Nancy Bilyeau

Born in Chicago and a graduate of the University of Michigan, Nancy Bilyeau moved to New York City to work in the magazine business as a writer and editor. After working for publications ranging from Rolling Stone to Good Housekeeping, she turned to fiction. She wrote the Joanna Stafford trilogy, a trio of thrillers set in Henry VIII’s England, for Touchstone/Simon & Schuster. Her fourth novel is The Blue, an 18th-century thriller revolving around the art & porcelain world. Her latest novel, The Orchid Hour, returns to the early 20th century New York City of her novel Dreamland to once again tell a story of suspense revolving around a compelling heroine.

My Q&A with Bilyeau:

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

‘The Orchid Hour’ is meant to intrigue and entice readers—how can an orchid have an hour?—while carrying various meanings for the story. My main character, Zia De Luca, learns in an early chapter that her gambler cousin, Salvatore, is a part owner of a new illegal nightclub in New York City and its name is The Orchid Hour. Slowly she discovers why it was named that and why the host of the speakeasy, a silent-film actor, would have chosen it. Orchids were fragile and seductive flowers in the 1920s. They were imported, as it wasn’t yet possible to grow them from seeds. They were bought, nurtured, and cherished by the wealthiest people in America. This club had orchid plants on display as a statement about its status and desired clientele. Speakeasys opened late at night, so you could say that this was their hour. But also, the most valued orchid in the club is a variety found in South America that emits its fragrance only during certain hours of the night.

What's in a name?

I wanted an unusual Sicilian name for my main character that carried a special meaning, even if it was never spelled out. I came upon “Audenzia,” which is the feminine version of “Audenzio” and means “one who dares or one is who is fearless.” Instantly I thought: “This is it.” She is strong and quite fearless. No one ever says that is what her name means in the novel. But I knew it. And for short, she’s called “Zia.”

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

Teenage Nancy would not be surprised that I wrote a novel. I had grandiose ambitions in high school! I intended to write novels and poetry and work on the staff of the Washington Post, exposing wrongdoing in order to change the world. But the New York City setting of this novel, The Orchid Hour, might have come as a shock. I grew up in Illinois and in Michigan, and in my teenage years, New York was a far-away, frightening place. The movies I saw in Michigan that were set in New York, like The Prince of the City, did not present it as a place where I would want to live. Of course, I did end up living in the city for more than twenty years.

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

I find the beginning is key to any of the novels I’ve written. Sometimes it springs from me easily. For example, the first paragraph of my debut novel, The Crown, and the beginning of The Blue just wrote themselves. Sometimes there is a lot of revision, but I have the basic idea in my head, such as with Dreamland. But with both The Fugitive Colours and The Orchid Hour, I changed my mind on where to start a few times and overhauled the beginning top to bottom. Maybe it’s because as I go along in my fiction career, I realize how important these beginnings are! It’s nothing to be taken lightly. Novel endings are much easier for me. They sometimes vary from what I had planned in my outline, but that’s a different matter.

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 write autobiographical fiction. I may take elements of my personality and that of people I know to build characters, but my protagonists are fundamentally different than I am. Zia is a Sicilian American immigrant to New York who at the novel’s beginnings is loyal to family tradition, excellent at math, and highly organized. That’s not me.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I make use of art, photography, films, and music. There are a few standbys that I turn to in the middle of every novel or toward the end of the writing process, to help me reach an emotional state. I often watch the film The Red Shoes. With music, I turn to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 or Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Carnival of the Animals.” Film scores also inspire me, ranging from those for Barry Lyndon to Vertigo to The Ninth Gate.

Visit Nancy Bilyeau's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Tapestry.

--Marshal Zeringue

Deborah J Ledford

Deborah J Ledford is the award-winning author of the Native American Eva “Lightning Dance” Duran Series, and the Smoky Mountain Inquest Series. Part Eastern Band Cherokee, she is an Agatha Award winner, The Hillerman Sky Award Finalist, and two-time Anthony Award Finalist for Best Audiobooks Crescendo and Causing Chaos. Ledford lives in Phoenix, Arizona with her husband and an awesome Ausky.

Book 1 of the author’s Eva “Lightning Dance” Duran Native American thriller is Redemption.

