Allison Montclair

Allison Montclair is the author of the Sparks and Bainbridge mysteries, beginning with The Right Sort of Man, the American Library Association Reading List Council's Best Mystery of 2019. Under her real name, she has written more mystery novels and a damn good werewolf book, as well as short stories in many genres in magazines and anthologies. She is also an award-winning librettist and lyricist with several musicals to her credit that have been performed or workshopped across the USA. She currently lives in New York City where she also practiced as a criminal defense attorney.

Montclair's latest novel is An Excellent Thing in a Woman.

My Q&A with the author:

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

“Her voice was ever soft / Gentle and low — an excellent thing in a woman.” King Lear, after the death of Cordelia. This mystery deals with voices — how they sound, who they belong to, and the stilling of them by death. The book begins with a new client coming to The Right Sort Marriage Bureau who has a background in radio and a particular love for voices. Iris mentions the Lear quote, with her own typically acerbic take: “Another man realizing the value of a woman when it’s too late.”

Titles have generally been difficult for me, and I have wrestled with my editors over them many times. This one, however, was accepted right away. It also echoes P.D. James’s An Unsuitable Job For A Woman, one of my favorite mysteries.

What's in a name?

My protagonists are Iris Sparks and Gwendolyn Bainbridge. I had a colleague named Sparks, and I thought it appropriate for this volatile woman. I liked Iris because of its similarity to Eris, the goddess of discord. Gwen was derived from The Importance of Being Earnest, and I settled upon Bainbridge because it sounded British. It occurred to me after that my subconscious was sending me the names of female British novelists: Iris Murdoch, Muriel Spark, and Beryl Bainbridge.

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

My teenaged self wanted to become some combination of Thomas Pynchon, Tom Stoppard, and Stephen Sondheim. Teen Self would have been surprised to find me writing mysteries and not sprawling modernistic novels, but they are historical, something shared with the first two writers. I started writing mysteries because I thought they would be easy (they’re not) and a good learning experience (they are). I’m also writing musical theater, so Teen Self would be pleased with that.

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

It’s all hard, it’s all easy. The middles are the difficult parts. Sometimes I know the ending in advance, sometimes I will write my characters into a hole, then claw my way out. Research drives the story. I tie it into specific events happening at the time, and I’m more skilled at planting items in earlier books that pay off in later ones.

I usually don’t change much. My editor felt one book had a secondary character with too much plot time, so I rewrote extensively, giving some of his plot points to Iris and Gwen and dropping others. (It saddened me, because I liked the character.)

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

Iris is closer to my own personality, although much smarter and more physically capable. I aspire to be on her level. Other than that, the time and place are very different than my own, so the fun is discovering that world and the characters’ voices.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I am looking at historical events, so that research is fascinating and a source of many writing ideas. I’m interested in social change and its effects on individual existence. An Excellent Thing In A Woman is set in the world of BBC-TV as it resumed after the war. I knew when I planned the series that I would be addressing it at some point. Alexandra Palace, which the BBC had taken over for their broadcast facilities, was a wonderful setting for a mystery.

Visit Alan Gordon's website.

The Page 69 Test: An Excellent Thing in a Woman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jacqueline Faber

Jacqueline Faber is an author and freelance writer. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Emory University, where she was the recipient of a Woodruff Scholarship, and taught in the Expository Writing Program at New York University, where she received an award for excellence in teaching. She studied philosophy in Bologna, Italy, and received a dissertation grant from Freie University in Berlin, Germany. Faber writes across genres, including thrillers, rom-coms, and essays. Her work explores questions about memory, loss, language, and desire. Steeped in philosophical, psychological, and literary themes, her writing is grounded in studies of character. She lives with her family in Los Angeles.

Faber's debut novel is The Department.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Like all departments, the eponymous department of my novel hints at some kind of authority, bureaucracy, a place where boundaries might be transgressed. But it holds back as much as it gives away. Something has gone very wrong in this academic setting, but it’s not quite what you think.

What's in a name?

