Friday, April 29, 2022

Marc Cameron

New York Times bestselling author Marc Cameron’s Jericho Quinn Thriller Series debuted in 2011. Since then, he’s written eight Quinn novels and four Arliss Cutter novels featuring a deputy US marshal based in Alaska, including the most recent Cutter, Cold Snap. Cameron is the author of five Tom Clancy/Jack Ryan novels for the Tom Clancy estate, including the Shadow of the Dragon and Chain of Command.

A retired Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal, Cameron spent nearly thirty years in law enforcement. He holds a second-degree black belt in jujitsu and is a certified law enforcement scuba diver and man-tracking instructor. The job of a deputy US marshal is extremely varied. Cameron’s career focused primarily on dignitary protection and fugitive operations. As a member of the rural Tactical Tracking Unit for the US Marshals District of Alaska, Cameron routinely tracked lost hikers, hunters, and fugitives in the vast Alaska bush. His assignments have taken him from Alaska to Manhattan, Canada to Mexico and dozens of points in between.

My Q&A with the author:

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

We’re going for Northern Noir. The Cutter novels are set in Alaska, most often in rural communities—what we call “the bush.” I want the books to have that icy, isolated flavor. Cold Snap takes place during the spring. In the lower forty-eight flowers are blooming and kids are flying kites in the park. But—like the old Johnny Horton song, springtime in Alaska can dip well below zero. The land, water, even the air itself conspire to crush anyone who’s not prepared. Deputy US Marshal Arliss Cutter is a skilled outdoorsman and fugitive hunter, but he’s from Florida. The intense chill of the Arctic grates on him, especially when in his mind, it should be spring. A sudden cold snap in the mountains makes for deadly conflict—man v man in a frozen environment that will happily kill both hunter and hunted. It would be impossible to write an honest story about Alaska without making weather a leading character.

What's in a name?

I had a couple of back-and-forth conversations with my publisher early on about Arliss. There was a feeling on that end that a deputy marshal should have a “tougher” sounding name. To me, he’s been Arliss from the beginning. It just took me a minute to convince the team. Cutter’s partner, Lola Teariki, is of Cook Island Maori descent. I wanted something that was recognizable as Polynesian, and to people that know, as Maori, and more particularly, as Cook Island Maori. My wife and I visit Rarotonga for a couple of months every year so I spent a lot of time poring over the phone book looking for suitable surnames. It’s Te Ah Ree Kee but I knew going in some readers would pronounce it “teriyaki” in their heads… My maternal grandmother’s name was Lola. She was one of the most adventurous people I’ve ever known—always on the move into her nineties. Lola Teariki shares much of her spirit.

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

I grew up very poor in rural Texas. As a boy, I read Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern Grows—and wrote a lot of stories about good dogs and trusty horses. In middle school I found Fleming and Forsyth. They turned me to writing Bond-esque espionage. In high school, I discovered Robert Penn Warren and Hemingway whose work nudged me toward a snooty literary phase where I tried, I think, to be too ‘writerly.’ I still have some of those manuscripts and boy, oh, boy, they will never see the light of day. All my friends knew that my teenage-self dreamed of living in the north, being a cop, and writing novels—but I think we’d all have been hella surprised to learned that it actually worked out.

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

I generally know the ending and the route my characters will take to get there, but the beginning takes me several tries. It’s not uncommon for me to bang out three chapters and then, when I start chapter four say to myself, “This is where the book actually begins.” Those first three weren’t wasted. I needed to write them to reach the starting line.