My Q&A with Ledford:

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

Quite a lot, actually. I love titles of one descriptive word. I tend to choose a word that could have several meanings. Best is one that concisely defines an aspect of my lead character, or an overall aspect of what their journey will be throughout the novel. For Redemption, my protagonist Eva and her best friend, Paloma, work to redeem their past behavior in order to regain approval from the people of their Taos Pueblo tribe.

What's in a name?

Most of the characters featured in Redemption are Native Americans living on the Taos Pueblo reservation. I’ve been fortunate to find a wealth of information at the 1929-40 census rolls for the. All of those surnames, and many first names, continue onward generationally. Also, for first names I research quite a lot in order to assign a name based on what I envision as each character’s psychological aspects. It’s fun to hear about when readers take the time to look up the meaning of the character names I’ve assigned. Doing this research also keeps me as the writer on track to make certain I am adhering to my original intent in order to convey the people and their lives and circumstances I’m creating throughout their journeys.

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

In order to make sure I’ll be able to sustain my original concept, I always know the first 5 chapters, main plot and subplot, do exhaustive character bios, and am certain about the ending. I tend to tweak the first chapter as I’m composing the first draft—primarily to make sure the motivating intent is concise so that the reader has somewhat of an overall roadmap of what to expect on the following pages.

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

I suppose each character I’ve created for Redemption features bits and pieces of myself. Life experience certainly plays a big part. The art of listening is key when working with my Native contacts on the Taos Pueblo. It took a long time to cultivate these relationships. Although none of my characters are based on “real” people, the key is to always be respectful of all Native cultures and traditions.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I started out as an oil and canvas painter and also a photographer, and later became a professional scenic artist and carpenter for theatre, commercials and industrial films. I believe this background experience has helped me to convey what I present with words for the reader. My intent is to put the reader in the shoes of my characters—to take every step of the journey with them visually. To not only paint the picture of the location, but also every sensory aspect along the way.

Visit Deborah J Ledford's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Erin Flanagan

Erin Flanagan’s new novel is Come With Me. Her novel Deer Season won the 2022 Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author and was a finalist for the Macavity Award for Best First Mystery and the Midwest Book Award in Fiction (Literary/Contemporary/Historical). Her second novel, Blackout, was a June 2022 Amazon First Reads pick. She is also the author of two short story collections–The Usual Mistakes and It’s Not Going to Kill You and Other Stories. She has held fellowships to Yaddo, MacDowell, The Sewanee Writers’ Conference, The Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, UCross, and The Vermont Studio Center. She contributes regular book reviews to Publishers Weekly and other venues.

Flanagan lives in Dayton, Ohio with her husband, daughter, two cats and two dogs. She is an English professor at Wright State University and likes all of her colleagues except one.

My Q&A with the author:

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

As with so many final titles, this wasn’t the one I used as I was writing, but it’s one I’ve grown to love. It feels ominous to me, and in combination with the wonderful cover with that weird green sky, it really fits the book. Podcaster David Temple of The Thriller Zone said it feels like “a beckoning and a reckoning” and I love that. I love too that the cover is the two women with their backs to each other, which also feels somewhat ominous to me.

What's in a name?

The protagonist’s name, Gwen, came to me pretty late in the game. She was Anna for a long time, but I could tell it wasn’t quite right. I wanted something with the same number of syllables but that ended with a less upbeat letter. Gwen seemed like a good Midwestern name, and also somehow subdued.

The antagonist, Nicola, also goes by Nikki. Nikki is her childhood name, and I wanted a clear divide between her childhood self and who she wills herself to be as an adult. She’s from a small, lower-class Ohio town. Her mother, Onita, was not what you’d call the greatest mom, but I liked that she would give her daughters these classier names—Nicola and Celeste—as if hoping for something better for them. I think Onita would have been like, those sound French!

A funny aside: I mispronounced Nicola in my head the entire time I was writing the book. I said it like Nick-cole-a, which is typically the male pronunciation. It’s Nick-o-la on the audiobook, which is how it’s usually pronounced for a woman. But I think Onita would have pronounced it like I did when she gave her daughter the name.

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

I think my teenage self would be like, what happened to us? (laughs) Although seriously, I think my teenage self would have thought I’d write more about romantic relationships since society held those out as the idealized and central relationships in a girl’s life, even though my main social relationships were all with friends.

