Julie Hensley

Julie Hensley is the author of three books, Five Oaks, Landfall: A Ring of Stories, and Viable. She is also the author of two chapbooks, Real World and The Language of Horses. A professor at Eastern Kentucky University and core faculty member in the Bluegrass Writers Studio Low-Res MFA Program, she lives in Richmond with her husband, the writer R Dean Johnson, and their two children.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The title Five Oaks is indicative of how important setting and landscape are to the story. It is the name of the family lake cottage where the current temporal frame of the novel takes place across a summer in 1988. The historical chapters all branch into that space eventually, as well. It is truly a nexus. The working title for this novel was actually The Recklessness of Water, a reference to the REM song “Night Swimming.” I changed the title to Five Oaks at my agent’s urging. I spent about a day worrying over it, but ultimately, I grew to love the new title. Both that lake cottage and the five sprawling oaks for which it is named anchor the lives and secrets of all the women in the Stone/Pritchard lineage.

What's in a name?

I found the name my narrator, Sylvie, in a cemetery. I love to walk in cemeteries, and I always make note of interesting names and play with trying to extrapolate into narrative. I liked the way the name contains both light and a mineral strength. I stole her last name, Pritchard, from one of my MFA professors, the amazing Melissa Pritchard.

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

I think teenage Julie would be shocked. I’ve always written—when I was young, I journaled and wrote poems. I devoured novels when I was a teenager, often reading one a day in the summers; however, back then, I wanted to be a scientist, specifically and ethologist. I wanted to live amongst animals and study their behavior like Dian Fossey or Eugenie Clark. Maybe being a novelist isn’t such a stretch. Writers live amongst human animals, observing and recording.

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

Honestly, it depends on the project. I feel like with short stories my endings usually feel like gifts. The entire narrative is a process of discovery, but once I’m deep in it, I feel such a propulsion toward those final lines. Five Oaks is my first novel, and it was definitely a different beast. I didn’t write sequentially in the beginning. At some point, I had to find my structure and create some scaffolding. Originally, I assumed the narrative would end at the lake, but I found I had to follow the girls back home and see how the trauma of the summer reverberated in their regular lives. For a long time, the novel began with the image of Hollis leaping off his dock and swimming across the cove toward Sylvie. Late in the process, I began experimenting with the intercalary chapters and decided to open with one of those, to let Sylvie’s musings on her sister function as a kind of prologue. I definitely wrote and rewrote the end of that last chapter many times. I don’t know if it ultimately changed more, but it certainly felt more important. I worried over it more.

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 called Five Oaks a work of autofiction, and I think that label fits. I used to spend my girlhood summers at my maternal grandparents’ cottage on Lake Hamilton in Hot Springs Arkansas. Their cottage was called Five Oaks. The current temporal frame of my novel is closely based on my own tenth summer when my own oldest sister began sneaking out with an older, local boy. Courtship stories from both sets of my grandparents and my parents are woven into the historical chapters. In many ways, this book is about memory and family lore.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Well, my working title was pulled from REM’s album Automatic for the People. Tonally, that album influenced the work—it feels full of nostalgia. So many of the songs feel like coming-of-age songs.

When I was in high school, I saw the movie Man in the Moon and had a strong, emotional reaction to it that I didn’t quite understand. It actually got me thinking back to my tenth summer, thinking about how my sister and I, despite our difference in age, were living out secret separate/parallel versions of coming-of-age stories that summer.

I’m also really interested in the theory from Family Systems Theory that secrets can be passed down, generation to generation, without ever being explicitly revealed. I believe we live around the previous generation’s secrets, that they affect the decisions we make and the relationships we form. This idea is something I explore in nearly everything I write.

Visit Julie Hensley's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Weina Dai Randel

Weina Dai Randel is the acclaimed author of five historical novels, including The Last Rose of Shanghai, a Wall Street Journal bestseller, and Night Angels, longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Awards. She is the winner of the RWA RITA® Award, a National Jewish Book Awards finalist and a two-time Goodreads Choice Awards Best Historical Fiction nominee. Her novels have been translated into seventeen foreign languages, including French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Hebrew.

Her new novel, The Master Jeweler, is about a gifted Chinese orphan’s dangerous quest to become a master jeweler in charge of a legendary diamond.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The Master Jeweler follows the journey of a jeweler who searches for fame, friendship, and family from her youth to middle age. It traces her growth, her ambition, her triumphs and mistakes, and ultimately, her realization of what truly matters in life. So I was pretty sure the title should be called The Jeweler, similar to Noah Gordon’s The Physician, which I adore. Simplistic and enduring, right? But as it often happens, I miscalculated. My publisher proposed to change it during the production stage, and my first reaction was, “Impossible! It has to be The Jeweler!” But then I realized they had a point, so we brainstormed and my editor came up with The Master Jeweler. I let it sit for a few days, and eventually, it grew on me and I really like it.

