Joshilyn Jackson, Author

Posted on September 26, 2012 by awritingprimate

Joshilyn Jackson, Novelist

Titles and Book Covers. They go together like bearded ladies and clowns at a crowded circus. It’s what catches your eye when you’re browsing through the library and Barnes & Noble or scrolling on Amazon and Kobo. It’s what first caught my eye when I came across gods of Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson. Don’t you just love that title (with the small g for gods), and the cover, which showed a retro photo of a woman driving down the road in a convertible.

gods of Alabama

But, the writing in-between the covers is what made me a fan of this author. It soon becomes obvious to the reader that this is a writer who enjoys her own stories!

Joshilyn Jackson is a New York Times bestselling novelist of five books, and gods of Alabama was her first. According to the Library Journal in their starred review of her first book: “Forget steel magnolias—meet titanium blossoms in Jackson’s debut novel, a potent mix of humor, murder, and a dysfunctional Southern family.”

But, she didn’t stop there, and she has kept on producing novels that exhibit wit, warmth, stories of love and betrayal. Everything you want in a book. Her latest is A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty (pub. 2012), which has recently come out in paperback. The Atlanta Magazine calls it… “her latest Southern Gothic joyride, Joshilyn Jackson creates an unforgettable story…brilliant.”

A Grown-up Kind Of Pretty

Her books have been translated into a dozen languages, won SIBA’s novel of the year, twice been a #1 Book Sense Pick, and twice been shortlisted for the Townsend prize.

Below is the interview.

1) You were on the February 2011 cover of Vanity Fair with other Southern authors such as Kathryn Stockett (The Help), Susan Rebecca White (Bound South), Karin Slaughter (Best selling Crime writer), and Natasha Trethewey, the 2007 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry, as well as others. What do you believe sets this group apart as a literary group? Do you feel there is an influence from previous Southern writers like Katherine Porter, Shirley Jackson, Eudora Welty, Alice Walker?

I’m not sure we are a literary group. I mean, you’re looking at the Poet Laureate of the United Freakin’ States right there. And, you know, me. So. That’s quite a spectrum already when you look at just TWO of us.

I think it’s a hugely diverse group, and the ONLY thing that makes us a group is location. We all have our own IT we need to say, and we are trying to say our it in exactly our own ways. But, yeah, Atlanta is chock full of talented women doing a vast array of fascinating things with words right now. That’s true in music and visual arts, too—-Atlanta has a pulsing, living, visceral female art scene. I don’t say this to discount major talents like David Bottoms or Joseph Skibell just because they have outies instead of innies. But Atlanta is FAT AND GLORIOUS with women writers who are blowing my mind in a variety of ways—I think the point of the Vanity Fair piece was to show a small selection of us that represented the broadness of female interests, styles, themes, and voices happening right here, right now.

As for the history of Southern women writers—well that’s a rich, loamy patch of earth to come of age in, for all of us.

 2) Do your books come out the way you intended them? Or do they get away from you during the creative process the character goes one way when you thought they should have gone the other way?

They never come out as I intend. That illusion happens, yes, where I feel the book has its own life and is now haring off in new direction without bothering to inform me first so I could pack the proper footwear for the climate… I’m a straight up organic writer, and it is an inefficient and ridiculous way to try and make a book. It’s also the only that works for me.

  3) You’ve indicated your first novel is still under your bed, and never to be published. How do you think working your way through that unpublished work led you to your first published book, gods in Alabama?

Two of ‘em, actually. I may at some point make them available for DL on my website, if people are interested. I don’t want to take a year or two to revise them into something more like what I write now—I have too many books I want to write to go backwards and try to re-care about these. They are what they are. They are not perfect, but I love them, and I am grateful to them. Writing them let me learn how to write a book. The only way to learn to write a book is to read a million of them and then sit down and write one. But the learning curve is big. It takes years. Some people write and rewrite the same book for five or ten years and at the end of that time, they know how. I chose to write one book after another, and it took the same amount of time.

 4) Writing dialogue is hard enough for writers, but you manage to get that “Southern” voice into your characters so well. Do you have suggestions to others on how to do this in their writing (whether Southern, Northern or Japanese, Cuban, etc) ?

Read aloud! I read everything aloud multiple times. If you want to catch your own regional voice, listen to yourself reading it. Some people can’t hear themselves, so if it doesn’t work for you, get someone ELSE to read it to you. If you are writing in your native tongue, you can hear where it goes wrong much more quickly than you can see it.

  5) Your characters are quirky, likable, intelligent and usually go against the norm of society. When you are starting out on an idea for a book, do you come up with a character first, or the idea of a plot? For instance, the character, Ro Grandee in Backseat Saints was a minor character in gods in Alabama so how did Ro come about as a fully developed person hightailing it out of Texas with her trusty dog, Fat Gretel? (Loved that cover btw!)

Oh thank you — That’s so kind. Rose was a pushy little object from the very beginning. When I was first writing gods in Alabama, I planned her as “Jim’s Girlfriend” and felt she would be a very minor character. She did not appear in the draft until chapter 6, but as I wrote what I thought would be her single scene, it kept streeeeetching until the whole chapter was riddled with her. She is such an instigator! Big Trouble loves Rose and Rose loves Big Trouble right back. I realized I needed her energy and drive to start off the action in chapter 1; I went back and revised to make Rose Mae be the push that sends Arlene careening home to Alabama.

By the time I finished gods, Rose had insinuated herself all through the book, and I suspected even then that I wasn’t finished with her—or perhaps she wasn’t finished with me. About two years before I wrote BACKSEAT SAINTS, I woke up in the middle of the night. I had been dreaming about her. I shook my sleeping husband and said, “Honey! I just realized, everything Rose Mae Lolley says in gods in Alabama is a lie, and now I know why she is really looking for Jim Beverly.” He said, “Hi! It is 3 AM!” He passed out again, but I stayed up the rest of the night writing little snatches of what would become this book, trying to catch her voice.

6) Do you think your background in theater was an influence on your writing style, and if so, how?

I think my acting background has had a huge effect on my writing. The only thing that has influenced my writing more was becoming a mother. I think the most important tool actors and novelists share is a facility for empathy. Some people are born with a huge facility for empathy, but I was not. I learned it, working as an actor, and I learned it more deeply when I had babies.

  7) Your most recent book, A Grown Up Kind Of Pretty, is a mystery with the discovery of a backyard burial and involves the complex relationship of a family of women, the Slocumbs. How do see yourself as evolving as a writer with this fifth book? Does writing get any easier for you?

No, never. It gets harder, in fact, as I want to make sure I am not obsessing and worry warting my same tropes into nubs. Of course, as a writer, I have areas that continue to interest me thematically—redemption, motherhood, brokenness, the mechanics of grace…These are the things I explore, but I want to make sure it is progressive. The questions I try to explore with story have to be the ones driving me now, not the ones that drove me five years ago.

I tell you what, I am more interested in MEN all of a sudden. I have been writing about women, mostly female characters, female relationships, for 5 books now. The last male narrator I wrote was in one of my “under the bed” books.

But in A GROWN UP KIND OF PRETTY there is a male/female best friendship between a weedy little big-headed kid named Roger and the youngest Slocumb, Mosey. I got so obsessed with them. I LOVE all their scenes together, all their dialogue and their interplay makes me SO happy. They crack me up and they break my heart. I think I wrote the whole book, in some ways, for a scene near the end involving Roger and Mosey’s left booby. If you read the book, you know the line I mean. I wrote more than 94 thousand words to get to write that line, writing toward it, waiting for it, hoping it would happen. I still shamelessly adore it.

8: What are you working on now?

