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Fiction

Lorraine López

The latest novel from PEN/Faulkner nominee Lorraine López revolves around a lost young woman who hopes to find peace and purpose by opening her Southern California home to wayward souls.

What inspired this story about spiritual and religious wanderings?
Curiosity. I write about what intrigues or perplexes me in order to gain a better grasp on what is at first elusive to me. I’ve noticed how certain people seem to gain greater serenity and equanimity through faith. In the novel, I pursue my curiosity about that through the protagonist who feels shut out from the realm of spirituality. For her, spiritual faith is like music she can’t hear or a work of art she’s unable to see. Her life is hectic and demanding, so she’s also after the peace of mind that spiritual people appear to enjoy.

How did you create Marina—the wisecracking, confused heroine forcing herself to try to be a lighthouse in chaos?
Marina’s voice came to me first, and it was an insistent voice that guided me into the story. Usually, I will draft fiction on my computer, but for the early chapters of this novel, that voice insisted on dictating to me while I wrote in longhand. And the voice led me to create Marina’s character, a reluctant benefactress who paradoxically strives for both peace of mind and the well-being of others. These traits were inspired for me by my oldest sister, who is well known in her community for being the go-to person for people who have problems. Though unflappably good to others, my sister has a biting wit and a sharp and profane tongue that provides a nice edge to her nurturing nature.

Why did you set your novel in a splintered community?
I have to say that I don’t perceive it as especially splintered. To me, the community in the novel is much more cohesive than, say, the middle-class suburban Nashville neighborhood in which I now live. In Marina’s community, members rely on and support one another in multiple ways. Beyond the novel, and despite negative stereotypes about Latino communities, these can be exceptionally cohesive and cooperative networks that provide practical help and emotional support to their members. In fact, writers from other cultural groups have expressed to me their regret that they do not have the same community that Latino authors sustain and benefit from. To my thinking, we are a community-oriented people. Of course, we have conflict as regularly as any other group, but in my experience, this is not a splintered community, and I have chosen to set the novel in this community because it portrays what I have experienced living most of my early life among Latinos in Southern California—to me, it feels real and true.

So often Latino literature is recognized for its connections to magical realism, but your characters tend to create their own magic. As a Latina author, where do you hope to take the genre with your novels?

It is usually Latin American and not Latino literature that is characterized by connection to magical realism. Latin American writers often inhabit spaces that are unstable—politically, economically and ideologically. People living in Latin America sometimes experience significant trauma due to this instability, and that trauma influences the writing that emanates from that part of the world. Magical realism can synthesize the instability and trauma, as well as reflect it, by presenting magical or fabulist occurrences that deliver characters from the instability and trauma in their lives, or fantastic occurrences that represent the forces against which characters feel powerless.

Latino literature is by definition written by writers of Hispanic heritage who are inculcated in the U.S. cultural experience, who write in English and who self-identify as Latinos. As such, our experiences in this country are significantly more stable and predictable than those of people living in Latin America. And while some Latino authors, such as Ana Castillo, do dabble in magical realism, I, like the vast majority of Latino authors, write realistic fiction that reflects my lived experience in this comparatively stable nation.

If there is magic in my writing, it results from interpersonal relationships among characters, from characters persisting in their attempts to be provident for others and to be kind, despite the obstacles and ingratitude they encounter. No special effects—just human miracles.

As to where I hope to take the genre (and I suppose this refers to the genre of Latino literature), I have to say that when we have such diversity within the diversity that is Latino literature, I don’t know if we have a genre, which I think of as a classification by form or style. There are Latino writers who pen mysteries, science fiction, young adult fiction, romances, poetry, drama and on and on. But my goals as a writer who is a Latina are simple and few: 1) to honor that diversity within what seems to be a cultural monolith, and 2) to write well.

Does Latino mythology spark your stories, or do they blend with your writing unconsciously? For example, did La Llorona, La Sufrida and La Chingada create your characters, or did the characters evolve into them?
Latino mythology also contains such diversity that it seems as impossible to generalize about it as it is to make broad statements about cultural genre, since there are Puerto Rican myths, Cuban myths, Chicano myths—to name just a few. La Llorona, La Sufrida and La Chingada emanate from Mexican mythology as interpreted by Gloria Anzaldúa, who has theorized about how this trinity was created to encourage Mexican women to subjugate themselves, to accept lives of sorrow, sacrifice and shame without complaining. I much appreciated how Sandra Cisneros developed and then deconstructed the myth of La Llorona in her story “Woman Hollering Creek,” and the way in which she reclaims the myth so it empowers the female characters. Anzaldúa’s work and Cisneros’ story have inspired me to look at the ways in which these mythological figures continue to shape women’s lives even on this side of the border. When I created Carlotta’s character as an abused woman who lives next door to Marina, I saw how her tendencies aligned with these three figures, and so I use them to describe Carlotta’s various “settings,” as Marina thinks of them. Here, the character suggested the comparative to the mythological figures. Usually, this is the case for me—first the characters emerge, and everything else follows, including plot, theme, symbols, metaphors and comparatives.

Women in Latino literature so often seem separate from male characters, as if fighting their own removed battle. But Marina seems open to help the opposite gender, as though machismo is both unavoidable but also conquerable. How do you see the roles of males and females in your book?
As a woman, I find it hard not to notice discrepancies in the way men and women are treated in the world, and the incongruity that emerges when men who are less capable, resourceful or accomplished than women are nonetheless afforded privileges withheld from women solely on the basis of gender. Machismo is a word that originates in Spanish, but it’s now an indispensible part of our English vernacular because it describes a condition that translates across cultures. But to Marina, it seems wrong to hold this against men, especially young men who have had no hand in creating the imbalance of privilege and quite probably do not even understand how it works, much less how to take advantage of it. Discrimination and bias are two-edged swords—harmful on both sides. With privilege comes the expectation of competence, even skillfulness, some measure of achievement that evades characters like Kiko and Reggie. The pressure of the expectation of accomplishment that accompanies this privilege seems to paralyze many of the male characters in the novel, and Marina, in her nurturing role, seeks to support and comfort all of the people she cares about, regardless of their gender or the reasons for their suffering.

One of the book’s big “lessons” is to let tormentors be the teachers. How did this become one of the novel’s messages?
This is the Dalai Lama’s message, and I must confess—like Marina in the novel—I don’t always grasp it as I should, especially on the highway when some other driver behaves rudely, though it is a powerful and illuminating perspective that I would like to maintain. I must also admit that I have limited attention for reading that does not contain a narrative, so self-help and spiritual books don’t sustain my interest beyond a page or two. But this idea appeared in a book by the Dalai Lama, and it jumped out at me, anchoring in my long-term memory and re-emerging when I was creating Marina and articulating her self-defining challenge.
 

The latest novel from PEN/Faulkner nominee Lorraine López revolves around a lost young woman who hopes to find peace and purpose by opening her Southern California home to wayward souls.

What inspired this story about spiritual and religious wanderings?
Curiosity. I write about what…

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Helen Frost

Sometimes it’s hard to discern what lies behind the façade of a young girl. Take Wren and Darra, the characters in Helen Frost’s intriguing new novel, Hidden. While they have never actually met, these girls share a secret that unites them—a secret that they’ve kept, individually, for years.

After reading just the first two pages of Frost’s novel-in-poems, young readers will be drawn into the vivid tale that unfolds, written alternately from Wren’s and Darra’s points of view. Their perspectives offer an inside look at how one moment in time, one unfortunate act, can both bind and alter many lives collectively.

“There were hidden elements of each girl’s life. The language itself works to bring the two stories together.”

Presenting those two perspectives was the challenge for Frost, who has cleverly woven such intricate details and dialogue into many of her past novels. And it’s a challenge she takes seriously. “It’s very important, and I try to get it right,” says Frost, an award-winning poet who won a 2004 Michael L. Printz Honor for her YA novel-in-verse, Keesha’s House.

As Hidden unfolds, Darra’s abusive unemployed father steals a minivan, not realizing young Wren is in the back. When Darra guesses that Wren is hiding in her family’s garage, she’s torn between helping the young girl she has never met (and seen only on TV news reports) and protecting her father.

The ensuing fear, confusion and uncertainty—experienced by both Wren and Darra—are vocalized through first-person accounts by the two eight-year-old girls. Wren’s insights, written in carefully crafted stanzas, make up the first third of the book. The second section illuminates Darra’s angst about the event, coupled with the blame she puts on Wren for her father’s eventual arrest. The denouement, which comes six years later when Wren and Darra unexpectedly meet at summer camp, brings all the memories, confusion, blame and turmoil to a head.

