Patrick Chiles

Patrick Chiles began his writing career with the self-published novels Perigee and Farside, which were acquired by Baen Books in 2016. His subsequent novels, 2020’s Frozen Orbit, 2021’s Frontier, and 2023’s Escape Orbit, have established him as a rising talent in the realm of realistic, near-future science fiction. Having a fascination with practical space travel and a love for Cold War technothrillers, his novels feature plausible technology while leveraging his military and airline experience to create stories with engaging, relatable characters on astonishing adventures: “ordinary people, doing extraordinary things.”

My Q&A with Chiles:

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

I like the title a lot, it’s punchy and uses actual spaceflight terminology to hint at what happens in the story, the same way Frozen Orbit did. It also implies an urgency, a need to get away from something, which is an underlying theme. My main POV character, Traci Keene, is driven to find her lost crewmate, Jack Templeton, out at the far reaches of the solar system. In the meantime she isn’t happy with developments at home, which are pushing her to get away. Not to give up too much, but it’s obvious from the cover (which is awesome) that Jack may have stumbled onto something quite strange which promises to take them both even deeper into space.

What's in a name?

I didn’t have to give much thought to the names, as all the characters came from Frozen Orbit along with a couple of previous books. Most of the names just came to me as I was thinking the characters through, enough to where I needed to do a few Google searches to make sure I wasn’t subconsciously appropriating another author’s characters, or using someone from real life.

One I did have to think about was Dr. Jacqueline Cheever, the NASA Administrator. She’s a nasty piece of work, and her name had to suggest this. Cheever takes herself extremely seriously and is impatient with people who she thinks “play in the shallow end of the gene pool.” She’s the type who will insist you call her “doctor.”

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

I’ve mentioned before that teenage me would ask why it took so long, and that still holds true. Anyone who knew me growing up is probably not the least bit surprised that writing science fiction is what I do now. Teenage me would be surprised at some of the more out-there scientific concepts I had to get my head around to write this story, because I was famously bad at math in my youth. I eventually got better at it.

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

Beginnings, definitely. I have to think through how to put the reader into the story right away, and keep things tight enough that they want to turn the page. Endings tend to come naturally once I’m far enough into the book, though most of the time the way I envisioned it ending is nothing like the final product. Sometimes I’m as surprised as the reader, which is great fun when that happens. I had a good idea of how Escape Orbit would end, but getting the characters to that point unfolded in ways I didn’t anticipate.

You've said "still firmly hard sci-fi, Escape Orbit is more of a space opera than its predecessor [Frozen Orbit]." Why is that?

Honestly, I hadn’t given it much thought until Publishers Weekly used the term in their review and I thought, “yeah, they’re right.” Space Opera contains themes of melodramatic, romantic adventure (the classical definition, not lovey-dovey stuff) set in space, with conflict using powerful technologies. That’s all at play here. I took the hard-sf technology of Frozen Orbit and Frontier, and used it propel my characters to a destination they could barely conceive of. Of course, the great-power conflicts we have on Earth follow them out the edge of the solar system. Everyone wants to stake a claim on what they’ve found, and to keep others from exploiting it.

You've also said that Escape Orbit is more character-driven? Why is that?

Using characters I’d already established in Frozen Orbit, I was able to play around in their sandbox and put them in situations that would test them in different ways. I was also able to explore some unresolved feelings between Traci and Jack. Traci is the main POV, and I enjoyed telling the story mostly through her eyes. She’s been recovering from an injury that has kept her off NASA’s flight roster, but now she’s been given a compelling reason to get back out there. She has to overcome personal physical challenges, bureaucratic inertia, and political scheming before she can even get started on the technological hurdles. She’ll play whatever cards she has to win, and is helped along the way by some unexpected alliances.

I also had a lot of fun developing Daisy, the artificial intelligence helping Jack run the Magellan spacecraft. She becomes a major player in her own way, and I’m looking forward to building her up even more in the next book.