The book I am writing now has two narrators who meet when they are caught in a hostage situation. Both are inside a Circle K when a man comes in to rob it. One is a 21 year old college student raising a three year old son; she has experienced a Virgin birth. The other is 30 something geneticist who recently lost his family. He emphatically does not believe in miracles. The girl, Shandi, begins their story, by saying, “I fell in love with William Ashe at gunpoint, in a Circle K.”

Now, each of them has a close friend. Shandi’s is a poet named Walcott. William’s is a divorce attorney named Paula. In a lot of ways, the Shandi/ Walcott, and William/ Paula relationships grew OUT of Mosey and Roger, because I was not finished exploring the mechanics of this kind of friendship. They are possible versions of Mosey and Roger, one pair in their twenties, one pair in their thirties. So this book came out of that book, but A GROWN UP KIND OF PRETTY is really about the search for identity, which is something I have not really looked at since BETWEEN. Meanwhile, this new book, SOMEONE ELSE’S LOVE STORY is about the nature of faith. But the relationships definitely came out of PRETTY, in a “next step” way.   

9) What was the best advice you ever got on your writing? The worst advice?

BICHOC is the best advice. Butt in Chair, Hands on keyboard. This is how books happen. By writing them.

The worst advice I ever heard, and I have heard it MULTIPLE times! “Oh, writers should not READ! If I READ I could have VOICE LEAK and be INFLUENCED!” My answer: Go read Flannery O’Connor and PRAY TO GOD that she influences you. You should BE so lucky.

Every writer I know who is producing interesting things, they are all huge huge huge readers. Addicts. Real writers read. The end.

   10) Please give us an Eight Word Description of Your Life.

YARRRRRRRG This is nearly impossible. Everything I write sounds flippant or pretentious or both. I think this is the kind of question only a poet can answer. Lord, but I SUCK at poetry. BUT OKAY! Here we go:
God, kids, husband, dogs, write, yoga, eat. Repeat.

Check out Joshilyn Jackson’s website HERE.

Her funny blog, Faster Than Kudzu. and Facebook Page

gods in Alabama

Between Georgia

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming

Backseat Saints

A Grown-up Kind Of Pretty

Nancy Ellen Dodd: author of The Writer’s Compass

Posted on December 30, 2011 by awritingprimate

A scene has to have a rhythm of its own, a structure of its own.
Michelangelo Antonioni

Lazy minds are like Jello, they need a mold for structure and to avoid brain spillage on the floor.
A Writing Primate

_________________________________________________________________________

In a few days, the New Year will be upon us: 2012. This is the time for resolutions, right? So, here is an interview to help you with your creative efforts. I’ve asked Ms. Dodd for the interview, because structure has always been a elusive goal for many writers, including myself. Structure as in discipline (write, write, and write), and structure as in building upon an idea into a complete story.

Nancy Ellen Dodd is a writer, university instructor,and an editor with two master’s degrees in writing from the University of Southern California. She currently teaches screenwriting at Pepperdine University and has studied with a number of award-winning authors. Back in May, 2011, she did an interview with Writer’s Digest Magazine. (Click here).

She is the author of The Writer’s Compass: From Story Map to Finished Draft in 7 Stages, which gives ideas/insight on mapping your novel from idea to final draft.

Nancy Dodd

Tell us what you mean by developing a “mind-set” for writing, and how important is it to the creative process?

Sometimes it’s difficult to shut out the rest of the world. The problem for too many of us is that we let too many other things interfere with our writing. Without a discipline or a mindset, we find that day after day goes by and we aren’t accomplishing what we wanted to in our writing because we haven’t prepared ourselves to see it as important as other things that we allow to interrupt us.

Getting into a creative writing space, or really any type of writing space, usually means preparing yourself, your mind, to sit down and start working. For many of us just saying it’s time to write, then doing it, isn’t how it works; we have to prepare our “mindset.”

One of the ways to do this is to have a consistent time to write so that your mind and body rhythm knows that every day, or whatever days you choose, at this time you will write. Another way is to have a certain place you write or certain music you write to or certain writing implements just for this type of writing. Again, when you get into that place or use those implements, your mind knows that it’s time to be creative. The more disciplined you are about writing, the more your mind will know when it’s time to focus on just writing and to let everything else wait.

You equate story-telling with building a house: foundation, adding structure of walls and roof, the flooring, painting and adding designer touches. Elaborate for us the use of the 7 stage process described in your book which maps out the writing of a story with beginning, middle and end.

Through years of studying writing I found that there were many questions a writer should ask themselves to help them develop ideas, character, structure, and so forth. I began to organize these questions and tools into stages that would help to build a story organically and more efficiently, much like a house, and in ways that you see the details as you need them.

I recently watched a show in which the contractor finished the walls in the kitchen and was getting ready to put in the cabinets when he realized he had overlooked allowing for the electrical and venting components of the range hood—something he should have done before dry walling. His comment was that even the most experienced sometimes overlook an important detail. The same is true for writing, when you work in stages it can be much more effective, and helps you not to overlook so many details. I suggest the following stages:

Stage 1 – Developing Ideas
Stage 2 – Building a Strong Structure
Stage 3 – Creating Vibrant Characters
Stage 4 – Structuring Scenes, Sequences, and Transitions
Stage 5 – Increasing Tension and Adjusting Pacing
Stage 6 – Enriching Language and Dialogue
Stage 7 – Editing the Hard Copy and Submitting

As you develop your story, in some ways you will be working on these simultaneously throughout the process, you create and introduce new ideas and you work on language. However, by focusing on what a particular stage requires, you address the particular issues for that stage. How I do this is when I feel I have enough ideas for a story in Stage 1, I create a story map and then I work on structure, going from the beginning to the end of the material I have.

During that stage I’m adding more material and ideas to develop the structure of Stage 2. Once I’ve gone through all the work I have, answering the questions and filling out the story, I then go to Stage 3 and work on developing my characters, getting to know them, again filling out the story with more details that focus on characterization.

When in Stage 4, I tear apart the story and develop each scene, determine where I have left out scenes that would add to the story and condensing what I thought was a scene, but really doesn’t have all the components of one, and I make sure all of my transitions are clear and won’t lose the reader. Then by State 5, I go back through the story and I look at tension and pacing and increase it or slow it down as needed.

Now I’m ready to do work on the language and dialogue and by the time I’ve gotten to Stage 6, my story should be well-developed and nearly complete. Finally it’s a matter of printing out the hard copy and editing, then submitting or prepping for publication Stage 7.

What recommendations can you give to a writer who is blocked about writing a certain idea, but can’t seem to get a handle on it?

Understanding what you are writing about, what the theme and/or dramatic question of your story is, can help with getting a handle on an idea. Having a clear theme really helps in making decisions about the story and can help to overcome being blocked.

Along completely different lines, finding what inspires you to write the story, what event, idea, activity, image, music, or whatever stimulated writing this story, then going back to that source, can help get the writer back into the story.

Another method would be to ask yourself, “What if it didn’t happen that way, what if it happened this way?” and seeing if changing direction can get you excited again.

What if you already have a rough draft or even a completed manuscript, how can your book, The Writer’s Compass help the writer?

Having a rough draft or completed manuscript means that you can skim through the questions to see what you may have missed or what you can add to further develop the story. The questions will help you to see where you might have problems you can fix. Using the story map at this stage is a tool that helps you to see where there might be holes in your story. I create a new one after every stage to see what I should change to make the story more dynamic or if I can’t answer a particular element on the story map, then I know precisely where I have a weak spot or a hole.

Building tension is important to any story line. What tools/ideas would you recommend on how to do this naturally in developing this sense of urgency?

People often confuse tension and pacing. Pacing is created by moving things quickly, putting in fewer details, making dialogue shorter, using less narrative. However, this may or may not increase the tension. Sometimes tension is better served by adding details and slowing down the pace. Which is more frightening: running through a haunted mansion, or going slow and being forced to see every shadow, hear every creak. In my book I give an example of a knife fight and how by showing each individual’s movements versus, just getting stabbed increases the tension in the scene. It also helps when the reader is going to guess the outcome. If the reader knows you probably aren’t going to kill off your protagonist halfway through the book, then showing how the protagonist feels and his or her fears, helps draw the reader into the tension of the moment. When you shorten it to something like, “…then he stabbed him.” The sentence goes by so quickly the reader may not catch the significance of what just happened.

Tell us a little about what you are currently working on?

I always have too many projects I’m working on. Three of the areas I’m pursuing include: how using storytelling tools to create ideas helps businesspeople to develop business ideas; how ministers can use storytelling tools in developing sermons; and using story telling techniques to develop case studies.
In my creative writing I’m working on prepping a screenplay for pre-production about a minister whose son is murdered, forcing him to reconcile his own past as a boxer who killed a man in a prize fight; the screenplay has already received awards. I’m also doing a final draft on a play about a clueless father whose wife leaves him and he has to raise their autistic child alone. I’m also trying to finish the final draft of a coming of age manuscript called “Wake-Up! Henny.” And I’m working on a creative nonfiction story on how my friend had to be smuggled out of the mid-east to escape execution for a crime he didn’t commit.

Please give us an eight-word description of your life.
God, family, writing, surviving, and learning to live.

Nancy Ellen Dodd / Facebook Page

Check out 1st 50 pages of

The Writer's Compass

Naomi Hirahara, Author

Posted on December 8, 2011 by awritingprimate

“What I need is perspective. The illusion of depth, created by a frame, the arrangement of shapes on a flat surface. Perspective is necessary. Otherwise there are only two dimensions.”
Margaret Atwood – The Handmaiden’s Tale

Naomi Hirahara, Author of Mas Arai Mystery Series

Naomi Hirahara is the author of a popular mystery series involving a complex and wonderfully human character named Mas Arai. Mas was “born” out of the author’s desire to “shed light on is Japanese American culture and history”, and is based on her own father, who survived the atomic bomb in Hiroshema in the basement of a train station. Her father Sam, is also a gardener like Mas Arai. What makes these mysteries go beyond the genre is the perspective they are told from: an older gentleman who has gone through much in his life and yet, still has an active curiosity about his surroundings. The writing is well-crafted and takes you into a Japanese-American culture which looks to its past and present to shape a future.

Naomi was a reporter, and has written non-fiction books before venturing into the world of fiction. Summer of the Big Bachi (Bantam/Delta, March 30, 2004) is Naomi’s first mystery. The book, a finalist for Barbara Kingsolver’s Bellwether Prize, was also nominated for a Macavity mystery award. Gasa-Gasa Girl, the second Mas Arai mystery, received a starred review from Booklist and was on the Southern California Booksellers’ Association bestseller list for two weeks in 2005. Most recently Snakeskin Shamisen, the third in the series, was released in May 2006. In April 2007 it won an Edgar Allan Poe award in the category of Best Paperback Original.

She has short stories published in a number of anthologies, including Los Angeles Noir (Akashic, May 2007), A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir (Busted Flush Press, December 2007), and The Darker Mask (TOR, January 2008). In the summer of 2008 her first middle-grade book, 1001 Cranes, was released by Random House’s Delacorte imprint in hardback and came out as a Yearling trade paperback in June 2009.

Naomi Hirahara’s latest novel in the Mas Arai series, Blood Hina, was published by St. Martin’s/Thomas Dunne Books. Mas’ best friend Haruo is getting married and Mas has grudgingly agreed to serve as best man. But then an ancient Japanese doll display of Haruo’s fiancee goes missing, and the wedding is called off with fingers pointed at Haruo. To clear his friend’s name, Mas must first uncover a world of heartbreaking memories, deception, and murder. You can read an excerpt here.

Below is an interview with Naomi Hirahara.

I know you were quite close to your father with the character of Mas being based on him (Mas is your father’s name spelled backwards). Did he get to read any of your series, and if so, what did he think of them? If not, what do you believe would have been his reaction?

When two of my novels were finally translated into Japanese (a direct result of the Edgar nomination), my father finally had an opportunity to find out who Mas was. “Hey,” he said after he had read the books, “you wrote about me!” ”But Dad,” I explained, “you knew that the main character was based on you.” He had, after all, taken me to places that gardeners had frequented in past (like the racetrack during the rainy season!). He followed me out to the porch when I was leaving my parents’ house. ”Hey,” he called out to me, “my friends are waiting for the next book.” That’s the biggest and perhaps best endorsement from my parents — that their friends like them.

A number of the characters in the book speak a mixture of Japanese and English, and you do a beautiful job of capturing this without it being distracting. Do you make a conscious effort to balance the accents/and or Japanese words as you write? Can you suggest ways of doing this to help other writers who would like to emphasize another language and culture?

This is perhaps the most “controversial” aspect of my series — the use of dialect or vernacular. It’s taken me a while to understand what I’ve been trying to do. First of all, I’ve been impacted by dialect since I was a small child. I was a huge Lois Lenski fan and if you look at her children’s books today, such as her Newbery Award-winning STRAWBERRY GIRL, it’s filled with strong Southern dialect. I love that. Being from a bilingual household and as a result, serving as an interpreter of the outside society for my parents, I understood from a young age what is being said in certain homes does NOT sound like the standard English dialogue on the page. If Mas or his other peers suddenly speaking in standard English, it would be absolutely bizarre. Language serves as an integral part of them as characters.

That said, dialect is sometimes a barrier for certain readers. One group of female readers said that they thought it was disrespectful that I had my elderly characters speak in dialect. So interesting! I guess some folks believe that accented English is evidence of a lack of intelligence. My intention was quite the opposite: that having an accent is absolutely not a reflection of how smart someone is.

In terms of writing in dialect/vernacular, I would not recommend that writers use it unless they are very familiar of how the intonation/language sounds. There’s a wonderful literary anthology called ROTTEN ENGLISH, edited Dohra Ahmad. She explains that vernacular (her favored term) is spoken, so transferring it to written form immediately changes it use/purpose. In a sense, when you write dialect, you are in essence creating your own language, kind of like that movie AVATAR. It’s not just mimicking sounds, but making decisions on what kinds of words/sentence structure to use. Of course, I’m not only using dialect but actually foreign words. What helps is that Japanese, like Spanish, usually has a consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel word structure and American English readers can somehow get the general gist of how something may sound. Tonal languages like Chinese is quite a different story.

Sorry that this answer is so long, but it is one of my passions.

Mari, who is Mas’ daughter, is a Gasa Gasa Girl (which happens to be the name of your second book). This means she is a restless person, not one to stand still for very long before moving on. Do you see yourself as a gasa gasa personality? How did you fill out her personality in the book to make her what I call, “a touchable character,” someone we can believe in? Do you think hard about your characters before you write them, or do they evolve as you write the book?

There’s another Japanese word, “guzu-guzu,” which means lazy, laid-back person. My husband says “guzu-guzu” fits me more than “gasa-gasa.” Actually I’m very “guzu-guzu” about household chores, but more “gasa-gasa” when it comes to meeting friends, participating in events and travelling. My goal is to go to all 50 states and I think I’m at least up to almost 35 states.

In terms of building characters, I need to figure out the character’s name before I can get that deep in who they are. I’m currently developing a new mystery series and I’ve thought long and hard about what to name her. Figuring out a series character’s name is crucial.

Developing Mari was not that difficult because I knew who she was in reference to her father, Mas. I know that Mas had not been an emotionally available father and as a result, she was scarred and jaded. I will say that I’m not Mari and my father is not Mas in terms of their emotional development.

