Nan Mooney

Katharine Mieszkowski of Salon interviewed Nan Mooney, author of Not Keeping Up with Our Parents: The Decline of the Professional Middle Class.

The start of the Q & A:

How would you characterize the educated middle-class professional you're writing about?

These are people who went to college and have at least a four-year degree. Oftentimes, they have extended education beyond that, a master's or a Ph.D. They're people who work in white-collar professions, usually not the high-end professions like law or medicine or finance.

Why did you want to write about this group?

Because I fall into this group and so many people I know fall into this group, and I feel like we fall under the umbrella of having done everything they say you're supposed to do to be financially secure in America.

There is this myth that if everyone could just go to college and get the proper job skills we would all be financially comfortable, and I was looking around me and saying, "Well, that's not true."

Read the full interview.

Visit Nan Mooney's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Elmore Leonard

From Neely Tucker's interview with Elmore Leonard in the Washington Post:

"The second-worst movie ever made," he's saying, "is the first version of 'The Big Bounce.' God, it was awful." This was a book he wrote back in the 1960s that was indeed made into a terrible movie. He pauses to inhale from a Virginia Slim. "The worst movie ever made was the second version of 'The Big Bounce.' I met Morgan Freeman on the set; he's a good actor, I like him, I asked him what he was doing there. He said, 'Well, I'm the law guy.' And I said 'No, not your role. I mean, what are you doing in this thing?'"

* * *

"This one time, he ran into a bull semen salesman at an opera," says Greg Sutter, his researcher of 25 years. "A bull semen salesman! At an opera! You think Dutch Leonard is going to let that go by?"

(No. See "Mr. Paradise.")

Read the full article.

--Marshal Zeringue

Stephanie Klein

Stephanie Klein is the author of Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp.

From Newsweek's Karen Springen interview with Klein about her memoir and related subjects:

NEWSWEEK: Is it true that all your "Moose" book tour stops will feature free chocolate?

Stephanie Klein: Yes! What kind of fat camp party would it be without a little junk food?

What was the most surprising thing about fat camp?

They weighed us on meat scales. The kids who were too heavy got weighed on a truck scale at the truck stop.

That must have been humiliating.

Humiliating. It's unbelievable to me, even to this day. They had barbed wire all around camp to keep us in so we didn't sneak out at night to go find food elsewhere. One parent sent menus from local restaurants nearby. Because we were so deprived, we would at night read the menu items out loud and imagine how they tasted. There were lots of humiliating experiences, but fun experiences too. For the first time in your life the opposite sex is paying attention to you. That's an aspect that people don't necessarily think about. Everyone is all of the sudden getting some boyfriends and girlfriends.

Read the full Q & A.

Visit Stephanie Klein's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Julie Compton

Julie Compton is the author of Tell No Lies.

Martin Edwards interviewed her for Shots magazine. The opening of the interview:

ME: In the UK, there aren't many lawyers who write crime fiction, but in the US it seems there's a large number of attorneys who turn their hand to legal thrillers. Any idea why that might be?

JC: I think there are several reasons. I'm not familiar with the work environment for lawyers in UK law firms, but here in the US, it can be quite grueling. It's not unusual to work 12 to 14 hour days. We have a saying here – the law is a jealous mistress – and there's much truth in that, especially for younger lawyers who are still trying to prove themselves. It's extremely difficult to have a life outside of work. Those who do often find they get a reputation for not being "committed" enough to the practice. So, many lawyers dream of escaping the grind to pursue other interests.

The logical "other interest" is, for many lawyers, writing. After all, lawyers do a lot of writing on the job, and most write well. Many (like me) wrote creatively when they were younger and gave it up when the demands of law interfered. So it's not a stretch to attempt to make the first love a second career. (The ones who manage to do both, such as Scott Turow, get a gold star in my book).

ME: Tell No Lies is your first published novel. What other writing have you done previously?

JC: I know it's a cliché to say it, but I've been writing as long as I can remember, in one form or another. I still have notebooks I wrote in as a little girl, filled with stories about sassy heroines with unusual names like Summer and True. I gave up my creative writing once I entered law school; I just didn't have the energy after a long day of classes and studying cases. It wasn't until I became a stay-at-home mom after my second daughter was born that I finally began writing again. I wrote some short stories and poems, and started on the novel that eventually became Tell No Lies. I also did freelance work for a local paper – it helped me to feel legitimate as a writer. One of my short stories became a finalist in Glimmer Train's Short Story Award for New Writers contest, giving me a badly needed boost of confidence.

Read the full Q & A.

Visit Julie Compton's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Maeve Binchy

From a Q & A with Maeve Binchy at her publisher's website:

What's the first book you remember reading?

The first book I read was Winnie the Pooh. My father used to read it to me and I used to keep asking, "Where was I?", so he told me I had a house in the Hundred Acre Wood and I believed it.

* * * * *

Name your favourite literary hero and villain.

Favourite literary hero is Leopold Bloom in James Joyce's Ulysses. My choice of villain is the weak, wishy-washy unnamed narrator of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, a woman so spineless and lifeless she did not deserve to survive.

Read the full Q & A.

Visit Maeve Binchy's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby’s novels include High Fidelity (1995), About a Boy (1998) – which were also adapted for the big screen – and How To Be Good (2001). His latest books is the YA novel, Slam.

Two exchanges from his brief Q & A with Anna Metcalfe for the Financial Times:

What book changed your life?

Fever Pitch, my first published book.

Who are your literary heroes?

Charles Dickens, Anne Tyler, and the scriptwriters Ray Galton and Alan Simpson.