I feel really lucky to have had such wonderful female friendships throughout different stages of my life. With this book, I wanted to honor how significant those relationships can be, both good and bad.

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

I try not to put too much pressure on myself when I write a beginning. I always tell my students, just open up a file and get sexy with it (laughs). All this means is, go in and have some fun—no stress and no stakes. I start by getting to know the character and who they are in the day to day. Once I know them, they are that character in every scene, so in revision I can go back and cut the get-to-know-you and get straight to some action.

As for endings, they rarely change. By the time I’m rounding the last corner on a novel, I have a pretty good sense of where I’m going and it often feels like landing a difficult dismount in gymnastics. It’s quite a rush, and one of my favorite parts of writing.

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 both the protagonist Gwen who lacks confidence and feels like she’s in over her head, and Nicola, the antagonist who wants to be loved so badly that she holds on too tight. For me, that was the key to cracking the book: seeing myself in both, and not just Gwen. I had to understand Nicola’s motivation for the book to make sense and not have her seem completely off her rocker. That said, I have never taken things to quite the extreme Nicola does, I promise!

Visit Erin Flanagan's website.

The Page 69 Test: Blackout.

My Book, The Movie: Blackout.

Coffee with a Canine: Erin Flanagan & Mavis and Lorna.

--Marshal Zeringue

Robert Swartwood

Robert Swartwood is the USA Today bestselling author of The Serial Killer’s Wife, The Calling, Man of Wax, and several other novels. His work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review, The Daily Beast, ChiZine, Space and Time, Postscripts, and PANK. He created the term “hint fiction” and is the editor of Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer. He lives with his wife in Pennsylvania.

Swartwood's new novel is The Killing Room.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The book starts with a businessman waking up in a Las Vegas hotel room that isn't his to find a dead woman in the bathtub. That's literally the first few pages. So the title, The Killing Room, gives the reader a good sense of what they're getting into when they pick up the book.

At the same time, I've always loved books that lead you in one direction and then suddenly go in an entirely different direction. Many times with thrillers, you know where the story is going after the first few chapters. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing! I’ve certainly written books like that.

But for this one, I wanted the reader to get caught up in what they think they know and then pull the rug right out from under them—so it’s challenging to go into much of the plot without giving away major spoilers, though I will note that I love titles that can have more than one meaning, and the title to this book is no exception.

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

I grew up reading Michael Crichton and Stephen King, so I'm not sure my teenage reader self would be too surprised. Though, at that age, I believed I would become a horror writer, so maybe my teenage self would be a bit bummed to learn I ended up going the crime/thriller route.

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

A blank page is always scary, for sure, but before I sit down to write a new book, I usually have been thinking about the plot and characters for a while, and sometimes even have an ending in mind, though oftentimes when I get to the end a few surprises pop up along the way—and that's always fun, because if I as the writer am surprised by what happens, then hopefully the reader will be even more surprised.

Having said that, as the story starts to crystalize, I'll sometimes realize certain parts of the beginning need to change. And sometimes I'll write an ending that doesn't work no matter how hard I try and needs to be retooled entirely. That's happened once or twice before. I don't love when that happens, but if it means the book is stronger for it, then so be it.

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

Some might call me a smart-ass, and my protagonists often have a sardonic streak that runs through them. But I also write about a lot of evil characters, so it's scary sometimes to think that maybe part of me is in those characters, too, just beneath the surface.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Movies and TV, for sure. Readers often comment that my writing is cinematic, which I think is a roundabout way of saying they can easily see the action playing out in their heads. Probably because when I write, I'm just typing out the action as I see it in my head.

Visit Robert Swartwood's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Genevieve Plunkett

Genevieve Plunkett is the author of Prepare Her: Stories. A recipient of an O. Henry Award, her short fiction can also be found in journals such as New England Review, The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, Colorado Review, and The Best Small Fictions 2018. She lives in Vermont with her two children.

Plunkett's debut novel is In the Lobby of the Dream Hotel.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I wrote songs before I started writing fiction, so the cadence of the title was important to me. In the Lobby of the Dream Hotel has a catchiness that I hope draws people in, even if they don’t know what the book is about. As for how it connects to the story itself, the title comes directly from a conversation between Portia and Theo. They are bandmates, who are also in love, searching desperately for a way to be together, when it seems otherwise impossible. The lobby of a dream hotel is a central place and also a nowhere place, kind of like hope.