I don’t need to know all the facts about a character before I start writing, but I need to know some basics facts about them. Most important, perhaps, is their outlook on life, because that would determine the tone or voice of the book. Voice is really everything. You can have the best plotted book in the world, but if you don’t have the voice down, forget it.

In Snakeskin Shamisen, you emphasize relationships between men: brothers, father and son, etc. Did you find it hard to write in the male perspective? What helps you to keep focused from a male’s POV?

I really adore men. I played organized sports as a young age, and appreciate some the rules and behaviors of men in group contexts. I’m old enough to have worked in a once male-dominated profession (journalism), and I’ve spent a lot of time with men.

I actually had problems writing from a female perspective (I have issues!). I attempted to write parts of GASA-GASA GIRL from Mari’s perspective, in fact, and it just didn’t work.

Writing a middle-grade book from a 12-year-old girl’s perspective (1001 CRANES) was actually extremely helpful for me creatively. Around the same time I wrote three short stories from a female POV. My new series will most likely be from a female POV and so will be next middle grade book. As I get older, I really appreciate women. I don’t think women reveal their secrets as readily as men. In some ways, they are an enigma, but I think that I’m slowly figuring them out!

Do you outline your books before you write them? Has your background in writing non-fiction books been helpful or a hindrance to you in writing fiction?

Lately because of the more competition nature of the publishing business, I’ve had to write outlines, at least for my Mas books. For other projects, I prefer not to write outlines and let the story organically lead me to where it wants to go. Writing nonfiction has helped in that I steal research from myself constantly. I think at times you can get buried in research and forget what you are trying to write. Journalism is good in that you learn to adhere to deadlines and be very self-motivating. It’s not good in that all that so-called objectivity needs to be shed. Fiction is all about being subjective.

How do you know when the rewrite is done?

When you can’t make the book or short story any better. I’ve a big believer that an author can over-rewrite. The initial energy of a piece can get snuffed out by a writer pushing their material too hard. Writing a book is a delicate business.

What tools do you use for research? I understand you are researching for you next book, could you give us an idea of that process? (Also, any hints on what the new book will be about?)

In terms of research, some of it has to be experiential. For me, something magical happens when I’m actually standing in the place where my characters are standing. Photographs and site visits are important. I try to be open to new experiences, even those that don’t seem like they will help me. Of course, I also use Google maps and the all the resources the Internet provides! Academic papers available on Google books and other sites are helpful, too.

And in terms of the next Mas book, it will be on strawberries! I’ve actually worked on a nonfiction book on strawberries, so, again, I’ll be stealing from myself. I also have that middle-grade project–steampunk set in California–and a new series that I’m still developing. I’m very excited about that project.

Please give us an eight-word description of your life.
pnuema
shedding of old skin, every seven years

Blood Hina

Links

Naomi Hirahara Website

Non Fiction Books

Mas Arai Facebook Fan Page

Interview: Donald Maass – Agent

Posted on October 28, 2011 by awritingprimate

Donald Maass Literary Agency, founded in 1980, represents 100 authors and sells over 150 novels per year to leading publishers both here in the United States and internationally. The agency is a known for its fiction writers. According to Publishers Marketplace, all agents of the Donald Maass Literary Agency are members of the Association of Authors’ Representatives (AAR). In addition to being members of the AAR, the agency also holds memberships in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the Mystery Writers of America, and the Romance Writers of America.

Donald Maass, Agent & President of DMLA

Donald Maass is president of Donald Maass Literary Agency and an author of both fiction and popular craft books for writers as well. He is a past president of the Association of Authors’ Representatives, Inc, and quite respected in the field of publishing. He also enjoys helping writers achieve their goals, and teaches workshops on the art of writing and getting published.

Interview with Donald Maass

Tell us something about how you got started in becoming an agent and then, opening up your own literary agency.

Ahem, that was a while back! I was previously a junior editor at a publishing house. What appealed about “agenting” was spending more time working with authors, less time in meetings. It’s now kind of hard to imagine doing anything else.

You are a writer yourself (both fiction, and non-fiction on writing). Has this given you an insight into what you would look for in a storyteller, and in what way?

One thing I learned is that fiction writing isn’t something you do alone. Critique friends are essential. It’s also a lifelong education. The best writers keep learning.

Walk us through the process of what happens when a query letter/email comes into your agency, right up to the point where you accept them as a client.

It’s a bit less dramatic than you might suppose. When one of my agents is excited about a project, that’s it. We may pass it around, read and discuss out of interest, but the decision to sign up an author doesn’t need the boss’s approval. What you’re passionate about is what you should represent. There’s far more discussion after we’ve taken someone on; about the pitch, marketing and such.

We once talked about the death of the small, independent bookstores, and now we are seeing the closing of a major bookstore like Borders. Obviously, the current economy has a hand in that, but do you think the increasing popularity of e-books is also a part of the issue?

The popularity of e-books is due to the success of the Kindle reader, the development of which was somewhat coincidental. I mean, the Kindle didn’t bring about the demise of Borders. (Borders did that to itself.) There’s no question that e-book sales have cut into physical book sales. Where that will top out remains to be seen.

With the move into digital forms of books (audio, epub), how do you feel this will change the role of an agent in the publishing world?

Agents help authors get published. Maybe that’s morphing nowadays but it’s still the same basic service. And publishing is still publishing. If you’re one of the Big Six, same job. If you’re an e-publisher, same job. If you’re an individual author going the e-book route, same job. (Except that you’re probably not as good at it.) Writers still write. Publishers still publish. Agents are still the author’s friend and advisor, early editor, deal cutter, subsidiary rights department…really, everything they did before. The medium is mixing and changing, to be sure. The process is still essentially the same.

What advice would you give a new novelist in developing their career and expanding their readership base?

90% of your success is your stories. Work on those most. The last 10% matters, but only by 10% and only if the first 90% is already terrific.

What kind of advances are first novels getting these days, and do you think there is any future for the mid-list authors?

Advances are down (four figures for first novels isn’t rare) and mid-list is not a place you want to be. Why not aim to soar out of category? (See comment above!)

You seem to be invested in teaching writing and getting published (with your books and workshops on the subject). What do you get out of it?

There are some aspects of fiction writing that are poorly understood and rarely taught; for instance, what I term “micro-tension”, the line-by-line tension that keeps readers glued to everything on the page. I feel it’s important to get those ideas out there. There’s too much magical thinking about writing fiction. Even inspiration and originality are qualities one can cultivate. I’d even argue that they’re learnable techniques. Just because some authors do certain things instinctively doesn’t mean other authors can get good at them too.

What do you think of the trend toward self-publishing? Does this have any effect on an agents’ business?

Self publishing is still self publishing. Digital only makes it cheaper. Selling books to the public isn’t any easier. Social media–? Helpful but not a panacea.

What books are you reading now (for your own personal enjoyment)?

A history of coffee!

Please give us an eight-word description of your life.

Agent, boss, teacher, writer, husband, dad, reader, traveler.

LINKS

www.maassagency.com

Follow Don on Twitter: @DonMaass

Donald Maass – Appearances/Workshops

Books on Writing

Jennie Shortridge and Seattle7Writers

Posted on September 24, 2011 by awritingprimate

“Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.” Jessamyn West (author, The Friendly Persuasion)

But does it always have to be like that: an isolated writer surrounded by his or hers imaginary characters. Not according to Jennie Shortridge and her fellow authors, the Seattle7Writers.

Jennie Shortridge, Author

Jennie Shortridge is the author of When She Flew, which has been selected by Indie Booksellers for the Winter 2011 Reading Group list. Other books by her are Love & Biology, Eating Heaven and Riding with the Queen.

She is also a founding member (along with Garth Stein, author of The Art of Racing in the Rain) of the Seattle7Writers, a collective of Pacific Northwest authors, such as Kit Bakke, Erica Bauermeister, Carol Cassella, Randy Sue Coburn, Maria Dahvana Headley, Mary Guterson, Kevin O’Brien, Laurie Frankel as well as friends of the group like Erik Larson, Mark Lindquist and Terry Brooks, etc.

The Seattle7Writers has a mission to encourage the written word in communities in the Northwest and elsewhere. They raise money to support literacy through projects like donating used and new books to variety of sites in the Puget Sound region for women, men and children who are currently without homes or bookshelves of their own. They have also raised money for programs like Powerful Schools, Writers in Schools and Path with Arts.

In the fall of 2010, Seattle7Writers brought together thirty-six Pacific Northwest writers for a week-long marathon of writing on stage in Seattle. Imagine writing live, in front of an audience. It sounds like paint drying, but it wasn’t, it ended up being a productive and exciting project.

The results were a novel: Hotel Angeline: A Novel in 36 Voices.

Hotel Angeline: A Novel in 36 Voices

Fifty percent of the proceeds from Hotel Angeline go directly back to the writing and reading community. Seattle7Writers will use these proceeds to award grants to worthy nonprofit organizations making a difference through literacy programs and support of the local arts.

Below is an interview with Jennie Shortridge about that project and about her own writing.

Who are the Seattle 7 Writers, and how did they get together as a group? What is the group’s purpose and mission?

Seattle7Writers really began in 2006, when I met Garth Stein at a reading we were both doing. We became friends and got together for coffee one afternoon to talk shop. Over the next year, we met for coffee every last Friday of the month, each time inviting other local authors.

We realized that our collective energies could be used, not just to promote our books, but also to give something back to our community, so we formalized the organization in 2009 and began putting on events with proceeds benefiting literacy programs in the Northwest. We also started our Pocket Library program, where we collect donated books and shelve them in unconventional places like shelters and correctional facilities.

At one point there were actually seven of us, but we now have ten core members and thirty-four “Friends of the Seattle7.” You can see all of them at the website here.

How did the idea of a marathon novel come up? Tell us about the plot of Hotel Angeline?

We wanted to do something really fun and different for Arts Crush, a month long celebration of the arts in Seattle. Writers always do readings, so Garth said, “Why don’t we write?” So we decided to do what we do best and write a novel. It actually got published (and is available on Amazon or at OpenRoadMedia.com and some bookstores. Here’s the blurb from the jacket:

Something is amiss at the Hotel Angeline, a rickety former mortuary perched atop Capitol Hill in rain-soaked Seattle. Fourteen-year-old Alexis Austin is fixing the plumbing, the tea, and all the problems of the world, it seems, in her landlady mother’s absence. The quirky tenants—a hilarious mix of misfits and rabble-rousers from days gone by—rely on Alexis all the more when they discover a plot to sell the Hotel. Can Alexis save their home? Find her real father? Deal with her surrogate dad’s dicey past? Find true love? Perhaps only their feisty pet crow, Habib, truly knows.

Walk us through the actual process for writing the Hotel Angeline – A Novel in 36 Voices.

We wrote for six days, with each author taking a two-hour stint on the stage at Hugo House and writing a chapter we’d “assigned.” An editorial board (five of us) had met the week before to put together a story idea, characters, etc. Then I mapped out what might happen in each chapter to get from beginning to end (very loosely) and the authors took it from there. They were free to write whatever they wanted to as long as they didn’t kill off the protagonist or introduce a chainsaw.

We had lots of help on site, including managing editors to work with each incoming author to get him or her up to speed. We had volunteers synopsizing as the authors wrote, and we compiled a running account of the story. We had butcher paper on all of the walls in the green room, with new developments, like characters and locations and time passing. It was the craziest and most fun thing I think I’ve ever done. All in front of a live audience in Hugo House and online, where it was streaming live.

You wrote the first words of this marathon novel. Did you feel the pressure to be the first to step up and write live on stage? Do you remember what you were thinking at the time?

Well, you see, if you’re the first, it’s the easiest! I didn’t have to know what came before or fit in with anyone else. I did have a big job, of course, to introduce the story and location and protagonist, and hint at the issues to come. I just thought it was a blast. It was more fun than I’d imagined it would be, and each writer said that, leaving the stage.

How did the group handle rewriting the final mss? Did each author do it individually, or was someone acting as the overall “chef” to make sure the soup tasted delicious?

Our publisher assigned a wonderful editor to the project and although she used a pretty light touch, she really helped pull it all together, snipping loose ends and tying up dangling threads.

In your own writing, your characters step outside the every day box to do something they’ve never done before, such as Mira in Love and Biology, leaves her family behind to start an unknown new life. And in your latest book, When She Flew, Jess breaks the rules big time in an effort to help a man and his daughter. Do you see a part of yourself in these characters and if so, why?

Oh, I’m certain they’re all from some place inside me. As a kid, I loved books about females overcoming hardship and obstacles, and then I overcame a lot of hardship and obstacles. So, I love putting those kinds of stories out into the world.

You used to be a musician (singer with a band). Can you relate the two creative impulses (music and writing) together? Has your music background had an effect on your writing?

I think what I really was all along was a writer. Singing in a band was a way for me to communicate my writing (poetry) to an audience. I’m an okay singer, but I think I really found creative satisfaction when I began writing full time 16 years ago. I still sing with my hubby and friends occasionally, just for fun, but I get a lot more out of writing every day.

What do the Seattle 7 Writers plan on doing now after Hotel Angeline?

Funny you should ask! We have two events on October 15th in honor of Arts Crush this year. The first is Write Here Write Now, a day-long intensive writing conference for all levels of writers, with tons of Northwest authors all around to help, all together. Lots of writing. And that night we’re putting on a super weird fun performance of authors reading, but in theatrical ways. It’s called Up Late Reading, and there will be music and comedy and dance and adult beverages and a silent auction . . . all very fun, and all to benefit literacy in the Northwest. There’s info at our website, www.seattle7writers.org.

Can you give us a hint about your next book?

I’d love to—I’m just about to finish it and turn it in! It’s the story of a Seattle woman who experiences amnesia and flees her fiancé, a condition known as dissociative fugue. When she turns up standing knee-deep in the San Francisco Bay, he comes to get her and bring her back to Seattle, and their life together begins again, even though she remembers nothing of the past. The story was inspired by a true story of a man from Olympia who experienced the same thing. There was a story in the paper about his fiancée going to get him in Denver and I found it very romantic but mysterious and intriguing. So, I’ve written a love story wrapped in a mystery. My working title is The Amnesiac’s Love Story, but I’m getting a little push back on it, so who knows what it will end up being at this point. Ah, publishing.

Please give us an 8-word description of your life.

Writing writing writing writing writing writing writing sleep. (Until my deadline.)

Jennie Shortridge website

Core Group of Seattle7Writers

Seattle7Writers FaceBook

Sarah Darer Littman – Author

Posted on August 5, 2011 by awritingprimate

Sarah Darer Littman

Sarah Darer Littman is the author of CONFESSIONS OF A CLOSET CATHOLIC, an award-winning novel for readers 9 and up and PURGE , a poignant but funny journey of a teenager winning her battle with bulimia out and LIFE, AFTER, a novel of immigration, tragic loss, and renewal. Her fourth novel, WANT TO GO PRIVATE?, a chilling tale about a high school freshman who becomes involved with an Internet predator, has just been published by Scholastic Press in August 2011.

She has won the 2006 Sydney Taylor Book Award. Ms. Littman’s books are realistic and tell-it-as-it-is in today’s world for teenagers. The latest novel, WANT TO GO PRIVATE, has been recognized as a must read for Young Adults and their parents by NY Finest Speakers ( a speaker bureau made up of City, State and Federal Law Enforcement professionals dedicated to educating and protecting today’s young people and their parents, from threats posed by Internet usage and drug involvement.)

