Daniel Pyne

Daniel Pyne's novels include Catalina Eddy, Fifty Mice, Twentynine Palms, and A Hole in the Ground Owned by a Liar. Among his many screenplays are Pacific Heights, Doc Hollywood, the remake of The Manchurian Candidate, and Fracture. He made his directorial debut with the independent film Where’s Marlowe? His list of television credits (creating, writing, and showrunning) spans Miami Vice to Bosch. Pyne has worked as a screen printer, a sportswriter, an ad man, and a cartoonist and has taught screenwriting at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television for more than two decades.

His new novel is Water Memory.

My Q&A with the author:

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

For some reason, I’ve always struggled with titles if they don’t come to me right away. I created a TV show about lawyers that was called The Antagonists, possibly one of the worst series titles ever, despite being incredibly accurate.

Calling my new book Water Memory is a bit of a misdirection; yes, it’s a story about memory; the main character is suffering serial concussion syndrome and worrisome memory loss. But it’s also a thriller, which is probably why the publisher added ‘A Thriller’ on the book cover.

Thematically, however, water memory refers to a folk belief that water -- which is ancient and immutable -- holds in it the memory of everything it’s touched, which means everything that’s ever happened, and everyone who has ever existed. And because the story takes place mostly on the ocean that idea, that memory is eternal and defines us, continually resonates throughout the novel.

What's in a name?

My protagonist is a private sector black ops specialist, and I named her Aubrey Sentro because it is an unusual and slightly gender-neutral name, both of which prepare the reader for who and what she is revealed to be over the course of her journey. There’s a hint of Texas in it, which is where she’s from; a measure of directness and menace, which are fundamental to her character. It’s not a soft name, or readily accessible. But the music of it is lyrical, almost old school romantic. And that’s important too, because those are the qualities that sustain her.

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

I don’t think I’ve changed all that much as a writer since I was starting out. I hope I’ve become a whole lot better at it. I loved the literary classics growing up, but also spy novels and thrillers, le Carré and Highsmith and Chandler. What might surprise the teenage me is the way I strive to integrate those both those strong influences in my work, for better or worse.

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

Beginnings are hardest and tend to change the most. I am constantly going back and rewriting, adjusting, sometimes restructuring the beginnings of books and screenplays as I get deeper and deeper into the story. The ending is always in some way defined by where I start, even if I don’t know what that ending is when I start. For me, endings are the inevitable sum of all that has come before them. Of course, getting the end exactly right takes quite a bit of rewriting, too.

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

I write people who I imagine I might be, given different circumstances. They’re often very different from me, a collection of emotions, memories, experiences and capabilities that I may not have—but if I did have them, the question becomes what decisions would this new me make given the obstacles ahead? I do tend to like to write about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Even with a character like Aubrey Sentro, who has specialized training and a mindset that isn’t average at all, I wanted her fears, her failings, her emotions and her relationships ground her. She doesn’t have superpowers. She bears the scars of what she’s been through; she’s not invincible. And the challenges she confronts in the course of Water Memory will leave their lasting mark as well.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Current events—news and cultural—are never far from my mind when I’m writing. But music and painting have a huge influence on my work.

Music, because the flow of prose, for me, has a rhythm, and a melody; the words are like notes in a composition, and my struggle is often to find just the right key. Thrillers are particularly dependent on pace and timing. Just like a great song or composition, you want to carry the reader, then offer up surprises, break the rhythm, slow down or speed up. I sometimes listen to music when I write and will choose an appropriate genre for what I’m working on.

My father was a painter and sculptor, so I have a very raw and, well, primal love of visual art. While I didn’t quite inherit his talent, I find that my writing tends to be very cinematic. I’m always aware of the setting, the composition, of the way that description paints a picture in the mind of the reader. Sometimes you want it to be extremely precise, like a photorealist. Other times you want to offer up something more abstract that the reader’s imagination can fill out and complete.

Visit Daniel Pyne's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Marti Leimbach

Marti Leimbach is known for her bestsellers, Dying Young, made into a film starring Julia Roberts, and Daniel Isn’t Talking. She is interested in neurodiversity and has shared the stage with young inventors at the Human Genome Project (Toronto), the National Autistic Society, and the University of Oxford. Her interest in science influenced her YA thriller, Dragonfly Girl.

She teaches on the Masters Programme in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford. Dragonfly Girl is her eighth novel, but her first for young adults.