While some authors start with an event or a kernel of a plot for a novel, Frost instead allowed her compelling characters to take her in a direction she never expected to go.

“In this one, I really started with the characters,” Frost says during a call to her home in Fort Wayne, Indiana. “I had this idea that this family, Wren and her brother, were going to go to the Isle of Barra” (the setting in Frost’s 2006 book The Braid).

But soon, Wren’s character became quiet, withdrawn and overshadowed by her brother. Frost began to envision that something must have happened to Wren to spark her silence.

“It became a very different story,” Frost says. “After I started telling the story, Darra kind of poked her head in. She wasn’t there until six or seven versions of the story went by. I had to keep asking myself questions.”

While the story changed, one thing remained consistent: Frost’s impeccable talent for creating novels in the form of poetry. She says that after she wrote The Braid, where form also plays an important role, “I felt like anything was possible with language. Language itself helps tell the story.”

Language definitely helps to convey the story of Hidden, with each girl’s words captured in a different format. “There were hidden elements of each girl’s life,” Frost says. “The language itself works to bring the two stories together.”

To relay Wren’s experience, Frost says she worked hard “to put her poems in a structured form.” For Darra’s dialogue, she created an ingenious form specifically for this novel. The last words of the long lines, read vertically down the right side of the page, form sentences that elucidate Darra’s memories.

While the form was intentional, the author says the words came organically—to create an authentic, natural-sounding dialogue. “[I] trust the DNA of the language. It creates tension and really interesting reverberations in the story. For kids reading it, I think they will think this is a really fun thing to discover.”

A native South Dakotan who was born fifth in a family of 10 children, Frost says she “grew up in a family that made me feel like I could do anything.” She received a degree in Elementary Education from Syracuse University, and it was there that she discovered poetry.

“I feel really lucky in the introduction to poetry I had. It has always been a part of my life,” says Frost, noting that the much-decorated poets Philip Booth and W.D. Snodgrass were among her teachers.

As her writing career progressed, “I was writing prose for children and poetry for adults,” she says, expressing amazement at how long it took her to meld those two worlds. “I realized that I had all those tools. I sometimes start my books in prose, but then I miss those tools. It’s like a really precise paintbrush. I want the structure, the sound of language.”

Frost has seen firsthand the impact of poetry on young readers. “I saw how much [children] loved poetry,” she says, recalling a time she once worked with a group of tween-age boys. “I remember putting out poems on a table . . . and a fistfight practically erupted. They were fighting over Shakespeare; I really saw a hunger for poetry.”

In addition to drawing on her background in poetry, Frost also infuses her writing with experiences from the many places she’s hung her hat over the years—from a progressive boarding school in Scotland to a one-teacher school in a tiny town in Alaska.

“I think I just grew up with a sense of adventure,” Frost says. “All these places came back when I became a full-time writer; I realized just how much I had to draw on.”

Next up for this talented author is Step Gently Out, a picture book collaboration with photographer Rick Lieder due out next year. She’s also starting a new novel-in-poems, and it’s likely there are even more ideas “hidden” somewhere in her imagination—but don’t worry, she’ll get them down eventually.

“The main thing is to keep from being distracted,” says Frost, a mother of two and grandmother of two. “I love writing, and I love children. To have those two things combined . . . it’s been a long journey to get to this point. It feels really lucky.”

Sometimes it’s hard to discern what lies behind the façade of a young girl. Take Wren and Darra, the characters in Helen Frost’s intriguing new novel, Hidden. While they have never actually met, these girls share a secret that unites them—a secret that they’ve kept,…

NonfictionMemoir

William Deresiewicz

Literary critic William Deresiewicz discusses his charming new memoir, A Jane Austen Education, and Austen’s timeless appeal.

Your book describes a series of “life lessons” you learned by reading Jane Austen’s novels, such as how to truly listen to other people’s stories and the value of a true friend. Do you think Austen consciously embedded these lessons in her novels, or was it unintentional?
Definitely intentional. As someone once said, she was a moralist without being moralistic. She didn’t preach, but she definitely wanted to teach—by example. The examples are what happens to her heroines. The lessons Austen imparted are the ones they learn themselves. Their stories are about learning to live better, and we’re supposed to get the idea, too.

You also document your coming-of-age through reading Jane Austen as a graduate student in English. Why do you think it was Austen who brought about this change, and not George Eliot or James Joyce, for example?
Partly it was simply a matter of timing. I discovered Austen at an age when I was probably ready to start learning these things, and through a professor in whose company I was eager to learn. But I also think it’s Austen. For reasons that I think I still don’t fully understand and probably never will, she just spoke to me in a way that no other novelist ever has. There’s something intensely personal about her writing, which is why I think so many people feel they have a personal relationship with it. You feel like she’s talking directly to you. Which is not to say that I haven’t learned important things from George Eliot and James Joyce: Joyce at a younger age than Austen, in college, when every young literary man identifies with Stephen Dedalus; Eliot at an older age. She’s more a writer of limitation and disillusionment.

Your professor Karl Kroeber acts as a kind of father figure in this memoir , introducing you to Austen’s Emma and modeling good teaching. Is it fair to say that Jane Austen was a mother figure?
Yes, I think that’s fair, all the more so because in a lot of ways she projects a maternal presence in her fiction—though the kind of mother who’s as apt to smack you in the head if you do something stupid as she is to nurture and defend you. She regarded her characters as her children, a fact that comes out explicitly in her letters. But for me, I also think it’s more complicated. A mother figure, but also a friend. Maybe a big-sister figure.

What drew you to write this hybrid of memoir and literary criticism for a general audience, as opposed to your scholarly work on Austen?
I’ve been writing about literature for a general audience for a long time, as a book critic. Actually, the fact that I was more interested in doing that than in scholarly work is the reason I decided to leave academia. The memoir part is new for me, though, and it’s been an interesting challenge: a technical challenge to blend the two and a personal challenge to be so candid in such a public way. The second part is a little frightening. As for why I decided to write the book this way, well, the idea was to convey the lessons I learned by reading Jane Austen, and I realized pretty quickly that the best way to do that would be to actually talk about the way I learned them, not just explain them in some kind of abstract and impersonal way.

What did you think of the recent Masterpiece Theater production of Emma? Was it faithful to that book's lessons?
Oops. I haven’t watched it yet. I tend to be wary of Jane Austen adaptations because so many of them are such travesties. But I should give it a shot.

Jane Austen taught you moral seriousness, how to be an adult and, ultimately, how to love. What would you like your book to convey to its audience?
First, that her books aren’t just soap operas and aren’t just fun—though of course they’re incredibly fun—they also have a lot of serious and important and very wise things to say. Second, that they aren’t just about romance (which is usually the only thing the movies have room for, or interest in). And finally, that they aren’t just for women. I would love it if the book helped introduce more men to her work. Maybe people could get it for their boyfriends/husbands/brothers.

What advice do you think Jane Austen would give to a contemporary single woman in want of a relationship?
Ha! Great question. The first thing I think she would say is, don’t settle. Then, marry for the right reasons: for love, not for money or appearances or expectations. But most importantly—and this is what I talk about in the love chapter, the last chapter—don’t fall for all the romantic clichés about Romeo and Juliet and love at first sight. For Austen, love came from the mind as well as the heart. She didn’t believe you could fall in love with someone until you knew them, and then what you fell in love with was their character more than anything else, whether they were a good person and also an interesting one. So I guess that means, date someone for a while before you commit, and don’t get so carried away by your feelings that you forget to give a good hard look at who they are. As for sex, it’s not so clear she would have disapproved of sleeping together before marriage. I think she maybe even would’ve liked it, as a chance to learn something very important before it’s too late.

Do you think Jane Austen still has more to teach you?
Absolutely. Every time I read her novels I learn something new.

RELATED CONTENT
Review of A Jane Austen Education.

Literary critic William Deresiewicz discusses his charming new memoir, A Jane Austen Education, and Austen’s timeless appeal.