What's in a name?

Elizabeth Bowen was perhaps the first author that I truly loved as an adult reader. Her novel, The Death of the Heart, is centered around sixteen-year-old orphan Portia Quayne. My Portia--Portia Elby-- is not modeled after her, but it was comforting to choose a name that I had a connection to, in a certain quiet, literary way.

Alby Porter, the rock star who Portia obsesses over, was called Alby Porter before I even understood the significance of how the names mirrored each other: Portia Elby > < Alby Porter.

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

Once teenage Genevieve got over the shock of discovering that I actually finished something, she might be surprised at how romantic certain parts of the novel are. She might think I’ve gone soft. And I suppose I have.

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

I was writing on a (loose) deadline, so the end of this book was a distant--but fast approaching--mystery. I was sure of it when I reached it and the ending has not changed since that first draft.

In general, beginnings are more difficult to discern. A novel or story can start at any point, from any angle. Sometimes I must discard what I thought was the beginning to find the true take-off point. Beginnings, for me, require skill, while endings are mostly discovered through intuition, trust, and luck.

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 had the great misfortune and pleasure of experiencing manic and hypo-manic highs. I wanted a chance to describe this state through Portia, to write a book driven by mood rather than time. Mania can create the illusion (or maybe it is not an illusion--who knows?) that all events are taking place at the same time, like a kaleidoscope. That might be why the novel is scrambled chronologically.

That being said, I think I put the best of myself into Theo’s character--his sensitivity, his worries, and his dreams.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

So many! I have always been mystified by song lyrics. As a child, I felt that the songs of artists like David Bowie, Grace Slick, Neil Young, and Captain Beefheart, were exclusive worlds. I wanted access, but believed that I was too naive, or not intellectual enough to understand. It took me a while to realize that the songs were not written for the intellect. That’s where I find the stories in my head now--by reaching past the meaning of them, right into the strangeness and confusion. It reminds me of music, and probably comes from the same creative longing, ignited by listening to those artists at such a young age.

Visit Genevieve Plunkett's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sara Flannery Murphy

Sara Flannery Murphy is the author of the novels The Possessions and Girl One. She grew up in Arkansas, studied library science in British Columbia, and received her MFA in creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis. She lives in Utah with her husband and their two sons.

Her newest novel is The Wonder State.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The Wonder State invites readers into Arkansas, even if they don’t realize it! This was the state’s first official nickname, chosen back in the 1920s. The nickname changed within twenty years because it didn’t draw enough new economic growth to the state, becoming the Land of Opportunity and then the Natural State. The moment I stumbled across this original nickname, I knew I had to resurrect it as my title, and I’m thankful my publishing team agreed.

I hope the title introduces readers to the enduring theme of the book, which is the sense of wonder that my characters experience naturally as teenagers and need to reconnect with as adults. And the interplay of “state” as both a state of mind and a geographic territory appeals to my love of puns.

What's in a name?

My protagonist is named Jadelynne. I notice that writers tend to choose unusually elegant or beautiful names for their main characters, which makes sense. Writers are an artistic bunch, and you have to spend a lot of time with your character’s name … why not name them Julian, Penelope, Cassandra?

But I wanted to give Jadelynne a name that reads as more common, less poetic. And she shortens it to Jay, trying to remove herself from her roots. In contrast, the twins who move in from out of town are named Hilma and Max after visual artists, which is the kind of highbrow name Jay envies.

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

My teenage self would probably be shocked that I’m writing about the Arkansas Ozarks. Just like Jay, in my book, hesitates to use Arkansas as source material in her visual art.

In other ways, though, I think my teenage self would love that I’m writing a novel that incorporates portals, magic, and otherworldly houses. It wasn’t until my twenties that I started agonizing over whether I was writing work that was “serious” enough, which wasn’t good for my creativity. My teenage self was still caught in the unabashed childhood love of fantasy that has, thankfully, worked its way back to the surface.

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

Beginnings and endings are equally easy for me … they’re the bookends that keep me grounded. It’s the middle that gets me.

