Jennifer Michael Hecht

Jennifer Michael Hecht is the author of four history books, including the best-selling Doubt: A History, and three volumes of poetry. Her work has won major awards in intellectual history and in poetry. Hecht teaches in the Creative Writing Program at New York University and The Graduate Writing Program of The New School University.

Hecht's new book is Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It. From her Q & A at Former People:

C. Derick Varn: Stay was prompted by the lost of two friends, both poets. Why do you think poets are so given to take particular social contagion?

Jennifer Michael Hecht: I don’t think they are, exactly. Most of all I think pain comes first and draws people into writing (which actually helps them live longer and happier than they would have). People who experienced trauma or childhood abuse or neglect come to literature to think about pain and meaning. Life is painful for most everyone, but to dedicate your life to writing into the problem requires an unusually deep need.

The first question is do author’s kill themselves more than the rest of the population? We don’t know. A study discussed in a Forbes article suggests we don’t; a study examined in The Atlantic, says authors do it twice as often as the general public. There are a lot of variables to testing this, so it’s hard to get consensus without a lot of different studies.

As for poets in particular, on the website TopTens, Shell Harris picks “Top 10 Authors Who Have Killed Themselves,” which I have annotated with their principle genre: Ernest Hemingway (novels), Virginia Woolf (novels), Anne Sexton (poetry), Ryunosuke Akutagawa (short stories), Karin Boyle (poetry), John Berryman (poetry); Richard Brautigan (novels), Hunter S. Thompson (journalism), Jerzy Kosinski (novels), Yukio Mishima (novels and plays).

That’s three poets to seven other kinds of writers, which doesn’t seem extreme. (Check out Harris’s short bios and you’ll see some bizarre and awful childhoods.)

Since none of these studies or estimates are sufficient to an answer, I’ll give you my impression. Personally, in the last twenty years I think I have heard of more poet suicides than other writers, but that that memory might be skewed because I knew quite a few of them personally (poets teach together, have festivals and conferences and joint readings, so we know each other – we’re completely mobbed up on facebook too). Someone who is part of the fiction world might remember it differently. I’ve asked poet and novelist Juliana Baggot and she said it seemed to her, too, that poets do it more and suggested it might be because of the low pay and solitary nature of writing poetry.

As I see it we are weird, pained, and want to be solitary before we get into poetry and that’s why we get into poetry. Yet the more I think about it, the more I have to admit that...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Jennifer Michael Hecht's website.

The Page 99 Test: Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It.

Writers Read: Jennifer Michael Hecht.

--Marshal Zeringue

Patience Bloom

Patience Bloom is a senior editor at Harlequin Books and focuses specifically on Harlequin Romantic Suspense, which gives her full license to indulge in her love of the thriller genre and all things suspense.

Her new book is Romance Is My Day Job: A Memoir of Finding Love at Last.

From Bloom's Q & A with Joelle Herr for BookPage:

How did the idea for the book come about?

I started writing Romance Is My Day Job as a stress-reliever six weeks before my wedding. Two years went by, and an agent—who became my agent—convinced me to polish the book and try to sell it. Why not? Sam and I have an extraordinary story. A reclusive 40-something romance editor unexpectedly reunites with the wild class clown of her high school years. That’s a pretty good romance.

What was the first romance novel that you ever read? How old were you and what did you think of it?

My first official romance novel was Phantom Marriage by Penny Jordan, followed immediately by Desire’s Captive. I didn’t realize there were books like this—just for me! I was 14 and reading romances when I should have been studying for exams. I remember Desire’s Captive more because the hero’s name was Nico, and after being such a grumpus through the entire book, he finally...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Patience Bloom's website.

The Page 99 Test: Romance Is My Day Job.

Writers Read: Patience Bloom.

My Book, The Movie: Romance Is My Day Job.

--Marshal Zeringue

Laura van den Berg

Laura van den Berg's latest book is The Isle of Youth: Stories.

From her Q & A with Michael Hafford at Interview magazine:

MICHAEL HAFFORD: In the opening story, "I Looked for You, I Called Your Name," the narrator talks about being "half-present, half-absent." I noticed this camera-type narrator running through six of the seven stories, with the exception of "The Greatest Escape." What led you to those more passive narrators?

