Lygia Day Peñaflor

Lygia Day Peñaflor is the author of Creep: A Love Story, All of This is True, and Unscripted Joss Byrd. She also teaches young Hollywood stars on television and movie sets. Her students have included cast members of Gossip Girl, Boardwalk Empire, Spielberg's West Side Story, and others. She lives on Long Island, NY, where she rides horses and flies from a trapeze.

My Q&A with the author:

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

There couldn’t be a more perfect title for this book. Creep: A Love Story sets the stage immediately. We have our narrator Rafi: a creep. And we have Laney Villanueva and Nico Fiore: a love story. When the popular couple walks into the Holy Family High School attendance office, where Rafi works at the front desk, she is instantly obsessed with them.

“Creep” by Radiohead was a huge inspiration for this novel. Those who know the song will pick up on its dark, desperate tone from the title. The words “weirdo” and “I don’t belong here” will come to mind, too, which are perfect ways to describe Rafi and her place in Laney and Nico’s lives, as her behavior escalates to full stalking mode. This title understood the assignment.

What's in a name?

I used the name Holy Family High School to emphasize the deep connection Rafi feels with her school. Rafi’s own family is fractured. Her mom left her to be raised by her grandparents, and her dad travels as a roadie for a touring rock band. Holy Family is the place where Rafi feels closest to her parents, since they are graduates of the school and fell in love there.

For Laney Villauneva, I wanted a last name that’s recognizably Filipino and also very pretty. Villanueva sounded just right. I got the name Laney from Rachel Leigh Cook’s character, Laney Boggs, in the movie She’s All That. It’s one of those movies I always watch if it happens to be on. It happened to air often while I was drafting. I loved the way Freddie Prinze Jr. said “Laney.” It sounded like he loved her.

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

My teen self would be floored. The premise of this book came from a brief encounter I had when I was a senior in high school. A freshman I’d never spoken to before approached me and said, “You have the cutest boyfriend.” Teen Me would be shocked that I remembered this and that I’ve written an entire novel based on it.

As a teenage reader, I enjoyed books that put me inside a character’s mind – I would love the intimacy of Rafi’s first-person present-tense narrative. I would be surprised that other people fantasize about spying on their classmates and thrilled to witness Rafi act on that fantasy to such a disturbing degree.

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

I definitely admired the cool senior couples when I was in school. They seemed very mature, and their secret world of couplehood fascinated me. I always wondered about them, “Are they happy? Are they sweet to each other? Are they dramatic and tumultuous? Are they in love?” I gave Rafi my curiosity and awe, except on a much more intense level. I see myself in Laney, too, because I became one of those enviable seniors with a cute boyfriend. Laney is also a dancer, and she’s from a Filipino American family with a close-knit group of cousins. She and I share those things in common. I feel connected to both of these characters. I think I always will.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I used to be embarrassed to say that I learned story structure mostly from television and movies over books, but I’m not embarrassed to admit that anymore. It doesn’t matter where you acquire these skills, as long as you get them from somewhere. I absorbed so much of what I know about writing from Degrassi, The Wonder Years, Stand by Me, Little Darlings, Clueless, Skins, ‘80s sitcoms, Frasier. They taught me voice, point of view, character development, pacing, and plot. And dialogue! I love dialogue the most. I learned how to hear it and how to write it from watching television.

Visit Lygia Day Peñaflor's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Christopher Swann

Christopher Swann is a novelist and high school English teacher. A graduate of Woodberry Forest School in Virginia, he earned his Ph.D. in creative writing from Georgia State University. He has been a Townsend Prize finalist, longlisted for the Southern Book Prize, and a winner of the Georgia Author of the Year award. He lives with his wife and two sons in Atlanta, where he is the English department chair at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School.

