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5 gifts that will shoot to the top of any reader’s TBR

Got a serious bibliophile on your list? Tick that box with one of these titles.
Got a serious bibliophile on your list? Tick that box with one of these titles.
Science Fiction & FantasyHorror

The Swarm

Andy Marino rides the balance between good horrific fun and grisly speculation in The Swarm, a tale of a cicada emergence of biblical proportions.
Andy Marino rides the balance between good horrific fun and grisly speculation in The Swarm, a tale of a cicada emergence of biblical proportions.
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YA FictionYAFantasy

Daniel José Older

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

For 10 years, Daniel José Older worked as an EMT in Brooklyn, and he blogged each day about what he’d witnessed the night before: tragedy and joy, blood and bandages, dead people and living people—and people who hovered somewhere in between, their fates as yet undecided.

“It’s part of how I became a writer,” he says during a call to his home. “It’s the roots of my fiction. It helped me just tell the f__king story. That became my motto as I went on to become a writer and realized it’s so easy to get caught up in head games.”

His motto worked, and write he did. He left his ambulance-based career in 2013 and has published three books in the last three years: 2012’s Salsa Nocturna, a collection of noir ghost stories; Half-Resurrection Blues, the first book in the Bone Street Rumba urban fantasy series, which debuted in January; and now his new YA urban fantasy, Shadowshaper.

It makes sense that this Boston-to-Brooklyn transplant who’s undergone a medic-to-author metamorphosis could so capably and creatively write a story about the transformation of teenager Sierra Santiago, who herself undergoes some major life changes and astonishing shifts in perspective right after school lets out for the summer. 

In fact, Sierra goes from newbie muralist to spirit wrangler in a matter of days—and she’s surprisingly adept at working with both paint and dearly departed ancestors. But why isn’t her brother surprised by this? Just what has her family been keeping from her? And what does her abuelo, speech strained by his recent stroke, mean when he warns her about “shadowshapers”?

The notion of spirits among us, of people who may not be alive but aren’t quite dead, is something Older has considered a lot in his own life, not least because, like Sierra, he’s Latino and accustomed to “the idea of history being present with us.”

One day, when Sierra is up on scaffolding, painting a mural on an abandoned building, she sees that a face in another nearby mural has shed a single real tear. She’s weirded out, but she doesn’t panic and fall off the scaffolding, which might be the reaction of someone less spirit-friendly. And when a creepy zombie-esque guy crashes the first party of summer and seems to know her by name, she’s scared—but also determined to find out what’s going on, and fast.

 “Sierra walks in both worlds, and she has to get used to that,” Older says. “[For anyone who] grew up Latino, they probably had some ghosts around. So it’s not that big a shock to her. . . . She gets through that pretty quickly because she’s already been preparing for that moment, in a way.”

Five years ago, Older was initiated into the Lucumí (also known as Santería) priesthood. “It was an intense process,” he says. “Shadowshaper, which I wrote in 2009, became a totally different book when I rewrote it that initiation year. . . . [My religion plays a] huge part in my understanding of spirituality . . . [and] of spirits and ancestors being part of daily life.”

"If death wants to win, it will win. And that’s also not necessarily the worst-case scenario.”

Harking back to his time as an EMT, he adds, “As a paramedic, you’re walking on the line between life and death constantly. It takes some of the freakiness out of it because it’s a regular occurrence, and there’s also more respect because if death wants to win, it will win. And that’s also not necessarily the worst-case scenario.”

These concepts come forward, then drop back, then surge forward again in the pages of Shadow-shaper, as Sierra’s understanding and fear grow apace. She roams from the subway to the Columbia University library, Bed-Stuy to Coney Island, dank basements to dark beaches, in her attempts to unravel the history and mystery of the shadowshapers. In addition to everything else, her neighborhood is rapidly gentrifying and everyone’s feeling unsettled; her awful aunt won’t stop spouting racist nonsense; and her handsome new artist friend doesn’t seem unfamiliar with the shadowshaper concept.

Older’s Brooklyn is beautiful and dangerous and busy and ever-changing; his love for his adopted hometown is evident. His characters are friends with people their age, older and younger; they speak different languages and have different backgrounds; their families are sometimes loving, sometimes not. It’s a refreshing (and, to anyone who’s lived in Brooklyn or a place like it, realistic) mix of viewpoints and ways of moving through life, for better or worse.

That ability to share his Brooklyn—to tell it like he sees it—has been cathartic for Older, though he’s far from finished. “So many black women on Twitter [saw the cover of Shadowshaper and said], ‘That’s me!’ It’s so powerful, because urban fantasy has failed people of color in general as far as representation goes, so for that to happen, it really moves me,” he says.

“We [authors of color] all want to be picked up by a big publisher but fear the corruption of our voices, the clipping of our wings. It’s a story heard over and over—not an idle fantasy or fear, but what has historically happened in publishing. I went in prepared and was pleasantly surprised. Both houses I work with, the editors are open, accountable, honest, admit things they don’t know. All I—all we—ask is that we work with people who will hear us out, trust our voice. . . . I’ve been really blessed to find the people I have found. That’s the miracle.”

For readers who’ve long been hoping to see themselves represented on a book cover or in its pages, Shadowshaper may well feel a bit miraculous. Older makes the historical elements seem as cool as the artistic ones, but there are plenty of scary and exciting action sequences as well—not to mention hilarity (see: a dog named Cojones). 

And ultimately, the most powerful presence in Shadowshaper is the Puerto Rican teenager Sierra. There are no wizened, white-bearded wizards here. Older says, “I think most people will be excited to have a Latina heroine running around doing magic stuff.”