Interview:

Tell us about your novel, Want To Go Private, which is being published in August 2011. What triggered your interest in the subject of teen vulnerability on the Internet?

Two years ago, Supervisory Special Agent Tom Lawler from the New Haven FBI office came to my son’s school to speak about Internet Safety. After his presentation, I was talking to him and he told me true story about a girl who’d left with a predator. Fortunately her mom was clued up and had the passwords to her accounts, so they were able to figure out what had happened pretty quickly, but even so, by the time the girl and the predator were apprehended, they were almost at the Canadian border. What really struck me about the story was the girl’s reaction when the police found her – it wasn’t “Oh thank goodness you’ve rescued me!” but rather “Don’t hurt him!” As soon as I heard that, I said to SSA Lawler, “That is the book.” Because I knew that I had to understand – and figured that others would, too – how a girl who had heard the Internet safety lectures at school and whose Mom was clued up enough to have her passwords so she’d obviously had the lectures at home as well, had traveled from the point of hearing all those warnings to getting in the car and “Don’t Hurt Him!”.

How did you go about doing research on the sensitive subject of Internet predators?

I was fortunate to get permission to work with the New Haven FBI office for my research and I also consulted with detectives at my local police department in Greenwich, CT. I read a huge stack of books on the subject, which gave me many sleepless nights. This was not an easy book to write!

Tell us about the Contemps, YA Authors Keeping It Real. How did you get involved with them, and their mission as writers for YA?

It’s been very easy to feel like a poor step-child as a realistic contemporary fiction writer for the last…well for a while now. Witness how Barnes and Noble shrank their general teen fiction shelf and created an entire paranormal romance section. I know there are teens out there who would much prefer reading a novel about real life to anything paranormal or fantasy. In my own house I had have one kid who likes all fantasy all of the time and another to whom that is anathema – this kid wants books about real teens in realistic situations, not vampires, werewolves, or fairies.
Those of us who write YA realistic contempory books really believe in them and since our books often don’t get the high-powered marketing love, we decided to band together to highlight the pure awesome of this genre, and make our site a resource for teachers and librarians who are interested in finding books kids like mine who want to keep it real.

What’s great about YA literature today is that there are books for all readers – it’s a matter of putting the right book in hand of the right kid at the right time, and librarians and teachers terrific at doing that.

Who do you feel has been a big influence on your writing style?

Funnily enough, since I haven’t read one of his novels since reading IT made me afraid to go to the bathroom for weeks, I’d have to say Stephen King. I read the sentence “The road to Hell is paved with adverbs,” in his book ON WRITING, shortly after my first book CONFESSIONS OF A CLOSET CATHOLIC came out. Then I read my book aloud to my son and realized just how right he was! I am now a sworn enemy of the adverb.

What do you like most about writing? What do you like least about it?

What I like least is writing the first draft. You know, the actual WRITING part. To me, writing a first draft of a novel is like having all my teeth pulled without anesthetic. What I love, love, LOVE is revising. To me, that’s where the novel really happens.

You are a strong advocate fighting against censorship, especially of books for and about teens. Can you give us some insight about your feelings about intellectual freedom?

My parents let me read whatever I wanted. They might have put some books on the top shelf in the study, but we always knew where they were and there was a step stool so we could get at them. I strongly feel that kids will put down a book that they don’t feel ready for and that parents shouldn’t act as censors. It’s fine to guide – for example, my daughter wanted to read “The Lovely Bones” in sixth grade. She’s sensitive and I thought the first chapter might give her nightmares. So I gave her a warning. Told her that it was a great book, but that the first chapter was very upsetting and it might give her nightmares, and my advice was maybe to leave reading it for a year or so. I would have let her read it if she’d insisted, but she was happy to take my advice. She read it in 8^th grade and was it was all good.

It’s my very strong belief that books are positive vehicles for promoting conversations about difficult topics, particularly when kids are teenagers and kicking off discussions can be challenging. Sharing a book and then talking about it in the car or at the dinner table is, to me, such a positive way to parent. And isn’t it better for kids to confront difficult topics in the safety of a book and be able to discuss them with us and hear our thoughts and values?

I think the folks who try to ban books from library shelves are making a huge mistake because they are trying to foster a culture of denial – “if we ban books about these issues we can pretend they don’t actually exist.” I’d like to tell those parents that denial is a far worse enemy than anything contained in those books and their kids are way, way smarter than that.

What tools do you use to do research and to write your books?

I’m a research geek. I think it’s because I love to learn and I write about topics that interest me. I read many books to get a broad understanding of the topic. For my book LIFE, AFTER, the first third of the book was set in Buenos Aires and I didn’t have the money to travel there to research my setting, so I made heavy use of Google Maps and local blogs to gain a sense of atmosphere. And then, my best research geek moment was finding a database that the City of Buenos Aires kept that detailed every tree on every street and in every park in the city. Oh, the JOY!!

You’ve also been a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. How differently do you approach writing a column vs. writing a novel?

Writing a column is much quicker with more immediate gratification. It’s also helped me as a novel writer, because I tend to be very wordy (if you meet me in real life, I talk a lot and I write just like I talk) so as a columnist trying to fit a cogent argument into a short column space, I’ve had to become very good at self-editing.

Oh, and as a columnist I can always look forward to good hate mail, whereas as a novelist I’ve been pretty lucky with the fan mail

Please give us an eight-word description of your life.

Humorous former MBA/farmer’s wife writes (when not chauffeuring).

Oh shoot. That’s nine words. Will you let me slide?

Check out the following websites for Sarah Darer Littman

Sarah Darer Littman -Facebook Page

SDL Web Page

the award-winning animation “Q & A “ by Rauch Brothers Animation based on the Story Corps interview between her and her son.

Want to Go Private – website

Interview with Wally Wood – Author

Posted on July 30, 2011 by awritingprimate

Author of Getting Oriented

Wally Wood is a professional writer and a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, with 19 business books to his credit. He holds an M.A. in creative writing from City University of New York and a B.A. in philosophy from School of General Studies, Columbia University. Mr. Wood is a long-time volunteer in local prisons and he teaches creative writing in the local library.

His first novel is currently available on Amazon: Getting Oriented: A Novel About Japan. (see A Writing Primate’s New Writer for July post for more details.)

Click HERE to read the first chapter of Getting Oriented. You can also check out his BLOG which talks both about writing and about Japan.

INTERVIEW:

Tell us about your first contact with Japan, and what was it that interested in the country and culture?

After the Korean war, I was stationed in an infantry regiment just south of the DMZ. On my way to Korea, my troop ship stopped in Yokohama for 24 hours and I had an eight-hour pass to walk around the city. I was astounded by the contrast between suburban Cleveland, Ohio, where I grew up and Yokohama. The architecture was unfamiliar. I couldn’t read signs or posters. I couldn’t talk to anyone. Shops carried goods I didn’t recognize. I’ve been trying to understand the country and the culture ever since.

You have an extensive editorial background. Can you tell us about this experience and how it has influenced your own writing?

I was a trade magazine editor for 25 years. I began as a reporter and eventually was promoted to editor of one magazine and hired to be the founding editor of another. As an editor, your function is clear: How does this article help the reader? You always have to think of the reader. For a trade magazine, the question is easy: Does this help the reader make money or save money? Then: Is it clear? Is it interesting? We spent a lot of time thinking about headlines, decks, leads, captions, callouts, sidebars—the whole package. The influence on my fiction is to do my best to make the characters, the situation, and the writing as engaging as possible.

Do you have a particular person/author who has inspired you as a writer?

No. Or no one comes immediately to mind. I discovered when I was 14 years old that I could entertain people—adults, no less—and I have been writing ever since.

What is your favorite place in Japan, and why?

I like Kanazawa, a small city on the west coast that was never bombed during WWII. I spent a little more than two weeks there in an immersion Japanese language program in the early 1990s and have been back several times. It has one of the three most famous gardens in Japan, several interesting museums, and a “ninja” temple—a Buddhist temple built (I guess) for a paranoid lord because it is filled with secret passages and hiding places. Kanazawa was the castle town of one of the richest fiefs during the Tokugawa era (1600-1868), and a surprising number of the artifacts remain.

Describe to us about your own writing habits (favorite place/time to write, tools, etc.)

I regard myself as a professional. I try to get to my desk by 9:00 and write until 5:00 with breaks to get tea, lunch, check e-mail (although I’ve learned to turn off “mail” so I am not tempted to distract myself every time something comes in; I now check it before lunch, and in the late afternoon unless I am waiting for something special), waste time on the internet. If I’m not in the mood to write, I write in my journal about why I’m not in the mood to write. Recently I’ve found it useful to think about the day’s writing while I am walking for half an hour after breakfast. It accomplishes two things; it gives me a head start on the day’s writing and makes me exercise.

Tell us something of your experience in getting this book published.

I published the book on CreateSpace, a subsidiary (division?) of Amazon. The process is embarrassingly simple: Either let CreateSpace do everything (for $300), or—my choice—do it yourself (essentially free). I thought I’d finished Getting Oriented two years ago and spent time and money trying to interest an agent without a nibble. When I decided to publish the book myself, I began re-reading it and found it full of small embarrassments, repetitions, awkward sentences. My wife, Marian, who is also a writer, read the manuscript and pointed out infelicities I missed. I would urge anyone thinking of self-publishing to hire a good copy editor. Because of my background, I was able to design the interior of the book and a good friend, a graphic designer, created the cover. Once you have a formatted manuscript and a cover design, publishing the actual book is mouse click.

Since you teach writing, what do you feel would be the one piece of advice you would emphasize to a new writer?

Write every day. If you write just one page of fiction every single day, at the end of a year you have the draft of a novel. Read the best writers you can find, not only the classics but authors publishing today. Read on two levels: the surface, what the story is about; and the technique, how the author is doing it.

When you are writing fiction, what do you usually come up with first: the place (like Japan), the conflict/plot or the characters?

I don’t know. I think I come up with a situation (a guide leading a tour in Japan), then populate it with characters and try to provoke lifelike conflicts among them.

Who are your favorite Japanese authors?

This is a two-hour discussion because I like different authors for different things. I just read Kensaburo Oe’s A Private Matter, which is fascinating. I liked—and mentioned in my book—Jun’ichi Watanabe’s A Lost Paradise. I’ve read everything Haruki Murakami has published in English. Others I like in no particular order include Nagai Kaifu, Ryu Murakami, Amy Yamada, Shusaku Endo, Morio Kita. I’m still discovering wonderful Japanese writers.

Please give us an eight word description of your life.

Boundlessly curious, avid to learn, eager to share.

Craig Nova/Interview/ Brook Trout and The Writing Life)

Posted on June 14, 2011 by awritingprimate

Craig Nova

Craig Nova‘s writing has appeared in Esquire, The Paris Review, The New York Times Magazine among other publications. He is an award-winning author of twelve novels, such as The Good Son, and his most recent novel – The Informer. His short story, “The Prince,” won an O.Henry Award. Mr. Nova also received an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1997. In 2005 he was named Class of 1949 Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Nova was a judge on the fiction panel of the 2006 National Book Awards.

He has also written a memoir called Brook Trout and the Writing Life. Don’t get fooled by the title, it’s not just about fishing (although fishing is a big part of Mr. Nova’s karma, it would seem). He reveals his love of family, worries, hopes, and stress and those life-changing moments of a naturalist living and teaching his children how to live a full life. As Ann Beattie writes in the foreword: “Brook Trout and the Writing Life is three books in one – a beautifully tied, totally convincing fly of a book, woven from several strands: marriage and fatherhood; being a writer; being a fisherman”. He’s led an interesting life, and there is even a clift-hanger in the book involving an attempt by an unknown person to extort money from him.

You will also never look at brook trout again on your dinner plate without thinking of Craig Nova’s description of them: Brook trout are the most beautiful of fish. They are streamlined and quick moving, having tails that are the color of hickory bark and the texture of wet silk. There are delicate rays in the tails as well, ridges that are fine and symmetrical. It is the coloring though, which distinquishes them. They are dark, either brown or bluish brown on the back and they are almost impossible to see from above unless there are shadows. On their sides, however, they are marked differently: The color of the back gives way to a silvery brown and then to a satinlike and dark silver which is spotted with circles of brown and light brown, which circles have the aspect of cut and polished hardwood, oak, chestnut oak, walnut, cherry, or very old woods of a lighter color which have been handled and waxed and rubbed into darkness…

Interview

You say that “writing a book is not a matter of what the writer does to the book, but what the book does to the writer”. In what way does writing a memoir vs. writing a novel different when it comes to the book “informing you of a few things?”

Actually, I don’t think the mechanism differs at all. By this, I mean, you discover, whether in a novel or in a memoir, what you really think, and this comes about through the hard word of revising, of arranging what you have seen, in a memoir, and what you make up (although often based on what you have seen) in a novel to the point where you think it accurately reflects your own experience and that it does so accurately.

Often, or it has been my experience anyway, we think we know what has happened to us and those around us, but in fact, this is only a sort of superficial understanding. When you dig deeper, when you look closer, you realize that what you thought you knew wasn’t right.

And this knowing that things are not as they seem is a humbling experience, and one that is, I think anyway, at the basis of the beginning of growing up.

Also, I think that in the post modern age, or post post modern age, or wherever we are calling from now, narrative (that is the relating of events) is a tool to pierce that array of conflicting points of view, which is the essence of the modern age, to discover what you really think. This is probably the biggest change that the book produces in the author of it. It is a sort of applied epistemology, that is, What do I know and how do I know it. In narrative, you know it if the story seems to make sense and seems believable.

In talking about how things are far more connected then you thought in the beginning (one example in your book was the connection between fishing and the hawks), how would you relate this concept to the writing process? Can you give us an example?

Yes. I didn’t really know anything about writing until the birth of my first daughter. Before that I hadn’t really known what love was, and without this, a novelist is likely to produce very thin gruel. So, this is the kind of unexpected connection I mean, between the birth of a child and the ability to write.

You mention knowing it was time to grow up as a writer…in what ways do you think this has happened in your writing style and development as a novelist? What was one of the skills you’ve developed over the years as a writer?

First, there is the answer to number 2. But there are many, many tricks of the trade you learn, such as this:

the time to slow action down, to draw it out, is when things are at their most tense.

Don’t let the dramatic simply fly by…take a moment to make it last.

When things go wrong with your writing, what tools do you use to fix it?

I have an entire array of devices. For instance, I will take one of the elements of a piece of fiction and change it to see what happens.

For instance, I might try to see what a story’s point of view is. By this, I mean the perspective from which a story is told. One of the things I have learned about using point of view is that if one doesn’t work, why then it is a good idea to try another. Point of view is almost infinitely adjustable.

Let us say you are writing a story about a man and a woman who are having breakfast, and at breakfast they decide to break up. Say for one reason or another the story isn’t working. You don’t know why it isn’t working (often, of course, this is the case) but you know it is flat. Familiar. Too much like things you have read. Or you might suspect that something critical has been left out.

One of the ways (among many, many others) to begin to figure out what is wrong and to fix it is to change point of view. Say you are telling it from the woman’s perspective. You might try to tell the story over again from the man’s. If that doesn’t do the job, tell the story from the point of view of a neighbor who is listening to the conversation through the wall. If that doesn’t work, have the neighbor who is listening to the story tell it to his brother, or his girl friend, or some other character. Or, maybe you can tell it from the point of view of a burglar who has broken into the apartment and is hiding in a closet and hears what is going on through the closet door. Anyway, the idea is to add new elements.

