Dani Shapiro

Some time back, Barnes & Noble interviewed Dani Shapiro, author of a bestselling memoir and five acclaimed novels including Black & White, new this month from Knopf.

Part of the Q & A:

What was the book that most influenced your life or your career as a writer?

When I was in graduate school, I took a course in 19th Century literature that changed my life as a writer. I had a gifted professor who taught me to read very differently than I had before. Until then, I had read novels as a reader, with a somewhat academic bent. But in this course, the professor (whose name was Ilja Wachs, and to whom I eventually dedicated my second novel) taught us to read as writers. It was as if a light bulb had gone off in my head. For the first time, I began to understand that metaphor, similie, foreshadowing and such were part of the creative process -- that the writer wasn't necessarily maneuvering and making decisions as much as following unconscious motivations. The book I was reading at the time the light bulb went off was Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. I read it three or four times, and it also led me to read about 19th Century French history in order to understand the political and social factors that might have been influencing Flaubert -- since writers cannot help but be affected by the times in which they live.

Read the entire interview and visit Dani Shapiro's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

L.C. and R.L. Hayden

Earlier this year Julia Buckley interviewed the writers L.C. and R.L. Hayden. Part of the exchange:

L. C., you’ve written many books, and the latest is called Why Casey Had to Die. That’s a catchy title. Why DID Casey have to die? Is it because he came to bat and struck out?

Cute! I like your answer — so much more original than mine. I’m taking the fifth in here. The answer to that is an integral part of the story and the answer is revealed at the very end. All I can say is, read and find out.

How did you get started in the mystery-writing biz?
Writing is something I’ve always enjoyed doing. I feel life is a mystery, so I’m fascinated with the concept of mysteries. Naturally, when it came time to write the novel, I chose the mystery genre — haven’t regretted it at all. But before I wrote mysteries, I freelanced for magazines. There’s an interesting story as to how that came about.

While in college, I had two term papers to do. One was for a professor who was known for his strict rules. I spent all my time doing the paper for him. I finished the paper four days before it was due. It was then that I remembered I had another term paper to write. I grabbed my finished paper, along with its note cards and bibliography cards. I dashed off to the library. I began by re-reading the paper. I found two typing errors (days before computers, sigh.) I made a mental note to retype those two pages.

I set everything to the side and began the research for the second paper. At 2:00 AM when the library closed, I grabbed everything and headed home. The next morning I reached for the finished term paper so I could retype those two pages. It was then I remembered I had set the paper to the side and left it there. I ran to the library, but it was gone: the paper, the outline, the thesis statement, the note cards, the bibliography cards. Everything. Just like that. Gone.

I knew if I approached the professor and told him what happened, he’d say “Tough luck. Paper is due Friday.” I had no choice but to redo it. Somehow in the next three days I redid the entire paper and finished the other paper.

When I got the papers back, on the paper I had to redo I got a C and it only had one comment: And you want to be a writer -- ha! On the other term paper, I got an A+ with the comment that this was publishable if I took off the footnotes and revised it. I went to the professor and he showed me the ins and outs of magazine writing. That was my first published work -- and I got to be a writer -- ha!

Read the entire interview.

Read the Page 69 Test: Why Casey Had to Die.

--Marshal Zeringue

Noria Jablonski

Daedalus Howell interviewed Noria Jablonski, author of Human Oddities, for the San Francisco Chronicle. The resulting article opens:

Writers are drawn to their craft for a variety of reasons -- some have a story that must be told, others do it for a buck. For Petaluma's Noria Jablonski, it was a nagging feeling.

"I had been teaching high school English in San Francisco for three years and I realized that I was a hypocrite. I was helping these students find their voices and tell their stories, but I had never done that for myself," reflects Jablonski, whose first collection of short stories, "Human Oddities," ($15) was released in October by Shoemaker & Hoard Publishers, an imprint of Avalon Publishing Group in Emeryville.

"I really hadn't had a chance to live my own life yet," says Jablonski, 35. "I had no ambitions to be a writer. I just wanted to teach. I knew that when I was 15 years old. ... And I did, I'm very goal-oriented."

When her goal became to be a writer, a determined Jablonski set her sights on graduate programs in writing. In her estimation, however, there was one stumbling block.