There are two protagonists in The Department. Neil Weber and Lucia Vanotti. Neil’s name feels like a blank slate. A man who has yet to claim agency over his life. Lucia’s name bears within it a kind of indeterminacy. There’s a debate in chapter one over the proper way to pronounce it. Lu-see-ah or Lu- chia. She’s Italian, so the correct pronunciation is the latter. But misrepresentation and misunderstanding are so central to her character, it felt important to capture that in her name.

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

For an early writer who never wanted to subject her characters to any form of hardship (which didn’t make for page turners, as you can imagine), my teenage self would be surprised by the devastation I’m now willing to heap on my characters.

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

Beginnings! Once I understand the story, the ending feels sanctioned. But the beginning is always challenging. It carries a heavy burden. Building a world, introducing character, revealing stakes, hooking readers and making them care. A beginning is a tall order. I’m in awe of books that do it well.

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 pieces of myself in every character I write. Our circumstances and experiences may be different, but I have to understand their psychologies and belief systems to write them authentically. I come to each of them – even the most depraved of my characters – with a sense of empathy.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Dance. And also foreign languages. There’s something about rhythm and cadence that informs my writing.

Visit Jacqueline Faber's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Department.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sejal Badani

Sejal Badani is the Amazon Charts, USA Today, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Storyteller’s Secret and Trail of Broken Wings. She is also a Goodreads Best Fiction award and ABC/Disney Writing Fellowship finalist whose work has been published in over fifteen languages. When not writing, she loves reading and traveling. Bruce Springsteen, Beyonce, and Ed Sheeran are always playing in the background.

Badani's new novel is The Sun's Shadow.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Quite a bit. In The Sun’s Shadow, the title symbolizes two key ideas: first, that even in moments of light and joy, shadows can loom over lives; and second, that one of the boys—a son—would cast a shadow over all their lives while also being a source of light and healing. Similarly, in The Storyteller’s Secret, the title reflects the layers of hidden truths. While the protagonist is a storyteller with a significant secret, it is the former servant, recounting the tale to the granddaughter, whose secret ultimately changes the course of all their lives, giving deeper meaning to the title.

What's in a name?

I love naming characters. I have a passion for exploring the meanings behind names, hoping to craft a connection between the name and the character’s essence. For instance, Felicity, which means "intense happiness," felt perfect for the character in The Sun’s Shadow. Her journey of searching for happiness, only to discover it was within her all along, mirrored a personal journey I’ve experienced myself. It’s these subtle layers of meaning that make naming characters so special to me.

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

My teenage self would be shocked I’m a writer at all. I was supposed to be a lawyer.

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

Beginnings. I usually have the ending in mind when I start a story. I change the beginning countless times but I have yet to change an ending.

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 so much of myself reflected in many of the main female characters I write. My first two novels, Trail of Broken Wings and The Storyteller’s Secret, were deeply personal, inspired by real events from my own life. This made it natural to weave elements of myself into the storylines. In The Sun’s Shadow, the two protagonists are women who fiercely protect their children while juggling careers and personal lives—a dynamic I can completely relate to.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Travel is a huge source of inspiration for me. Experiencing different cultures and connecting with people from around the world is truly incredible, and I feel deeply grateful every time I have the opportunity to explore new places. My family is another profound influence in my life. I’ve always wanted my children to understand the importance of chasing their dreams and believing in themselves, no matter how challenging the journey may seem.

Visit Sejal Badani's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Sejal Badani & Skyler.

My Book, The Movie: The Storyteller's Secret.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kemper Donovan

Kemper Donovan is an acclaimed author and host of the “All About Agatha” podcast. A graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School, he worked at the literary management company Circle of Confusion for a decade before transitioning to writing full-time. He is a member of the New York Bar Association, PEN America, and Mystery Writers of America. He lives with his husband and daughters in Los Angeles.

