John Katzenbach

John Katzenbach is the New York Times bestselling author of such novels as the Edgar Award-nominated In the Heat of the Summer, which was adapted for the screen as The Mean Season; The Traveler; Day of Reckoning; Just Cause and Hart's War, which were also made into movies; The Shadow Man, another Edgar nominee; State of Mind; The Analyst; and The Madman's Tale. Katzenbach has been a criminal court reporter for the Miami Herald and Miami News and a featured writer for the Herald's Tropic magazine.

His new novel is The Architect.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Titles are odd deals. When they work (Jaws or The World According to Garp) they can accompany the book into popular culture. Or...not. In my case, The Architect, I hoped to remain very simple, yet subtly suggestive. What is an architect after all? Someone who designs and builds. Basic concepts that require significant, hidden depths and skills. That’s what I hope/pray/trust readers will feel when they consider the title to my story. In any mystery-thriller, the protagonist must construct a path to get him/her through a maze. At the same time, the antagonist is building roadblocks. Sometimes 9 mm or .40 caliber roadblocks. Lots of emotional architecture in a good psychological thriller.

What's in a name?

A modest question, that asks much.

In The Architect, the main character is a young woman named Sloane Connolly. On the opening page she receives a note from her potentially suicidal mother that includes the admonition: Remember what your name means.

That bit of remembering and the elusive history that accompanies it are critical themes throughout the novel. They help provide necessary tension and underscore twists in the story.

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

I like to imagine my teenage self would see some of his burgeoning personality in my lead character. Both the thoughtful good... and the headstrong not so good. When I was seventeen, I first encountered Crime and Punishment. It had an immediate impact on me. At the time, I owned a long, black overcoat. For days I walked around my New Hampshire bitter icy unfriendly winter school imagining that I – like Raskolnikov – had a hidden axe concealed beneath the folds of cloth. I believe I considered most of the school’s administrative staff as potential victims – like the old woman in Dostoevsky’s great tale. Fast forward decades, and I hope that my teenage self would identify with The Architect of the title in much the same fashion. See her as a sort of soul-sister and inwardly say things like, “That makes sense...” and “She doesn’t have a choice, and neither would I...” and “Pull the trigger, goddammit!”

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

Both are equally challenging, with substantially different requirements. I probably ponder the beginning more – because the rhythms of a thriller are established at the start, along with the critical elements of plot and character. One needs to get that opening right – and frequently that demands much thought and much rewriting. Endings for me are easier – because I already know the ending when I start the story. In any thriller, the writer is asking readers to come along with him on a journey. Now, if your buddy said “Let’s just jump in the car and go I don’t know where and see where we end up...” I suspect you’d have a few more questions before agreeing to take that trip. All that said – one truly needs to hit the right notes at the end. Readers need to be satisfied and appreciative of the trip they’ve been on. One of the greatest fears for any author: A reader slamming shut the finished book and uttering a long sigh and a meh!Loudly.

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

The safe answer: No.

The accurate answer: Of course I do.

The secret addendum: My personality is reflected – in both the hero/heroine and in the killer/bad guy. And this is true for all my books, not just the latest.

My wife sometimes tells me that I had three potential career paths: 1) Novelist (the chosen approach); 2) Journalist (I was good at this when I was a young man); 3) Psychopathic Serial Killer (managed to avoid this. So far.).

The truth is -- to make characters come alive on a page, I have often relied on psychological elements in my own make-up. I think there is a bit of me in every character I’ve ever delved deeply into. As I said, good guys and bad guys. It helps to be comfortable in one’s own skin when one is creating new skins between the covers of a book. When writing The Architect I constantly recalled my own stumbling start in my early 20s. And I frequently asked myself, when my characters reach decisive points, “Are they doing what I hope I would do?”

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Lots. Too many to single out more than a few.

Movies: “Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown.”

And: “My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius... and I will have my vengeance in this life of the next.”

And: “I’ll be back...”

And: “I do wish we could chat longer, but I’m having an old friend for dinner...”

And: “Jack, I swear...”

Songs. By Warren Zevon, Chris Smither and James McMurtry and Tyler Childers. “I remember your words, Lord, they give me a chill...”. And many others.

Music: Ravel’s "Bolero" employs the same rhythms as a good novel. So does Beethoven’s 5th and Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain.

