Linda M. Castellitto

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Kirkpatrick Hill

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Fiction writers are often exasperated by questions from readers who want to know whether their books’ characters and events are based on real life. Not so with Kirkpatrick Hill.

Instead, she told BookPage in an interview from her Fairbanks, Alaska, home, “Everything in the book is pretty much true. Think of me as a Grandma Moses type: I’m just recapturing things.”

In her eighth novel for young readers, Bo at Ballard Creek, Hill sends us back to the 1920s, to a post-gold rush town called Ballard Creek that sits on the Koyukuk River. She herself lived at a mining camp as a child in the 1940s—she comes from a family of mining engineers—and says she was “just like Bo.”

Readers who grew up in suburbs or cities—really, anywhere that doesn’t have Alaska’s snow and ice and bouts of 24-hour daylight—may find it hard to picture living in a 1920s mining town intertwined with an Eskimo village, a place where everyone has a broom on the front stoop (it’s rude not to sweep snow off your boots before you go inside); kids are told not to run in the woods because a bear might chase them; and only one resident has ever laid eyes on an airplane.

But thanks to Hill’s vivid writing (and her palpable fondness for her home state), plus LeUyen Pham’s artful, adorable illustrations, the places and people of Bo’s world soon feel familiar. Especially because, despite being set in a seemingly exotic place, Hill’s story encompasses universal themes—like the fact that families don’t require members to be blood relations.

Bo’s own family is described in the first chapter: “Bo had two fathers and no mothers, and after she got the fathers, she got a brother, too. But not in the usual way.”

It’s a promising, tantalizing start, and Hill has crafted an entertaining and interesting backstory: Bo’s fathers both came to Alaska in the gold rush of 1897, in search of work and a way to get some distance from sadness. Arvid, a Swede, had recently lost his mother, and Jack, an African American, was grieving the death of his fiancée. The two big, strong men became friends and workmates, and when Bo’s mother (a “good-time girl” known as Mean Millie) thrust her baby at them and demanded they take her to a local orphanage, Arvid and Jack couldn’t bear to leave her there. So they took her home and, with help from their miner and Eskimo neighbors, they became Bo’s family.

Hill says the blend of races and cultures in Bo at Ballard Creek jives with her own experiences, as does Bo’s unofficial adoption. She says, “It happened a lot. It was a ubiquitous thing, not just men of course. . . . And also, within the Indian culture, it was very common for people to give up their kids. Kids would live right in the same village with their natural parents and have two sets of relatives. And you see, Jack and Arvid had no legal claim to Bo at all, because they never would’ve had to.”

It’s fascinating stuff, not least because it’s true. That’s very important to Hill, who says her urge to commit Alaska—and its singular history, dramatic terrain and diverse people—to the printed page was prompted by years of frustration with the way the state was depicted in books and other media. As a mother of six, and during her 30-plus years as an elementary school teacher, Hill encountered many ill-informed books about her state. “I would read Alaska books to my children, and they were all totally bogus because the authors weren’t from Alaska. And Jack London . . . it was as bogus as you could get!” So, she decided she’d write about Alaska herself.

Her first book, Toughboy and Sister, was published in 1990, when Hill was in her early 50s (if you’re wondering, Grandma Moses began painting in her 70s). She explains, “I’d gotten seriously broke and needed a new life plan, so I thought, ‘Well, I’ll just send this off and get some money.’ I had no clue how anything worked at all!” Then, she says, “By the sheerest good luck, it fell into the right hands. A dear, lovely person got it out of the slush pile and wrote me a letter. . . . It never should’ve happened. You just don’t do things like that!”

But Hill did, and it worked—and she’s been writing ever since. While her protagonists are a range of ages, and her time periods are both historic and contemporary, all of her books are set in her beloved home state and make real the traditions and trials, foods and fun experienced by the people who have lived there, from sliding down a riverbank, to making ice cream out of decidedly non-dairy ingredients, to hearing the click-clacks of a telegraph machine.

Like all of Hill’s novels, Bo at Ballard Creek is a fine mix of happiness and hard truths, reverence for history and excitement about innovation. It’s enough to make readers want to visit Alaska to see it for themselves. Though perhaps, for those who are winter-precipitation-averse, you might want to check the forecast first: When she spoke with BookPage in May, Hill realized that day was her “last ticket for the ice pool. . . . I guessed on days the ice would go out. But the weather’s gone mad, and we’re still experiencing winter when normally there would be leaves on the trees. I’m looking out my window at snow, deep snow.”

Fiction writers are often exasperated by questions from readers who want to know whether their books’ characters and events are based on real life. Not so with Kirkpatrick Hill.

Instead, she told BookPage in an interview from her Fairbanks, Alaska, home, “Everything in the book is…

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Holly Goldberg Sloan

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Some people have lucky numbers; others have lucky stars. Holly Goldberg Sloan credits her career change, and her subsequent success as an author of children’s books, to something a little different: a lucky shrimp.

Alas, said shellfish wasn’t so felicitous for Sloan’s husband. But for her, it touched off a life-changing transition from screenwriter (numerous feature films, including Angels in the Outfield) to author (2011’s I’ll Be There, and now Counting by 7s).

In a phone call from her Santa Monica, California, home, Sloan told BookPage the story of how her first book came to be: “My friend asked us to go on a trip, and didn’t give a lot of specifics. It turned out we went to a vegetarian yoga resort, which was totally cool with me, but my husband isn’t a vegetarian and doesn’t do yoga. The first night, I asked if they had meat or protein of any kind. They were able to get a limited amount of shrimp, so he ordered that.”

Then, gastrointestinal disaster struck—and between her husband being out of commission for a week and the resort’s no-Internet-or-TV policy, Sloan found she had some time to kill. “It was really serendipitous,” she says. “If I hadn’t gone on a crazy vacation in Mexico, where I was on my own and my husband was in a stone hut, sick . . . I wouldn’t have had so much time on my hands, and started writing a book.”

Fortunately, Sloan’s husband was not harmed during the writing of her brilliant second book, Counting by 7s, which draws readers into the singular world of eccentric 12-year-old Willow Chance.

Sloan has created a story where the line between youth and adulthood moves back and forth.

Willow applies her prodigious intelligence to her hobbies: a thriving and varied backyard garden, and the diagnosis of medical conditions. “I am particularly drawn to skin disorders,” Willow explains with a seriousness that is at once amusing and endearing, “which I photograph only if the subject (and one of my parents) isn’t looking.” She also counts by sevens to establish a soothing sense of order. “It’s an escape technique,” Willow says.

But when her parents, with whom she has a loving relationship, are killed in a car accident, Willow’s pain cannot be organized or soothed away. Even worse, the policemen who gave her the terrible news are asking about next of kin—and she has none, save a grandmother with dementia.

Then a lie spoken out of compassion—a new friend, Mai, tells the police her family has known Willow’s for a long time, and can thus take her in—offers a temporary reprieve. It also segues into a memorable story of kindness among friends and strangers, the dangers and rewards of taking risks, and ultimately an exploration of the meaning of family.

Sloan’s gift for storytelling is evident: Her characters are sometimes kooky, but not too; trust is earned and happiness tentatively blooms, but not so quickly as to seem unlikely; and Willow’s sorrow isn’t smoothed over, but rather recognized as an addition to her new, unpredictable existence.

If anything might seem improbable to readers, Sloan says, it’s probably Willow’s preternatural poise and smarts. “I know that some people will read the book and think it’s not possible, that Willow seems to have superhuman powers,” she says. “But they just haven’t been around a kid like that. If you’ve been around highly gifted kids, some of them do seem to have superpowers, and corresponding confidence. Those kids spend more time with adults . . . but because they’re more comfortable with adults, they become outcasts in their own peer group.”

Sloan says she’s “always been interested in those kinds of kids,” not least because she was sometimes one of them, which she drew on when creating this story. For example, during one year in elementary school, she left her classroom twice weekly to visit a nearby college campus, where “the psychology department was conducting an experiment rewarding gifted children.” Sloan says, “It was so strange, and it made me feel like an outsider.” In Counting by 7s, Willow leaves class for regular visits with her school’s counselor, Dell Duke—something that further sets her apart from her peers, too.

In addition, Sloan’s father’s job as a consultant to the Peace Corps meant her family had a new address every few years, so she was the new kid in class many times. “I had a peripatetic childhood that in many ways informs who I am today, and influences my writing because I very much identify with outsiders,” she says.

