P.J. Nelson

P.J. Nelson is the pseudonym of an award-winning actor, dramatist, professor, and novelist (among other many other professions) who has done just about everything except run a bookstore. He lives in Decatur, Georgia.

Nelson's new novel is All My Bones.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The title of this book is part of a quote from a Grimm Brothers story, and in the book a rare first edition of their Kinder- und Hausmärchen, published in 1812, figures heavily in the plot. But the murder mystery plot begins with the discovery of human bones in the front yard of the quasi-Addams Family Victorian mansion in Enigma, Georgia, that is The Old Juniper Bookshop. So, while the title phrase may not mean much at first glance, it is, in fact, a distillation of the entire novel.

What's in a name?

Well, this is going to sound ridiculously pretentious, but I chose the name Madeline because of Proust’s madeleines, the little French pastry that allegedly impelled him to write In Search of Lost Time (sometimes called Remembrance of Things Past). But here’s the thing, All My Bones is set in Enigma, Georgia. In the 1980s when I was writer in residence for the Georgia Council for the Arts I lived in Tifton, a larger town near Enigma, and most of the people and places in these books are odd memories of my time there. I was hoping that naming the main character Madeline, a former actor who owns and operates a rambling bookshop in a small town, would somehow magically help me to remember more about those environs, those people, those experiences. And, as it turns out, it seems to be working.

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

When I was a teenager, I thought I was going to be a poet. I only wrote and published poetry all through my teens and twenties. The fact that my bedside table was covered with mystery novels (everything from Rex Stout to Colin Wilson to John Fowles to Jorge Borges) didn’t seem to have any effect on me until I was in my forties. And then, all of a sudden, I only wanted to write mystery books. I’ve written twenty-five of them now. So far. That would really surprise my fifteen-year-old self.

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

The hard part about a beginning is, you know, beginning. Once I write the first sentence, the rest of the book emerges more or less without much involvement from me. My best course of action is to try to stay out of the way as much as humanly possible and let the book write itself. But with every book so far, I’ve gone back to the first page—or sometimes even the entire first chapter—and rewritten. Sometimes the first page thinks it knows where it’s going, but the last page proves that thought wrong. Sometimes the rest of the book just wants a slightly better introduction. And sometimes I’m just…what’s a better word than “fussy”?

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

Supposedly someone asked Shakespeare which of his characters was most like him, and he said something like “They’re all me! How could they be anyone else?” I see his point. I can only write what I know. I can guess what other people are like, what they’d say, what they’d think, but it would always be from my point of view, so it’s always really my interpretation of my observations. This is, oddly, especially true for Madeline Brimley, the main character in All My Bones. I am Madeline. She is me. And if that’s not the case, my wife of nearly thirty years (a writer and actor herself) is always happy to tell me. In detail.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Music always influences me. My father was a symphony French horn player; my mother sang on the radio when she was a kid. I’ve been in a dozen bands, and I listen to a remarkably wide panoply of recorded music: Thomas Tallis, Mozart, Prokofiev, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, The Incredible String Band, Doc Watson, Bob Dorough, Blossom Dearie, Jacob Collier, Dodie, the Chieftains, Del McCoury—and that’s just this morning. I’m also constantly inspired by certain film and television experiences. Recently The Residence on Netflix knocked me out. The writing is spectacular and the character of Cordelia Cupp (played by the remarkable Uzo Aduba) is my favorite detective in decades. But I also believe, and there are plenty of people who agree with me, that every significant experience in life can be supported and probably explained by a corresponding quote from The Andy Griffith Show. For example, Opie raises baby birds and eventually has to let them go. When he does, Opie says, “Cage sure looks awful empty, don’t it, Pa?” And Andy says, “Yes, son, it sure does. But don’t the trees seem nice and full?” Tell me that’s not a great thing to say to every parent who ever had to let a child go out in the great wild world.

Read more about All My Bones at the publisher's website.

My Book, The Movie: All My Bones.

The Page 69 Test: All My Bones.

--Marshal Zeringue

Rebecca Armitage

Rebecca Armitage is an author and journalist, who likes to write about royals.

As a journalist, she has written stories about the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the coronation of King Charles III, the exile of Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan, and the abdication of Denmark’s Queen Margrethe.

As digital editor for the ABC’s International news team, she has covered several US elections and travelled to Israel to cover the war in Gaza.

Armitage lives in Hobart, Tasmania, with her husband and a poorly behaved German Shorthaired Pointer named Chino. The Heir Apparent is her first novel.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The title, The Heir Apparent, tells you a lot about what you can expect to find within these pages, but it's also deliberately confusing because female heirs to the British throne are almost never called called 'the heir apparent'. Instead, they're called 'the heir presumptive'. To be the heir apparent means that the crown belongs to you. No one will ever have a better claim to the throne than you. It's almost always a phrase used in reference to men. But to be 'heir presumptive' means you're a woman who has made it to the head of the line because there are no men left. The crown always holds out hope that a boy will come along and supersede her - even if it's physically and legally impossible.

The Heir Apparent is about a wayward British princess called Lexi who is estranged from her royal relatives and living in obscurity in Australia. But a skiing accident kills her brother and father, and makes Lexi the future monarch. Her grandmother, the Queen, decides to dispense with tradition and call Lexi 'the heir apparent' because she's tired of royal women being back-up options when there are no men left to reign. She wants Lexi to know that nothing stands between her and the throne - except for Lexi herself, who's not at all sure she wants this responsibility.

What's in a name?

Lexi's full name is Princess Alexandrina. I chose this as a little nod to Queen Victoria, who was born Princess Alexandrina Victoria. When she became queen at 18, she decided to go by her middle name because it was considered much more British than Alexandrina. There are a lot of parallels between Lexi and Queen Victoria. They were both born to be mere decorative accents to their families and were never, ever meant to rule. But the men in their families kept dying or failing to produce sons, and they both kept rising through the line until the crown was theirs for the taking. The key difference between Victoria and my fictional character is that Lexi is scared of the power dangling right in front of her.

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

I think my teenage self would be absolutely thrilled that I grew up to write a book, which was my secret dream. As a kid, being published seemed like something that happened to other people, so I pursued a career in journalism instead. I've always been too practical for my own good. My teenage self was also in a hardcore literary phase, reading Sylvia Plath and long, dense Russian novels for fun, so she might also wonder why we've written about something as frivolous as royalty. But she really needed to loosen up and have a bit more fun, so I'm not too worried about her opinion!

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

I find the beginning and the end very easy. I always know exactly where a character will start and where they will end up. The tricky part for me is what journey they will take to get from Point A to Point B. The middle therefore changes a lot, but the destination almost always stays the same.

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

I am definitely all my characters. The villain of this book, Prince Richard, is a greedy, jealous, scheming social climber who is addicted to attention, luxury and relevance. But we all have that meagre, nasty creature inside us. My main character, Lexi, is brave and smart, she's complicated and makes a lot of mistakes, but is constantly striving to do the right thing. She's who I aspire to be in my best moments. They might be living in palaces, draped in jewels and ermine, but they're human beings and I borrowed heavily from myself in filling out their souls with weaknesses and strengths.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

The news is a big one for me. As a journalist working in international news, I have to keep across every country constantly, so I am immersed in all the dramatic, wonderful, awful, confronting things that are happening on the planet. But now and then, I'll be working on a news article, and I'll think to myself, 'hmm this would actually make a really great novel.' All my ideas are news stories that are planted in my brain like seeds, and eventually they sprout as novel-length stories.

Visit Rebecca Armitage's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Brionni Nwosu

Brionni Nwosu is a writer, educator, and joyful creative based in the vibrant city of Nashville, where she lives with her husband and their three children. After more than a decade teaching students and mentoring teachers, she shifted her storytelling craft from a side passion to center stage. A 2021 We Need Diverse Books mentee under Rajani LaRocca, Nwosu writes bold, heartfelt fiction that explores connection, purpose, and what it means to live a life well.

Her debut novel is The Wondrous Lives and Loves of Nella Carter.

My Q&A with Nwosu:

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

I think The Wondrous Life and Loves of Nella Carter does a lot of work right away. It signals that the book is a sweeping, emotional story, centered on one woman’s very long journey. “Wondrous” captures the feeling of seeing the world through Nella’s eyes as she moves through different eras. And “loves” lets readers know this book is not just about time travel—it’s about the relationships that shape her and the people she carries with her.

What’s in a name?

Nella was always her name—that part came baked into the idea. But her full name, Nella May Carter, is deeply personal. “Carter” is my son’s name, and “May” comes from both my daughter and my grandmother, Bessie Mae. I liked the idea of anchoring this large, time-spanning story with names that come from my own family.

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

My teenage self would be shocked—in the best way. She would think we would be a lawyer by now, but this is better. Instead of picking through contracts for tiny details, we get to make everything up. I think she’d be proud that I wrote the kind of story I would have loved but never thought I’d get to see. She would also laugh because I was the kid whose punishment one time was not reading books for a week, so writing a whole novel feels like something she would have dreamed about and be proud she did.

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

Beginnings can be harder to land the right note, tone, and promise for the reader. I tend to overwrite until I get the tone right, and then I go back and cut a lot. Early in my writing career, I came across First Line Frenzy with Rebecca Hayman, and I know how important the first line is to hooking a reader. I like endings that mirror the opening, showing both the character's change and a neat summary of the overall story. For The Wondrous Life and Loves of Nella Carter, the prologue and ending of the book are nearly identical from the first draft. Honestly, I have more trouble with all the things in the middle, making sure the logic is correct and makes sense, than anything.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters?