Donovan's new novel is Loose Lips.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Quite a lot, I hope! My title, Loose Lips, is the first part of a common phrase: “Loose lips sink ships.” To make certain that this word association occurs in the mind of a would-be reader, I made sure to include a picture of a sinking ship on the cover of the book. The idea is to convey: 1) the action of the story takes place entirely on a boat, and 2) matters on this boat go seriously awry. There is also a subtitle, A Ghostwriter Mystery, which clarifies that this book is a mystery, one in a series, and furthermore, that it does not matter where the book falls within that series, since any one of the Ghostwriter Mysteries can be read on its own. The Ghostwriter in question is the narrator of each book, and in this outing, she reluctantly joins a literary-themed cruise as a lecturer, along with a handful of writer colleagues and a few hundred paying passengers. Would you be surprised to learn that secrets and intrigue abound aboard this ship, and that someone ends up murdered?

What's in a name?

Ah, well, this opens up a can of worms, I’m afraid. Loose Lips is the second Ghostwriter Mystery. In the first book in the series, The Busy Body, my Ghostwriter character did not have a name. That’s right: she went nameless for the entire book. I was partly inspired here by Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, which famously features a nameless first-person female narrator, but I also felt that my enigmatic, withholding Ghostwriter character did not want to be named. (She is a ghostwriter, after all.) In my second book in the series, I decided that this character finally needed a name, if only for ease of reference. And so, she goes by “Belle Currer” in this book, which is the pseudonym she used when she “wrote” The Busy Body. (Just as Watson writes his chronicles of Sherlock Holmes, my first-person narrator writes the stories that she tells.) This name is a cheeky inversion of “Currer Bell,” the pseudonym Charlotte Brontë used when first publishing Jane Eyre—a novel both the Ghostwriter and I happen to love very much.

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

I think it would make perfect sense to my teenaged self that I write mysteries. I was always a mystery fanatic—in particular, a devotee of Agatha Christie, both on the page and screen. (I particularly loved the David Suchet series, Agatha Christie’s Poirot.) For the past eight years, I’ve vented my love of Christie by way of a podcast that I host called All About Agatha. (For the first five years I co-hosted the show with a dear friend of mine, Catherine Brobeck, but she passed away. I’ve continued the project solo.) Sooner or later, I was going to have to start writing mysteries of my own. It was only a matter of time….

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

I’ve found that when I’m writing a mystery, the beginning is much harder than the ending, due to the type of mystery that I write. My mysteries are “puzzle” or “fair play” mysteries, also known as “whodunits,” which feature clues that the reader can ferret out in the text at the same time the fictional investigators do. This means there is a pre-arranged solution at the end of the novel, which has to be carefully built into the text. (Agatha Christie was an expert at these sorts of mysteries, as were many of her contemporaries in the so-called “Golden Age of Detective Fiction.”) For this reason, by the time I’ve reached the ending of one of my mysteries, I’ve got everything worked out, and the going is much smoother than at the beginning, when I’m still experimenting and figuring out exactly what I want to do. There is no question that the beginnings undergo significantly more changes!

Visit Kemper Donovan's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Samrat Upadhyay

Samrat Upadhyay was born and raised in Nepal. He is author of the novels The City Son, The Guru of Love (a New York Times Notable Book), and Buddha’s Orphans, as well as the story collections Mad Country, The Royal Ghosts, and Arresting God in Kathmandu. His work has received the Whiting Award and the Asian American Literary Award and been shortlisted for the PEN Open Book Award and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. He has written for The New York Times and has appeared on BBC Radio and National Public Radio. Upadhyay is Distinguished Professor of English and Martha C. Kraft Professor of Humanities at Indiana University.

His new novel Darkmotherland.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I settled on the title Darkmotherland fairly early in the process, and the title didn’t change even though the novel went through numerous drafts.

This is not my standard writing process. Normally, I have a working title that changes later when I have a firmer sense of what the novel is about. But in Darkmotherland, the name of this dystopia came to me early on, and it felt very right. It’s a combination of Darkmother, a prophetic figure in the novel, and Motherland, which evokes old-timey patriotism and nationalism.

Darkmotherland is not only a place but also a character, a mythical reverse-Shangrila. It holds the major characters in a grip they cannot escape.

What's in a name?

