Erin Swan

photo credit: Sylvie Rosokoff

Erin Swan was born in Manhattan and lived there for ten years until her family moved upstate, where she started writing stories and poems. She used her early adulthood to travel, write children’s books, and work for a literary agency before going to teach English in India and Thailand. Swan earned her MA from Teacher’s College at Columbia University and began teaching in New York’s public school system in 2008.

While teaching full-time, Swan attended the MFA program at the New School and graduated with a degree in fiction. Her work has been published in various journals, including Portland Review, Atticus Review, The South Carolina Review, and Inkwell Journal, and her stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Walk the Vanished Earth is Swan's first novel.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Titles are not easy for me. This was especially true when it came to this novel. Coming up with a short story title feels simpler, because it needs to cover less. For a novel, however, the title must encompass characters, plotlines, themes: everything I’ve crammed into the book. It took me a while to land on Walk the Vanished Earth, especially because the story covers so many characters and settings and timelines.

When I had just a short story that was only beginning to dream of being a novel, I called it Aftermath, because at that point it was fixated on my character Bea’s trauma and its apocalyptic aftermath. As I churned out more pages, spinning into other time periods and eventually launching my characters to Mars, I chose the title This Infant Nation, which is a phrase my bison hunter Samson says towards the end. I thought this captured what I was trying to say about America, what it has been and what it might yet become. This title, however, didn’t roll off the tongue quite right.

Once I began working with my agents (I have two who collaborate brilliantly as co-agents), we decided the book needed a new name. After writing my character Michelangelo on the Caribbean Sea in the year 2030, I noticed a line he said that included “vanished earth.” This seems like a start. There is a lot of walking and a great deal about the journey in the book, and so eventually I combined these ideas into Walk the Vanished Earth. The grandiosity of this title used to embarrass me when I said it aloud, but I have come to embrace it and can now proclaim it with pride. I think it captures one of the book’s big ideas, that even if all comes tumbling down, we as a species will continue to push forward, to walk across what seems vanished, because that is what humans do.

What's in a name?

Usually, I give my characters the names that pop into my head while writing, but in a few cases in this book I made conscious choices. One such choice was to change some of my characters’ names as the story progresses. For example, I begin one character as Paul, an average-seeming insurance salesman in Kansas City, but change his name to Pa once he becomes the architect designing the Floating City in flooded New Orleans. His daughter Kay becomes Kaiser in the Floating City, as most of that city’s inhabitants choose new, often ridiculous, names. In this section, I have a Mussolini and a Roosevelt, a Harbinger and a Rhombus and an Isosceles. I wanted to show both their playfulness in their new environment and their desperate need to shuck off the old world that has failed them. I don’t have real children to name, only characters in books, which is probably good, because who knows what absurd names my kids would end up with?

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

I believe my teenaged self would be thrilled by my novel. She loved everything from Adrienne Rich and Sylvia Plath to Stephen King and Frank Herbert’s Dune. She also wrote a lot of poetry, much of it about death. That angry, bookish teen would delight in my novel’s dysfunctional families, apocalyptic upheavals, and adventures on another planet. I think she would also appreciate the poetic language and the way I play with structure and point of view in each section. I like to think that on some other plane of existence, 17-year-old Erin is reading Walk the Vanished Earth, maybe even staying up all night to finish it.

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

I definitely find beginnings easier to write, because anything seems possible. Once I am midway through, I tend to flounder, uncertain where to go next. When this happens, I give my draft to my partner to read. He is great with helping me brainstorm plot points, especially when it comes to endings. We will sit around our campfire at our cabin in Pennsylvania and generate as many crazy ideas as possible. He was the one who helped me alight upon the giant babies and the presence of fire that tie my novel together, bringing everything full circle. That said, since there are so many time periods in the book, there are actually multiple smaller beginnings and endings in this novel, which presented other challenges for plotting but also eased some of the pressure, since there are so many places for the reader’s attention to go.

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

For this, I will say simply that this is one of the most autobiographical things I have ever written, although in many cases links to my own life might be evident only to me.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I don’t know, everything? I tentatively began this book in 2014 and completed final revisions for it in 2021, so I did a lot of living and a lot of thinking during its creation. Here is a list of some of my non-literary inspirations:

Living in New York City
Riding the subway at 7:00 am
The film Beasts of the Southern Wild
The film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
The film Children of Men
My cross-country travels in my 20s
Hearing deer bark outside my cabin
Headlines in the New York Times
American politics from 2016 to 2020
The rover Curiosity’s pictures of Mars
Recent hurricanes, wildfires, and mudslides
The weather

Visit Erin Swan's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

R.W.W. Greene

R.W.W. Greene is based in New Hampshire, USA. He is a frequent panelist at the Boskone Science Fiction & Fantasy Convention in Boston, and his work has seen daylight in Stupefying Stories, Daily Science Fiction, New Myths, and Jersey Devil Press. Greene keeps bees, collects typewriters, and lives with his writer/artist spouse Brenda and two cats. He is a member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association of America.