 

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

For 10 years, Daniel José Older worked as an EMT in Brooklyn, and he blogged each day about what he’d witnessed the night before: tragedy and joy, blood and bandages, dead people and living people—and people who hovered somewhere in between, their fates as yet undecided.
Science Fiction & FantasyFictionFantasyDebut Fiction

Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor

Interview by Amy Scribner

Joseph Fink claims he’s calling from a New Jersey beach. I prefer to imagine that his spotty cell reception is actually because he’s calling from a dark bunker in an undisclosed location. That somehow seems more appropriate for a co-author of Welcome to Night Vale, the new novel based on the wildly popular podcast of the same name.

In case you’re late to the Night Vale party, here’s a quick recap: Fink, along with Jeffrey Cranor, created a podcast called “Welcome to Night Vale” in 2012. A traveling live show based on the podcasts came a couple of years later. Night Vale is, as Cranor describes it, “in the non-specific American southwest desert, where ghosts and government and angels are commonplace and people go about their lives.” 

The Night Vale podcasts are presented as a radio show hosted by a guy named Cecil Gershwin Palmer, who shares news about the town in a soothing, friendly and NPR-ish voice. Slate named the pilot episode as one of the best podcasts ever. 

The shows are somewhat in the vein of “A Prairie Home Companion,” only completely weird and surreal. In a recent episode, a sentient patch of haze with a wicked Midwestern accent, Deb, comes on the air with Cecil to bring a message from sponsor Jo-Ann Fabrics. Also, the highway department presents a public service announcement, read by Cecil, in which they remind Night Vale residents to buckle up, then hunker down, then forget everything, remember everything and open their eyes to what is really going on. 

“Time doesn’t work in Night Vale,” someone says in the book. And they’re right. The podcasts are unsettling, funny and deeply addictive, and the novel is a pitch-perfect spin on them.

But back to the phone call with Cranor, calling in to talk with us from New York City, and Fink, calling in from a secret location that we all know was not really on the Jersey shore. Though the two have written together for five years—they wrote and performed a play in the East Village of Manhattan before they started Night Vale—they say co-writing a novel based on a beloved podcast was an exhilarating challenge.

“We just trusted each other,” Fink said. “We would build on what the other person was writing.”

“At the very get-go, it was a completely different medium than the podcasts or live shows, where all our writing goes in someone’s ear,” Cranor says. “Once I recognized that challenge, it was a lot easier. There is a nice benefit of having built the Night Vale world already. There is some shorthand. So when [Fink] says, ‘Let’s have a scene take place here,’ I know where that is. We decided early on how we would explore the town—new and old characters—and give them a life not from Cecil’s point of view.”

In the novel, Night Vale pawn shop owner Jackie Fierro, who has been 19 as long as she can remember, is handed a piece of paper by a stranger. The paper reads, “KING CITY.” Jackie has no idea what to do with this paper or what it means, and despite her efforts to wash the paper down the shower, throw it away or burn it, it keeps returning to her hand. 

Even after an accident requires Jackie to get a cast on her arm, she knows the paper is still there. “When this comes off, I’ll be holding a paper that says ‘KING CITY,’ and I’ll keep holding it for centuries, not growing old, not growing at all, still in Night Vale, like I always have been,” she says in the hospital. “I’m never going to get my life back. I’m never going to get a life. I’ll be 19-year-old Jackie Fierro, no purpose, one slip of paper, forever.”

Jackie finds herself obsessed with finding out the meaning of the note. At the same time, in the same town, Diane Crayton is a single mom struggling to raise her son Josh, who is a teenager and—of course—also a shape-shifter who likes to become, say, a spider while driving. Josh begins searching for his birth father, and ultimately, Jackie discovers a connection with Josh she never imagined.

Diane was a character who popped up in early podcasts as a throwaway, but Cranor wanted to explore her story more in the novel. “She just sort of stuck with me,” he said. “I just wanted to think more about Diane. Does she have kids? She’s definitely on the PTA. She’s a character who would be hard to develop just through Cecil. I gave her more breadth.”

Fink, on the other hand, wanted to explore Jackie. “She has been in my head for quite awhile,” he says. “Originally she was just a very creepy idea.”

Don’t worry; there’s still plenty of Cecil and some of the other characters that podcast fans know and love and obsessively follow. Night Vale’s popularity has spawned many Tumblr sites and volumes of fan fiction, all of which the authors deeply appreciate, and none of which they read.

“I’m super thrilled that it exists,” Cranor says. “As a writer, I just don’t want that in my head. It’s an expression of love to build a fan canon, but it would conflict with my own ideas. I need to make sure I’m not muddying my own ideas.”

The fans of Night Vale are as eclectic as the town itself.

“We have all sorts of fans,” Fink says. “Teens come [to the live shows] with their parents and grandparents, and that’s a really cool thing when they all enjoy it for a different reason.”

Welcome to Night Vale lives up to the podcast hype in every way. It is a singularly inventive visit to an otherworldly town that’s the stuff of nightmares and daydreams.

 

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

Joseph Fink claims he’s calling from a New Jersey beach. I prefer to imagine that his spotty cell reception is actually because he’s calling from a dark bunker in an undisclosed location. That somehow seems more appropriate for a co-author of Welcome to Night Vale, the new novel based on the wildly popular podcast of the same name.
Science Fiction & FantasyFictionFantasy

Catherynne M. Valente

Interview by Matthew Jackson

Author Catherynne M. Valente crafts a unique and vibrant world in her new novel, Radiance. Set in an alternate present where interplanetary travel was discovered at the turn of the 20th century, this story of secrets and scandals entertains and intrigues even as it explores what a single life can mean.

We asked Valente a few questions about her new book and its remarkable heroine.