And, she adds, “You can approach that in two ways: Be Willow-esque and retreat to live in your own head, which is a great place to live on some levels, or throw yourself into the situation. Mai . . . throws herself into the world and makes as many connections as she can, while Willow does the opposite until she’s forced to do something else.”

But it’s not just Willow who must learn to behave differently; the adults in Counting by 7s have some growing and changing to do, too. For example, Dell Duke has long categorized the kids he counsels (as misfits, oddballs, geniuses, etc.), but Willow and her friends defy his descriptions. And Mai’s mother’s routines are upended, which makes her cranky—but also leaves her more open to the unexpected.

Sloan says that aspect of the book struck a chord with one of its first readers: “I gave it to a precocious 11-year-old, and she said her favorite character was [taxi driver] Juan, by far. She said she liked him because Willow made him change without even trying. And I know what she’s saying—she’s very attracted to the idea that she could be doing this in the adult world, too.”

It’s easy to imagine that readers—whether kids, adults, young-at-heart adults or precocious kids—will find themselves taken with, even inspired by, Counting by 7s. Sloan has created a story where the line between youth and adulthood moves back and forth, often more than once in a single day—and where kids and adults “have relationships that are real and go both directions,” she says. The book is a moving, often funny reminder that such relationships are worth cultivating, and that being open to new people and experiences—however strange or difficult they may seem—can lead to wonderful things.

After all, look what happened when Sloan and her husband went on that vaguely described vacation, and her husband ate that fateful, tainted crustacean! “I’m hoping that today my husband also thinks it was a lucky shrimp,” Sloan says. “But I don’t ask.”

Some people have lucky numbers; others have lucky stars. Holly Goldberg Sloan credits her career change, and her subsequent success as an author of children’s books, to something a little different: a lucky shrimp.

Alas, said shellfish wasn’t so felicitous for Sloan’s husband. But for…

Children's & YAPicture Book

Steven Kellogg

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Steven Kellogg has made a career of dreaming up stories that entertain, intrigue and delight. The author and illustrator has his name on more than 100 books and counting, from reimaginings of fairy tales to quirky animal stories such as The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash.

His new book, Snowflakes Fall, stands apart from the rest. Kellogg, who lived with his family in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, for 35 years, collaborated with his longtime friend, Newbery Medalist Patricia MacLachlan (Sarah, Plain and Tall), to create a story that pays tribute and offers hope in the wake of the December 14, 2012, mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in which 20 students and six staff members died.

Kellogg took time out of his busy schedule to answer questions about the genesis of Snowflakes Fall, his personal connection to Sandy Hook and a new partnership with a dear friend.

What was it like to work on a book that held such emotional heft for you—and the people who will be reading it and remembering that day??

It was very important to me to be able to deal with the depression brought on by the tragedy, and I chose the voice of the picture book to deal with the sadness while gratefully celebrating my memories of the vibrant community where, for 35 years, I lived and worked and raised my family. The events of 12/14 will always be the darkest chapter in the town's history, and, while acknowledging that deep sorrow, I also wanted the illustrations to join the spirit of the uplifting, life-affirming verses Patricia wrote by depicting the joy and wonder that children who grow up in that idyllic village and its magical woodlands have experienced ever since the town was founded in the early 18th century.

"Her lyrical verses evoked my memories of children playing in the woods, fields and streams that surrounded our old farmhouse in Sandy Hook."

Have any of your other books been as personally meaningful for you??

All of the books I have written and/or illustrated are personally meaningful to me, but Snowflakes Fall is unique in that it allowed me to utilize the picture book art form to address the dark shadows cast by a tragedy in a manner that acknowledges profound sadness, but also revels in the rich diversity of life and the beautiful changes we see all around us, in growing children and the evolving seasons.

Did you and Ms. MacLachlan readily "click" regarding your respective visions for Snowflakes Fall?

Authors and illustrators rarely collaborate during the creation of a book, and that accepted custom can allow the creative process to flow more freely for both because they concentrate on their individual contributions rather than their personal relationship. Occasionally, a book benefits from a long-established friendship between the artist and author, and that was very much the case with Snowflakes Fall. The coming together of the text and images was enhanced by the freedom we felt to discuss and integrate each other's pictorial and verbal ideas, and to make suggestions we felt would help the book put across the feelings and insights we both hoped to convey.

Was the snowflake metaphor the first thing that came to mind? And the snow angels . . . I see that, at book's end, there are 20 of them spiraling up to the sky. Beautiful.

On first reading, I loved the eloquent phrases and the images in the verses Patricia wrote, and her utilization of the diversity and beauty of the simple snowflake to establish the theme of the book. I couldn't wait to combine her poetry with the paintings I was imagining. Her lyrical verses evoked my memories of children playing in the woods, fields and streams that surrounded our old farmhouse in Sandy Hook. We had very constructive discussions about ways in which the verbal and visual movement of the book could be shaped so it would achieve the effect we both envisioned. Her mention of snow angels in one of the sequences, for example, opened me to the possibility of broadening their presence to the jacket, the title page, the last spread, and to the final, wordless scene on the last endpaper where they rise from the silent moonlit playground and fly into the healing peace of the falling snow.

Do you hope your book will help children understand that artistic expression can help us when we're grieving?

My intent was to illustrate the book as a celebration of the uniqueness of children and the joy of childhood, with a concentration on the excitement of the changing seasons, and the fascinating, celebratory and occasionally very difficult stages of life as it continually evolves. My hope is that we have created a picture book that will speak about a range of emotions and reach out to people of all ages.

Most of the 100 books you've published were created when you lived in Sandy Hook. What made it such a fertile place for your imagination and your art? ?

In addition to the beautiful landscape and congenial townships, the joy of my life in Sandy Hook evolved from the discovery of a generous old farmhouse that accommodated all of our needs. . . . It had an intriguing maze of intimate nooks and crannies that were perfect for a large family with a Great Dane and a troupe of personable cats . . . and I realized the attic rooms could be combined into the perfect space for a studio that overlooked the treetops and woodland waterfall below. We loved living in that house, and it appears in the distance in one of the illustrations in the book.

Were you ever concerned about readers thinking it was "too soon" to do this book?

I felt an urgent need to express and re-channel the concerns the tragedy aroused in me, and I hoped the book's carefully composed life-affirming and consoling qualities would be felt by people who read Patricia's verses and wandered through the pages of the accompanying paintings.

Will you be touring with Ms. MacLachlan to promote Snowflakes Fall?

I'll be doing an event for the village of Sandy Hook and the Newtown community, and select appearances in addition to ones I’ve already done for booksellers in New Orleans and Providence, RI.

Random House made a donation to support Sandy Hook, and will donate new books to national literacy organization First Book, correct?

Yes, a book donation will be made to First Book and, in honor of Newtown, Connecticut, and the village of Sandy Hook, Random House Children’s Books has made a donation to the Where Angels Play Foundation in support of The Sandy Ground: Where Angels Play project. The project's goal is to build 26 playgrounds along the Hurricane Sandy-ravaged coast of New Jersey, New York and Connecticut to honor the lives of those lost at Sandy Hook Elementary.

 

View the book trailer for Snowflakes Fall:

Steven Kellogg has made a career of dreaming up stories that entertain, intrigue and delight. The author and illustrator has his name on more than 100 books and counting, from reimaginings of fairy tales to quirky animal stories such as The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate…

RomanceContemporary Romance

Jill Shalvis

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

It takes a certain kind of person to parlay tearful, angry-door-slamming sibling rivalry into a series of popular novels. 

But Jill Shalvis is nothing if not creative, so she combined her romance-writer instincts (50 novels and counting) with her motherly concerns, and kicked off her best-selling Lucky Harbor series.

“My three daughters had just entered their teens and were fighting all the time,” Shalvis recalls. “I couldn’t imagine a happily-ever-after for them.” So she made one up. “I pitched a story about three estranged sisters who inherit their mother’s dilapidated beach inn [in a small town in Washington state]. They can’t sell the inn because it’s a mess, so they’re stuck together for the summer. They start out estranged, and end up happy.” 

Shalvis says her publisher was enthusiastic about the idea right away. “Grand Central was lovely enough to say, let’s do it as a trilogy, with each sister getting her own story.” Then, “when I turned in the third manuscript, they said, this is becoming very popular, we need more.” 

Thus followed three more Lucky Harbor trilogies. February will see the arrival of Book 9, Once in a Lifetime, featuring Aubrey, who’s trying to reopen her beloved late aunt’s bookstore—and check names off a list of people to whom she wants to make amends. 

Aubrey’s uncle hires Ben to fix up the store. Ben’s been grieving the death of his wife by doing engineering jobs in dangerous places around the world. Romance isn’t on either one’s mind, but it’s not long before Aubrey’s more than a little distracted by Ben (and his low-slung tool belt), and he her. There’s an underlying threat to their connection, though: Aubrey has a secret she’s afraid to share, and Ben’s afraid to fall in love again.

The two receive well-meaning advice from family and friends, as well as suggestions posted on the Lucky Harbor Facebook page by a group of irrepressible senior citizens. That small-town scrutiny figures in all the Lucky Harbor novels. 

“I grew up in Los Angeles, a very large town that’s very anonymous, but my dream was always the opposite,” Shalvis says. “[Lucky Harbor] is truly just a fantasy.” 

“I grew up in Los Angeles, a very large town that’s very anonymous, but my dream was always the opposite."

Ten years ago, Shalvis’ dream came true when she and her family moved to a home outside Lake Tahoe, California. “I now live in a small town,” she says, “and it’s easy to find the humor. I’m able to pull out things that someone who’s always lived here wouldn’t think are funny, but they are to me.”

She includes herself in that category: “I always feel like a misplaced city girl. I’m always going to scream when a wolf spider shows up, or if I see a bear out by the garbage. I’m not the Pioneer Woman.” 

Shalvis thinks there’s a hint of herself in the character Lucille, the chief gossip of Lucky Harbor. “She’s a little bit of how I would see myself as an old lady. I’m curious, I’m nosy,” she says with a laugh.

Shalvis has a knack for translating real-life relationships to the page.

It’s that intense curiosity—plus a knack for translating real-life relationships to the page—that makes Shalvis’ novels so engaging, whether a dialogue-heavy scene in which characters face up to their less-than-pleasant behavior, or a sex scene in which pleasure is the order of the day . . . and the night . . . and the next morning. 

About those sexy bits, Shalvis says, “I try to make each sex scene important to the story and individual. Whether the experience is funny, or even anxiety-ridden, I try to keep it real.”

Also keeping things real: Shalvis’ affinity for men with carpentry skills, and the fact that her husband is a builder. Ben of Once in a Lifetime is a tribute to him, she says. “There’s always a tool belt in my books!” 

While the current romance trend is the billionaire bad-boy, Shalvis says she prefers real-life men who work with their hands. “It’s more attractive, to me, to make an everyday guy become a hero versus a guy who had everything easy and doesn’t see how hard life is.”

And “there’s always a bromance,” Shalvis says. “It’s a big part of what I write. In Ben’s case, his relationships with [friends] Jack and Luke are part of who he is.”

Aubrey’s attempt to right past wrongs is a big part of who she is, and who she’s trying to become. “There are so many layers, and her huge complicated past, and some things Ben doesn’t know about,” Shalvis says. “I thought, what can I do to make the worst possible scenario?” (No spoilers here, but: It’s a doozy.)

There’s more Lucky Harbor ahead, with another trilogy starting in August. After that, the series will likely come to a close, the author says. “I want to go when readers are still happy. I don’t want to stay too long at the party.”

For the moment, fans have a lot to look forward to—and there’s always Shalvis’ active presence on her blog, Facebook and Twitter, where she alternates shirtless-hunk photos with less sexy updates. 

They’re all part of Shalvis’ plan to maintain the sense of community she always longed for—and has found in her fictional hometown of Lucky Harbor and her connection with fans. “Romance readers are the best on the planet,” she says.

It takes a certain kind of person to parlay tearful, angry-door-slamming sibling rivalry into a series of popular novels. 

But Jill Shalvis is nothing if not creative, so she combined her romance-writer instincts (50 novels and counting) with her motherly concerns, and kicked off her best-selling Lucky Harbor series.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Margi Preus

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Before she became a Newbery Honor-winning author, Margi Preus spent 25 years as the artistic director of Duluth’s Colder by the Lake Comedy Theatre, where she wrote, produced and directed sketches, operas, plays and adaptations. So why the switch to children’s books? “I had kids!” she says with a laugh.

“Something really happened to me when my older son [now 26] discovered the magic of books at age 2 or 3. He wanted me to read him book after book, and he’d watch my lips and . . . eyes, look at the page, then back up at my face and mouth. I could see he was putting it all together, that those little squiggles on that page are making her say words that have meaning to me. This magical thing is happening to me, and a story is happening somehow. That was a big part of my inspiration, of wanting to try [writing books].”

And so she did, first with three picture books, and then historical fiction for middle grade readers: the 2011 Newbery Honor book Heart of a Samurai and 2012’s Shadow on the Mountain.

Her new book, West of the Moon, was another new writerly adventure for Preus: It’s inspired by the writings and art of her real great-great-grandmother, Linka, who came with her husband to America from Norway in 1851, but the story and its characters are not as tied to history as in her previous works. Preus spun a mere few lines of text from Linka’s diary into a magical mix of folklore, myth and adventure set in the sometimes beautiful, sometimes forbidding mid-19th-century Norwegian mountainside.

The heroine in West of the Moon is not unusual for Scandinavian folktales. "Girls can be very strong; even if a boy comes to rescue them, they tell them what to do.”

It’s the story of 13-year-old Astri, who (in today’s parlance) kicks some serious butt. She’s smart and savvy, and ably navigates strange, stressful situations even if she’s sad or scared—which is fairly often, considering her mother’s dead, her father is somewhere in America, and her aunt has just sold her to a filthy, mean goat-herder, thus separating her from her younger sister Greta.

Astri strives to maintain her safety and dignity, recalling favorite folktales and memories when she needs a mental lift, and using all her guts and wits on a daring escape-and-rescue mission that’s often as funny as it is suspenseful. And the mission continues on—ill-intentioned pursuers and bridge-trolls be damned—because Astri decides it’s time to go to America.

While many details of her ancestors’ own immigration experience informed West of the Moon, Preus says her great-great-grandmother’s brief mention of a girl she met on the ship to America revved up her imagination.

“As I read over [those lines in the diary],” she says, “I wondered . . . what kind of girl would get on a boat alone and go to America, not knowing anyone? I thought I’d see if I could figure out a story for her.”

But, she adds, this “was a bit scary for me. . . . I had so many ideas, and it was hard to settle on what should happen next. [When] writing the two earlier books based on real people . . . I couldn’t go off in a direction too far afield from what actually happened. With Astri, I just had to decide or feel how I wanted it to be.”

One important decision: Preus infused Astri with the strength and smarts typically found in Scandinavian folklore, as well as in the pages of her great-great-grandmother’s diary.

In Astri’s favorite folktale, “the girl goes three days past the end of the world to rescue a guy,” Preus explains. “That’s not an unusual heroine in Scandinavian folktales and fairy tales. Girls can be very strong; even if a boy comes to rescue them, they tell them what to do.”

She adds, “I was thinking about that, looking through the diary again. The night before [Linka] got married, she wrote . . . ‘A human being is a free and independent creature and I would recommend every woman consider it, and I insist that every maiden owes it to herself to do so.’ That is a fairy-tale heroine. . . . She kind of got in trouble as a pastor’s wife, because they were supposed to be submissive.” (At the book’s end, readers may peruse Linka’s actual drawings and a handwritten excerpt from her diary.)

Lucky for readers, Preus’ great-great-grandmother didn’t stop writing and drawing in her diary because others disapproved, and Astri wasn’t meek because dastardly people wanted her to be. That drive for independence, the belief that something better lies ahead, is an inspiration for readers of any age—and, perhaps, an impetus to read Scandinavian folktales.

For now, though, Preus has put folktales aside to work on her next book, a companion to Heart of a Samurai. “It picks up where that book left off, historically.” She’s working on it in her backyard writing house, built for her in 2009 by her younger son (artist and furniture designer Misha Kahn) and her husband, a designer and contractor.

Margi Preus' writing house

Preus' backyard writing house, where she crafts her stories and wears fingerless gloves as needed.

“It’s a wonderful place. I love it!” she says. “It’s got a real wood stove, great big picture windows looking out over a frozen creek, all birch inside. . . . I’m sure if I looked hard I could see a deer in the woods behind it.” The little wooden house has become vital to Preus’ writing process, now that she’s left the comedy theater (and teaching, which she also did in previous decades) and has been transitioning to writing full-time.

But her years spent focusing on laughter have served her well, as evidenced by the bouts of humor that buoy West of the Moon and in the way she approaches her stories.

“[At the comedy theater], I didn’t write the funny stuff. I just took all these ideas everybody had, all these little scripts and pieces and improv bits, and made them into a show. I feel like writing a novel is a lot like that, with all the different themes that have to come together to make a whole story.”

While she does miss collaborating on comedy productions, “I don’t miss the ego things, which are rampant when doing theater. . . . I have very little patience for that now.” It works out nicely, then, that the woodpeckers and chickadees—and the occasional black bear—in her yard aren’t likely to bicker over personal issues. They’ll do their outdoor things; Preus will write indoors; and Astri will journey on.

 

Writing house photo courtesy of Preus.

Before she became a Newbery Honor-winning author, Margi Preus spent 25 years as the artistic director of Duluth’s Colder by the Lake Comedy Theatre, where she wrote, produced and directed sketches, operas, plays and adaptations. So why the switch to children’s books? “I had kids!” she says with a laugh.

RomanceFictionContemporary Romance

Robyn Carr and Kristan Higgins

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Robyn Carr and Kristan Higgins have a strong and supportive friendship, a match made during the at-first-sight moment their eyes met across a crowded convention-center hallway.

Carr reminisces, “I saw Kristan and [fellow author] Deanna Raybourn standing next to each other, two beautiful women with all these RITA award [ribbons] on their badges, and I said, ‘Jesus, I can’t buy one of those!’ Then Kristan said, ‘Poor Robyn!’ and that was it.”

Translation for those new to romance-land: The RITA is an annual award from the Romance Writers of America (RWA) and is named after RWA’s first president, Rita Clay Estrada. Higgins, author of 12 books and counting, won in 2008 and 2010, while Carr (with nearly 50 books to date) has yet to garner a statuette. Higgins’ quip referred to the fact Carr is a number-one New York Times and USA Today best-selling author many times over . . . so, she’s not doing too badly. Higgins’ books have made those bestseller lists many times as well.

Now, back to our story: The two met for dinner soon after meeting and have been talking on the phone a couple of hours a week since then. Carr says with a laugh, “Oh god, we probably shouldn’t let it get out how much time we spend on the phone, so our editors think we’re working ourselves to death.”

“We probably shouldn’t let it get out how much time we spend on the phone, so our editors think we’re working ourselves to death.”—Robyn Carr

Of course, during much of their time on the phone, they are working. They run ideas past each other, talk through plot or character sticking points, share reader feedback both touching and wacky, and “fix the world every week,” Higgins says. “It’s a lonely, solitary job to write, and Robyn is my colleague.”

BookPage recently joined the phone fun with the two Harlequin authors dialing in from their homes in Las Vegas (Carr) and Connecticut (Higgins) to talk about the writing life, their friendship, their new books and more.

The two share a March 25 release date for Carr’s Four Friends and Higgins’ Waiting on You. Although their novels are set on different coasts (California and New York, respectively) and feature different kinds of characters (40-somethings undergoing marriage-related upheaval, and 30-something exes who haven’t left love behind), both stories deal in second chances . . . how to recognize them; decide if they should be embraced or avoided; and ultimately accept that, while things will not ever go back to the way they were, a new way of living can be wonderful, too.

Carr’s Four Friends are Gerri, Andy, Sonja and BJ, neighbors in Mill Valley, an affluent Marin County suburb of San Francisco. The women take a daily morning power-walk—save BJ, who prefers to run solo—and are very involved in each other’s daily lives. Over the course of several fateful months, the women are beset by revelations, crises and struggles that shake the foundations of their marriages, friendships and outlooks on life.

For starters, Gerri discovers that her relationship with her husband, Phil, isn’t as strong as she thought. Twice-divorced Andy despairs of ever finding a loving and stable mate. And Sonja’s dedication to New Age rituals and remedies is shaken when her husband leaves her, and nothing can make her feel better. To their surprise, it’s the usually reticent BJ who steps in and eventually becomes instrumental in getting the women on their various paths to healing.

It’s a powerful tale, one that doesn’t shy away from the tough stuff, whether it’s infidelity, mental illness, domestic violence or the indignities of menopause (not least of which are those damnable hot flashes). Of course, there’s love and sex and hope, too, presented believably and often humorously by Carr’s skilled and perceptive hand.

When asked if Four Friends represents a move away from romance toward mainstream women’s fiction (although, certainly, her multiple-bestseller status indicates her books have long been reaching a massive audience), Carr notes that she’s done women’s fiction before, “a book I really loved and believed in, that every publisher rejected and Harlequin bought, called The House on Olive Street. In a perfect world, I would do both romance and women’s fiction.”

Higgins adds, “Both of us have that crossover in our books. They’re not just about romance, but about life issues, too.” Continues Carr, “Yes, women’s fiction is about issues . . . you have more issues than you have villains. Kristen’s work crosses over, too—you have a child without a parent, other issues women have taken on and are put in charge of.”

And, says Higgins, “There’s infidelity, grief, belonging . . . women’s fiction focuses more on that than romance.” She adds, “A lot of time, I’m criticized by hardcore romance fans” for having what are seen as women’s-fiction elements in her books, but “You always have to write what you love. Writing books is so hard, I can’t imagine trying to write because I think it would sell. I write because I love the story and characters.”

“Writing books is so hard, I can’t imagine trying to write because I think it would sell. I write because I love the story and characters.”—Kristan Higgins

In Waiting on You, the third novel in Higgins’ Blue Heron series, those characters are Colleen and Lucas, former lovers who, to borrow from a movie line, just can’t seem to quit each other. Colleen and her twin brother, Connor, own a tavern in fictional Manningsport, New York. Connor’s the chef, and Colleen manages the place, pouring drinks and charming customers with equal dexterity. She’s also an ace matchmaker, who has been sticking to superficial encounters herself since getting her heart broken a decade ago.

When said heartbreaker—Lucas—returns to town to care for his ailing uncle, Colleen must admit to herself that she’s not ready to truly let him go. To complicate matters, her kooky friends—particularly the delightful Paulie—insist on continuing in their outrageous ways; Colleen’s mother persists in loudly detailing her menopausal woes; and Colleen's brother is being overly protective. It’s a fine mess, one that Higgins detangles with her trademark mix of empathy and wit.

Striking a particularly appealing and relatable balance of emotion and entertainment is something Carr and Higgins both do exceptionally well, as borne out by their devoted fans and stellar sales. That blend of feeling and fun is no small part of what keeps their fans eagerly anticipating their new releases.

Says Carr, “It’s part of romance’s job as a genre, not only to entertain, and have feelings of eroticism and desire, but also to show women what’s good for women . . . to also serve as an affirmation, and hopefully provide an intelligent, reasonable lesson that’s at some point achievable by an average person.”

Higgins agrees, adding, “In well-constructed romance, the characters become role models. There’s a reason they haven’t found what they’re searching for: They haven’t figured it out yet. During the course of the book, they tackle the issue that’s been their special problem all their lives—whether they feel unworthy, or there’s a past event with a grip they just can’t shake—and overcome it, and the relationship is the reward for self-actualization.”

As for the authors, both Carr and Higgins say that their careers—and the active, engaged romance community—are their own reward every day, whether via a productive writing session, a good review or a positive reader encounter.

Higgins, who’s been writing for 10 years to Carr’s 35, says of people excitedly recognizing her in public, “It’s so funny. I don’t think there’s a more ordinary person than me or Robyn. We’re very normal, ordinary people with this extraordinary career. . . . It’s kind of mind-blowing. I’m not used to it, and I don’t want to get used to it.”

Carr adds, “And if you’re brilliant—as Kristan and I are, obviously . . . ha!—you don’t take that for granted. I’ve seen a lot of writers achieve well-known or best-selling status and act as though they’re entitled to it and it’s their due. But remember, there are a lot of fingerprints on our books, most of all the readers’ . . . they make it all possible, and could make it impossible tomorrow.”

(Photo of Robyn Carr and Kristan Higgins courtesy of Kristan Higgins.)

Robyn Carr and Kristan Higgins have a strong and supportive friendship, a match made during the at-first-sight moment their eyes met across a crowded convention-center hallway.

Carr reminisces, “I saw Kristan and [fellow author] Deanna Raybourn standing next to each other, two beautiful women with all these RITA award [ribbons] on their badges, and I said, ‘Jesus, I can’t buy one of those!’ Then Kristan said, ‘Poor Robyn!’ and that was it.”

YA FictionYAHorror

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Most of the time, interviews about an author’s new novel take place a year or so after the book’s completion. So it might take a bit of doing for an author to feel up-to-date, especially if he or she is already ears-deep into the next project. Carlos Ruiz Zafón had to travel much further back in time when he spoke with BookPage from his home in Los Angeles about his fourth young adult novel, Marina: A Gothic Tale, which was first published in his native Spain in 1999.

In the intervening years, Zafón (who also has a home in his native Barcelona) has become best known for his three (and counting) adult novels, worldwide mega-sellers The Shadow of the Wind, The Angel’s Game and The Prisoner of Heaven. His books have been published in some 45 countries, and translated into 40-plus languages. (His English translator is Lucia Graves, novelist and daughter of poet Robert Graves.)

But Zafón’s career was launched in the YA realm when his first book, The Prince of Mist (Spain 1992; U.S. 2010), won Spain’s Edebé Literary Prize for Young Adult Fiction.

“It never crossed my mind that I wanted to be a YA writer,” he says. “My first novel happened to win an award for young adult fiction, but when I wrote it . . . it was just a tale of adventure that had young characters in it.” But Zafón’s literary magic was met with a captive audience: His next two YA books, The Midnight Palace (Spain 1994; U.S. 2011) and The Watcher in the Shadows (Spain 1995; U.S. 2013), found success around the world.

Marina is sure to follow suit, thanks to a mix of mystery, adventure, suspense and horror, plus a touching story of love, both romantic and familial. It’s an exciting read with a lot to take in—which makes sense, since the story’s protagonist, 15-year-old Oscar, is overwhelmed, excited, intrigued, besotted and terrified, often in the same 24-hour period.

Oscar has no idea what’s to come one day in 1979 when he, as is his habit, leaves the grounds of his Barcelona boarding school to explore an abandoned section of the city. His imagination is already on high alert when he encounters a well-fed gray cat and hears beautiful music coming from a decrepit mansion. His curiosity about these signs of life in the seemingly abandoned house proves impossible to squelch, and he ultimately learns that the lovely, enigmatic Marina Drai lives there with her father, Germán, an artist (and with the cat, Kafka).

Thus begins a tale of adventure and suspense, as the teenagers’ romance blossoms against a decidedly unusual backdrop. They follow a mysterious woman who goes to the cemetery every month to wordlessly perform a strange ritual. Soon they find themselves venturing into the long-hidden Barcelona underworld and the terrifying history of a man whose desire to heal turned into something twisted and gruesome.

Zafón doesn’t shy away from the grotesque, and there’s no shortage of scary scenes in Marina; under his skilled hand, readers will push forward even as they fear something scarier waiting around the corner. It’s deliciously thrilling, with echoes of Dickens, as well as Shelley’s Frankenstein.

That’s intentional, the author says. “As a kid, I read everything I could get my hands on . . . Dickens, Tolstoy, 19th-century classics, Stephen King, Peter Straub, crime novels.”

He adds, “I tend to go for the Gothic—a lot of my influences come from that, and I tend to pay homage. . . . I always like to look back, because there’s something in those works, that world, that appeals to me and my personal sensibility.”

And, Zafón says, whether in his YA works or his more recent adult fiction, “One of my ambitions has been to go back to what those great authors were doing then, and try to reinvent . . . the language through deconstruction and reconstruction. That’s always the direction I’m trying to hit. Marina on a small scale tries to do that, to bridge that sensibility of old Victorian Gothic tales and reconstruct them in a modern way.”

"One of my ambitions has been to go back to what those great authors were doing then . . . to bridge that sensibility of old Victorian Gothic tales and reconstruct them in a modern way.”

Speaking of modern, Zafón’s work appeals to fans of—and draws comparisons to—Stephen King’s novels. Not least, Zafón explains, because, “As a child in Spain in the ’70s, I always felt many of the things I was interested in were not available to me because I was born in Spain, so I was forced to learn English to access certain books, magazines and newspapers.” He adds, “I would go to newsstands and buy paperbacks they were selling for tourists, usually bestsellers and mass market paperbacks. In the beginning, it was like going to the Rosetta Stone—I didn’t understand anything, I’d get a headache—but I began to figure it out, and I’d read a lot of Stephen King paperbacks. I’ve always said he was my English professor.”

Zafón adds, “He’s extremely good at creating character and dialogue, and I learned a lot of idioms . . . and from the perspective of someone learning a language, I became aware of how different people and different registers work. On top of that, he’s a great storyteller.”

King thinks the same about Zafón; they haven’t discussed storytelling in person, but King wrote a lovely review of The Shadow of the Wind.

“For me, he’s such a great figure, and he wrote a very generous article,” Zafón says. “On top of that, he exactly nailed things. . . . It’s the only time in my life I’ve gone to a newsstand, bought a magazine, cut the page out and kept it.”

Perhaps the two authors will meet someday soon—say, at a book-centric event where Zafón is promoting his upcoming novel, the fourth in the adult fiction series set in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books? “I’m working on it right now. . . . It closes the circle,” he says. “It’s the big one.” Here’s hoping both stories get a happy ending.

 

This article was originally published in the August 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Most of the time, interviews about an author’s new novel take place a year or so after the book’s completion. So it might take a bit of doing for an author to feel up-to-date, especially if he or she is already ears-deep into the next project. Carlos Ruiz Zafón had to travel much further back in time when he spoke with BookPage from his home in Los Angeles about his fourth young adult novel, Marina: A Gothic Tale, which was first published in his native Spain in 1999.
YA FictionYA

A.S. King

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

From the brilliantly bizarre mind of A.S. King comes a haunting look at a bleak future—not only for teenager Glory O’Brien, but for all women.

Glory is having a rough senior year. High school graduation is nigh and, unlike her self-assured, college-bound peers, she’s uncertain about what’s next. Actually, she wonders if there will even be a next, because the sad legacy of her mother’s suicide 13 years ago still weighs so heavily upon her.

Then there’s her longtime friend Ellie, whose frenemy tendencies have been tolerable—but lately, Glory’s been thinking their relationship is no longer worthwhile.

Even more ominous are the visions Glory and Ellie begin having after a strange, fateful night. After ingesting the remains of a dead bat, the girls start to receive “transmissions” from other people’s past or future across infinite generations. Glory’s visions are harbingers of a second Civil War that brings with it violence, misogyny, boundless danger and sorrow.

So, yeah . . . the teen protagonist of Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future has a lot going on. King tells Glory’s complicated story with skill and grace, via her trademark method of melding reality with the otherworldly—a sort of matter-of-fact magical realism. For example, when the transmissions begin, the characters are stunned and confused, but accepting. Their jarring visual interludes are woven right into the narrative. (No reason to slow down for marveling and wondering; there’s a story to be told!)

That mix of magic and mundane, intellectual and fantastical, has long worked for King. Her first novel, The Dust of 100 Dogs, was a 2009 ALA Best Book for Young Adults; Please Ignore Vera Dietz was a 2011 Printz Honor book; and Ask the Passengers won the 2013 L.A. Times Book Prize and was a Lambda Award finalist.

Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future is King’s sixth YA novel, and it’s a story that’s close to her not-one-for-following-the-traditional-life-path heart. “We put so much pressure on 16-year-olds—What do you want to do? Where do you want to go?” King says. “That goes with Glory, who feels like she’s not allowed to be lost anymore.”

The author can relate: “High school wasn’t for me. Traditional college was also not for me. Art school I excelled at, and that was great.” Also, the Pennsylvania native and her Irish husband lived for a decade in Tipperary, Ireland, renovating a decrepit farmhouse, living self-sufficiently and raising chickens. She also taught adult literacy and wrote, wrote, wrote.

“When we moved back [to Pennsylvania in 2005], I had seven or eight novels under my belt,” King says. “I didn’t know anything about publishing, which was fine. It meant I got to grow as a writer without caring about getting published.”

Her growth as a writer began long before, though. King kept journals as a child, and in college at the Art Institute of Philadelphia, where she studied photography and archival printing, “I secretly wrote little essays about the pictures I took. . . . No one ever saw them. I was always a closet writer.”

Just as King emerged from her writerly cocoon (though she still favors “an office where I can close the door and do whatever I want with my brain”), Glory’s growing awareness—of her parents’ past, her own talents, the near and far future—is a transformation that begins in her late mother’s closet-like darkroom, where she sifts through photos, journals and other flotsam and jetsam of a creative, troubled mind.

Glory’s nerve grows, too, and she faces the transmissions head-on by creating a History of the Future that warns others about the coming war. The catalyst? A loophole in the future Fair Pay Act: If states make it illegal for women to work, they can forgo equal pay. The subsequent Family Protection Act sparks ever-worsening misogyny. Women and girls suffer immensely, and citizens start fighting back.

While extreme, it’s a future that doesn’t sound entirely preposterous, with current social media campaigns of young women proclaiming “We don’t need feminism” and the proliferation of so-called men’s rights groups. King says, “Being on the farm and out of touch for so long in Ireland, I wasn’t here [in the U.S.] for the whole reversal of what a feminist was. I was confused to come back and hear the word being used for other things . . . like someone changed the word while I was gone.”

She goes on, “It’s also just the culture: I have two girls, and it’s hard to navigate anything from Internet to TV to ads without constantly seeing women being objectified.”

Thanks to her parents, King grew up in a household where gender stereotypes were not promoted nor enforced. “Chores had to get done, so I might be the one up in a tree sawing off a mimosa limb, and I collected the trash . . . whereas in a lot of houses those were only boys’ jobs. That was strange to me, because the only boy around was my dad, and he had other stuff to do.”

Young people must be fearless in standing up for themselves, whether against a frenemy or a discriminatory social norm. 

Those values are integral to Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future, as is the notion that asking questions, while sometimes scary, is worthwhile. Young people must be fearless in standing up for themselves, whether against a frenemy or a discriminatory social norm. “The bottom line is, equal rights are important,” King says. “I don’t think it’s politics, I just think everybody’s equal.”

She adds, “When it comes to feminism, there’s still a simple definition. . . . I’ll look in my old high school dictionary. . . . ‘The advocacy of political, social and economic equivalency of men and women.’ I don’t see a problem with that, and I don’t see why anyone else would.”

Put simply, she says with a laugh, “The world is full of assholes. What are you doing to make sure you’re not one of them? In a way, that’s what every book [I’ve written] is about. It’s a call to arms!”

 

This article was originally published in the October 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

From the brilliantly bizarre mind of A.S. King comes a haunting look at a bleak future—not only for teenager Glory O’Brien, but for all women.
Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Martine Leavitt

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Martine Leavitt has a super-cool dad—a smart, rugged man named James Webster who, throughout his life, has gone on countless hikes into mountain ranges and national parks in his native Canada, where he immersed himself in and learned about nature. He also took pages and pages of notes, and countless photographs of the flora and fauna he encountered.

Leavitt—who, it must be said, is pretty cool herself—has done her own pages and pages of writing via eight novels for young readers, including the 2006 National Book Award finalist Keturah and Lord Death. So, naturally, when she became enchanted by her father’s account of a herd of bighorn sheep he followed for four seasons, she encouraged him to publish it.

He demurred, and several years passed. But then her father gave her a special gift: his sheep-centric notes and photos, for her to use as fodder for a book.

The end result, Blue Mountain, is a wonderful, often wondrous, story about a herd of bighorn sheep who live high in mountains very much like the ones Leavitt’s father explored. One major difference: The sheep (and other animals they encounter) talk, laugh, squabble and negotiate just like human beings.

“I told my father I was going to have to fictionalize and anthropomorphize the sheep,” Leavitt tells BookPage from her home in Alberta, Canada. “I got his permission to do that.” That, plus the felicitous timing of the gift, got Blue Mountain off to a strong start.

“I’d just finished writing My Book of Life by Angel, a novel-in-verse about a teen prostitute in Vancouver,” the author explains. “It was a very dark kind of story, not a happy place for me to live while writing. . . .  I needed to do something that made me happy, that was a little bit of an escape. And I have 15 grandchildren, but I’ve yet to write a book any of them could read. That’s kind of what got me started, and it was just pure fun from beginning to end.”

Though she has created an affecting tale that illustrates the seriousness of humans’ ever-increasing encroachment on nature, Leavitt has also infused her story with fantasy and given her animal characters personalities that jive with their real-life counterparts’ behaviors and tendencies.

There’s Tuk, a young male bighorn who finds himself in charge of his own small herd, a subset of the larger, older group over which savvy matriarch Kenir presides. Fellow youngsters, including ditzy Mouf and loyal Rim, join him on an exploratory journey to Blue Mountain, which Tuk believes can be the herd’s safe new home—unless, of course, the mist-shrouded behemoth is merely the stuff of myth.

Tuk’s little band of yearlings encounter a variety of obstacles and animals along the way, from a hungrily conniving, yet easily outsmarted, bear to an otter with self-esteem issues (who may or may not help them traverse a bog). Oh, and an elk who really, really wants everyone to know that she’s beautiful.

Leavitt says she “writes the stories I feel really compelled to write,” not least because a character will insist on making itself heard. “My books often start that way—I hear a character talking to me. Before, they’ve always been teenagers.”

And so, the question: Was it difficult to think like a bighorn sheep this time around?

Leavitt says with a laugh, “I do feel you cannot construct a believable voice in a story unless you’ve lived inside the body of your characters. It was a little bit of an extra challenge for me to crawl inside the body of an animal, but it ended up being quite glorious and meaningful.”

Not least, she adds, “because I ended up thinking, is there so much of a difference, so much of a divide, that I can’t understand some things about their exigencies? If you check out a YouTube video of bighorn lambs playing, they run around like little children do. . . . These animals have their territory, their need to exist and survive. Can we really distance ourselves from that basic kind of existence?”

The author’s passion for her subject is infectious and inspiring, for sure, and Blue Mountain is a compelling echo of—and expansion on—her father’s work. Readers who already love animals and worry about the future of our beleaguered Earth will feel both indignant and hopeful on behalf of the animal characters, and perhaps those who are less aware will find their curiosity piqued, or even experience the sparking of an activist flame.

Of course, Leavitt is already there, her respect and concern for nature amplified by her Blue Mountain experience.

“I loved being a bighorn sheep,” she declares. “I felt like that’s what we need to do a little bit more of. Maybe if we stop separating ourselves so much from animals, and see ourselves as a different kind of animal, maybe if big cities could . . . feel the connection of being alive and having the same basic needs, maybe some of the efforts we have to protect wildlife would come naturally, and be even easier to promote.” Here’s hoping.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Martine Leavitt has a super-cool dad—a smart, rugged man named James Webster who, throughout his life, has gone on countless hikes into mountain ranges and national parks in his native Canada, where he immersed himself in and learned about nature. He also took pages and pages of notes, and countless photographs of the flora and fauna he encountered.
Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Sharon M. Draper

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Thanks to a smart-alecky student who sat in the back row of her classroom, Sharon M. Draper went from teacher to award-winning writer. Of course, there were other factors: a lifelong love of reading, plus years of hard work and outstanding scholarship, for starters.

But as Draper tells BookPage from her Cincinnati home, that student’s challenge—“Why don’t you write something?”—led her to an entirely new career.

Further inspired after winning an Ebony magazine short-story contest and receiving a lovely letter from author Alex Haley, Draper began writing longhand while she served as a study-hall monitor. “I got 24 rejection letters in a row,” she recalls. “And the very last letter was a ‘yes’ from Simon & Schuster.”

It’s been 20 years and 25 books since that yes for 1994’s Tears of a Tiger, which won Draper her first Coretta Scott King Award. Since then, her accolades have been many: National Teacher of the Year, five-time Coretta Scott King Award winner and New York Times best-selling author. She’s been honored at the White House no fewer than six times.

Draper, who retired from teaching in 2000 to write full time and to speak at schools, book festivals and other events, takes readers to 1932 North Carolina in her new novel, Stella by Starlight.

Ten-year-old Stella, her parents and her brother Jojo live in Bumblebee, a tiny town united by hardscrabble life in the Jim Crow South. There’s love and laughter, but, Stella observes, “Every Negro family in Bumblebee knew the unwritten rules—they had to take care of their own problems and take care of one another. Help from the white community was neither expected nor considered. It was as it always had been.”