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

I think all of them reflect different aspects of my personality, Traci and Jack especially. I used them to work out the conflicts in my own head about the nature of life: Where did we come from? Were we created or did we evolve, either by random chance or guided by some superintelligence? And if we haven’t found evidence of intelligent life elsewhere, is it possible that we’re the first? And how do we reconcile those types of philosophical conflicts?

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I’ve joked that Escape Orbit is “Interstellar without all the crying.” The comparison is kind of obvious, in particular the bizarre effects of relativity and their emotional impact on characters who’ve been separated by time dilation. Once the book is well underway and I’m kind of living inside the story, I like to write to movie soundtracks. They’re designed to hit certain emotional beats, and that works out well for me. I listened to a lot of Hans Zimmer soundtracks for this one, though oddly enough Interstellar wasn’t one of them! Inception hit the right beats this time, as did some of the Wrath of Khan soundtrack. Other than that, the PC game Kerbal Space Program helps me quite a bit. I’ll build the kinds of vehicles I envision for the books and simulate their missions. My background research goes a lot deeper than that, but Kerbal’s a great way to visualize what the end results will look like. Although readers will quickly find there is no way to simulate what ultimately happens in Escape Orbit!

Visit Patrick Chiles's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Patrick Chiles & Frankie and Beanie.

The Page 69 Test: Frozen Orbit.

My Book, The Movie: Frontier.

The Page 69 Test: Frontier.

Q&A with Patrick Chiles (June 2021).

The Page 69 Test: Escape Orbit.

Writers Read: Patrick Chiles.

--Marshal Zeringue

E.J. Copperman

E.J. Copperman’s new novel is Ukulele of Death, first in the Fran and Ken Stein Mystery series. Copperman also writes the Jersey Girl Legal Mystery series, currently represented by And Justice For Mall and soon to be joined by My Cousin Skinny. When not otherwise occupied, Copperman lives in New Jersey.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Well, Ukulele of Death was such a catchy little title we couldn’t possibly have passed it up. I actually wanted to give the reader a slight inkling of the rather unusual protagonists for the story, but the series name A Fran and Ken Stein Mystery should clue in all but the least observant readers. The ukulele mentioned in the title is the McGuffin of the story; it is the object everyone’s looking for and therefore the impetus for the plot. Hitchcock said the McGuffin is “the thing all the characters on the screen are chasing and the audience doesn’t care about.” So I’ll leave it at that.

What's in a name?

The names were pretty much the jumping off point. When I knew that I wanted to do another sort-of-paranormal series (after the Haunted Guesthouse books), my first thought was that Frankenstein, Detective would be fun. But I didn’t want it to be just one person. Two manufactured-ish people, who start an investigation agency to help people find their birth parents because the investigators themselves never had birth parents, seemed like a good vein to mine. And the names just had to be.

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

My teenage reader self probably wouldn’t have noticed; he was so busy training to write screenplays that movies were all he thought mattered. He read, but not very selectively. Mostly books about movies. I think he’s be surprised that the story isn’t grimmer. I had more of a stomach for the gruesome in my younger days. Now I feel like if you’re not laughing on every page I missed an opportunity.

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

I find middles far harder to write than beginnings or endings. I’m a “pantser,” so I’m constantly making it up as I go. But I start with a premise (because if you don’t have that you’ve got nothing) and that’s the beginning. I have a general idea of where I want the characters to end up, so that’s a vague idea of an end. The middle? Your guess is as good as mine until it’s written. I like to write myself into a corner and then see how I can get out —when I can get out. Endings get changed a lot because of all the stuff I made up in the middle. And who the murderous culprit is going to be changes three or four times per book. I’ve literally come to the page with the reveal and had to think it through.