Swann's new novel is Never Go Home.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I tend to like titles that create an image in a reader’s mind and have something to do thematically with the story. But my Faulkner family thriller series is different. Never Turn Back is the first in that series, and my editor suggested the title. I didn’t know if I was going to turn it into a series, but when I did, I decided the subsequent books all have to be “never” titles—“never” plus a verb plus a third word. I’ll see how many books I write in that series and how many “never’ phrases I can come up with!

What's in a name?

Everything. Even the minor characters’ names matter. In Never Go Home, the first chapter has Susannah Faulkner interacting with a real slimeball, and I wanted to give that guy a slightly unserious name. I settled on Bobby—some people can pull off that name all their lives, and some people should stick with Robert or Bob. This character goes by Bobby. And then “Bonaroo” popped up in my head, and Bobby Bonaroo was born. One of my friends said I had to get rid of the name because it’s ridiculous. I said I have to keep the name because it’s ridiculous!

As for Suzie Faulkner: I first named her brother, Ethan, and then cast around for a last name. He’s an English teacher, and so “Faulkner” came to mind. He even makes a joke about it in Never Turn Back. I almost named Susannah “Savannah,” then realized that’s the name of the protagonist’s sister in Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides, and so I went with Susannah—Suzie for short.

Names are important, both because of their inherent meanings and as a way for readers to connect with and remember your characters. I always try to keep characters in a book from having names too similar to each other, so readers don’t get confused.

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

Beginnings are easier for me. There’s nothing more fun than writing the opening scene of a story, especially for a character like Suzie Faulkner in Never Go Home. I struggle more with endings. That may be why I like to write novels as opposed to short stories. You have to wrap up a short story in ten pages or so, but you don’t have to end a novel for a few hundred pages. But I think I’ve gotten better at endings, or at least more confident. Practice makes perfect. If my wife reads the end of one of my novels and says, “You nailed the ending,” I know it’s good.

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

The protagonist in my first novel is a novelist and high school English teacher—he’s a more haunted and (hopefully) selfish version of me. In my fourth novel, Never Go Home, my protagonist Suzie Faulkner is a young woman with a vengeful streak, a rather fluid sexual identity, and a skill set that includes firearms, martial arts, and skip tracing. I tend to be diplomatic and avoid conflict; Suzie has little filter and has no problems with conflict, even violence if she believes it’s justified. My protagonists have gotten progressively farther away from my own identity and life experiences. And that’s a good thing, for me—it makes the act of creation that much more fun.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

That’s a great question! Movies are a close second to books—Jaws, Sense and Sensibility, The Silence of the Lambs, The Untouchables, and Captain America: the Winter Soldier among others have informed my sense of plot and character and action combined with more intimate, emotional, character-driven scenes. Long-form television shows like Ozark confirm my sense of crime as the perfect vehicle for a story, especially a story spun out over a long period of time. And my teaching career has provided me with a lot of knowledge to draw upon for any scenes or stories that involve school settings.

Visit Christopher Swann's website.

The Page 69 Test: Never Go Home.

My Book, The Movie: Never Go Home.

--Marshal Zeringue

Martha Anne Toll

Martha Anne Toll writes fiction, essays, and book reviews, and reads anything that’s not nailed down. Her debut novel, Three Muses, won the Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction. Toll brings a long career in social justice to her work covering BIPOC and women writers. She is a book reviewer and author interviewer at NPR Books, the Washington Post, Pointe Magazine, The Millions, and elsewhere. She also publishes short fiction and essays in a wide variety of outlets. Toll has recently joined the Board of Directors of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I consider titles tremendously important. Three Muses frames my entire book. These mythical women are Song, Discipline, and Memory, and those three concepts braid the book together. For about nine of the ten years that I was writing this book, I called it "The Three Muses." Then one day I woke up and realized there was power in removing the article. Too often "the" gets in our way! The title as it is now, is meant to take readers right into the novel.

What's in a name?