Your book describes a series of “life lessons” you learned by reading Jane Austen’s novels, such as how to truly listen to other people’s stories and the value of…

Nonfiction

Mitchell Zuckoff

Shangri-La became a synonym for a remote, secluded paradise in 1933 via the James Hilton novel Lost Horizon. That name gained much wider currency in 1937 after the book was made into a movie. Little wonder, then, that in the spring of 1944, when a U.S. Army Air Force pilot on a reconnaissance flight “discovered” a wide, fertile valley high in the central mountains of New Guinea, it would be dubbed Shangri-La. Surrounded by jungles and inaccessible by road or water, the valley was dotted with cultivated fields and villages that appeared to be inhabited by tribes from the Stone Age.

During the ensuing year, the discovery generated so much curiosity that it became commonplace for military personnel to arrange for brief flyovers of the valley, even though its high altitude and sudden shifts in weather made the flights potentially hazardous. Nonetheless, on the Sunday afternoon of May 13, 1945, a group of 24 American soldiers—including nine members of the Women’s Army Corps (WACs)—boarded a twin-engine C-47 at the American air base in Hollandia (now Jayapura), Dutch New Guinea to embark on the tour. Their plan was to take a quick look at this latest Eden everyone was talking about, watch the tribesmen below react to their sudden and noisy presence and then be back at base in time for dinner.

“My eyes were bulging, my jaw dropped to the floor and my tongue rolled out. By the time I pulled myself together, I knew I couldn’t pursue the other story."

Less than an hour into the flight, the pilot miscalculated the plane’s altitude and flew it into the side of a mountain. Only three of the passengers survived—Lieutenant John McCollom, Tech Sergeant Kenneth Decker and Corporal Margaret Hastings.  Drawing on Army records, diaries, scrapbooks, newspaper accounts and personal recollections, Mitchell Zuckoff has reconstructed what seems like hour-by-hour account of how the survivors—two of whom were seriously injured—descended from the crash site into the mythical valley, dealt with the warlike natives there and, after would-be rescuers were parachuted in, aided in their own perilous escape. It is a tale rich in adventure and comradeship.

Speaking to BookPage from Boston, where he teaches journalism at Boston University, Zuckoff says he simply stumbled onto the story that became Lost in Shangri-La. “It was about seven years ago. I was searching online newspaper databases, particularly The Chicago Tribune, [reading] a variety of different sources that would yield human stories of World War II. I thought I had one in mind, and I wanted to look around a little bit—to sort of step back from that story [idea] to see what else was happening around the same time.” That’s when he encountered a series of stories on the crash and rescue written by the Tribune’s war correspondent, Walter Simmons. “It was almost comic strip-like,” he recalls. “My eyes were bulging, my jaw dropped to the floor and my tongue rolled out. By the time I pulled myself together, I knew I couldn’t pursue the other story.”

In spite of his enthusiasm for the subject, it took a while for Zuckoff to commit to writing a book about it. “It was an evolving process,” he explains. “When I began searching for the different survivors of the crash and the paratroopers [who were dropped in to rescue them], I found that one after another had already died. It was discouraging. I wasn’t ruling it out, but I was thinking, ‘Gee, it would be great if there was somebody who was in the valley I could talk to.’ My resolution [to write the book] became unshakeable when I found that Earl Walter [who led the rescue] was still alive.”

Although Zuckoff deftly delineates the personalities of all the pivotal characters, it is the luminous and plucky Margaret Hastings from Owego, New York who steals the show. A lot of readers are going to fall in love with her. Zuckoff confesses he kept an enlarged picture of Hastings over his desk when he was writing the book. “I had to tell my wife I was just trying to keep in the moment,” he says with a laugh.

“Margaret was a woman who was 30 years old in 1945 but who could easily be a 30-year-old woman in 2011. She knew what she wanted. She did not want to be dependent upon a man. She wanted to explore her world and the larger world. She didn’t like the fact that she [had reached] the end of her 20s and had never been anywhere more foreign and exciting than Atlantic City. So she took this amazing adventure and joined the WACs when she had endless opportunities to have been married by then, to have done things that were more traditional for a woman in the ’40s. I found her enormously appealing—beyond her beauty.”

Much of the book is based on stenographic diaries Hastings kept, even as she was struggling to stay alive. With Walter as his chief source, Zuckoff also discovered and includes here dozens of black-and-white photographs that chronicled the ordeal and its aftermath.

Zuckoff’s research was so thorough that it enabled him to give vivid thumbnail sketches of even secondary and tertiary characters. “I used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain individual deceased personnel records for each one of the victims of the [plane] crash,” he says. “That was a very fundamental resource for me because each IDPF record is as much as an inch thick of data on each person. I also used the Air Force historical resources in various states and at Maxwell Air Force Base. And I used the Library of Congress for some things that had already been declassified.”

The most arduous part of his research occurred early in 2010 when he took a sabbatical from teaching to trace down and interview those tribesmen in the valley who still remembered the incident from their childhood. Even now, getting into the valley is a test of patience and nerves, Zuckoff reports.

“It was hell. But it’s a little easier than it was in ’45. My flight was from Boston to L.A., from L.A. to Hong Kong, from Hong Kong to Jakarta and two stops from there to Jayapura and then a little puddle-jumper over the mountains and into the valley. So it took me two or three days just to get there. There is a little airport in Wamena [the main town in the valley], but I don’t think this book is going to result in a ton of tourism, I’m sorry to say.”

This particular Shangri-La, Zuckoff notes in his book, has gone the way of all Edens. “The province has the highest rates of poverty and AIDS in Indonesia. Health care is woeful, and aid workers say school is a sometimes thing for the valley children. . . . Elderly native men in penis [-shielding] gourds walk through Wamena begging for change and cigarettes. Some charge a small fee to pose for photos, inserting boar tusks through passages in their nasal septums to look fierce. More often, they look lost.”

Although the U.S. spent an enormous amount of money and endangered numerous lives rescuing survivors of what was essentially a Sunday-afternoon lark, Zuckoff says he found no evidence that anyone was ever reprimanded for it “because it ended happily. . . and there were these wonderful news accounts and photographs.”

Zuckoff, whose other books include Robert Altman: The Oral Biography and Ponzi’s Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend, says he worked closely with his publisher in developing Lost in Shangri-La. “I had a very clear sense of what the book was going to be. I think I wrote probably about a 30- or 40-page proposal with a few photographs and laid out exactly how I planned to tell it. They bought it from a proposal.”

At the time of this interview, the book had not yet been optioned or purchased for a movie.  “There are talks underway,” Zuckoff says, “but nothing we can announce yet.”

With a figure like Margaret Hastings at its center, how could a movie miss?

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE
Read our review of Lost in Shangri-La.

Shangri-La became a synonym for a remote, secluded paradise in 1933 via the James Hilton novel Lost Horizon. That name gained much wider currency in 1937 after the book was made into a movie. Little wonder, then, that in the spring of 1944, when a…

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Rick Riordan

Rick Riordan’s writing space is not decorated with images of mythical creatures or epic battle scenes—what one might expect from a teller of fantastical, dramatic tales like The Kane Chronicles trilogy.

The first book in the best-selling series, The Red Pyramid, debuted last year, and book two, The Throne of Fire, was released May 3. But despite the book’s title, there is no fiery throne—the author sits on a regular desk chair. “My office is pretty nondescript,” he says in an interview from his home in San Antonio, Texas, “just a room with a computer.”

 

"It's a typical week in the life of the Kane family," Riordan laughs. "Gods are annoying that way."

And he laughs when asked if he’s an exceptionally organized person. He’d have to be, in order to write two children’s book series at once (The Kane Chronicles and The Heroes of Olympus), hard on the heels of an earlier series (Percy Jackson and the Olympians), plus helming a multi-author series (The 39 Clues), not to mention doing plenty of signings and events, right?

“Not really,” Riordan replies. “I’m very easily distracted and don’t normally sit for 10 hours at a stretch staring at the screen. I do hit-and-run writing.” He adds, “I’m writing a book every six months now. I wanted to see if I could pull it off. It’s made me a lot more disciplined and productive.”

Riordan is no stranger to such brainbending scenarios—before he started writing for kids, he was a middle school teacher and the author of the award-winning Tres Navarre adult mystery series. “When I got the contract to write kids’ books as well, I didn’t want to leave teaching, but I felt like I had one too many balls in the air,” he says.

And so, after some 15 years as an English and history teacher, Riordan left to pursue writing full time. Thanks to his books’ popularity, though, he’s found himself in classrooms, libraries and bookstores all over the country, meeting eager young fans that often number in the thousands.
“I’ve had amazing crowds,” Riordan says. “Thanks to my teaching background, I like to give every kid my attention, and I don’t always get to spend the one-on-one time I used to be able to have. But the kids are so great—even if they have to wait in line for a long time, they’re so excited to be there, they jump up and down.”

Books didn’t make a young Riordan jump for joy, however; at least, not at first. “I really was a reluctant reader in elementary school,” he says. “Dyslexia runs in my family. I was never diagnosed, but I have a feeling it maybe was part of my struggle.” Eventually, book recommendations from his teachers (“I had wonderful English teachers—they got me into mythology”) and maternal encouragement turned Riordan into an avid reader. “My mother got me interested in storytelling; she was really instrumental in my path as a reader and writer,” he says.

It’s fitting, then, that a character inspired by his mother is at the heart of The Kane Chronicles: Sadie Kane, a confident and clever 12-year-old raised in London by her grandparents after her mother’s death. 

“My mom was an Air Force kid who grew up in London and moved back to the U.S. in high school,” Riordan says. “She felt she didn’t really belong in either country and was caught between two cultures. It was an interesting dynamic for me to play around with.”

Sadie’s 14-year-old brother, Carter, stays with their father, a globe-trotting Egyptologist who, after six years apart, reunites the siblings on a Christmas Eve trip to the British Museum. No boring excursion, that: It touches off a series of ever-wilder events and revelations, including the fact that they’re descended from ancient Egyptian pharaohs and have special powers that they must harness so they can use them to save their father from the angry Egyptian gods he has unleashed.

And that’s just book one! In book two, The Throne of Fire, the Kanes discover that Apophis (who’s even more evil than the kids’ nemesis, Set, in The Red Pyramid) wants to “come back, rule the world, swallow the sun and ruin everybody’s day,” Riordan says. The only way to stop Apophis is to bring back his archenemy and find the Book of Ra . . . in one week. “It’s a typical week in the life of the Kane family,” Riordan laughs. “Gods are annoying that way.”

The gods may be, but the books sure aren’t—whether it’s sibling rivalry, talking animals or learning that parents are only human (or are they?), The Kane Chronicles are exciting, edifying and enthralling. Readers will learn about mythology and geography, ponder family and identity, and thrill to the suspense that builds with the turn of every page.

As readers join Carter and Sadie on their adventures in The Throne of Fire, Riordan will be working on book three of The Kane Chronicles and book one of The Heroes of Olympus (a sequel series to Percy Jackson and the Olympians). He’ll also be spending time with his family and fitting in book tours, too.

For now, though, most of Riordan’s time will be spent in his nondescript office. “I’ve had to cut back on the amount of visiting I do,” he says. “For now, the best way I can communicate [with my readers] is writing the best books I can as fast as I can.”

Rick Riordan’s writing space is not decorated with images of mythical creatures or epic battle scenes—what one might expect from a teller of fantastical, dramatic tales like The Kane Chronicles trilogy.

The first book in the best-selling series, The Red Pyramid, debuted last year,…

Biography

Steve Coll

The events of September 11, 2001, changed the world—or at least, most Americans' perception of it. In his 2004 bestseller, Ghost Wars, Steve Coll put that event in context by detailing the history of foreign involvement in Afghanistan, explaining why it was the perfect place for Osama Bin Laden to pull together a radical organization like al Qaeda.

Now, Coll puts Osama Bin Laden himself into context with The Bin Ladens, a comprehensive look at a sprawling family tree. Not even Tolstoy had to handle this large of a cast—Osama is one of 54 children sired by Mohamed Bin Laden, though of course not all of them are introduced here—but readers will find their concentration rewarded with a new understanding of a dynasty that has strongly influenced the modern world.

The Bin Ladens is an incredibly dense and information-packed narrative. Did the topic ever overwhelm you with its complexity and depth?
It was very hard work. It was hard to track down the people who could help me understand the family as fully as possible—they were scattered literally all over the world. And it was hard to spread my research over time in a way that would support writing in depth about an entire century. My goal was to try to write something fresh and specific that was located in the history of Saudi Arabia—not just a narrative of the royal family, which has been done before. So that meant digging under a lot of rocks that had not previously been turned over.

If Americans could take away one lesson from your book about the rise of Osama Bin Laden and his influence in the Muslim world, what would it be?
I think it's important to see him as a modern figure, not as a medieval figure in a cave. He represents not only a reaction against the West and against globalization, but also an adaptation of Western ideas and technologies for anti-Western ends. These are the layers of complexity in his identity, his appeal and his actions that I think are too often neglected in analysis of Osama and Al Qaeda.

What would you identify as the key factor that radicalized Osama?
He was initially recruited by a Muslim Brotherhood gym teacher in his elite prep school in Jeddah. But in some way his early beliefs, while puritan and rigid, were rather orthodox in a Saudi context. His violence arose from his experiences in war in Afghanistan, where he met violence-minded volunteers from across the Islamic world.

Do you see Osama as a product of the Bin Laden family as a whole or an extreme departure from it?
Both. He is a Bin Laden in the sense that his talent as a leader and his understanding of border-crossing technologies, among other things, are derived from his membership in his own family, as was his wealth. He is not the only Bin Laden of his generation to have become deeply religious. But his embrace of violence and war against the United States and Saudi Arabia is an extreme departure from his family's interests and values—in the end, he declared war, in a sense, against his own family.

What is the one thing most people should know about the Bin Laden family, but don't?
The diversity of views and lifestyles within it. The Bin Ladens include some brothers and sisters of Osama who were as enthusiastic about America as he was hostile to it.

You note that although Saudi Arabia makes up less than 2 percent of the world's Muslim population, it has had a pervasive influence on Muslim thought. Do you see that trend continuing in the future? Or will another nation usurp Saudi Arabia's role?
Oil wealth, and the centrality of Mecca and Medina to the Islamic world, will ensure that the kingdom will continue to have influence greater than the size or proportion of its population. But I do think that there will be—and may already be—a gathering backlash in the Islamic world itself against the extreme religious and political beliefs that emanate from the kingdom's most conservative clerics.

You write that in the late 1990s, The U.S. intelligence community simply did not know very much about the Bin Laden family, and an important aspect of what it claimed to know was wrong. Without these intelligence failures, do you believe we could have prevented the 9/11 attacks?
If the U.S. intelligence community understood the family and Osama's wealth better than it did, it might have helped shape a more intelligent, more effective campaign to cut off Al Qaeda's resources and restrict its operations, but I don't think it would have prevented the 9/11 attacks.

What ties, if any, currently remain between Osama and the rest of the Bin Ladens?
The main branch of the Bin Laden family says that all ties are completely broken. His mother and one of his stepbrothers visited him in Afghanistan as recently as early 2001. Osama's wives have left him behind since the 9/11 attacks. But he has more than 20 children and some of those seem to still be in exile and perhaps some of them are in contact with him from time to time.

What do you foresee for the third generation of the Bin Laden family?
There are so many of them—hundreds—and it will be a challenge for them to develop the leaders and the cohesions to continue the extraordinary business success of their parents' generation. But I think they are generally a more worldly generation than their parents, more comfortable with the West and all of its pressures, and so many of them may be able to enjoy fully the success and wealth they have inherited.

Do you feel Osama continues to play a crucial role in the world of terrorism? Or is he a figure of the past?
Al Qaeda has revitalized itself along the Afghan border and its leadership plans and supports attacks in Europe and elsewhere from that sanctuary. Osama himself is surely more isolated within Al Qaeda than he used to be, but he remains an important media spokesman and source of visibility and, for some, at least, a source of inspiration. He is not a figure of the past—not yet.

What are you working on next?
I have the kernel of an idea about American foreign policy that I intend to work on, but I'm in the very early stages and it will be another long research road ahead.

The events of September 11, 2001, changed the world—or at least, most Americans' perception of it. In his 2004 bestseller, Ghost Wars, Steve Coll put that event in context by detailing the history of foreign involvement in Afghanistan, explaining why it was the perfect place…

Children's & YAPicture Book

Jon Katz

If you love dogs and good writing, chances are you’re familiar with the work of Jon Katz, a former journalist and CBS News producer who has chronicled his life with dogs in such memoirs as A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs and Me and Dog Days: Dispatches from Bedlam Farm.

Now for the first time, Katz offers his wisdom about dogs and life to a younger audience in a new picture book, Meet the Dogs of Bedlam Farm. Featuring Katz’s own photography, the book profiles each of his four dogs—Rose, Izzy, Frieda and Lenore—and shows these beautiful animals at work and at play.