What's in a name?

I put careful thought into names, especially those of the main characters. It’s important to me that each name carries cultural resonance. In The Master Jeweler, the protagonist is called Anyu, which means “peaceful jade” in Chinese. It alludes to two aspects of the character: one is that she was a precious thing to her mother, even though she was nothing to her powerful father whom she never met, and the other is that jade has significant meaning in Chinese culture, as well as in her profession as a jeweler. Another character’s name is simply called Confucius, who’s a gangster in Shanghai. This might sound odd, and the ancient teacher must be rolling in his grave, but I thought adopting a philosopher from the classical Chinese literature added a twist of subversiveness and a tease of cultural meaning. And hey, he was a gangster with consciousness.

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

The teenage me would be judging the master jeweler and crying for her but also deeply admiring her. She would probably think I am pretty cool too, for understanding the mindset of a teenager, without realizing she was the inspiration for the impulsiveness and stubbornness and the relentless drive to do whatever it takes, to her detriment.

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

Beginnings, beginnings, and beginnings. But. To write a beginning, I must first have the ending in mind, and a general arc of the story has to be planned out before I type the first word. As I write, I keep going back to tweak the sentences and heighten the intrigue factor.

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 always write myself in novels, because, you know, sometimes characters command their own universe and do whatever they want to do, but Anyu takes a piece of me – bluntness. Her speech pattern, her lack of social skills and her insensitiveness to people’s emotions were all intentional and connected to my personality. Her relationship with Esther started off on the wrong foot (pun intended!) because of her bluntness. I’m not as helpless now (hopefully), after years of stumbling and making gaffes, but I’m pretty sure, at her age, I was a terror to the people around me. The reason Anyu behaves this way? She grew up without a father, relatives, siblings, cousins, or friends. The only person in her life was her mother, so you kinda understand why she couldn’t read the room. Why do I behave this way? I have no clue, but there’s no excuse!

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Paintings. I’m not an expert by any means, but when I look at Van Goh or Klimt, I pause to think about what is timeless, what art means in our life, and what is our legacy after we’re gone.

Visit Weina Dai Randel's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Shana Youngdahl

Shana Youngdahl is a poet, professor, and the author of the acclaimed novel As Many Nows as I Can Get, a Seventeen Best Book of the Year, a New York Public Library Top Ten Best Book of the Year, and a Kirkus Best Book of the Year. Youngdahl hails from Paradise, California, devastated by the 2018 Camp Fire, which stirred her to write her latest novel, A Catalog of Burnt Objects. She now lives with her husband, two daughters, dog, and cat in Missouri where she is Associate Professor in the MFA in Writing Program at Lindenwood University.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The title, A Catalog of Burnt Objects, comes from “objects,” scattered throughout the book. These short chapters tell the story of objects different community members lost in the catastrophic wildfire that hits Sierra in the middle of the book. The opening chapter is the protagonist, Caprice Alexander’s, object. It tells of the Talking Heads LP her grandfather gave her, and in doing so introduces us to the geography and culture of the town, as well as her gramps' important role in her life.

I had this title picked very early before the book was written because I knew the project would be about fire and what is lost and community. I know that the title doesn’t tell you that this is also a sibling story and a love story, but I hope that it is interesting enough for people to pick up and wonder about. When they start to flip through it they will see it is a story of how to come of age in a world on fire and how to have hope.

What's in a name?

A name can say more about the people that name you than it does about who you are. We can grow into our names, or we can grow against them, and we can also choose our own names. In this book, the protagonist, Caprice is named for the “whim,” her parents had to have a second child, but I picked the name because her own ability to embrace whims and change is part of her character arc. Her brother Beckett is named after Samuel Beckett, and early in the book when Caprice meets her love interests she wonders if he is considering “what kind of people name their kids after an avant-garde playwright and a whim?”

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

Beginnings because you can’t get them right until you nail the ending. I change every part of a project a lot. Revision is 99% of the job. In A Catalog of Burnt Objects figuring out where to start was one of the challenges of the project, since the story is ultimately a sibling and family story I landed with opening with Caprice’s object and following with the chapter where her brother moves home. There were versions that started with the fire and then flashed back but that didn’t work. I realized you need to love this town and family before you can really care that it is on fire.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I’m always interested in how science can provide metaphor and a framework for understanding and questioning the world. Growing up in Paradise the outdoors were my playground. I spent my days outside, in trees, in the river, in the canyon. My public school education taught me the importance of valuing people, lending a hand, and a foundational curiosity that has allowed me to keep my eyes open for inspiration in all places. I probably find inspiration most often science and nature, where questions more than answers, drive our quest for knowledge forward. I suppose that is because fiction is like that too, it invites us to question.