Greene's new novel is Mercury Rising.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Mercury Rising -- I’m pretty sure that’s been the title since I started the thing, and I received no pushback from the publisher. The name of the series, “The First Planets,” was a collaboration but mostly the contribution of my spouse.

It would be a spoiler to talk about all the work I think the title does, but on the surface it conveys “space” and “heating up.” The cover smacks of alien invasion. On an SFF store shelf among many other titles, that’s pretty much a successful mission. The other work done may only be apparent when the reader reaches The End, maybe reads the acknowledgements, closes the book, and looks at the cover again. The title is both indirectly direct and directly indirect … and maybe a misdirection.

What's in a name?

The protagonist of Mercury Rising is Brooklyn Lamontagne. It’s a French-Canadian last name, because I wanted to show his working-class roots. The first name kind of runs in that direction, too, with an attitude, a point of origin, and maybe a hint of his parents’ personalities to go along with it. His dad loved the old neighborhood so much he named his kid after it, even though the family had to move to Queens before Brooklyn was born.

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

My attempt at a novel, around age 11, was called Space Academy, and by high school I was subsisting mostly on science-fiction and fantasy. The surprising part would probably be the casual diversity in the book. I grew up in a tiny, very white town in Maine before there were LGBTQ+ groups, and it took quite a few years before I realized I wasn’t seeing the complete picture. Not everyone is a Kirk or Spock analog.

My teen self would be surprised and disappointed that I wasn’t living in space by now.

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

So far, both ends of the stories have shown up pretty early in the process. I knew what Brooklyn’s fate would be, even what song he’d be listening to when he met it, before I’d finished his first chapter. It was the only possible outcome for that guy at that point in his life. The work came in bending the arc of the plot to get him where he needed to go to do the thing he needed to do. It took warm hands and steady pressure.

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

I’ve never felt like I had much of a personality to share with a character, but it’s telling that a lot of my creations like books and music and would probably vote for half of a ham sandwich over Donald Trump.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

My favorite painter is John Singer Sargent. There’s just something about the way he conveys light and shadow that I really like. I’d like to think I’m trying to emulate him in some ways, although he painted mostly rich people and those folks aren’t that interesting to me.

Visit R.W.W. Greene's website.

The Page 69 Test: Mercury Rising.

--Marshal Zeringue

Susan Furlong

Susan Furlong is the author of several mysteries including the acclaimed Bone Gap Travellers series and Shattered Justice, a New York Times Best Crime Novel of the Year. She also contributes, under a pen name, to the New York Times bestselling Novel Idea series. Her eleventh novel, What They Don't Know, is now in bookstores. Furlong resides in Illinois with her husband and children.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The title, What They Don’t Know, propels the reader directly into a twisty story where they meet Mona Ellison, a seemingly normal suburban housewife with a devastating secret. Her life appears perfect to those around her, until her son goes missing, and the police show up accusing him of a heinous crime. Her quest to find her son and prove his innocence, leads her on a trial of social media clues through the sinister side of suburbia where she finds she’s been betrayed by those she trusted most. Or is it Mona who can’t be trusted? Readers will have fun trying to figure out what the characters do or don’t know, and who can be trusted.

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

My teenager reader self would fall out of her chair with shock. Not so much because of the content of this slightly strange and twisted story (because my teen self was, after all, a bit strange) or because this is a mystery, because my teenage self read mysteries by the armful (Wolfe, Grafton, DeMille, Burke, Ellis Peters, Koontz …) but she’d be amazed that she would end up a writer. She was supposed to be a teacher, but life is full of surprises … and here I am.

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

Writing endings is fun but coming up with the beginning of a story is torture. There are too many questions to answer at the start of a manuscript: Past or present tense? How much backstory to include? Third or first person? I started and stopped What They Don’t Know at least a hundred times before I figured out the beginning.

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 good question because I write about dark crimes and serial killers, and people who meet me after reading one of my books are often a little leery of me. Thankfully, my characters are straight from my imagination. If they were like me, they’d be terribly boring.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Family is a central theme in every book I’ve written. I come from a happy, but sometimes loud and chaotic family, and our interactions have always fascinated me. It’s no surprise that I enjoy making up families in my books. My faith also influences my writing, which may seem weird considering that I write about crime, and mostly murder and all the ugly motives for killing. But crime fiction is ultimately the story of good vs. evil and the decisions people make when faced with temptation. I push every one of my main characters to the ultimate brink of an evil influence, present them with a defining decision, and then the let the fallout of their decision unfold in my story.

Visit Susan Furlong's website.

My Book, The Movie: Splintered Silence.

The Page 69 Test: Splintered Silence.

