Cynthia Swanson

Cynthia Swanson is the Denver-based author of the psychological suspense novels The Bookseller, The Glass Forest, and the newly released Anyone But Her. An Indie Next selection, New York Times bestseller, and winner of the WILLA Literary Award, The Bookseller is slated to be a motion picture produced by Julia Roberts. Swanson is also the editor of the award-winning anthology Denver Noir, which features dark, morally ambiguous stories set in and around Denver, written by 14 notable literary and mystery authors.

My Q&A with the author:

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

On page 7 of Anyone But Her, we hear these exact words (“anyone but her”) spoken by Alex, mom of Suzanne, the novel’s main character. Six months earlier, Alex was killed during an armed robbery of her record store on Colfax Avenue in Denver. Now, she appears as a ghost to 14-year-old Suzanne, a clairvoyant, and urges Suzanne to intervene in the relationship between Suzanne’s father James, and his girlfriend, Peggy, whom he’d dated in high school. Alex explains that after meeting Peggy at James and Peggy’s high school reunion, she’d jokingly told him that if she died, he could marry “anyone but her.”

Lost in grief and loneliness, Suzanne heeds her mother’s warnings and does what she can to break up James and Peggy. The repercussions of this decision are severe and long-lasting, both when Suzanne is a teen in 1979, and in 2004, twenty-five years later, when she returns to live in Denver with her husband and children after decades away.

What's in a name?

Ooh, I worked long and hard on this one! As a record store owner, Alex obviously loved music, so I wanted her to give her daughter a name inspired by a musician or a song. I ultimately landed on Suzanne, after the Leonard Cohen song. I made up a scene in which Alex, pregnant at the time with Suzanne, hears Judy Collins sing “Suzanne” in a little club in Denver in 1964. The scene is purely fiction, in no small part because Cohen didn’t publish “Suzanne” as a poem until 1966, so I had to take poetic license there. However, Judy Collins did record the song that same year (1966). She was a graduate of the high school that Suzanne attends, Denver East High. Collins was in the class of 1957—the year before James and Peggy also graduated from East.

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

Suzanne and I are about the same age, so my teenage self would definitely recognize the cultural references in Anyone But Her—music, clothes, movies, books. I’m not clairvoyant, but I’ve always had an affinity for ghost stories. My teenage self wouldn’t be a bit surprised that I wrote one.

Teenage Cynthia might be surprised that the novel is set in Denver, because I didn’t grow up here. However, I think she might (as I do) sort of wish that I did. I have numerous friends my age who are Denver natives, and their stories helped shape the narrative—and also made me a bit envious that I didn’t share their experiences here in the seventies and eighties. I would have loved going to a concert at Red Rocks when I was a high schooler!

I didn’t plan this, of course (I started writing the novel in 2019), but Gen X/Gen Jones is having a moment right now, and it’s fun to have a novel coming out that’s set in the era when those generations were young. Like many of us born in the 1960s, my teenage self would be pretty excited about that.

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

For me, it’s the middle that gets tough! I usually have a solid beginning and at least somewhat of an idea where things are going to land. With a clear picture of where to start and a general sense of where I’m ultimately headed, it’s the “getting there” that can be a challenge. I completely rewrote Anyone But Her, top-to-bottom, five times, changing key elements and plot lines—this is not counting dozens of interim revisions. Because of this, the ending changed quite a bit, as did much of the middle. But the beginning never did; it always started with that scene between Suzanne and the ghost of her mother, Alex.

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

As mentioned above, Suzanne and I are similar in age and share many cultural references. Additionally, like I was as a teen, Suzanne is introverted and trying to figure herself out. That’s where the similarity ends; she’s otherwise way more badass than me. In the 2004 timeline, adult Suzanne has married and had children at a much younger age than I did—and as the mother of a teen and a 9 year old, she faces motherhood challenges that I did not in 2004, when my first two children, twins, were infants. Despite these differences, Suzanne is one of my favorite characters that I’ve ever written, in both her teen and adult lives.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

For Anyone But Her, certainly music played a big part. I have 1970s playlists that I listened to as I wrote. And as anyone familiar with my writing knows, I’m greatly influenced by setting. When I was younger, I had aspirations of being an architect, and this shows in my writing via the homes that often play a part in my novels. In Anyone But Her, the house where the family lives is an 1888 Queen Anne Victorian, complete with turret. This house, while fictional, is common in its neighborhood, Capitol Hill, and throughout much of Denver. I’m currently writing a new novel—a mystery set in Denver and the Colorado mountains in 1938—and readers will recognize this same house playing a role in that book, too.

Visit Cynthia Swanson's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Bookseller.

The Page 69 Test: The Glass Forest.

Writers Read: Cynthia Swanson (February 2018).

--Marshal Zeringue

Erica Wright

Erica Wright's new novel Hollow Bones, a contemporary retelling of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, is out now! Her essay collection Snake was released as part of Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series. Her mystery Famous in Cedarville received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was called "a clever little whodunnit" in The New York Times Book Review. She is the author of five other books, including the poetry collections Instructions for Killing the Jackal and All the Bayou Stories End with Drowned. Her poems have appeared in Blackbird, Denver Quarterly, New Orleans Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Wright was the senior poetry editor at Guernica Magazine for more than a decade and currently teaches at Bellevue University. She holds degrees from New York University and Columbia University. She lives in Knoxville, Tennessee with her family.

