Angela Brown

Angela Brown’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Real Simple, and other publications. She holds an MFA from Fairleigh Dickinson University. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and two young children, where she is currently at work on her second novel.

Brown's debut novel is Olivia Strauss Is Running Out of Time.

My Q&A with the author:

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

If I’m being honest, I really love the title and think it captures so much about the story that readers will discover within the book’s pages. The title arrived to me very early on – I was only about twenty or so pages into the first draft – and never strayed from it (my agent and editor ultimately loved it, too, so at no point in the process of writing or production did the title ever change). There are really three things I admire about the title Olivia Strauss Is Running Out of Time. First, I love that it’s sort of a big, clunky type title (my favorite kind!) which I think perfectly suits the protagonist, Olivia. She’s a bit of a mess at the start of the story, and so I don’t think a very neat and tidy and simple title would quite suit her. I also love that her full name is included in the title. It lets readers know right away that this is very much her story. At the start, Olivia is a bit self-absorbed, too – something she really works at changing throughout the text – so for that reason I also like that her name is the very first thing readers see when they pick up the book. Lastly, the second part of the title captures the primary theme of the story and also provides a similar sense of urgency that Olivia herself feels right from the get-go.

What’s in a name?

The book is very much about Olivia’s journey toward learning to live her best life, while also being about life and death (and one woman’s fear that she’s running out of time to live). I loved the idea of the protagonist having this theme embedded right into her name. Her nickname, which she’s more often than not referred to in the book, is “Liv.” As she points out early on: “That’s the irony of this whole thing: the fact that my nickname is Liv. Live. To live! And yet…”

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

I think my teenage self would really love this book and think it was pretty cool. I was very much the bohemian kid growing up, so I think sixteen-year-old me would be excited to read about, and also proud that I wrote about, a woman who still finds ways to explore this side to herself.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more? 1000% beginnings! Even if I have a very clear vision for a story, if the first ten or twenty pages don’t feel just right, I can’t create anything beyond them. Like all writers, I go through many drafts before I arrive at a final product, though there’s something about the beginning of a novel that just feels so different for me. It has to “hit” right from the first draft, which makes them much more difficult for me to craft. For Olivia, the opening pages in the final book are nearly identical to those in the very first draft. Endings are very different – those just pour right out of me.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters?

The whole book, of course, is fictional, though I drew a lot of inspiration for Olivia’s character from my own life. Like her, I’m a suburban mother of a certain age, a former educator, and at the time I wrote the book, was an aspiring writer. I think Olivia and I also share many personality traits: we’re both overthinkers who can be a bit sarcastic or witty at times but are (I hope!) ultimately very tender people.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Music was very important to me while I wrote this book. There was a specific playlist I listened to on repeat the whole time I worked on this project, which consisted of songs that reminded me of a certain point in my life (one that Olivia herself longs for). It consisted of a lot of Magnetic Fields, Tom Waits, the Velvet Underground, stuff like that. I’m also really inspired by just plain old everyday life. I live a very simple, suburban existence, and I love to find relatable stories hiding just beneath the surface of my day-to-day. It’s unlikely that you’ll ever find me writing a story about, say, some fictional superhero. I think I’ll probably always, to some extent, focus in my adult work on women like me and work to discover what makes them so interesting and to find unique ways to tell their stories.

Visit Angela Brown's website.

The Page 69 Test: Olivia Strauss Is Running Out of Time.

--Marshal Zeringue