Tag Archives: interview

Joshilyn Jackson, Author

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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.

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.”

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

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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

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


Sarah Darer Littman – Author

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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 8th 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

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Interview/ Shimmer Magazine Editors

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Shimmer Magazine

Magazines come and go quickly like passing thunderstorms, so when a print and on-line magazine like Shimmer has been successful for the past six years, I feel it deserves to be recognized for this accomplishment.  Shimmer Magazine publishes contemporary fantasy stories with some science fiction and horror genre thrown into the mix.  The magazine is the brainchild of Beth Wodzinski, Editor-in-Chief. They release several issues a year in both print and online format. Working with Beth on the magazine is Elise Catherine Tobler, Fiction Editor, as well as other talented staff, aka the Shimmery People.

Editor-in-Chief, Shimmer

Beth Wodzinski has had her fiction in Flash Fiction Online, Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest, and Fictitious Force.

Fiction Editor, Shimmer

E. Cathering Tobler (Elise)’s stories were published in SciFiction, Strange Horizons, Fantasy Magazine, Talebones, Realms of Fantasy, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and others. She is also an active member of SWFA. Check out her blog Here.

Following is an interview with these two amazing women. If you are an author interested in submitting your work to Shimmer: Speculative Fiction for a Miscreant World, I suggest reading below to see how the magazine is put together, and then go to their Fiction Guidelines page.

Interview with Beth and Elise:

Both: How did the two of you come together to do this magazine? And where does the name Shimmer come from?

BETH: It took forever to find the right name! I considered dozens, maybe hundreds, of possibilities, but nothing felt right. Then one day, I read a story in a writer’s group I was in. The author had some kind of ghost-type characters called “shimmers,” and that just clicked. I liked how it sounded beautiful and a little otherworldly.

Elise joined us in 2006 after a few staff members left. Our art director, Mary Robinette Kowal, put out an announcement on the Codex writer’s group and maybe a few other places. We ended up “hiring” three of the applicants: Elise, Lisa Mantchev, and Catherine Knutsson. I think we’d only planned to hire one, but those three really stood out.

ELISE: I remember seeing Mary’s call in the Codex group and I thought “hey, that sounds really fun.” I was somewhat familiar with Shimmer, having read the early issues and submitted a couple of my own stories. I remember agonizing over my application email and trying not to sound like a doofus. Being with Shimmer has been a great learning experience, because it’s given me a new appreciation for the small press, and for writing, and for fellow writers and editors.

The Shimmer Magazine has been up and running since 2005. In these days of magazines opening and closing like shutters on a window, what do you attribute your success for staying in the magazine business for past 6 years?

BETH:  I like to say it’s because of low expectations! We never really intended to become a giant and challenge Asimov’s or F&SF — if we’d expected that, it would have been really easy to get in over our heads with huge print runs, expensive distribution deals, staff salaries, etc. Instead we’ve stayed small and not taken on more than we could handle.

We’ve also had really good luck with finding people to volunteer to help out when we’ve had vacancies. There are parts of this I could never do: like learning layout, or all the web support; but it’s also essential to have good people helping out on the fun parts, too, like reading the stories.

What vision do you have for Shimmer in the future, say …five years from now?

BETH: Five years is a really long time! Who knows? I do expect to still be publishing in five years.

We’re definitely going to be putting a lot of energy into getting our electronic versions into new markets and new formats — and it seems like new markets and formats are emerging every day.

I also hope that within five years, we’ll have a few other offerings — novellas? novels? some kind of interactive web format? I don’t know yet what we’ll expand into, but I do know it’ll be something special.

Both: Please take us through the process of putting together an issue of Shimmer?

BETH: Here’s a blog post I did that gives one take on our process: Behind the Scenes.

A bit over 5% of stories submitted to us get picked out of the slush pile and passed on to our editorial forum for further review. I solicit comments from the rest of the staff, and eventually decide whether to acquire a story or not. (On rare occasions, I’ll contact the author to request a rewrite, or ask for clarification about a point in the story.)

Once we’ve acquired a story, we edit it. This involves two sets of eyes: mine and another editor’s. Each person has different strengths as an editor, so it’s been useful to have more than one set of eyes on a story. For example, I think I’m really good at clarity and focus, but I rarely notice repeated words; Elise will often catch those, and she’s also really good at livening up static description.

It goes again to the author, and often there’s some back and forth about how to tweak the story. We view our changes more as suggestions than demands; so we work with the authors to get a version that we’re both happy with.

That version gets a thorough copy edit (which again the author gets to review and adjust), and it’s on to layout. Eventually, all the stories make it through the editorial process, and it’s all up to the art director. In this stage, we do the layout and proofreading, acquire art, and get everything perfect. Once it goes to the printer, we have about a month to get the web site ready for the new issue: setting up the shopping cart, setting up the author interviews, getting the mailing ready.

That is probably more detail than you wanted. But it’s a hell of a lot of painstaking work! Luckily it’s fun.

ELISE:  We also interview each author prior to the issue’s release, getting some background on them as well as the story we’re running (what inspired you to write this, who are your influences, which writer would you eat first if stranded on an island during a zombie apocalypse–the basics). We invite authors to give us audio or video goodies too, which usually involves them reading a piece of their story.

Both: What advice can you give to new writers submitting their work to Shimmer, or any other magazine for that matter?

BETH: Keep trying! We try to offer a few helpful comments with rejections; we hope that this gives authors a better sense of what we’re looking for.

One of the authors in our upcoming Issue 14 submitted at least 25 stories to us before he got accepted. Here’s a blog post he wrote about the value of persistence: http://www.shimmerzine.com/2010/10/06/on-persistence/

Just keep at it.

ELISE: Take risks. You never know if something is going to succeed until you get it on the page and toss it out there. Every Wednesday, the Shimmer blog features advice for newer writers, from Shimmer staffers as well as established authors. Read the blog, follow staffers on Twitter; we often talk about slush, what we see too much of, what we want to see more of, etc.

Both: How has working on publishing a magazine changed you as a writer? And visa versa?

BETH: Actually I think part of the reason I started Shimmer was to have a good excuse to procrastinate on the writing. It’s certainly been successful from that perspective!

Seriously though? I think it’s shown me to stop fretting about whether a story is “good” and just write it as well as I can, because every editor’s perception of what “good” means totally varies. Fretting just gets in the way, so have faith and write.

ELISE: Overall, I think it’s made me more thoughtful. It has made me reconsider the way I structure my writing; leap in, be bold, do wacky things, and trust that the editor and reader will go with you. It has also made me considerate in the rejections I send, because I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of such; if I can give even one little piece of advice on a story, I try to.

To Beth: In a blog on Apex publications, you mention how publishing is personal, just as much as writing is for you. Can you tell us in what way they are personal for you?

BETH: I think the main thing was getting at is that anything you voluntarily put this much time and effort into has to be personal, just like running a marathon or climbing a mountain or collecting stamps is personal. There has to be something about the endeavor that speaks to your heart. You can’t just go through the motions; it’s way too much work for that.

It’s also entirely true that different editors have different tastes, and to the extent that our tastes describe us, our fiction selections can be very revealing. When we’ve worked with guest editors, I’ve been fascinated by the choices they’ve made.

Elise is going to handle the editing for Issue 15 (which will be released sometime early next year), and I can’t wait to see what she’ll pick.

To Beth: Tell us something about your writing process? Who has been an influence on you?

BETH: I’m gonna skip this because I’m just not writing much these days. Alas.

To Elise: You are also a photographer as well as a writer, and you have mentioned that photography is another way to tell as story.  What similarities / and / or differences do you feel you have in approaching the creativity of both writing and photography?

ELISE:  I would say both require you to approach a subject, and find the right angle for capturing it. You need to know where your light comes from, you need to know what to focus on and what to leave in the background. Quite often, it’s trial and error with both writing and photography, and at least with digital technology, we have the ability to erase easily and start over, if we haven’t stumbled upon the right focus.

To Elise: Tell us about what are “ghostpigs” and how do they relate to writing a good short story?

