John Twelve Hawks

FantasyBookSpot.com has posted an interview with John Twelve Hawks, author of 2005's The Traveler and its sequel (the second book in his Fourth Realm series) The Dark River, conducted by Gabe Chouinard.

The interview opens:

Gabe Chouinard - The Dark River, the second in the Fourth Realm trilogy, throws many new kinks and twists into the saga of Gabriel and Michael Corrigan. Was it a difficult novel to write?

John Twelve Hawks - In one way it was easier, because I didn’t have to write pages and pages explaining the particular rules of this fictional world as I did in The Traveler.

I had to remind people who read The Traveler of the realms and the barriers and the Evergreen Foundation, and I had to make it easy for someone who hadn’t read the first book to enjoy the second purely on its own, but mostly I felt like the race car had already been polished and fueled; I just had to get behind the wheel and go.

Gabe Chouinard - The first thing I noticed about The Dark River is just that – in contrast to The Traveler, it is a much darker novel, opening with a particularly harrowing scene. Is there hope left for the third novel?

John Twelve Hawks - I’m fundamentally a hopeful person. Sitting down to write The Traveler was the ultimate act of hope in my own life – hope mixed with a dash of stubbornness and anger. I don’t know if the next book will have a fairytale ending, but I truly believe that “goodness” has great strength against every form of evil.

Read the entire interview.

The Page 69 Test: The Dark River.

--Marshal Zeringue

J.D. Rhoades

Stephen Allan over at Noir Writer recently interviewed J.D. Rhoades, whose third "Jack Keller" novel Safe and Sound releases in the coming week.

A couple of exchanges from the interview:

NoirWriter: What was the first book you read that made you want to be a writer?

Rhoades: That's a tough one. Probably some early Robert Heinlein or one of Harlan Ellison's short story collections back when I was but a yoot. The one that got me back writing again in my thirties, though, was Molly Ivins' collection MOLLY IVINS CAN'T SAY THAT, CAN SHE? I started writing newspaper columns soon after that. A few years later, I started reading the work of North Carolina's own Katy Munger, who wrote a series set in Durham. That really inspired me, because it showed me that where I was could be an interesting setting.

NoirWriter: What is your definition of redneck noir? How does it compare with other noir stories?

Rhoades: Redneck noir is basically dark crime fiction set in the South. It started out as more of an attitude I wanted to hold in my head as I wrote. I was listening to a lot of Steve Earle, who remains one of my favorite artists. Songs of his, like "The Devil's Right Hand" and "Copperhead Road" tell stories about southern boys on the edge, both of society and of their sanity. I used to call them "songs about psychotic hillbillies." But at the same time, there's a lot of compassion in those stories.

Read the entire interview.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nancy Pickard

Writer Julia Spencer-Fleming interviewed Nancy Pickard about her Agatha Award-winning novel, The Virgin of Small Plains.

One exchange from their dialogue:

The Virgin of Small Plains seems to spring first and foremost from its powerfully realistic characters. What's your process for developing and working with characters?

(Thank you!) Well, the weird thing is that I think my process is changing. It used to be that I didn't really want to *think* about my characters very much. For instance, I never wanted to make lists of where they went to school, what their favorite colors were, or those kinds of things. I wanted them to reveal things like that to me in the course of the story, which they would do only if they needed and wanted to do it. I didn't care what flavor of ice cream Jenny Cain liked best -- unless she needed to reveal that to me as I wrote. I thought of creating characters in the same way that I thought about making friends -- I would never hand you, for instance, a questionnaire demanding to know your hobbies. I would wait for that to come up naturally in conversation. Or, if you were coming over to my house and I was serving ice cream, I'd ask so I could be sure to have a flavor you like.

Now, however, although that still remains mostly true, I find that I'm wanting to *think* more about them. When something happens in a story, I don't just wait for them to do what they do -- I think about how they'd be reacting to it, and what their options might be, and what effect that might have on the people around them. And I'm finding that this is deepening my feeling for them.