You said in the acknowledgements that Radiance was inspired by growing up as the daughter of a filmmaker. How has film sculpted your approach to storytelling in ways that books haven’t?
Film is such a visual medium—it communicates so much of its power and narrative without words. I suppose you could say that books taught me how to speak and movies taught me how to see. My books are intensely visual, I always “see” the story in my head playing out like a movie, and I translate that visual experience of mine into words. Of course, a screenwriter must be more frugal with words than a novelist. But I think there’s much to be learned from film in terms of creating a cohesive aesthetic and making every word count double. It’s often the images that stick with us—the moon being hit with a rocket in Melies’ A Trip to the Moon, the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the costumes in A Clockwork Orange. Those striking visions can happen in a novel, too. Some novels are not overly concerned with visuals—and that’s fine!  I have a few favorites where I couldn’t tell you what the protagonist looks like at all, really. But for me, sight is a deeply important sense, even in prose.

"I think there’s much to be learned from film in terms of creating a cohesive aesthetic and making every word count double."

You could’ve written a Hollywood-centric mystery without changing Hollywood at all, but you infused the novel with an immense sci-fi/alternate history background. Were those elements there from the beginning, or did the story evolve to include them?
I am a science fiction and fantasy author at heart—the fantastic elements were present from the beginning. Radiance began as a short story, complete with my beloved waterlogged Venus. But when I went to convert it into a novel, I did have a moment of thinking, maybe I’m over-egging the pudding. I could just do a decopunk mystery without the space whales and the crazy planets. Slim it down a little, make it a bit more streamlined. And then I thought: NOPE.

I love the Radiance universe. The mystery happens within this mad, bustling solar system and without that, the mystery isn’t all that interesting. In the real world, it’s a binary choice: A missing person is either dead or alive. There are so many more options in science fiction. I couldn’t tell Severin’s story on Earth. And I couldn’t tell Venus’ story without Severin. To me, they were all wound up together, because movies, so far, are the way most of humanity has experienced space at all. We see the universe through a camera lens. And it’ll likely be that way for a long time. So for me, the lens and the rocket are twins.

I can do you Hollywood and space without the mystery, and I can do you space and mystery without Hollywood, and I can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you mystery and Hollywood without space. Space is compulsory.

"In the real world, it’s a binary choice: A missing person is either dead or alive. There are so many more options in science fiction."

Were there any parts of that alternate history that you would have liked to explore in greater detail?
I definitely would have liked to explore the effects of colonialism further on from the events of the book. Perhaps I will one day. The idea being that the discovery of space flight kind of puts the brakes on some of the colonial atrocities of the 19th century as the powers that be race toward the stars—leaving America governed jointly by Washington and a league of First Nation tribes, for example. But as Severin discovers, it’s really only a reprieve. All the same problems our own history saw will occur, just on a longer timescale, with greater damage, as Navies are forced to contend with the distance between planets and the colossal destruction that can be rained down on, for example, a Martian moon.

There’s also a subtle thread concerning caretaking the environment on the worlds of the Solar System—I didn’t really have room to tease it out in the larger narrative, but it’s there. Though no sentient life was found on the other planets, much plant and animal life abounds, and the colonial powers of the 19th century treat it more or less as they have always done, as resources to be consumed at top speed.

When did you realize this was going to be a story told primarily outside the realm of narrative prose, i.e. through transcripts and diary entries?
Oh, right away, really. It’s very hard to write a book about movies and sub-light space travel while keeping the narrative strictly linear. There were so many stories and voices I wanted to explore, and it never seemed right, to restrict it to simply Percival’s story, or Anchises’, or Severin’s, or Mary’s, or Erasmo’s. With these characters living on different worlds for much of the book, some hopping about was required.

And the thing is, life isn’t linear. It isn’t made up of neat scenes that only take place in one location and then fade in to another that logically follows on. Life is made up not only of the things we do and say but the things we read and watch and hear secondhand. Especially for lovers of movies and books, the world of stories intrudes on the real world all the time. We speak, often, in quotations and references. We race to show a new partner every movie we’ve loved. The fictional world lives alongside the nonfiction. And if I was going to have my alternate Hollywood (and eat it too), I needed to create that same network of referential culture that I and everyone else lives in, or it wouldn’t feel authentic. I find it frustrating when alternate histories don’t explore the timeline’s effect on popular culture, or simply repeat that culture more or less as it happened in our own world. I didn’t want to make that mistake—so that meant including movies and radio plays and pieces of fiction. Add that to the need for multiple perspectives to see the Solar System all at once, and you’ve got the structure of Radiance.

Severin, your main character, makes nonfiction films in part because she rejects her father’s focus on fiction. Your book is obviously fiction, but you tell much of her story through writing styles primarily used in nonfiction. Is that connection a coincidence?
Not at all, and I’m so pleased you noticed!

There’s a natural desire to rebel against, if not precisely one’s parents, at least against the known, the everyday world of childhood. Severin grew up in a very unusual environment (I often thought of Drew Barrymore when writing Severin, growing up the child of such a famous family, surrounded by Hollywood excess), where her “everyday” was filming wild Gothic dramas. Her rebellion against that meant she only wanted to tell real stories—the irony being that she ends up lost in a series of events very like her father’s fantastical films, and her “realistic” films involve planets that to us are completely fantastical. But then, I’ve often found that rejecting the fantastic means it comes running after you to fetch you home. Fairy tales and folklore and science fiction (which is really only a fairy tale with a machine instead of a fairy)  are stories we take in very young, and they have a profound effect on our psyches. We play out their tropes in real life without even noticing—think of how many times you’ve heard something described as “a Cinderella story.”

I used a good number of very realistic, nonfictional styles to tell Severin Unck’s tale—newspaper clippings, interviews, film transcripts—because, well, Severin would just hate it if I used all those gussied-up literary flourishes to tell her really real and true story. I couldn’t let her down.

