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