LAURA VAN DEN BERG: I was having a conversation about first-person narration with my friend who's a writer, her name's Elliot Holt, and she made this great observation where the "I" is an "eye" that really resonated with me. I think of that first person as a roving camera, and you're seeing where they choose to let the lens fall. And that's one of the most interesting logical components of first person—what the character is choosing to reveal and what they conceal. The tension between what is shown and what is hidden. I think these characters are desperate to tell their story, desperate to show the reader something, desperate to tell the reader something true, but also equally desperate to...[read on]

Learn about Laura van den Berg's six favorite unconventional mystery novels.

Visit Laura van den Berg's website.

Writers Read: Laura van den Berg (January 2010).

--Marshal Zeringue

Gill Hornby

Gill Hornby's debut novel, The Hive, hit America in September 2013.

From her Q & A with Lisa O'Kelly in the Observer:

Is it nerve-racking, publishing your first novel when your brother is Nick Hornby and your husband is Robert Harris?

Yes, it's terrifying, and not just because there are bound to be comparisons. Apart from doing a bit of journalism, I've lived an extremely quiet life for 20 years, raising my children, and now I'm feeling exposed. This is so much more personal than writing a column in a newspaper. It's entirely you.

The Hive is about playground politics among a group of mothers who meet at the gates of a home counties primary school. Need I ask you, as a mother of four, where you got the the idea?

I think I've had the idea all my life, since I was aged seven in the school playground. The book is about queen bees, the rule of the clique, and what that does to us. There are queen bees like my main character Bea everywhere. Most start off quite nice but, as their power over the clique grows, other women get girl-crushes on them and indulge them until we find we've created a monster. Then it's: "We hate you, you're a bitch", and we start hovering around someone else. Power...[read on]

Follow Gill Hornby on Twitter.

--Marshal Zeringue

J.T. Ellison

J.T. Ellison is the New York Times bestselling author of eleven critically acclaimed novels, including The Final Cut with Catherine Coulter, When Shadows Fall, Edge of Black and A Deeper Darkness. Her work has been published in over twenty countries. Her novel The Cold Room won the ITW Thriller Award for Best Paperback Original and Where All The Dead Lie was a RITA® Nominee for Best Romantic Suspense. She lives in Nashville with her husband.

From Ellison's interview with Bookreporter.com’s Ray Palen:

Bookreporter.com: WHEN SHADOWS FALL is the third installment of your series starring Dr. Samantha “Sam” Owens. Why was it important for you to have this character make the transition from medical examiner to Georgetown academic? Is this an example of the old adage “those who can't do, teach,” or is this simply a new page in her personal history?

J.T. Ellison: A new page, certainly. Samantha is running from her past, running from her passion --- being a medical examiner --- into a place she thinks will be safe and where she will not have to be involved in law enforcement anymore. She’s wrong, of course. She realizes rather quickly she’s probably made a huge mistake, but she’s honor-bound to see it through. It’s a good place for her, though, since the idea of working in forensic pathology is too much for her anymore. This gives her a chance to shape the future. It’s a very symbolic choice for her, a woman who’s lost her children, reaching out to influence other people’s kids.

BRC: How did the tragic loss Sam suffered in the first book in the series, A DEEPER DARKNESS, shape who she is in WHEN SHADOWS FALL? How does this influence her decision-making process and judgment?

JTE: The loss of her family creates a completely new woman, one who doesn’t have the best judgment, one who makes mistakes. She was on such a safe, comfortable path before the floods, and suddenly she’s been pushed out into a different world, one she’s not at all prepared to handle. She manages, albeit with difficulty, to move on, and she’s now ready for...[read on]

Visit J.T. Ellison's website, or follow her on Twitter or Facebook.

The Page 69 Test: Edge of Black.

Writers Read: J. T. Ellison.

The Page 69 Test: When Shadows Fall.

My Book, The Movie: When Shadows Fall.

--Marshal Zeringue

Amy Shearn

Amy Shearn's first novel, How Far Is the Ocean from Here, was published in 2008. Her latest novel is The Mermaid of Brooklyn.

From the author's Q & A with Lucy Walton at Female First:

Why did you want to focus on parenthood in [The Mermaid of Brooklyn]?