--Marshal Zeringue

Brian Klingborg

Brian Klingborg has both a B.A. (University of California, Davis) and an M.A. (Harvard) in East Asian Studies and spent years living and working in Asia. He currently works in early childhood educational publishing and lives in New York City. Klingborg is the author of two non-fiction books on Shaolin kung fu; Kill Devil Falls; and the Lu Fei China mystery series (Thief of Souls and Wild Prey.)

My Q&A with the author:

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

There is an art to creating a good book title. It must be catchy, suggestive of the plot without giving too much away, and not something that dozens of other authors have already used for their books.

The working title of the first book in the Inspector Lu Fei series was City of Ice. Pretty catchy, I thought. And relevant, as the book is set in the northern part of China, near Harbin, which is, in fact, nicknamed City of Ice. Unfortunately, many other authors, mostly writing in the fantasy genre, had already used that title. So, in the end, we had to change it to Thief of Souls. Although Thief of Souls is a good title, I’m not sure it let readers know what to expect. As I said to my editor, it sounds a bit like a 1980s synth-heavy pop song by Stevie Nicks.

The plot of this next book, Wild Prey, revolves around the illegal animal trade in China and Myanmar. In keeping with the criteria – catchy, relevant, unique – I came up with a variety of titles that included words like “meat,” “raw,” “butcher,” and so on. Okay, so perhaps I was going for lurid, rather than catchy.

After some back and forth, my editor and I narrowed the choices to either Wild Prey or The Quarry. We both liked The Quarry best – it was evocative and somewhat “literary.” However, when I started polling friends to see if they knew the definition of the word as “an animal pursued by a hunter,” I discovered many did not. So, out of fear that readers might think the book was about chipping stone out of a hole in the ground, we settled on Wild Prey. In the end, I think the title fits the plot like a CSI tech’s latex glove.

What's in a name?

When you’re writing about a country where just 5 surnames account for more than 300 million citizens and the language is wildly divergent from English, it is a struggle to come up with names that a Western audience can both pronounce and keep straight.

In the Lu Fei series, wherever possible, I have resorted to using nicknames or titles – Chief Liang, Constable Sun, Li the Mute, Big Wang, “Monk,” and so on. I’ve also avoided choosing, with limited success, names that I think most readers will find difficult to digest: Xi, Qin, Cui, Xiong, and the like.

For my protagonist, I wanted a name that was easy to read, meaningful in some way, and was authentically “Chinese.” In other words, no Kuai Chang Caines or Charlie Chans. I chose Lu (according to Chinese conventions, surnames go first) because it was simple, and Fei, meaning “to fly,” because it sounded illustrious.

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

As a teenager growing up in a small town – this was before home computers, the internet and cable television – reading was my escape. I read anything and everything, but mostly fantasy, horror, and historical fiction. And although I was reading for pleasure, I always enjoyed learning something new in the process.

I suppose that sentiment has informed my own writing. Wild Prey, and its predecessor, Thief of Souls, are crime/thriller novels, but they are also intended to give Western readers a peek into a different culture and society. While fifteen-year-old me wouldn’t have had an inkling that I’d go on to study Chinese culture and live in Asia, he might have guessed I’d base my writing on factual history or current events.

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

Endings are much harder than beginnings. A beginning starts with an inspiration. A brainstorm, a “Hey, what if?” Beginnings are full of promise and excitement.

But every beginning eventually comes to a midpoint - and must strive to reach a satisfying conclusion. That’s where the hard work lies. Figuring out how to mold your one brilliant idea into a complete story.

When writing, I usually start off strong and have a general idea of where I’m going but get lost frequently along the way. It’s like driving down an unfamiliar road with a destination in mind, but only a few fragments of a map to guide you.

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

I suppose all my characters have some connection to my own personality. After all, their emotions, reactions, and motivations all spring from the same well – me!

The protagonist of Wild Prey, Inspector Lu Fei, is a citizen of the People’s Republic of China and came of age at a time when that country’s society and economy were undergoing rapid changes. In writing him, I have worked very hard to create a character who is relatable to a Western audience, but also very much of a product of a culture and setting that is not my own. While I like to think we share a similar sense of humor, romantic sensibility, and fondness for beer, my goal is to make Lu Fei true to his setting and himself.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I’m a huge movie buff, especially horror movies. Horror movies are designed to tap into a primitive part of your emotional framework – your lizard brain – and produce a visceral response: fear, disgust, arousal, excitement, jubilation.

Good horror films also know how to paint a character with just a few brush strokes, build tension, lull you into a false sense of security, and then BAM! - hit you with a surprise twist.

Although my books are more in the thriller or crime vein than horror, I try to follow some of these same principles. If I can get my readers to feel and experience what my characters feel and experience, then I will have done my job.

Visit Brian Klingborg's website.