In the case of The Wonder State, I knew I wanted to begin with the perspective of Brandi Addams, the character whose vanishing pulls the other characters back to their hometown. I had an early, clear vision of Brandi walking alone through the Ozarks forests, seeking a mysterious house, and that’s exactly how the published book begins.

And the ending was the bright beacon that was pulling me through the complicated parts in the middle of the story. The exact mechanics shifted around, but I actually cried when I wrote the final scene because I was so happy to have arrived right where I wanted to (no spoilers).

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

In a word: houses. I’ve always been curious about the houses in my own neighborhoods, or in any town or city I visit. This book is a love letter to the many, many houses that I’ve never set foot inside, but that have made a home inside my imagination.

Visit Sara Flannery Murphy's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Possessions.

The Page 69 Test: The Possessions.

--Marshal Zeringue

James Byrne

James Byrne is the pseudonym for an author who has worked for more than twenty years as a journalist and in politics. A native of the Pacific Northwest, he lives in Portland, Oregon.

His new novel is Deadlock.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The editor of the Dez Limerick series (The Gatekeeper, Deadlock) is Keith Kahla at Minotaur Books. He’s a friend and has edited me before. He makes my books better. I met him at a World Mystery Convention and told him I was working on a single-protagonist action/adventure book.

“What’s it called?” he asked.

“Limerick.”

“What’s it going to be called?”

That’s Keith’s very subtle way of reminding me how much freight the title needs to carry!

My second choice was The Gatekeeper. My hero, Dez, worked in a foreign military as a “gatekeeper,” a breach-expert, capable of opening any door, keeping it open for as long as necessary, and controlling who does, and doesn’t, go through. I’d been looking for a unique skill set that I hadn’t read in other thriller/mystery novels, and finally settled on that one. So I suggested it to the awesome team at Minotaur, and they liked it.

They wanted a title for the second book that involved things like keys, locks, doors, gates, etc. I offered a wide array of options and they gave the greenlight to Deadlock.

What's in a name?

I call it the Rumpelstiltskin Effect: If my protagonist has the “wrong” name, the character just won’t work. I spend an inordinate amount of time working on character names.

I also didn’t want to go with the overused, like “Jack” and “Jake.” A whole lotta those guys are running through mystery/thriller novels.

I tried a lot of names in the very early drafts, before I knew Dez was from the United Kingdom. Once I knew that, I threw out every name on the possibles list. I wanted this guy to stand out, and I thought maybe a totally overwrought, ridiculous name might be fun and different. But with a light, bright, punchy nickname. One syllable. I got “Dez” first, which led me to Desmond. OK, different, old-timey. I liked it.

In my teens, I’d read a comic book by the great Denny O’Neill and Howard Chaykin called IronWolf. In it, the pirate character had a ship called the Limerick Rake, which also is an old Irish drinking song. I’m Irish-American. I thought, why not? “Limerick” is a cool word that brings to mind a silly (often ribald) rhyme, an Irish city, a comic book I liked, and an old song. A lot going on there. So I had a first and last name.

And “Aloysius” is just one of those goofy names that are always in the back of my mind, like, “Why in the world would anyone name their boy that?” Desmond Aloysius Limerick. Dez to his friends.

The moment I had that name, I knew I had my character. Rumpelstiltskin be damned, this character would do what I wanted on the page!

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

Some, but less perhaps than I think.

My dad loved action/adventure novels (Beau Geste, The Four Feathers) and shared that love with me. I was a devoted comic book reader (still am), and a lot of what I learned from writing action, I learned from Marvel Comics.

As a teen, I fell in love with a brilliant British comic strip, Modesty Blaise, about a young orphan girl who became the crime lord of Tangiers and retired to England in her mid-20s with her most faithful lieutenant, Willie Garvin. Now bored, she and Willie lend their services to British Military Intelligence and to old friends in trouble. Peter O’Donnell wrote the strip from about 1961 or so, to about 2001. I still read those today, and am inspired by his international settings, his strong female protagonist, his action sequences.

I half suspect that my teen self would have enjoyed Dez.

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

It’s harder to write an Act III than an Act I. I’ve tons of clever ideas in my head for launching a rollicking good story. I just don’t know how to make all of them pay off!

Since I’m a former amateur actor, I think in the Three Act format. I go into a novel usually knowing the inciting incident (the “ratchet-up-the-danger” point) that moves us from Act I to Act II. And I often know the inciting incident (the big set piece) that moves us from Act II to Act III. But I then gotta figure out how to bring this beast in for a landing. That’s the tough part!

At age 18, I was working in food services at the Boise Airport. One night after my shift, I was walking to my car in a drenching downpour. The ceiling of clouds was quite low. I looked up for some reason just as a jetliner broke through the ceiling. It had been silent until it broke through, and then boom! the noise shook me. And it was trailing two horizontal tornadoes of rainwater caught in its thrust vortexes.

True story: I thought, standing then, tired, drenched, “That’s gonna be in my novel someday.” I was 18. My book Crashers was published when I was 50, and that’s part of the inciting incident in Act II.

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 been in much physical danger. I can’t fight worth a damn. If I stumbled into a gun battle, I’d shriek and fall into the fetal position.

But I’ve worked for some powerful and successful women, some of whom have mentored me, so I like strong female protagonists, as does Dez. I’m attracted to loyalty, as is Dez. I think I’m funnier than most of the people around me (I crack myself up), a trait that Dez shares.

I’m most similar to a guy named John Broom, who appeared in a couple of Minotaur Books I wrote, Ice Cold Kill and Gun Metal Heart. My wife, Katy King, insists that John is her favorite of my characters. Who knows? I might bring him back.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I’m a print journalist, and a lot of my stories are (please forgive this cliché ) “ripped from the headlines.” I wrote The Gatekeeper mostly in 2021. It includes a small bit about political troubles brewing between Ukraine and Russia, and it includes a right-wing political insurrection. Sound familiar? I wrote early drafts of Crashers, which focuses on terrorists bringing down multiple airliners, mostly in 1999 and 2000. Then came Sept. 11, 2001, and I had to shelve that book for a decade.

The movie (and later the novel) The Andromeda Strain had a huge influence on me as a kid. It’s brilliantly put together.

The British comic strip Modesty Blaise remains a strong influence. I often tell people that Peter O’Donnell was one of the truly great storytellers of the 20th century.

As for music: When I’m writing, I often play the score of an action/adventure film (the score is the music that we, the audience, can hear but the characters cannot). If I’m not much in a mood to write one of my thrillers, I gotta tell you, I put on Michael Giacchino’s music from the TV show Alias or Mission: Impossible 3, and wow does that get my juices going. Also Brian Tyler’s music from The Fast and the Furious franchise or Bangkok Dangerous; Christopher Lennertz’ soaring, orchestral work from the TV relaunch, Lost in Space; David Arnold’s moody work for the most recent run of James Bond movies; Hans Zimmer’s big wall of sound for The Peacemaker; James Newton Howard’s work on Salt; and best of all, John Powell’s driving string sections for the Jason Bourne movies, as well as Mr. & Mrs. Smith. The list goes on.

Visit James Byrne's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jennifer Cody Epstein

Jennifer Cody Epstein is the author of four novels that have been published in a total of twenty-one countries around the world: The Madwomen of Paris (2023), Wunderland (2019), The Gods of Heavenly Punishment (2012), and The Painter from Shanghai (2007).

She is the recipient of the 2014 Asia Pacific American Librarians Association Honor Award for fiction, and was longlisted for the 2020 Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Since the book is about women locked up in France’s largest women’s asylum in the 19th century, I think The Madwomen of Paris does a lot of work! Unfortunately, I can’t take credit for that, since my amazing agent Amelia Atlas was the one who actually came up with it. I’d initially wanted to call the novel The Mesmerist, since the story is based on a very bizarre, real-life chapter of medical history in which Jean-Martin Charcot—today widely regarded as the father of modern neurology—used hypnotism to recreate hysterical symptoms with patients from the asylum’s hysteria ward. In the end, though, it didn’t work as well to signpost what the story was about or where it was set.

What's in a name?

Names are always an interesting challenge in historical fiction, particularly when it’s based on real events like The Madwomen of Paris is. Actually, my first big decision with this book wasn’t choosing the names themselves, but deciding whether and how to fictionalize the names of characters in the first place, since most of them are drawn from real people. I went back and forth on that, particularly with regards to Charcot, whom I was at one point going to give the name “Bouchard.” I think at least part of my urge to rename him stemmed from a reluctance to paint such a revered medical figure in a less-than-reverent light. Ultimately, though, I realized I couldn’t do what I’d set out to do with the book—that is, fully hold Charcot and the powerful men he worked with (Freud, Babinsky, Gilles de la Tourrette) accountable for their treatment of women—without naming them, because so much of their power lay in their real-life names and reputations.