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

I worked in Alaska for most of my career with the US Marshals, much of that on the district’s man-tracking team and fugitive task force. I get asked all the time if I’m Arliss. I wish. His adventures are inspired by my career, but he’s far cooler and more capable than I ever was. He’s sort of an amalgam of all the terrific people I worked with over the years. If I’m like anyone in the books, it’s Arliss’s grandfather, Grumpy, a lawman in Florida during the period when I came on the job in Texas.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I come from a family of cowboys and farmers who spent most every evening on the porch telling stories while they shelled peas or played dominoes. Some of my earliest memories are chewing on a piece of fried chicken, listening to how some kid in the next county over died of a tick bite or how my great grandma blew her fingers off on at a piece of military ordinance the kids found around Camp Polk. They may not have known the terms “character arc” or “rising action,” but my family could tell a mean story. I value those porch-swing master classes more than any formal training I’ve ever received.
Visit Marc Cameron's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Bonnar Spring

Bonnar Spring writes eclectic and stylish mystery-suspense novels with an international flavor. A nomad at heart, she hitchhiked across Europe at sixteen and joined the Peace Corps after college. Bonnar taught ESL—English as a Second Language—at a community college for many years. She currently divides her time between tiny houses on a New Hampshire salt marsh and by the Sea of Abaco.

Spring's new novel is Disappeared.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Fay disappears on page one, so the title leads directly into the story. The mystery of Disappeared is learning where Fay went and why she left without giving any hint to her sister, Julie, what she was doing.

Without giving away too much of the plot, ‘disappeared’ also refers to other characters in the novel. And it hints at the loss of trust between the sisters caused by Fay’s disappearance.

Julie’s search for her sister prompted the original title, The Black Desert, because most of the cat-and-mouse intrigue and the dangers the women encounter take place in that stony wasteland adjacent to the Sahara.

But the novel is an on-the-road adventure, and The Black Desert started (after numerous re-writes and editor complaints) sounding too static. I came up with Disappeared, which ties into the themes I write about and spotlights the story’s action and emotion of the two sisters.

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

My teenage self would not recognize me. I write stories that focus on themes of betrayal, revenge, and redemption. There are a lot of messed up, conflicted characters acting out in ways that may or may not be productive.

Okay, I was a lonely and hormonal teen, bookish, a bit of a nerd. But I had no inkling then, of the lies and the losses that would upend me as an adult. In fact, many of my characters experience that same loss of center, for lack of a catchy diagnostic term, when they come into adulthood and other people begin carving off pieces of their psyche. They’ve become wounded and raw—unlike their oblivious teenage selves.

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

So far my female characters have all shared one aspect or another of my personality. Most are quiet and serious. They feel inadequate to the tasks demanded of them, but somehow they manage to hold it all together and win through. Of course, they are smarter, prettier, and more decisive and creative than I am.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I lie to myself about why I travel. I say I want to (as the cliché would have it) “get away from it all.” There’s a kernel of truth—I like taking a break from daily workouts, escaping long New England winters. Still, I plan involved vacations, not two weeks at the beach with a stack of novels. That always sounds scrumptious, but somehow it never happens.

Trekking to Machu Picchu, biking in Cuba, on camelback into the Sahara ... that’s what I end up doing because, for me, getting away is only the means to an end. And the end is learning more about who I am when I’m not supported by the norms and expectations of my home culture.

We’ve all had the disorienting experience of driving home from work, only to find ourselves pulling into the driveway with no memory of the trip. Our internal maps keep us from needing to pay attention to most road signs throughout our daily lives.

Now that I’ve got a few novels under my belt, I realize I’m doing the same thing with my characters that I do on vacation. Because I write international thrillers, they often turn up in places they’ve never been before. In addition to not knowing friend from foe, my characters literally don’t know their way around. To meet the challenge of unfamiliar territory, their senses must remain on high alert.

I want my readers to experience my characters’ heightened awareness along with them.
Visit Bonnar Spring's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, April 20, 2022

Andrea Yaryura Clark

Andrea Yaryura Clark grew up in Argentina amid the political turmoil of the 1970s until her family relocated to North America. After graduating from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service — including a year of study at the Universidad del Salvador in Buenos Aires —and completing her MBA at York University (Toronto, Canada), she returned to Buenos Aires to reconnect with her roots. By the mid-1990s, many sons and daughters of the "Disappeared"—the youngest victims of Argentina’s military dictatorship in the 1970s —were coming of age and grappling with the fates of their families. She interviewed several of these children, and their experiences, not widely known outside Argentina, inspired her debut novel. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two sons and a spirited terrier.

