributing so much to my life.
Visit Timothy Jay Smith's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

Margot Harrison

Margot Harrison has a lifelong habit of creeping herself out and now attempts to creep others out via her fiction. Her teenage dream was to see as many movies as possible and write about them, which she does as a Tomatometer critic for Vermont media company Seven Days.

She is also a Harvard grad, wrangler of calicos, speaker of French, native of New York City, and lover of horror podcasts and strong black tea.

Harrison's new novel is The Glare.

My Q&A with the author:

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

My title started as a placeholder and eventually became the actual title. In the book, 16-year-old Hedda has led an isolated, screen-free existence for the past decade. Her mother chose to shield her from the Internet after a disturbing online experience that Hedda can't remember.

"The Glare" is Hedda's childhood word for screens in general—phones, computers, tablets. But the phrase has a second, more specific and dangerous meaning. When Hedda gets a chance to visit her dad, she wastes no time getting online. She finds a dark web address that leads her to a video game surrounded by a sinister urban legend. To find out whether this is the source of her terrors of "the Glare," she plays the game ... and very bad things happen.

I often find myself wishing there were one nice, simple word for the screen/online culture we're all immersed in, so I was happy to invent one. And screens do glare, giving us eye-strain in the process! I don't expect the term to catch on, but I like it.

What's in a name?

I wait for my characters to tell me their names. Sometimes a mental image and mood come paired with a sound. In Hedda's case, I knew she was an H, and she was recalcitrant and often angry. Ibsen's Hedda Gabler came to mind, so I grabbed that rare (in the U.S.) name, then gave her a Scandinavian last name to match.

Hedda changed a lot over the course of my revisions, but the name stayed. Eventually it inspired a piece of backstory: In first grade, Hedda's classmates gave her the nickname "Heady" because she was smart, headstrong, and a bit of a show-off.

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

My teenage reader self would be perplexed, because she didn't use the Internet and knew about it only from movies like WarGames. I am a digital immigrant, and I used that experience to build Hedda's character. What is it like to live in analog isolation and then suddenly find yourself thrust into a bustling online world?

My transition was obviously more gradual, but this book was inspired by the sense that the Internet has changed us in ways we don't yet fully understand. Unlike Hedda's mom, I don't believe "the Glare" is inherently bad or dangerous, but teens now really are growing up in a different world. I would have been far less lonely and very possibly happier if I had had access to online communities when I was a nerdy kid. Possibly more stressed out, too—it's hard to say.

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

Usually it's beginnings I have the most trouble with, but every part of this book was hard! There were revisions on revisions as the concept evolved in my brain. The story has had four distinct endings at various times, and even more beginnings.

Looking at the final product, I'm happier with the ending, because the beginning required me to feed the reader a ton of backstory. This book is a slow burn that ramps up gradually from an oddball coming-of-age story to a horror tale with a body count, and the second part was the most fun to write!

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I'm a huge movie fan and a Tomatometer critic. Some years ago, I got very into Japanese horror cinema. The Glare is influenced by Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2001 movie Pulse, the scariest depiction of computers I've ever seen.

What I am not is a gamer. It's not that I dislike or disrespect video game culture; I just never had time for games between all my book, movie, and TV obsessions. So those parts of the book I had to research, drawing on my experience copyediting for a gaming magazine. I made the Glare a very simple first-person-shooter game, because even I can grasp the mechanics of that!
Visit Margot Harrison's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, July 20, 2020

Erica Waters

Erica Waters grew up in the pine woods of rural Florida, though she now resides in Nashville, Tennessee. She has a Master’s degree in English and works as a university writing tutor. When she’s not writing books, you can find her hanging out with her two dogs, Nutmeg and Luna, and forgetting to practice her banjo. Ghost Wood Song is her debut novel. Her second book, The River Has Teeth, will be published in 2021.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Ghost Wood Song is not an obvious, literal title; rather, it is meant to be evocative—to convey the book’s eerie atmosphere and hint at its forest setting. For me, the title is like the sound of a bow on a fiddle’s strings, one that raises the hair on your neck. I think the title, especially as it is illustrated on the book’s cover, prepares the reader for the atmosphere of the book they are about to open. At least that’s the hope!