I see pieces of myself in Nella—mostly her curiosity and her desire to understand people deeply. She pays attention to small gestures and quiet moments, and that’s how I move through the world, too. She keeps stepping into new worlds, new relationships, and new versions of herself, even when she’s afraid. But overall, Nella is her own person. She’s not a stand-in for me; she’s someone I learned from.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Music is a big one. I build playlists for every book, and certain songs help me capture a scene's emotional tone. Visuals matter too—images from art, photography, and film help me anchor the mood, and pictures of actors and stock images help me to imagine characters. For Nella’s book, I found myself drawn to historical paintings, old photographs of New Orleans and Paris, and even fashion references.

Visit Brionni Nwosu's website.

Writers Read: Brionni Nwosu.

The Page 69 Test: The Wondrous Life and Loves of Nella Carter.

My Book, The Movie: The Wondrous Life and Loves of Nella Carter.

--Marshal Zeringue

Cindy Jiban

Cindy Jiban lives in Minnesota, where she was awarded a 2023 emerging fiction writer fellowship through the Loft Literary Center. Jiban holds a Ph.D. in educational psychology; before writing novels, she was an educator and researcher who published frequently, particularly focusing on how students learn to read.

Like the main character in her debut novel The Probable Son, Jiban has taught in middle schools and is raising two sons. She was born and raised in the Seattle area but has now lived with her family in St. Paul for over twenty years.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I love that my title is essentially a very-distilled elevator pitch. Someone is only probably the main character’s son. The title could refer to the boy Elsa has been mothering for thirteen years, or it could be about the familiar boy who just walked into her life and made her realize she can’t bury her secret suspicions forever.

The title is also a variation on a biblical story about a prodigal son. Elsa is firmly not religious – she teaches math and thinks about probability instead of faith – but the title activates the idea of a long-missing son re-entering a family. That this might occur brings a mixture of hope and dread, and it helps to propel readers into the thick of this story.

What's in a name?

The name Elsa invokes an animated ice princess focused on the need to let it go, and that became intentional. My main character has a lot that she struggles to let go, and her childhood memories circle back to the ice and snow on a Minnesota section of the Mississippi River.

The boy she is raising is called Bird, a nickname that suits the quiet of his personality. But the real and secret reason Elsa calls him this comes from a classic children’s book, from a bird who walks around asking a heartbreaking question.

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

She would not be surprised that the novel exists, that it is contemporary realistic fiction, or that it offers propulsion and a satisfying twist. But I think she would be indignant that it came so late. I am 55 years old as I debut, and I know she would have liked to see me go for it when I was decades younger. I owe her an apology for both my pragmatism (other careers offer health insurance!) and my lack of confidence.

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

Beginnings are by far the hardest for me.

There are two kinds of beginnings, both hard. One is about first setting words on the page in a committed start to a first draft. What makes that hard is the foreclosure on other ideas: can I set aside the others to fully choose this one?

The second beginning is about deciding where and how to start the reader’s experience of the story. Could I start them any closer to the main action, or do I need that central piece of backstory first? Am I making the right promises, if I start with this focus and this tone? So far, I’m someone who needs to write the whole story before I can figure out where it’s telling should begin.

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

Like Elsa, I have taught middle schoolers by choice, and I am raising two amazing sons. But Elsa has at her core a defining experience that I have not had, and that makes her think about decisions very differently than I do. In writing her, I found that asking what I might think or do in a situation she faced was not helpful in finding Elsa’s thinking. Instead, it helped me to remember the gap between most readers’ version of reasonable and Elsa’s.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Looking back, I know what contributed inspiration to the premise of The Probable Son, in particular.

There’s a stunning This American Life episode (#360) where two adult women learn they were accidentally switched at birth and then raised in the wrong families. One of their mothers turns out to have quietly suspected this all along, which…wow.

Second, a 2018 documentary called Three Identical Strangers follows 19-year-old boys who accidentally find one another. The triplets were separated at birth and raised in separate families, none with any idea of the others’ existence. (Parent Trap, anyone?)

Imagine, in either case, learning you have immediate family you never knew about – and how that might affect the family you do know. I remained fascinated with this idea as my own (definite) sons entered their teen years. Those are the years when you begin to wonder whose child this strange kid actually is. But what if I literally weren’t sure he was mine?

Visit Cindy Jiban's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Probable Son.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ruth Mancini

Ruth Mancini is an author and criminal defense lawyer. Her background as a solicitor adds authenticity to her crime and psychological fiction. She has spent two decades representing those accused of crimes, navigating courtrooms and police stations. Her storytelling prowess and legal background combine to create thrilling reads that will keep you guessing until the very end, including the Sunday Times bestseller The Woman on the Ledge. Mancini was born in London and now lives in Oxfordshire with her husband and two children.