Read the full Q & A.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jim Krusoe

Jim Krusoe is the author of five books of poetry, a collection of short stories called Blood Lake and two novels: Iceland and the newly published Girl Factory.

From his "Author Snapshot" at January Magazine:

Please tell us about your most recent book.

Girl Factory is about a guy who discovers six young women suspended in acidophilus in the basement of the yogurt store where he works. He’s trying to find a way to bring them back to life. In this process one of the questions I asked myself was: what does it mean to try to help someone? I’m afraid the results are mixed, at best.

* * * * *
What’s the question you’d like to be asked?

How many drafts to you do? (The answer is about 40, and the reason I like to tell is to let others know the process is a long one. When I began to write I imagined a novel would be finished after about three drafts, and I worry too many other writers may set an artificial limit on when they decide a book is finished. For me, and much to my surprise, the process of revision is as pleasurable, or maybe more so, than the actual imagining.)

Read the full Q & A.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kate Mosse

Kate Mosse is the author of the New York Times-bestseller Labyrinth. She is also co-founder and Honorary Director of the prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction, which annually celebrates and promotes the best works of fiction written by women throughout the world.

Her new novel is Sepulchre.

From a Q & A at Mosse's website:

Labyrinth was set in Carcassonne, in southwest France, and you return to the same region in Sepulchre, albeit centuries later. What is it about that region that inspires you as an author?

Eighteen years ago now my husband and I bought a tiny, biscuit-coloured house in the medieval fortress city of Carcassonne, in the shadow of the walls of the 13th century Cité. The moment I saw it, I fell in love – with Carcassonne in particular and with the Languedoc in general, the name given to the region of southwest France bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the West, the Mediterranean Sea to the South and the great wall of the Pyrenees to the south west. When I’m there, my imagination runs riot. It’s a combination of the outstanding, imposing, physical beauty – the endless blue sky, the wild weather than shifts from brilliant sunlight to black thunder clouds in a moment, the untamed garrigue, the mountains – and the fact that history lies littered all around. The ancient labyrinthine caves with Pre-Historic paintings, the Roman baths and roads, for this book, the Celtic legacy and the Visigoth history of the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries AD. It would be hard for any author, with such materials to work with, not to want to people the real landscape with imaginary characters. This time, focusing on the 19th century in Sepulchre rather than the 13th as in Labyrinth, it gave me the opportunity to go back to some of the places (and some of the characters) about which I’d written and see how time had changed them.

Read the full interview.

The Page 69 Test: Sepulchre.

--Marshal Zeringue

Marcus Sakey

Marcus Sakey is the author of The Blade Itself, At the City's Edge, and Good People, due out at the end of this summer.

Julia Buckley asked him a few questions about his craft; the opening exchanges of the interview:

Marcus, first of all, congratulations on all of your successes. Your website is filled with great news. So my first question is—is this a dream come true? Have you always aspired to be a writer? Or did you happen into it and find that you were quite good at it? Or some other thing I didn’t mention?

Thanks! I’m delighted but a little dizzy. I’ve had an awful lot of luck.

It’s a dream come true. I’ve wanted to do this pretty much my whole life. So, knowing that, I promptly went to college to study something else, then got a job doing something else still. Ten years later, hating my job, I decided to quit, and was fired before I could get a word out. True story. So it seemed like an opportune time.

Your reviews have been terrific. I was struck by the quote from the Chicago Tribune on your website, indicating that your work is “even better than they say.” I would be happy if someone said this about my talent in any context. But—weird as this may sound—are good reviews ever intimidating?

You know, they are, because by the time you get them, you’re deep into something else. So you get about ten seconds of happy glow followed by a double handful of pressure. While I like my finished work, in process I’m wracked with doubt—is this interesting enough, big enough, new enough, good enough. And someone saying nice things about something I’ve already done adds to that.

That said, to any reviewers out there, please, don’t feel the need to “help me” by gratuitously bashing my books.

Read the full Q & A.

The Page 69 Test: The Blade Itself.

The Page 69 Test: At the City's Edge.

Writers Read: Marcus Sakey.

--Marshal Zeringue

James Rosen

Jamie Malanowski, managing editor of Playboy and author of The Coup, interviewed James Rosen, author of The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate.

Their opening exchange:

PLAYBOY: Let's start at the beginning: who was John Mitchell, and why should we care about him?

ROSEN: First of all, thanks for having me on Playboy.com. John Mitchell was the closest thing to a friend Richard Nixon had in government, and, as a result, became the highest-ranking U.S. official ever to be convicted on criminal charges and to serve prison time. After a fabulously successful career on Wall Street, where his innovations in the financing of public works projects made him an indispensable figure to mayors and governors in all fifty states, Mitchell merged his law firm with Nixon's in 1967. The next year, Mitchell served as campaign manager for Nixon's amazing comeback presidential bid, and, after Nixon won, reluctantly agreed to serve as U.S. attorney general. As head of the Justice Department from 1969 to 1972, Mitchell served as the nation's chief law enforcement officer during a period of extraordinary turbulence in American life, one that witnessed the Kent State killings, the Mayday riots, the heyday of radical groups like the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground, and a number of controversies unprecedented in their nature and seriousness, e.g., the desegregation of Southern schools, the Pentagon Papers, and the episode where the Joint Chiefs of Staff were discovered to have been spying, during wartime, on the commander-in-chief. After resigning to run Nixon's '72 re-election campaign, Mitchell became embroiled in the Watergate scandal, and ultimately served nineteen months in prison for his role in the cover-up.

Read the full interview.

--Marshal Zeringue