Mothering small children is incredibly epic and surreal and magical and legendary all at the same time, but I didn’t feel like I had read that many great novels that dealt with early motherhood the way I was experiencing it. Being a mother really pushes you to your most extreme limits in every way – which is after all an interesting place for a character. Parenthood is so amazing and awful, so inspiring and exhausting, that I think every mother can relate to this idea of needing something slightly magical to get you through.

This book was inspired by your great-grandmother’s story, so please can you expand on this for us.

My great-grandmother Jenny was, in recent memory, a tiny, wizened crone known for being exceptionally mean. So I was fascinated when my grandmother said to me, as we were shopping for shoes for my wedding, “Did I ever tell you how a pair of shoes saved my mother’s life?” The story went thus: Jenny Lipkin, young and depressed, took off her shoes and prepared to jump off a bridge. Then she looked back at her shoes and thought that no, she didn’t want to leave them behind. She didn’t jump, she lived, and she eventually emigrated to Chicago with her ne’er-do-well on-again-off-again husband, and supported her three daughters with her virtuosic sewing, and because of all that I am here today. Jenny was a tough, strong lady, faced with problems most of us contemporary mothers have never even considered. I loved the idea that this fairy-tale-ish moment had changed the life of this woman, and it....[read on]

Visit Amy Shearn's website.

The Page 99 Test: How Far Is the Ocean from Here.

Writers Read: Amy Shearn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lee Child

Lee Child is the author of the Jack Reacher thrillers.

From his September 2013 Q & A with Nancie Clare for The Rap Sheet:

NC: Lyndsay Faye [Seven for a Secret] told me a funny story about a question you answered at the Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate about combating writer’s block. You said, “I’ll tell you how to combat writer’s block. Don’t be such a pretentious wanker. That’s how you combat writer’s block. What? Do truck drivers get ‘driver’s block’? ‘I don’t feel like driving my truck today.’” I wanted you to comment on that.

LC: Yeah, that’s how I feel. It’s difficult to talk about [writing] as a job, because people want to hear that it’s wonderfully joyful and creative and spontaneous and you just pluck this stuff out of the air. Which absolutely you do, and it absolutely is a wonderful, creative, just fabulous thing to do. But it is also a job and you have to take it seriously; you have to show up and do it. If you waited around for the muse to strike, you would be waiting around forever. There are many days when you don’t really feel like going to work--we’re all in the same boat. And my point was: everyone has a job, everyone has days when they don’t really want to go and do it, but you have to. A truck driver who doesn’t really feel like working today has no alternative. So he goes and gets in his truck and he starts the motor, clips his seat belt on, and those muscle memories kick in and off he goes. It’s the same thing for a writer. There are some days when you feel bad, you don’t want to do it, but you sit down, you boot up your computer, you open the file and the muscle memory gets you into it and you do your work.

Yeah, I feel people who talk about the muse and writer’s block and all these airy-fairy things ... they’re not serious. Especially for genre professionals, like us who are doing a book a year. It is a job and you have to do it. You’ve got to deliver. To complain about writer’s block is ...[read on]

Learn about Lee Child's hero from outside literature and the fictional character he would most like to have been.

--Marshal Zeringue

Christian Jungersen

Christian Jungersen is a Danish writer who has been published in more than 20 countries. His novels are Undergrowth, The Exception, and You Disappear. All of them have won major literary prizes and become bestsellers.

From his Q & A with Caroline Leavitt:

You Disappear explores how a brain injury can transform a person you thought you knew into a stranger. How did you research this? What surprised you in the research?

I got the idea for the book because I have an old school friend who’s now a psychiatrist. Whenever we would meet, I would hear stories from her work, and it struck me that her way of looking at people was very different from what I’m used to seeing in fiction. The kind of knowledge she has simply doesn’t inform fictional descriptions of people. Besides of course writing a page-turner readers would find relevant and thought provoking, I wanted to write a novel that tried to modernize the way we conceive of people in literature.

As part of my research, I got to know a variety of brain-damaged people and their families. I worked on this novel for almost five years, and several of these family members became my friends. I’ve grown quite close to some of them, and they’ve shared private details about living with someone who suffers from brain damage, details that I don’t think they’ve even shared with their best friends.

In the course of five years, this neurological world became my world. I traveled around hospitals and visited one expert after the other. The novel also features...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Christian Jungersen's website.

