Chris McKinney

Chris McKinney was born and raised in Hawaiʻi, on the island of Oahu. He has written nine novels, including The Tattoo and The Queen of Tears, a coauthored memoir, and the screenplays for two feature films and two short films. He is the winner of the Elliott Cades Award and seven Kapalapala Poʻokela Awards and has been appointed Visiting Distinguished Writer at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

McKinney's new novel is Sunset, Water City, Book 3 of the Water City Trilogy.

My Q&A with the author:

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

When my editor and I discussed title options, we both agreed that it’s better to be direct and simple as opposed to trying to be clever. “Water City” indicates to the reader that a significant portion of the novel is set in an underwater city. “Sunset” suggests that this is the last book in a trilogy.

But I’m also hinting at something thematic. Walking backwards is a motif in these books, and the sequence of titles move backwards as well, from “Midnight” (book one), to “Eventide” (book two), to “Sunset” (book three). The idea is that as we advance technologically, we devolve in significant, terrifying ways.

What's in a name?

Two major characters in this book have the same name: “Ascalon.” This is a risk. The last thing a writer wants is confused readers. However, why write and not take chances? That seems boring. Besides, the reason they share the name makes sense. It was, at one time, the most popular name in this world because it was the name of the weapon that saved humanity (The Ascalon Project). The name also has religious and mythical implications because it’s the name of the spear that Saint George used to slay a dragon. Religion and myth figure largely in this book.

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

While the teenage me would be surprised that I became a writer, he would not be surprised by the content of this and other books I wrote. Every writer has that first book that shook them, and mine was Animal Farm in the sixth grade. Orwell had an enormous impact in how I look at literature and imagine what it can say.

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

For me, the ending is harder. I always have a beginning in mind before I start writing a book, and I usually stick with it. It’s through writing the first draft of a novel that an ending is discovered. In this book, I discovered the end about a quarter into draft one, when the genetically engineered mythical creatures first appear. I only found an end by navigating the self-created maze in which it hid.

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

Some of these characters share my cynicism. One in particular shares my habit of liking to have a drink or ten and using foul language. Other than that, these characters are very different than I am. I don’t think of myself as manipulative, and a few of the major characters in this book are master manipulators. Writing characters most unlike me are the most fun to create.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Watching movies and even gaming has influenced me. Blade Runner, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and The Road Warrior stained me for life. I have always really liked the anime aesthetic as well. As far as games go, I spent an embarrassing amount of hours playing Everquest and World of Warcraft. The Mass Effect trilogy and Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2 are among my all-time favorites, too.

Visit Chris McKinney's website.

The Page 69 Test: Sunset, Water City.

--Marshal Zeringue

Constance Sayers

Constance Sayers is the author of the best-selling novels A Witch in Time and The Ladies of the Secret Circus, the latter receiving both a Publishers Weekly and Library Journal starred reviews. Her work has been translated into six languages. In her spare time, she is the Chief Revenue Officer for a media and information company. She splits her time between Alexandria, Virginia and West Palm Beach, Florida.

Sayers new novel is The Star and the Strange Moon.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Usually, my agent or my editor take my original title and improve upon it, but this is the first book title that came from me. The novel is about an actress who, in 1968, goes missing on the set of a French horror film and is never seen again. The film’s title is L’Étrange Lune which translates into The Strange Moon. Since the book focuses on her disappearance and one man’s obsession to find her (the star), I think it is an elegant and provocative title that nails the mysteriousness of the story.

What's in a name?

Naming my characters is the first thing I do. I cannot move forward with them until they have their names. I also know when I haven’t nailed the name and, as a result, I don’t connect with them as characters. The name Gemma Turner came to me before the idea for the book was fully formed. She just leapt off the page with that name and provided a great deal of direction for the plot. Thierry Valdon is just a great name for a French director. I loved the painter Suzanne Valadon who was the partner of Erik Satie and named the director in her honor. Probably the name Thierry came from the French designer Thierry Mugler. I say “probably” because some of this stuff runs in the background, and I just settle on it. Thierry Valdon was a great creative mashup from two great creative minds in French history.