Severin is a captivating character, but we spend much of the book getting to know her only through the accounts of others. Were you as a writer able to see her distinctly as a character, or did you get to know her through your other characters, too?
It was very deliberate, seeing her through others’ eyes so often. Anyone who spends their lives in front of the camera is altered by their observers, just like any scientific experiment. But also, in utilizing the tropes of noir and gothic cinema, where the girl in question is so often completely trapped in the hero’s vision of her, I wanted to start from that place and then smash that vision. Anchises sees Severin as an obsession, by turns Madonna and whore, but he never really knew her at all, nor did many. So we start with her father’s idea of his daughter. Then Anchises. Then her stepmother’s. Then her lover’s. Then Severin’s idea of herself, what she put onscreen. And somewhere deep in that onion of images is Severin herself, just a girl trying to say something, trying to make something, within the restrictions of her life. All of these are true and none of them are—that’s what makes her very real to me, I think. Radiance is so deeply about who gets to speak and who gets to see, who gets to be seen and who gets to be heard. The privilege of the viewer is intense.

Most of us are a hybrid, just like that. The way people see us affects us. The way we present ourselves to the world slowly becomes habit. Our actual, secret selves come out only when we think it’s very safe.

I have always been able to see Severin in my mind’s eye with total clarity. I could tell you how many wrinkles she has around each eyes. I don’t see all my characters so clearly, but she has always been in full color—or in full black and white. It took a little longer to hear her voice. I think it was in writing Erasmo’s scenes that I really got a handle on her as a person—it takes time to get to know someone as grumpy and canny as my Rinny.

On one of the novel’s title pages, you quote Orson Wells as saying a camera is “a medium by which messages reach us from another world.” Stephen King has famously compared writing to “telepathy.” Do you feel that same sense of otherworldly communication about books and films?
Wow, I love all these questions I’ve never been asked before! I absolutely do. A book is a time capsule and a teleportation machine, it brings the writer into the reader’s house, and together they make something new, out of what the writer meant and the reader discovers, base don their own experiences, their obsessions, their assumptions, their mind. A book is a science fictional object.

Movies are, too. Books and movies work both ways—they teleport the creator and her creations into the reader’s world, and teleport us into the creator’s world. In movies we see more, in books we know more. A book is like a possession, you inhabit the body of someone who lives in that other place. A movie is a window. You see it all playing out in front of you. They are magic, such magic. And they bind strangers together, too. Instant friends are made through the magic spell of “Oh my god, you’ve read that, too? You’ve seen that, too?”

Books and movies are some of the best ways we have of truly knowing other human beings. Of exercising radical empathy. Of experiencing life as someone other than themselves. It’s as otherworldly as it gets.

Without giving anything away, the finale is, in part, a meditation on the nature of endings. Do you think, in the age of the “spoiler alert,” that readers and viewers rely too much on finality when it comes to storytelling?
I feel a little sad that I’ll never be able to read the final scenes—or sing the musical number—of Radiance at a public reading. They give everything away, but they’re some of my favorite scenes I’ve ever written. But that’s the nature of the beast.

My partner is so adamant about spoilers that he’d rather not even read the back of the book—sometimes I think he’d prefer they didn’t have titles. Something might be given away. So I’m of two minds. On the one hand, a book or a movie or a show is so much more than the step by step events of the plot. I don’t necessarily mind being spoiled, as long as the spoiler makes me want to know more. I need to know that the story is worth my time! You gotta tell me why I should read it, not just that I should!

But on the other, because of my partner, I’ve started seeing things completely unspoiled—like, for anything, even what actors are in it or who wrote the short story. And there’s a real pleasure to that, to being totally surprised. So I respect people wanting to stay pure, because you have to guard that surprise. People will gush and reveal everything without even meaning to, just because they’re excited. It’s hard work to avoid knowing the whole plot of something the week it comes out.

But there is more to a tale than the end. This is why I started describing Radiance by its many genres years ago. It tells you what’s in there without letting anything big escape. It’s a decopunk alt-history Hollywood space opera mystery thriller with space whales. Does what it says on the tin.

What are you working on next?
Several things! A superhero novella, a post-apocalyptic Western novel, and a new middle grade book called The Lords of Glass Town, which can be summed up as: The Bronte children go to Narnia.

 

RELATED CONTENT: Read our review of Radiance.

Author Catherynne M. Valente crafts a unique and vibrant world in her new novel, Radiance. Set in an alternate present where interplanetary travel was discovered at the turn of the 20th century, this story of secrets and scandals entertains and intrigues even as it explores what a single life can mean.
YA FictionYAFantasy

Alexandra Bracken

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

We’ve all had that moment when we realize our parents had a life before us, but it’s safe to say that in Alexandra Bracken’s exciting new YA novel, Passenger, 17-year-old violin prodigy Etta Spencer’s epiphany about her mom is more astonishing than most. 

As the story begins, Etta finds her mother, Rose, hard to connect with at best. But after a sudden, supremely shocking series of events, Etta realizes there’s a lot more going on behind her mother’s stoic demeanor than she could’ve imagined. Rose is a time traveler, which Etta learns after discovering she’s a time traveler, too. 

Following said shocking events, Etta wakes up on a wooden ship, surrounded by oddly dressed men with old-fashioned accents. One of them is a handsome, highly capable young seaman and freed slave named Nicholas Carter. 

Upon deducing that no, this isn’t weird performance art, and she’s definitely not in present-day New York City anymore, Etta struggles to accept her new reality—which is occurring in the 1700s on the Atlantic Ocean. She discovers that Rose has been on the run from a power-hungry, wealthy old man named Cyrus Ironwood who wants her to return something he believes she’s stolen. Etta embarks on a bizarre, mystifying, dangerous new chapter of her life, searching with Nicholas for the stolen object as they travel through centuries and continents. Her understanding of her place in the world broadens and evolves as she discovers more about her mother’s past and its repercussions for her own future.

“I’ve loved history my whole life,” Bracken says during a call from her Virginia home, but for a long time she had “an idealistic view of time travel. As I’m getting older, I’m realizing that [women would be] subjected to the standards of an era, and time travel wouldn’t be a joyful thing for people unless they go into the future.”

Etta, her mother and other female time travelers are just as savvy as men when finding portals, dodging pursuers and the like, but Etta still contends with outdated views of women as she travels into centuries past. And the powerful, time-traveling Ironwood family still adheres to antiquated and classist views of station and bloodlines, despite their extraordinary ability to visit more modern, egalitarian times. 

Equally compelling is Nicholas’ situation. He’s also under the megalomaniacal thumb of the wealthy Cyrus, yet is highly respected by his colleagues and moves freely through time and geography. He is determined to break free of Cyrus once he and Etta fulfill their dangerous quest—if that’s even possible.

“Slaves were victims of history, but I didn’t want Nicholas to have the opinion he was a victim,” says Bracken. “I wanted him to be very self-sufficient, and ultimately the person who’s saving himself, with none of the white-savior complex.”

This is just a fraction of the goings-on in Passenger, which is densely and deftly packed with all sorts of thrilling events and memorable characters. As each chapter closes, readers will certainly wonder where—and when—Etta and Nicholas will end up next.

And how did Bracken end up here, at age 28 with six books (and counting) to her name? After publishing her debut, Brightly Woven, in 2010, Bracken published four more books over the next five years, including her bestselling Darkest Minds trilogy, all while working in children’s publishing in New York City. When she was tapped to write a middle-grade Star Wars movie tie-in, Star Wars: A New Hope: The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy, she admits to being a bit nervous—Star Wars fans are known for their passion and protectiveness—but ultimately felt very welcomed by the community. “A dad came up to me after a panel [at a pop-culture convention] and said his daughter will be so excited to see a girl’s name on the cover,” Bracken says.

Bracken was also a bit apprehensive about a certain aspect of Passenger: Etta’s budding romance with Nicholas. “I was so nervous to make the jump to this book because it’s so different from the Darkest Minds series,” she says. “The romance is definitely really different. But if I did the same kind of story and characters over and over again, I’d be bored, and readers would be bored.”

There’s no chance of that with Passenger. Bracken’s rules for time travel are fun to encounter and untangle, and the far-flung centuries and locations—Bhutan, the U.K. and Syria, to name a few—are rich with vibrant detail. Etta’s determination to carry out her mission, have a relationship with Nicholas (she’s not averse to kissing him first, should her mood dictate) and use her powerful gift for good makes her a symbol of potential positive change, while also pitting her against those who want to keep things the same. And that’s all we’ll say about that, lest we spoil the complex, multilayered, time traveling, globetrotting fun.

In terms of her own future, Bracken has big things—and a lot of writing—ahead. The second book in the Passenger duology, Wayfarer, is due out in 2017. And the day before she spoke with BookPage, her four-book deal with Disney Publishing was announced, including a new series for middle graders, a standalone YA novel and one more hush-hush book. 

“It feels like a dream,” Bracken says. “But if I ever stop writing and don’t sell another book, I’m really proud of the little stack I’ve put out into the world.” 

That stack’s going to keep growing for now, and Bracken’s glad to know what lies ahead. “It’s really exciting to be gainfully employed for the next four years!” she says. And really exciting for her readers, knowing there are many more wildly inventive, eminently entertaining books to come.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

We’ve all had that moment when we realize our parents had a life before us, but it’s safe to say that in Alexandra Bracken’s exciting new YA novel, Passenger, 17-year-old violin prodigy Etta Spencer’s epiphany about her mom is more astonishing than most.
FictionScience FictionDebut Fiction

Sylvain Neuvel

Interview by Becky Ohlsen

Canadian writer Sylvain Neuvel makes a thrilling debut with Sleeping Giants, a gripping sci-fi adventure that is innovative both in plot and structure. It all begins when a young girl stumbles (literally) into the archaeological find of the century: an enormous robotic hand created by an ancient alien race.

Fast-forward some 25 years, and that girl is now a scientist in charge of a military-run operation to find and retrieve other parts of that robot, which could be the greatest weapon the world has ever seen. Told in journal entries of the various characters as well as their interviews with a mysterious man who works as a go-between for the project and the government higher-ups, Sleeping Giants is an imaginative tour de force that will appeal to science fiction and mystery fans alike. 

How did the story first come to you: was it that image of the giant hand, an idea about the plot, a particular character, or something else?
The idea for the book came while watching Japanese anime about a giant robot. I asked my son if he’d like a toy robot but he wanted to know everything about it before I built it. We were watching "Grendizer" together and I started thinking about what it would be like if we found some giant alien artifact in real life. That got me started, but I tend to picture things before I write them. I need a strong visual to get me going. For this book, it was the little girl in the giant metal hand. 

How did you arrive at the format for the book (a combination of interview transcripts, news briefs and journal entries)? Did you try other approaches first?
Not really. I knew it was going to be epistolary from the start. That said, I couldn’t find the right way to do it at first. I wanted to switch perspective between chapters, but I thought they would feel somewhat disconnected. I needed something to hold everything together, a common thread. That’s when I got the idea for the interviewer. Once I figured him out, everything else fell into place.

Was it difficult to figure out the structure—which moments to show and what to skip over?
Yes. I wrote the prologue first. Then I structured the whole book. That took a while. I’d picture a scene in my head, then I’d figure out the best way to present it. Do I show it as a future plan, while it’s happening, or do I deal with the consequences before I let the reader know what really happened? Who gets to talk about it? The one who is most affected by the situation or the one with more knowledge about the facts? Can I create more anticipation if I change the time or the point of view? Sometimes, the best thing to do is to skip that moment completely and let the readers figure it out on their own. 