What's in a name?

My main character, Shady Grove, is named after an old Appalachian ballad by the same name. My favorite version is Doc Watson’s—when I heard it on vinyl for the first time, it gave me chill bumps. “Shady Grove” is a song that is simultaneously sweet and a little eerie, filled with longing and a desire for beauty and connection, as well as a sense of loss and incompleteness. It’s a perfect name for my main character, a bluegrass fiddler who is grieving for the father she lost and straining toward meaningful relationships in the present.

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

Beginnings are much harder for me than endings because I rarely start in the right place. I generally don’t plot or plan my books before writing. I find a thread and I follow where it leads, which means that by the time I finish, the beginning sometimes doesn’t really belong in the book. But by the time I reach the last 25% of the novel, I am propelled toward its natural conclusion. I rarely have to rewrite the end of a book.

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 bit of me in most of the characters I write—my strengths and weaknesses, my hopes and fears. Shady Grove, the protagonist of Ghost Wood Song, has my earnestness and sense of loyalty. Sarah has the same mile-high personal boundaries as me, and Orlando has my wonder and curiosity. Even characters who are my polar opposites have little pieces of my personality or personal experiences inside them.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Music has been an enormous influence for me, especially folk, bluegrass, and classic country. Music helps me figure out the mood and themes of my books and often serves as a way into the supernatural elements of my writing.

I am also an aspiring naturalist, so the natural world is always a big part of what I write. I’m inspired by landscapes, native plant life, and animals, as well as the less obvious citizens of our world: moss, mushrooms, insects, and snails.
Visit Erica Waters's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, July 19, 2020

Paul Acampora

Paul Acampora writes novels and short stories for teens, middle grade and elementary school readers. He was born and raised in Bristol, Connecticut and now lives in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley. He is a full-time development officer during the day and writes fiction early in the morning and late at night. Acampora is a former kindergarten teacher, a member of the Rutgers University Council on Children’s Literature, and enjoys leading writing workshops with students of all ages. He is also a writing instructor for local colleges, high schools and middle schools.

Acampora's new novel is Danny Constantino's First (and Maybe Last?) Date.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The title – Danny Constantino’s First (and maybe last) Date – really sums up the plot. It also makes a bunch of promises: There will be an opportunity for romance. Our hero will screw it up. That should be funny. I hope I’ve kept those promises!

What's in a name?

I definitely put a lot of thought into characters’ names. There needs to be a sort of rhythm and heft in a name so that characters can feel like real people. At the same time, names can provide some insight into a character’s nature. Danny is sort of an everyday, no-adventure name. There are no Pirate Danny’s. At the same time, Constantino sounds a bit like Valentino as in Rudy Valentino, one of the great romantic Hollywood leading men of all time. Constantino also means steady and faithful, which describes Danny as well. Shoving all the disconnects into Danny Constantino creates a source of comedy and possibility and may even hope for the rest of us schmoes.

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

My teenage self would be very surprised to see me writing anything connected to romance. It is not a subject area in which I excelled. I had hoped that I’d be writing lots and lots of sci-fi stories by now. My goal was to become Marty McFly’s dad (the good version).

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

I love writing beginnings. Figuring out how and where a story starts feels like getting strapped into a roller coaster car after a long wait in an amusement park line. It’s satisfying and exciting. But once I’ve built that car, I really am strapped in. I’ll make changes if necessary, but I’m more willing to rework an ending, which I think of as a conversation with the beginning. Like a roller coaster, you sort of end where you started, but now you’ve changed. Hopefully I didn’t throw up on anybody during the ride.

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

My characters are definitely connected to my own experiences and perspective on the world. They ask the questions I want to ask. They are often confused and moved and entertained by things that confuse and move and entertain me. At the same time, I push them to react in ways that I might not. As a result, characters can surprise me with thoughts, words, and actions I did not think I had in me.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Everything influences my writing. Overheard conversations, music, movies, the way my dog snores when I’m on a Zoom call. It’s all material. For Danny Constantino, a whole bunch of really fun romantic comedies caught my attention while I was starting to figure out where this story might go. I got intrigued with the rom-com genre and wanted to see if I could write one for middle grade readers. I hope I have!
Visit Paul Acampora's website.