Clark's new novel is On a Night of a Thousand Stars.

My Q&A with the author:

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

On a Night of a Thousand Stars was not the original title. In fact, I had two titles before landing on this one. The first title was Southern Cross. It remained the title until one day, an editor friend pointed out that a reader might think the story takes place in the American south, involving the KKK. My next title was The Ambassador’s Daughter. I liked this one, but a few months later, a search online revealed that another author had snapped it up. After some brainstorming with my agent and editor, we came up with the final title, which, in my view, is the best one. The title may be evocative for those familiar with the musical, Evita, but key scenes take place under the big Argentinian skies.

What's in a name?

I knew almost immediately I would name one of my main characters Paloma, which means dove and is a symbol of peace and love. The novel transpires in Argentina, but it was important to me that the other characters’ names be easily pronounced in English.

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

My teenage self would be very surprised! My father was a poet/novelist and he had various writer friends who would often come to our house for readings or workshops, but I had always been drawn to the theater, singing and playing the guitar. That said, when I was a high school senior, I took a screenwriting class as an elective. I remember how much I enjoyed writing dialogue and being thrilled when two of my one-act plays were chosen for the stage.

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

It’s a work of historical fiction so I knew what the overall ending would be. I wasn’t sure, however, how one of the two narrative threads would be resolved. This led me to work more on the ending than on the beginning.
Visit Andrea Yaryura Clark's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, April 18, 2022

C. S. E. Cooney

C.S.E. Cooney lives and writes in Queens. She is author of the World Fantasy Award-winning Bone Swans: Stories (2015), an audiobook narrator, and the singer/songwriter Brimstone Rhine.

Her new novel is Saint Death’s Daughter.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Like Lois McMaster Bujold’s Warrior’s Apprentice, Theodora Goss’s The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, or Laurie R. King’s The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, Saint Death’s Daughter hints at the identity (and destiny) of the protagonist via a kind of shorthand nepotism. We learn something about Lanie Stones's character immediately because we already know something of the greater power behind her; what power, after all, is greater than Death itself?

From the title Saint Death’s Daughter, we may intimate that Lanie Stones is closely related to Death, perhaps even a beloved child, and that Death (in this world, at least) is considered holy. We might also conjecture that, being of this lineage, there are duties into which Lanie has been born—and might not have chosen, given the choice. We also know that, like any child of a famous parent, Lanie has a lot to live up to. (As the author, I can tell you that the title also leaves room for the projected sequels—Saint Death’s Herald and Saint Death’s Doorway—to suggest Lanie's character arc, as she grows in power, agency, and expectation.)

What's in a name?

Lanie Stones’s full name is “Miscellaneous Immiscible Stones.” One of my great delights in writing Saint Death’s Daughter was naming the whole branching family tree of Stoneses, from Unnatural Stones, to Irradiant Stones, to Ostrobogulous Stones, to Extramundane Stones, to Quick Fantastic Stones and her son, Even Quicker.

Part of my delight is in the ridiculous nature of their names, and how well the Stoneses wear them, or retrofit them (Unnatural’s nickname was “Natty,” as he was a very fine dresser) to suit their tastes. I wanted Lanie to have a name that meant jumbled, that meant not-one-thing-only, or not easily defined. She’s a necromancer, yes, but woman cannot live on necromancy alone. It’s her ability to adapt, to become something of a renaissance woman of the world, that really ensures her survival—for all her uncanny powers.

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

I think my teenage self would have liked it fine. It may even have influenced her going forward. But she was more interested in fairy tales than necromancy at that point. I think it would help that she also liked Stephen King, Anne Rice, Clive Barker, and Angela Carter at that age. But she hadn’t yet discovered Terry Pratchett, which I think was her loss. Much of what I learned about humor in writing I learned later from Terry Pratchett, so I don’t think my teenaged self’s sense of humor was quite developed enough to appreciate my writing now. I think she might have skipped the footnotes, which would have been a real pity.