Though the language and the story are straightforward, there’s an important lesson contained within: that every individual (whether dog or human) has strengths and weaknesses, and that each can play a role in the success of a family or community.

We contacted Katz at Bedlam Farm in upstate New York to find out more about the project.

Why did you decide to write a book for children at this point in your career?

Children are the purest and most intense animal lovers on the earth. They experience animals in a very particular way, unfettered by the many issues adults bring to their attachments. Animals are the beloved and imaginary comforters and soulmates of many children, as psychologists can attest. Kids talk to animals in very touching ways.

Animals are sometimes scary to them, but more often are very loving and never cruel or wounding. Animal fantasies are a seminal part of childhood development. The Bedlam Farm dogs run the gamut for kids—the troubled dog, the love dog, the serious dog, the healing dog. Until I wrote Meet The Dogs Of Bedlam Farm, I didn't quite realize how broad and familiar an emotional range Lenore, Frieda, Izzy and Rose covered.

What would you say is the message of the book?

Being loving and generous is serious work. It's important. Despite all of the arguing and controversy we see and hear about, love and acceptance are very powerful forces. Every child I have ever met knows that, even if the grownups forget. Our culture is sometimes tense and combative and I think animals like dogs can reinforce for children the notion that we don't have to communicate in an angry way. We can come together, exist together, work together. Love is work.

Do you think the book will appeal primarily to children who love dogs?

Despite contemporary marketing ideas, I don't think books appeal so narrowly to one spectrum or another. You don't have to have a dog to love dogs and you don't have to love dogs to appreciate a sweet story. I get messages from animal lovers but also many people who just like stories. Marketing is an important tool, but it ought not overwhelm ideas.

You've long been known as a talented writer, but now you're a photographer, too. Why do you think photography has become such an important part of your life?

I can't even describe how much I love taking pictures. Words are one way of telling a story. Photos another. Now, videos yet another and I am doing all three. The new story is visual as well as textual and Meet The Dogs Of Bedlam Farm is very much a new kind of story. I was prepared to argue for my photographs being included, but it wasn't necessary. Holt wanted that as much as I did. Photos can be static and cold, but I have worked hard to use my photography to capture emotion, especially in animals. The photos in this book are very emotional, they capture the spirit of each of the dogs—you can not look at Lenore without smiling, Rose demonstrates the virtue of hard work, Frieda is the trouble side of all of us, and Izzy is a sweet soul who helps people in the most profound way. I can write that all I want, but the photos show it and add depth and credibility to the story. Photographing animals is complex, but I think animal photography works especially well for children, makes the stories real and credible.

You clearly love your dogs but you don't believe they should be treated like children. Can you explain why you make that distinction and why you think it's a bad idea to treat pets like human members of the family?

Children and animals are different, and we ought never to confuse the two, in my opinion. You don't ever want to treat a dog like a child, or a child like a dog. In our culture, the idea that dogs and children are different is becoming controversial. Dogs are not children with fur, or "furbabies." They are animals with alien minds and sensibilities and instincts. When dogs are treated like children, it is impossible to train them or communicate with them. Sometimes we become disconnected from one another and we turn to dogs and cats for comfort. That's great, but we need perspective.

And I would never want my daughter to think I think of her in the same way I think of a Labrador Retriever, as much as I love Lenore. I wonder what children make of the idea that people see dogs and cats as their children. It can't be good. There is also the important message that all animals can be a bit dangerous if they are misunderstood or mistreated. When a dog is frightened, it can hurt people, and many children do get bitten (a rising number.) We need to maintain the distinction between dogs and kids, for the sake of both. We don't need to transform these wonderful animals into mini-versions of us. Let dogs be dogs and kids be kids.

Dogs are very different from humans, young or old, and their minds are very alien. It would be so much better for them if we understood how they really think rather than turn them into versions of us.

Near the end of the book, there's a beautiful photo of all four dogs resting around the woodburning stove in your farmhouse. Did you have to pose that photo or do the dogs really gather together there at the end of the day?

My dogs all gather by the woodstove, especially in the winter. I never have to pose them there. Dogs are pack animals, they love to hang out with one another. It wasn't always that way. Frieda was very aggressive with the other dogs at first, and Rose likes to be alone, or at the window looking at sheep. They are at ease with one another now, and all I have to do to get them to band together outside is yell "photoshoot" and they all come together and wait. My dogs are all media experts. 🙂 They seem to know that's where the biscuits come from.

Each of your dogs has a distinct personality and temperament. Do they ever squabble like human siblings do?

Honestly, my dogs do not squabble, in part because I just won't tolerate it. They all get plenty of food, water and treats, so they don't have much to fight about. They all have different roles as well, as the book points out. My dogs are with me most of every day, so I have the opportunity to correct troublesome behaviors. I do a lot of calming training and obedience work. Well-trained secure dogs don't squabble, in my experience. They get food, exercise and attention and they are quite grounded and responsive. They also adapt to one another. There was some jockeying for bones early on, but we worked through that. I never worry about that now. I can't remember the last time where was a confrontation of any kind. Rose and Frieda are two dominant females and there was a lot of posturing for a year or so, but nothing serious, and that is gone. Lenore doesn't squabble with anybody or anything. She is really the Love Dog.

What were your favorite books as a child?

I'm sorry to say that books were not a part of my childhood, so I read few of them. I remember Grimm's Fairy Tales and Hardy Boys, but that's about it, so I am especially fortunate to be able to write children's books. It is one of the reasons I wanted to do it.

What's next on your writing schedule?

I have two more children's books coming out from Holt. And in October, a book for Random House on grieving for pets, Going Home: Finding Peace When Animals Die. Next year, a short story collection called Dancing Dogs. And then a book on Frieda called Frieda and Me: Second Chances.

 

If you love dogs and good writing, chances are you’re familiar with the work of Jon Katz, a former journalist and CBS News producer who has chronicled his life with dogs in such memoirs as A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs and Me and…

Food & DrinkCookbooks

Guy Fieri

When you bite into a burger, a steak sandwich or pile of juicy wings—and sauce drips down your wrist and your jaw aches from opening wide—you’re having a classic Guy Fieri moment.

The restaurateur, author and top-rated Food Network personality is best known for his hit show “Diners, Drive-ins & Dives” and the best-selling cookbooks of the same name, in which he travels the nation in his ’67 Camaro in search of the best hole-in-the-wall joints with “good food by good people.” 

But long before “Triple D” (as Fieri refers to it), his quirky rock-’n’-roll, adrenaline-fueled food philosophy helped him win season two of “The Next Food Network Star.”

“I didn’t want to do ‘The Next Food Network Star,’” the very busy Fieri says in a phone interview. “I had no interest—go on national TV and lose? But I always had this mantra in my company: Take that hill. Be all that you can be. That’s the challenge.”

He sized up the competition and realized that most of the contestants were younger and had been to culinary school. He decided to focus on “having a good time, and maybe I’d get to meet Emeril and hang out with Bobby Flay.”

Fieri ended up winning the whole thing, and made his Food Network debut with “Guy’s Big Bite.” Ditching the traditional chef’s coat and bandana for bowling shirts, spiky dyed blond hair, tattoos and man-bling, he created a big, bold, in-your-face food category that he has made his own.

“I’m comfortable with who I am and how I cook and what I do,” Fieri says. “I don’t believe in luck. I think it all comes back to surrounding yourself with good people, surrounding yourself with information and, more importantly, feeling comfortable in your own skin.”

On May 3, Fieri moves a bit beyond his bad-boy, rock-’n’-roll image with his first cookbook of original recipes, Guy Fieri Food, which includes more than 125 recipes, plus color photos and cooking tips. The same goofball humor and big flavors are there, and the same emphasis on quality ingredients and expert preparation, whether it’s a hot dog or filet mignon. But this book focuses on how he cooks at home in Northern California, where he also owns and manages a small chain of fusion restaurants.

“I’m very into ethnic food, fresh food, vegetables,” Fieri says. “I’m a huge texture person. Love BBQ, love stuff that has to cook for 12-16 hours, love Asian food, love complexities, love French food, Italian food, love making pasta, love making food and working with it.”

Guy Fieri Food features twists on everyday classics from appetizers, soups, salads, sandwiches, pizza and pastas, to main course meats and seafood, vegetables and sides, sauces and marinades, a smattering of desserts and drinks, all with a funky fusion of flavors (Irish Nachos, anyone?).