The Page 69 Test: Danny Constantino's First (and Maybe Last?) Date.

--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, July 18, 2020

David Klass

David Klass is the author of many critically acclaimed young adult novels and has also written more than forty feature screenplays for Hollywood studios including Kiss the Girls (starring Morgan Freeman and adapted from the novel by James Patterson), Desperate Measures (starring Michael Keaton), Walking Tall (starring The Rock), and In the Time of the Butterflies (starring Salma Hayek and adapted from the novel by Julia Alvarez). He has also written for Law and Order: Criminal Intent and currently runs the TV Writing concentration at the Film Program in Columbia University’s Graduate School of the Arts.

Klass's new novel is Out of Time.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Out of Time catches the pace of the novel but also the underlying question that drives it forward: If the Earth is almost out of time, does that justify an eco-terrorist taking matters into his own hands? I originally wanted to call the book Green Man but was warned that it would sound like a book about The Hulk.

What's in a name?

I never thought I would name a main character Tom Smith but I like the way everyone kids him about his very common name, when his abilities are extraordinary. As for Green Man, whatever first and last name I gave him he will always be Green Man to me. That’s the name I had when I started writing the book one night and knew nothing else about the project.

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

My teenage reader self loved thrillers like Marathon Man so I think he would have enjoyed this book and been proud that his older writer self could have come up with it.

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

The beginnings are always much harder for me because the characters swim slowly into focus as I try to find their voices. But once I have them locked in, I sit back and try not to impose myself and I let them tell their story. The ending of Out of Time wrote itself.

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

Both Tom and Green Man are versions of myself. They feel similar to me but both have qualities and abilities that I yearn for. When they meet near the end of the novel for the first time, it sort of felt like my younger self was coming face to face with my older self.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

My teenage daughter brought me to a climate change rally at the UN and I was impressed by the passion of the protesters. But on a deeper level I was inspired by the charge they were leveling against me and my generation: we were bequeathing to them a damaged and possibly doomed world and it was our responsibility to try to fix it before we’re all out of time.
Learn more about Out of Time.

--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, July 17, 2020

Spencer Quinn

Spencer Quinn is the bestselling author of the Chet and Bernie mystery series, as well as the #1 New York Times bestselling Bowser and Birdie series for middle-grade readers.

Quinn's new Chet and Bernie mystery, the tenth in the series, is Of Mutts and Men.

My Q&A with the author:

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

At first, with the Chet and Bernie novels, the titles – all punning – were meant to send the message that this series was comic not tragic, and dog-centric. But that struck me as a bit misleading, because these stories are not cozies. There’s darkness in them (although Chet, the canine narrator – not a talking dog! - snaps back quickly to his preset position which is all about joy in life). So lately I’ve been looking for funny titles where after you read the book you think, Hey, that really was about dog and man, thematically speaking. The title Of Mutts and Men was suggested by a reader. (Hint, hint.)

What's in a name?

Well, let’s take a look at Gudrun Burr, powerful lawyer – and much more, it turns out - at the white-shoe law firm Lobb and Edmonds in Of Mutts and Men. (Bernie, the detective, even remarks at one point, “A white-shoe firm if there ever was one.” That’s me underlining the joke for readers who don’t know that Lobb and Edmonds are two high-end shoe manufacturers.) But back to Gudrun Burr. Burr, of course, summons the memory of Aaron Burr, a powerful and very capable, but bent, character, who ended up on the wrong side of history. And it sounds just like a shiver – brrrr. Gudrun Himmler was Himmler’s long-lived and unrepentant daughter. But you the reader need know none of this. It just makes it easier for me to write the character.

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

The hard part is the middle! Beginnings are always fun – and they’re off! The ending – if the story has been working properly – is something that I know weeks in advance. It’s just a matter of adding grace notes. I often return to the beginning during the writing to improve, add to, or delete certain set-ups. That’s because I’m not one of those writers with an A-Z outline. I find much of the story along the way – like an actual detective.