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

I think my beginnings tend to be far more polished than my endings, simply because I always comb through what I’ve already written to get be primed for the next chapter I have to write. The end may get a good eight drafts, but by the time it’s written, the beginning would have had about twenty-four. But by the end I also know more about the voice, the characters, and the world than I did at the beginning, so it evens out. No, it’s the middle that’s the hardest: that fine balance between editing down until nothing but the essentials remain and keeping the bits of the book that made it, you know, actually worth writing. Which are not always the purely load-bearing, velocity-dependent, twistily cunning plotty McPlotty bits.

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

All the characters are some aspect of opinion of me. Who do I fear, what repulses me, what lessons do I need to learn, where am I most wise or most foolish, what do I think is cool, what do I think we need more of in the world, what do I notice out in the real world that I want to reflect or enhance in my own fiction? Lanie in particular has to unlearn a lifetime of lessons taught to her in a toxic household. She has to acknowledge and examine the historical myths her own culture tells itself, and her place in it. She has to leave her home in order to understand it, and meet people whose perspectives are alien to her to realize just how strange and isolated a life she’d been leading. I believe in friendship, found family, tenderness, owning up to my mistakes, trying to do better—and Lanie does too. Eventually.
Visit C.S.E. Cooney's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, April 16, 2022

Philip Gray

Philip Gray studied modern history at Cambridge University, and went on to work as a journalist in Madrid, Rome and Lisbon. He has tutored in crime writing at City University in London and serves as a director at an award-winning documentary film company, specialising in science and history.

Gray's grandfather was a captain in the Lancashire Fusiliers and fought through the First World War from start to finish, losing his closest friends along the way. Years after his death, Gray came across a cache of trench maps and military documents that his grandfather had kept, and in which he had recorded the events that befell his unit. Gray was inspired to write his thriller Two Storm Wood when the pull of his grandfather's legacy felt too strong to ignore.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Two Storm Wood is the name given to a strongpoint on one of the battlefields of the Somme during the First World War. Because the Western Front ended up playing host to 20,000 miles of trenches, dugouts, tunnels and fortifications, it became necessary for navigational purposes for the army to give them names, most of which had nothing to do with the underlying topography, let alone the local language. This, of course, gives the author a lot of leeway, which I have exploited. I actually came across the name in a different place altogether. (Yes, there is a real place called Two Storm Wood, but it is not in France!)

In the story, Two Storm Wood is where the aftermath of a horrifying atrocity is discovered deep underground. This terrible crime, and the events leading up to it, form the dark heart of the story – a vortex into which the characters are inexorably drawn. As such, it constantly focuses the readers’ attention on the question of what happened there, and why. Helpfully, this puts readers and characters on the same page, as it were.

What's in a name?

I try not to be too clever with the names of my characters. I generally use first names that carry no special connotations, and surnames that are reasonably simple but distinctive from each other. For me, names that have been chosen to say something relevant about a character only serve to remind me that I am reading a fiction, and that the character is not real. In some kinds of story, that does not matter. But in Two Storm Wood, authenticity is crucial. That is why I have avoided using any names that might seem artificial.

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

When I was at school, I had two large posters on my wall depicting scenes from the First World War. So, of all the books I have written or co-written, Two Storm Wood might have surprised me the least. I’d like to think, though, that the book’s particular take on the war – the post-war clearance effort, aimed at locating and identifying nearly half a million missing men, the presence of the Chinese Labour Corps, the extent of drug use by the troops – would surprise my younger self, because these are aspects of the conflict that were quite quickly forgotten.

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

Both are tricky and subject to change, but I find beginnings get reworked and reordered more often. Early drafts of Two Storm Wood actually began with what is now Chapter 3; and main character, Amy Vanneck, began her journey into the story at an earlier point. I think, in general, the need to balance narrative momentum with context and backstory is at its most tricky in the earliest stages of a book. The readers need to be engaged swiftly, but also to know where they are and who they are supposed to be concerned about. Getting it right often involves a lot of trial and error.