“The recipes are out of bounds,” Fieri says. “Everything from Asian to All-American to cooking with your kids, to homemade whole wheat pizza dough to juicing fresh vegetables, making chicken stock, tomato sauce and meatballs—not that I’m trying to be everything to everybody. I just opened up my Rolodex to the 150 recipes that I’ve been cooking at home and this is what you get.”

While Blackened Sesame Salmon with Cellophane Noodle Salad, Caramelized Leek and Apple Pizza and Lamb Loin Chops with Mint Pesto could be at home in any California restaurant, Fieri adds Bacon Jalapeno Duck Nuggets, No Can Beato This Taquito, and Good-to-Go Pizza Dough to the mix. It’s the high and low he’s known for.

“There are some steak sandwiches, there is some crazy food in there,” Fieri says of the new book that aims to teach as well as make cooks salivate. “But what you’re going to see is a lot of fresh ingredients. I broke down all the vegetables, cuts of meat. I try to give some insight. Chili from dried beans—that’s just the energy. It’s the life of Guy with food.”

Long before he became known as a fearless rock-’n’-roll chef, Fieri fell in love with food as a 16-year-old exchange student in France. Today, he shows great respect for all the cooks he visits on his “Diners, Drive-ins & Dives” show. “The guy making the burger, that’s what he wants to make, how he wants to live. That’s his domain,” he says. “When you walk into somebody’s castle, you’ve got to respect that. That’s how I was raised.”

Fieri’s new cookbook reflects the way he and his family really eat. His children have never been to McDonald’s.

“Probably the last thing you’ll ever see me eat is a hamburger,” Fieri says. “I’d much rather have a tri-tip sandwich—I can’t even tell you the last time I had fried food, and not because it’s wrong. I love a good french fry like anybody [else], but I have to keep a balance.”

“I’m not saying I’m a purist—you can look at my petite 215-pound structure and tell I’m not some dietary wizard,” he says. “It’s about eating good food by good people. Make a french fry the right way, use good beef, fresh baked buns, lettuce that wasn’t sliced two weeks ago and packed in a bag in Schenectady. Keep it real.”

It also reflects how Fieri spends his off-camera time. He helped draft California legislation proclaiming the second Saturday in May as “Cook With Your Kids Day” and just launched Cooking with Kids, a program that promotes healthy eating habits and encourages families to share quality time in the kitchen. Fieri has also visited military bases as a guest of the U.S. Navy, entertaining troops and consulting with their cooks.

Whether he’s cooking for family, hosting hopefuls on the hit game show “Minute to Win It,” “bustin’ down” another best-selling book or cooking show, or hitting the culinary highway with “The Guy Fieri Road Show,” his focus is always clear: quality food and maximum fun.

 

When you bite into a burger, a steak sandwich or pile of juicy wings—and sauce drips down your wrist and your jaw aches from opening wide—you’re having a classic Guy Fieri moment.

The restaurateur, author and top-rated Food Network personality is best known for his hit…

Mystery & SuspenseSuspenseMystery

Carol Higgins Clark

Mary Higgins Clark and daughter Carol Higgins Clark have a way of finishing each other’s sentences—and not just when talking. Together they’ve written five holiday suspense novels, and separately they have written countless other bestsellers. 

The mother-daughter relationship is a complex one, sometimes fraught with frustrations, but not so for these two. As entertaining and titillating a story as that might be—creative differences, clashing egos, epic fights—Mary and Carol reserve that sort of thing for fiction. In contrast to the nefarious goings-on in their novels, the authors are gracious, grounded and just downright nice—and they get along swimmingly.

In a recent conversation divided between the Manhattan offices of Simon & Schuster and Mary’s home in New Jersey, the two Clarks are happy to discuss everything from the creative process to maintaining a positive outlook on life. 

Both women have books coming out this spring, Mary’s I’ll Walk Alone and Carol’s Mobbed, her 14th Regan Reilly mystery. In her new book, Mary tackles the subject of identity theft with the story of Zan Moreland, a talented New York interior designer who discovers that someone has not only stolen her identity, but has also taken on her appearance. It’s a chilling, and timely, doppelganger drama sure to thrill fans. Carol’s latest, Mobbed, involves a stalked starlet and a deadly garage sale—but to say more would spoil the fun.

Asked what she thinks of Carol’s latest mystery, Mary says definitively, “It’s a very funny book.” A genuinely flattered Carol responds, “Thanks, Mom!” 

Even when not collaborating, Carol and Mary read each other’s work in progress, but, says Mary, “This time Carol was so busy with her own that she didn’t see mine, and now that I finished mine, I’ve been reading Carol’s in progress. Other years it will start the other way.”

From her mother’s house in New Jersey, Carol chimes in, “Sometimes we’ll fax each other pages as we’re working on our own books and say, ‘What do you think?’ It’s just nice to get feedback and encouragement.” 

In such a symbiotic relationship, however, one wonders if it’s ever a challenge not to take the feedback personally. “It doesn’t ever feel like criticism. That’s the difference,” Carol explains. “We just want to help each other tell a better story . . .  and that’s why we can write books together.” She laughs, “It’s really a good working relationship we have.” 

Carol and Mary long ago established a comfortable writing routine. Mary recreates a typical scene: “We sit next to each other. Carol works on a laptop, and I always work at my desk.” She laughs, “So she’s the fingas on it.” (That’s “fingers” in Mary’s charming New Yawkese.) Carol describes an average day as follows: “We sit on the couch with our legs outstretched and sometimes move out onto the porch for a change of scene.” Mary adds, “Every few hours when we’re working together we’ll say, ‘We’ve sucked up all the energy in this room, let’s move.’ ” 

Their working relationship began when Carol was a co-ed and took on the task of typing her mother’s manuscripts. “I started typing her books when I was in college, before computers, when she was working full time,” Carol says. “I had to get her manuscripts in to her agent, and that was great because it got us into being able to work together.” Carol credits this partnership with saving the life of Mary’s beloved character Alvirah Sheehan, the lottery winner and amateur detective who appears in the Christmas books and in I’ll Walk Alone. “I saved Alvirah’s life,” Carol proclaims, taking due credit. “My mother had killed her off in a book, and I begged for her life, and she finally relented. I just thought Alvirah was so funny.”

While studying acting and helping her mother, Carol met a producer who encouraged her to write her own book, advising her, “You should write a part you can possibly play.” Carol says, “If I hadn’t typed the books, it would have been much harder to start because I had seen the process she goes through and how it evolves, which was very helpful.”

Growing up in a large Irish-Catholic family with Mary at its head also provided fertile ground for Carol’s creativity to flourish. Asked what she was like as a child, Mary says, “Carol was always a good kid. She was a funny kid, and hardworking—because I worked. You know her father died when she was eight. She was always a big help and had a great sense of humor. Carol was a straight A student in high school and grammar school and always just fun to be around.” Carol, again says, “Thanks, Mom.” 

Mary honed her skill, in part, out of necessity. After her husband died, she had to find a way to support her young family and would get up at 5:00 a.m. each day to write before corralling the kids for school. She says with typical humility, “People think that’s so valiant, but, you know, people get up early to do yoga or to jog, or whatever . . .” Or write 30-plus best-selling books.

Asked to share the best advice that her mother ever gave her, Carol jokes, “The best advice my mother ever gave me about writing is that if someone’s mean to you, make them a victim in your next book! But, no, my mother’s always had a positive outlook on life and is such an optimist. She works hard; she looks at the positive.”

Mary agrees, “I have always been an optimist. And I have always felt that you should give back when you’ve been blessed. I think much is expected of those to whom much has been given.”

Listening to these two talk, it’s easy to detect their ease with each other and their mutual admiration. So it’s no mystery why Mary and Carol Higgins Clark make such a winning team—in life and literature.

Mary Higgins Clark and daughter Carol Higgins Clark have a way of finishing each other’s sentences—and not just when talking. Together they’ve written five holiday suspense novels, and separately they have written countless other bestsellers. 

The mother-daughter relationship is a complex one, sometimes fraught with…

Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

James Patterson

Arguably one of the best-known authors in the world, James Patterson shows no signs of slowing down. This spring, Patterson will release the latest two volumes in his wildly popular Women’s Murder Club series. The 9th Judgment is on sale in trade paperback in April, followed by 10th Anniversary, a new hardcover on sale in May. Taking the time to speak with BookPage, Patterson tells us where he finds his inspiration and what’s next for the ladies of the Women’s Murder Club.  

You hold the Guinness World Record for bestsellers, with 63 New York Times best-selling titles and counting! After so many years and so many books, how do you keep coming up with fresh and exciting ideas?
Yeah, I guess writer’s block has never been a problem for me. I suppose that I am addicted to telling stories. In fact, I’m always trying to come up with new scenarios and plots. I’m actually running a bit behind schedule—I have at least a dozen concepts I haven’t begun to outline yet.

The Women’s Murder Club series started in 2001 with the publication of 1st to Die. Where did you get your inspiration for the series?
It seemed to me it was high time there was a female detective hero who works in the way most women, refreshingly, do work—as a team. Thriller fiction is full of lone-dog male (and a few female) protagonists who don’t play nice with others. Lindsay and company took shape out of that realization that there are other ways to solve problems, and catch criminals. There’s nothing quite like the Women’s Murder Club elsewhere in detective or thriller fiction.

What do you think it is about the Women’s Murder Club series that has resonated so strongly with readers?
Probably part of it is the collaborative group dynamic. Also, I think Lindsay, Claire, Jill and Yuki are pretty cool people. And they’re definitely great friends—the kind we all want to have. The plot twists aren’t bad, either . . . of course, I suppose I might be a little biased.

Can you choose a favorite character from the Women’s Murder Club? Or is that like asking a parent to pick a favorite child?
You must have read one of my prior interviews. I’m a good author that way. As a parent, I have no problem picking my favorite child. His name’s Jack and he’s my one and only.

10th Anniversary, the 10th entry in the Women’s Murder Club series, goes on sale in May. What can you tell us about this book?

It’s the 10th anniversary of the entire series so, in celebration, I may  have pulled out even a few more stops than usual. The plot’s definitely one of the twistier ones that I’ve come up with. Without giving too much away: A teenage girl’s newborn infant is stolen from the hotel room where she just delivered; a surgeon is accused of murdering her husband; and Lindsay is trying to balance being a very good detective as well as a wife.

 

Can we look forward to more books in the Women’s Murder Club series?
All right, here’s your exclusive (though I may have told my editor): the next is probably going to be called 11th Hour.

Arguably one of the best-known authors in the world, James Patterson shows no signs of slowing down. This spring, Patterson will release the latest two volumes in his wildly popular Women’s Murder Club series. The 9th Judgment is on sale in trade paperback in April,…

Science Fiction & FantasyFiction

Anna North

Anna North's dark, gripping and wildly creative debut, America Pacifica, goes where few Iowa Writers' Workshop grads have gone before: a futuristic end-of-days setting where the buildings are made of sea-fiber and solvent-huffing hoodlums roam the streets. Still, North's story of a young girl in search of her mother (and her island's history) is remarkably universal, with characters as real those found in any contemporary fiction.

We sat down with the author to chat about dystopias, female protagonists and the pressure of happy endings.

America Pacifica is a difficult book to categorize. To what extent do you consider it a post-apocalyptic or sci-fi novel?
I definitely consider it post-apocalyptic, but whether it’s sci-fi is a more difficult question. I think the reputation of science fiction has really improved a lot over the years, but a lot of readers of literary fiction still tend to think of sci-fi as badly written, or as not concerned with character. This isn’t true—there are a lot of wonderful and beautiful sci-fi novels. Sometimes I call America Pacifica “literary sci-fi” so that people know I care about emotions and sentences, but I do look forward to a day when that kind of marker won’t be necessary.

The creation of a fantasy world like America Pacifica requires creating a universe larger than the book itself. Did you have the entire landscape and rules of the Island in your head before you began to write, or did you develop as you went?
I developed as I went, but my knowledge of the world had to be pretty far ahead of the story. So if Darcy was going to a particular neighborhood I had to know where it was on the map and how long it would take to get there before she set out. I drew a lot of maps, and I kept a map of the whole island in my desk and referred to it constantly. A lot of the rules—things like the absence of cameras and phones and Internet, and the general difficulty of getting your hands on metal—I established very early on, because I did a lot of thinking about how hard it would be to get a bunch of stuff across the Pacific. But others, like the toxic seawater, actually came in much later drafts.

The dystopian setting and strong female lead brings to mind the (wildly popular) Hunger Games books. Have you read that series and how do you feel about the comparison?
I haven’t read the Hunger Games books, because someone recommended them to me while I was in the thick of writing America Pacifica and had banned myself from reading dystopias until it was done. But I’d like to read them. They sound like the kind of thing I’d really enjoy, and I’m happy they’ve done so well. I think we need more books about girls swashbuckling and having adventures.

Speaking of strong female lead, Darcy is quite a character. Had you always imagined her as book’s focal point? Or did you develop the concept first and the character second?
I started with the idea of writing a post-apocalyptic novel involving a missing person, but Darcy came fairly quickly after that. In my very early stabs at a beginning, she had a different name and lived in a totally different place—a mainland full of tent cities that people got around by bicycle. But she was pretty much the same person—she was always someone young who has to seek and search, and carry a lot of responsibility mostly on her own.

Along similar lines, I see your publisher is doing cross-promotion with YA markets. Were you ever pressured to publish this as a Young Adult book? What do you think makes it decidedly adult?
I was never pressured, but I did have an agent suggest to me that I make Darcy several years younger and try to sell the book as straight-up YA. I felt strongly that Darcy should be 18, because I wanted her to be an adult, but only just. Over the course of the book, I wanted her to be finding out what kind of adult she would be, the way you do when you’re still very young but not a child anymore. I didn’t want it to be about coming of age quite so much as I wanted it to be about the fashioning of a grownup self. The fact that it’s less about the (very real) perils of adolescence and more about what happens afterward may make it more adult than your average YA book. But I think it’s getting tougher and tougher to make these distinctions—young readers have always read books for adults, and now more than ever, adults are reading YA.

Without giving too much away, I’ll say that book’s second half and ending definitely diverge from norms within the YA/sci-fi genre. Did you feel pressure to wrap things up neatly? Did you always know how the book would end?
I always knew more or less what the last chapter would look like. It was probably the fastest to write because I had it all planned out in my head. But my first draft did end a bit more ambiguously than the finished one, in a way that my advisor found way too sad. I think she was right—not because sad books are bad, but because it hadn’t really had the effect on her that I was going for. So I did end up making some changes, but I never felt pressure to make things too neat or tidy. I think that would be contrary to the spirit of the book.

I see you’re an Iowa grad. Were you working on America Pacifica while you were there? If so, how did it differ from what your classmates were up to?
I wrote pretty much the entire first draft while I was at Iowa, which was a wonderful place to do it. Work set in the future was pretty uncommon there, though one of my classmates did write some post-apocalyptic stories set in Maine (another wrote very compelling fantasy). I worried about this a little before I got there, but it turned out to be totally fine. Everyone was very respectful of America Pacifica and treated it like it was a serious book, and even though futuristic stuff was pretty uncommon, the diversity of my classmates’ work was really impressive. I got to know a lot of people who were taking big risks and trying new things in their writing, and I never felt like I had to conform to one specific mode or do things in a traditional way.

You’re also a writer for the smart-lady blog Jezebel. How does writing in the online (and feminist) sphere influence your fiction?
Writing online means I read a ton of news every day, which is really good for my fiction, because I end up having a lot of ideas and facts swimming around in my head all the time. It’s also exposed me to a lot of writers I might not be aware of otherwise, which is a good thing for any fiction writer. I do think my interest in female protagonists and especially female protagonists doing heroic things was set before I started working for Jezebel, but working there and also reading the other great feminist blogs I became aware of as a result has given me a better understanding of the politics surrounding women’s writing and women’s stories. And I think being more politically aware is making me a better fiction writer, even if my work doesn’t end up being overtly political

We have to ask: what’s up next for you?
I’m working on a novel about a dead female filmmaker, told in the form of a filmography composed by the four people who loved her most.

 

Anna North's dark, gripping and wildly creative debut, America Pacifica, goes where few Iowa Writers' Workshop grads have gone before: a futuristic end-of-days setting where the buildings are made of sea-fiber and solvent-huffing hoodlums roam the streets. Still, North's story of a young girl in…

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Elissa Brent Weissman

Here’s a secret about nerds: Most nerds like being nerds . . . because being a nerd is fun—as long as you’re hanging out with equally smarty-pants friends.

Just look at Gabe, the 10-year-old main character of Elissa Brent Weissman’s new novel Nerd Camp. Gabe has plans to spend the summer with delightfully geeky friends at the Summer Center for Gifted Enrichment, but his life gets complicated when his dad gets engaged to a woman with a decidedly ungeeky son of the same age.

Will Zack think Gabe is the biggest dork on earth, or will the new brothers form an unlikely friendship? Weissman—herself a teacher at Johns Hopkins’s Center for Talented Youth—has written a smart, funny book that will appeal to tween guys and girls—and geeks of all ages.

In a Q&A, BookPage got the scoop on Weissman’s favorite brain game, book and level of nerdiness.

There’s no way you could have written Nerd Camp without having been a geek! But what kind of geek were you as a 10-year-old? Band nerd? Quiz Bowl obsessed?

A word nerd, first and foremost! I read like crazy, and I filled notebook after notebook with stories. I even wrote a novel when I was ten. But, like Gabe, I just loved school in general. I was such a nerd that I even “played school” in my free time. I set up a whole classroom in my basement, complete with a chalkboard and worksheets, and I’d teach things to my little brother. I don’t know why he put up with it!

Have you ever been to summer camp?

I went to a day camp that was also a travel camp, so we’d take overnight trips to various parts of the country. That meant a lot of time spent on buses and sitting in the woods; telling jokes and ghost stories; trading stickers and candy; and playing hand games. My fondest memories are of the things we did to amuse ourselves. I was a pro at both “Concentration” (which involved naming things alphabetically according to a category while clapping in rhythm—challenging!) and “Concentrate” (which involved patting someone’s back and chanting about cracking eggs on their head and stabbing knives in their backs—morbid!). I also loved how seriously we took the legends that went around. Who didn’t believe in Bloody Mary or fear hiking Suicide Hill? It’s all that free time to play those games that truly makes summer camp so magical.

What do you teach at the Center for Talented Youth? Did any of your students inspire the characters in Nerd Camp?

I teach a class for rising fourth and fifth graders called “Writing and Reading Workshop.” None of my characters are based on individual students, but Gabe and the other campers are inspired by them in general. I’ve had the sweetest, most talented kids every summer. They’re inquisitive readers and fantastic writers, and they thrive when they’re together in a stimulating academic environment. Like my characters, they can also recite Pi to an impressive number of digits.

Have you ever found yourself in an unlikely friendship, like the relationship between Zack and Gabe?

I have a very close friend who’s the Zack to my Gabe. She’s fashionable and stylish; I live in jeans and sneakers. She’s trendy and in touch with pop culture; I resist trends, if I’m even aware of them. But despite our differences, something about us just clicks. And I know I can always count on her for anything, including a great time when we hang out.

What’s your favorite brain game? (Any secret fantasies of appearing on Jeopardy?)

My favorite is Balderdash. Making up definitions for crazy words is both brainy and creative, which just about sums me up. And it’s no secret that I’d love to appear on any gameshow. I submitted my name for both teen Jeopardy and college Jeopardy, but I never got the chance to audition. I don’t think I could cut it on regular Jeopardy. Too bad there’s no gameshow of Balderdash!

What was your favorite book as a child? Why?

Sixth Grade Secrets by Louis Sachar. I love Louis Sachar’s style. It’s tight and concise, and he plays with language and structure in brilliant ways. But I didn’t think about any of that as a kid. Sixth Grade Secrets was my favorite because it made me laugh out loud every time I read it—and I read it many times.

What can you tell us about your next project?

I’m working on another middle grade novel. It’s about a talented girl who gets herself into some major trouble. But my main project these days is of another sort entirely: being a mom! I have a super smiley four-month-old daughter, and how can I possibly write when she’s grinning up at me, wanting to play?

Here’s a secret about nerds: Most nerds like being nerds . . . because being a nerd is fun—as long as you’re hanging out with equally smarty-pants friends.

Just look at Gabe, the 10-year-old main character of Elissa Brent Weissman’s new novel Nerd Camp. Gabe has…

NonfictionPop CultureHumorArts & Culture

Michael Barson

Michael Barson has been a comics collector for decades, in addition to his day job as co-director of publicity for Putnam/Riverhead Publishing. He’s collected some of the finest examples of 1940s and 1950s love comics in the new anthology Agonizing Love.

In the panels of the brightly colored comics that once filled newsstands, young women of the era picked up pointers on finding and keeping love. These tear-jerking pop culture delights feature such stories as “The Man I Couldn’t Love,” “My Heart Cried Out” and “I Loved a Weakling.” Cheesy as the comics might seem to the modern reader, Barson thinks these vintage “morality plays” might still offer all of us some important lessons on love.

We asked Barson to tell us more about his obsession with collectibles, the appeal of romance comics and the agonizing nature of love through the ages.

How and why did you begin to collect romance comic books?
I started pretty late in life in terms of collecting the classic Romance comics. I had been collecting all sorts of other genres since the mid-60s—Superhero, War, Sci-Fi, Horror, even Funny Animal—but it wasn’t until I bumped into a big collection of vintage Love comics that was being offered for sale in the early ‘80s at NY’s Forbidden Planet store, in their collectible comics section, that it suddenly clicked—How cool are these? It was a group that contained most of the early Simon & Kirby Young Romance issues, and those proved my entry point into collecting this category for the first time. Later I bemoaned the fact that I probably had passed over several hundred (if not several thousand) tasty Romance issues over the previous 10 or 12 years while collecting in all those other genres; love comics just didn’t register for me at that time.

Why did you decide to share your collection with readers?
What’s the fun in collecting something for almost 30 years if you can’t share it with others? Let’s face it, 99 percent of the world out there would never have a chance to read any of these little gems if someone—in this case, me—didn’t take the time and effort to rescue them from obscurity. I feel I am performing a service, however modest, for humanity.

For those who aren’t familiar with the genre, can you give us a capsule description of what a “romance comic” is?
To oversimplify terribly, most of the stories that appeared in Love comics during their golden period—to me, 1947 to 1960 or so—are little morality plays that have been given a seven- or eight- page stage on which to play out. Sometimes the resolution is a happy ending, but not always. But I think it’s fair to say that in 98 percent of the cases, a lesson is learned by one of the characters in the story—a lesson that will change their attitudes and philosophy going forward.

These comics look hilariously cheesy today. Do you think readers took them seriously back then?

To the extent that even a teenage girl or young woman (probably the target audience for these comics) would take any kind of comic book in a totally serious manner, I would answer with a qualified “yes.” In that pre-Ironic era, the main reason for someone to buy and read Love comics was because they connected to both the medium and the message. They weren’t partaking of these in order to get a quick laugh—there were humor comics such as Archie and Betty and Veronica for that purpose. So while the readers of the day were not treating these romance issues as the second coming of Madame Bovary, I believe they were reading them in a serious frame of mind.

Do you have a favorite romance comic cover or story?

I don’t have a single favorite, but I will admit to being partial to the Mother-in-law subgenre. There’s something about those that just tickles my fancy, even though my own real-life mother-in-law is perfectly benign. But not so in the stories about them that I’ve included here! And I do have friends in real life who are very much embroiled in a problem of this exact nature. 

What's the most important lesson you've learned about love from a romance comic?

If you just got hitched, don’t invite your mother-in-law to move in with you on your wedding night. That goes for both of you!

Is love any different today than it was in a half-century ago?

Love, and its surrounding mysteries and problems, is exactly the same, I am convinced. The only difference is that eHarmony didn’t exist in 1951. Not that it (or any of the other popular dot-com dating sites) seems to have done all that much good.

Is love always agonizing?

In my experience, yes. Because if it isn’t you that’s doing the agonizing, then the other person probably is. The real question is, would we really have it any other way? The empirical evidence of the past 100 years suggests the answer is no.

You’re the father of three sons. If you could give your children one piece of advice about love, what would it be?

Collect stamps instead. Or at least try to avoid the 434 mistakes I was too dumb to avoid.

You’re an avid collector of pop culture memorabilia—everything from postcards and posters to magazines and comics. Where on earth do you keep all this stuff? Does your collecting drive your wife crazy?
Yes, I have in fact driven my wife crazy because of the millions (nahhh, it’s really just thousands) of pieces of moldering antique memorabilia over which she stumbles every morning. And afternoon and evening.

But let me ask you—does that make me a bad person?? Right—I was afraid of that.

 

Michael Barson has been a comics collector for decades, in addition to his day job as co-director of publicity for Putnam/Riverhead Publishing. He’s collected some of the finest examples of 1940s and 1950s love comics in the new anthology Agonizing Love.

In the panels of the…

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