I gave my male protagonist the name "John," because I was looking for the simplest, most American sounding name I could think of. John comes from a shattering, traumatic childhood spent in a concentration camp and arrives in New York as a refugee. His immediate and extended family have all been murdered. I was interested in the irony of such an American name, and the seemingly simplicity held behind it. I am not sure where the name "Katya" came from. She is the ballerina protagonist in Three Muses. I played around with some "hard c" sounding names like Clara (which resonated with The Nutcracker) but ultimately landed on Katya.

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

I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I think my teenaged self is actually quite similar to my adult self, particularly in our reading tastes (well okay, I am not the Herman Hesse fan I once was). I think my teenaged self would understand this novel, but perhaps not as deeply as my adult self does after having worked on it for ten years!

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

I find it impossible to write beginnings and endings. So impossible, in fact, that it is not unusual for me to start in the middle of a project of this size. Three Muses had at least four different endings through the years, and I've lost track of how many beginnings.

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

I don't see myself in the characters in Three Muses. Nevertheless, since I created them, I feel we share many values and emotions. But as to their personalities and the choices they make, they are a world apart from me.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Music music music. I trained for many years to be a classical musician (viola) and that is the biggest influence on my writing--the sound of music, the repertoire, the meaning that I see in it, the discipline that it takes to gain mastery over an instrument, and the importance and beauty of collaborating in musical ensembles such as chamber groups and orchestras. For Three Muses, I drew heavily on my very early introduction to ballet as well. Ballet had a huge impact on my life, even though I stopped studying seriously when I was twelve.

Visit Martha Anne Toll's website.

My Book, The Movie: Three Muses.

--Marshal Zeringue

Susan Richards

Susan Richards is the author of the Jessica Kallan mystery series and stand-alone novels of suspense. She strives in each story to create characters who are confronted by circumstances that push them to their limits, test their strength, and challenge their beliefs and integrity—people who would do almost anything to protect the people they love.

Richards’s new novel, Where Secrets Live, was a finalist in the Mystery/Suspense category of the 2018 Daphne du Maurier contest.

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, she has lived throughout the Midwest and currently resides in Northern Minnesota. She also spent several years in the Pacific Northwest, moving back to Minnesota to be closer to her family. Every winter she wonders what the hell she was thinking.

My Q&A with Richards:

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

The title that my publisher and I landed on, Where Secrets Live, says everything about this book, telling the story of a highly dysfunctional family, buried in decades of secrets.

My original working title was something quite different—more ethereal—and I loved it. When my publisher asked for alternative titles, it was a sad letting-go for me. But after months of working with Where Secrets Live, I’m very happy with it. It gives readers a definite feel for the book.

What's in a name?

I have to be honest . . . I find naming characters one of the most difficult parts of writing a book. I know going in, who my characters are and the roles they will play—but finding a name is not that easy.

In Where Secrets Live, it was a little easier to name my people than in my previous books because most of the main characters were members of a wealthy, old-money family. I wanted the names to sound classy and for some reason, classy to me involves lots of syllables. Elizabeth. Meredith. Frederick. It worked.

But as difficult as the naming process is, once they’ve been given a name, that’s who they become. At some point, they seem to evolve into the name they’ve been assigned.

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

Initially, she’d be incredibly surprised! Her first thought would probably be, “Holy crap! You actually did something with your life!”

But after that she’d realize that it was inevitable that I became an author—because writing has always been a passion—and becoming a mystery author was a given, because those are the books that she and I have always loved.

I know she’d be proud that I accomplished what I set out to do and there is no doubt in my mind that she would love the story I told with all the twists and turns and damaged people.

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

Hands down, beginnings are harder. I know where I want the story to go, but it’s crucial to get that perfect jumping off place—that one sentence that sets the mood for what is to come.

It can take me weeks to find that. In the meantime, I’m actively writing and creating, but I will go back to the beginning again and again. The first few paragraphs will go through probably more revisions than the entire book, until I get them where I need them to be. Once I do that, I’m happy. I feel better about the whole book then.