Read on to learn more about that "stumbling block."

The Page 69 Test: Human Oddities.

--Marshal Zeringue

Simon Wood

T-Zero interviewed Simon Wood, author of Accidents Waiting To Happen.

Part of their conversation:

TZ: What authors inspired you to write in the thriller/mystery genre?

SW: There are so many teachers who have nurtured my imagination that it would take me forever to list them all, but here's a few: James M. Cain gave me a dark heart, Raymond Chandler showed me how a man of principles acts, Reginald Hill taught me it's the little things that hurt the most, Jack Higgins showed me how to lie and make it sound like the truth, Robert Crais taught me to have a sense of humor in times of trouble, Ross MacDonald told me a hero can't be bought, but rented, Walter Mosley showed me having a heart will cost me, and Barbara Vine showed me obsession has a price.

Read the entire interview.

--Marshal Zeringue

Cait Murphy

Dave Studeman of The Hardball Times recently interviewed Cait Murphy, author of Crazy '08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History.

The first exchange from the Q & A:

THT: Let's start our conversation with a "softball": What is your background and what started your fascination with 1908?

Murphy: I work as an assistant managing editor at Fortune magazine, think of it as general assignment editor. Prior to that, I was a social policy and then energy correspondent at the Economist in London; and then an editorial page editor at the Asian Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong. But I have been a baseball fan longer than I have been a business writer. I inherited a love of the game from my father, who grew up a couple of long fly balls from Wrigley Field (Gabby Hartnett was an upstairs neighbor). I grew up playing in our backyard and on various local teams, including one year as one of the first girls to play Little League. I also played in college, an energetic if not particularly skilled second baseman. I am a Mets fan.

Read the entire interview.

Visit Cait Murphy's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Megan Abbott

Steve Allan interviewed Megan Abbott at "Noir Writer."

The opening exchange:

NoirWriter: THE SONG IS YOU is set in Hollywood. Why is tinsel town such a great setting for noir novels?

Abbott: Part of it is tradition. So much classic noir is set in LA that, by setting stories there, you can kind of write your way into that world. But I think a lot of is thematic. The whole concept of Hollywood as a dream factory, as celluloid fantasy, as a glossy scrim concealing a darker reality—that’s pretty perfect for noir, for all its themes of deception and betrayal. There’s also the tradition of California as the end of the frontier, as the land of milk and honey, the promised land. That works both ways for noir. You have the idea of all these desperate souls coming to this place to see their dreams realized, only to discover the dream is a lie. At the same time, though, located at the end of the frontier, there is this nihilistic quality to Los Angeles and Hollywood—it’s a dropping-off point. An awful terminus, like you see in Nathanael West, Horace McCoy. And of course there’s the glamour of Hollywood too. The famous nightclubs, the movie star scandals. That stuff is just fun to write about.

Read the entire interview.

(Hat tip to "The Rap Sheet.")

--Marshal Zeringue

Charlie Williams

Roger Morris recently interviewed fellow novelist Charlie Williams, author of the “Mangel Trilogy”: Deadfolk, Fags and Lager, and King of the Road, for "The Rap Sheet."

Part of their dialogue:

RM: There’s a lot of humor in these books. But it’s pretty dark, jet-black, in fact. It’s the kind of stuff that as a well-brought up, PC-indoctrinated North Londoner, I find myself laughing out loud at and then feeling terribly guilty about. So thanks for that. But it is tremendously liberating, though I imagine it can provoke pretty strong \negative reactions, as much of the humor revolves around people dying violently and casually. None of these deaths ever seems to trouble Royston too much, and that’s part of what’s funny, I think. Do they ever trouble Charlie Williams?

CW: Am I ever troubled by a fictional character dying? It’s easy to say “no, of course I’m not.” These people don’t exist. But I have been troubled on one or two occasions. You get close to the characters and you might want a better outcome for them. But am I troubled by the violent deaths? Not if I can get a laugh out of it. Also, like I say, it’s usually Blake (or the flow of thoughts and creativity, or whatever you want to call it) who decides that someone dies (or accidentally kills them), so I don’t have to feel bad. Of course I feel bad if someone gets killed in real life, or even just hurt. Especially when it’s not even funny.