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

Until Chet and Bernie (meaning quite a number of novels written under my real name, Peter Abrahams) “I” was to be found only in the tone and mood and attitude of the story. But there’s no question there’s some of me in Bernie. And I hope there’s some of Chet in me!
Visit Spencer Quinn's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Peter Abrahams and Audrey (September 2011).

Coffee with a Canine: Peter Abrahams and Pearl (August 2012).

The Page 69 Test: The Dog Who Knew Too Much.

The Page 69 Test: Paw and Order.

The Page 69 Test: Scents and Sensibility.

The Page 69 Test: Bow Wow.

The Page 69 Test: Heart of Barkness.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, July 16, 2020

Julian Stockwin

Julian Stockwin was sent at the age of fourteen to Indefatigable, a tough sea-training school. He joined the Royal Navy at fifteen before transferring to the Royal Australian Navy, where he served for eight years in the Far East, Antarctic waters and the South Seas. In Vietnam he saw active service in a carrier task force. After leaving the Navy (rated Petty Officer), Stockwin practiced as an educational psychologist. He lived for some time in Hong Kong, where he was commissioned into the Royal Naval Reserve. He was awarded the MBE and retired with the rank of Lieutenant Commander.

Stockwin's latest Thomas Kydd novel is To the Eastern Seas.

My Q&A with the author:

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

People do judge a book by its cover so both the title and cover art must work together to attract a reader into the story. For To the Eastern Seas my publisher created what I think is a very compelling offering. The artwork is obviously the Indian subcontinent, with palm trees, a large Oriental dagger, intriguing exotic local craft - and a British man- of-war centre stage. You know immediately that there are going to be salty adventures in tropical locales!

What's in a name?

My central character is Thomas Paine Kydd. I thought long and hard about this, wrote down hundreds of possible names from the period, even wandered through numbers of graveyards looking at tombstones. In fact I was nearly arrested at one time for loitering over-long in a graveyard in Guildford in Surrey. I knew I wanted something manly, of the time, but also with a modern ring. Princess Diana’s mother’s name was Frances Shand Kydd. ‘Kydd’ somehow rang a bell and when I checked I confirmed it would certainly have been found in Georgian times. The ´Paine´ comes from Kydd´s parents' admiration for the early teachings of the radical Thomas Paine.

I wanted to have someone not at all connected with the sea, taken against his will into His Majesty’s Royal Navy but who grows to love the life and find a natural ability as a seaman. I chose to have him as a wig-maker somewhat on a whim but also as this was an occupation facing many challenges with changes in society at that time and through this I could also reflect the Georgian age ashore.

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

Once I´ve decided on the physical location and time frame of the book I like to do a White Board exercise mapping out the essential features of the narrative arc. Crucial to this in my view is seeing, in my mind´s eye, the beginning and the end. The beginning should draw the reader in, sprinkle in a little back story, and set out the stakes and themes in a broad sense. As I write a series it is important to have variety in the beginnings and endings of each book. For To the Eastern Seas I saw the beginning fairly quickly in my mind´s eye - an anxious crowd standing on the high vantage point of Plymouth Hoe peering out to sea. Rumour has it that there has been a great clash of fleets out to sea. Have the French been vanquished? How many British sailors have lost their lives in protecting the sacred shores? And I felt the end must in some way reflect the beginning. Captain Kydd, after his great successes in the East is recalled home to England, the circle complete.

I find that once I have settled on a beginning and an ending - and have a narrative arc that works - I rarely make any changes.

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

Where do a writer’s characters come from? Obviously reading, period research and life experiences all play a part. My wife (and literary partner) Kathy believes that Thomas Kydd and Nicholas Renzi strongly reflect both sides of my personality – the physical me (or me when I was a little younger and a wee bit more spry…) and the logical me. That’s flattering but I don’t think a writer can just transpose aspects of his own personality onto a character. They must also reflect the values and mores of the age in which they live. And they must be characters with which the reader can have some sort of emotional bond; if you don’t care about characters – either positively or negatively – a book won’t be satisfying. I have to say also that my time in the Royal Navy has certainly influenced my writing and I was privileged to have served both on the lower deck and later as an officer.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I find inspiration in many things. My collection of eighteenth- century sea artifacts provide a tangible link to Kydd’s day. As I take a long sniff of a piece of tarred hemp rope, if I half close my eyes it is not long before I am well away at sea.