The Page 69 Test: You Disappear.

--Marshal Zeringue

Robert Lane

Novelist Robert Lane resides on the west coast of Florida. The Second Letter is his debut novel.

A brief Q & A with the author:

How would you complete this line: "You might well enjoy my book if you like..."?

…the TV series Castle and Suits. Like Castle, there is an element of danger and suspense, but that is the plot, not the story. Do not confuse plot with story. In Castle there is a continuing story that the characters are experiencing while pursuing criminals and brandishing badges and guns. (They also brandish heavy coats in the middle of the summer, but we’ll let that slide.) The underlying story ties one episode to another. The story, propelled by witty lines and engaging characters, creates continuity and cements the interest between the viewer and the show. The story maintains just enough element of suspense that a happy ending is not a forgone conclusion.

And Suits? Snappy, fast paced dialogue. An absolute joy to listen to. We hear words as we read. Why not make them fun? Why not a pace that threatens to leave you behind? I like dialogue that crackles and is slightly ahead of my general knowledge. Want realism? Read the manual on programming your garage door opener. You don’t take that to the beach.

If they make your book into a movie, who should direct it?

Lawrence Kasdan—Body Heat, Grand Canyon, The Big Chill—with a little help from Woody Allen (I know, but bear with me).

In Kasdan’s movies, there is a desperate pining and desire that binds the characters. Kasdan’s characters need each other. They shape their world and lives through interaction with other characters. In Grand Canyon, Steve Martin’s calloused Hollywood producer character sets the boundaries of what the others do not want to become. You think that Body Heat is just about the sex—you may be right—but I don’t think so. And The Big Chill? Let’s unite a bunch of former college pals together for a funeral and throw them in a house together. Even the dead character holds sway over the others. Plot arises from characters and that is never clearer than in Kasdan’s films.

Casting? I don’t go there. I’m afraid. Afraid that if I put some tabloid picture next to my character’s name, the mental image I hold of that person will drive my character. (Also, my character would forever be overweight, in a bathing suit, and emerging from the waters off the coast of Marseille.) I would let Woody Allen do my casting. Not that he has anything to do with my genre, but that man is a casting god. His movies also, are totally character driven.

What is your second favorite art form?

Music.

Everything is about feeling and nothing provides an emotional jolt like music.

Music cheats—it has numerous elements at its disposal and varied tools that can be utilized to tug at your heartstrings. It can make you cry, laugh, and swell up past emotions. Those emotions can possess you—will possess you—if only for moment. Read This is Your Brain on Music (Daniel Levitin). Your brain literally has a chemical reaction to songs. That is why when you hear a particular song, you know for certain that your eighth-grade romance was one for the ages, and somewhere, right now, in the still of the universe, she is thinking of you. No wonder we’re such a mess. As writers, we’re supposed to compete with that?

Good luck.

But we can transition from musical notes to written notes. What does the character feel? What emotions am I, as the writer, eliciting from my reader. From myself? If I feel nothing, how can I expect the reader to feel anything? And if you don’t feel anything; no anger, joy, sadness, fear, hesitancy, heat, lust, for God’s sake, man, something….why read? Why waste your time?

And my third favorite art form?

Stick figures. Hemingway said to boil it all down. There you have it.

Learn more about the book and author at Robert Lane's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth Gilbert's latest novel is The Signature of All Things.

From her October 2013 Q & A with Margo Rabb at Slate:

Slate: Some critics have expressed surprise over how different your new novel is from Eat, Pray, Love, although you’d been writing literary, ambitious work long before that memoir.

Gilbert: It has not escaped my attention that when I wrote about a man’s emotional journey they gave me the National Book Award nomination, but when I wrote about a woman’s emotional journey, they shunted me into the “chick lit” dungeon.

Slate: What are your thoughts on that dungeon?

Gilbert: “Chick lit” is the “polite botany” of our time. I think that the whole conversation about who’s included in the serious literary world is an entirely fear-based discussion—that the people who exclude certain kinds of women writers from that world are afraid that by including them it will diminish their own seriousness, and the women themselves are afraid of being excluded, or of not being taken seriously, so that they sometimes either hide some of their impulses or try to write in a certain kind of way to gain approval. I just don’t want to play that way. It’s not fun and it’s not exciting, and it...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue