Paul Theroux

Paul Theroux's new book is Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar.

It's his account of retracing most of his original route that he chronicled in his 1975 best seller The Great Railway Bazaar — from London to Tokyo and back via Russia, mostly by train.

Bob Minzesheimer of USA Today asked him a few questions about the book, including:

Q: The most striking change you saw?

A: Without question, Vietnam. From a country that was a muddy, flattened, bloody, beleaguered hell hole … to the country it is today: flourishing, forward-looking and, almost incredibly, forgiving.

Q: The biggest disappointment?

A: Burma was a military tyranny when I took the train to the far north all those years ago. Nothing has changed, though it seems quite a bit worse: poorer, more oppressed, more exploited, thanks to China and India's support of the Burmese generals.

Read the full Q & A.

--Marshal Zeringue

David Hewson

From a Q & A with David Hewson about his first Nic Costa novel, A Season for the Dead:

A Season for the Dead crosses several genres. It is a novel of suspense, as the Italian police attempt to stop a serial killer. It is a psychological novel that slowly gives up clues as to the killer's motivation. It is, in some ways, a historical novel, as the reader is given a guided tour through the Roman churches and the paintings within which motivate and inspire the killer. It is a love story about the bittersweet romance between policeman Nic Costa and the enigmatic Sara Farnese. What was your inspiration for this novel? Did you know where it was headed from the start? Or how it would twist and turn?

The idea for A Season for the Dead came into my head when I was in Rome one very hot August editing the final draft of my Venice novel, Lucifer's Shadow. When I wasn’t sweating – literally – over the computer, I wandered around the very local part of Rome where I was staying and was struck by the very vivid – ghoulish frankly – depictions of martyrdoms on some of the small, early churches there. It prompted the question: Why does a religion based around love need such violent images? And with the success of Mel Gibson’s "Passion" I guess it’s not an entirely historical question either. I also wanted to write another cop story, this time with a cop who was totally against type: good, young, fit, optimistic, and trying to do the right thing. The two married up somewhere. For me, the core of the novel is Nic’s attempt to define what it is to lead a good life, at a time when he’s dreading the loss of his father and facing the horrors of these crimes and his destructive relationship with Sara. I always know the eventual destination of a novel but the journey there is a little like a ride on London Transport: You're aware of where you’re headed but you’re never quite sure how or when you’re going to get there. Writing has to be a journey of discovery for me too, one in which the characters dictate some of the moves, otherwise I’d be bored stiff.

Read the complete Q & A.

Learn more about the author and his work at David Hewson's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Seventh Sacrament.

The Page 99 Test: The Garden of Evil.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jeri Westerson

From an interview with Veil of Lies author Jeri Westerson at SuspenseMagazine.com:

Who would you say has been your biggest inspiration?

I had many authors inspire me over the years, but I would have to say that my first inspiration was J.R.R. Tolkein. I was always writing stories when I was a kid, since the first moment I could pick up a crayon. But in high school when I first read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy I was truly inspired by this enveloping sort of writing, of this world-building that took in so many of the myths and legends that I already enjoyed (having grown up in a household of rabid Anglophiles with a hunger for history). It was in high school that I wrote my first novel. Four hundred pages...in long hand! And then for many years after, I wrote Tolkein-esque fantasy novels. Just for fun. It never occurred to me to cultivate this interest into a career till much later in life. It was just a hobby, just something I did for fun.

Read the complete Q & A.

Learn more about Veil of Lies and its author at Jeri Westerson's website, her "Getting Medieval" blog, and the Crispin Guest Medieval Noir blog.

Westerson wrote about Crispin Guest's place among fictional detectives for The Rap Sheet.

The Page 69 Test: Veil of Lies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Elizabeth Bear

Elizabeth Bear was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year. She is the author of eight sf/f novels, including A Companion to Wolves with Sarah Monette. Her new novel is All the Windwracked Stars.

From Joe Sherry's interview with Bear at Adventures in Reading:

All the Windwracked Stars is the first volume of your new trilogy The Edda of Burdens and is scheduled to be published in November. I've seen you describe All the Windwracked Stars as "periApocalyptic Norse steampunk noir high fantasy", which has to be one of the most baffling yet fascinating descriptive labels ever to be slapped on a book. Can you expand upon that description a bit and talk about All the Windwracked Stars?

Bear: End of October, actually.

AtWS is a story which takes place after, during, and before the end of the world. In that order, yes.

It stars a valkyrie who has gotten herself shipwrecked in time, a kickboxing gigolo, a kitten with a whip, a two-headed iron horse, and a nihilistic wolf, and it's about all sorts of things--the differences--or lack thereof--between service and slavery being one of them.