Mancini's new novel is The Day I Lost You.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The Day I Lost You is, at its core, a story about one very all-important day in the lives of each of the three central characters: Lauren, Hope and Drew. Clearly, someone loses a baby that day, so I think the title reflects that, but the question the reader will want answered is who? And why? What happened? Because it’s clear from the outset that both women are laying claim to the same child and he can’t belong to them both. My working title was ‘The Lost Child’ but I knew this was wrong for the genre. When the book was finished it went to my editor and to the sales and marketing teams at my publisher. We toyed with ‘You Belong to Me’ but this, again, was considered wrong for the genre. The cover needed to say, ‘this is a psychological thriller’ and I think we got it right.

What's in a name?

Unlike the title, my characters’ names usually announce themselves at random. The name needs to feel right and fit with that character’s personality, but otherwise, I don’t attach too much importance to them. The exception to that is my recurring criminal defence lawyer character Sarah Kellerman. My editor wanted a standout surname for her and she gave me a few options. I picked Kellerman because I liked it, but I later realised it’s a name that’s more prevalent in America than in the UK where Sarah lives, so I will probably at some point explain that her dad is American and still lives there, in Boston. I just made that up, so you saw it here first. But that’s really how my characters appear. It just happens and their names just come to me without too much thought. They just are who they are. I actually have a friend who lives in my village who’s mum was German and whose dad is American and still lives in Boston, so that’s probably been at the back of my mind and is why it feels right.

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

Quite surprised, I think! I studied English literature at school and read Thomas Hardy and the Brontes and George Elliot, and Shakespeare but was also reading Joanna Trollope and Jilly Cooper and more light-hearted stuff, so it did take me a while to find my voice. I do remember reading a courtroom drama by Leon Uris, whose writing I really enjoyed, but I would never have guessed that I would become a criminal defence lawyer and write legal thrillers.

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

Beginnings and endings tend to come pretty easily. It’s all the stuff in the middle that’s harder and gets chopped and changed way too much. I tend to begin my writing day by ‘polishing’ what I wrote yesterday, which can involve three hours of changing a few paragraphs and then putting them back how they were in the first place, and then it’s lunchtime. I need to discipline myself to just chase the story, get it out and not go back until I’ve finished.

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 always loads of me in my characters. Like many writers, I began writing for cathartic reasons and my first book was a bit of an outpouring. Although my stories are now stories as opposed to therapy, my characters are still vehicles for my own emotions. But not the bad ones, obviously!

Follow Ruth Mancini on Facebook and Instagram.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mia Sheridan

Mia Sheridan is a New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. Her passion is weaving true love stories about people destined to be together. Sheridan lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with her husband. They have four children here on earth and one in heaven.

Sheridan's new novel is The Fix.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The Fix not only references a "fix" in the sense of a problem-solver for hire (which is suggested might be the reason for the crime the reader steps into almost immediately), but it also references what unfolds at the end of the story. So the title felt perfect to me because right up front, it made sense to the reader, and then made even more sense at the conclusion. I love a title that ends up having a deeper meaning than it originally suggests.

What's in a name?

One of the characters in my book is a young, extremely rational, non-emotional, genius of a young woman who is referred to by some as a, "human computer." But in my heart I knew there was a tiny twinge of whimsy in her otherwise austere soul, and I wanted to acknowledge that with her name. I settled on Posey Kiss which, on the surface, seems all wrong for my serious, neuro-divergent heroine, but is a nod to the part of her only those she allowed close to her to see.

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

My teenage reader self would be absolutely bowled-over that I'm an author at all! I never, in my wildest dreams, pictured myself writing a book until I sat down and did it on what was essentially, an emotionally-charged whim. Life can be so wild and my unplanned career is proof that it's never a bad idea to expect the unexpected. But as far as the content of my novel, I think my teenage reader self—lover of both romance and thrills—would be completely on board.

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

Beginnings are by far the most difficult for me, and I procrastinate mercilessly before forcing myself to add words to that blank first page. But interestingly, I tend to change my endings far more than my beginnings. I think that might just be because once I know the full scope of the characters and the plot, more often than not, the ending I had planned months before I got there, doesn't feel quite right. With The Fix, I actually trashed about twenty-thousand words of the ending and re-wrote it completely. It was painful, but well worth it as once I did the work, and it felt right and true to the rest of the story.

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 definitely reflect my own reactions and emotional responses, especially the heroines. When I first started writing, I think I basically wrote variations of myself for all my characters. And if I didn't, that character felt false or overdone because I hadn't become adept at writing personalities completely unlike my own. That skill—for me anyway—took time to hone. But now that I've grasped the ability more fully, I have a really good time writing completely outside my own nature. It sounds funny, but it's harder than one might think to get out of your own head and "become" someone else!

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

My own reflections on the world and nature specifically. Especially now that I've started writing and attempting to set a scene or create an atmosphere, I'll literally pause sometimes if I see a beautiful sunset, or feel wind on my face and think about how I'd describe the vision or the feeling. I believe those simple things are what can make a really immersive reading experience.

Visit Mia Sheridan's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jonathan Payne

Jonathan Payne is a British-American writer based in New York City.