Reading the book, it’s hard not to “cast” the characters. For instance, I kept seeing the interviewer as Victor Garber, who plays Sydney Bristow’s dad on “Alias.” The evolution of his sympathies through the book was really interesting. Did you have a particular model or type in mind for that character?
I love the interviewer. I wouldn’t object to your casting, but I couldn’t really see his face when I wrote the book. He was all about the voice for me. Now, if I were making the movie, I’d probably go for Idris Elba, or Ray Stevenson, the way he looked in "Dexter," season 7.

"Would such a discovery bring humanity together, or would we wage wars over it?"

Do you find it scary or comforting to imagine a race of super-advanced aliens out there keeping an eye on us?
I think the most interesting question is how we’d deal with that knowledge. Would such a discovery bring humanity together, or would we wage wars over it? Fear of the other is a frequent theme in the news these days and I think it begs the question as to how we’d deal with a different species. I’m much more scared of us than I am of them. 

What books or movies do you see as having influenced Sleeping Giants?
I wanted this story to be about us. Close Encounters of the Third Kind is probably the closest thing to what I was aiming for. Here’s a movie about an alien encounter and we’re watching a guy sculpting mashed potatoes and wrecking his backyard. I loved that. Contact is also similar in spirit to Sleeping Giants. The book is also part political thriller. I see a lot of The Hunt for Red October in there as well. 

Did you learn anything while researching the book that surprised you?
I learned a whole lot of interesting things researching that book. The science was all new to me, so was everything military. What surprised me the most was probably how many websites are dedicated to gathering evidence of secret government bases. I was looking for one plausible site to build one. I ended up with dozens to choose from. The time and energy that went into many of these websites is absolutely fascinating. 

You have a PhD in linguistics—what originally interested you about that area? What effect do you think this background has had on your writing?
I dropped out of high school when I was 15. When I went back to school for a B.A., linguistics seemed like a good idea, a way to combine my passion for language and science. I’m not sure what kind of influence my linguistics background has on my writing. I understand the mechanics behind some of the humor, for example, but I don’t know if I would have done the same thing without that knowledge. There’s a linguist on the team, though, and chances are he’ll have to work a bit throughout the series. 

What do you like to read for fun?
These days, I’m looking for quick reads. I like books with science in them, but I’ll try just about anything if it looks interesting. Favorite one I read lately: The Flicker Men by Ted Kosmatka. That book is so good. I wish I had more time. I don’t read nearly as much as I’d like to, and I buy books way faster then I go through them. I think it was Stephen King who said: “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write.” To that, I’d like to add time to exercise, fix the house, build robots . . .  

I’ve read that you like to build toys and small robots for your son—are there any that you’re especially proud of?
I do. I like to make physical objects. I work on a computer all day, then I go home and I write on the computer. I like to build things. I haven’t in the past couple years, but I usually spend six or seven months making my Halloween costume in my spare time. I built a robot from my book for my son. It looks good, but it’s not really playable. The idea was cool: it comes in pieces that are held together with magnets, but it keeps falling apart. I’m shopping for a 3D printer so I can build him a better one. I made him a spaceship bed, inspired by the Raptors in “Battlestar Galactica,” with a cannon, a joystick, some buttons. He really likes it. I do too. [photo at right]

Sleeping Giants is Book 1 of the Themis Files; can you talk a little about what we can look forward to in the sequel(s)? Anything else you’re excited about working on right now?
I don’t want to spoil anything, but I can tell you that the stakes are even higher in book two. There are some questions being answered, some new ones being asked. There will be at least three in the Themis Files. I’m having a blast in that universe, and I love the people who live in it. I can’t wait to share. 

 

RELATED CONTENT: Read our review of Sleeping Giants.

 

Author photo by James Andrew Rosen.

Canadian writer Sylvain Neuvel makes a thrilling debut with Sleeping Giants, a gripping sci-fi adventure that is innovative both in plot and structure.
Science Fiction & FantasyFictionDystopian Fiction

Justin Cronin

Interview by Trisha Ping

Justin Cronin leapt to the top of the crowded field of post-apocalyptic fiction in 2010 with the publication of The Passage, the first in a trilogy. An instant bestseller, the novel imagined a future where mankind has been decimated thanks to a vampire-creating virus. 

Six years and more than a thousand pages later, Cronin brings the Passage trilogy to a brilliantly plotted, thrilling conclusion with The City of Mirrors. We asked him a few questions about how it feels to take a series across the finish line.

First of all—congratulations on finishing such an epic trilogy! How did you reward yourself after finishing The City of Mirrors?
A glass of Scotch and a piece of pie. It’s a ritual I always observe. It usually happens at about 3:00 in the morning.

The world of the Passage trilogy has always been a large one, but it expands even more in this book. Was it satisfying to get more of that world out of your head and onto the page?
It was a lot of fun in this novel to go back to Fanning’s college life, which borrows a great deal from my own. I’d wanted to use Harvard as a setting for years, but the occasion hadn’t arisen until now.

You’ve been with most of these characters for a decade. How does it feel to let them go? Was there one in particular that you’ll miss most?
Though Amy stands at the center, the Passage trilogy is an ensemble piece, and I felt close to all the major players, although my affinities differed from character to character at various times. Into Amy I poured a lot of my feelings about being a father, and Wolgast’s love for her really touches me. Carter is the most long-suffering, patient soul I will ever meet, a man full of an incredible decency. Peter’s bravery has an automatic quality I admire intensely; he simply can’t stop himself. Alicia’s struggles both break and mend my heart. It’s odd and rather lonely to say goodbye to these people, like standing on the pier while I watch them sail away.

Has this project and its success changed the way you see yourself as a writer? 
As someone who writes sentences all day long, my goals and habits are the same, so to that extent, nothing has changed at all. I go to my office, I think really hard, the world sort of melts away and my fingers begin to move over the keyboard. I write how I write, and that’s always been true and always will be. But success means readers—a lot of them. I’m more aware of my audience now and want them to be happy with the work I do. It also means I don’t have to have a second job, which is a colossal luxury for any artist. Writing can get 100 percent of my attention during the workday.

What’s next for you?
More novels. But maybe first I’ll take a nap. 

RELATED CONTENT: Read our review of The City of Mirrors.

This article was originally published in the June 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Justin Cronin leapt to the top of the crowded field of post-apocalyptic fiction in 2010 with the publication of The Passage, the first in a trilogy. An instant bestseller, the novel imagined a future where mankind has been decimated thanks to a vampire-creating virus.
Science Fiction & FantasyYA FictionYAFantasy

Victoria Schwab

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

"What about humans makes them so monstrous to each other and the world around them?”

Unexpected monsters haunt the latest young adult novel from Victoria Schwab, who considers This Savage Song “the strangest, darkest book I’ve ever written.” The freedom to explore this creepy new territory comes from her—and her publisher’s—trust in her readership.

“I’ve been really careful to develop an author fandom,” says Schwab during a call to her home in Nashville. “If you have a book or series fandom, you get pressure to stay in your lane and do what works. With an author fandom, I’ve been given more and more creative freedom to be as different and daring as I want, and my readers have been staying with me.”

Schwab, who also writes as V.E. Schwab, has 11 books and counting to her credit—adult, YA and middle grade novels rife with dark settings, sinister storylines and supernatural goings-on. Some of her works have comic-book roots, while others draw upon magic, science-fiction or fantasy tropes.  

“All of my work has a speculative thread, and all of my work has me,” explains Schwab. “[This Savage Song] is the most me. It’s a merger of what I’ve been writing for several years as an adult author and a YA author . . . and it’s about things I’ve wanted to explore but haven’t had the window to do it.”

That window’s certainly open now, and Schwab dove through it and into the dark, Gotham-esque world of Verity, a future metropolis divided by war and ruled by two very different men: Callum Harker, a ruthless crime boss, and Henry Flynn, a kind leader trying to maintain the city’s six-year truce even as Harker moves, with devious determination, to break it.

And there’s another problem plaguing the crime-ridden city: monsters born of violence and hungry for flesh, blood and souls.

In the meantime, the children of these two men—Kate Harker and August Flynn—have both reached an age where they want to be more like their fathers. Kate, an only child whose mother died when she was young, has gotten herself kicked out of six boarding schools in five years. Now she’s been sent home, where she hopes to show her father she’s tough enough to earn his attention and love. August has a different perspective on things, not least because he happens to be a monster (as are his two siblings), and it’s getting harder and harder for him to deny his real nature.

Attempting to suppress our true selves to gain approval is an age-old struggle, one that Schwab clearly delights in exploring, as Kate and August engage in verbal sparring, scary physical combat and mental and emotional gymnastics as the city threatens to fall into ruin around them.

“The epigraph for the book is a line from [my earlier novel] Vicious,” she says, “because I was really inspired by the concept from Vicious—the potential for humans to be monsters and vice versa. I wanted to take that and add the societal question, what about humans makes them so monstrous to each other and the world around them?”

She adds, “Being pagan, I think a lot about the natural world, the cycle of give and take, the notion of balance. If we put that much hatred and bloodshed in the world, there has to be something left, some sort of repercussive force and blowback.” 

In the world of This Savage Song, monsters spawn from malicious deeds—the steeper the crime, the more dangerous the monster. As the monsters of Verity reveal themselves and their varying levels of destruction, cunning and violence, Kate and August begin to question everything they thought they knew about good and evil.

That’s the fun of it, Schwab says. “I feel so passionately about this book . . . and the freedom to write a YA novel that asks existential questions about humanity. It’s a risky book, but I think for the right people, they’ll see what they need to see in it . . . about what we can and can’t change and the difference between the two, and at what point we have to self-destruct or self-accept.”

That’s something Schwab has thought about a good deal in terms of her own life. She had a happy childhood and has always been independent, always off in her own world. “I definitely had a morbid streak,” she says. “I definitely hung my teddy bears from the stair railing, execution-style.”

She adds, “The first story I ever wrote was about the Angels of Life and Death. Death killed Life, and the whole world died. I was 8. It was the precursor to everything I write.”

Schwab says that early focus on death, and her interest in plumbing it in her work, stems from long-held fears about her father’s health. “He is Type 1 diabetic and has been for 60 years. [When I was a child,] I took it on myself to keep him alive. . . . I was hyper-vigilant of the people around me, especially my parents. The idea that if I wasn’t paying enough attention they could die made me observant to a fault.”

Plus, she says, “It also makes for a kind of god complex: If you just pay enough attention, you can keep all of the balls in the air. It’s the same as a writer: You become a little god in your own world.”

Although Schwab’s father was told he’d never see age 50, he’s now 67 and recently retired to a house in the French countryside with Schwab’s mother. The author is working on her next phase, too: She just purchased an apartment and is getting used to a new tattoo, a key that stretches down her forearm. 

“I see writers as gatekeepers,” Schwab explains. “We provide the keys to these worlds and can’t control whether or not readers step through, but we can give them access.”

Fans will be glad to know there will be plenty more books to access, including adult novels and a follow-up for Kate and August. 

“It’s nice to have job security,” Schwab says with a laugh. “And every time I sell a new book, I think about how I get to keep doing this thing I love.”