ELISE: “Ghostpigs” came from Catherynne Valente‘s blog and has become shorthand for “your cool idea.” If you bury your cool idea–whatever it is–on page five, the editor may never get there to discover it. Share that cool thing as soon as you can. It makes me think of The Sixth Sense in some ways, because the ghostpigs are there from the beginning, only the viewer doesn’t know it until the very end (okay, okay, some people say they knew all along!). Same with Katy Perry’s “E.T.” video; your viewer presumes one thing to be true and in the end, it’s something else that was there all along. Your cool thing should be just as vital, and woven through every part of your story, if possible.

Both: Who are your favorite authors?

ELISE: Ray Bradbury, Mary Doria Russell, Borges, Elizabeth Hand, E.B. White, Karen Joy Fowler, Laura Kinsale, Lovecraft, Kage Baker, Edgar Allan Poe, Connie Willis, Charles de Lint, Alice Hoffman, Nick Bantock…and so many more.

BETH: Yes to all those! plus Shirley Jackson, Lynda Barry, Caitlin Kiernan. Peter Beagle. Campbell nominee Dan Wells. Christopher Moore. World War Z, by Max Brooks. Geek Love, by Katherine Dunn. Jeff Ford. Jim Thompson. and a million more.

Both: Please give us an eight-word description of your life?

ELISE: Not the life I expected, but still shiny.

BETH: Oooh, I wish I’d thought of that first.

Check out the Following Links for Shimmer.

Issue #13/Shimmer

Blog (highly recommended reading)

Fiction Guidelines

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

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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.

Brook Trout and The Writing Life

Craig Nova – The Writing Life (Blog)

Craig Nova-Amazon Author Page

S.J.ROZAN-Mystery Writer Extraordinaire!

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S.J. Rozan

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!

Interview

You’re coming out with your 10th novel in the Bill Smith/Lydia Chin series in Sept. 2010 called On The Line.  Are the characters like old friends now?
S.J. Rozan : My friends behave better.


How do you keep the characters Bill Smith/Lydia Chin fresh for another book? When you reach number 10, does it get harder or easier to write a book with these characters?
S.J. Rozan : Easier, though I must say writing is NEVER easy.  But I know them by now, well enough that I know what they’ll do.  As for keeping them fresh, you don’t get tired of people you know just because you’ve known them for many years.  In some ways it’s the same with characters.

You really got some great writers in the The Dark End of the Street: New Stories of Sex and Crime collection. Writers like Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Child, Lawrence Block and many more. What is involved in getting stories like this from such talented people?
S.J. Rozan : We just asked.  Most people were excited about the idea and jumped at the chance to be part of it.

 

Did you feel you learned anything from them about writing? If so, what?
S.J. Rozan : I always learn from other writers.  In this case the variety of approaches to the single topic was eye-opening.

 

What is the method of your madness? Do you write down all the details (character, plot, setting) as an outline, or do you start off on the first sentence and see where it takes you?
S.J. Rozan : The latter.  Though I always have a distant goal in mind.  Like if you’re driving from NYC to LA, even if you don’t know the route, you’ll keep yourself heading basically west, and somewhat south, and you’ll know when you get there.


Are you still a practicing architect?
S.J. Rozan : No.


How do you find the time to write? When do you get into the writing zone?
S.J. Rozan : When I sit down at the keyboard and turn off the phone and the email.


What was the best advice you ever got on your writing?
S.J. Rozan : Best, from Martin Cruz Smith: “Look to the melody.”  When you get lost in a jazz riff, find the melody and you’ll know where you are and where you’re going.  Same in writing.

The worst advice?
S.J. Rozan :  Worst: “Don’t write in first person as a man.”  (I ignored that.)


Not to put you on the spot, but please give us an Eight Word Description of Your Life.
S.J. Rozan: Tea books birds work workout friends travel sleep.

Check out her website at www.sjrozan.com

She has writing contests, interviews, and other fun and interesting stuff and link to her blog. Other books by S.J. Rozan are The Shanghai Moon; In This Rain; A Bitter Feast and Mandarin Plaid.


Watch out for her newest book coming out in September, 2011. Lydia Chin is the narrator for Ghost Hero, which will be the 11th in the series.