From my Q&A with Wright:

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

Hollow Bones is a retelling of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, and the title comes from the line “…thy bones are hollow; impiety has made a feast of thee.” It is a condemnation—the villain’s absence of faith has lead to an absence of character—but the phrase “hollow bones” also references birds. And a bird is a perfect symbol for the book’s protagonist Essa who is slight and fragile but determined. While not what Matthea Harvey might call a license plate title, grounded in information, I do think Hollow Bones establishes an appropriately gothic tone.

What's in a name?

This story is told in three POVs, and I decided to give Juliet the same name in my version that she has in the Shakespeare play. In Measure for Measure, she only has seven lines, so I was starting from scratch in some ways. Of all the characters in the play, she’s most affected by the events but given least attention. Her fiancé Claudio has been sentenced to die for impregnating her, and she’s sent off to what sounds an awful lot like prison. In Hollow Bones, she’s also in tough circumstances. Her fiancé has been arrested for burning down a church and killing two people inside. Instead of wallowing, though, she tries to control her own fate, not relying on the whims or rules of others.

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

Honestly? Not too surprised. I was introduced to Measure for Measure as a teenager when I attended the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery. I was captivated by Isabella and her plight. I even had her first speech on mercy memorized, but please don’t ask me to recite it today!

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

In general, I find endings more difficult to write. With a mystery, I want all the pieces to click together, and sometimes those pieces are misshapen or broken on a first—or fifth—draft. For this book, though, I wrote and rewrote and rewrote the first chapter. The final version of Hollow Bones is only 70,000 words but I wrote at least 100,000 during the drafting process.

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

Like Essa, I grew up in small town, and while most aspects of my childhood were happy ones, I longed for privacy. I never had any important secrets to hide from my neighbors, but I never liked them knowing even my unimportant ones. Essa wants to start over somewhere where she won’t be known as “the serpent orphan,” and who could blame her? Personality-wise, we’re worlds apart. I like to think that we could be friends, though.

Visit Erica Wright's website.

My Book, The Movie: Famous in Cedarville.

The Page 99 Test: Snake.

--Marshal Zeringue

Elizabeth Bass Parman

Elizabeth Bass Parman grew up entranced by family stories, such as the time her grandmother woke to find Eleanor Roosevelt making breakfast in her kitchen. She worked for many years as a reading specialist for a non-profit and spends her summers in a cottage by a Canadian lake. She has two grown daughters and lives outside her native Nashville with her husband and maybe-Maltipoo, Pippin.

Parman's debut novel is The Empress of Cooke County.

My Q&A with the author:

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

My story is dual-POV and has two main characters, Posey Jarvis and her daughter, Callie Jane. The title applies to them both. Posey claims to be the Empress of Cooke County, and everything she does in the book can be traced back to her feelings of entitlement, but, in my mind, Callie Jane is the real empress. The cover art is of Posey at the Curly Q beauty shop, and Posey is very vocal about her rightful position as an empress, so it’s easy to interpret the title as applying only to Posey, but I hope readers read more closely and realize how Callie Jane is transforming.

What's in a name?

Posey’s name is obvious—she is a poser, and Callie Jane’s name relates to something very specific in the book I can’t name without giving a spoiler. The Humboldt family got their name from the town of Humboldt, Tennessee, which I would pass when I’d drive to Memphis to see my daughter. Vern’s name was harder to come up with. I wanted something plain but dignified, a “salt of the earth” name. I went through several options before choosing Vern. I asked the woman who inspired the character of Evangeline to name Evangeline’s dog and she chose Muse. Evangeline means “good news,” and every Callie Jane in the world needs an Evangeline to help her see clearly.

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

Not a bit. She would say, “It’s about time!” I first announced I wanted to be a writer when I turned four. I asked my mother where books came from, and when she told me people wrote them, I could not imagine anything better than being an author. It took over 50 years from that announcement for me to be published, but better late than never.

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

Definitely the beginning. I always know the ending of a story before I write the first word, but knowing where to start the story is hard for me. I rewrote that first chapter probably a dozen times. I compare that first paragraph to a double Dutch jump rope game— you have to time your entry into the action perfectly or everything falls apart.

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

I take bits and pieces of my own personality and give them to characters, but they are mostly from my imagination. Callie Jane has trouble speaking up for herself, which I struggled with when I was younger, and she has no sense of direction, which I suffer from. Some of the sweet things Vern does for Callie Jane came from my father, like teaching me to ride a bike.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I am an active observer when I am out and about. Inspiration can come from anywhere, and I am always watching and listening. I keep a notebook where I write down tidbits I hear or see, and it is amazing how often I can use those notes in a story. For example, I misread the name of a church we whizzed by on the interstate and will be using that wrong name in a future book. During a recent trip, I spotted a woman carrying an unusual purse, and I am pretty sure that will pop up in the next one, too.

I will talk to anyone and love striking up conversations with strangers while in line or waiting for a take-out order. Stories are about people, and talking with new people gives me new ideas. That being said, if I’m behind you in a slow grocery line, be careful what you say!

Visit Elizabeth Bass Parman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue