Rachel Starnes

Rachel Starnes's new book is The War at Home: A Wife’s Search for Peace (and Other Missions Impossible): A Memoir.

From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: What do you think are some of the most common perceptions and misperceptions about military spouses?

A: I’m so glad you asked that question because it’s been on my mind a lot lately. Less than one half of one percent of the population of the United States currently serves in the military. That means that many people don’t come into regular and sustained contact with someone currently serving.

Instead, much of our exposure to the military is through what we see on the news or in movies or on social media, and many of those outlets perpetuate certain stereotypes about who serves in the military, why they serve, how they vote, and what struggles they face.

And it’s been my experience that however narrow those assumptions are about service members, they get even narrower when the conversation turns to their spouses.

I think many of us are assumed to be entirely unconflicted about our roles, or patriotic and subservient to our husbands and the unique demands of their careers in a way that makes us seem like we’re from another era.

The fact of the matter is that military spouses are...[read on]

Visit Rachel Starnes's website.

The Page 99 Test: The War at Home.

--Marshal Zeringue

Carol Birch

Carol Birch's newest novel is Orphans of the Carnival.

From her Q&A with Caroline Leavitt:

I always imagine that writers are haunted by some inner question or need to write a certain novel. What sparked Orphans of the Carnival for you?

It’s true that something gets into the mind and then builds up until it reaches critical mass and demands to be written. In this case, I was haunted by Julia’s baby. Julia [actual 19th century freak show attraction, Julia Pastrana] is quite well known, her baby less so. I was very moved by his fate. It’s hard to say too much without giving away so much about the book, but because this book is more than just a simple life story, though Julia is at the heart of it, her story led me to consider such things as the meaning we invest in physical objects, particularly those that reach us from the past, laden with significance.

I love the character of Julia Pastrana. She’s a sideshow attraction who is undeniably exploited, yet she still believes in the dream of love. But the question is can she have it – and that is the wrenching heart of this novel. Who are we really to ourselves and to others. Can you talk about this please?

Julia believes in love. Famously (and this is apocryphal) she said on her deathbed that she knew she had been loved for herself alone. Most people who’ve commented on Julia and her life seem firmly convinced that this was...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Rae Meadows

Rae Meadows is the author of Calling Out, which received the 2006 Utah Book Award for fiction, No One Tells Everything, a Poets & Writers Notable Novel, and the widely praised novel, Mercy Train (released in hardback as Mothers and Daughters).

Meadows's new novel is I Will Send Rain.

From her Q&A with Adriana Delgado at Blogcritics Magazine:

You’re not a stranger to writing about difficult topics like the one portrayed in your novel, Calling Out. What made you delve into the realm of historical fiction, and the Dust Bowl in particular?

I started writing a novel fictionalizing the photographer Dorothea Lange, but it wasn’t working for me, and I found myself returning again and again to one particular photograph of hers of a young woman nursing her son. They sit in a makeshift shelter, a tarp overhead, the California sun a fierce glare behind them. They are Dust Bowl refugees from Oklahoma. The woman’s gaze is a live wire of determination, anger, and shame. She made me wonder about the life she left behind. We’re familiar with the migrant story from Steinbeck, but I wanted to know what life was like for those who stayed. I also felt that the Dust Bowl was actually quite relevant, given the effects of global warming.

Was your portrayal of the Bells inspired by a real “okie” family during the Dust Bowl era?

The Bell family was entirely fictional, but I did spend countless hours immersed in the photography archive of the Library of Congress. The photographs taken in the 1930s for the Farm Securities Administration—Dorothea Lange was among the photographers—were a source of inspiration, particularly those of...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Rae Meadows's website.

The Page 69 Test: Mothers and Daughters.

The Page 69 Test: I Will Send Rain.

--Marshal Zeringue

Douglas Smith

Douglas Smith's new book is Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs.

From his Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: What are some of the most common perceptions and misperceptions about Rasputin?

A: One of the most common is that he was evil incarnate, Satan personified. That’s so utterly wrong, it’s [surprising] this myth took hold.

He was very much a man of peace. During the Balkan Wars before World War I, he came out against Russian involvement, and on the eve of World War I—I reproduce a letter where he was begging Nicholas II not to listen to the warmongers; if you are a true Christian, killing is wrong. That’s important about Rasputin and is misunderstood.

The idea that he was an orgiastic sex machine like in the Boney M song—he was an adulterer, no doubt, and he probably [was involved with] prostitutes, but if he was a sex maniac, there would have been illegitimate children, and there isn’t a mention of that anywhere.

His influence over policy and the Czar is...[read on]

Visit Douglas Smith's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Pearl.

--Marshal Zeringue

Benjamin Bergen

Benjamin K. Bergen is a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego, where he directs the Language and Cognition Laboratory. He writes for the Huffington Post and Psychology Today and appears on NPR's Morning Edition, the Brain Science Podcast, and elsewhere.

Bergen's new book is What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves.

From the author's Q&A with Scott Timberg at Salon:

Let’s start with the word most of us learned early on was the biggest, scariest, nastiest, dirty word of them all, the one your title turns on: the F-word. I’ve heard all kinds of theories as to where it came from. What are its origins, and has it always been such a forbidden, dangerous term? Was it ever an acceptable word?

So the word, as far as we can tell, is very, very old. It’s thousands of years old and comes from a root that means something like to strike or rub. For most of its history, it has not had any profane meaning at all. The first time we know it starts to have the meaning “to copulate,” as it now does, is as early as the 14th century, A.D. It comes from some legal proceedings, in which there was a defendant who had that as part of his last name. His name was Roger Fuckebythenavel. It appears to have been his real name.

But through Shakespeare’s time, it didn’t seem to have been as profane as it became in the 20th century. That only started to be the case around three centuries ago. In Shakespeare’s day the equivalent term was “swive,” which was far stronger.

And like a lot of words in English, this came from Germanic roots or Anglo-Saxon or something?

That’s right. This comes from the Germanic line. And there are therefore similar words you see in Norwegian and German, where there’s a similar word — “ficken” — that has a similar meaning but is far less profane than the English word.

The interesting thing about the F-word is that according to survey data, it’s...[read on]

Learn more about What the F at the publisher's website.

The Page 99 Test: What the F.

--Marshal Zeringue

Meera Syal

Meera Syal is an British comedian, writer, playwright, singer, journalist, producer and actress. Her latest novel is The House of Hidden Mothers. From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: You have several female protagonists in your new novel. How did you come up with these characters?

A: All my novels have focused on the lives of South Asian women, whether in Britain or in India, quite simply because we are ripe and bursting with untold stories, why would I need to look further than my own front step for inspiration?

And of course much of the inspiration comes from the lives of women around me, Priya and Lydia encapsulate any of the women I know in their complex life choices about relationships, children, ageing.

I wanted to try and create a snapshot of women in their late 40s/early 50s, an age where many of us are judged to be invisible by society but ironically it is the period where we are as women full of life experience, know and like ourselves, have suffered the highs and lows of life and gained wisdom from this journey, and yet because we are passing from fertile women into what used to be the wise old witch phase, suddenly we are...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Alexandra Zapruder

Alexandra Zapruder's new book is Twenty-Six Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film. From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: You note that your family really didn’t talk much about the film as you were growing up. What made you decide to write about it, and do you think writing the book changed any of your beliefs about the film?

A: I decided to write about the film because I realized in the aftermath of my father’s death that our family’s relationship to the film was a very significant one, and that this part of the film’s life had not been told, and that without it, the whole story of the film and its impact on American society and culture was incomplete.

Once I realized that, I felt it was important – and meaningful for me as a writer and a person – to really look at the film’s history in all its dimensions and try to understand its meaning, legacy, and significance not only for us as a family but for American society as a whole.

I’m not sure I could say that writing about the film changed my beliefs, because...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Dawn Lerman

Dawn Lerman is a board-certified nutrition expert and a contributor to the New York Times Well Blog. Her company, Magnificent Mommies, provides nutrition education to students, teachers, and corporations. She lives in New York City with her two children, Dylan and Sofia.

Lerman's 2015 book is My Fat Dad: A Memoir of Food, Love and Family, with Recipes.