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

As is often said, there is a little of the author in almost every character he or she creates, even if it is only the way those characters think or respond to the world. In Two Storm Wood, I would say that Amy’s world view chimes quite closely with my own (although she’s stronger and braver than me!). That said, I think if my personality is expressed anywhere, it is in the overall architecture of the story: the decisions about right and wrong, bravery and cowardice, honour and shame, that the characters are forced to make. I think that’s usually the way it is. You get a sense of a writer’s identity from his or her work as a whole: what makes them angry or sad, what they find ridiculous, what bothers them and what doesn’t.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

My writing is often described as cinematic, and this might have something to do with the fact that I used to do a lot of still photography, in particular portrait and landscape work. I tend to imagine scenes visually in the first instance, and the visual context of what takes place is always important to me, helping to fire my imagination. I’ve also written for the theatre, and I think that has considerably sharpened my ear for dialogue, as well as making me more aware of the rhythms that flow through it. The little bit of screenwriting I’ve done may also have changed my perspective on the pacing of scenes, and the balance between description, thought and action. Things tend to move along a little quicker these days – although any novel that aspires to be as stripped down and concise as a screenplay is going to end up very short indeed!
Visit Philip Gray's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Sarah Bird

Sarah Bird is the author of eleven novels. Her latest, Last Dance on the Starlight Pier, is out this month from St. Martin’s Press. Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on one woman—and a nation—struggling to be reborn from the ashes.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Quite a bit, actually. My working title was The Cellophane Wedding since the book takes place in world of the dance marathons of the Great Depression and that was one of the events that promoters cooked up to draw crowds. Since so many couples couldn’t afford to start their lives together, weddings became rare enough that audiences would pay to see one.

And a cellophane wedding? Where the bride and all her many bridesmaids wore gowns made of transparent cellophane over their underwear? Well, that was a guaranteed sold-out house.

The cellophane wedding was just one of the fabulous research discoveries I made about the dance marathons and, though it didn’t become the title, it became a pivotal element.

In the end the actual title, Last Dance on the Starlight Pier, was a better choice because, in a very few words, it plunges the reader into the story of a young woman whose future is going to be decided during a dance marathon held beside the sea. The word “last” introduces the sense of urgency that animates my protagonist and her quest.

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

My teenage self would adore this novel and the two that preceded it since they are what she loved most: historical fiction. I grew up reading the big, juicy epics that my mother devoured. Doorstops by the likes of Leon Uris, Mary Renault, and Taylor Caldwell. I think my earlier novels would have surprised the shy Catholic schoolgirl that I was since they are generally considered comic and can be fairly bawdy.

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

Beginnings are definitely harder for me. I generally know, or at least think I know, what the ending will be. But I’m typically not certain how the book should begin until I’ve written the whole thing. The ending is like a note on a pitch pipe. It tells me the emotional tenor I want to end on. My job is to find the right note to open with and all the ones that go in the middle so that the whole thing is ultimately in tune.

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

I’m sort of a Method writer. Like a Method actor, I have to become my protagonist, to understand her grief and joy, in short, her motivation, in order to tell her story. Some of my protagonists have included the only woman to serve with the Buffalo Soldiers, an Okinawan girl conscripted by the Japanese army during World War Two, a drug-addled caterer, and, most recently, a desperate nursing student/former vaudeville performer who enters a dance marathon. On the surface, my current life as a suburban mom would seem worlds apart from them. But, emotionally, I have inhabited each one and they are all me.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Though I’m deeply grateful for my acceptance as a “Texas Writer” to the point that I’ve been selected for the Texas Writers Hall of Fame, I’m not sure I deserve the title. I was a mostly finished product by the time I ever set foot in the Lone Star State. My early influences were about as strong as they come: large, Catholic, Democratic, military family composed of voracious readers. These influences set me on the path I was to follow in both life and in my writing.
Visit Sarah Bird's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, April 9, 2022

Antoine Wilson

Antoine Wilson is the author of the novels Panorama City and The Interloper. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, StoryQuarterly, Best New American Voices, and The Los Angeles Times, among other publications, and he is a contributing editor of A Public Space. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and recipient of a Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin, he lives in Los Angeles.