From my Q&A with Leimbach:

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

Dragonfly Girl is about a high school senior who discovers a “cure” for death and ends up embroiled in an international rivalry. I thought about calling it The Death Cure, but that sounded like science fiction (the novel has some speculative fiction, but is very steeped in the real world). Also, it didn’t sound personal enough. This is about a girl, after all, one who is very smart in some ways, but woefully not in others, who can handle herself in very difficult situations that most teens wouldn’t cope with, but who can barely get through a school day without drama. How do you describe such a girl?

Within the first few chapters the reader will understand why the main character is called “dragonfly girl” but it isn’t until the end that the name has further significance, and we see that this girl has changed. She’s become something she wasn’t before. And this new identity will take her forward in life (and take the reader into the novel’s sequel).

What's in a name?

I chose the name Kira because I wanted a name that would work in America, where Kira lives, but also in Russia, where she ends up after everything goes south for her. I could have chosen a lot of other names but somehow Kira stuck in my head and, once there, refused to budge.

When I imagined Dr. Munn, his name and face and everything about him came to me at once. I remember googling like mad to make sure there wasn’t some famous Dr. Munn out in the real world that would prevent me from using the name.

As an aside, I’ll add that Cornelius, the lab rat who comes back to life in the book, was named after one of my own pet rats.

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

Very surprised. First, that I wrote it at all. I was already writing poetry and short stories in high school but I didn’t think of myself as particularly “science-y”. I grew to love science as an adult, in part because of the excellent popular science writers out there that made it all a lot more interesting than it seemed in school.

The real shocker for my teenage reader self would have been the science inside Dragonfly Girl, which is largely real. The rate of change in the scientific world is staggering. My teenage self would never have imagined that the stuff that happens in the book is taken largely from real life, or that defense technology has truly reached James Bond levels.

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

I dabbled with the beginning of Dragonfly Girl for ages because it was so much fun to write! I mean, a poor girl wins big money but has to carry off being an adult for a week in order to get it? Has to borrow all the clothes and even the suitcase from her best friend because the only clothes she owns are hoodies? Has to avoid the guy she has a crush on because he doesn’t know she’s a 17-year old high school student but believes she’s a post-doc in her mid-twenties? It was like writing about Cinderella going to the ball except there was a lot more than a romance at stake.

I rewrote the ending a few times because I couldn’t decide whether to sew it all up or make it an invitation for the novel’s sequel, which is called Academy One. In the end, I decided to sew up one set of Kira’s problems and then push her into a whole new set, ones we will see resolved in the sequel.

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

While I’m certainly not super-smart like Kira, I have a few things in common with her. Or at least, I did when I was a teenager.

First, like Kira, I was the daughter of a single parent who became ill early in her life. During high school, my family went through significant financial difficulties and we lost our house. Due to illness, my mother moved out of state to live with my grandparents. I didn’t follow her. Instead, I spent my senior year working all hours at restaurants and fast-food chains, babysitting in between those shifts. Like Kira, I worried all the time about debt collectors and school administrators. I knew I was supposed to get good grades but, like Kira, I had a singular gift that didn't always extend to every subject. However, that gift sustained me through the hardest of times. In my case, I could write. There were a few very important people who believed in me, including my mother for that matter, and made it very clear that if I was going to succeed in life I had to avoid what Kira’s mother calls “the great downhill”. That is, the cycle of poverty that can set in for so many kids in similar circumstances.

Visit Marti Leimbach's website.

My Book, The Movie: Dragonfly Girl.

The Page 69 Test: Dragonfly Girl.

--Marshal Zeringue

Emilya Naymark

Emilya Naymark was born in a country that no longer exists, escaped with her parents, lived in Italy for a bit, and ended up in New York, which promptly became a love and a muse.

She studied art and was lucky enough to illustrate numerous publications before transitioning to the digital world.

She has a particular fascination with psychological thrillers, crime, and suspense. All the dark stuff. So that’s what she writes.

In her other life, she is a web developer and designer, an illustrator, and an artist.

Naymark's new novel is Hide in Place.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I think coming up with Hide in Place, the title, took longer than writing the novel. I’m kidding (not really). What I really wanted to call it was Minor Threat, but that would have been impossible—first, because it’s the name of a very famous punk hardcore band, and second, because it refers to my secondary protagonist, Alfie, the minor in the book. That title wasn’t thrilling enough. It wasn’t about my undercover detective. It implied something minor.

