Naomi Hirahara, Author

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“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

Ode to Smith Corona and Underwood

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No. 5 Underwood American Standard Typewriter -photo by D.S. Renzulli

I’m feeling a bit sentimental tonight. Very recently, I upgraded my Apple OS to Lion (a belated hear me roar! to Steve J.).  That’s when I discovered that I could no longer use my trusty Microsoft Word, version 10 or thereabouts!  You have to understand that I’ve been using Microsoft Office software since 1989, first at work, and then at home. I’ve written reports, done graphs in Excel, setup PowerPoint slideshows, written books (yes, completed and whole and not published), short stories (some published), letters, and this particular blog: A Writing Primate.  I loved Word, although I never upgraded after the 10.1. Once I left the working world, I only needed a word processor for my writing, and I was quite happy with the version I was using, thank you very much. After all, you don’t want something too complicated to interrupt the muse at her literary efforts. But, when I went to write after installing Lion, well, the big cat bit me in the ass by telling me that it wouldn’t open this particular Office software version.

Now, I could get an upgrade to Office 2011, but I had Pages on my computer, and I made a life changing decision to try it out. Pages (an Apple program) has been on my Macbook Pro for a few years, but I never got into using it. After all, I had the Word and the Word was all I needed, but sometimes you have to try something different, to make sure your brain cells don’t calcify or dribble out your ears (which can be quite messy). So, this blog is being written on Pages, and after it is done, I will uninstall the Microsoft Office with a ceremonial piping generally used for retiring admirals.

Which brings me to Smith Corona and Underwood. For you youngster, these are typewriters. What are typewriters, you ask? Ah child, they were used before the computer came along, and they were glorious machines. They made clackety-clack noises as you pressed down on the keys, and if you made a mistake, shame on you, you either used “white-out” to cover over the mistake, or start all over again, which, when you think about it, really made you think first about the words you were laying down on that pristine sheet of paper.  My mother gave me her Underwood typewriter when I was ten years old and the thing had to be thirty years old then. It was a huge, hunk of metal and I loved it. At a later Xmas, I got a Smith Corona that purred like a kitten because it was electric. The clack wasn’t quite so clicky any more, but there was still a noise. (When I write on my Macbook Pro, all I hear is my brain yelling, “THINK, THINK, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO WRITE NEXT, DUMMY?”, so I do miss the noise of a typewriter.

The concept of a typewriter dates back to at least 1714, when an Englishman filed a patent for an artificial machine to impress or transcribe letters singly or progressively one after another. The first typewriter built was for a blind Countess in Italy, so she could write letters, and that was in the early 1800’s. The first successful for the public typewriter (1870) looked like a pin cushion with a writing ball above the paper. Others soon followed, looking more like the typewriters we remember, and one in particular, Sholes & Glidden became popular, because it introduced the QWERTY keyboard (a layout we still use on our computers), although it only typed in capital letters. In the 19th century, the cost of a typewriter was $100. The typewriter also helped our grandmothers and great grandmothers find respectable jobs in office around the country, typing away at business letters written by men. Times have changed our perspective, haven’t they?

I miss my typewriter, and I miss my Word, but you know what? I kind of like this Pages software, too. Whatever tool you use to express yourself, it can only be good, whether using a pen or pencil, or typewriter or laptop, or iPhone, or iPad. It’s awesome to think of all the machines I’ve used to write. What fun, it’s been, and will continue to be. I can’t wait to see what comes next.

Quick! What was the first published novel written on a typewriter?
If you are interested, check out the Comments section below for the answer…

Interview: Donald Maass – Agent

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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


A Writing Frenzy in November!

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If you see people in November walking around muttering, “Nanowrimo! Nanowrimo!”, please be assured, they are not from Mars, or Zombies from Planet X. They are participants in National Novel Writing Month (aka Nanowrimo), a yearly ritual for writers that has become an international obsession.

Nanowrimo participants begin writing on November 1. The goal is to write a 50,000 word, (approximately 175 page) novel by 11:59:59, November 30. That’s right, 50,00 words in one month! That is 1666 words per day…and if you skip a day, double that amount. It is a challenge, but it’s invigorating, trust me, because I’ve done it twice. The idea is to let the writing flow…to never stop and think about it or rewrite it, not until after the month of November is finished. It gets your creative juices flowing.

The first Nanowrimo started in July, 1999 with 21 people in the San Francisco Bay area. Twelve years later, in 2010, 200,530 participants all around the world had written 2,872,682,109 words, with 37,479 winners blowing through the 50,000-word goal. And you could be one of them in 2011.

Go to the National Novel Writing Month website and sign up now…before November starts. You will be able to track your progress, join forums with other writers in the same situation as you, and maybe even get together in person with the local Nanwrimo group.

I’ll be doing it this year, and hope to see you there. Let’s do it together.

nanowrimo.org

TEN ROTTEN BASTARDS OF FICTION

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They are sleazy, obsessed, murderous and just plain rotten, but we love them anyway! The Baddies are the ones who interest us the most in fiction. We shiver, we shake, and we just can’t believe how bad they can really be, and damned if we’ll put down that book just as we get to the part where they’re behaving at their worst!

Below is the Ten Rotten Bastards of Fiction.  Before you email me, I did NOT include Moriarty of Sherlock Holmes fame. I always believed he was an opium-induced vision of Holmes.  Just my opinion…

Long John Silver – Treasure Island

            He’s like the eccentric uncle of villains. Sure, Silver is sneaky and sly, but that’s what we love about him. Admit it, you rooted for him to escape at the end, don’t you?

Mrs Danvers – Rebecca

            She is the housekeeper from hell! Her obsession with Rebecca drives her to make life more than miserable for the new mistress of Manderley.  At the book’s end, she’s just another crispy critter, or is she?

Hannibal Lecter – Red Dragon

            It’s a hard road for Hannibal. To be a gentleman and a cannibal, what a tough act to balance, but this anthropophagous villain manages it with a threatening charm. Be sure to count your fingers after he bends over your hand to kiss them.

Sauron – The Lord of the Rings

            “The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat’s, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing.” Oh, will that unsleeping Eye ever stop watching us? For weeks I had nightmares, how about you?

Bill Sikes – Oliver Twist

            I hated him right off, but when he kicked the ugly dog who adored him, well, that was it for me. Boo! Hiss! He deserved his bad end.

Annie Wilkes – Misery

            You don’t want her as your Number One Fan!

 Frederick Clegg – The Collector

            This guy is creepy. He’d be a good match for Annie Wilkes. He “collects” a beautiful woman like she is a butterfly for his collection, then pins her with his love until her death. Love may be strange but Clegg is stranger!

Police Inspector Javert – Les Miserables

            One thing that villains seem to have in common is obsession. He is inflexible and cruel, and one way or the other, he is determined to be the source of Valjean’s downfall.

Count Dracula – Dracula

            A cousin of Hannibal Lector, for sure. He wants your blood. Throughout the years, he’s been transformed into a cottage industry of movies, books, etc. So, we should consider him the Bill Gates of Villains.

The Clown – IT

            This Baddie really creeped me out. It spoiled circuses forever for me because every clown I saw had sharp, sharp teeth. Thank you, Stephen King!

Did I forget your favorite Rotten Bastard of Fiction? Be sure to let me know via comments.

Jennie Shortridge and Seattle7Writers

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“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

New Writers Corner for Sept. 2011

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This month at our New Writers Corner, we are looking at authors who view history as a chance to tell fascinating stories through the eyes of real people. It’s a genre that is hard to pull off, but when it’s done right, as these authors did, it gives the reader a chance to get lost in an era other than their own. Check out these authors and buy their work. After all, we want to encourage them to keep writing!

The Painter from Shanghai is a historical fiction novel based on the life of Pan Yuliang, a Chinese artist born in 1899. Based in New York, Jennifer Cody Epstein has written for Self, The Wall Street Journal, and the Chicago Tribune. She has published short fiction in several journals and was a finalist in a Glimmer Train fiction contest.

Fighting Castro: A Love Story is a fascinating glimpse into the world of Cuba during the time of Castro’s takeover of the country as seen through the eyes of an actual couple:  Lino and Emy.  The book combines historical fact and storytelling of a turbulent time.  Kay Abella is a professional journalist, author, and editor who has been a magazine journalist in New York and in France where she worked as a translator and journalist for the Chicago Tribune. She is now a full-time writer of fiction and nonfiction.

Coffeyville by C. E. L. Welsh is an interesting mixture of using a historical character like Harry Houdini in a novel full of misdirection and mystery.  This is a short novel at a great price ($2.99). C.E.L. Welsh is an author of fiction living in Texas.

Have you come across a book like the one above that you’d like to share with us? Be sure to tell us in a comment below.