My Book, The Movie: Wild Prey.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sarah McCoy

Sarah McCoy is the New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author of the novels Mustique Island; Marilla of Green Gables; The Mapmaker’s Children; The Baker’s Daughter, a 2012 Goodreads Choice Award Best Historical Fiction nominee; the novella “The Branch of Hazel” in Grand Central; The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico; and Le souffle des feuilles et des promesses (Pride and Providence).

Her work has been featured in Real Simple, The Millions, Your Health Monthly, Huffington Post, Read It Forward, Writer Unboxed, and other publications. She hosted the NPR WSNC Radio monthly program “Bookmarked with Sarah McCoy” and previously taught English writing at Old Dominion University and at the University of Texas at El Paso.

McCoy lives with her husband, an orthopedic sports surgeon, their dog Gilly, and cat Tutu in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

My Q&A with the author:

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

A great deal! It’s the name of the setting, Mustique Island. Immediately, readers are docked on the shore. I don’t think the title could be more specific about what you’re going to get: it’s a book about an exclusive, privately-owned tropical island. Google the name and you’ll see it’s real and notable for scandal and secrets. The title has been Mustique since I saved the first page as a word document and thought, “This could be a book.”

What's in a name?

In Mustique Island, the spark of inspiration for the three protagonists’ names came from real people mentioned in Colin Tennant’s autobiography, but everything beyond that is entirely of my own imagining. Their names, Willy May, Hilly, and Joanne, are fictionalized variations of reality. These three women are surrounded by public figures whose lives have been well-documented in the press and further speculated by the world. Princess Margaret, the Tennants, Mick Jagger—you can go online and pull up books written about and by all of these named individuals. I carefully chose to include information already suggested (gossip magazines) or documented (newspapers) in the public domain.

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

I don’t think teenage Sarah would be surprised by the content so much as the fact that I am putting that content out publicly for others to read. By that I mean, as a teenager, I was terribly aware that there was an implicit “good girl” code of behavior. Adhering to that social protocol made a young woman acceptable and liked by superiors (parents, teachers, neighbors, adults). I struggled with depression, which was often catalyzed by my sense that what I felt inside had to be masked— everything from my burgeoning sexual desires to simply wishing to speak my mind when my opinion did not fall in conservative line. I knew that the real Sarah was not a good girl by the good girl code. So I felt both like a fake and a failure. This novel speaks openly to all of those topics.

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

I love writing endings. They are the climactic catharsis of the storytelling. It’s so satisfying to write endings!

I tend to write my way into a book. My beginnings often get chopped, reformatted, reversed, and definitely rewritten multiple times. I’m one of those writers who believes that I’ve got to know the ending before I can write the beginning. It’s the omnipresent author’s duty to set forth a story navigation (even if the reader doesn’t implicitly know there is one) so that we end up on course. So, I’d say beginnings are trickier. I need to know my characters well enough to give the readers only the most significant bits for the oncoming journey, but I don’t really know my characters well enough until I’ve journeyed with them to the ending. That make sense?

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

Characters are autonomous spirits. They are muses that come to writers via some mode of story sharing. It could be a visual image, a song/sound, a touch, taste, idea, or feeling. My characters tend to come to me as voices. I heard Willy May’s Texan twang first and it drew me to her.

That said, all characters are filtered through the writer’s lens of interpretation. They connect to writers most able to understand or most willing to investigate their fundamental conflicts. Willy May, Hilly, and Joanne certainly connected with me as empowered females searching for their footing in the world. The Caribbean culture connected with me as a Puerto Rican. The solitary island setting connected with me while putting this to paper during the pandemic lockdown.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Everything is fodder for inspiration. I warn my family members, friends, and neighbors of this on a continual basis. Nothing is out of bounds simply because I haven’t the ability to compartmentalizing my experiences. It’s all me. Trying to pick one as the lead inspiration would be like trying to separate different hues coming through a sunny window. The molecular structure and natural variants within the glass changes the light. It’s a multifaceted rainbow and a single ray of sunshine all in one.

In Mustique Island, 1970s music, photographs, magazines, films, newspapers, politics, the British royal family, my own family members’ history—all of it influenced the writing.

Visit Sarah McCoy’s website, Facebook page, Instagram page, and Twitter perch.

The Page 69 Test: The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico.

The Page 69 Test: The Baker's Daughter.

Coffee with a Canine: Sarah McCoy and Gilbert.

The Page 69 Test: The Mapmaker's Children.

My Book, The Movie: The Mapmaker’s Children.

The Page 69 Test: Marilla of Green Gables.

The Page 69 Test: Mustique Island.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wendelin Van Draanen

Wendelin Van Draanen has written more than thirty novels for young readers and teens. She is the author of the 18-book Edgar-winning Sammy Keyes series—often called “The new Nancy Drew”—and wrote Flipped, which was named a Top 100 Children’s Novel for the 21st Century by School Library Journal and became a Warner Brothers feature film, with Rob Reiner directing.