For the female characters, though, I wanted to have more flexibility in terms of creating characters who were composites of the real-life, fascinating patients of the Salpêtrière. I was also reluctant to project my own narrative designs on women who’d spent so much of their lives having men do exactly that to them already. So while Rosalie is based pretty directly on the woman who was probably the Salpêtrière’s most celebrated and famous hysteric, Blanche Wittman, I made her into a separate character in the novel. The same goes with Josephine; though she’s drawn loosely from Augustine Gleizes (in particular, from Geizes’s extraordinary photogenic presence) she has some qualities from other hysterics I’d read about, and others I simply made up.

Choosing their names and that of Laure, the narrator, ended up being a process too. I started with names I found on name generator websites like behindthename.com, and which felt intuitively like they fit the characters. Then I worked with my very thoughtful and diligent factcheckers in Paris to refine them to make sure they aligned with naming trends of the time. Laure was actually “Flore” at first; I liked it because it felt simple, strong and unadorned, which is essentially her character. After learning that Flore wasn’t actually very commonly used in France in the 19th century, I switched her to “Laure,” which had the same feel to me.

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

Honestly? Probably less surprised than I would have been by my first two novels! I was fascinated by 19th-century European literature about women as a teen, in particular Gothic classics like Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Tess of D’Urbervilles. I would probably have been surprised by the amount of research that ultimately had to go into the novel, however. And given how much I struggled in math and chemistry, I definitely would have been surprised by the fact that it was positively reviewed by Science Magazine.

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

I’d say it depends on the story. With my first novel, The Painter from Shanghai, I rewrote the preface about a dozen times before finding the right setting and scene, but I always knew where I wanted to end the novel. With The Gods of Heavenly Punishment I actually didn’t know either the beginning or the end when I started it, and kind of felt my way to both. With Wunderland the beginning came pretty easily to me, but I wrote about a dozen endings before finally just ending the book at an earlier point.

By contrast, The Madwomen of Paris was inspired, in part, by a real-life detail from the Salpêtrière that I was always particularly struck by: the fact that one of Charcot’s “star” hysterics ultimately escaped him and the asylum dressed as a man. There was something about that role inversion, and the sheer, subversive audacity of the act, that felt so powerful to me, and from the beginning I knew I wanted to build my own ending around it. Of course, Josephine ends up having her own set of dangers and fraught circumstances she needs to escape, and I added some elements to my version that reflected those. But no matter where the novel went before that (and it went a lot of places, as there were numerous rewrites!) I always knew that that was my destination.

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

That’s one of the funny things about writing characters who inhabit such completely different worlds from my own–I always end up imbuing at least a little bit of myself in them anyway. In part, I think that’s because writing different characters is not unlike acting in different roles–in order to make both feel fully-realized, you need to imbue them with observations, reflections and sensibilities that ring true. And the only way to really do that is to draw from personal experience.

But there are definitely elements of myself that go beyond that in the characters I’ve written; things that connect them not only to me, but to one another. I’ve realized, for instance, that each of my books has a character who uses art—and especially literature—as a kind of lifeline. In The Madwomen of Paris, literature is one of the things that binds Josephine and Laure together. Laure has always been a bookworm, and Josephine—whose working class background has limited her access to literature—taps into Laure’s literacy and cache of remembered storylines by having her read and recite stories to her in the dank darkness of the asylum’s hysteria ward. It’s very reflective of my own love of books, and how pretty much since I first learned to read they’ve been my go-to source of safety, escape and intellectual growth.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Nearly all of my books have been influenced by visual images in one way or another. The Painter from Shanghai started when I saw a self-portrait of Pan Yuliang at the Guggenheim and was completely riveted by it, as well as by the brief summary of her extraordinary life that accompanied it. (I also used her paintings to try to understand her story, since there is almost nothing by the way of formal biography about her out there, even in Chinese.) While writing The Gods of Heavenly Punishment, I was deeply influenced by the photographs of Tadahiko Hayashi, whose postwar images in the wake of The Tokyo Firebombing really captured for me the tragic scope and devastating impact of that event. And The Madwomen of Paris started with an image of Augustine Gleizes that I stumbled onto online in 2017. It was just so intriguing; this young, scantily-clad woman with a strangely-contorted arm, staring straight at the camera. Once I discovered who she was and the circumstances of that photograph, I knew I’d found a world I wanted to explore fictively.