Congratulations on the Hugo Award for your short story "Tideline". What does winning the award mean to you personally and what do you hope it will mean for you professionally?

Bear: Alas, I hate to disillusion you, but to take the second half of your question first--it's generally accepted in the industry that the only award that has any effect on sales whatsoever is the Best Novel Hugo, and that is a minuscule bump at best.

What it means to me personally is a little different. It's a wonderful, flattering vote of confidence from the readers and fans, and I could not be more pleased that the SFF community enjoyed "Tideline" and chose to tell me--and the world--about it. Also, it's been a wonderful opportunity for every single person I know even slightly to bust my ass from here to Texas and back. *g*

Read the complete Q & A.

Read excerpts from All the Windwracked Stars, and learn more about the author and her work at Elizabeth Bear's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: All the Windwracked Stars.

--Marshal Zeringue

Laurel Corona

Laurel Corona is the author of more than a dozen middle school books and is a professor of English and Humanities at San Diego City College.

From a Q & A about her new novel, The Four Seasons, at the publisher's website:

Q. What inspired you to write The Four Seasons?

A. I ran across a reference to Vivaldi’s work with the female musicians of the Pieta in a textbook I used for a Humanities courses at the community college where I teach. When I did a little research, I realized how rich and complex a subject the Pieta was in and of itself, how magnificent it became when a great composer and his music were added in, and how explosive a result there would be to have the opulent, complicated and gorgeous city of Venice as the foundation for the story.

Q. While Venetians were—by their own admission—often described as too impassioned, your characters are often in situations where they must suppress any passion. Do you see your most successful characters as those who were able to conceal it the best?

A. My goal was to create central characters with a deep sense of personal dignity, characters who are trying to be all they can be, and not disappoint themselves with the way they’ve lived their lives. I think people recognize that suppression of at least some of our passion is the price of keeping or enhancing our social status, and I think most of us probably aren’t proud of at least some situations where we let passion overwhelm us. I perceived my characters as having all this in mind as they made decisions in their lives, whether I wrote any of it into their thoughts or not.

Read the complete Q & A.

Visit Laurel Corona's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Amitav Ghosh

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg of the Wall Street Journal interviewed Amitav Ghosh about his latest novel, Sea of Poppies.

Part of their conversation:

The Wall Street Journal: Why did you decide on a historical novel set in 19th century India?

Amitav Ghosh: I've written one other historical novel, "The Glass Palace." It's the book for which I am probably best known outside of India. When I was writing it, I became interested in the history of indentured workers leaving India -- workers who went to Burma and Malaysia, where they were called "coolies." The history of that experience fascinated me. It wasn't possible to write about it at great length in "The Glass Palace," but I wanted to explore the earliest period of indenture and steep myself in it, so I came back to it.

WSJ: This novel is very much an ensemble piece. Was that your original intention?

Mr. Ghosh: Yes, always. One of the books that has been a great inspiration to me since I was an adolescent is Thornton Wilder's "The Bridge of San Luis Rey." It's a wonderful book about a bridge in 18th century Peru. One day, while five people are crossing, the bridge collapses and they die. The book then traces their histories. [The novel won the 1928 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.] As I researched "The Sea of Poppies" I looked at a lot of crew lists and passenger manifests of actual ships that sailed the Indian Ocean in the 19th century. The officers were white men, basically, Australian, English, American. The passengers were often indentured workers leaving India. And then there were the sailors, Indian sailors called "lascars." The way in which all of their destinies were connected in the enforced proximity of a ship was something that fascinated me.

Read the complete Q & A.

--Marshal Zeringue

Stephen King

For Salon.com, John Marks talked with Stephen King about his 30-year-old novel The Stand and other topics. Part of their dialogue:

It's 30 years since the publication of "The Stand," which was written, as you say in "Danse Macabre," "during a troubled period for the world in general and America, in particular." We're in another troubled period now. Do you feel yourself itching to write another apocalypse?

I just did. I finished a very long book called "Under the Dome," and it isn't like a worldwide apocalypse or anything like that, but it's a very long book, and it deals with some of the same issues that "The Stand" does, but in a more allegorical way.

As you worked on it, was "The Stand" at all in your mind?