Van Draanen’s latest novel, The Peach Rebellion, explores the lives and loves of three young women who come from completely different backgrounds and join forces to take a stand against the patriarchy.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Titles can be tricky! Sometimes the perfect one reveals itself from day one, or was the inspiration for the entire story. And sometimes it’s a struggle. The working title for The Peach Rebellion was Millions of Peaches. The trouble with a working title is that it’s seared into your brain for – in this case—the three years that it took to write it. So, when my editor suggested that the working title didn’t really reflect the story of three young women standing up to the patriarchy, it was a challenge to erase my mental board and start fresh. But she was right. And I do love The Peach Rebellion as a title. I like that it’s not too on the nose, and reflects the sweet conflict inside.

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

Teenage Wendelin would be astounded. Not just because The Peach Rebellion is a historical novel and I was a mystery buff, but because I became an author at all. Writing was not my forte in school—math and science were. But tragic events forged me into a writer, and now I can’t imagine life without writing.

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

Like a title, the first and last lines can be inspiring or a struggle. When I write a book, I always have the idea in mind for the ending. I like knowing what I’m driving toward! And often what spurs me to begin the actual writing of a project is the spark of a first line. With The Peach Rebellion, both the beginning and ending changed a lot. I added an opening to the story—one that immediately set the tone and helped convey the emotional depth of a tragic event. And the ending…I reworked the last pages a lot. But endings are so important! They’re the author’s swan dive off the page. I want my reader to hug the book after they close it; to feel emotionally satisfied and hopeful, but not wrap things up with too many bows. It takes real work and contemplation to achieve the right balance.

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

I feel that to convey the heartbeat of a character, you have to understand them. That can come from your own experiences, or by research, reflection, and submerging yourself in their world and dilemma. There are alternating narrators in The Peach Rebellion. As the daughter of immigrants, I understand why Ginny Rose—the Dust Bowl migrant—so often feels like an outsider. And having worked for my parents at their small family business, Peggy—the peach farmer’s daughter—is a girl I really identify with. But in the writing process, these characters evolved away from the sparks that inspired them. They become their own separate and completely independent entities. But I can still feel their heartbeat, and I think that helps make them come alive to my readers.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

The Peach Rebellion is a celebration of differences—of people coming from vastly different viewpoints and backgrounds and uniting for a common cause. Like peaches being the combination of such varied elements—earth, air, sun, and water—the characters in the story combine forces to create change, not just in themselves, but in their community. The book’s theme is very much a reflection on the heartache I feel over how divided we are as a country, and as a world. Ultimately, I hope The Peach Rebellion serves as a way to consider and discuss why we label and treat people as outsiders, the lingering effects of economic disparity, and the fortifying power of being part of something bigger than ourselves.

Visit Wendelin Van Draanen's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seraphina Nova Glass

Seraphina Nova Glass is a professor and playwright-in-residence at the University of Texas, Arlington, where she teaches film studies and playwriting. She holds an MFA in playwriting from Smith College, and she's also a screenwriter and award-winning playwright. Glass has traveled the world using theatre and film as a teaching tool, living in South Africa, Guam and Kenya as a volunteer teacher, AIDS relief worker, and documentary filmmaker.

Her new novel is On a Quiet Street.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Titles are so hard. When I was writing Hallmark scripts, I learned that networks will sometimes buy just a title by itself, or buy a script they don’t like just to take the title because they are so powerful. I find coming up with a title painstaking, and arduous. It sometimes seems easier to write the whole novel then land on a title you love.

I’ve also learned that the publisher usually wants to change it. So far, my very first book, Someone’s Listening, is the only title I had as a working title that made it to the actual final vote and was used. At first I was a little offended. Can they just change my title? Now. I’m very grateful because my titles are usually crap and they have a glorious team of people working on creating a title that works on so many levels.

Often, I start with a working title and part way through writing the book, I hate it so much, I take the time to go into all my working documents, the notes, outlines, character pages and change it everywhere because I can’t look at it anymore! Dramatic, I know. But, I’m happy to report though, that the novel I’m writing currently is titled The Vanishing Hour, and I think it suits the piece for a change, and I’m happy with it.

My novel, On A Quiet Street, coming out this month was originally called The Payoff, and my agent and I, and our film agent really liked it and thought it would stick, but when the publisher proposed On A Quiet Street, it felt right. All of the three main characters in the story live in a quiet cul-de-sac in Brighton Hills where all the chaos rests just under the glossy, manicured surface, and they are all just close enough to nose into one another’s secrets and uncover a shocking web of lies.