Certainly the work of the great artists in capturing the many moods of the sea, and the majesty of a ship under sail is inspiring to me. I have a huge admiration for the giants of the past – Charles Brooking, Peter Monamy, Dominic Serres, Thomas Whitcombe, Samuel Scott, John Cleverley and Nicholas Pocock – and of course, Turner. They provide a contemporary window on the world of Thomas Kydd. Then there are the modern artists like Geoff Hunt, John Chancellor and Derek Gardner ( I have framed prints of all their work in my home). And I delight in what the modern world of electronics can offer me as a sea writer. I now have the most up-to-date ships electronic charts system installed in my computer and can call up and plot all of Kydd’s journeys with the press of a key! The familiar paper charts that I used when I first started writing the books have been lovingly stored away.

And of course my own time at sea. Having served ‘before the mast’ was invaluable to me in being able to ´get under the skin´ of my characters. There is a real comradeship, loyalty and strength of character at sea in the fo’c’sle, which I believe has changed little to this day. Then, later, I was privileged to serve as an officer and I draw on these experiences when Kydd himself becomes an officer. I do not feel it is essential for someone to have actually been to sea to write about the sea, but for me, it’s important that I have personally experienced the sea in all her moods.
Visit Julian Stockwin's website.

Writers Read: Julian Stockwin.

My Book, The Movie: To the Eastern Seas.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Alina Adams

Alina Adams was born in Odessa, Ukraine, and emigrated from the USSR with her family in 1977. She lives in New York City with her husband and three children.

Adams's new novel is The Nesting Dolls.

My Q&A with the author:

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

There is a funny story behind the title of my book. I originally called it Love Is Not a Potato, after the first line of the book, and a Russian expression (Love is not a potato. When it goes bad, you can't throw it out the window.) My agent thought it sounded like a children's book, so I changed it to Mother Tongue, to highlight how difficult it is to communicate between generations even when you speak the same language - and especially when you don't. My editor, however, felt that it sounded like a nonfiction title, so we went back to the drawing board. I eventually asked my friends on Facebook to suggest a title, and one of the suggestions was The Nesting Dolls. Nesting dolls are dolls who live one inside of the other, and The Nesting Dolls is the story of three women who carry their families' stories inside of them, which affects every choice they make moving forward.

What's in a name?

I love names! I can't start writing a new story unless I have a name for every character. In The Nesting Dolls, the heroine's name, Daria, is particularly meaningful. Daria is a Russian name. Daria is Jewish in Odessa, USSR in the 1930s. Her mother deliberately brings her from the small village they live in to a major city in order to improve her daughter's marriage prospects. She forces her to learn Russian instead of speaking Yiddish, and she changes her name from Dvora (Deborah) to Daria, so she can better assimilate to the new Soviet Union. It doesn't go well.

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

My teen-age self would be very surprised to learn that I wrote a book set in the USSR. My teen-age self wanted nothing more than to be all American and to write books about all-American characters who spoke perfect English and weren't weirdly foreign in any way.

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

I have no problems with beginnings or endings. Middles, however, I always suspect of trying to kill me. The goal is to write a very long beginning, and then immediately jump into a very long ending, thus skipping the murderous middle as quickly as possible.

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

I have a tendency to make sarcastic comments in my head as I observe a situation. So do they. In the third section, my character, Zoe, the daughter of Soviet-Jewish immigrants who lives in NYC, meets an African-American computer programmer who went to private school and loves science-fiction. My husband is an African-American (one-time) computer programmer who went to and now teachers at a private school. He also may have literally over 1000 science fiction novels and comic books in boxes stashed about our home - and in a separate storage space. As our oldest son observed, "Such a common story!"