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

Well, they have a snarky sense of humor most of the time and you’ll be shocked, but so do I. Other than that, each character has to have of life of their own. If I can’t tell you what the character does in the parts of their life between chapters, I don’t have a firm enough grasp of who I’m writing. And they do all spring from my mind, so there has to be some of me in there. Is any one character exactly like me? No, not even the most obvious example in the (long-ago) Aaron Tucker series. I believe in don’t write what you know. Find out about it and then write it.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

First it was movies. I didn’t even realize that someone wrote the stories on the screen until Star Trek and North By Northwest, and then that was all I wanted to do. When I found out about the writers room at Your Show of Shows, with Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, Lucille Kallen, Neil Simon and (sometimes) Woody Allen, among many others, I wished I had been born earlier. I don’t wish that anymore. I don’t think there were any authors that particularly influenced me, but I did appreciate how Robert B. Parker got right to the story and didn’t mess around. I try to do that.

Visit E. J. Copperman's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

My Book, The Movie: The Thrill of the Haunt.

The Page 69 Test: The Thrill of the Haunt.

My Book, The Movie: Ukulele of Death.

The Page 69 Test: Ukulele of Death.

--Marshal Zeringue

Alisa Lynn Valdés

Alisa Lynn Valdés is an award-winning print and broadcast journalist and a former staff writer for both the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe. With more than one million books in print in eleven languages, she was included on Time’s list of the twenty-five most influential Hispanics and was a Latina woman of the year as well as an Entertainment Weekly breakout literary star. She is the author of many novels, including Playing with Boys and The Husband Habit.

Valdés's new novel is Hollow Beasts.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I tend to come up with book titles that are double entendres, sometimes even triple or quadruple entendres, catchy enough to entice a reader to open the book, but layered enough that at the end of the book the title will make sense on multiple symbolic levels. Hollow Beasts is no exception.

What's in a name?

I choose character names with deliberation. Jodi Luna, the protagonist of Hollow Beasts, has a name that is both symbolic and a bilingual double entendre. Jodi’s full given name is Jodilynn Luciana Luna. She’s a Hispana from northern New Mexico, with roots that go back in that area to the 1500s. Luna is a regional, old Spanish surname in New Mexico. It means moon. Jodilynn is a countrified anglo name that she shortens to Jodi, but jodí is the Spanish first-person past tense for “I f*cked up.” She’s the oldest rookie game warden ever hired by the state of New Mexico, a nature poet who has decided nature needs more than poetry in the era of climate change; it needs warriors. Luciana means light, hope. So her name, to me, symbolizes, in a way, how the US colonization and anglicization of our region, its wilderness and its people left them screwed, how she is a bit of a screw-up in this new job, but also that she is motivated by a hope and light that are rooted in the ancient power of the moon.

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

My teen self knew she wanted to be a novelist, and loved suspense novels. I don’t think she’d be surprised at all.

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

Endings are harder for me, especially with an ongoing series like the Jodi Luna books, because it’s a balance between figuring out how to tie up the loose ends enough to feel satisfying, while leaving others dangling as hooks for future books. That said, I rewrite beginnings more, probably by virtue of revisiting them more each time I sit down to write.

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

I have a lot in common with Jodi Luna. We are both middle aged single mothers from New Mexico, who left to attend ivy league colleges and become writers, but returned to New Mexico in our middle age to live a more rural and secluded life dedicated to protecting wildlife. I’m not a game warden, but if I were younger and could do things all over again, I would be.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I am a musician by training. My undergraduate degree is in music, from the modern music conservatory, Berklee College of Music. So music, and being a musician, have influenced my writing more than anything else in my life. I approach writing as an auditory endeavor. I seek the music in prose. I employ the same mindset in writing novels that I use in jazz improvisation as a saxophonist, which is a bit hard to explain to people who’ve not studied jazz improvisation. Jazz improvisation is spontaneous composition, on the spot, over a set of complex cord changes, governed by strict harmonic and melodic rules that must be memorized and practiced for years so that what flows out of the artist in the moment seems and feels easy. So I “practice” my stories and the shapes and sonic colors of my work before I sit down to write, and when I do sit down to write I enter a trancelike state of absolute concentration where the words just come, fully formed, from a subconscious place. I’ve been told I’m an unusually “fast” and clean writer, and I credit my training as a jazz improviser with training my brain and fingers to work in a peculiar way that lends itself to the illusion of speed.