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

I start with the ending almost always, so I take a lot of time to really figure out exactly what the twists and climax will be before I begin, so I know what I’m writing to. I’ll say that takes the most time, but that is the phase before I actually start writing—it’s more the staring at walls and taking distracted dog walks than writing. Once I know where it’s all headed, the ending is the easier and more fun part to write because I am most familiar with it.

Then, going back to the beginning and getting to know the characters and creating the world feels much harder to me. It’s like a first date or making a new friend in some ways—I get nervous meeting them and even though I get to create them, I hope I like them. I hope it goes well! You know?

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

I love this question because my characters have often been called “unlikable.” And yes, I do see myself in them. Maybe because I write female protagonists roughly around my age, and in domestic settings, it’s easy to relate to them, and because, of course, I hear my own voice often, and I’m pulling from my memories and life experiences here and there.

I’ve often written about this “unlikable” critique and how it’s a double standard because male characters are never coined “unlikable,” and because it’s so much more important to me that they are interesting and layered than “likable.” But, since I do see myself in many of them, I’m not sure what that says about me!

When I think about a couple of my very favorite fictional characters, I think of Eleanor Oliphant and Olive Kitteridge, and “likable” isn’t the first word that comes to mind, yet I’m still in love with them and adore their complexity and rough exterior.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

My background in theatre has been a big influence in my writing career. Yes, my education was in playwriting, but as an acting instructor for many years, it’s interesting to see the similarities of creating a character on paper and a live human being crafting a character on stage—all the unwritten backstory the actor needs to fill in to make a well-rounded, three-dimension character is the same.

I was watching Masterclass where Aaron Sorkin is discussing “Intention and Obstacle.” He was saying that in storytelling, you can never have a character’s intention that’s too strong--too great, and you can never have obstacles too formidable. That has to be in place and tested before he can begin a story. This is the same thing we’ve been teaching in acting for decades, so I loved the parallel.

The acting teacher Uta Hagan begins with the idea of “super-objective” when working with actors. You have to ask yourself, as an actor, “what do I desperately want, and what’s in my way?” So, I’d always thought about this in the context of acting, but now I see that it’s the only way for me to begin as a writer also. It’s always been an anchor for me, if I lose my way in the middle of a story, to come back to the protagonist and their “super-objective,” and it gets me back on track. It’s been such a helpful piece of advice.

Visit Seraphina Nova Glass's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Evie Hawtrey

Evie Hawtrey is a Yank by birth but a sister-in-spirit to her fierce and feminist London detective, DI Nigella Barker. Hawtrey splits her time between Washington DC, where she lives with her husband, and York, UK, where she enjoys living in history, lingering over teas, and knocking around in pubs.

Her new novel is And By Fire.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Generally I am rubbish at titles. Absolute rubbish. That’s not a new discovery for me, because, although this is my first foray into crime writing, I’ve been a published historical novelist (Sophie Perinot) for over a decade. So, I get stressed around titles because they matter. And I am also very open to input from my agent and editor when titling my books.

In the case of And by Fire, however, the title is mine and I am rather proud of it. I think it takes the reader deep into both timelines in my crime novel (modern-day London & London 1666), while simultaneously connecting them.

And by Fire is excerpted from a longer phrase, “and by fire, resurgam,” from a taunting note written by my modern-day murderous arsonist on the back of a unusually placed necktie. The word resurgam (Latin for “I shall rise”), come up repeatedly in the novel—spotted by my contemporary detectives, DIs Parker and O’Leary, on the south transcept of St. Paul’s Cathedral; on the charred page of a book that floats down at the feet of architect Sir Christopher Wren during the horrific Great fire of London, offering him a moment of reassurance and inspiration.

Why not include resurgam in my title or even make it the single-word title of the book? Because foreign words, along with words that are not easy for readers to spell (and thus search), are big no-nos in the publishing industry. So Resurgam was out from the get-go. Other titles I did consider include: From Fire, As to Ashes, and The Hawk and the Phoenix. But I think And by Fire best evokes the effort that it takes, whatever your passion or profession, to rise from ashes—to never give up—while at the same time leaning into a central theme in the book: what type of sacrifice can be justified to achieve one’s personal ends? Ultimately that is the pivotal question in both timelines of And by Fire—what can and should we justify in the name of art? My resounding answer is self-sacrifice, but not the sacrifice of others.

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

My teenage self wouldn’t be surprised to find adult me writing novels—after all I cut my teeth telling stories to the neighborhood kids on our walk to and from school (30 minutes each way, but not uphill both ways). I do, however, think teen me would be surprised by this foray into crime after a decade long career in historical fiction (as Sophie Perinot). After all, I was a history major in college but I’ve never murdered anyone (no matter what my current search history may suggest).

