Rachel Heng

Rachel Heng's new novel is Suicide Club: A Novel About Living.

From Heng's Q&A with Kristen Iskandrian for The Rumpus:

The Rumpus: When people ask you what Suicide Club is “about,” how do you respond?

Rachel Heng: I usually start by telling people it’s a dystopian novel set in near future New York, where life expectancies average three-hundred years and the pursuit for immortality has become all-consuming. The novel follows Lea Kirino, a high-powered organ trader whose perfect genetic code means she has the potential to live forever―if she does everything right. Things get complicated when she her estranged father re-enters her life after having been missing for eighty-eight years. His return marks the beginning of her downfall as she is drawn into his mysterious world of the Suicide Club, a network of powerful individuals and rebels who reject society’s pursuit of immortality, and instead choose to live―and die―on their own terms.

Suicide Club is a novel about our relationship with death, both our own and that of our loved ones. It explores the commoditization of wellness culture and the deep fear we seem to have of our oozing, shedding bodies, as well as the resulting desire to control them. At its core, I also think it is a book about...[read on]

Visit Rachel Heng's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Terrence McCauley

Terrence McCauley's new novel is The Fairfax Incident.

From his LitReactor Q&A with Steph Post:

You’re the author of several books, including the acclaimed James Hicks techno-thriller series and Slow Burn, a classic noir novel set in the 1930s. The Fairfax Incident shares a protagonist—NYPD detective turned private eye Charlie Doherty—with Slow Burn and two others, but also reveals the origins of the University, the secret intelligence agency of the Hicks’ thrillers. Can you explain further how The Fairfax Incident links these two worlds and narratives together?

When Sympathy for the Devil, the first James Hicks novel, came out, I was surprised by how many people were interested in the University’s backstory. I intentionally wrote it so that the reader would buy into the modern-day action of the tale, but their request got me thinking about whether or not I should write a novel that shows how the whole story began. The Fairfax Incident had already been written for several years by the time I even thought of writing Sympathy for the Devil. I knew I wanted Charlie Doherty to continue working as a P.I. and get involved in pre-war events here in America. When people began asking for backstory, I was able to easily adapt the Doherty timeline to the University timeline. It was seamless, actually, and made the book even more fun to rewrite. Whether I’m writing about the modern day or the 1930s, I always want the reader to be interested in the characters more than the plot. I feel that if the reader develops an affinity or a dislike for the protagonist, it will keep them engaged in the book. I hope Jason Pinter over at Polis Books will allow me to continue telling the modern day story of Hicks while continuing to detail the beginnings of the University from pre-war all the way through the Second World War, the Cold War and beyond. Obviously, the books...[read on]

Visit Terrence McCauley's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Conspiracy of Ravens.

The Page 69 Test: A Conspiracy of Ravens.

Writers Read: Terrence McCauley (October 2017).

--Marshal Zeringue

Rosalie Knecht

Rosalie Knecht's new novel is Who is Vera Kelly? From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with your character Vera Kelly?

A: She came together in bits. She has parts of the biography of some people who are close to me, and parts that I made up completely, and she had to have a personality that would bridge those pieces and hold together. She also has a slight reserve that I think all my protagonists have.

Q: Anmiryam Budner writes of the novel that it "brings to life a young woman who defies the stereotype of the glamorous male hero that has been...the public face of fictional espionage." What do you think of that assessment?

A: It's true that she's not a typical spy protagonist, not just because she's a woman but because she is often frustrated, unsure, irritated, lonely-- a lot of feelings that James Bond doesn't have.

However, a lot of those feelings...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

David Joy

David Joy is the author of the Edgar nominated novel Where All Light Tends To Go (Putnam, 2015), as well as the novels The Weight Of This World (Putnam, 2017) and The Line That Held Us (Putnam, TBD). He is also the author of the memoir Growing Gills: A Fly Fisherman's Journey (Bright Mountain Books, 2011), which was a finalist for the Reed Environmental Writing Award and the Ragan Old North State Award. His new novel The Line That Held Us will be released on August 14th.