Wilson's new novel is Mouth to Mouth.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Mouth to Mouth starts with an anonymous narrator bumping into a college acquaintance while waiting out a flight delay at JFK. That acquaintance, Jeff Cook, now a successful art dealer, invites the narrator for a drink in the first class lounge, where he proceeds to unspool the story of his rise, a story that kicks off with his rescuing a drowning man on the beach in Santa Monica. That event—traumatic, heroic, overwhelming—shapes the course of his life to come.

That's the title on a literal level, obviously. But baked into the structure of the novel is the telling of the story itself. How reliable is Jeff? What are his motives for telling our narrator? That’s the second layer, a story that’s transmitted face to face—the Bible uses mouth to mouth at one point to mean this—and a story that’s related second-hand. This book is at least as much about storytelling (the narratives we tell ourselves and those we share with others) as it is about saving a life, so the two meanings overlap nicely in Mouth to Mouth.

What's in a name?

The fun thing about Francis Arsenault’s fancy name is that it’s a construction. He was born Frank Busse. I’m fascinated by people who rename themselves.

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

My teenage self would be surprised by how conventional it is, I think. I mean that it’s a realist novel rather than a surrealist stage play. He would appreciate the brevity of it.

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

I don’t know the ending when I set out to write something, so in a sense the ending is ever-changing, hovering in a kind of subjunctive mood the whole time I’m working. Once it’s arrived at and written, though, it doesn’t usually change much. The ending seems like it would be more difficult, but once I’m there, I feel like I’ve got everything necessary to put it together, and, if all goes well, a dollop of inspiration.

Beginnings used to be easy for me, when I was younger. Now I write for a bit, start over, write a bit further, start over, write further, start over, and so on. So the beginning gets written many times. Everything relies on it. If there’s a problem with an ending, I like to tell my students, it’s usually in the beginning somewhere.

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

Only in glimpses. Like when you see your kid make a gesture you recognize as your own. The zone from which characters emerge is a miasma of personal observation, internal functions, types, vague recollections of books I’ve read, and so on. From my perspective, they seem very cobbled together. Little Frankenstein’s monsters. Of course, I do my best to spackle the cracks so that from the reader’s perspective they appear as coherent wholes.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Much of Mouth to Mouth takes place in the so-called art world—Beverly Hills in the mid-1990s, to be specific—and the novel calls into question all kinds of issues of valuation and commerce pertaining to the buying, selling, and collecting of fine art. But putting the financial aspect aside, the book is also inspired by art and artists from that world. Agnes Martin—whose Writings is incredible—has a cameo, and Jeff Cook describes a profound aesthetic encounter with a piece by Joan Mitchell, one of my favorite painters. Several fictional artists and their artwork appear in the novel, transparent sublimations of my own fine art fantasies.
Learn more about the book and author at Antoine Wilson's website and Twitter perch.

My Book, The Movie: Panorama City.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, April 7, 2022

Erica Ferencik

Erica Ferencik is the award-winning author of the acclaimed thrillers The River at Night, Into the Jungle, and Girl in Ice, which The New York Times Book Review declared “hauntingly beautiful.”

My Q&A with the author:

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

The title Girl in Ice can be interpreted as referring to the girl who is actually frozen in the glacier and thaws out alive, and/or the protagonist, the linguist Val Chesterfield, who is in one sense “frozen” by her anxiety disorder, which causes her to feel safe only in certain settings: home, her office, etc.

Girl in Ice is also short and direct, and has a thrillery-feel, which I thought would be effective, as much as I chafe at categorizing the novel strictly as a thriller, since it also has elements of mystery and touches of horror – and – it’s not a by-the-numbers thriller read. We tossed around a few other titles but not too many. One was Girl on Ice, which to me sounded like a skating story or an appetizer.

The title of the German edition (September 12th release) is Ein Leid Vom Ende Der Weld, or, Song From the End of the World, which I love. They are positioning the book as general fiction rather than a thriller. I love the complexity of the word Leid, which means song but also call, or melody, or melodic message. There is no literal singing in the book, but the girl who has thawed from the ice certainly “sings” her own message of warning and truth to this modern world about climate change and the dangers of not working together to address it.