His first novel, Citizen Orlov, was named a Book of the Month by Apple Books. It won the 2024 IBPA Silver Medal for Mystery/Thriller and the 2024 IPPY Bronze Medal for Suspense/Thriller.

Payne previously worked in national security for the British government.

He holds a Master of Arts degree in Novel Writing from Middlesex University, London.

Payne's new novel is Hotel Melikov.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Hotel Melikov is the sequel to Citizen Orlov. It picks up a week after the first book finishes, in the same unnamed, fictional central European country between the two world wars. The sequel kicks off with a bang, as tensions between the government and revolutionaries erupt into civil war.

This series revolves around Citizen Orlov, an unassuming fishmonger who accidentally becomes a spy. But, of course, I can only use his name as a title once. Naming the other books in the series is an interesting challenge.

I've always loved stories set in hotels, like A Gentleman In Moscow by Amor Towles and John Irving's Hotel New Hampshire. Since this novel both begins and ends in Hotel Melikov, the grandest hotel in my fictional capital, I hope the title will tempt readers to wonder what happens behind those walls, and what role the hotel plays in the civil war.

Also, since there are nuns on the cover, and one of them is carrying a gun, readers will hopefully be wondering what on earth is going on!

What's in a name?

With the exception of nuns, no one in the Orlov novels is given a first name. This is because it's a rather strange, formal society in which everyone is known by a title. So, anyone who's not an Officer, Judge, Minister, Prince, etc, is known as Citizen.

Since the novels are set nowhere, the family names are taken from everywhere. I use popular family names from all over central and eastern Europe. Orlov, meaning eagle, is a common family name in Russia. Orlov is an everyman, which is conveyed in part by giving him a common name.

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

I like writing both the beginning and ending of novels; I struggle with the middle. In the middle of a novel, there are so many strands in play, and all of them need to be wrangled in a way that sets up the ending.

In Hotel Melikov, I knew that the plot had to kick off with the civil war erupting, and I knew where both Orlov and his beloved nation would end up. The tricky part, and the fun part, was plotting the route between those two points.

Whenever I get tough homework from my editor, it usually relates to the middle of a novel.

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

Orlov is both me and not me. When I think about politics and government, and perhaps life more generally, I often find myself bewildered by the things that go on in the world and the strange ways some people behave. In a sense, the character of Orlov is my bewilderment turned up to 11. The result is a protagonist who's well-meaning but also very confused and utterly paranoid.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I'm a huge movie fan, and that definitely informs some aspects of Hotel Melikov. In particular, the middle of the novel is set at a convent at the peak of Mount Zhotrykaw, the highest mountain in the kingdom. In setting it there, I'm referencing a couple of classic movies featuring religious communities at the top of mountains: Lost Horizon, based on the novel by James Hilton (from which we get the concept of Shangri-La), and Black Narcissus, made by one of my favorite cinematic partnerships, the brilliant Powell and Pressburger.

Visit Jonathan Payne's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Brittany Amara

Brittany Amara is an author, screenwriter, actress, and model with a passion for science fiction and fantasy that ventures beyond space and time. She loves writing about curious aliens, morally gray protagonists, other dimensions, rifts in reality, and all things playfully wicked. When she’s not working on something new, Amara can be found stargazing, collecting stuffed animals, and baking pumpkin bread. She grew up in Bronx, New York, and graduated summa cum laude from SUNY New Paltz in 2021 with a degree in digital media production, creative writing, and theater arts. In 2024 she furthered her storytelling journey at Queen’s University Belfast. Since then, her work in various genres has been recognized by film festivals and writing competitions across the globe.

Amara's new novel is The Bleeding Woods.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The story behind The Bleeding Woods’s title is actually very special to me. Its very first incarnation was simply called The Woods, since I like to give all of my stories codenames as they lounge in the “dreaming phase.” Later, my beloved antagonist, Jasper, insisted he take center stage, and so the title switched to Jasperwood. His suggestion reigned supreme until the final stages of editing, when my publishing team suggested we try out some alternatives.

After weeks of brainstorming, I asked one of my closest friends if she had any ideas. She followed my question with a question, “What are some things the book wouldn’t be the same without?” I started rambling through a handful of disjointed elements ranging from thematic to aesthetic. “Blood”, “woods”, and Jasper’s unrelenting desire to make his sinister mark on the world kept returning. The Bleeding Woods flowed from her lips as intuitively and effortlessly as a stream. We paused in stunned silence, then in unison, muttered, “It’s perfect.”

I immediately sent an email back to my publisher, and we all fell in love. I think The Bleeding Woods harnesses the essence of the story from both a direct, visceral perspective and from a more symbolic one.

To me, the inclusion of a The channels Jasper’s inflated sense of self-importance. It could have just been Bleeding Woods, but Jasper simply wouldn’t have it. He relies so heavily on the idea that he is above humanity, and that his presence is one of borderline divine retribution. There’s a lot of power in labelling something a The, and he feeds off of that power.