I recruited an army of friends and acquaintances to come up with a title for me. Dinner conversations, lunch conversations, Facebook threads, dozens of suggestions sent to my publisher. Nothing. When my agent suggested Hide in Place and my publisher accepted it, I was so happy I could have danced on the ceiling.

It's a great title because it refers to the way all the characters are playing a role. My undercover detective adopts alternate personas, my teenager tries on different behaviors to see which fits. My confidential informant hides in plain sight, and my detective’s ex-partner hides everything.

What's in a name?

Sometimes it takes me a really long time to settle on a character’s name, and sometimes the character is born fully named. Laney Bird and her son Alfie came to me right away. Laney means “bright, shining one,” and Alfie means “wise counsel.” I always intended Laney to be extremely good at her detective work, though she can be utterly clueless in her personal life. And Alfie, though he’s clueless in his own way, is determined to find his place in the world and goes about it in, what I think is, an intelligent way.

I do have a funny story about one of my supporting characters, a detective in the small town of Sylvan where the story takes place. I originally named him Rob, but then changed my mind and renamed him Ed. Here’s a piece of advice—when you rename your character via a search and replace function, make sure you turn case sensitivity on, or you will end up with a manuscript full of pEdlems. Just sayin’.

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

I think my teenage self would be pleasantly surprised I wrote a novel at all, since as a teenager my goal was to become a famous artist (though even then I suspected commercial art was more my speed). Having said that, I happily dabbled in writing as a teenager and won a place in a NY city-wide playwriting competition in high school. My reading and writing tastes at the time tended to science fiction, horror, and existential avant garde, but I liked thrillers as well.

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

The beginning came to me right away, and I knew the ending as well. However, there are endings and there are endings. There is an ending to the story itself, and there is the last chapter. Those are not always the same thing. I had to add an extra chapter after I thought I was done because I didn’t quite complete the full circle 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?

Laney shares my complete devotion to my child and a tendency to romanticize the people she loves. Alfie shares way more traits with me than is comfortable to reveal. In order to properly get into a character’s head, I need to be able to identify with at least some of their personality traits. I couldn’t write someone alien to me.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Family, of course. Everyone I write about is either me, my family members, or my friends, cut up, thrown into the air, and reassembled into something new.

Music! Although I need absolute silence when I write, music has had more of an effect on my creative output than anything else I can imagine.

In Hide in Place, Alfie develops an interest in fire. He studies it, respects it, plays with it. This interest would never have occurred to me if I hadn’t been a rabid Rammstein fan.

Laney listens to classic rock and Alfie is a musician himself with a wide-ranging knowledge base of everything from classical, to Big Band, to dancehall and EDM (much like me).

Visit Emilya Naymark's website.

The Page 69 Test: Hide in Place.

My Book, The Movie: Hide in Place.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ashley Schumacher

Ashley Schumacher is a young adult author with a degree in creative writing from the University of North Texas. She lives in a small town with her antisocial but lovable husband and more books than is strictly necessary. When she's not reading or writing, you can find her belting Disney or Broadway songs, protecting her snacks from her greedy golden retriever, hand embroidering, or playing Mario Kart. Amelia Unabridged is her first novel. She lives in Dallas, Texas.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I was told very early in my pursuit of traditional publishing that the powers that be are more of an influence on titles than anything else. I had friends who warned that they had held onto a beloved title with both hands only to have it wrenched from their grasp, so I was very hesitant to let myself really love any title lest I should lose it.

Amelia Unabridged was actually courtesy of my husband after a joint brainstorming session. It represents the book beautifully, I think, bringing the main character Amelia right up against a literary term and hinting that stories will be a large part of the novel itself. I’m thrilled the title stood the test of time.

What's in a name?

Names play an important part in Amelia Unabridged, especially when it comes to N. E. Endsley, the mysterious author of the book series with which the main character, Amelia, is obsessed. What people call him—Nolan, Endsley, N. E. Endsley—indicates his role in that relationship. His relationship with Amelia changes over the course of the story, and thus what she calls him also changes from beginning to end.

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

I don’t think she’d be surprised at all. This book has touchstones and hallmarks of stories and books I’ve loved since childhood. I hope teenage me would be pleased with my writing progress, but beyond that, I think she would be unsurprised that the themes in Amelia Unabridged echo the books I’ve read and loved over the course of my life.