I guess maybe previously I was scared of destroying my creative flow by getting analytical, and maybe I was right about that -- maybe it would have had a bad effect. But I have more experience now, and more confidence in my own skill, I guess. Previously, maybe I had more confidence in my characters than I did in myself.

Read the entire interview.

The Page 69 Test: The Virgin of Small Plains.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kristin Gore

Kristin Gore's new book is Sammy's House, the follow-up to Sammy's Hill, which was a New York Times bestseller and is currently being adapted for the screen by Columbia Pictures.

From a Q & A with the author:

Q: When did you know that you wanted to write more about Sammy Joyce than the material in Sammy’s Hill? Did you have different goals for Sammy’s House than you did for Sammy’s Hill?

A: I never planned to write two Sammy books, but I enjoyed the character so much that I couldn’t help but keep writing her in my head, so it didn’t take long after finishing Sammy’s Hill to realize that I had a lot more of her to share. In Sammy’s House, she’s moved from Capitol Hill to a position in the new administration, so she gets to experience first-hand the excitement and insanity of working behind the scenes in the White House. I wanted to continue her comic adventures in this new setting while delving a little deeper into the political world she inhabits, and exploring more meaningfully the professional and personal challenges she must navigate to persevere. And of course I wanted to make people laugh along the way.

Read the entire Q & A.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thomas Keneally

Anna Metcalfe interviewed Thomas Keneally, author of the 1982 Booker Prize-winning novel Schindler’s Ark (later adapted by Steven Spielberg as Schindler’s List) and other books, for the Financial Times.

A few of the questions and answers:

What book changed your life

Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock.

* * *

What is the last thing you read that made you laugh out loud?

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka.

* * *

Which book do you wish you had written?

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

* * *

Which literary character most resembles you?

James Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus.

Read the entire Q & A.

--Marshal Zeringue

Meg Rosoff

Adrienne Wong interviewed Meg Rosoff for the Financial Times.

A few of the questions and answers:

Who would you most like to sit next to at a dinner party?

My favourite writers - Molly Keane, Graham Greene, Wilfred Thesiger.

* * *

Which book do you wish you’d written?

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

* * *

What novel would you give your child to introduce them to literature?

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

Read the entire Q & A.

Meg Rosoff wrote her first book, How I Live Now, at the age of 46; she had no previous literary experience, and had spent years in an unfulfilling career in advertising. A darkly poignant tale for young adults about love, adolescence and a third world war, the book won the 2004 Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. Her second book, Just in Case, just won the CILIP Carnegie Medal for 2007.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sophie Gee

Sophie Gee is the author of the forthcoming novel, The Scandal of the Season.

From a Q & A at the publisher's website:

As an Assistant Professor of English at Princeton University, you specialize in a wide range of Restoration and eighteenth-century British literature. What made you want to write about these particular events and characters? What was it about "The Rape of the Lock" or Alexander Pope that intrigued you?

"The Rape of the Lock" probably marks the first moment in English literature when a writer gives a satirical, comic description of the habits and behavior of a privileged social world from which he himself feels excluded. I always think that Pope's poem gives us the feeling of an outsider looking in, noticing things and overhearing conversations that he ought not to be seeing. What we get in "The Rape of the Lock" is the beginning of English comedies of manners. The satirical attack on something from which the writer feels excluded is essentially the basis of all English comedy. So "The Rape of the Lock" is an instantly appealing poem from that point of view.

I discovered in Alexander Pope an unexpected, compelling protagonist. He begins as the underdog; he is the guy who comes from behind and wins the race. He's a sympathetic character: a cripple, a young man cursed by being a Catholic at a time of Catholic persecution in England, deeply ambitious, wanting to mix with the fashionable rich. We watch him taking on this world of power and money and very tight social circles as an outsider -- and we want him to pull it off. As readers of the book we begin as outsiders too, appropriately for a historical world that we don't yet know, but increasingly we are drawn further and further in with Alexander Pope, until the world seems very intimate and familiar.