From Joy's conversation with Ingrid Thoft at Jungle Reds Writers:

INGRID THOFT: One of the main threads in The Weight of This World is the main character’s experience fighting in Afghanistan and his catastrophic re-entry into life back home in North Carolina. What prompted you to feature that and were there challenges writing about war and its effects?

DAVID JOY: I think a large part of that came from some things I was dealing with personally. That book is dedicated to a dear friend of mine who was a combat Marine and who served multiple deployments in Iraq, but anyhow, one day after he’d come home he walked into his house, shot his brother, shot his father, and killed himself. I don’t know what led him to do that, and I don’t know how his military service may have played into that, but I remember how he was portrayed on the news and just remember feeling like they stripped him of his humanity. So I think a lot of what I was doing in this book, maybe even subconsciously, was trying to make sense of all that. This novel is very much an examination of trauma and violence. The three main characters’ decision-making processes are driven almost solely by trauma, each uniquely his/her own. For ...[read on]

Visit David Joy's website.

The Page 69 Test: Where All Light Tends to Go.

My Book, The Movie: Where All Light Tends to Go.

The Page 69 Test: The Weight of This World.

--Marshal Zeringue

Adrienne Celt

Adrienne Celt's new novel is Invitation to a Bonfire.

From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: What inspired you to write a novel based on the marriage of Vladimir and Véra Nabokov?

A: Nabokov has been one of my favorite novelists since I first read him, back in college—his writing has a way of enlivening existence as only the best art can do. Heightening sensation, danger, pleasure, while still remaining grounded (for the most part) in reality.

I took a seminar on his work, and I'm sure every paper I wrote was just one big mash note to him; my enthusiasm has not really tempered with time.

Part of Nabokov's fascination, though, comes from his larger-than-life mythos. He was a pre-revolutionary Russian aristocrat; he translated his own novels and wrote fluently (brilliantly!) in multiple languages; he was a refugee; and then there is his famous marriage.

It's well known that Vladimir's wife, Véra, was devoted in a way that few spouses can aspire to: she did everything for him, from opening his mail to teaching his college classes.

She's really become known as the ne plus ultra of female support for male genius, to the degree that she is known to have destroyed pieces of her own correspondence so that historians wouldn't be able to focus on her part of her husband's legacy. (Which kinda backfired, at least as far as my own interest is concerned, because what a fascinating thing to do!)

I wanted to explore what kind of woman—what kind of person—is able to subsume their own desires beneath the glory of another person.

Now, I should say that the characters in my book are only inspired by the Nabokovs, not based on them—I think that anyone familiar with Nabokov's biography would see the traces, but also the major deviations—and that's also true of the third important character: the woman who Leo Orlov (the famous writer in my novel) has an affair with.

Nabokov did in fact have at least one important...[read on]

Visit Adrienne Celt's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Stephen McCauley

Stephen McCauley is the author of The Object of My Affection, True Enough, and Alternatives to Sex. Many of his books have been national bestsellers, and three have been made into feature films. The New York Times Book Review dubbed McCauley “the secret love child of Edith Wharton and Woody Allen”, and he was named a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture. His fiction, reviews, and articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Harper’s, Vogue, and many other publications. He currently serves as Co-Director of Creative Writing at Brandeis University.

McCauley's new novel is My Ex-Life.

From the transcript of his Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross:

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, my guest is novelist Stephen McCauley who's probably best-known for his novel "The Object Of My Affection," which was adapted into a film that Jennifer Aniston starred in. His new novel, "My Ex-Life," is about a couple who had been married 30 years ago until he - the husband, David - came out as gay. Now, for several reasons, they've come back together but this time as good friends and as allies. And what's brought them together is that he's a college adviser, and he's been asked to help the daughter, Mandy, with her college application and her college essay application.

So the daughter in the novel, Mandy, is one of the girls who thinks that she's not really attractive. She's not popular. She has a lot of doubts about herself. And one of the characters speculates, like, this is the kind of girl who gets herself into trouble. And this is the kind of girl who a boy or a man can exploit. And that turns out to be true. What can you tell us that you feel comfortable giving away about how she is taken advantage of?

MCCAULEY: Well, Mandy, as you describe her, is someone who feels that - as many of us do, I think - that somewhere within us, we have this undiscovered talent and quality that makes us unique and makes us stand out. But she doesn't know what it is. And so when a man who is in his late 20s comes along and tells her that, you know, he sees something in her that other people don't, she's very susceptible to that. And she gets involved in something that has the potential to be dangerous and have dire consequences for her involving the Internet. I mean, you know, right there - that probably tells as much as you need to know. And so she becomes very vulnerable to his attention.

GROSS: So have you had experiences with students or young women who - or your friends, or the daughters of your friends who've done that and have - or have nearly - gotten themselves into trouble, or into a dangerous situation or, you know, been exploited in a way that, you know, was really damaging to them?

MCCAULEY: You know, one of the things that is attractive about it to Mandy is that it allows her to be a different person when she is chatting online with anonymous men. It allows her to enter into a different kind of character, to be confident, to be sure of her body and so on. And I - many years ago, I had a student who was an incredibly bright, talented young woman. And I had her over to my house for dinner with a few other students who I was working on honors projects with. And she began talking about the job that she'd had the previous summer, which was working on a phone sex line, which tells you how long ago it was.

And it was all very funny. And she felt that it somehow was a creative endeavor, and it allowed her to take on this other persona and so on. And for a while, it seemed to be that way. And then - I don't know - maybe a year or so later, I heard from one of her other friends that it - doing this had had dire consequences for her because she had kind of crossed the line between, you know, being an anonymous person and meeting one of these guys that she was talking about.

And that risk is in the novel for Mandy. And I think it's kind of a risk...[read on]

Visit Stephen McCauley's website.

Writers Read: Stephen McCauley.

The Page 69 Test: My Ex-Life.

My Book, The Movie: My Ex-Life.

--Marshal Zeringue

Greg Howard

Greg Howard is the author of Social Intercourse.

From his Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for Social Intercourse, and for your characters Beck and Jax?

A: I wrote Social Intercourse for NaNoWriMo [National Novel Writing Month] in about five weeks and all I knew when I started was that I wanted to write a really funny, gay young adult romantic comedy.

The only other book I’d written before that was an adult paranormal thriller, so this was a huge direction change for me. I’d never really considered writing young adult before because I thought I was too old!

But after reading a few popular YA novels with gay main characters, I realized that there are so many different experiences and points of view, that mine are just as valid as the next.

I set the story in Florence, S.C., where I grew up and went to high school and tried to imagine how different things would be a for an out and proud gay kid there today, or how much it might be the same. I was NOT out or proud in high school, so Beckett is more of “who I wish I had been” rather than “who I was.”

The story evolved pretty organically, but I knew from the outset that I wanted the two main characters to be...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Ronan Farrow

Ronan Farrow's new book is War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence. From the transcript of his interview with Fareed Zakaria:

ZAKARIA: The interviews with the secretaries of state are fascinating. You have Colin Powell, very bluntly, a fellow Republican -- a former Republican secretary of state, saying that Trump is gutting the State Department. Perhaps the most interesting one was Rex Tillerson who gives you the only interview I've seen where he on the record describes his frustrations and essentially why he was eventually fired.

What do you think is the big story? What did you learn from what Rex Tillerson told you?

FARROW: So I think in each of these conversations with all of the living secretaries of state, people will find something surprising, some moment of candor they didn't expect. You mentioned how searing Colin Powell was, saying we're mortgaging our future right now. This is a man who cared deeply about the workforce at the State Department. That was a common sentiment.

You know, George P. Shultz saying you don't have to take a job when he surveys the way Rex Tillerson acted on these orders to gut the State Department. And as you say Rex Tillerson himself really surprisingly candid in his last days in the job.