One night, Stella and Jojo realize it’s not just the bright stars that are casting a glow outside; the Ku Klux Klan is burning a wooden cross, sending an eerie red light flickering through the trees. Draper skillfully builds suspense around this frightening event and subsequent unrest which, while handled peacefully by the black community, is still dangerous to them and the few white townspeople who aren’t racist. Even a visit to the candy store is layered with risk and tension. Draper offers comic relief through schoolhouse scenes and an accidentally hilarious school play.

Although Stella by Starlight is fiction, Draper drew inspiration from her own family’s story. “The timing falls within my father’s childhood, but I wanted the main character to be based roughly on my grandmother . . . [who] used to go outside at night and write in her journal. All of them were lost except one; she gave it to my father just before she passed away. He gave it to me and said, ‘I want you to write my mother’s story.’ ”

And so, like Draper’s grandmother, Stella is bright and hungry to learn. She asks lots of questions, papers her walls with newspaper articles and eagerly listens while the grown-ups talk—which Draper loved to do during her own childhood visits to North Carolina.

“Sitting on the front porch at my grandmother’s, I wasn’t taking notes to write a book as a 10-year-old, but I was absorbing things about these people,” Draper says. “Everybody was different at night. They worked all day in the fields, no cushy office jobs. At night, they were telling stories, relaxed, and could be themselves. . . . When it came time to write the book, the rhythms of their voices were what started it and triggered my memories.”

Draper is curious to see how Stella by Starlight resonates with young readers. “I have grandchildren this age, and they really don’t think much beyond yesterday,” she says. “To go way back and ask them to care about a child who lived in 1932 is asking them to take a journey.”

If anyone can get kids to take that journey, Draper can. Through Stella’s eyes, readers learn about societal and political issues from 1932 that, alas, are still relevant today.

Universal themes, important lessons, plus some fun—it’s very teacherly, isn’t it? That’s inevitable, as being a teacher is part of Draper’s identity: “Wherever I go, I teach . . . not from a script, not by rote. I speak from the heart.”

 

This article was originally published in the January 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Thanks to a smart-alecky student who sat in the back row of her classroom, Sharon M. Draper went from teacher to award-winning writer. Of course, there were other factors: a lifelong love of reading, plus years of hard work and outstanding scholarship, for starters.
FictionWomen's Fiction

Susan Mallery

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Susan Mallery is a sparkling conversationalist: She’s funny, smart and easy to talk to about all manner of topics, from her writing career to dog breeds to her favorite eyeshadow brand (it’s Laura Geller).

That accessible quality is reflected in her books: Mallery has a talent for building vivid fictional worlds, creating characters we can relate to and skillfully depicting the highs, lows and occasional weirdness of relationships—whether between friends, lovers, co-workers, family members or even owners and pets.

Her ability to connect with readers has won Mallery legions of fans around the world. She has sold more than 23 million books, with more than 50 of her novels landing a place on bestseller lists for a combined 500 weeks.

Now in the third decade of her career, she has written more than 100 novels, ranging from spicy romances featuring sheiks and cowboys to more recent women’s fiction set in beach communities with dazzling scenery and small-town intrigue.

Fans of Mallery’s best-selling Blackberry Island books will be excited about her new series, which debuts with The Girls of Mischief Bay, set in a coastal community in Los Angeles County. Three friends—30ish Nicole, 40ish Shannon and 50ish Pam—find themselves at turning points in their lives, whether they want to be there or not.

Nicole was happy with her husband Eric, young son Tyler and her Pilates business, until Eric quit his job to work on a screenplay without discussing it with her first. She struggles with resentment and uncertainty, and tries to maintain hope for the future of her marriage.

Meanwhile, Shannon is proud of her successful career in finance, but wishes she could meet a man who’d appreciate, rather than be threatened by, her work. Adam is an excellent prospect: He’s smart, determined to learn from mistakes he made in his first marriage and has two cute kids. But will conflicts about stepparenting derail them?

And then there’s Pam, who wants to shake things up a bit. She’s happily married to John, has a good relationship with her adult children, and her dog Lulu is an adorable sidekick. But she wants more . . . or different . . . or something. Just when she starts to feel re-energized, something terrible happens—and she has to figure things out all over again.

What these women are dealing with is the stuff of life, and that’s what Mallery likes about writing both women’s fiction and romance
—the kinds of relationships she can create, the topics she can tackle and the chance to do new kinds of stories.

“I’m really lucky because I get to do both. It keeps writing fresh for me, and it’s fun. I’m actually plotting the next book right now,” she says during a call to her Seattle home, where she lives with her husband and their three pets (a toy poodle and two ragdoll cats). “I’ve written three pages, am working on characters—only 547 pages to go! By the time I hit 500 I’ll be desperate to return to Fool’s Gold,” one of her wildly popular romance series, “and so ready for boy meets girl.”

Romantics need not fret; when Mallery writes a women’s fiction book, “one storyline is always straight romance. In The Girls of Mischief Bay, it was Shannon.” And while there’s certainly sex happening in the lives of the Mischief Bay characters, more is left to the imagination in this and Mallery’s other women’s fiction. Overall, though, she says with a laugh, “It’s the real miracle of my career that, even after I’ve done so many books, I still want to write about sex.”

She’s been writing about sex and love in its various guises since 1992, when her first book, Frontier Flame, was published—right after she graduated from college with an accounting degree. She’d been an avid romance reader since her teen years, and when she saw a notice for an adult education course on romance writing a few months before graduation, it called to her. “I was used to doing assignments for college, so I figured I should write a book . . . and then I realized that’s what I wanted to do.”

And do it she has: She publishes four or five books a year, does readings and blog-tour interviews and interacts with fans on Twitter and Facebook. In fact, Mallery says, social media has become integral to the detailed worldbuilding she does for each series.

Visitors to the author’s website, susanmallery.com, will find recipes from the restaurants of Mischief Bay, along with a map of the town and a list of clever business names, like Chinese restaurant Wok’s Up and the Strung Out Kite Shop.

“All the businesses in Mischief Bay have been named by Facebook fans, and some are hysterically funny,” Mallery says. “I hope it’s a fun little diversion for [readers].

“Facebook, for me, is extraordinarily fun,” she says. “We do surveys or ask questions and get a lot of feedback. . . . Even if it’s not what I want to hear, it’s really nice to know what people are thinking.”

That’s a lot of information to manage and cross-check, whether ensuring consistency in Mischief Bay’s locations and storylines, or in the other books and series Mallery has in play at any given time.

Might her accounting background help with that? “Managing that much work does require a skill set,” she says. “Being organized and breaking a project down really does make a huge difference. I simply couldn’t do the volume I do if I wasn’t able to, in essence, be a project manager.”

And of course, she says, “I enjoy creating relationships and exploring friendship and throwing in an element of life that sends characters down a path they didn’t anticipate.

“It’s interesting to me, and I do get to giggle through my day. I’m very, very lucky. I love what I do.”

This article was originally published in the March 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Susan Mallery is a sparkling conversationalist: She’s funny, smart and easy to talk to about all manner of topics, from her writing career to dog breeds to her favorite eyeshadow brand (it’s Laura Geller).
Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Cynthia Rylant

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

It’s been 20 years since Cynthia Rylant’s beloved middle grade novel Gooseberry Park introduced the world to Stumpy the squirrel and her quirky, clever, community-minded friends. Now, the furry and feathered bunch is back in Gooseberry Park and the Master Plan, and readers will delight in discovering that the Gooseberrians are as adorable, smart and resourceful as ever.

Teamwork and lots of laughs help solve a water shortage in Gooseberry Park.

The park is still a peaceful, beautiful place, too. As Gwendolyn the hermit crab observes, “There was a stillness to Gooseberry Park that is rare in this world. It seemed that every tree, every flower and bird and creature, had taken a deep breath and settled in.”

Despite the lovely qualities of the characters and place she’d created, Rylant hadn’t been particularly keen on writing another Gooseberry Park novel. She explains to BookPage via email from her home in Portland, Oregon, “Animal fantasy is harder for me. My imagination is not really very good. . . . So even though I wished I could write a second story, I wouldn’t try, sure I couldn’t make it happen.”

It must be noted that in the intervening years since Gooseberry Park, the Newbery Award- and Caldecott Honor-winning author was busy writing many, many other books, including entries in her Henry and Mudge series, seven other series and numerous standalone titles.