Visit Shana Youngdahl's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Allison King

Allison King is an Asian American writer and software engineer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In technology, her work has ranged from semiconductors to platforms for community conversations to data privacy. Her short stories have appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Diabolical Plots, and LeVar Burton Reads, among others. She is also a 2023 Reese's Book Club LitUp fellow. The Phoenix Pencil Company is her first novel.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The Phoenix Pencil Company was pretty much always the title of the book. I think it does a good job of capturing the fantasy-aspect of the book, and of course the pencil part. It also gives a sense that this is going to follow a company, so potentially span a long period of time. Another idea I had was Pencil Hearts, which might've spoken to the emotional parts of the book more, though feels less distinctive.

What's in a name?

The name with the most significance in this book is that of Wong Yun, who is the grandmother and one of two main characters. Her name is my own grandmother's name, as a lot of the story is inspired by what she used to share with me about the pencil company my family used to run in Taiwan.

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

I think she'd be surprised but pleased. Maybe mostly surprised by how I've processed a lot of the things we went through. Teenage me had never really read anything by Asian American authors either, so that might be the more surprising part.

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

Beginnings are harder for me. Whereas I feel like I tend to know the ending, and the whole book is working towards it, a beginning feels more flexible and open-ended. The beginning of The Phoenix Pencil Company was one of the parts I worked on with my editor the most, whereas the last sentence and scene have been the same pretty much since the first draft.

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

Yes, the granddaughter character in this book in particular is very similar to me, maybe an exaggerated version of me. I purposefully gave her many of my own experiences, since the grandmother character was so different from me, growing up in a totally different time and country.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Family, anime, video games, cities, public transportation, and tea!

Visit Allison King's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

KD Aldyn

KD Aldyn lives everywhere and nowhere (home is where the Wi-Fi is). She most often wears black (and sometimes red) and sometimes dances like Elaine from Seinfeld.

Sister, Butcher, Sister is her debut.

My Q&A with the author:

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

There are three sisters and one of them is a killer, so the title is perfect. I can say this without being boastful because the title was gifted to me by my editor and her team. It is so clever. My original title was She and when I first saw the cover I cried with joy because the publishers had incorporated that word into the Sister Butcher Sister graphic.

What's in a name?

The sisters’ names came to me in my sleep, and I built the characters from there. The name Kate suggests physicality and movement to me. Aurora sounds musical. Peggy has that kind of ragged, wayward sound to it (sorry to all the Peggy’s out there!)

The main detective’s name didn’t come so easily as he didn’t really enter the scene until much later. In fact, I kept muddling Nick Timms: one minute he was Nic, then Rick, then Nick. At various places, I called him Detective Simms instead of Timms. By the end of the writing process, he’d formed more fully in my mind.

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

From the age of about twenty, I read mainly literary novels, short stories and poetry. I even enjoyed the odd romance. But I wasn’t reading or writing in the crime thriller genre.

So, when thinking about this question, I got a bit of a jolt.

When I delved further back into my memories, I found that I was quite taken with blood and guts as a teenager. I liked anything macabre and frightening.

So maybe teenage me wouldn’t be too surprised at all.

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

It varies. In the case of Sister Butcher Sister, the ending was harder. You see, I had these three sisters almost fully formed in my mind. The opening came easily. What I didn’t have, even vaguely, was an ending.

I knew one of the sisters was a serial killer, but I had absolutely no idea which one it would be. I was waking up at ridiculous times in the early hours of the morning, racing to the computer, hunching myself over the keyboard, desperate to find out who the killer was. I changed my mind constantly.

In the end, the right character or characters rose to the challenge and accepted responsibility. What a relief!

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

Many of my friends have said they can’t believe I could write such gruesome images and when my husband first read the manuscript, he went rather quiet. So, I am a little wary in saying I could have something in common with any of the sisters.

To be honest though, I do have something in common with each of them: Aurora’s love of music, Peggy’s relationship with her son, Kate’s fixation with her grandfather’s house.

I can even relate to the anger that simmers within the killer. However, when that simmer comes to a boil and the killing starts, I’m a world apart. Believe me!

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Inspiration is everywhere: song lyrics, an overheard conversation on a train, a beautiful painting.

But it was a dinner party conversation that got me interested in serial killers. Fueled by wine from memory, an intense debate began with friends and family, and the conversation became the spark for this novel.