Visit Alisa Lynn Valdés's website.

My Book, The Movie: Hollow Beasts.

--Marshal Zeringue

Josh Weiss

Josh Weiss is a first-time author from South Jersey. Raised in a proud Jewish home, he was instilled with an appreciation for his cultural heritage from a very young age. Today, Weiss is utterly fascinated with the convergence of Judaism and popular culture in film, television, comics, literature, and other media. After college, he became a freelance entertainment journalist, writing stories for SYFY WIRE, The Hollywood Reporter, Forbes, and Marvel Entertainment.

Weiss's new novel is Sunset Empire, the thrilling alternate history sequel to Beat the Devils.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Believe it or not, you’re only the second person to ask about the meaning behind the title. Alas, I cannot go into too much detail, as it would divulge more than a few crucial plot points. All I can say is that the word “Sunset” connotes a state of decline — both morally and geopolitically. The original title was Empire of the Setting Sun, though it was my brother-in-law (he’s got a PhD in chemistry and is much smarter than I could ever hope to be) who suggested shortening it to the current title. Not only did this shave down the word count for my publisher, but it also had the added benefit of sounding like a true film noir. Thanks for the advice, Rob!

What's in a name?

If you happen to glance at the left-hand corner of the Sunset Empire cover, you’ll see an incredibly humbling blurb from Ian R. MacLeod, Sidewise-Award winning author of Wake Up and Dream (a true work of imaginative genius). I foolishly tried to nab the film rights to it while still in college, but, quite understandably, the publisher didn’t go for my low-ball offer.

Nevertheless, I still had Ian’s email address and reached out to him several years later when it was time to collect promotional blurbs for my own book. He happily obliged and what’s more: he happily obliged again on Book 2! I wanted to acknowledge Ian in my sophomore effort with a small nod to WU&D, which centers around a version of Clark Gable who became a private eye after failing to adapt to the “feelies” (a moviemaking process in which an actor’s raw emotional aura is captured and then projected back to an audience).

The story begins with Gable entering into a dubious partnership with a femme fatale by the name of April Lamotte. Oh, man, “Lamotte” is a surname divinely built for hardboiled fiction, wouldn’t you agree? So, when it became clear Sunset Empire would feature a powerful Los Angeles businessman with potentially shady motivations, I just knew he had to be named “Orson Lamotte,” a hybrid of film noir legend Orson Welles and the seductive April Lamotte.

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

If you spoke to the 18-year-old version of Josh studying his butt off for the AP U.S. History exam in 12th Grade, I don’t think he’d be the least bit surprised with the subject material of Beat the Devils and Sunset Empire. As much as I owe my fascination with the past to my father, I’d be remiss not to provide a shoutout to my history teacher in 11th and 12th grade. Mr. Kirzner — whose name you will find prominently featured in the acknowledgements of both books — had the rare gift for bringing history to life through a combination of animated delivery and multimedia aids. Plus, we’d get extra credit for watching movies at home and relating them back to our class via a one-page essay. Dear teachers of the world: take note!

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

It really depends, honestly. I often find myself jumping between different parts of a manuscript if certain narrative beats are much stronger in my head than others. Consider it a helpful detour around the dreaded potholes of writer’s block. The first section I ever completed for Sunset Empire was the epilogue — a year or so before I started tackling the rest of the book — because it was so vividly imagined.

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

I know this is sort of a cop-out answer, but I’ll have to go with my main character: Jewish homicide detective turned private investigator Morris Baker. He represents an amalgam of several different individuals — my own grandfather, Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Jake Gittes, Rick Deckard, Eddie Valiant, and Indiana Jones — but his personal struggles with faith in the wake of the Holocaust directly reflect my own religious frustrations.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Movies! Lots and lots of movies. I went to religious day school for most of my life and every morning, we were required to wrap phylacteries and pray. Don’t ask me how — because I’m not even sure myself — but I somehow convinced my teachers I was using my phone to access the prayer text. That was only half-true. Whenever they weren’t looking, I’d begin surfing through Wikipedia and IMDb for cinematic trivia and the latest developments out of Hollywood.