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

I always know where my stories begin and therefore often find that the endings change and evolve along with my characters. In Amelia’s case, I had a pretty good idea of how her story was going to end, which is why I like to think of the prologue and epilogue as bookends of each other.

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

I can’t speak for all writers, but in order to connect with the characters I’m writing, I need to put an aspect of myself into their personalities. Even if these traits are stretched and distorted so they no longer resemble me, I find I need that personal connection in order to understand the character fully. For Amelia, she got my love of books and her way of using the stories she’s read to shape the world around her. For Nolan, he got my fear of disappointing others, though his fear is far greater than my own.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Most of my writing is influenced by sources other than books. I am intrigued with how people talk to each other when they think no one else is listening, how people move in the world when they think they’re alone versus when they are in a crowd. Eavesdropping and, when I can’t hear nearby conversations, making up what someone is saying based on body language and facial expressions might be my favorite non-writing writing exercise.

Visit Ashley Schumacher's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kateřina Tučková

photo credit: Lenka Hatašová

Kateřina Tučková is a Czech playwright, publicist, biographer, art historian, exhibition curator, and bestselling author of Gerta and The Žítková Goddesses. She has won several literary awards, including the Magnesia Litera Award (for both Gerta and The Žítková Goddesses), the Brno City Award for literature, the Josef Škvorecký Award, and the Czech Bestseller Award. Tučková is also the recipient of the Freedom, Democracy, and Human Rights Award by the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, and of the Premio Libro d’Europa at the Book Fair in Salerno, Italy. Between 2015 and 2018, she was a founder and first president of the Meeting Brno festival, focusing on international and intercultural dialogue. Kateřina Tučková currently lives in Prague and Brno, Czech Republic. Her books have been translated into seventeen languages. Gerta is her first to be translated into English.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The book, which American readers can read under the title Gerta, in its original language bears a much more explicit title – Vyhnání Gerty Schnirch [The Expulsion of Gerta Schnirch]. In a Czech context, the German name of the title character immediately raises several questions: Why was a German girl expelled from a country inhabited by Czechs? Was she guilty of some offence? Did she deserve her punishment? What happened to her? Using the second half of the twentieth century as a backdrop, I then offer an answer that is a criticism of collective guilt, which after the end of World War II was brought down on the heads of even those who were innocent. Many of them paid with their lives – in the so-called Brno Death March in May of 1945, some 1,700 women, children and elderly persons died and were buried in a mass grave about which nothing was known for over forty years.

What's in a name?

I named my heroine Gerta in memory of one of the victims who didn’t survive the Death March. The Schnirch family was also deported, but there was no Gerta among them. Although the story in the book mirrors events that really happened, it is not a biographical narrative about a concrete person.

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

My teenage self would probably not be surprised by the kind of literature I write because I’ve always inclined toward historical novels that by nature don’t tend to be particularly cheerful. What certainly would have been a surprise, though, was that writing about the tragedy of post-war settlements between Czechs and Germans would lead me to become a researcher, digging through archives for secret reports, and an investigative journalist, searching for a mass grave in the fields outside of Brno. Writing this novel led me through several professions.

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

Definitely beginnings. I return to them often and I rewrite them, whereas the final chapters, those I typically enjoy. By then I know all of the characters in the book well enough so that the last chapter tends to be just a beautiful and poignant farewell dance.

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

Gerta’s story is based on real events and there are appearances by concrete historical figures. Although the title character is fictional, I wrote about her with an awareness of how women who found themselves in her situation experienced the given circumstances. I didn’t consciously project myself into any of the heroines in Gerta, however, I was so deeply immersed in their thoughts, desires and dreams, that I can’t say for sure that on some pages of the book we didn’t merge.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I would say most of all the environment. In Brno, where Gerta’s story unfolds, there are still neighborhoods where it’s obvious at first glance that something strange must have happened there in the past. This was actually how I came up with the idea of writing Gerta’s story in the first place – when, at the age of 22, I moved into my own apartment, I discovered that a girl of the same age had been driven out of it under dramatic circumstances, regardless of the fact that she came from a mixed Czech-German family, had a six-month-old baby, and had not demonstrably participated in wartime events in any way. Even so, she wasn’t spared punishment for the name she had been born with. There was no way I could leave that alone!