Character names are important to me either in their symbolism or the physical image they conjure for me as I’m writing—sometimes they are a mixture of both. One of my main characters, Kranti, for example, means “revolution,” but she dislikes her name because she has an antagonistic relationship with her mother, a dissident-activist who gave her that name. The mother herself has earned the nickname Madam Mao, undeservedly, for her communist leanings. The irony of the two names hover over their contentious exchanges throughout the novel.

Interestingly, the naming of places and temples became important to me in the novel. I found myself translating Nepali street names into English, so much so that they became, at times, awkward and convoluted, which then provided another texture to Darkmotherland as a land of dissonance and dislocation. So, Battispulati became Thirty Two Butterflies Street, Ghantaghar clocktower became Home of the Bell, and so on.

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

My teenage self would be quite surprised by my new novel. I was a serious teenager, and as a young man I wrote about serious things. So the dark comedy in Darkmotherland would be a surprise to my younger self. But on second thought, maybe not so surprising. As a teenager some of my favorite books were Catch-22, The World According to Garp, and Cat’s Cradle.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

My interest in “translations” of culture and language is at a heightened display in Darkmotherland. I’m interested in how global English has become, and how it transforms and is transformed by other cultures and countries.

I’m generally interested in politics, especially in politics that impacts our daily living, and it was interesting to explore this in the novel with an all-consuming authoritarian figure who inspires fear. I’m also fascinated by how American politics dominates the globe, and I had fun imagining this influence in the emotional landscape of Darkmotherland.

Visit Samrat Upadhyay's website.

Writers Read: Samrat Upadhyay (August 2010).

The Page 69 Test: Buddha’s Orphans.

The Page 69 Test: Darkmotherland.

--Marshal Zeringue

Heather O'Neill

Heather O’Neill is a novelist, short-story writer and essayist. Her work includes When We Lost Our Heads, a #1 national bestseller and a finalist for the Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal, The Lonely Hearts Hotel, which won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and CBC’s Canada Reads, and Lullabies for Little Criminals, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, and Daydreams of Angels, which were shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize two years in a row. O’Neill has also won CBC’s Canada Reads and the Danuta Gleed Award.

The Capital of Dreams is O’Neill's most recent novel.

My Q&A with the author:

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

My novel is about a fictional country that gets its borders after World War 1. They invest in the arts, and hold it above everything else. They believe they don’t need to invest in an army. They will be protected by the West should they be attacked. And then at the height of their golden era, the Enemy comes to wipe them off the face of the earth.

The Capital of the country is so important in the novel. Sofia, a fourteen-year-old girl, is entrusted with getting her mother’s manuscript out of the country, so the culture can be saved.

I liked the idea of having a sophisticated girl from the cultural elite, having to make her way through the war-torn countryside. I wanted to see how the philosophy of The Capital made sense to her once she was out of it. Can a clarinet tune stop a war? Can a poem save a people? I have always believed in the power of art.

I wanted to show why artists and children are targeted by genocidal invaders. And how they are at the heart of a country’s identity.  

What's in a name?

I decided to name the children in the novel names that sounded as though they might all come from varying countries. I wanted them to have names that made them sound as though they were each from a different sort of children’s book from a different culture. They were all from the land of childhood which has different borders than adults.

I named the main character Sofia, because it means knowledge, and she is a philosopher of the children’s condition and the particular existential questions children have, and particularly the ways in which children make sense of trauma.  

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

Very delighted probably. Most of the novels I write are based on idea I had as a young girl. I would plan out the novels that I wanted to write when I was older and figured out how to write a novel. Capital of Dreams was a novel based on stories I had heard about my dad and uncles going to war as teenagers. I would be so surprised my future self listened to me. And that I was in possession of real ideas for novels. I think children have incredible ideas.

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

I almost always write the ending first. So I know where the characters are heading towards. The beginning always changes. Because you don’t begin a book with the beginning. You begin a book with an arresting moment, a sort of photograph, a little dance, to trick the reader into reading the whole book.

At the start, I dress my characters up and say, “Your job is to make the reader enchanted by you. Do anything, something lovely, something bizarre.”