Seriously though, maybe teen me should have expected this. I like to surprise people—including myself. And my voracious appetite for reading certainly included classic mysteries by the likes of P.D. James and Agatha Christie. On top of that my love for PBS/BBC mystery TV series started in my pre-adolescent days and continues to the present day. Readers will find references to some of my favorite BBC detectives—including fierce, feminist inspiration Jane Tennison of Prime Suspect, and clever Endeavour Morse—in And by Fire.

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

Middles. I am a contrarian aren’t I.

But seriously, I knew what the opening crimes in each of my dual timelines were going to be, before I wrote the opening lines of And by Fire, along with who committed them. In the case of my 1666 timeline, I knew what the “oh my God” unexpected crime twist was as well. In my modern timeline I knew my killer’s motivation for his sculptures using burnt flesh as well as burnt wood. But I am not an outliner, so, while I had ideas for the additional, escalating crimes in the modern timeline, as well as a handful of pre-determined clues for my detective teams working in both the present day and the 17th century, I genuinely had to solve multiple murders set more than three-hundred-and-fifty years apart as I went along. In a weird way that was sort of like being all of my detectives—DI Nigella Parker of the City Police of London; DI Colm O’Leary of Scotland Yard; Lady Margaret Dove, maid-of-honour to the queen; and Etienne Belland, royal fireworks maker to King Charles II—while at the same time playing God. Except I wasn’t a very effective God, because quite often my characters failed to listen to me.

Sure, there were days when I charged ahead at the speed of an inferno (sorry couldn’t resist), exceeding and even doubling my expected word count, and ending my workday with an “you’ve got this” adrenaline rush. But most of the time, like my detective protagonists, I felt as if I was taking one step forward and two back. Or as if I was seeing or hearing something important at a crime scene without quite being able to grasp why it was a key puzzle piece.

Eventually I worked it out. The puzzle pieces fell into place, and I—or rather my fictional detectives—brought “the malefactors to book” (as Kirkus Reviews put it). Writing the final scene in each of my timelines felt like crossing the finish line at a marathon. I am delighted with how my mysteries, both modern and historical, were resolved as well as with how crimes past and present tied together. I only hope readers will be equally satisfied.

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

I feel several very deep connections to my modern timeline heroine, DI Nigella Parker of the City of London Police. I am not claiming to be as fierce as Ni is, but I gave her a “gift” of sorts—her fear of fire is my own. The house address, and the names may be different, but the core story at the root of Ni’s fear is basically the same one that sparked my own. Additionally, DI Parker and I have a similar approach to things that cause us anxiety—we try to kick them in the teeth (metaphorically). What you can’t conquer destroys you—Nigella has that thought in And by Fire, it’s a mantra for her. It is also mine.

On a less serious note, Ni and I share a couple of favorite perfumes—ironically each with underlying notes of smoke. I wore one while writing much of the book: Iris Cendre by Naomi Goodsir. When I want to summon my inner Nigella—inside or outside the writing realm—Iris Cendre is my go-to bottle.

Visit Evie Hawtrey's website.

Writers Read: Evie Hawtrey.

--Marshal Zeringue

Chris Holm

Chris Holm is the author of the cross-genre Collector trilogy, the Michael Hendricks thrillers, and thirty-odd short stories in a variety of genres. His work has been selected for The Best American Mystery Stories, named a New York Times Editors' Choice, appeared on more than fifty year's best lists, and won a number of awards, including the 2016 Anthony Award for Best Novel. He lives in Portland, Maine.

Holm's new standalone biological thriller is Child Zero.

My Q&A with the author:

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

This book went through several titles before my agent, editor, and I settled on Child Zero. First it was Survival (too bland). Then, for a long while, it was Endtimes (too biblical). Once we scrapped that one, it was a free-for-all of terrible suggestions until we hit upon Child Zero.

I’d like to think that Child Zero, in addition to being short and punchy, is also something of a tease. Who is this kid? What is he “child zero” of? Are we looking at some kind of “patient zero” situation?

What's in a name?

I sweat the heck out of my characters’ names, because a good one helps create an air of verisimilitude, while a bad one can be jarring enough to knock a reader clear out of the book.

Names are products of one’s region, heritage, and socioeconomic status. Because given names are subject to trends, they can evoke specific eras, and tell you whether the people they belong to were raised by traditionalists or iconoclasts. In fiction, they’re often winking or referential. That’s an awful lot of weight for a few short words to carry.

Child Zero’s protagonist, Jacob “Jake” Gibson, is so named because a) J names are disproportionately represented among popular action heroes—think James Bond, John Rambo, Jason Bourne, John McClain, Jack Reacher, Jack Bauer, and John Wick, b) Child Zero is an attempt at near-future prognostication, not unlike many works of William Gibson’s, and c) I named my previous protagonist, Michael Hendricks, after a gin, so it struck me as funny to name this one after a gin cocktail.

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

He’d be shocked to discover I make my living as an author, because the very notion was beyond his wildest dreams. He’d probably adore Child Zero, because it’s exactly the sort of book he gravitated toward. And he would lose his freaking mind if you told him it was recommended by none other than Stephen King.