Visit Kateřina Tučková's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Marshall Ryan Maresca

Marshall Ryan Maresca is a fantasy and science-fiction writer, author of the Maradaine Saga: Four braided series set amid the bustling streets and crime-ridden districts of the exotic city called Maradaine, which includes The Thorn of Dentonhill, A Murder of Mages, The Holver Alley Crew and The Way of the Shield, and a newly released dieselpunk fantasy, The Velocity of Revolution. He is also the co-host of the podcast Worldbuilding for Masochists, and has been a playwright, an actor, a delivery driver and an amateur chef. He lives in Austin, Texas with his family.

My Q&A with Maresca:

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

I struggle a lot with titles, to be honest. With a lot of my other novels, the titles were very fluid in the development process. Sometimes I’m not 100% sure what a book is really about, and thus what the title should be, until the draft is done.

But with The Velocity of Revolution, a novel about cycle riders who race through the streets as part of a rebellion to throw off a colonial yoke? That title— a term used in math and physics-- came to me early on and was perfect. You’re going to get speed. You’re going to get a revolution.

What's in a name?

So, my central character, Wenthi Tungét, goes undercover with the name Renzi Llionorco, and the names “Wenthi" and “Renzi" were designed to be the “same” name from two different cultures, with different root languages and different phonemic inventories. The same name, but both so much about where they come from. Wenthi, from the culture and language of the colonizers, combined with a family name that, while an important family name in Ziaparr, is also from this foreign culture that has left its bootprints all over Ziaparr. “Renzi Llionorco” becomes the name he might have had, the person he might have been, were his country not currently occupied by a colonizing force.

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

Radically. Like, my Maradaine series, he would have been surprised and thrilled at. They are, frankly, exactly the books he wanted back then. But this book, I’ve got to be honest, he’s not ready for. He’s still in the 80s, in somewhat of a sheltered bubble, so the idea of a queernorm world like this, where all sorts of sexualities and polycule families aren’t just accepted but treated as the cultural norm? He’s never seen anything like that. It would shock him, and he wouldn’t be sure how to react. But he’ll get there, though. Trust me.

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

Beginnings are always harder, figuring out how to on-ramp the worldbuilding, jump right into the story in a way that engages but also gets the reader up to the speed you want them to be at. With endings, I’ve always found it’s a process that by the time I get to writing the ending, it’s all very much done in my head, and it’s a matter of just getting it out of my fingertips.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

With this book, food is such a critical influence, and the opportunities I’ve had over the years to explore the cuisines of Mexico and Latin America, especially learning through the work of chefs like Roberto Santibañez, has been instrumental. If you aren’t ordering tacos while reading this book, I may have done something wrong.

Visit Marshall Ryan Maresca's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Velocity of Revolution.

My Book, The Movie: The Velocity of Revolution.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sam Taylor

Sam Taylor grew up in Arizona's desert and now lives among Connecticut's trees. She writes fantasy novels for teenagers, and magic is always at the heart of her stories. (What world isn't better with a bit of magic?)

For her writing, Taylor has won the Tassy Walden Award for New Voices in Children's Literature and twice received the Young Adult Romance Writers of America Rosemary Award. She's worked as a proofreader, copywriter, and instructor of university writing courses before deciding to write her own books.

Taylor's debut novel is We Are the Fire.

My Q&A with the author:

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

My editor, Emily Settle at Macmillan, came up with the title We Are the Fire. It’s partly inspired by some lyrics from the song “Missile” by Dorothy, which my editor said would be a great theme song for my book. And she’s right!

I loved this title the moment my editor suggested it because it had the bold, powerful, punchy vibe that I’d been searching for to draw readers into this story. In my book, the fire magic is forced onto the teen characters through alchemical transformations. And some of them—particularly Oksana—greatly struggle with what they’ve become. But winning the fight for their freedom starts with reclaiming themselves and repurposing these powers they didn’t choose to have. They truly have to become the fire.

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

It’s certainly much darker than anything I read as a teenager and would have expected to write! Teen Sam would be quite shocked and maybe even a little overwhelmed by this book. (Teen Sam also had a lot to learn about herself and the world.) But I’d have absolutely loved my cover, and I think a part of me would have been very proud and awed to know I’d write such a bold and fierce story.