I probably need to spend a minute talking about the demon, Althacazur who appears in this book as well as A Witch in Time and The Ladies of the Secret Circus. Readers love him and no one can pronounce the name. It is All-tha-CAZAR. He is based on a demon that appears in many texts, but just didn’t want to work with real demon names. It started as Alcazar and I added a flourish to it. I wanted the name to sound weird and otherworldly.

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

I’d like to think my teenage self would be proud. As a kid, I wrote a weighty tome on my sister’s Smith Corona typewriter so my teenage self would think that nothing had changed!

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

I used to find beginnings sacred. Like so many writers, I probably fixated too much on the first fifty pages of a book. Now, I realize the first chapter is the icing on the cake after the book is completed. I know where I want to start the story but that doesn’t mean that is the point where I will begin the book. Always, my process has been to write a soft ending to the book and then provide an epilogue which is the true ending. Always, the epilogue is the final piece.

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

The character of Christopher Kent has a lot of me in him. Growing up, I had a tumultuous childhood and that shows up in each book. When I was writing The Star and the Strange Moon, my mother died. She had suffered from dementia for a few years, so she had been fading, but finally losing her just gutted me and I channeled that grief into his character. The idea of a search for her is something that I find at an existential level. Where did she go? It was a raw wound. His character personified that grief for me.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Music. I went into college as a vocal performance major and my father really wanted me to be an opera singer, so my childhood was filled with voice and piano lessons. I changed my major to English my freshman year and never looked back but I did feel like I let my parents down because they sacrificed so much for me to have a music career. I loved music, but in my own way and I really didn’t want to perform. I became a midnight-to-six DJ at a commercial radio station in Pennsylvania for four years and it taught me so much.

Visit Constance Sayers's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Witch in Time.

The Page 69 Test: A Witch in Time.

Writers Read: Constance Sayers (February 2020).

--Marshal Zeringue

Lisa Gornick

Lisa Gornick has been hailed by NPR as “one of the most perceptive, compassionate writers of fiction in America ... immensely talented and brave.” Her novels include The Peacock Feast, Louisa Meets Bear, Tinderbox, and A Private Sorcery. Her essays have appeared widely, including in the New York Times, the Paris Review, Real Simple, and the Wall Street Journal. A graduate of the Yale clinical psychology program and the psychoanalytic training program at Columbia, where she is on the faculty, Gornick was for many years a practicing psychotherapist and psychoanalyst. She lives in New York City with her family.

Gornick's new novel is Ana Turns.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Writers often go through hell with their titles—with the process sometimes devolving into a focus group with editors, publishers, marketing departments, and publicists all weighing in. For my first two novels, dozens of options were considered, and the title was changed at many stages. Since then, I’ve had the title as an anchor early on—though with this novel, I did waver between Ana Turns and Ana Turns Sixty before recognizing that the sixty made the title too “on the nose.” It was only after I had the finished book in my hands that I more deeply understood how Ana Turns encapsulates the central theme: a moment in a woman’s life, her sixtieth birthday, when she turns away from ossified views, turns back to what she cherishes, and turns towards a vision of what she wants next in this blink of a life.

What's in a name?

I’m smiling at this question because it’s taken up in the second paragraph of my novel:

My mother, who’d wanted Anna, was disappointed when my father insisted on removing an n because he deemed the double ungainly, and then disappointed again when I more closely resembled an androgynous Giacometti, collarbones in lieu of cleavage, than a stolid milkmaid like her Swedish forebears.

As a novelist, we can grant our characters names that seem simpatico with who they are—though if we do this with too heavy a hand, the reader will feel manipulated. For me, Ana’s solid loving husband had to be Henry. Her lanky boy-man lover had to be Lance. And her mother, deemed by Ana’s best friend Fiona “more battleship than mum,” had to be Jean.

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

In an interview in Esquire, novelist Lauren Groff describes one of her characters as “not not me.” Late in the novel, Ana reflects similarly on her own teenage self—that she’s not not her. My teenage reader self—a shy girl writing cryptic poems, including one about a boyfriend’s mother that won a local prize, which meant that she had to read it in front of her subject’s women’s club—would, I think, say the same of the adult novelist I’ve become.

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

I spend a very, very long time in what I consider “pre-writing”: allowing shadows of characters to slowly gain flesh until they are as real to me as my intimates. Ideas begin to whirl about what happens to these characters—in other words, what is the story I’m going to tell? Then comes the harder work of figuring out how I’m going to tell that story: from whose point or points of view, in what time frame, how the dramatic arc will be shaped. I go through dozens of possibilities before settling on the opening of the book.

Ana Turns had too many drafts to admit – but after I wrote what would become the final sentence of the book, it felt like a click on a lock and I never changed it.

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

With Ana’s chapters narrated in the first person (and then interspersed with chapters written in the third-person from the points of view of her husband, her father, her brother, her lover, and her lover’s wife), I suspect some readers will presume a connection between Ana and me–but that would be a mistake: Ana’s biography, like that of all of my characters, is both invented and a mash-up. The well that I draw from is subterranean: what I’ve come to understand on a psychological level about myself and others who I’ve been privileged to know intimately. For me, fiction involves alchemy: combining elements of something observed in oneself or others to create something entirely new.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Having trained as a clinical psychologist and then psychoanalyst, my beliefs in how the unconscious works, the past influences the present, and personality is revealed in action are foundational in my creation of characters and story lines too.

Like many contemporary writers, I’ve also been influenced by film: how the camera moves in and out, taking different perspectives. I recently read Noah Gallagher Shannon’s profile of Jack Fisk, the production designer who worked with Martin Scorsese on Killers of the Flower Moon. Fisk’s approach to creating the visual elements of a film as world building “for character and through character” strikes me as similar to the process I go through with my characters: imagining their bodies, their clothing, their homes, what they cook, what they read, the furnishings they inherit or choose.

As an amateur pianist, I studied with a teacher who’s both a classical pianist and master improvisationist. She taught me that composition is improvisation and that with anything we do—playing music, cooking, and writing too—we can find a balance between assuming the position of an acolyte—learning from the masters—and breaking free to proceed in a way that opens a window for inspiration. It won’t arrive on any schedule, but if you show up every day for your work, you’ll be there when it does.

Visit Lisa Gornick's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Amy Hagstrom

Amy Hagstrom is a writer and travel industry editor whose work has appeared in US News, OutdoorsNW Magazine, Travel Oregon, and Huffington Post, among others. A lifelong outdoors enthusiast, she served as a volunteer EMT with her local county search and rescue unit before launching her writing career. After raising three children in the Pacific Northwest, Hagstrom traded the Cascade, Siskiyou, and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges for the Sierra Madre mountains, making her home in central Mexico with her wife.

Hagstrom's debut novel is The Wild Between Us.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I believe my title, The Wild Between Us, does a succinct job of drawing the reader into the story. It works on several levels because the 'us' can refer to several relationships in the book: the distance between the two protagonists, the distance between them and their search subjects, or even the distance of the decade and a half that has separated them. The 'wild' is fairly self-explanatory, especially paired with the cover of mountains, a lake, and topographical lines. This book is clearly set in the wilderness. This wilderness, the Sierra Nevada mountains, serves as a secondary character in its own right, and I do think it deserves title billing.

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

My teenage reader self would be surprised to see so many familiar places in this novel, as it is loosely based on the wilderness where I grew up and spent my formative teen years. I'd like to think she would be gratified to know her future self did not forget where she came from and why she loved it the way she did.

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

As a writer, I find myself changing both beginning and endings over the course of re-writes, and this novel was no exception. That said, I find it easier overall to write beginnings. I tend to know where I want to start, gleaned from a single--yet usually fully-formed--scene in my head. I write character-driven suspense, and I have to know who my characters are before I know how they will react to the situations I put them in. So my earliest scenes are usually quieter ones, in which I get to know them. Inevitably, these scenes get moved around to allow for a stronger start.

I also tend to know how my books will end (usually in the form of another succinct yet fully-formed scene or two), and then I work back from those bookends, dealing with the messy middle!

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

My characters in The Wild Between Us are a world apart from my own personality, with the exception of Silas's two young sons, Spencer and Cameron, reminding me of my own boys at that age. Honestly, Silas is like no one I've ever known, and while I can see aspects of myself in Meg, she's more cautious and deliberate than I have ever been.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Without a doubt, my time spent volunteering for my county's Search and Rescue unit inspired this novel, combined with my experience with my own kids in the outdoors. I was fortunate to learn the protocols, challenges, and rewards of SAR through months of training exercises, on-the-ground searches, and educational programs and I will never forget my time in the woods with these hardworking and dedicated people.

Additionally, my previous career as an outdoor adventure travel writer has informed all my manuscripts. I love to shine a spotlight on beautiful and rugged outdoor settings, and my years exploring wilderness all over the world ingrained in me a respect for nature and what she can do.

Visit Amy Hagstrom's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Wild Between Us.

--Marshal Zeringue

Finley Turner

Finley Turner is a debut suspense author. She made a career change to become an archivist at a university after leaving academia, where she studied cults and new religious movements.

When not producing and consuming all things morbid and dark, Turner can typically be found playing video games with her husband, and occasionally pausing to interrogate her rescue animals about what they're chewing on.

Her new novel is The Engagement Party.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The title is very matter-of-fact, which is something I really struggled with due to the lack of creativity. My publisher asked me to come up with ten alternatives, but we weren't crazy about any of them. The only one that I could see working was A Family Affair, because this novel is all about a dysfunctional family, love affairs included. We stuck with The Engagement Party because it does capture the fact that this is a claustrophobic book where none of the characters can leave the site of the party.

What's in a name?

Coming up with character names is one of my favorite parts of writing. I often pick names with the same energy as the characters, so the Sedgemont family names had to sound expensive—Beatrice, Emmett, and Kennedy to name a few.

Meanwhile, the main character Kassandra goes casually by Kass, further separating herself from the Sedgemonts. I named Kassandra after a favorite video game character, Kassandra from Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. I like to sneak in easter eggs for myself. My advice on naming characters is to never name one after your real-life enemies. They don’t deserve to be immortalized—they would love that!

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

My teenage self wouldn’t be surprised at all that I wrote a thriller, but she would definitely be surprised it was published. My mother and I always watched murder mysteries together when I was little, like Poirot, so that’s always been a part of who I am.

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

It’s by far the hardest to write endings for me. Thrillers are all about the twist, and this is the biggest struggle for me because of how much pressure there is to surprise readers. With the first two books I wrote, including The Engagement Party, I actually didn’t know who the culprit was until halfway through the first draft. When I took a step back and really figured out what the book was about, which is redemption and revenge, I felt it all click into place.

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

I definitely see a little bit of Kass in myself. She feels awkward in fancy social situations and much prefers being casual. She falls in love too quickly, and has a bit of a mouth on her. She’s sensitive to being judged, but can hypocritically make snap judgements (don’t we all?). But luckily, there’s much about her that is a world apart from me. I won’t say what those are to avoid spoilers, but hopefully readers know what I’m talking about when they get there.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I absolutely love to play video games, and while most people unfamiliar with them are picturing Mario or Fortnight, I prefer narrative-heavy video games like The Last of Us and God of War. There are some heavy-hitting writers in video games that could easily write a bestselling book, but instead they write stories that players get to live in. It’s the most immersive way to consume a story, in my opinion.

Visit Finley Turner's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Engagement Party.

--Marshal Zeringue

Diane Barnes

Diane Barnes is the author of More Than, Waiting for Ethan, and Mixed Signals. She is also a marketing and corporate communication writer in the health-care industry. When she’s not writing, she’s at the gym, running, or playing tennis, trying to burn off the ridiculous amounts of chocolate and ice cream she eats. She and her husband, Steven, live in New England with Oakley, their handsome golden retriever.

Barnes's new novel is All We Could Still Have.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I struggled to think of a title for All We Could Still Have. My working title was Life, Unplanned, but I didn’t love it. When I gave a draft to beta readers, I asked them to suggest an alternative. Fortunately, someone suggested All We Could Still Have. It’s a line from the novel and it perfectly captures the meaning of the book. To me it conveys that even when you don’t get what you want or when things don’t go as planned, you can pivot and still be happy. I hope my book leaves readers with that sentiment.

What's in a name?

The protagonist of All We Could Still Have is Nikki Sebastian. Nicholas is my favorite name, and most of my books all have some form of the name in it, Nico is the bad guy in Mixed Signals, Nick is the hot guy in More Than, and now Nikki is a character I hope readers will root for. In the book she says people always call her Nikki except when they’re breaking her heart. That she prefers to be called Nikki tells me she is approachable and down to earth.

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

Of all my novels to this point, I think All We Could Still Have is the book my teenaged self would be least surprised I wrote. Teenaged me love watching Dynasty, General Hospital, and Days of Our Lives, and actually thought writing for a soap opera would be the coolest job. This book is about the ups and downs of a relationship and the work that goes into making a marriage succeed, which is sort of what soap operas are about, right?

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

For this book, the ending was harder to write. When I started writing, I had the last scene in mind, and in the draft I sent to beta readers, that’s the ending I used. But, 2 of my 3 beta readers said the ending didn’t work, and they both cited the exact same reason for it not working. So, I felt I should change it and I did. If anyone wants to know the original ending, they can email me and I’ll tell them.

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 always a little of the author in all the characters we create. There are definitely similarities between Nikki, the protagonist in All We Could Still Have, and me. Like Nikki, I grew up in an Italian American family in New England. Like Nikki, I wanted children but don’t have any, and we’re both a bit paranoid that we don’t fit in or are judged for not having kids. We also both work jobs that involve writing and are still close to our childhood friends.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

When I listen to music, I pay more attention to the lyrics and the story the song tells than to anything else. Sometimes I get ideas for scenes or characters based on lyrics. The song "Never Wanted to Be That Girl" by Ashley McBryde and Carly Pearce inspired one of the characters in All We Could Still Have.

Visit Diane Barnes's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Elise Hart Kipness

Elise Hart Kipness is a former television sports reporter turned crime writer. Her debut mystery, Lights Out, the first in a series, is based on the author’s experience in the high-pressure, adrenaline-pumping world of live TV. Like her protagonist, she chased marquee athletes through the tunnels of Madison Square Garden and stood before glaring lights reporting to national audiences.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I’m a bit obsessed with my title and I feel like I can say that because I didn’t come up with it. After bagging my original title, my husband suggested Lights Out. What I love about Lights Out is that it works really well for a domestic thriller. But it also has a sports reference. If someone plays “lights out” it means that they can’t miss. I thought the connection to basketball was really cool because the murder victim is an NBA player.

What's in a name?

At first my main character was named something completely different. In fact, I unintentionally chose a last name that I had a hard time pronouncing. My Long Island accent tends to come out when I have a “t” in the middle of a word. I usually pronounce it as a “d.” Originally, my main character’s last name was “Martin” which I pronounced Mar-den.” Then I thought–why would I do that to myself? So I changed my protagonist’s name to Kate Green!

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

One-hundred percent endings! I tend to write in layers, which means I’m always coming back to the beginning and tweaking it. But when I get to the ending I get a little stymied. I usually know what the twist will be, but my mind imagines so many different ways to reveal the ending that I struggle deciding which way to go. I’ve found, my best endings come in conjunction with collaboration with my agent and editor.

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

My main character, Kate Green, is a way cooler version of myself. We are both sports reporters. But where I’m a soccer mom, she’s a former Olympic soccer gold medalist. I chase my three dogs around the yard, she chases bad guys through the hidden tunnels of Madison Square Garden. Her demons are also way more interesting than mine. Darker and edgier. But we both love coffee and greasy grilled cheese sandwiches.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Anything that tells a story from movies to television to songs and musicals. I’m always studying how ideas are portrayed and plots revealed.