And then, one day, the characters pushed aside Rylant’s doubts and demanded another outing. “All I know is that Kona and Gwendolyn and all the rest of the gang came back. I went to a coffee shop to read the New York Times, and before I finished page one, suddenly I was fishing my little notebook out of my purse, and I wrote the entire first chapter without stopping. No editing. No pausing. What I wrote is what is in the book. It’s inspiration, and it just has its own calendar.”

She adds, “I didn’t know what the book would be about exactly, just a water shortage. I like the characters to be able to do brave and noble things, so I give them weather disasters.”

Everyone at Gooseberry Park rises to the occasion, working diligently to craft and implement the titular Master Plan to bring water to everyone in the drought–bedeviled park. First, Gwendolyn and Kona (a black Labrador retriever) realize they need their neighbor, a genius crow named Herman, to help them figure out the mathematical aspects of their ambitious strategy.

Herman agrees to join the cause (thank goodness he likes a challenge). Next, they need to recruit a few more animals, gather 20 packs of chewing gum and corral 200 teamwork-averse owls. Good thing Murray the bat’s long-lost brother is coming to town; he’s super-aggravating to Murray (who copes by using his “toesies” to shove raisins in his mouth even as he complains to his friends), but he’s also got the gift of gab—just the thing to get those owls to work together, even for a little while.

And yes, the book is as funny, even funnier, than it sounds here. Rylant’s gift for sly yet sweet humor is on every page, whether describing Herman’s learned family of crows (“At suppertime . . . every member . . . ate with a book in one foot”) or Kona’s wandering thoughts during a serious discussion about the need for water (“For a moment he wished he were someone else. Maybe one of those dogs on a surfboard in Hawaii.”).

As with Gooseberry Park, Gooseberry Park and the Master Plan will simultaneously entertain and teach readers about the relationship between human actions and consequences for our earth, and inspire them to look at animals with a more imaginative eye.

The illustrations by Arthur Howard contribute to that cause and are wonderfully suited to Rylant’s prose. His portraits are evocative: Augustina the owl looks thoughtful, a bit skeptical and ultimately, er, unflappable. Howard’s action-shot drawings are a joy to behold as well: pictures of animals solving problems, cooking with The Zen of Stir-Fry cookbook and relaxing, as in the hilarious image of Gwendolyn giving Murray a soothing Reiki massage in the warm glow of a single candle.

That perfect pairing of words and pictures is no surprise. Rylant and Howard have worked together for decades. The author says, “He and I have still never met. We did our first Mr. Putter and Tabby book back in the 1990s. . . . Arthur has been a part of my life ever since. I think he and I have the same child inside us.” In fact, she says, “I don’t tell him what to draw. Arthur is really a genius (just like Herman).”

Speaking of Herman, Rylant says that while much of the book came to her as she wrote, there was one sticking point: “The hardest part for both Arthur and me was trying to figure out Herman’s mathematical calculations. We drove ourselves crazy counting seconds and minutes and making sure the clocks had the right time in the drawings. Our editor also. She even called in her math-teacher husband to double-check our numbers.”

Headaches aside, she says, “We had a really good time with all the work, because we all really love the characters. They are part of us. They are our better selves.”

That respect and appreciation for nature and its creatures is palpable in Gooseberry Park and the Master Plan, in the way the characters communicate, accept each other’s differences (not without a little teasing, of course) and work to ensure a healthy, safe environment.

Here’s hoping Rylant’s latest inspires her readers, young and not-as-young, to enjoy and care for their own version of Gooseberry Park.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It’s been 20 years since Cynthia Rylant’s beloved middle grade novel Gooseberry Park introduced the world to Stumpy the squirrel and her quirky, clever, community-minded friends. Now, the furry and feathered bunch is back in Gooseberry Park and the Master Plan, and readers will delight in discovering that the Gooseberrians are as adorable, smart and resourceful as ever.
Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Cassie Beasley

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

When we reach author Cassie Beasley at her family’s home in rural Georgia, it’s 50 days until the release of her debut, Circus Mirandus . . . not that she’s counting.

Oh, let’s not be silly—of course she’s counting! On a huge calendar hanging on the wall: “I mark off the days and get more and more excited until I feel like I’m about to burst!” Beasley says.

Too late: Beasley has already burst onto the children’s publishing scene. Her magical tale for middle grade readers sold to Dial after a five-publisher bidding war, and a Hollywood production company has pre-emptively purchased film and TV rights.

“It’s been a whirlwind, and so much fun—everything that happens is a revelation!” Beasley says. It’s also the culmination of steady progress along a path to authordom that began in childhood. 

“I loved books from a very early age and read everything I could get my hands on,” Beasley says. “But it took me a while to make the connection that I didn’t have to just read books, I could also write books.”

Beasley figured this out in high school, which led to her choosing an undergraduate writing program at nearby Georgia Southern University, followed by getting her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts, where she wrote the first draft of Circus Mirandus.

“Writing that first draft was very exciting and fun and all so new. . . . I loved it, loved it, loved it,” she says. “Then came the years of revision! That’s where the work comes in. But it can be really exciting, too, seeing it getting better as you progress. It’s so rewarding, now that it’s done, to see how far it’s come.”

All that work was certainly worth it. Circus Mirandus is an engaging, innovative tale that balances fantastical goings-on with an exploration of love, loss, friendship and the value of being open to the unexplainable. The latter has been part of Beasley’s mental makeup from an early age. 

“I always gravitated toward fantasy novels,” she explains. “It’s probably my parents’ fault—they had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with fantasy books, so I was always imagining I could go to Narnia or Hogwarts. Even when I try to write contemporary books, there’s always some magic because I can’t help myself.”

Ten-year-old Micah Tuttle is wide open to magical thinking, thanks to the stories Grandpa Ephraim (who has cared for Micah since his parents died) tells him about the amazing, magical Circus Mirandus. There are talking animals, invisible tigers and otherworldly performers—not least The Man Who Bends Light, a magician who transports his audiences to places and times they can only dream or imagine.

When Grandpa falls ill and his sister, the awful Great-Aunt Gertrudis, comes to stay, she won’t allow them to talk about the Circus . . . or spend much time together at all. But Micah sneaks in to see Grandpa, and that’s when he learns something astonishing: Circus Mirandus is real! And Grandpa has written a letter to the Lightbender, because the magician owes him a miracle.

As if finding out magic is real and having a sick grandpa and a mean great-aunt isn’t stressful enough, Micah also has an important project due at school—and his partner, the super-smart Jenny Mendoza, is not going to be pleased when she finds out he hasn’t finished his part yet. 

Micah wracks his brain to come up with an idea and decides to make an Incan quipu, a series of intricate knots that represent numbers, words and other information. It’s somewhat of a natural choice for Micah: “Grandpa Ephraim liked to say that Tuttles and knots went together like toast and cheese.”

It’s also a somewhat unusual story choice, in that knot tying is a bit of a lost art (and skill). Beasley was fascinated to learn about quipus in sixth grade, and the idea resurfaced as she wrote Circus Mirandus. “I like that knot tying’s a physical thing and not a super-powerful talent, so it’s subtle, in a way.” 

And it’s a recurring element that showcases Beasley’s gift for conveying detail and sentiment in unexpected ways, whether Micah is contemplating a classmate (“A Nathan Borgle knot would be big and sturdy and not too good-looking”) or creating a harness for an airborne adventure. 

That adventure is just one of many as Micah and Jenny team up to find the Circus and convince the Lightbender to give Grandpa his miracle—all while attempting to keep the grown-ups none the wiser (and to get their schoolwork done on time).

Circus Mirandus is an exciting and entertaining read, rife with inventive surprises, stories from the past and shiny hopes for the future, feats of derring-do and much more. There’s plenty of humor, too—from science-loving Jenny’s initial resistance to the Circus (“You must have a wonderful team of geneticists working with you to create bioluminescent bush babies”) to a wallaby who burps the Greek alphabet to nearly everything done or uttered by Chintzy the tart-tongued messenger-parrot.

It’s also an excellent testament to the upside of believing in magic. After all, as Grandpa Ephraim tells Micah, “Once in a while, it’s good to be ridiculous and amazing.”

Words to live by. And—especially if you’re Beasley, who will soon be on the road sharing the Circus Mirandus magic—it’s probably a good idea to practice your half hitches and your square knots, too

When we reach author Cassie Beasley at her family’s home in rural Georgia, it’s 50 days until the release of her debut, Circus Mirandus . . . not that she’s counting.

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