It’s through this clandestine practice that I learned about film noir and the greatest entries of the genre: The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, Chinatown. I especially loved the subsection of Neo-noir projects, which combined the classic gumshoe premise with elements of sci-fi and fantasy (think Blade Runner, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Minority Report). All of that came back to me when I sat down to write Beat the Devils and Sunset Empire.

Visit Josh Weiss's website.

My Book, The Movie: Beat the Devils.

The Page 69 Test: Beat the Devils.

My Book, The Movie: Sunset Empire.

The Page 69 Test: Sunset Empire.

--Marshal Zeringue

Emily Franklin

Emily Franklin is the author of more than twenty novels and a poetry collection, Tell Me How You Got Here. Her award-winning work has appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Guernica, JAMA, and numerous literary magazines as well as long-listed for the London Sunday Times Short Story Award, featured and read aloud on NPR and named notable by the Association of Jewish Libraries.

Franklin's new novel is The Lioness of Boston.

My Q&A with the author:

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

When I began this novel about the life of Isabella, Stewart Gardner, I kept coming back to the idea that she evolved into the art collector/museum, founder/Boston, scandalous society person from her beginnings as a social outcast. Initially, the novel was called Becoming Isabella. However, once I had finished writing the novel, I realized that unless a reader knew who Isabella Stewart Gardner was, the title wouldn't mean all that much. I also realized that I wrote about this woman in the 1800s becoming herself as Boston was becoming the city it is today, so I wanted to ground the story in a location. The entrance to the Gardner museum is flanked by two Lions, and there's a story of Isabella parading two Lions down Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. Once I incurred the novel title in Boston, the lions quickly followed. The Lioness of Boston is truly about a woman finding her own voice and being able to roar.

What's in a name?

Isabella, Stewart Gardner and numerous people in this novel: Henry James, John Singer, Sargent, Berthe Morisot, George Sand, James McNeill Whistler, Oscar Wilde - were all real folks so I didn't have to name them. Other characters that I did create were given names that suited the time (Miles Louris) or a character trait (Mr. Valentine).

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

My teenage reader self would not be completely surprised by this novel. I did grow up going to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and was completely captivated by it… I also loved Edith Wharton and EM Forster, and this novel certainly fits into that genre.

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

I have always found both beginnings and endings come rather easily to me. That said, I more often know the exact ending, including a last line of what I'm writing, whether it is a short story, or poetry, or a novel, and the opening pages are more likely to shift. I end up changing the first chapter once I've gotten further along in the novel because generally that's before I found the voice completely.

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

Probably all of the characters have a little bits of me a little bits of other people I know, and certainly a great degree of imagination to make them fully realized on the page. I think I identify with Isabella's outspokenness, her inability to fit in completely with one group or another. I enjoyed writing the witty banter between Isabella and many of her friends, because that is certainly how some of my friends and I like to talk, so I identify with that fast-paced wit. Ultimately, I suppose I do feel similar to Isabella and the friends she finds in that it took me a while to find my lunch table. In terms of the world, these characters live in, a lot of Boston, still retains its historic architecture, so that was not too big of a stretch, but the social mores of the 1800s were a far cry from anything I have experience personally, though growing up in the UK in the 1980s and 90s there were still some remnants of those old social rules (which I often broke).

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

My first novel was all about mix tapes. I find music and lyrics at the heart of a lot of my influences, and listen and enjoy all types of music. Weirdly, I cannot listen to music when I write, because I find it leaks onto the page. Nature is also a huge part of my writing, and does show up in everything I write. To break up my workday I take a lot of walks with my giant beast dogs and find the natural world full of inspiration. My family is a constant influence - both my chosen family and my family of origin.