Not really, because it has a different setup than "The Stand," but beyond that I don't want to say too much about it, because it's got to be rewritten and spruced up and everything. But you're right, the two eras are very similar. I just finished reading a book called "Nixonland," and the parallels to the Nixon campaigns and McCain campaigns are just depressing. He's doing a lot of events that are supposed to be populist but are in reality completely managed. He's got a vice president who's Joe Six-Pack. The parallels just go on and on. You've got the unpopular war, economic problems, gasoline problems. Whatever goes around, comes around. "The Stand" even says that. Life is like a wheel. Sooner or later, it always come around to where you started again.

Do you find that Americans have become a lot more apocalyptic in their thinking in the last 30 years?

Americans are apocalyptic by nature. The reason why is that we've always had so much, so we live in deadly fear that people are going to take it away from us.

Read the complete interview.

--Marshal Zeringue

Hooman Majd

Hooman Majd is the author of The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran.

From his interview with TIME's Adam Zagorin:

[M]any Americans find President Ahmadinejad extreme, for example when he calls for the destruction of Israel. Is that view widely shared in Iran, or by the Supreme Leader himself?

President Ahmadinejad may be extreme in some of his views, and I think it is safe to say most Iranians do not share them. The Supreme Leader has made it clear on a number of occasions, rarely reported in the Western media, that he disagrees. On Israel, for example, soon after Ahmadinejad first suggested, in 2005, that Israel would be "wiped off the map", the Supreme Leader made a speech saying that Iran has not and would not be the first to start any war, and would not attack any country. That statement was intended to show that Iran wanted to play no part in Israel's disappearance, regardless of the inflammatory rhetoric of the president.

The book contains a lot of descriptions of Iranian manners and behavior, and you tell stories that give readers a sense of what it's like to be immersed in Iranian society. What do you think is a fundamental misconception that Americans have about Iran and Iranians?

As Americans, we have a tendency to believe that Iranians are a bunch of fundamentalists, even crazy. Sure, there are plenty of fundamentalists or arch-conservatives in Iran, including those in power, but the society is far more diverse than that stereotype would suggest. There are all kinds of civic groups, political activists, even secularists, along with 30 or 40 daily newspapers that offer a wide range of opinion. Even among the clergy, there are liberals and conservatives.

Read the complete Q & A.

Read an excerpt from The Ayatollah Begs to Differ, and learn more about the book and author at Hooman Majd's website.

View the video trailer for the book, and watch Jon Stewart's interview with Hooman Majd on The Daily Show.

The Page 69 Test: The Ayatollah Begs to Differ.

--Marshal Zeringue

Charlie Huston

Graeme Flory of Graeme's Fantasy Book Review interviewed Charlie Huston about his terrific Joe Pitt novels.

A few of their exchanges:

The Joe Pitt novels have a noir tone but Joe Pitt is not your typical ‘noir private eye’, what gave you the inspiration for his character and is Joe the same character that you originally concieved?

I was thinking tough guy as much as I was thinking PI. Joe’s ended up being a little more sympathetic than I thought he’d be. Which seems absurd in retrospect.

One of the things that I really like about your Joe Pitt books is that a great deal happens in a relatively short space of time. Have you ever been tempted to write a Joe Pitt book that is twice or even three times the length of previous books?

Not really. If the books moved any slower the holes in the plots would become too obvious. But the fifth and final book is likely to be the longest. There are a lot of loose ends to tie.

‘Every Last Drop’ is now in bookstores, what can fans expect from this latest installment?

Toe biting. Lots of toe biting. More than one toe is bitten off. Toe biting.

Read the complete Q & A.

Visit Charlie Huston's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Gary Cross

Gary Cross is an historian and the author of Men to Boys: The Making of Modern Immaturity.

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

Question: Why did you write a book about men becoming “boys” at this time?

Gary Cross: I am an historian who asks questions of the past by observing the present. So when I saw evidence everywhere of how growing up male has changed and how increasingly maturity is mocked and denied in the popular and commercial culture, I was compelled to explain it historically. All this not only profoundly shapes the many (especially women) who have “boy-men” in their lives, but it has led to much confusion among men of all ages about who they should be and what they should want. As important, the boy-man has shaped contemporary culture in many, often undesirable, ways.

Q: How is your approach different from others who explore the issue of male maturity?

GC: I agree with many who explain these trends in psychological or sociological terms, as consequences of changing child rearing methods or new economic and social realities that have reduced the authority and responsibilities of men, but I take a different approach. I try to show how delayed marriage and careers, denial of childrearing responsibilities etc are related to wider changes in male culture over the past three generations. I look at the transformation of men’s hobbies, tastes in magazines, movies, and TV, and dress and attitudes toward aging, for example, to plot how and why men became boys.

Read the complete interview.

--Marshal Zeringue