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

My parents, my grandparents, many of the stories in the first two sections are theirs. Also, my husband and his parents. Being with him for the past 22 years has given me a perspective on America I never could have had as an immigrant. I like to think that The Nesting Dolls tells a story that's universal, but through a very particular lens, which wouldn't have been possible without the life I've lived up to this point.
Visit Alina Adams's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

Katie Tallo

Katie Tallo has been an award-winning screenwriter and director for more than two decades. In 2012, Tallo was inspired to begin writing novels. Dark August is her debut novel. Tallo has a daughter and lives with her husband in Ottawa, Ontario.

My Q&A with the author:

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

At first my novel was called Gracie’s Kiss. The story was based on a screenplay of the same name that I’d written two decades earlier. As the story evolved, the focus shifted away from the character of Gracie and the meaning of that kiss changed. It also became a much darker thriller and so my editor and I agreed that Gracie’s Kiss was no longer a fit. It sounded a bit too romantic. I came up with Dark August and immediately it resonated. The story is set in the summer and many of the flashbacks harken back to a dark time in August when the lead character’s mother is killed. The lead’s name is Augusta which also makes the title a fun nod to her. August just happens to be my favourite month and my birth month. Mostly though, August to me represents the dead of summer when cicadas buzz, heat ripples off pavement, humidity thickens the air, and the setting sun burns the evening sky red — hence the cover of Dark August.

What's in a name?

I finally landed on the name for my lead character after quite a few tries - Andi, Lily, Charlie. Something about these names wasn’t resonating for me. I kept writing but always felt there was a better name for her. Names are important to me. A name can truly help me as a writer get into that character’s skin and energy and sense of self. Dark August is a story very much about family and so I took a step back and started with her parents. I named her mother Shannon and decided I liked Charlie for her father instead of her. And so I began by first figuring out who Shannon and Charlie Monet were. Once I worked out where they grew up, what they loved and how they died, I knew what they would name their daughter. You see Charlie loved The Masters golf tournament. He'd loved it his whole life and when he died days before their daughter was born, Augusta’s mother knew what name would honour him. The home of the green jacket is Augusta, Georgia. And so Augusta Monet was born. Nicknamed Gus. I loved it! And from then on, her character blossomed. Gus fit her skin perfectly. It’s also a little nod to my husband who’s also a huge fan of The Masters.

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

My teenage self would have devoured this novel and would not have been the least surprised that it came from my/her brain. Although she and I are still both amazed and grateful that it got published. I was always someone with a penchant for dark and twisty stories like Dark August. My sensibilities were more macabre than syrupy, preferring mystery stories over romance. But because it’s a novel about a young person who hasn’t quite grown up, doesn’t have a job, eats sugary cereal for dinner, drinks cream soda by the bucketload, and doesn’t really know what she’s doing most of the time, yet manages to stumble across cash when she needs it — my teenage self would have absolutely loved that.

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

I find it much harder to write beginnings because they are always there, looming, begging to be reworked. But moving forward is the only way to get that first draft done so you have to dig your way out of those beginning pages and keep going. The beginning also sets the tone and if it’s off, then the whole novel can be off. But endings are great fun. Once the beginning and middle have been worked out, suddenly the wind catches your sails and you’re soaring across the page. Endings for some reason pour out of me. I think it’s because I know where I’m headed and I can’t wait to get there. Although, it’s never a direct route. There is something big that happens at the end of Dark August that wasn’t there until later drafts and it caught me by surprise, like a giant wave that you have to head towards or you’ll get thrown overboard. So I just hung on and wrote. It’s one of the creepiest moments in the entire novel. I love that about endings. They can twist and turn you in all kinds of directions.

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 my lead character, Augusta, comes out of that common experience that many of us feel of not fitting in or making sense in the world. Gus is clueless when it comes to social media; retreats from the present into the past; and hibernates. Separateness is her natural state, or maybe it feels like a safer state of being. That sense of disconnectedness is something I’ve explored before in my writing. Ultimately, Gus is a loner who longs for connection and a place to call home. I'm something of a loner myself and friendships haven’t always come easily to me. My daughter has become my best friend. She is a lovely and soft-hearted soul who has come into my life and changed it profoundly, and so I think there are parts of her and me that inspired this character. She’s definitely the reason I write.
Visit Katie Tallo's website.

The Page 69 Test: Dark August.

--Marshal Zeringue