By the time I get to the end, I have a momentum going and usually know how I will wrap things up.

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

Outwardly, I don’t think there’s anything about my characters' lives or personalities that resemble my own. Inwardly, there are a lot of parallels with me and the protagonist, Liz. Our devotion to family is foremost and a driving force in both our lives. Liz is braver than I am, a trait I would love to cultivate.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Wow. Life, I guess. Being a part of relationships, both healthy and unhealthy ones can be the impetus to some great stories. Music and nature are also things that touch me deeply and can be the fuel for scenes or characters.

Visit S.C. Richards's website.

My Book, The Movie: Where Secrets Live.

The Page 69 Test: Where Secrets Live.

--Marshal Zeringue

Annelise Ryan

Annelise Ryan is a pseudonym for the author of the new Monster Hunter Mystery series, the first of which, A Death in Door County, is out this month.

Ryan also penned the often hilarious 12-book Mattie Winston Mystery series featuring the adventures of a wryly cynical nurse-turned-coroner in a small Wisconsin town.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The title of my most recent book, A Death in Door County, certainly gives the reader the setting if they know Door County, Wisconsin at all. If they don’t, they may well have heard of it and know that it’s a popular, idyllic vacation spot, so a death there takes on extra interest. If they haven’t a clue about Door County, I provide plenty of history and description.

My first title for the work (the publisher changed it) was A Monster At Death’s Door, and I did like this title a lot because it conveyed more of what the book was about: the possibility of a homicidal Loch Ness-type monster lurking in the waters of Lake Michigan, and the treacherous waterway that divides Green Bay and Lake Michigan at the tip of the Door county peninsula, which is known as Death’s Door. It earned that moniker because of all the shipwrecks there—literally hundreds of them—thanks to the underlying geography and unpredictable, deadly storms that brew up with little warning.

What's in a name?

My main character’s first name is Morgan, which means water born. And since she was born on a boat on the waters of Loch Ness while her cryptozoologist parents were hunting for Nessie, it seems appropriate. Morgan’s main sidekick is her huge rescue dog, Newton—Newt for short—who dropped into her life one day, kind of like Newton’s apple. Hence the name. Morgan’s police sidekick and potential love interest is named Jon Flanders, a name that befits the original settlers to the area and that also allowed me to use the nickname Flatfoot Flanders, a moniker that popped into my head in the middle of a shower one day.

As for my name, it’s not Annelise Ryan. I spent nearly 50 years working as a nurse, the last 20 in an ER setting. As a mystery writer, using a pseudonym came in handy because I didn’t want my patients knowing I spent my spare time thinking up clever ways to kill people.

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

Probably not very. I’ve always loved puzzles, mysteries, romance, and adventure, and A Death in Door County has all of these. I grew up reading what I now write. I’ve also always been fascinated by the strange, the odd, the unexplainable, which is why I made my main character Morgan a cryptozoologist—someone who hunts for creatures rumored but not proven to exist, like Nessie and Bigfoot.

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

I always know my starting point. I love to toss my characters into intriguing/dangerous/mysterious/funny situations and then see what they do, where they go, and where they take me. I often think I know who the bad guy is when I start a book and yet by the time I’m done, I realize it’s someone else. When I go back to add in clues for the reader, I discover they’re already there. It’s like my subconscious knew all along.

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

There are bits of me in every character I create. Even the bad ones. They all come from my mind, after all. But all of my characters are amalgams, Frankenstein-ish creatures pieced together with details from all kinds of people I’ve encountered during my lifetime.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

The world of science, medicine, and the paranormal have always been fascinations for me. My books contain carefully researched facts and scientific principles even when they deal with ideas that are unproven. My goal is to make those ideas believable, or to use the phrase my character uses in A Death in Door County, to create “plausible existability.”

My career in medicine was a varied one. I literally worked everything from birth (obstetrics) to death (hospice) with two decades in ER settings. it gave me ample opportunities to observe people under the best and worst of circumstances and I think that has helped me to create more realistic characters. It has also given me a great deal of knowledge about how fragile the human body and psyche can be.

The other circumstance that I think greatly influenced my writing was my family’s mobile lifestyle. We moved a lot. And each new place meant trying to make new friends and fit in. I learned to lie a lot, making up stories to make myself and my life seem more interesting. When I got older, I simply made a career out of it.

Visit Annelise Ryan's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Bobi Conn

Bobi Conn is the author of the memoir In the Shadow of the Valley. Born in Morehead, Kentucky, and raised in a nearby holler, Conn developed a deep connection with the land and her Appalachian roots. She obtained her bachelor’s degree at Berea College, the first school in the American South to integrate racially and to teach men and women in the same classrooms. Conn attended graduate school, where she earned a master’s degree in English with an emphasis in creative writing. In addition to writing, she loves playing pool, telling jokes, cooking, being in the woods, attempting to grow a garden, and spending time with her incredible children.

Conn's new novel is A Woman in Time.

My Q&A with the author:

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

My title creates a little mystery rather than pulling readers into the story. From the title, the reader doesn’t know what time period might be referenced (though the cover image provides some clues). However, I chose this title because it relates to the story in three different ways, which the reader cannot understand until they finish the book. I won’t be giving anything away by telling readers here that on one level, the title refers to the protagonist’s existence during a specific era and the novel explores the constraints and possibilities for women of that era. This story also follows a girl through into young adulthood so the title would be written “a woman, in time” to reflect that arc. And finally, this story seeks to illuminate the relationships that exist between one generation and the next, and therefore, this main character is a woman who lives for a specific time (a lifetime, like all of us) but there are aspects of her that are timeless.

What's in a name?

Most of my characters have names that I chose based on their root meanings and/or Biblical meanings. I love the idea that names tell us a lot about a person (when they fit that person) so I made this choice as a kind of Easter egg for readers who are interested in delving into deeper layers of the story. The protagonist, however, is named Rosalee after the name I picked for my daughter (Rose) when I wrote about her in my memoir. I also love how “Rosalee” sounds like a character in a ballad. There are a couple of other female characters who I named after my grandmother and a beloved teacher. Since the women in this story all represent women in my own family, I sometimes picked female names that reflected my actual relations.

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

I think my teenager reader self would be thrilled that I have a new novel, and I hope she would also recognize the hints of magical realism in it. I fell in love with magical realism when I was sixteen, so I think that version of my self would be enthralled with that aspect of the novel, though it could also hit a little close to home since it is based on some of the stories I grew up hearing about my family.

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

I suspect some of my characters – and maybe all – have some aspect of me in them. I feel like I sink into a new character and am able to occupy that imaginary life when I’m writing about them, but in the end, I think we see the world as we are. That is to say, our psychology is inextricable from our perceptions and creations, so I think my characters represent my personality at times, or my hopes, fears, and beliefs at others. I do hope I’m nothing like the couple of cruel characters who show up in this book.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

As I mentioned earlier, some of this story is based on stories I grew up hearing and namely, about my great-grandfather who was a moonshiner during Prohibition (and long after). I grew up in Eastern Kentucky and oral storytelling is a rich aspect of Appalachian culture. I suspect that, and the 70s- and 80s-era country music I grew up on, helped inspire my love of stories. And while I’m not part of it now, I grew up in an evangelical Christian church, so the King James Bible first introduced me to language, symbolism, and other elements of writing that I appreciate so much. My grandest aspiration in writing is to illuminate those aspects of our human experiences that bind us together and make our individual lives so meaningful. For that, I have a lot of non-literary inspirations to credit, but growing up surrounded by nature was my first influence and in many ways, the most important.

Visit Bobi Conn's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Woman in Time.

--Marshal Zeringue