The Bleeding Woods portion of the title is where our intent to express gory intrigue meets layers of symbolic undergrowth, pun intended. Of course, a lot of blood spills in Blackstone Forest. At this point, the soil is more cadaver than earth. The trees themselves are victims of Jasper’s, twisted and mutated to decorate his domain. However, the mere existence of the forest is due to the monstrous blood that coats human hands. That is to say, it takes a monster to make a monster, and Jasper and Clara are very much made-monsters. This forest doesn’t just blossom from blood; it was born in it.

What's in a name?

I absolutely love the process of naming things in my work. Sometimes, the names find me more than I find them. I’ve known Jasper would be Jasper and Grayson would be Grayson from the start. However, Clara’s name has shifted many times over the years.

Before she was Clara Lovecroft, she was Selena, then Alina, then Odette. Selena and Alina were both references to light, moonlight to be specific. I wanted to convey the idea that she is a force of light, but one surrounded by deep, suffocating darkness. In order to glow, she must reflect and alchemize all that comes her way. I toyed with the idea of calling her Odette later on because of Swan Lake, a ballet in which a woman faces the horror of turning into a swan against her will. Much like Odette, Clara feels cursed by what she turns into. In the end, I think I landed on Clara because I liked the idea that she finds clarity within herself by being as bright a light as she can in the world.

Unlike Clara, Jasper and Grayson have always had their names. It wasn’t until later in life that I researched their meanings, and was delightfully surprised by their synergy with the story. Jasper is said to mean “treasurer”, and his role is very much one of keeping what he deems to be treasure (Clara). Grayson, on the other hand, is said to mean “son of the steward”, and a steward is someone meant to look after others. I can’t dive too deeply into his name without touching on spoilers, but I will say it serves up a serendipitously delicious double meaning.

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

My teenage self would be positively delighted by my novel, but I can’t say she’d be surprised. I wrote the very first version of The Bleeding Woods when I was only thirteen years old. After a particularly creepy drive with my family, I raced to my laptop and typed up a short story about a demon hiding in the forest that had just run alongside our car. I printed and proudly toted it around my middle school the next day, telling all of my teachers and classmates that I’d just become an author. I am genuinely starstruck every time I hold my book in my hands now, because every time, it feels like my younger self gets the chance to say, “See? I was right!”

My teenage self believed in me without question and without fail. Nothing could sway her confidence, and whenever I harness her energy now, I become just as feral and unshakeable. This book wouldn’t have existed without her fearlessness. Therefore, she wouldn’t be surprised by this, because she knew I could do it all along.

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

Beginnings are definitely more difficult for me than endings. The Bleeding Woods’s beginning has changed so many times over the years because I just couldn’t settle on a good place to “set up the portal” into this world. It has started at the gas station, in the lab, at Jasper’s creation, at Clara’s conception, and so on and so forth. There were so many options. Inevitably, the publishing team jumped in to help out, and we decided on a more linear approach. We start with the moment Clara realizes she is doomed to mutate into a full-fledged monster if she can’t find a suppressant for her inhuman power.

Endings, on the other hand, are a lot easier and more fun to arrive at for me. I may have an inkling into how things resolve, but oftentimes, the story itself surprises me. My inklings and expectations are superseded by the flow of the story, more alive than it’s ever been. With beginnings, I’m tasked with building a portal. With endings, something otherworldly takes over, and the story’s conclusion only becomes clear as I arrive at it.

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 one of my favorite questions to receive about my work. The answer varies from story-to-story, but I think there are shades of me to be found in each one. Sometimes, I am of the characters; I bleed the same astral blood, so to speak. Other times, I am in perfect alignment to meet the cast, albeit from a considerable distance. Regardless, there are shades of me to be found in everything I write.

In the case of The Bleeding Woods, I don’t have a direct in-story incarnation. Clara is the main character, but she isn’t me. She’s more like a distant friend who reached out her hand and offered to help me through what I’d been going through at the time. Together, we ventured through Jasper’s forest to process our pain, different in nature but similar in sentiment.

Jasper, Grayson, Jade and Joey are part of Clara’s world, and so, they became part of mine. She introduced me to them, and over the course of many drafts, we got to know one another. I definitely have to note that it was Jasper who found me first. I’ve felt connected to him for years. To this day, I suspect there was some kind of portal hidden in upstate New York, and through it, he sent forth a ghostly, “Hello~”

Jasper may appear as the antagonist of this version of the story, but only because he agreed to. Through him, at this moment in infinity, Clara and I both got the chance to process our pain. There are other versions of The Bleeding Woods where he gets to step into a more heroic role. There are even stories completely separate from this one where I’ve had him meet my main characters. Jasper’s a complex entity, one I’m grateful to have collaborated with to make this novel a reality.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

In my experience, I’ve found creativity to be something of an interconnected web, and artists across space and time hold keys for one another whether they know it or not. The first major piece of media to offer me a key so that I might unlock my own creative doors was Marvel. Both the comic books and movies filled me with such unparalleled wonder. Experiencing those stories felt like coming home, or at least, locating many paths to many homes.