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

Though I’m not an outliner, I never begin a book without knowing how it begins and ends. As a result, both tend to stick pretty close to what I envisioned. It’s all those pesky scenes between that trip me up.

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

Whether intentionally or not, every character I write is bound to be some version of myself, but I try my best not to lean into it—because, as a writer, I live for the moments in which they surprise me.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

For years, scientists and medical professionals have been sounding the alarm about the impending collapse of the antibiotic era, but their warnings have largely gone unheeded, probably because the public fails to comprehend the enormity of the threat.

It’s not their fault. Widespread antibiotic resistance is a thorny concept, the full ramifications of which are tough for laypeople to wrap their heads around. That’s where I come in.

Before I became a fulltime author, I made my living as a molecular biologist. My background makes me uniquely suited to render, in vivid detail, the terrifying reality of a post-antibiotic world—and, by doing so, educate readers about this looming crisis before it’s too late to avert.

That was the impetus behind Child Zero, and the reason I spent six years working hard to get it right.

Visit Chris Holm's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Killing Kind.

The Page 69 Test: Red Right Hand.

The Page 69 Test: Child Zero.

--Marshal Zeringue

Julia Glass

Julia Glass's books of fiction include the best-selling Three Junes, winner of the National Book Award, and I See You Everywhere, winner of the Binghamton University John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Other published works include the Kindle Single Chairs in the Rafters and essays in several anthologies. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Glass is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emerson College. She lives with her family in Marblehead, Massachusetts.

Glass's new novel is Vigil Harbor.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Vigil Harbor was titled, until the 11th hour, In a Time of Tempests. I loved that title the way one loves a garish dress that you secretly suspect makes you look more clownish than elegant. I wanted the reader to picture storms, hurricanes, typhoons--high drama! (And if there were an intimation of themes Shakespearean, so much the better.) In the near-future era of this novel, the volume's been turned up on many existential threats, but none more prominently than climate change (though I would not call this novel cli-fi).

Ultimately, however, that title was a diva. At heart, this is a story about a place, the forces that its history and topography have exerted on nearly five centuries of inhabitants. I thought of David Ebershoff's Pasadena, Richard Russo's Empire Falls (such a great pun); Sebald's Austerlitz, Eliot's Middlemarch. All good company. (My fictional town Vigil Harbor actually harks back to a previous novel of mine, The Widower's Tale.)

Last week I got a wonderful note from a close writer friend, praising the title: "What a terrific name for where we are this day, this year, now! I think all the time about how to characterize the sense of parlousness and the need not to give up hope, both more intensely felt than ever before in our lives. Vigil Harbor covers the ground in two words." Never mind that I had to look up the word parlous (which does not, it turns out, mean "talkative"). Miraculously, what he describes is the very ethos of the book as I've intended it!

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

Beginnings simply arrive, like a dear friend pulling up to the house in a convertible and saying, "Hey, climb in. Champagne's chilled and the day is ours." A new beginning will feel, for a while, perfect, even brilliant. Endings, on the other hand, are valiantly fought for, like the summit of a mountain after a long hike. (I sometimes think I suffer the climb just to earn the view.) Yet once I reach the end of a book--which takes months, if not years, since I revise as I go along, rather than writing a series of drafts--I'm often happily surprised. Rarely does it change much, if at all. Over the course of writing a novel, it's that seductive beginning that I'll fuss with and change, discard, replace, re-voice, dozens of times. So the entire enterprise is a big game of bait-and-switch. Yet I fall for it every time.

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

All the characters I end up caring for the most (and often my feelings about them change radically along the way) emerge from some cranny of my own psyche--generally reflecting qualities and habits of which I'm not terribly proud. Yet I won't realize it (and this is a blessing) until I'm well along in crafting a story. My tendency toward caution, my curmudgeonly resistance to innovative changes, my hoarding of grudges: these are just some of the worst sides of my personality that have distinguished characters with whom, to my shock, readers fall in love. A number of major characters in my novels would seem to embody cautionary tales written by and for their author!

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Above all, the ambition I once had to succeed as a visual artist, which lasted into my early thirties, definitely shaped the way I write. I am extremely visual and love nothing more than to put my reader in a very particular place, be it a house, a landscape ... or a town like Vigil Harbor. I am a writer who looks as passionately as I feel. The places I've lived and loved also cast a large shadow, especially New York City and New England.

I would also have to say that becoming a mother and raising children, something I've done on a later timeline than most women, changed forever the way I see and write about my characters, all of whom I can't help seeing as the children of their parents. I think hard about every character's family tree and gene pool. And so, quite often, do they.

Follow Julia Glass on Facebook.

The Page 69 Test: Vigil Harbor.

--Marshal Zeringue