ZAKARIA: For example, he says he did not want those State Department cuts. He privately argued against them, but he thought maybe his corporate background, once the decision was made he had to be a loyal soldier.

FARROW: He did, although he also said, look, I may have just been too inexperienced. He said when he started defending those deep, deep cuts to the State Department on the Hill, he had only been on the job briefly and he might not have known better. He said, I think with hindsight that maybe he would have done things differently. That seemed to be the suggestion throughout our conversation.

ZAKARIA: He said something very peculiar, that he thought that Congress would increase the State Department's budget even though he was not requesting an increase.

FARROW: Which every other living secretary of state I spoke to found astonishing. That's...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

J. E. Smyth

J. E. Smyth is Professor of History at the University of Warwick and author or editor of Reconstructing American Historical Cinema from Cimarron to Citizen Kane (2006), Edna Ferber's Hollywood (2009), Hollywood and the American Historical Film (ed., 2012), Fred Zinnemann and the Cinema of Resistance (2015), and the BFI classics monograph on From Here to Eternity (2015).

Her new book is Nobody's Girl Friday: The Women Who Ran Hollywood.

From Smyth's Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: You write of Nobody's Girl Friday, “This book is meant to challenge and to inspire people who love Hollywood and believe in gender equality.” What first inspired you to write the book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?

A: When I started out – years ago – as an art historian at Yale, I got fed up when so much of the curriculum focused on celebrating the achievements of dead white men. So I changed majors and moved into film studies, thinking a younger cultural medium would be more gender inclusive.

But academic and popular understandings of film, and particularly Hollywood, were (and for the most part still are) focused on studies of great male directors (“auteurs”) and stylistic theories which claim the male gaze of the camera objectifies and punishes strong women.

It was assumed that women could only get jobs as actresses or secretaries in studio-era Hollywood. They were there to be looked at or to take dictation. It was depressing stuff to read. And I didn’t believe it.

Few historians bothered to look at the collaborative nature of film production during the studio system, or at...[read on]

Learn more about Nobody's Girl Friday at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Nobody's Girl Friday.

My Book, The Movie: Nobody's Girl Friday.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kathleen George

Kathleen George is the author of The Johnstown Girls, a novel about the famous Johnstown flood. She has also written seven mysteries set in Pittsburgh: A Measure of Blood, Simple, The Odds, which was nominated for the Edgar® Award from the Mystery Writers of America, Hideout, Afterimage, Fallen, and Taken. George is also the author of the short story collection The Man in the Buick and editor of another collection, Pittsburgh Noir. She is a professor of theater arts and creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh.

From a Q&A with George about her new novel, The Blues Walked In:

You wrote JOHNSTOWN GIRLS, a novel about the Johnstown flood, and seven mysteries set in Pittsburgh. Your new book, THE BLUES WALKED IN, explores Pittsburgh's Hill District, with Lena Horne at the center of the story. Why is Pittsburgh the backdrop for so much of your work? Do you remember the first time you wrote a story with Pittsburgh as the setting?

KG. I did write those things! You might say I'm geographically challenged so I stick to what I know or can investigate by driving around. I've been in Pittsburgh got most of my life so I keep using it.

I don't remember the first time I imagined a story set in Pittsburgh, but I'm pretty sure it was early on—when I was writing short fiction and before I jumped into novel writing. I didn't name streets at that point but I felt the setting was local.

I DO remember the thrill of setting my first novel, TAKEN, in Pittsburgh. There was something totally exciting about naming real places—even the ones that had disappeared a year before my project, like Ralph's discount City downtown. I kept thinking, "I can do this? It makes it feel so real!" It felt like bravery as a writer. I was saying, "Believe this. Trust me."

One really funny thing happened early on that jolted me though...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Kathleen George's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Blues Walked In.

Writers Read: Kathleen George.

My Book, The Movie: The Blues Walked In.

--Marshal Zeringue