Music has this effect on me, too. I couldn’t even begin to quantify the number of times I’ve heard a song and physically felt gateways blasting open in my mind. Suddenly, an onslaught of ideas, like impossible memories, pour through, and I’m left scrambling for my keyboard to type it all out. My current favorite artists are Midnight Kids, Avicii, and Bebe Rexha.

I suppose life itself is full of these keys if your heart is open to feeling them and your eyes are primed to see them. I once saw a terrible video of a praying mantis attacking a hummingbird, and in the midst of my horror, I “came up with” a story idea. Another time, I heard a clown’s nose squeak, but somehow sadly. In some small, inexplicable way, that too was a key. They’re everywhere, waiting just as eagerly to be found as I am to find them.

Visit Brittany Amara's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Bleeding Woods.

Writers Read: Brittany Amara.

The Page 69 Test: The Bleeding Woods.

--Marshal Zeringue

T. Kingfisher

T. Kingfisher is the New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award–winning author of fantasy, horror, and occasional oddities, including What Feasts at Night, Nettle & Bone, What Moves the Dead, Thornhedge, A House with Good Bones, and A Sorceress Comes to Call. Under a pen name, she also writes bestselling children’s books. She lives in New Mexico with her husband, dog, and chickens, and does not trust roadrunners.

Kingfisher's new novel is Snake-Eater.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Snake-Eater describes a predator, and furthermore, a predator that feeds on animals many people find alarming. Hopefully the reader will go “Wow, badass!” and want to see what got that name and why. This is the story of a woman who comes to a small desert town, fleeing an abusive relationship, and finds that the desert is full of beings, and that the one called Snake-Eater has an eye on her in particular.

What's in a name?

As much as I’d like to claim that I have a very deep and meaningful process, the truth is that coming up with names in novels, particularly after you’ve written a dozen or so, gets harder and harder. I eventually devolve into looking at baby name lists and going “No, no, no…could work…no, no…hey, I like that one!” For minor characters, I have been known to use the Latin names of plants. Sometimes it’ll end up being a placeholder until I think of a better one, but there’s a narrow window in which I can change character names. After a point, that’s just their name in my head and that’s the way it is. The only hard and fast rule I try to follow is not to have two major characters whose names that start with the same letter, since that’s just visually confusing for the reader.

In the case of Snake-Eater, the only standout is that Father Aguirre, the Catholic priest, is named after my fourth-grade teacher, who was a very kind and patient man and didn’t ever yell at me for reading ahead when we had to read aloud in class.

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

My teenage self made a point to be blasé about everything, so I suspect she’d at least try to play it cool. The setting of the Arizona desert wouldn’t surprise her at all, nor would many of the individual spirits. And I had a black Lab growing up, so that wouldn’t be surprising either.

Hmm, actually at fourteen, I had the boundless confidence of the untried that I could write books, so she’d probably just go, “Yeah, yeah, obviously we wrote a book. Now explain this smartphone thing to me. And do they still make Amiga computers?”

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

The beginning almost never changes—I can think of maybe one or two books where I changed the opening scene. Things do get edited, mind you. I wrote the first part of Snake-Eater over a decade ago, and when I came back to it, I found myself editing as I went along. At times, it started to feel like a collaboration with my younger self.

I always start at the beginning, but unlike Alice, I don’t go straight on until the end. I am not an outliner at all, and I tend to write very much out of sequence. If I know a scene happens over here, I write it, and if I don’t know what happens in a scene, I’ll just skip it until later, when I do know. So the book, for quite a long time, is just a word .doc full of disconnected bits, and sometimes the word “gap” to denote that something ought to be there, but I’m not sure what yet. Then I’ll go back and write the connective tissue required to get from this scene to that one.

I don’t write the ending until the end, though. Once it’s done in my head, so is the book.

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

Any character whose head I want to get into has to have some connection to me, even if it’s a very small one. In the case of Selena, I did in fact work in a deli. But mostly I was trying to tap into experiences I’ve had at very low points in my life and the sense of being completely unable to go on but having to anyway. I certainly got better, and I wanted Selena to get better and find herself too.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Practically everything influences my writing in some fashion—I’m like a weird sponge who grew up Catholic. In the case of Snake-Eater, I was influenced a lot by the landscape of Arizona. I spent four years there as a kid, during that critical window when you imprint on what the world is supposed to look like, and I’ve loved the desert ever since. (I live in New Mexico now.) The enormous skies, the way the shrubs all grow almost-but-not-touching, all the plants and animals that live in this incredibly harsh environment…all of it helped shape the book.