Visit Elise Hart Kipness's website.

The Page 69 Test: Lights Out.

--Marshal Zeringue

Alysa Wishingrad

Alysa Wishingrad writes fantastical stories for young readers, tales that ask; is the truth really true? Her favorite stories are those that meld the historical with the fantastic, and that find ways to shine a light on both the things that divide and unite us all. The Verdigris Pawn, a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, is her debut novel.

Her new novel is Between Monsters and Marvels.

Wishingrad lives in the Hudson Valley with her family and two demanding rescue dogs.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I think, far more than my debut, The Verdigris Pawn, Between Monsters and Marvels does a good deal of work to set the stage for the book. The title alone promises the reader, well . . . monsters, but it also promises something else that feels safer, friendlier, and above all, magical. The word Between also does a good deal of work as Dare, the main character, gets caught between a great many rocks and some very hard, and tricky places. There are the worlds of Barrow’s Bay, the bucolic island she grew up on, and City-on-the-Pike, the teeming, overcrowded, and at times desperate city on the mainland to which she is banished after her father’s untimely and mysterious death. Then once in the City, Dare gets caught between competing loyalties and allies, the truth and lies, history and facts, and who she always thought her father was and reality. And finally, Dare must learn to live between what she knows and what she hopes can be true.

What's in a name?

From the moment you meet her I think the reader understands exactly the depth of meaning behind Dare’s name. Though her given name is Darvlah, everyone, except for the governor, calls her Dare. And she is daring to the core!

Yes, she is opinionated, defensive, quick tempered, and fiery. But she also has the self-confidence to flout convention and spurn the impulse to try to fit in. She knows who she is, and she won’t change that for anyone. But she also knows that her edges are rough, and she tries, for a time, to soften them, to emulate her kind and gentle father, the one person who truly understood and appreciated her.

Dare is truly daring and bold and determined, and she will not stop until she finds the truth of the monsters and her father’s death. But she is also vulnerable and loving and devoted to truth and kindness.

I dare you not to fall in love with her!

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

I don’t start drafting until I know the full arc of a story, and I cannot move forward until I have a beginning that works. It’s in those early pages that I find the voice of a piece and ground myself in the world. So I will stay there until I have a solid launch pad.

But in fact, it’s the middle that is hardest for me, and that I have changed the most for both of my books. I’ve been known to chuck entire full drafts, or as in the case of Between Monsters and Marvels, the last 200 pages in order to make the middle work. If the center of the arc isn’t working, then even the tightest beginning will not matter. As for a satisfying ending, it has to be earned and built on the back of that strong middle. If I’ve done my job right, then the ending should almost write itself.

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

I like to think that there’s a piece of me in every character I craft—but I would say that Dare is the closest to my heart. I understand her desire to put on a tough face, I think I was like that when I was younger, to not let anyone in lest they hurt you. But I also relate to her soft heart, her unconditional love, and her undying belief that the truth is out there. I’m also just as determined as she and unflinching in my belief that we have a responsibility to each other, to nature, and to being honest and truthful in all our dealings with others.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I am a devoted thief! I will glean ideas from everywhere: history, theater, tv shows, movies, music, overheard conversations, magazines, and news stories. Ideas are everywhere. I try to stay open so that those floating seeds can find me. But I also know not every idea has wings, at least not ones that I can use. But what’s fun is to see how seeds show up in unexpected ways.

Visit Alysa Wishingrad's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Alysa Wishingrad & Cleo and Lucy.

The Page 69 Test: The Verdigris Pawn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jennifer duBois

Jennifer duBois is the author of The Last Language. Her first novel, A Partial History of Lost Causes, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and winner of the California Book Award for First Work of Fiction. Soon after its publication, duBois received a Whiting Award and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award. Her second novel, Cartwheel, was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award and the winner of the Housatonic Book Award. And her third novel, The Spectators, was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship and a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Stanford University Stegner Fellowship, duBois teaches in the MFA program at Texas State University. She lives in Austin.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I tend to feel pretty helpless about titles: I never know where they’ll come from, when they’ll appear in the process (if ever), or how they’ll be received. The phrase “the last language” was in my head a lot while I was writing, and though I can’t say it’s a precise reference to any single concept in the book, it did seem to generate several meaningful interpretations: the idea that Angela’s epistolary account of her relationship with Sam might be the last piece of language between them, and that Sam’s conversations with Angela might be the last connection through language he ever experiences at all; the broader (more optimistic) thought that whatever communion that existed between Angela and Sam—be it partly spiritual, subconscious, or sub-verbal—reflects the deepest form of language, the kind that will outlive all the particular tongues we know. Throughout the book, Angela is scouring global languages, hoping that their insights might illuminate the fundamental question that haunts her: does language predate thought, or the other way around? Maybe The Last Language as a title contains the suggestion that if she just finds the final language—whatever that is—it will contain the definitive answer. And of course I thought a million times while writing it that this book would probably be my last novel; I think all my books have had titles that in some way describe not only the plot/thematic concern but also the literary project at hand, and so for a time, calling this book The Last Language seemed right in that regard.

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

My teenage reader self was, lucky for me, on a journey of pretty radical re-assessment of my literary values, so it would really depend on the year we caught up with me. I think my eighteen-year-old self would have been thrilled I’d written a novel at all, even more thrilled that I’d written a novel that seemed to engage with Lolita. I think if my teenage self could read The Last Language, I might be invited to reconsider Lolita—not to condemn it, but to reconsider where I thought its complexity derived. But I think even my fifteen-year-old self, who was much more innocent and much less settled on any particular literary opinion, would have been pleased that I’d written a book in which uncomfortable moral entanglements aren’t miraculously resolved through external coincidence, so that the characters don’t actually have to grapple with the consequences of making a decision. (Jane Eyre. I am talking about Jane Eyre.)

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

For me, endings seem to sort of write themselves—by the time I get two-thirds of the way through a novel I have a pretty clear sense of the final third, and by the time I get to the very end I usually have a whole bunch of cherished images and sentences and downbeats I’ve been saving up to use. I find beginnings to be much harder. The beginning of The Last Language came pretty easily; those opening paragraphs were the first part of the book that I wrote, and they contained so much information about the novel I was writing—the voice, the direct address, the fact that the narrator is writing from jail—that I felt a lot of natural momentum going forward. But other times I’ve really struggled with the opening pages. For two of my books in particular, I went around and around with editing and polishing the beginnings, and something about them still feels a little off to me. Which is high-stakes, given that readers who aren’t taken with a beginning will probably just jump ship, understandably.

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

I wouldn’t be curious enough about a character to write about them if they weren’t significantly different from me. My characters all experience situations and dilemmas that I haven’t; in almost every case, they make decisions that I would not (not necessarily better decisions, but certainly more dramatically interesting ones). Some of my characters have sharply different moral priorities than I do, and others have profound intellectual, political, or religious attachments I don’t share. And usually my characters differ from me demographically in significant ways, as well—The Last Language is actually the first time I’ve written from the perspective of white woman living in the United States in the 21st century. All that said, because all of my characters’ brains come from my own, there are similarities between them that I can’t get rid of, even when I’ve tried. For one thing, they are all very verbal—even though lots of people experience the world in ways that are more physical or visual or intuitive than my characters, I don’t really know how to write a person like that, because my own consciousness is just wall-to-wall words. And most of my point of view characters are, in my opinion, pretty funny. For some, this is a significant aspect of characterization; for others, it’s more incidental—but the reason that my characters so consistently make jokes is that I like to make jokes in my writing, and if I make a joke I think is halfway decent, I will always be too vain to take it out. So this probably puts some kinds of characters out of range for me—I’ll probably never be able to write somebody extremely solemn or humorless or reverential before all things.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

An interest in geopolitics, which plays a large role in my first novel and a significant one in my second. News stories and gossip, since most of my fiction begins with at least a snippet of some real-life event I find compelling. Comedy, maybe especially sketch comedy, because I wish I was funny enough to be an SNL writer and this thwarted desire comes out everywhere, including in my writing. An interest in languages and linguistics. The woods around the house where I grew up in western Massachusetts. And my undergraduate degree in philosophy, certainly, since every book I write tends to grapple with some moral or philosophical question I find truly irreducible.

Visit the official Jennifer duBois website.

The Page 69 Test: A Partial History of Lost Causes.

My Book, The Movie: A Partial History of Lost Causes.

The Page 69 Test: Cartwheel.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kellie M. Parker

Kellie M. Parker grew up traveling the United States and Europe as a US Navy brat. She attended high schools in three states and was too nerdy to ever sit at the cool kids’ table. With books as her most reliable companion, it was only a matter of time before she decided to write one herself. She has college degrees in biology and nautical archaeology but has always found her sense of adventure most satisfied by a great story.

Parker lives in west Michigan with her husband and four kids. She writes about brave, smart teens trying to figure out who they are and where they belong. When she’s not plotting her next fictional murder, she can be found baking, gardening, tackling DIY home projects, and reading to her kids.

Thin Air is her debut YA novel.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I admit that coming up with book titles is normally a challenge for me, but the title for Thin Air came to me pretty early on in the drafting process. This title stuck out to me for a few reasons. It’s short, which usually works well for thrillers. It implies a sense of danger or mystery since it’s hard to breathe when there’s not enough oxygen. Last of all, it relates to the book’s setting--almost the entire story takes place on an airplane at 42,000 feet. And as readers will find out, the characters find themselves in a dangerous situation almost right after takeoff. The air up there is very thin indeed!

What's in a name?

Like book titles, I often struggle with naming characters also. My go-to solution is to use baby name finders on my internet search engine, based on the year the character would’ve been born. Then I scroll through the list of popular names for that year, looking for something that feels like a good fit for the character’s personality. For Thin Air, I used Pinterest to find images for each of my characters. Once I had a mental picture, narrowing down the right names was easier.

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

As a teenager, I loved reading all kinds of novels, but I definitely included a number of mysteries in my reading “diet.” Thin Air follows a group of boarding school students who are competing for a scholarship—one someone is willing to kill to win. As a teen reader who also happened to be an overachiever, I think I would’ve related well to these characters and how important success is to them. I would’ve loved the twists and turns as I tried to figure out who the killer was. Would I have guessed correctly? Hmm, not sure about that one!

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

I think I feel more pressure when I’m writing a beginning, because it sets the tone for the whole story. If I don’t “get it right,” then I worry the story will run off the rails right at the start. So in that sense, I think endings are easier. By the time I get to the end, I know the characters very well and my subconscious brain has pulled together all the loose threads of the story into a nice, tight ending. But because I’m often tired of drafting and ready to be done, I tend to rush my endings and need to go back later to flesh them out more. Beginnings are harder, but I change the ending more during revisions.

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

To some extent, all my characters are infused with little bits of me, whether it’s a personality trait, an interest or skill, or something from their backstory. I think that’s a natural outflow of writing characters you care about. But I don’t want them to be clones of myself, so I make sure to round them out with plenty of things that are different, even if they’re small. Emily, the main character of Thin Air, is much more extroverted and “popular” than I was in high school. She also drinks a lot of Diet Coke, which I can’t stand. But she’s smart, loyal to those she loves, and has a quirky sense of humor like I do.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

My writing tends to be shaped by two major non-literary inspirations: my love of learning and my love of travel. I’ve got a pretty good storehouse of random information in my brain after years of learning about things that interest me, and these facts often work their way into whatever I’m writing. And because of all the places I’ve been able to visit, setting is very important to me in my work. I want the setting to feel real to readers and to play such an important role in the story that it couldn’t happen the same way if it were set somewhere else. For Thin Air, I loved being able to research private luxury planes and thinking about how to use elements of the setting to propel the story forward.

Visit Kellie M. Parker's website.

--Marshal Zeringue