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

I rewrote the beginning of We Are the Fire many more times than the ending, so I’d have to say beginnings. Though I tend to have a lot more energy and momentum while writing story beginnings, as a fantasy writer, it’s challenging to figure out how to introduce readers to the worldbuilding: what information to include in those first chapters, what to hold back for later, how to pace everything in, and how to present the characters’ feelings toward their world and their conflicts with it.

I’ve lost count how many times I rewrote that first chapter in particular; it underwent some major changes until the line edits stage with my editor. When I finally landed on the current opening—Oksana and Pran witnessing the Scarlet Embers attack and rebellion—it felt so obvious, so right, I wasn’t sure how I hadn’t figured that out before! But it’s a truth many writers come to terms with: you have to write a lot of the wrong words before you uncover the right ones.

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

I definitely see a lot of myself in Pran, for good and for ill: especially his ambition, his thirst to prove himself, and doing what it takes to succeed. Though thankfully, I’m not pitted against such dire circumstances, and therefore I’m not faced with the gut-wrenching choices he must make. I’m just trying to launch a writing career, and therefore my scheming consists of spotting out new ways to promote my debut novel (released during a pandemic, alas). But like Oksana, I also struggle to balance of taking care of others while holding true to my own dreams and hopes for myself.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Lots of music! It always helps to listen to music while I write; that can easily transport me to the mood of each scene. The movie score-esque group Two Steps from Hell fit particularly well with many moments in my book.

I also love to cook and bake foods inspired by my writing. Eating a slice of spiced cake with cardamom buttercream while working on revisions for this book was an excellent treat.

And visiting a historic alchemy lab and museum within Heidelberg Castle in Germany was an inspiring experience. It helped to see real tools that had been used by alchemists in our world, so I could better visualize the alchemy for my story’s world.

Visit Sam Taylor's website.

The Page 69 Test: We Are the Fire.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nancy Johnson

A native of Chicago’s South Side, Nancy Johnson worked for more than a decade as an Emmy-nominated, award-winning television journalist at CBS and ABC affiliates nationwide. A graduate of Northwestern University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she lives in downtown Chicago and manages brand communications for a large nonprofit. The Kindest Lie is her first book.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The title of the book works on multiple levels. The Kindest Lie centers on Ruth Tuttle, a successful, Black chemical engineer who has been harboring a secret—she gave birth to a baby when she was just seventeen and left him behind in the dying Indiana factory town where she grew up. The title reflects the lies she’s told herself over the years about outrunning her past. When she returns to her hometown to search for her son, she discovers that her grandmother and brother have been lying to her as well in an effort to ensure her success. Often, these well-meaning lies are borne out of love and expectations. Also, the title works on the macro level—America has been lying to itself for centuries, pretending to be more honorable and just than it really is.

What's in a name?

Names carry great significance in my novel. In the first chapter, we learn that Mama insisted that her grandmother be named Ruth. For one, it’s biblical, but more importantly this grandmother believed that a racially ambiguous name like Ruth would at least get her granddaughter to the interview.

Midnight is the surprising nickname for the 11-year-old white boy who figures prominently in the narrative. Adrift and looking for connection, Midnight attaches himself to a group of Black and brown boys from school and immediately he becomes known as the little white boy who wants to be Black. That’s why his friends gave him this nickname and he’s never sure if the kids he desperately wants to like him actually do or if they’re just making fun of him.

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

My teenage self would be very surprised that I’ve centered Black characters in my novel. In high school, I rarely saw myself reflected on the page and I didn’t realize that my experience and understanding of America were important enough to be part of the literary canon. Obviously, I hadn’t read enough to know the literary greatness of Black authors who preceded me.

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

Beginnings are easier for me to write than endings. In the first paragraph of my novel, I tell you that Ruth Tuttle gave birth at age seventeen and pulled away from her little shotgun house in Indiana without her baby. Right away, you learn the secret she’s been carrying all these years. What you don’t know is how that secret will impact her marriage, the life of her son, and that of Midnight, a boy she meets who’s untethered and vulnerable.

I struggled to find the right way to end the book. I didn’t want a neat, tidy wrap-up. The story began with the palpable hope Ruth and her friends felt the night Barack Obama was elected president. I knew I wanted a hopeful ending that also felt earned. Ultimately, at the close of this book, there’s ambiguity and you don’t know what the future will hold for some of the characters. The ending felt real and inevitable to me.