Read the entire interview.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jennifer McMahon

Mia King recently interviewed Jennifer McMahon, author of Promise Not To Tell.

The opening exchange:

What was your inspiration for Promise Not To Tell?

I was living way back in the woods of Vermont with no running water, electricity or phone. It could get scary out there at night. Sounds play tricks. You tell yourself that what you hear is an owl, but some part of your brain is screaming, “No, it’s a serial killing clown blowing a slide whistle. Now run for your life, you idiot!”

Every day, I’d walk down the old railroad bed that bordered our property and if I went far enough, I’d pass a group of ruined buildings that locals call The Hippie Shacks. Built in the late 60’s/early 70’s they now stood abandoned, covered in moss, roofs collapsed. I’d imagine the hope that went into them; the promise of living simply, going back to the land. I wanted to write a story that captured both the creepiness of living way out in the woods and the sorrow of those abandoned buildings. I knew right away that it would be a ghost story. I just wasn’t sure how to get started or who my ghost would be.

Then, one day, I was driving by a vegetable farm down the road from us, and saw a dead crow hung up in the center of a field. I’d heard some farmers did this to keep other crows from pecking newly planted seeds out of the dirt, but I’d never seen in it practice. For days, weeks, that crow hung there, quietly rotting. When I sat down to start my story, I began with the image of the crow. Then, from nowhere, a hand began to stroke my dead bird. The dirty hand of a little girl. And I knew I had my ghost.

Read the entire interview.

--Marshal Zeringue

John Banville/ Benjamin Black

At Newsweek's website: "John Banville Confronts Benjamin Black…. or how an alter ego explains things to a noted author."

The prefatory remarks to John Banville's interview with his crime-writing alter ego:

April 13, 2007 - I find him living — I was about to write holed up — in an anonymous apartment building just across the river from Temple Bar, that God’s little acre laughingly known as Dublin’s Latin Quarter, and such landmarks as the Clarence Hotel, owned by Bono. This is a version of modern-day, tigerish Ireland I would not have associated him with. The quay on which his apartment building stands is named Bachelor’s Walk, which conjures swaggering Regency rakes, and this is a bit better, though not quite it, either. Fog, coal grit, whiskey fumes and stale cigarette smoke, these are the atmospherics of Benjamin Black’s Dublin.

He buzzes me in through the front door and I climb three silent flights of stairs. The silence tells me this is a childless establishment. Children do not figure in BB’s world except as victims, rejects, pawns in an appalling power-game. But immediately I have to make an adjustment: BB is not Quirke, the troubled and troubling hero of BB’s first novel, “Christine Falls.” For all I know BB may be a pipe-smoking family man in carpet slippers and a Fair Isle jumper.

He is not.

The apartment is small, and would be neat except for the books crowding everywhere. The window of the room that is his study looks into a courtyard with grass and not quite authentic-looking trees. “When I came here the building was brand-new and I was one of the first tenants. In that apartment opposite” — he points — “there was a girl who used to wander about her room naked in the mornings. She must have thought there was no one living on this side. I’m surprised she didn’t spot my bloodshot eye at the window. Or maybe she was an exhibitionist and happy to be watched.”

We are, of course, coevals, BB and I. How to describe him? Nowhere near as big as Quirke, the bull-man whom no woman can resist. As he crosses between me and the window—he is rarely still, preferring I suppose to make a moving target—he seems to me peculiarly blurred. He is less himself than the shadow of someone else. Does this explain the unease I sense in him? He avoids my eye; I suspect he avoids everyone’s eye.

Read the entire article.

--Marshal Zeringue

Hailey Lind

From a Q & A with Hailey Lind, author of Shooting Gallery and Feint of Art:

Q: Why the interest in art fakes?

Hailey: I learned to paint by copying other artists, primarily classical artists. I then got interested in “ageing” my paintings so that they would look genuinely old. A visitor to my Berkeley studio once asked me if a little Vermeer I had painted was real (I told her if it were, I would have sold it and moved to the Bahamas years ago!) But I started thinking about the line between forging for profit and copying for fun; and about the temptations for starving artists to cross that line.

Read the entire Q & A.

See: The Page 69 Test: Shooting Gallery.

--Marshal Zeringue