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

When I was creating the character of Clara Bottom, a renown philosopher, I went to great efforts to make her a narcissist and bombastic. I wanted her to be so openly full of herself and not humble. It was such a fun way to portray a middle-aged woman.

When I was finished the novel, everyone I knew said Clara Bottom resembled me very much. Which I found shocking and hilarious.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

This book was very influenced by the news of the world. I describe an occupied country being subjected to a genocide. What was happening in the Ukraine and Gaza greatly affected the politics of the novel.  

But also photographs. Fashion magazines. Traveling. I collect notes about people doing and saying strange things to me on the subway.

I was influenced by the way children play instruments. My daughter went to a Performing Arts school. There was something so magical about the sound of children making their way through a piano tune. The notes would tumble out into the corridor. I loved the awkward pacing and imperfection. I wanted some of that spirit in the language of this novel.

Follow Heather O’Neill on Instagram.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ellie Brannigan

Ellie Brannigan has lived in South Florida for the last twenty years. She loves the ocean and any food dish with shrimp. When she’s not creating new fictional worlds, she reads, and travels…and eats.

Brannigan's new novel is Death at an Irish Wedding.

My Q&A with the author:

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

For Death at an Irish Wedding, I was asked to come up with several titles. In fact, this was the third title selected, and I wrote the book under a completely different title and saved my word doc that way. When I went to look for my story later, I couldn’t find the manuscript. Any author might imagine my immediate reaction of holy smokes, my work has all disappeared: belly tightening, sweaty palms, slightly sick…but then I went to my saved emails and found the email stream with my editor. Crisis averted, but it was an awful ten minutes of panic.

This is the Irish Castle series, and at the end of the first book there was the question of ghosts in the castle. I liked Haunting in an Irish Castle, but my publisher wasn’t sold. Once the story progressed, I realized it was more about the super-secret Hollywood wedding of Rayne’s rich American client and her actor boyfriend than ghosts. We came up with alternates and Death at an Irish Wedding stuck. It was a lot of fun to bring in Irish wedding traditions to the getaway weekend to fit the title.

Through each story, the struggle for Rayne and Ciara to save Grathton Village is paramount and it is unfortunate that people keep kicking the bucket—which is why I’ve included more of the villagers in book three, Death at an Irish Village, available in August 2025. The title completely matches the story.

What's in a name?

I think names for characters are hugely important and I spend a lot of time researching what might be appropriate for the area and time period. Let’s unpack Rayne Claire McGrath, my protagonist for the Irish Castle series.

Rayne—a fun play off of ‘rain’ that her Irish father, with a poet’s soul, gave as an ode to his birthplace. Ireland is known for gray rainy days.

Claire. This is a family name, and she is named after her poor dead aunt who died as a child.

McGrath. This is a popular Irish surname that has been around for centuries.

Ciara Smith. Her name also tells a story…though Nevin McGrath was her father, she didn’t know it until her mother got sick with cancer and introduced them before she died. This gives Ciara all kinds of baggage with claiming her stake at McGrath Castle, and Grathton Village. She feels she has to prove herself doubly hard.

Blarney, the Irish setter. Just saying the dog’s name makes me smile. He’s his own character and attached to Rayne. He’s supposed to be a bird dog but doesn’t have the hunter’s instinct.

Maeve, Aine, and Cormac Lloyd—the live-in staff at the castle, all have classic Irish names. They are part of setting the scene.

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

I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I wrote angsty poetry and children’s stories as well as novels that rightfully never saw the light of day. If my teenage self knew about Death at an Irish Wedding, I’d like to think she’d be pumping her fist and doing the pogo.

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

I love a plot board. I love lists. I have an addiction to notebooks and go through a dozen at least a year. As I sit down to write, I have the reader in mind, wanting to entice and entertain. I have been known to take the ending I’ve imagined beforehand and throw it out the imaginary window if I feel it is predictable. My biggest thrill is when I’m reading reviews, and the killer has remained masked until the end. As a voracious reader, which I am, I want to be fair and lay out clues, and then mix everything up.

Visit Ellie Brannigan's website.

--Marshal Zeringue