Visit Emily Franklin's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Lioness of Boston.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eli Cranor

Eli Cranor lives and writes from the banks of Lake Dardanelle, a reservoir of the Arkansas River nestled in the heart of True Grit country. His critically acclaimed debut novel, Don't Know Tough, won the Peter Lovesey First Crime Novel Contest and was named one of the "Best Books of the Year" by USA Today and one of the "Best Crime Novels" of 2022 by the New York Times. Cranor also pens a weekly column, "Where I'm Writing From" for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and his craft column, "Shop Talk," appears monthly at CrimeReads.

Cranor's new novel is Ozark Dogs.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Ozark Dogs works pretty well for this novel. The main theme is the vicious cycle of violence caused by poverty in places like rural Arkansas. My family is all the time taking in stray cats and dogs. I wanted to extend that metaphor to the people in my home state and play up the sense of loss. What's funny, though, is that Ozark Dogs was not the original title. When I turned the manuscript in it was called Salvation. Which hits on the book's other main theme of redemption. In the end, Ozark Dogs won out because of marketability.

What's in a name?

This book is chock full of original names. Evail, Bunn, Rudnick, and Beladonna Ledford. Guillermo Torres. Dime Ray Belly. Jeremiah and Joanna Fitzjurls. I keep a little black book in my pocket and take down unique names as I encounter them. Those were some of my favorites.

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

I didn't read many thrillers until later in life, but I was always into the classics. I think teenage Eli would find a book like Ozark Dogs as a welcome surprise.

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

The endings always take the most thought for me, and usually get changed half a dozen times before publication. The original Ozark Dogs manuscript was over 100,000 words. As it stands now, it's barely 70,000. Almost all of that cutting came in the final act.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I played guitar and wrote songs long before I tried penning a novel. Those early musical influences are as follows: John Prine, Jerry Jeff Walker, Jimmy Buffett, Harry Chapin, Carole King, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bob Marley, Jason Isbell, Outkast, and lately one hell of a duo by the name of Shovels & Rope.

Visit Eli Cranor's website.

The Page 69 Test: Don't Know Tough.

--Marshal Zeringue

Asale Angel-Ajani

Asale Angel-Ajani is a writer and professor at The City College of New York. She's the author of the nonfiction books Strange Trade: The Story of Two Women Who Risked Everything in the International Drug Trade and Intimate: Essays on Racial Terror. She has held residencies at Millay, Djerassi, and Playa, and is an alum of VONA and Tin House.

A Country You Can Leave is Angel-Ajani's first novel.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I think the title, A Country You Can Leave, does some work to take the reader into the story but not all of it. The title operates at three levels: first, it acts as a container that sort of helps make clear to the reader the confines of living in this desert community. The second thing the title does is reference the fact that Lara’s parents are immigrants, both from countries that have had a long history of citizens being unable to leave easily—Cuba and Russia.

What's in a name?

Names are everything! In the book, names have a lot to do with belonging—Yevgenia, Lara’s mother—names Lara after Boris Pasternak’s Lara from Dr. Zhivago. Saying that Lara Antipova is Dr. Zhivago’s “heartbeat of longing and its death.”

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

My teenage reader self would be floored. I don’t think she could ever imagine seeing someone who seemed a lot like her in the pages of any book. If my teenage reader self could have read my book back then, it might have saved her a decade of questionable choices.

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

The beginning is always difficult for me. Mostly because I write in a way that is like rooting around a dark room for the tiny key that will open the hidden compartment in the ceiling that holds the box that holds the key to the room with the light switch. So I end up making many passes, back-tracking and restarting until I finally find what I am looking for, which oddly is usually a sound.

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

I see myself in all of my characters, but they are also their own world, which makes them (for me) fun to visit and spend time with. They are relatable to me and yet, I can still be judgmental about the ways they treat each other. So I would say they are like cousins.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Music influences my writing. Which I imagine is common. But being out and about, watching people, seeing how folks interact with each other—that influences me too. Before writing a novel (and now writing another one) I trained as an Anthropologist (yes, graduate school and job and all of that) so it’s there, that ethnographic eye, on culture and how we are shaped by it.

Visit Asale Angel-Ajani's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Country You Can Leave.

The Page 69 Test: A Country You Can Leave.

--Marshal Zeringue

Marcia Bradley

Marcia Bradley is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College. An adjunct professor, she also teaches economically challenged teens and is proud that one of her Yonkers students is now a student at Sarah Lawrence. A former editor of Antioch's Two Hawks magazine, Bradley has been awarded residencies at Ragdale, Community of Writers, and Writers in Paradise. She lives in New York City.

Bradley's debut novel is The Home for Wayward Girls.

My Q&A with the author:

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

There was one word that came to me when I was writing my book. That was wayward; a word that guides the reader in many ways. The definitions of wayward run the gambit from difficult to disobedient as well as following no clear pattern. My agent and I first thought of having Wayward as a one-word title; we also tried to come up with a list of alternative titles to include when the book was sent to editors. We considered Silent Cloud which left us needing air. Then a few that I felt were very off point like At His Feet and What Sinners Do.

I kept going back to the original idea for the book. I’d been out west, driving really fast because the speed limits there are mind boggling. We passed a building with a sign that said Home for Girls. And that led me to my title: The Home for Wayward Girls. My agent and I were sure of this title; my editor at HarperCollins was 100% in agreement. And I was totally relieved because I knew it was right and that readers would feel taken into the story immediately.

What’s in a name?

It’s funny for me as a writer to find that some things in a story remain constant from first draft, through revisions, and to the final copy. In my book, the strong-willed, seventeen-year-old living on a ranch who would become an even stronger-willed adult helping runaways in New York City was always named Loretta. A part of me thought of the country singer Loretta Lynn and how much she overcame in her life. I also just liked that it’s an unusual name and has substance. I find that people who have read early copies of the book never forget Loretta or her name and that means a lot to me.

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

My teenage self would be cheering right now and a little surprised. Not because I had the idea for a book but because I actually finished it! My teenage self knows that I have always had tons of ideas. My entire family is like that. We putter and muse about our creative ideas. But for me, execution isn’t my strong suit. When I was a teen, I was reading Richard Bach’s Love Story and Stephen King’s Carrie. Quite a combination. Right now, my teenage self would be telling me to get to work on the next book!

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

This question has me thinking about how I like to engage the reader at the very beginning of a book or story I’m writing. I want the reader to feel that they have the chance to anticipate what is coming by the end. I set the beginning and end right away and it’s rare that I change them. In The Home for Wayward Girls, the story starts when Loretta is in her 30’s. Readers get to experience both her past when she was a teen on her parents’ ranch as well as her present-day life in big, bustling New York City. Much of what will happen to Loretta is foreshadowed in those early pages and I love when readers tell me they knew this would happen but didn’t expect that and were so relieved when such and such occurred. In this way, we’re all a part of Loretta’s life, and for me that means we all take responsibility in a small way to applaud her and to care about survivors like her.

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

My stories are about people finding an inner strength to get them through difficult situations although some characters handle life better than others. The more I write, the less these stories are about me or anyone I know. What happened with The Home for Wayward Girls is that Loretta became my hero. She still is. She never gave up and gosh did life try to get her to collapse, roll over, and stay under William’s control. I think about Loretta hitchhiking across the country alone and the tough exterior she had to wear, and I’m wowed. Every time I read about the evening when she finally makes it to the big city, I get emotional. It’s a very simple scene, so little happens, yet it is huge for my character and for me.

Still, I admit that there’s always something of myself and members of my family included. All the characters in this book matter but I’d like to add that Mrs. Barry, the librarian at Loretta’s school, is based on someone in my family who is no longer with us. I loved including her and the way she very kindly helps Loretta map out her journey is just plain great. Including Mrs. Barry was special. Librarians rock.

Visit Marcia Bradley's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Home for Wayward Girls.

--Marshal Zeringue