Read the entire Q & A.

Also see Sophie Gee's interview with the Sydney Morning Herald.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mark Billingham

Ali Karim recently interviewed Mark Billingham for The Rap Sheet.

Here is the introduction to their conversation:

I first bumped into Mark Billingham way back in 1999, when he was a still-unpublished British crime writer standing in a lengthy queue outside London’s Murder One Bookstore, waiting for the release of Thomas Harris’ sequel to The Silence of the Lambs (1988), Hannibal. I encountered him again a year later at the Dead-on-Deansgate conference, after his debut novel, Sleepyhead, was published. We shared a few beers, and I took some photos of the young Mr. Billingham before he went off to interview American writer George Pelecanos. After enjoying Sleepyhead, I was captivated by his follow-up, Scaredy Cat (2002), a sweaty novel about two serial killers working “in concert.” But of course, those slayers didn’t stand a chance, when pitted against Billingham’s series protagonist, Detective Tom Thorne, who would go on to win his creator a Sherlock Award at the Crimescene 2003 conference in London.

In the years since, Billingham has been juggling his composing of the Thorne series with his stand-up comedy work, his writing for television, his acting, and his efforts as one of the organizers of the annual Harrogate Crime Writing Festival. Not an easy set of responsibilities to handle, but he’s done it. And did I mention that he was once also a contributor to Shots, back when it was an in-print magazine, rather than the Web publication it is today? It was the dry-witted and insightful Billingham, in fact, who convinced me to join editor Mike Stotter at Shots (a memorable moment I captured on film). As his renown has risen, Billingham has himself become the subject of a Shots interview.

Anticipating this month’s paperback release in the UK of his sixth Thorne novel, Buried, and a hardcover version of that same book finally being due out in the States on July 3; and with his latest novel, Death Message, debuting in Britain on August 23, I tracked down this award-winning Birmingham-born writer for The Rap Sheet, and talked with him about his works-in-progress, his extracurricular activities, and his history as a humorist.

Read the entire interview.

--Marshal Zeringue

Craig Johnson

Kindness Goes Unpunished, Craig Johnson's third Walt Longmire Mystery, was published this spring.

Julia Buckley interviewed Johnson earlier this month. Part of their exchange:

Parts of your books also remind me of old westerns. Did you watch those as a kid (or an adult)? Were you ever influenced by people like Zane Gray or Louis L’Amour?

You can’t write about the west and not be influenced by those guys. I think it’s important to acknowledge the iconoclastic aspects of the genre you work in, taking advantage of a high-context relationship with the reader for all sorts of reasons, laughs, for one. I write contemporary novels, but they’re set in the west, so I better know about the west in a non-fiction and fictional sense. I’m probably more influenced by western writers like Walter Van Tilberg Clark, Wallace Stegner, John Steinbeck, and Dorothy Johnson.

Read the entire interview.

See Johnson's website for another Q & A about the Walt Longmire series.

The Page 69 Test: Kindness Goes Unpunished.

--Marshal Zeringue

David Sloan Wilson

David Sloan Wilson's new book -- his first for a general audience -- is Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives.

A few years ago, following the publication of Darwin's Cathedral, Andrew Brown interviewed Wilson for the Guardian.

From the interview:

"My decision to become a scientist was in part motivated by the fact that my father [Sloan Wilson, author of The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit] was such a famous novelist that I couldn't do that. But he did give me a love of writing. So there was a strange combination of wanting to please him and wanting to do something different. I wanted to be a scientist, and first I had in mind the kind of white-coated brain surgeon. Then I discovered it was possible to be an ecologist. I sometimes think of myself as a novelist trapped inside the body of a scientist. As soon as there was a way to study human beings within my discipline I moved to that."

Read the entire article.

The Page 69 Test: Evolution for Everyone.

--Marshal Zeringue