Also, there was a moment a few years back when my husband and I were in Albuquerque, in a little jewelry shop with glass doors, and a roadrunner came up to the door and began tapping on the glass with its beak. (They have quite large and pointed beaks.) My husband staggered back and said, “Is that a roadrunner?” He’d never seen one and was astonished by how they looked in person. They’re basically velociraptors. If you ask anyone in the Southwest about them, they will almost all have a story about some horrible thing they saw a roadrunner do. So that definitely went into the book as well!

Visit T. Kingfisher's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mirta Ojito

Born in Havana, Mirta Ojito is a journalist, professor, and author who has worked at the Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald, and the New York Times. The recipient of an Emmy for the documentary Harvest of Misery as well as a shared Pulitzer for national reporting in 2001 for a series of articles about race in America for the New York Times, Ojito was an assistant professor of journalism at Columbia University for almost nine years. She is the author of two award-winning nonfiction books: Finding Mañana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus and Hunting Season: Immigration and Murder in an All-American Town. Currently, Ojito is a senior director on the NBC News Standards team working at Telemundo Network.

Deeper than the Ocean is Ojito's debut novel.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I don’t exactly know when I decided on Deeper than the Ocean as the title, but I do know that I never considered any other. The narrative in my historical novel is anchored on a very real event: the 1919 shipwreck of a Spanish ship, the Valbanera, with 488 people on board; most of them, immigrants who left Spain and were en route to Havana, Cuba, in search of a better life. A devastating hurricane derailed those dreams, and the ship sank far from Havana, off the coast of Key West. When it was found, the ship was buried in a bank of soft sand, and the bodies had disappeared. It is believed they were buried deep, deeper than the ocean. But the title also alludes to the love story that drives the story and to the ties that run deep and connect families across the oceans, migrations, generations, and unimaginable losses.

What's in a name?

Everything. When I first conceived of this book I saw an image: a woman wearing a mauve dress running on naked feet, desperately searching for her infant daughter in a ship, her long curly red hair flowing behind her. That was it. I didn’t have any more. But I knew her name: Catalina Quintana, the name of my maternal grandmother, whom I never knew. She died at 40, a day after my mother turned 16. Mary Oliver has a poem that begins with this line: “Needing one, I invented her.” I’ve always needed my grandmother, and so I invented her. I infused the character with all the stories my mother had told me about her, and the rest… the rest is the novel.

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

Very surprised. When I was a teenager, my mother’s stories were such an integral part of my life that I never saw them as magical or inspiring — essential elements for a novel. It wasn’t until later, much later, that I began to pay attention and to remember my own visits to my mother’s birthplace and to understand that her entire life was the stuff of novels. Not surprisingly, she told me several times that she had always wanted to be a writer. “One day,” she used to tell me, “I’m going to write the story of my life.” In many ways, this book is her gift to me, and, of course, mine to her.

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

Beginnings. Always the beginnings. As a journalist you know that you must grab the reader with the first sentence. And while a novel gives you more freedom and possibilities as a writer, I still sweat out that first sentence as if I were writing a lede on deadline. Endings have their own force, of course, but they happen organically. The story takes you there, and, instinctively, you know you’ve reached the end.

For example, I changed the beginning of this novel several times, but never the ending. Because my novel is a dual narrative in two different timelines, I had the choice of beginning with Catalina Quintana, the character in 1919, or with Mara Denis, the character a century later, in 2019. Ultimately, I went with the contemporary character because Mara is the one investigating her family’s past. It seemed appropriate, then, to begin not in the past but at the beginning of the search, the quest that informs what happens later.

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

Yes, readers who know me are certain that I modeled the character of Mara Denis after my own, and they are not completely wrong. Of course, I’m not Mara, but I gave her many elements of my life and of my own memories. She is Cuban and a mother, like me. A journalist, like me. And she is 55, the age I was when I began writing the book. Crucially, I also gave her a flare for scarves — which I’ve been told I have — and a love for Santander, a city by the sea in the north of Spain where I used to spend summers when my children were young.

Interestingly, Mara has inspired me to follow her steps. In the book, she is searching for her Spanish ancestors; specifically, her great-grandmother. I’d never done that before, because I never knew where my great-grandparents were from, but I’ve just learned that my mother’s grandfather went to Cuba from the Canary Islands, and now, like the character in the book, I’ve begun my own search.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Paintings have always inspired me. For some reason, before I begin a writing project, I visit a museum. Sometimes I take notes. Sometimes not, and I just stand there focusing on a painting, and trying to understand the art and the process.

I’m also influenced by the news. I can’t help it, I’m a journalist. In fact, Deeper than the Ocean begins with a phone call in the middle of the night. Mara’s editor in New York wants her to go to the Canary Islands to cover a story about a boat full of African immigrants that capsized near one of the islands. Mara goes, of course, because reporting is her life, and because, unknown to her, those islands are imprinted in her DNA and in her soul.

Visit Mirta Ojito's website.

My Book, The Movie: Deeper than the Ocean.

The Page 69 Test: Deeper than the Ocean.

--Marshal Zeringue