But as a writer of historical (and now, I guess, hysterical) fiction, I’ve also been deeply influenced by modern-day political events and currents, because the more I write about the past the more vibrantly in conversation with the present it always seems to be. As I wrote The Gods of Heavenly Punishment America was indiscriminately killing Iraqi civilians with drones, and while I wrote a Wunderland scene about the Nuremberg Rallies—with its torchlight, red flags and violent rhetoric—there was Trump, supporting Tiki-Torch-carrying white Supremacists, demonizing foreign immigrants and denouncing the media with exactly the same term (“lying press”) Hitler had used.

Madwomen was no different: as I wrote it, the news cycle seemed to be continually roiling with revelations about all of the ways in which powerful men (Weinstein, Epstein, Nassar, Cosby, Trump) abuse and exploit women and have largely gotten away with it, and the ways in which many of those women are then required to relive that trauma publicly in their quests for justice. I was working on a scene where Josephine relives a violent sexual attack on Charcot’s stage while Christine Blasey Ford was testifying on national television that Brett Kavanaugh had assaulted her, and being mocked by Trump and other Republicans for it. Then, of course, Kavanaugh and another accused predator, Clarence Thomas, helped overturn Roe vs. Wade, effectively stripping American women of control over their own bodies. Even as I was working on revisions, E. Jean Carroll was being called a whack job by Trump on CNN’s Town Hall stage. All of this definitely influenced the sense of anger and urgency with which I wrote the novel, which may have made it more of a heavy read then you might expect a historical novel set in Belle Epoque Paris to be. But I think that ultimately, it also makes it a more resonant and relevant book—something I didn’t expect myself when I started, but with which, in retrospect, I’m very satisfied.

Learn more about the novel and author at Jennifer Cody Epstein's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Painter from Shanghai.

The Page 69 Test: The Gods of Heavenly Punishment.

The Page 69 Test: Wunderland.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ken Jaworowski

Ken Jaworowski is an editor at the New York Times. He graduated from Shippensburg University and the University of Pennsylvania. He grew up in Philadelphia, where he was an amateur boxer, and his plays have been produced in New York and Europe. He lives in New Jersey with his family. Small Town Sins is his first novel.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Small Town Sins was fairly easy to write, but the title gave me headaches. I was foolishly enamored of the working title, The Second Girl I Ever Kissed, which was taken from a line a character says. Luckily, my agent and editor talked me out of it and we brainstormed Small Town Sins. That, I think, gives the reader a sense of the setting, and an inkling of the plot.

What's in a name?

The character names are taken from real family names of people in that area. Every time I'd get stuck on what to name a character, I'd google "popular Pennsylvania names" and look to that for inspiration.

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

My teenage self would be incredibly surprised. I grew up as a city kid who roamed the Philadelphia streets. I'd rarely left the city limits. But then I moved to a small town -- Shippensburg, Pa. -- for college, and was completely perplexed by, and soon in love with, small town life.

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

The middle is the hardest to write. I find myself racing through beginnings and plotting out endings. But it's the middle section -- the 'How do I get from here to there?' -- that sometimes gives me a bit of trouble.

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 only heard this quote once, but I've loved it ever since: 'We are all the same person, expressed differently.' Meaning, we are all equipped with the same basic emotions, though perhaps in different quantities. In that vein, we are all like our characters, in small ways or large ways. That's why readers are drawn to news stories like 'Man Beats Up His Boss at Work.' We've all been frustrated, and all of us have fantasized about doing something like that. Thankfully, though, even if we all feel like that at one time or another, most of us resist that urge.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I take inspiration wherever I can get it. Mostly it comes from people who tell me stories. Later on I'll be writing and will take a story that I've been told, alter it, and it becomes part of the plot.

Visit Ken Jaworowski's website.

--Marshal Zeringue