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

I identify strongly with Ruth as a professional Black woman who wears a mask and code switches to navigate predominantly white spaces before going “home” to the Black community. One might think that Midnight would have been the most challenging character for me to write because of the differences in age and race; however, I connected strongly with his journey. As a kid who was bullied relentlessly, I often stood on the outside of things. I brought my own isolation and desire to belong to his character.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

The 2008 presidential election inspired this book. So many people were hopeful because America had elected its first Black president. While I understood the sense of hope and shared in it, I recognized the fallacy of a post-racial America. The occupant of the White House had changed, but the racial divide remained deeper than ever. The Great Recession left Black and white families out of work and that scarcity exacerbated racial tensions in the fictitious town of Ganton. I set out to examine the interior lives of Ruth, Midnight, and their family members at a historic moment in America. I didn’t realize it in the beginning, but through those characters, I was also telling the story of America.

Visit Nancy Johnson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Gwen Florio

Gwen Florio grew up in a farmhouse filled with books and a ban on television. After studying English at the University of Delaware, she began a thirty-plus year career in journalism that has taken her around the country and to more than a dozen countries, including several conflict zones.

Her first novel in the Lola Wick mystery series, Montana won the Pinckley Prize for Crime Fiction and the High Plains Book Award, and was a finalist for the Shamus Award, an International Thriller Award and a Silver Falchion Award. She has since released four other books in the Lola Wick series and one standalone novel.

Florio's new book, Best Laid Plans, is the first installment of a new mystery series.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Best Laid Plans is actually the first time a title I gave a manuscript was still on the book when it was published, something that makes me inordinately happy. I think it lasted because it works in three ways: It’s a play on my protagonist’s name, Nora Best. It’s the title of the book that Nora was supposed to write about her cross-country trip with her husband in their new Airstream trailer, a book about choosing adventure over the well-planned, career-climbing lives so many people lead. Most of all, it’s a nod to the fact that Nora’s own best-laid plans go straight to hell within the first few pages of the book.

What's in a name?

I had Nora’s name before I chose the book’s title, although obviously the one led to the other. I borrowed Nora’s last name from my then-editor at the newspaper where I was working at the time. Kathy Best is a nationally known talent and one of the (ahem) best editors with whom I’ve had the privilege of working. She also has a terrific name and graciously agreed to let me use it for my protagonist.

My other favorite name in the book is Forever, the “trail name” of the outdoorswoman who befriends Nora. Forever is a through-hiker, someone who hikes the entire length of the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail and the like. I gave her the nickname because of her preference for forever being in the outdoors, rather than constrained by the rules of towns and society. She’s utterly self-reliant and I admit to envying her competence in the outdoors.

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

My teenage self would be delighted and also surprised by the subject matter. I was a flashlight-under-the-blankets reader – still am, actually, although now I read books on my phone into the night – and I couldn’t imagine a better life than being a writer. But I figured I’d write books about horses: think Walter Farley’s Black Stallion series, Marguerite Henry’s books and (as I got older) Dick Francis’ novels. I did put a horse in my first novel, Montana, an Appaloosa named Spot. However, although I’ve always read mysteries, my younger self couldn’t have imagined doing the sort of plotting required – a feeling that comes back to me whenever I bog down in the middle of a manuscript.

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

I nearly always know both the beginning and ending of a novel when I start. As I’ve often said, it’s the 89,000 words in the middle that are the problem. Knowing the ending really helps when I’m stuck in the murky middle – it's the light at the end of a very long tunnel, guiding me on my way. That said, I’ve changed endings on two different novels, once at the suggestion of an editor and once at my agent’s suggestion. One change was fairly minor; the other significant, but each made the novel in question stronger – the best possible outcome.

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 are generally far braver than I. They take crazy risks! Sometimes, as I type, I find myself muttering, much as one does at a scary movie, “Don’t open that door! Don’t sass the man with the gun! Can’t you tell that guy is going to do you wrong?” With Best Laid Plans, I deliberately chose an older protagonist because of the freedom afforded women whose kids are grown, their career boxes checked, and (in my protagonist’s case) are newly single. The idea of someone who’s shed the responsibilities of her thirties and forties and now can do whatever she wants was enormously attractive, and something with which, to an extent, I can identify. I just have more sense than to backtalk the bad guy.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I grew up on a wildlife refuge and nature has always been extremely important in my novels. In fact, most generally started with a particular place, and then I came up with a plot that revolved around something that might happen in that place. For years I had a job that required roaming around the Rocky Mountain West, where many of my novels including Best Laid Plans are set. While many people think of mean city streets when it comes to crime fiction, I find the vast empty spaces of the West infinitely more intimidating. Out here, if you get into trouble, it could take police or a sheriff a very long time to reach you. You’ve got to rely on your own skills to survive.