Everyone seated around the table seemed to agree that the feminine makeup excluded a woman, generally, from becoming a murdering psychopath. Even those accepting the examples I put forward, said the scarcity of female serial killers was somehow because of nature. I was alone in my argument from the feminist perspective that, given the opportunity and motive, a woman could easily turn into a killing machine.

This book is, in a way, my way of rising to the challenge to [fictionally] prove a point.

Visit the Karenlee Thompson / KD Adlyn website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Laney Katz Becker

Laney Katz Becker is an award-winning author, writer, and a former literary agent. Her books include the novels, In the Family Way and Dear Stranger, Dearest Friend, and the nonfiction anthology, Three Times Chai, a collection of rabbis’ favorite stories. When she’s not writing, Becker enjoys drawing, sewing, reading, long walks, playing tennis, and canasta. She is a graduate of Northwestern University, raised her two children in Westchester County, New York, and currently lives on the east coast of Florida with her husband and their Havanese.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I think my book title, In the Family Way, does a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to communicating what my novel is about. First, the expression itself is a somewhat antiquated euphemism for saying a woman is pregnant. And while it may not alert readers that my book is set in the 1960s, it (hopefully) is a pretty clear indicator that it’s not a contemporary novel. My working title was With Child, which I also think says “historical,” but I changed it because I really preferred the word “family.” It has a warmth to it which gives it an added bonus for readers who may be unfamiliar with the expression “in the family way;” they’d still know the book involves families and a sense of community. And since, at its heart, my novel is about the friendship between a group of suburban housewives—and an unwed 15-year-old mother-to-be—I felt family was the perfect descriptor!

What’s in a name?

It’s a Jewish custom to name babies after those who’ve already passed away, rather than someone who is still living, (which is why you don’t meet young Jewish men who share their dad’s name). Anyway…my novel is narrated by three different voices (all in the same time period) and two of the narrators are sisters and are Jewish. They’re named Lily and Rose. Their mother named them after relatives who’d died, but giving them both “flower names” was her added twist. It was a way to help the reader know a little bit about the mother, even though she has died years before the novel opens. It was also a practical decision as I felt it would help readers keep the characters straight, particularly at the beginning when everyone is being introduced. Another thing about names in my book that readers will surely realize: My chapter titles for the married women all use their husband’s first names and their married surnames—so there’s Mrs. David Berg, and Mrs. Marty Siegel, because it was 1965 which was before the women’s movement, when women/housewives didn’t have their own identities. Under each “Mrs.” name is the woman’s actual name, but it’s in smaller type and in parenthesis, appearing as (Lily) or (Rose). The type is actually helping to convey that the women are parenthetical to their husbands, and smaller in stature. (I absolutely love that something as simple as type can convey so much!)

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

Beginnings are harder for me and I definitely futz with them a lot more. I think that’s especially true because I tend to write my novels in a linear order…and while I might have a pretty good idea where I’m going, I typically make myself wait until I’m at least half-way through my first draft before I allow myself to write the ending. Then I go back and pick up where I left off and start writing in order again. By the time I finish my first draft, I know my characters so much better than when I started. So, as I work my way through my second draft, I find myself reading dialogue and thinking “she would never say” or discovering actions she would/wouldn’t take. But only after writing 300ish pages do I have the confidence that I know—I truly know—exactly how a character would behave. And that means rewriting the opening. Again.

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 there’s a bit of me in all of my characters. But in this novel I needed a strong matriarchal Jewish grandma, so I not only based her on my own Grandma Mollie, I actually named her Grandma Mollie. But I didn’t stop there. Hoping my kids and grandkids—and any other offspring who may be born after I’ve passed away—would maybe (?) have a copy of my novel, I gave my own Grandma Mollie’s backstory to the character of Grandma Mollie, assuring that future generations would know from where they come. In short, I memorialized my grandma because that’s the joy of being an author—you can do that sort of thing because you’re in charge…and unless someone like you asks me about it, no one is the wiser!

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

In the Family Way was inspired by politics, for sure. I came up with the idea after the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs decision, overturning Roe v. Wade and a woman’s constitutional right to abortion care. When that occurred, I was watching the news and saw a 20-something protestor holding a sign that said We Cannot Go Back. I scoffed, thinking she wasn’t old enough to appreciate what times were like “back then.” I did some research to fill in my own memories about women’s in the 1960s. Then I decided that someone really should write a book about it so women today would appreciate how far we’ve come, but also recognize that these days we’re on a slippery slope. And then I remembered Toni Morrison’s advice when she said “If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” So I did.

Visit Laney Katz Becker's website.

--Marshal Zeringue