What's in a name?

I come to names in a very subconscious way. I choose them without choosing them, if that makes sense. I picture the character and then name them. Who they look like in my mind, literally a sound picture. It’s tough to be as clear about this as I’d like.

I’m also hampered by associations I have with the names of people I’ve known. That kid Suzy who was a bitch in high school; mild, meek Sarah, bully Lisa and her gang. I tend to go for names I don’t have any association with; otherwise all I’m doing is picturing the person I knew, or know, with that name.

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

My teenage self would be surprised that I became a writer, since back then I was a painter, a fine artist. She would also be surprised that, being such a conformist in high school, and also painfully shy, that I let my freak flag fly in all my books.

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

The ending of Girl in Ice, as apocalyptic as it is, felt inevitable me. The combustion of greed, misdirected grief, repressed love and lust, all trapped in one of the harshest environments on earth could only end in the way it did. I spend months outlining a book before I write a first draft, so endings don’t change. But beginnings, or first chapters, are rewritten dozens of times, because they are a balancing act of giving just enough of the who, what, why, when, and where to orient the reader but not confuse them, and an irresistible hook.

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

Call me an incurable narcissist, but I am in all of my characters, to some extent. Hey – I know myself best, why not reach inside and use what I’ve got? We all contain multitudes, if we admit it to ourselves. For my part, I know I can tap on inherent shades of the beast inside me, my cunning, great kindness, my grieving self, my joyous self, the part that remains a child, the jealous part, loving part, wounded, empathetic. And then there is the rich trove of tapping into everyone I know or have ever known….

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Like so many others, I survived an extremely challenging childhood, and so I have ready access to dread, to feeling trapped, to planning creative ways to survive. In short, my fight or flight hormones are quite close to the surface, so it’s natural for me to write stories filled with tension and scares.

Other influences are travel, being in nature, film music, theater, the news and films!! I love the films of Werner Herzog and Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water), especially.
Visit Erica Ferencik's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, April 3, 2022

Diana Abu-Jaber

Diana Abu-Jaber is the award-winning author of several books of fiction and nonfiction, including Crescent and The Language of Baklava.

Her new novel is Fencing With the King.

My Q&A with the author:

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

That's an interesting and tricky question for this novel. There is a literal fencing match with the king of Jordan--which the story events are leading up to. But it's also a kind of metaphor for the relationship between a monarch and their people. While the duel is only one of several climatic moments in the novel, in a sense, each of the characters is "fencing" with their own desires and fears, so I think it hits at the heart of the story.

What's in a name?

Character names are super intuitive for me. They have to not only sound right but somehow feel right. I just knew my character Gabe had to be a Gabe- sort of angelic, yet sort of casual and down to earth. And I've always loved the name Amani - it wasn't until I was deep into writing the novel that I realized how closely it echoed the name of the setting - Amman.

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

I would probably be pretty darn surprised. When I was younger I was very much into fairy tales, myths, magical realism, as well as language - a heightened, almost lyrical approach to writing. Over the years, I've become much more interested in story-telling, a kind of detailed, natural, clipped narration, and painting big stories on broad, real-world canvases.

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

Oof - both are tough! I re-wrote both my beginning and ending for Fencing With the King. But there's a kind of natural energy and momentum that can help carry a beginning - once you hit on the right one. I feel like endings have to do an awful lot of heavy-lifting -- you usually have to answer some questions but it shouldn't feel too neat or pat. Somehow it should feel satisfying, but conveying a true sense of closure can almost seem mystical and at times near-impossible for a journey of hundreds of pages.

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

I'm inside of all my characters - that seems almost inescapable to me. If you really want to convey layered, human characters, you can to draw on your own well of emotional layers. Some of the details and circumstances might come from real life as well, but if you do your job correctly, I think characters eventually grow themselves and their own natures -- a bit like children eventually grow their own lives, distinct from that of their parents.
Learn more about the writer and her work at Diana Abu-Jaber's website.

The Page 99 Test: Origin.

The Page 69 Test: Fencing with the King.

--Marshal Zeringue