Visit Gwen Florio's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Gwen Florio & Nell.

My Book, The Movie: Best Laid Plans.

The Page 69 Test: Best Laid Plans.

--Marshal Zeringue

Allison Epstein

photo credit: Kristin DiMaggio

Allison Epstein earned her M.F.A. in fiction from Northwestern University and a B.A. in creative writing and Renaissance literature from the University of Michigan. A Michigan native, she now lives in Chicago, where she works as a copywriter. When not writing, she enjoys good theater, bad puns, and fancy jackets.

Epstein new book, A Tip for the Hangman, is her first novel.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The goal of the title was to sweep the reader up into the dangerous world of Elizabethan espionage: full of secrets, impossible choices, and people who can be swayed for the right price. A Tip for the Hangman is a pun to that effect. (My friends know I'm an incorrigible pun-lover.) On one level, my spies are searching for heretics and traitors, so the secrets they uncover will tip off the hangman about his next victim. On another, it was customary at the time for condemned prisoners to pay a monetary tip to the executioner—a weird, grim factoid that hints at how some of my characters seal their own fates.

I love the title, but it was a mess getting there: my team and I had a document with 75 options, and we went back and forth for weeks. The working title was The Devil and the Rose, which my agent loved but others thought wasn’t specific enough. Now, though, I can’t imagine this book with any other name.

What's in a name?

Since 90% of the characters in my book are real historical figures, I didn’t have to think much about naming them! In the case of Kit Marlowe, the name fortunately had the perfect feel for the character I was shaping. “Kit,” as a nickname for Christopher, feels both of-the-period and modern. It rolls off the tongue like a stage name—perfect for a playwright and a spy. And the single syllable feels full of energy—perfect for a fast-thinking liar, and also great to snarl at a guy who’s just done something stupid.

There’s a drawback to this approach, though. 60% of sixteenth-century men had the same three first names, which is why my book has five Thomases and five Roberts. There’s one scene with so many men named Thomas it almost broke me and my copy editor both.

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

I read mostly high fantasy as a teen, so I might have expected my book to feature more elves and/or vampires than it does. Then again, I was a Shakespeare nerd even in high school, and I have fond memories of getting cast as Iago in junior-year English, so the turn to Elizabethan historical fiction does track. The way A Tip for the Hangman thinks about sexuality probably would have surprised me more, as mine wasn’t something I figured out until much later.

To be honest, teenage me would also be surprised there’s cursing and sex in this book. I was a very well-behaved young person.

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

It’s funny, but the beginning and the end of A Tip for the Hangman barely changed from draft to draft. It always started and ended where it now starts and ends, and the last three chapters in particular are virtually unchanged from when I wrote them at one in the morning six years ago. It’s the darn middle that gets me. There are thirteen separate drafts of pages 175 to 275 saved on my computer right now. I won't explain exactly why in order to preserve my authorly mystique, but suffice to say I had to write it wrong many times before I could write it right.

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

Oh, there’s a lot of me in Kit, for sure. What is it people say, the first novel is always autobiographical? Mine isn’t exactly—for one thing, I would be a really awful spy—but Kit and I are motivated by a lot of the same things. We share a desire for recognition and respect that we’re both a little ashamed to admit, and his complicated relationship with authority is definitely drawn in part from mine. We’re worlds different too: it’s great fun for a shy person to write a character who wouldn’t know shyness if it shook him warmly by the hand.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I tell people the two pieces of art that shaped A Tip for the Hangman the most were the movies A Knight’s Tale and Shakespeare in Love. I love historical fiction that smashes together new genres and makes the past feel deliberately and immediately modern. (Do not get me started on Shakespeare in Love’s portrayal of Marlowe, though. That’s a whole separate post.) I also listened to an embarrassing amount of Hozier while writing, which deepened and reinforced my love for somewhat-spooky religious imagery.

Visit Allison Epstein's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Tip for the Hangman.

The Page 69 Test: A Tip for the Hangman.

--Marshal Zeringue