From her Q & A with Caroline Leavitt:

I love how you figured out that food was equated with love, and that what we eat really does make a difference in how we feel. How did you learn to understand this (My mother-in-law still believes that food has nothing to do with health.)

I grew up with a 450 dad who was always one diet away from the perfect weight loss miracle. Every week he would rotate to a new fad diet, and my family ended up eating whatever freeze-dried, saccharin-loaded concoction he was trying at that moment. By the time I was 9, I was an expert on Atkins, Weight Watchers and even prayed beside him after he read, I Prayed Myself Slim.

My mother, on the other hand, never understood what the big deal with food was and ate only one small meal a day while standing up and chatting on the phone. Most weekday meals consisted of my dad’s diet foods, a meal replacement shake, or a bagel or pizza in the car. What I remember most about those early years, is that I was always hungry — hungry for food, hungry for nice clean clothes, hungry for someone to notice when I ran away from home or hid in the closet for hours. I was just hungry — hungry for someone to care for me because I was a child and I yearned to be cared for.

But on Friday nights, my maternal grandfather would pick me up and when we arrived at my grandparents’ home, the table was always set with beautiful china. There was always a pot of chicken soup cooking on the stove, a freshly drawn bath, and a fluffy, lavender-smelling nightgown waiting for me. It was at my grandmother Beauty’s house where I learned what true nourishment was. It was the only place I can remember feeling happy, safe and nourished. It was what I craved. Her famous mantra was...[read on]

Visit Dawn Lerman's New York Times blog and Facebook page.

Writers Read: Dawn Lerman.

The Page 99 Test: My Fat Dad.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sonya Chung

Sonya Chung's new novel is The Loved Ones. From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for The Loved Ones, and for the two Lee families?

A: The Loved Ones—like many ultimately successful creative projects, I'm learning and realizing—was actually born of failure and lack of confidence.

I'd been working on another novel for about three years, and in the summer of 2012, it became clear to me that the project was dead in the water. I was anxious and very low after that, wondering if I'd be able to move forward as a novelist.

Later that summer I resolved to "just show up"—at my desk, to the blank page. In baby steps, I started working in territory that felt both familiar and interesting, which turned out to be an awkward, lonely Korean American girl's adolescence in the D.C. area in the mid-1980s. The rest grew from there.

The two Lee families—Hannah's Korean immigrant family, and Charles and Alice Lee, who are an interracial couple (African American and white) with two biracial children—are ostensibly different in every way and "shouldn't" converge or collide. But they do—a series of unusual circumstances bring them together—and that...[read on]

Visit Sonya Chung's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Sonya Chung and Pax.

--Marshal Zeringue

Chris Holm

Chris Holm is the author of the Collector trilogy, which blends crime and fantasy, and the Michael Hendricks thrillers. His first Hendricks novel, The Killing Kind, was nominated for an Anthony, a Barry, a Lefty, and a Macavity Award and named a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a Boston Globe Best Book of 2015, and Strand Magazine’s #1 Book of 2015.

Holm's latest novel is Red Right Hand, the second Hendricks novel.

From his Q&A with Rob Hart at Lit Reactor:

In The Killing Kind, Hendricks is at the top of his game. In this one he's hobbled—injured, without ideal weapons, frequently planning on the fly. What inspired that choice, and how early in the process did you plan on doing that to him?

When we meet Hendricks in The Killing Kind, he has a partner in crime, a buddy, a support structure. Then (uh, spoiler) Hendricks loses him in grand fashion.

Hendricks isn’t a guy who fares well when he’s left to his own devices. He’s angry and full of self-loathing, which makes him reckless. I realized very early on that I wanted his recklessness in Red Right Hand to have serious consequences, in part because it sends the audience the message that no one in the book—not even my protagonist—is truly safe, and in part because I needed him to realize that—even though he’s terrified of putting those he cares about in harm’s way—he’s incapable of going it alone.

There was also some sequel-y one-upmanship involved. In The Killing Kind, we found out what a healthy Hendricks could do when faced with a cunning, sadistic antagonist. In Red Right Hand, I thought, “Let’s see how well ...[read on]

Visit Chris Holm's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Killing Kind.

The Page 69 Test: Red Right Hand.

--Marshal Zeringue