Art: I defy anyone to stand in front of Picasso’s Guernica for more than ten seconds without feeling that they now own a better understanding of panic, despair, savagery and heartbreak.

Photography: There are many images that continually haunt me:

Alfred Eisenstadt’s photo of a mother and child in the Hiroshima rubble. Gerald Waller’s Life Magazine photo of the orphan in Vienna in 1946 clutching a new pair of shoes. The famous pictures from Viet Nam by Eddie Adams, Art Greenspon and many others. Lawrence Schiller’s evocative photos of Marilyn Monroe. (Want to get an idea of beauty and vulnerability? Go no further.)

And here is an aside – sort of semi-literary, so it maybe shouldn’t count in answering this question: When I need to search for inspiration (a word I don’t really like) I have sometimes in the past turned to Bartlett’s Famous Quotations. Reading the memorable words folks have written or spoken over centuries can pitch me into thinking about the present and the pages awaiting me.

Visit John Katzenbach's website.

My Book, The Movie: Red 1-2-3.

Writers Read: John Katzenbach (January 2014).

The Page 69 Test: Red 1-2-3.

Writers Read: John Katzenbach.

--Marshal Zeringue

K.M. Colley

K.M. Colley writes thrillers, contemporary mysteries, and cinematic stories that explore legacy and ambition. Her work often centers around powerful families, glamorous settings, and complex characters. Born in Mobile, Alabama, she’s currently based in Tampa and Philadelphia. When not writing or reading, Colley enjoys traveling, learning new languages, and building a creative legacy. She’s also passionate about raising her autistic daughter, who dreams of creating her own comic book one day.

Colley's new novel is The Roaring Ridleys.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Call me biased, but I think The Roaring Ridleys is a great title. In two words it conveys the 1920s setting (roaring) and the family dynasty dynamic (Ridleys). The Roaring Ridleys is a sharp and lush mystery thriller set in 1920s New York, where the adopted heirs of a powerful multicultural family fall under suspicion after a scandalous columnist is found dead, unraveling secrets from Harlem to the Gold Coast mansions of Long Island.

What's in a name?

My granny was strong on the idea that names have power. She would have me Google the meanings of the names of people I met ever since I was a child. So, for the daughters' names, Adesua means "center of wealth;" she radiates this wherever she goes. Amelia means work and striving, which is fitting for her as the eldest daughter; and Kavita means poem, which, for her, she's one of the most expressive characters. Poems are sometimes complex and perplexed, like her.

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

I would say she wouldn't be too surprised but definitely relieved. For a long time, I would struggle writing my first books on a gifted laptop, which I am sure was around during the dinosaur age. So in all, she would probably think it's about time! Honestly, being an avid reader since I was a little girl, I was fascinated by the worlds and characters people would create, and I hoped one day that I would do the same.

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

For sure, the endings. I usually keep the beginnings of the story concrete because, in reality, for me, not sure for everyone else, that is the backbone. I don't ever see myself changing the beginning, but the ending has definitely been through surgery, as I call it.

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 feel similar to the sisters. Each of them has their own special character traits that I relate to in some way. Take Kavita, for instance. That girl is so unpredictable and makes such drastic life choices. She reminds me of myself. Sometimes I go against the grain on purpose to liven up my life. Adesua has this soft-spoken nature, wanting to be alone in her own world. And Amelia has this quiet, authoritative nature that is very determined in everything she does.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Music has inspired my writing a lot. I love listening to Big Band Jazz. Music truly makes me feel something in a way where I can imagine worlds like no other. I remember the day I stumbled upon swing era jazz music. I was listening to Pandora, which was the cool music platform before Spotify! So shoutout to Pandora for getting me into the world of the 1920s.

Visit K.M. Colley’s website.

My Book, The Movie: The Roaring Ridleys.

--Marshal Zeringue

Carmela Dutra

Carmela Dutra is a Bay Area–based author who writes cozy mysteries with sharp banter, strong sibling bonds, and the vibrant food culture of Northern California’s most eclectic region. Her Food Truck Mystery Series blends culinary competition, small-town secrets, and humor-forward sleuthing, all rooted in the distinctly diverse rhythms of the Bay Area.

Dutra's debut novel, A Murder Most Fowl, received praise from Kirkus Reviews for its “serious set of crimes leavened by plenty of amusing moments,” and from Criminal Element for the “juicy reasoning behind the sabotage [that] was almost as shocking as the murder itself.” New York Times bestselling author Ellery Adams called it “the perfect escapist read, brimming with banter and an extra helping of fun.” Dutra has also been featured in CrimeReads.

The second installment in the series, Hot Wings and Homicide, earned additional praise from Kirkus Reviews, which said, “Winner, winner, murder for dinner ... An entertaining mystery with amusing characters—including a pet chicken.” Further cementing the author’s voice in the cozy mystery space.

A frequent podcast guest and live-event panelist, Dutra has appeared on Bookish Flights, The Fiction Lounge, Cozy Crime Reads, and Bookshelf Odyssey, and has spoken at bookstores including Kepler’s Books & Magazines. She is known for her warm, engaging presence and her ability to connect with readers through humor, craft, and community.

Dutra lives in the Bay Area with her husband, two dinosaur-obsessed sons, and an assortment of over-cuddled pets. When she’s not writing, she can usually be found at a bookstore, a farmers’ market, or chasing the perfect chicken wing.

My Q&A with the author:

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

A surprising amount. I wanted something that felt catchy, cozy, and immediately signaled “culinary cozy mystery,” but also made readers pause and smile, or do a double take. I went through an entire list of possibilities and couldn’t quite land on the right one, so I asked my agent for help. She’s very collaborative, and that’s one of the things I love most about working together. I sent her a few options, and she immediately chose Hot Wings and Homicide. Marketing loved it, and readers have responded in exactly the way I’d hoped: curiosity, humor, and yes, hunger. People see the title and immediately have a comment or want to know more.

What’s in a name?

The name Beth Lloyd was actually a placeholder when I originally drafted book one. I even remember telling alpha readers not to get attached to any names because I planned to change them. But by the time I finished drafting and self-editing, the name Beth just fit. Naming her twin brother Seth was a total accident. I didn’t even realize I rhymed their names until a beta reader told me how much they loved the rhyming. My agent liked it too, so I kept them as Beth and Seth Lloyd.

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

Very surprised. My teenage self was still trying to decide between architecture (which I quickly learned was not my path after failing trig) and photography. I ultimately landed on photography, which feels like it shaped the way I see the world. Observing details, framing moments, and noticing the stories happening in everyday life. I don’t think she would have predicted food trucks and chickens, but the cozy mysteries or murder plots wouldn’t surprise her.

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

Both. Beginnings are harder for me because I’m trying to hook a reader within the first five pages. However, I tend to revise the ending chapters more because while I know where everything is heading emotionally and structurally, I’m trying to make sure every lose thread is wrapped up. The beginning has to hook readers, but the ending has to satisfy them.

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

There’s definitely a blend. I don’t intentionally base characters on myself, but pieces of me sneak in, especially in Beth’s tendency to speak before thinking. Or in the way she notices small details other people miss. At the same time, my characters are much braver and more chaotic than I am in real life. If I see an open gate into a backyard, I’m not just going to waltz through then tuck and roll then drop into an army crawl for flair. But I might press my nose up against a window as I try to see in. But yes, I will somehow manage to get myself wrapped up in something questionable and survive it with sarcasm, and questionable judgment.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Daily life is my biggest influence. Farmers markets, taking my kids to the park, rainy afternoons, overheard conversations in public, and people-watching are all constant sources of inspiration. I’m always fascinated by small moments. Watching how people interact, what they say when they think no one is listening, and the tiny quirks that make everyday life feel a little unpredictable. Those details often find their way into my stories, even when I’m writing about food trucks, festivals, and the occasional murder.

Visit Carmela Dutra's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Emma Garman

Emma Garman, a Brighton-based writer and critic, has been a columnist for The Paris Review and a contributor to Literary Review, The Daily Beast, Lapham’s Quarterly, and History News Network. She has an MA in creative writing from the City College of New York and an MA in literature from Queen Mary University of London.

Garman's debut novel is The Kindness of Strangers.

My Q&A with the author:

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

One reader called the title ironic—meaning, I guess, that some very unkind acts are committed in the story, which is true! But I see the title as having a double meaning. Strangers can be dangerous, but so can those we know most intimately. And in The Kindness of Strangers, both possibilities play out. Ultimately, the title gestures to the idea of found family. In the novel, a disparate group—individuals of different ages, class backgrounds, nationalities, sexes and sexualities—end up living together and forming lifelong bonds.

What's in a name?

I love over-the-top Dickensian names that broadcast exactly what we, the readers, are meant to think. But I deliberately chose unobtrusive names that I hope seem natural, almost invisible, while still feeling apt to the characters. The name of Honor, the less-than-honorable landlady at the center of the story, does carry a touch of irony. But more significantly, nearly everyone in the story has changed their given name, to a greater or lesser degree. Some use everyday nicknames and some (those with the most to hide) have renamed themselves to obscure their pasts.

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

Beginnings are the hardest task in the world! Not only does it take incredible motivation to start writing a story (for me, at least), the possibilities are infinite, so choosing an approach is daunting. In comparison, I find endings a pleasure to write. By then, I know the characters inside-out, while the possible outcomes are limited by what’s come before. I change beginnings a lot, constantly going back and retrofitting according to the dictates of the story. Endings tend to be written once and left alone.

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

I find this question fascinating, because I don’t think it can be answered with honesty or objectivity. Of course, some writers intentionally base characters on themselves, and I definitely don’t do that. But do I, subconsciously or otherwise, transfer some of my behaviors and attitudes to my characters? Almost certainly yes. How can you not?

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

For this novel, the atmosphere, built environment, history, and culture of London was a huge influence. The city is ever-changing and modernizing and yet all the old elements remain, both literally in the form of centuries-old streets, and figuratively with the resonances, ghosts, and memories of the past.

Visit Emma Garman's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Kindness of Strangers.

Writers Read: Emma Garman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lisa Lee

Lisa Lee is the recipient of the Marianne Russo Emerging Writer Award from the Key West Literary Seminar, an Emerging Writer Fellowship from the Center for Fiction, and a Pushcart Prize. She has received other fellowships and awards from Kundiman, Millay Arts, Hedgebrook, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Tin House, Jentel Artist Residency, and the Korea Foundation. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, VIDA, North American Review, Sycamore Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. Lee holds an MFA from the University of Houston and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Southern California. She lives in Los Angeles.

Lee's debut novel is American Han. Joumana Khatib of the New York Times Book Review called it “one of the best things I’ve read in ages.”

My Q&A with the author:

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

The title is doing a lot of work in that American han is what the book is about. But many readers won’t know what han is or what I mean by “American” han, and since I don’t define or use the word anywhere in the book other than in the title and epigraph, for some readers it might take reading the whole book and maybe a little research to understand the meaning.

What's in a name?

I chose the name Jane Kim for my narrator because it’s a common Asian American name—so common that she shares it with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Jane Kims in America. She has no middle name because her parents are Korean immigrants and it wasn’t customary in Korea to assign middle names. In the novel, Jane explains how she ends up with the middle name NMN on her driver’s license. Jane’s brother is named Jun-ho at birth, and changes his name to Kevin when he’s ten. Kevin is another common Asian American name. To be honest, I just liked the way it sounded with the last name Kim.

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

My teenage self wouldn’t believe it if you told her that she’d grow up to write and publish a novel. I read a lot growing up, but I didn’t think about the idea of being a writer until I was in my twenties, and even then, I thought that was for other people, not for someone like me. It took almost a decade after college to really pursue writing as a career. I had to live and learn a lot before I was ready to write this book. My young self didn’t have any of the knowledge that went into it. I think she’d be relieved to learn that she would one day have a novel’s worth of insight into her experience.

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

I always knew how my novel would begin. I knew that the charged scene where the mother shows up unannounced at Jane’s apartment in San Francisco was the beginning because it was the first thing I ever wrote concerning this novel, but it took me years to figure out where the novel would end up. At some point, I realized that we couldn’t understand the women in the novel without understanding the men, and this is when I decided to bring Jane’s brother and her father into the forefront as central characters. In this world, the men have the authority and their experiences take precedence. The way they process the world gets passed on to Jane and her mother. So I understood that the men’s experience is a shared experience with the women. When I understood that, I knew that it would end with the climactic event involving Kevin, and that the novel would end with Jane and Kevin.

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

There’s a lot of myself in all my characters. I imagined them all, so they must all come from some part of me. The characters are inspired by people I know or have met, at least my perception of them, but they are entirely fictional.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I’ve learned a lot from my daughter. Being a mother has helped me to think about perspectives different from my own and to have more empathy for my own mother. This has found its way into my writing. Motherhood has also helped me to value time and think about the passing of time. I try to do the things that bring me joy because that joy fuels my work and allows me to be more free in my writing.

An early draft of my novel is based on Harold & Kumar. I love that movie. When it came out in 2004, it was transformative to see two young Asian American men playing stoners on a road trip to White Castle—their characters were so anti-stereotype and I loved it. I knew Asian American men just like them. It made me happy to see them on film. I tried to write a comedy of errors like Harold & Kumar, starring Jane Kim and Margaret Cho’s mother, but it just wasn’t funny.

Visit Lisa Lee's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Diane Josefowicz

Diane Josefowicz is the author of Guardians & Saints: Stories, L’Air du Temps (1985), and Ready, Set, Oh: A Novel. She is also the author, with Jed Z. Buchwald, of two histories of Egyptology: The Zodiac of Paris and The Riddle of the Rosetta. She serves as managing editor of the Victorian Web, the internet’s oldest and largest website devoted to Victoriana. A graduate of Brown University, she holds a PhD in History of Science from MIT and an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Josefowicz's new novel is The Great Houses of Pill Hill.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The Great Houses of Pill Hill is a novel about an interior decorator who inadvertently winds up investigating the murder of her marquee client, a surgeon who lives with his wife in a grand mansion in an expensive neighborhood nicknamed Pill Hill because, historically, many doctors either lived or had offices there.

Since the book has been published, I've heard from many people who also live on or near a Pill Hill. It turns out, quite a few neighborhoods have that nickname, and they have a similar historical connection with medicine and medical professionals.

For a long time, the novel's working title was The Ministry of the Interior, which is also the name of the heroine's interior design firm. But this working title directed the reader's attention to the wrong things. As your question implies, a novel's title should place the reader directly in the scene of the story. In The Great Houses of Pill Hill, the murdered client is himself a doctor, and the local hospital plays a role in the plot, so foregrounding this aspect in the title made sense to me.

What's in a name?

Funny you should ask. One morning, years ago, I woke up with this line in my head: "My real name is Hannah Cooke, but no one ever calls me that."

This line, with its ambivalent gesture toward and away from self-disclosure, became the first line of the novel. The narrator, who goes by "Cookie," doesn't like her nickname but she goes along with it because she's lived in the town her whole life, and everyone knows her by this nickname. To change it would mean rocking the boat, and even though it seems like such a small thing, to insist on a change like that is a big no-no in this small place.

Personal history can be sticky in small towns. I'm also from a small place, and it can be hard to convince people who've known me forever that I'm not that shy and pliable small child they remember. Cookie has a similar problem. It also gives her power: People expect her to be a certain way, to do certain things. It's as if her real self is a secret, something only she knows about.

Cookie has a few secrets. One of them—in addition to her day job, she's a working artist with a side hustle making miniature crime scenes—plays directly into the plot. Another of her secrets, which is more to my point here, is that she's intelligent. She thinks—and that's something no one gives her credit for. As a thinking person, she's socially invisible—and also, for that reason, freer to operate behind the scenes, to pursue her own ends. With the character of Cookie, one of the things I'm hoping to suggest is that people blind themselves to each other at their peril.

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

For me, endings are more difficult by a country mile. The Great Houses of Pill Hill had several endings over the course of its development. One of them even involved a trip to Italy, which was really just wishful thinking on my part.

While I was in Columbia's MFA program, everyone seemed to be writing a road novel. One of my teachers, who got fed up with this, kept repeating: Stay in the wound. He meant: Don't let your characters skip town, literally or figuratively, on the psychological work they need to do. Letting go of that Italian ending, I kept thinking of his advice. A road trip doesn't always, or even very often take a character where he or she most needs to go.

The book's present ending, with its last-minute turnabout, came to me as a complete surprise. As I wrote it up, I tried to preserve that element of shock, of feeling bowled over by an important revelation.

Endings are hard for me in general. I need to feel my way into them, and that emotional labor is almost always something I'd rather not do. I have a lot of ways to avoid too. Housecleaning, errands, hobbies—the whole procrastinatory run of stuff. My closet is never as organized as when I'm finishing a draft.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I've mentioned that Cookie makes miniature crime scenes. These are primarily domestic interiors, something that she, of course, knows a lot about as an interior designer. The two interests dovetail nicely, in the sense that she's always confronting the problem of being on the outside looking in. She observes and creates the context for the crime scenes that interest her, just as she does for the domestic lives of her clients, whose luxury fittings and appliances are well beyond her personal budget.

Before writing The Great Houses of Pill Hill, I'd renovated a historic carriage house on the East Side of Providence where I live. So I was already immersed in the world of interior design and historic renovation. As I was doing that, my mother-in-law handed me a copy of The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death by the photographer Corinne May Botz, who took a series of amazing photographs of miniature crime scenes created in the 1940s by a Chicago heiress named Frances Glessner Lee.

These little crime scenes are immensely detailed. They remind me of the famous and equally detailed and inviting illustrations that accompanied the publications of Victorian novels like those by Charles Dickens. There is a level of detail that I find distinctly novelistic, and these crime scenes by Glessner Lee are a wonderful example of what I mean. Amazingly, they are still used to train detectives to "read" crime scenes, to quickly absorb all the details of a space, to notice all the clues that might otherwise escape notice. I could not have written my novel without these minatures and the photos that Botz took of them.

Visit Diane Josefowicz's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mahmud El Sayed

Mahmud El Sayed is a British Egyptian science fiction and fantasy writer and translator. A former journalist, he won the 2023 Future Worlds Prize for Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers of Color for his work focusing on Arabic and Islamic–inspired themes in a genre he is calling Arabfuturism. He lives in East London where he spends his time pondering linguistic oddities and running story ideas by his cat.

El Sayed's debut novel is The Republic of Memory.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Memory is definitely one of the meta-themes of the story (“what must this crew, so far from Earth in years and light-years, remember and why?”) so hopefully quite a bit. TROM was not the book’s original title (or even the second or third version) and it came about via a process with my editor and their publishing team. When I won the Future Worlds Prize in 2023, the novel was called ‘What the Crew Wants’ (probably it’s third title by then) in reference to a popular Arab Spring protest chant and I still have a soft spot for that one. However, having gone through so many titles before, it was easy to accept changing it. For myself, I always thought of it simply as “The Book.”

What's in a name?

TROM is multi-POV and while I’m not Dickensian in my character naming there are definite reasons why characters are named as they are. Given that the book is set on a generation ship that is divided by language, there’s lots of linguistic shenanigans to be had and multilingual puns for readers to discover. One of the main POV characters is Translator Iskander Ezz – named after the Egyptian city of Alexandria (Iskanderiya). It’s no accident that a translator is named after a city with an extremely cosmopolitan and multi-lingual history. Iskander’s younger sister, Damietta (also named after an Egyptian port city) gets embroiled in the revolution. Of course, the city of Damietta has a long history of protest and rebellion dating back to the Crusades.

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

My teenage self would not be surprised at all by TROM. It includes all his favourite things. Science fiction. Revolutionary politics. Constructed languages. Hardboiled detective fiction. If anything, he would be surprised it took me so long to write. ‘What were you doing for all those years instead of writing, Mahmud? Working a nine to five? Ugh, so boring!’

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

This is a difficult one! Writing multi-POV means getting into my characters heads but, at the same time, that means getting out of my own. In real life, everyone thinks they are the hero of their own story. The same applies to fiction. In a story about revolution, every character has their own view (should I protest? And if so, how? Violently? Non-violently? Or maybe it’s better not to protest at all but to reform slowly?) and I worked very hard to keep my own personal views if not out of it altogether, at least opaque from the reader. If I’ve done it right, at the end of the book, the reader should have no idea where I – the author – stand on things.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

So many! Music? Yep, I was listening to a lot of jazz when writing the hardboiled detective sections of TROM, Miles Davies and Ibrahim Maalouf particularly. Movies? Science fiction is always in conversation with other science fiction and that, of course, includes film and TV. Andor is one of the best explorations of rebellion that I can think of. The news and politics? As a former journalist, I’m always embroiled in those and TROM is a soft retelling of the events of the Arab Spring, an event that continues to reverberate through the region, whether people realise it or not.

Follow Mahmud El Sayed on Instagram.

The Page 69 Test: The Republic of Memory.

--Marshal Zeringue

Melinda Leigh

Melinda Leigh is a #1 Wall Street Journal and #1 Amazon Charts bestselling author. Her books have sold over 16 million copies, and she has garnered numerous publishing awards, including nominations for an International Thriller Award and two RITAs. A martial artist and animal lover, Leigh lives near the beach with her family and two spoiled rescue dogs.

Her new novel is You Can Tell Me.

My Q&A with the author:

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

You Can Tell Me as a title is meant to feel personal, as if someone is whispering secrets. The main character, Olivia Cruz, is a former investigative journalist turned true crime writer. One of her strengths is getting people to talk to her. They tell her their secrets. She is small and physically nonthreatening, and she uses this to her advantage. Since this is a series, the title of the first book must also establish the feel of the books yet to come.

What's in a name?

My protagonists are strong women, and I like to give them names that sound strong. Other than that, I choose names that are generally easy to say and read. I want readers to be comfortable with my characters, to feel like they’re family or friends, to be invested in their lives, and to want to know more of their story.

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

Teenager me would not be surprised by my books at all. My grandmother had almost every Agatha Christie novel on her bookshelf, and I read them all. I consumed Flowers in the Attic by V. C. Andrews in middle school. By the time I reached high school, I was a solid Stephen King fan. So dark and mysterious books have always been my favorites.

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

Beginnings and the two-thirds mark are the two most difficult parts of a novel for me to write. First chapters are drafted at least five times. I need the beginning to feel right before I continue. Once I have the story voice established, then I typically cruise until I’m about sixty percent finished. I’m not a plotter. I start with a few ideas and let the story evolve organically as I write. So, when I’m ramping up toward the black moment, all the threads I’ve developed have to come together. Once I’ve decided on my black moment and how it will flow, then the rest of the book generally comes together quickly.

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

That depends on the character. My protagonists probably share some of my personality. I make an effort to give them individual characteristics, I’m sure a little bit of me leaks through, especially in my longer running series. It would be impossible for me to spend so much intimate time in my fictional world and remain separate from it. That said, I also write in the POVs of serial killers, etc., so I hope they’re not much like me.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

This might be the weirdest—or nerdiest—answer for this question, but math. As a kid, I was a math geek. For me, writing a mystery is like a logic problem. While I’m plotting, I sometimes envision multiple linear equations all converging at the same point—the black moment.

Visit Melinda Leigh's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kayla Hardy

Kayla Hardy is a mythology expert and multi-hyphenate author and screenwriter of Louisiana Creole descent. She earned her PhD in creative writing and African American literature from SUNY Binghamton University. Hardy is an adjunct professor at SUNY Binghamton University and is an accomplished scholar of Black folklore, mythology, and Voodoo.

The Quarter Queen is Hardy's first novel.

My Q&A with the author:

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

It is my hope that my novel’s title The Quarter Queen centers readers in the heart of New Orleans’ French Quarter which, in a historical fantasy novel, is a character in itself. More than simply a lush backdrop, the French Quarter is alive with dark magic, Voodoo, alchemy, gods, and demons. The title The Quarter Queen is my own twist, made up of the real-life moniker for Marie who was known historically as the ‘Voodoo Queen’ and the neighborhood of New Orleans known as the French Quarter—the Vieux Carré—where she lived and worked her magic. While it is has some great alliteration to it, I hope that readers will see the title as something to be critically unpacked, to study the very nature of unprecedented power that a woman like Marie Laveau wielded in the 19th century.

What's in a name?

Because The Quarter Queen centers both the real-life Marie Laveau I and her daughter, Marie Laveau II, the names were already baked into the conceit! But, the challenge arose with how to differentiate the two on the page so readers wouldn’t be confused between them. So I had the not so crazy idea to name Marie II, Ree, which ended up working out because so much of the novel is about Ree inherently rejecting the title of The Quarter Queen, and in doing so, the legacy of the name Marie Laveau itself. Much in the same way I hope readers will do, Ree begins to critically understand the political power she holds as her mother’s successor and how to, ultimately, use this power to change the course of destiny not just in her own life and family, but for her people and the city of New Orleans as a whole in the ways in which her mother failed to do.

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

Usually, the endings will come to me first. But for this novel, the beginning came to me right away, down to the very first line in the prologue. The ending was changed a couple of times, but not so much on a craft level, but in a way that helped conclude both Maries arcs satisfactorily. Because their chapters alternate between two different timelines, their arcs naturally became more emotionally entangled as the past and present collided. By the end of the book, I wanted readers to see how the events of Marie’s life, for better or for worse, complicated the course of Ree’s rise, forcing her to make one final emotionally and politically devastating choice that would have explosive ramifications for all the power players in New Orleans. I wanted the ending to have a sense of destiny that shapes both mother and daughter and that will make readers question a sense of legacy in their own families and lives.

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

On other projects, I have not. I try to honor the characters in all of their messy glory which is a process that has nothing to do with me, author-Kayla, personally. But with The Quarter Queen, I wanted to explore my own Louisiana Creole heritage and really try to unpack questions of duality. How can someone be both Catholic and a Voodienne? How can someone live in the shadow of a larger-than-life mother without her own light being totally eclipsed? I had a rocky relationship with my own mother growing up that has now since mended and I saw so much of that in the dynamic between Ree and Marie. I also just think Ree and Marie are such great foils for readers to study because they represent the inherent duality, we as humans embody mother and daughter, princess and queen, saints and sinners.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I absolutely love the band Sleep Token; they are cinematic and lush and dark. Honestly, their music stayed on repeat the entire time I was writing the book (including songs like “Rain” and “Dark Signs”). Perfect fuel for a book like The Quarter Queen. I am also a massive fan of Ryan Coogler and Jordan Peele; there are intersections in their films, different but overlapping takes on the lives of black folks. I also feel so deeply anchored by the American south, by my childhood summers spent beneath a sweltering Louisiana sun. That sense of southern gothic is deeply implanted in my brain, and I hope it never goes away.

Visit Kayla Hardy's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Quarter Queen.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jennifer Pearson

Jennifer Pearson is a former teacher and author who lives in the northeast of England with two energetic boys and her somewhat energetic husband. She’s the author of several middle grade novels, writing as Jenny Pearson, and has been short-listed for the Costa Children’s Book Award and the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, and was the winner of the Lollies (Laugh Out Loud Book Awards). When she’s not writing, Pearson can either be found doing something sporty or binge-watching true crime documentaries while eating astounding quantities of cheese.

Pearson's new novel is Drop Dead Famous.

My Q&A with the author:

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

My working title for Drop Dead Famous, a YA story about a girl who investigates the murder of her superstar sister Blair Baker, was Homecoming. I think this title worked in some ways – Blair is killed during the opening act of her homecoming tour, and it hints that the home is an important part of the story, but I don’t think it was quite strong enough for the YA audience. It doesn’t mention murder or death, words which are frequently found in YA thrillers as they serve as good genre touchstones. By the time the book went on submission to publishers, I had changed it to Drop Dead Famous which I think does a good job of signalling the core themes of murder and fame to the reader.

What's in a name?

I think I’m quite instinctive when it comes to naming characters. Often, I’ll hear a name I like or find interesting during a school author visit and file it away to use later – which is how Colby’s name came to me. It works for her because to me, Colby is a fun sounding name. For Blair Baker, I wanted something that felt like a teen star, and I think the alliterative name helps with that. I’ve always liked the name Stevie, (huge Fleetwood Mac fan) and I think Stevie Budd in Schitt’s Creek was partly in my mind when I was writing her.

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

My teen self would be very surprised! My current self continues to be very surprised! I really had no idea what I wanted to do career-wise as a teenager, but becoming an author seemed like such a ludicrous proposition, I never seriously considered it.

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

Endings are the worst. By far. And I change them a lot. With a mystery, there is always so much to do – so many loose ends to tie up, characters to give moments to. A reader will not forgive you if you mess it up at the end. You can’t take them through 300 pages and then drop the ball at the last moment.

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

I suppose I’m a positive person like Colby and we have a similar sense of humour. There are elements of me in Stevie too. She can get pretty hyper-focussed, and I see that in myself, especially when it comes to writing. I can lose a whole day at the laptop and realise I’ve not eaten.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Not suggesting that they are non-literary, but the biggest influences are my family! My grandparents, parents, my sister and my extended family have shaped my humour, they’ve shaped my ability to tell an interesting story (you cannot get away with being boring with my lot) and they’ve shaped a lot of the characters I have written.

Visit Jenny Pearson's website.

My Book, The Movie: Drop Dead Famous.

The Page 69 Test: Drop Dead Famous.

--Marshal Zeringue