Do you have a particular person/author who has inspired you? Tell us how?

Albert Camus. He is an inspiration because he was able to construct a morality on the basis of the fact that we are all in the same boat and that this means we have obligations to one another.

Anything you want to tell us about your next project (give us a hint)?

There are two new books in the works, one scheduled for fall, 2012, which is a sequel to a book of mine called the Good Son. The first book was set in the late forties. This new book is set now. The first book was about a family of lawyers, and the second is too, actually the new book is about the grand son of the lawyer in the first book, and he is still a lawyer, but now a prosecutor. The idea is to show how things have changed over the last sixty years.

The other book is about a man who loves his father and takes him fishing when the father is sick. It is just the opposite of the usual book one sees now (sons hate fathers, daughters hate mothers). It is about those profound attachments of love between one generation and another. These attachments have gotten lost in the shuffle of social utilitarianism, which novels seem to be indulging in and which I think are hurting them.

Please give us an Eight Word Description of Your Life.

In Haiku form it is

ink dries

what surprise

emerges from

white paper

Here are some links to Craig Nova’s web sites and book.

Craig Nova – The Writing Life (Blog)

Craig Nova-Amazon Author Page

Roberta Isleib – Mystery Author

Posted on June 1, 2011 by awritingprimate

Roberta Isleib is a New Jersey born clinical psychologist who has used her background to write a mystery series with a Connecticut psychologist and advice columnist, Rebecca Butterman. She has had three books in this series, the latest is Asking For Murder. Her short story “Disturbance in the Field,” published in SEASMOKE by Level Best Books, was short-listed for both Agatha and Macavity awards. Roberta says the work of the detective in a mystery has quite a bit in common with long-term psychotherapy: Start with a problem, follow the threads looking for clues, and gradually fill in the big picture.

She has another series involving another love: golf, plus she is starting a new series, which will be published in 2012 under the name of Lucy Burdette. She even has a website: Lucy Burdette. This latest series will be about a Key West Food Critic (food also being another favorite of Ms. Isleib!) She has also given writing workshops, the next one in Sept, 2011 called “Escape to Write”.

In your first book, SIX STROKES UNDER, you write a mystery involving golf and psychotherapy…two loves of yours. I know you started out as a psychologist, and you’ve said this profession has helped you structure your mysteries, but what was the pivotal moment to cause you to pick up the pen and start your mystery book?

Donna, it really started when I realized how much time and money i was spending learning to play golf (badly!) I decided I’d like to write about it and idea hatched about a mystery featuring a neurotic lady golfer. (They tell you to write what you know!) Thus Cassie Burdette was born.

Have you ever been in a writing group before you were published? Even now, do you have beta readers, and if so, how does their input help you?

I’ve been in the same group since well before I was published. We are down to three regulars now, but I rely on them to read everything and give me honest feedback. They let me know where they stumble over the writing and characters, and are really helpful with brainstorming plot points. I also exchange manuscripts with a couple of other writers. I couldn’t do it without them!

I notice you still do short stories (such as “The Itinerary” in the next MWA anthology, THE RICH AND THE DEAD, edited by Nelson DeMille.) What do you like about the short story format vs the novel length? In what ways is it different (or more challenging) in writing a mystery in such a compact number of words?

A short story is challenging because so much has to be fit into so few words. For me a story works well if I have one compact idea. In “The Itinerary”, published in the Nelson DeMille anthology, the idea came when we were watching a cruise ship leave port in Key West. We saw a very distressed man arguing with the captain, and I imagined that someone was missing that boat. A lot of “what if’s” later, the story was born.

Do you try to figure out the red herrings in your mysteries beforehand, or do they come up as the book moves along in the writing?

A little of both. Sometimes a snippet of story will come to me and I’ll jot it down to save for the right place later. Other times, the false clues evolve as the story does.

You have a new book coming out in 2012 that involves a food critic mystery series under the nom de plume: Lucy Burdette. Can you tell us a little bit about this first book in the new series?

Here’s the copy that’s going on the back cover. It does a pretty good job of describing the book:

Haley Snow is a woman of many passions. She’s followed her soul mate to funky, foodie Key West, but when their romance loses its sizzle, she’s determined to find a new life in this island paradise. She’s always been a foodie, so when she applies to be a food critic for Key Zest, the new Key West style magazine, it seems like a perfect pairing. But then Hayley discovers her new boss would be Kristen Faulkner—the woman who stole her boyfriend.

Hayley can’t see how things can get worse now that she’s loveless, jobless, and living on her friend’s boat—until Kristen is murdered and the police pull Hayley in as a suspect. Unfortunately, Hayley’s got more motive than Key Lime pie has meringue. To clear her name she’ll have to find the real killer fast or the only restaurant she’ll be reviewing is the prison café.

Now that you are Lucy Burdette and Roberta Islieb, does this mean you’re developing a split personality? What would your Rebecca from the Advice Column Mystery series say about this, and what was your reason for coming up with this new person, Lucy Burdette with her own web page?

I have a new publisher for the food critic series and they asked me to consider a pseudonym to differentiate these books from the first two series. I was happy to give it a try and chose my grandmother’s name, Lucy Burdette. (Rebecca would say go for it!)

Food seems to play a big part in your books. The beginning of ASKING FOR MURDER book with the broiled square hamburgers on toast, loaded with cheese tomato, and onions had me drooling. And now, you’re starting a new series with a food critic as the detective. Are you a great cook? Any favorite recipes?

I truly love to eat, and to talk about food, and write about it. I’m a good cook, but not gourmet level. My husband likes to say that our meals have improved since Rebecca Butterman and Hayley Snow have come along. (My first character, Cassie Burdette, was no cook at all and had a dreadful diet!) I must say that I make a killer chocolate cake, though I personally prefer the yellow cake with whipped cream and strawberries.

Do you have a particular person/author that has inspired you?

I love to read, always have. Some of my favorite mystery writers are Michael Connolly, Julia Spencer-Fleming, CJ Box, Abigail Padgett, Stephen White–there are so many great ones! Barbara O’Neal writes wonderful romantic fiction with food laced through it–and I’ve always enjoyed Diane Mott Davidson’s culinary mysteries. Right now I’m having fun reading foodie memoirs as background for Hayley Snow.

What turns you on about writing? What turns you off?

Writing is hard work–especially the first draft! But I do love editing. And I love seeing the book published and hearing from readers. The tasks of promotion are fun, but enormously time-consuming and distracting!

Please give us an Eight Word Description of Your Life.

Friends, family, books, food, writing, psychology, pets–lucky!

Check out Robert Isleib’s websites:

Lucy Burdette – Key West Food Critic Mysteries

Roberta Isleib.com

and you can also follow her on Twitter @lucyburdette

S.J.ROZAN-Mystery Writer Extraordinaire!

Posted on May 12, 2011 by awritingprimate

S.J Rozan, author of 12 books (and counting, I’m sure) has won many awards, including the Edgar, Shamus, and others. She has served on the National Boards of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, and is ex-President of the Private Eye Writers of America. A New Yorker and a former architect, her latest novel, On The Line (2010) is from the 10th in the Lydia Chin/Bill Smith popular series. This is what S.J. Rozan tells us about the book:

t’s a ticking-clock thriller. A lunatic with a deep hatred of Bill has kidnapped Lydia, and Bill, with the help of some odd people and a dog, has to rush all over New York following the guy’s clues trying to find her before the madman’s deadline.

And it looks as if the reviewers agree with her. Want to read an excerpt of On The Line? Click HERE!