 

This article was originally published in the July 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Unexpected monsters haunt the latest young adult novel from Victoria Schwab, who considers This Savage Song “the strangest, darkest book I’ve ever written.” The freedom to explore this creepy new territory comes from her—and her publisher’s—trust in her readership.
Science Fiction & FantasyYA FictionYAScience Fiction

Sharon Cameron: Memories run deep, truth runs deeper

Interview by Cat, Deputy Editor

Just prior to The Forgetting book launch event at Parnassus Books in Nashville, we spoke with author Sharon Cameron about her thrilling new sci-fi adventure, its questions of memory and truth, and what it’s like to belong somewhere you never expected.

First of all, I have to say that I loved this book and am still thinking about it. And I felt like my writer’s review sounded like he was thinking about it long after finishing the book as well.
I personally love books that make me think, so I naturally gravitate toward writing a book like that, one that’s going to make someone think and make me think. I had a really funny review on Goodreads, where someone had given me a five-star review that said, “This book really made me think, and I liked it anyway.” I was like, “Yes!”

Amazing. Reluctant thinking. You’re going to sit down, think about it, and you’re going to like it.
That’s right. (laughing)

What was your inspiration for The Forgetting?
There’s not one [inspiration], but I think the main one is that I do think a lot about the past. History is absolutely my thing. I am very into genealogy and heritage, and that’s how I started writing. I wrote my very first novel about the family history that I had been researching. I love getting into the basement of a courthouse, and all the dusty records—all that stuff makes me really happy.

I think the past is something I have spent a lot of time thinking about, not only what is different about the past but what’s the same, and what links us to the past. It occurred to me at some point that what really links us to the past is memory, and there’s so much we’ve forgotten. There was so much in my family history that were incredible stories that had been completely forgotten. It’s almost like that erases it out of existence until you know it again. . . . When I was thinking about all the things that the world had forgotten, it made me think about people who have actually really forgotten everything, and how much of our identity is wrapped up in those memories, and how much of our experience makes us who we are, and remembering those experiences makes us who we are. That’s where it blossomed out from, and I started thinking, what would a group of people do if they did not have their identity, if they had no history, if they were going to lose it again?

This makes me think of an interview with Billy Collins we just did—it’ll be in the October issue of BookPage—where he talks about humans’ ability to dwell in the past, how we find pleasure in nostalgia. It’s OK to indulge in our memories sometimes.
I don’t think you have to be defined by them, either. I think it’s great to know and understand what those things are, but you don’t have to be defined by them.

When you’re reading The Forgetting, it’s inevitable that you consider your own potential loss of memories. It’s what I was thinking about the whole time while reading it. In the vein of, if your house is on fire and you have one suitcase to take with you, if you faced the Forgetting, what would be your suitcase of memories if you were allowed to choose what not to lose?
That is such a hard question, because how can you choose? (laughs) I’m going to think beyond the obvious, which is your family and your emotional ties. That was something with the book that I gave a lot of thought to, how much of our emotions are tied up in our memories. If those are gone, a lot of those emotional ties are cut. Whether they would be there or not be there in some deep way was a question that I explored. So I’m going to skip over all of that, because that’s obvious. You don’t want the trauma of losing your emotional ties.

I would not want to forget the first time I read The Lord of the Rings. I would never want to forget that! That was so magical to me, and that was a real eye-opening experience. I was probably 11 when I read that and already a reader, but I think that book really showed me how you can be transported and how your imagination can take you to a whole other place. I would not give up that experience. Actually, I keep trying to relive it by rereading it. (laughs)

I would not give up a lot of what I know about my heritage. I would not give up knowing where I came from, the good parts and the bad parts.

I would not want to give up my first trip to Scotland. I think Scotland is probably my spiritual home and I love it there very, very much. It was almost, I felt very connected to that place in a really deep way. I would not give up my memories of that, I don’t think.

I think those are some good ones, right?

This is completely off-topic, but I’m fascinated by the idea of places where you “have” to go, places that you call your “spiritual home,” like Scotland for you. I was just talking to a painter whose “place” was Uganda, and she keeps going back there. What do you think that is? Where do you think that comes from, that draw to a certain place?
I think it’s DNA, personally. I think that there’s a lot—and I don’t want to say too much because I’m writing another book about this—I think there’s a lot that we remember almost chemically, through our DNA. There’s been a lot of research on this lately, and a lot of stories have been coming out about how memories can be passed down. That’s what instinct is, that’s why we have phobias of certain things. We’re naturally afraid of a spider—these are memories that are being chemically passed down through your DNA. I think there can be a place memory. I really do. I just think it must be true. There’s some place memory where you are drawn. . . .

I tend to be a very logical, practical person, and I don’t know how that’s true, but I still believe it. I had the experience of stepping onto a piece of ground and just feeling like my feet sank a foot into the soil. I felt like roots grew. This is my spot. It was very strange, and it was the whole reason I started writing my first book, which was about Scotland and isn’t published.

Do you think it ever will be?
Yeah, I do. And I’m so glad, actually, that it’s not published. I was still learning then and I had no ambitions to be a writer at that time. I was learning at that point, but that story is so meaningful to me, and I can do it so much better now. I got an agent based on that book. It’s how I completely started, but we ended up going another direction first. I’ll go back to it.

Actually, my husband did DNA tests—there’s all kinds of Scottish surname projects where people connect through DNA—and he actually turned out to be directly descended from all the characters in my book. It was crazy. . . . I feel like I was meant to to do it, even though I didn’t know for many years.

Going back to The Forgetting, you’re toying with the notion of truth, how what you believe to be the truth can be twisted as much as memory. What do you hope young readers will take away from the book?
Your truth really can’t be twisted. It is what it is. That doesn’t mean that a person can’t develop and change and reinterpret their life. It doesn’t mean, again, that you have to be define by those things. But I think [it’s necessary to accept] things that are just true about yourself: These are my faults, these are the things I’m good at, this is where I came from, this is where I didn’t come from. I think happy people are the ones who have made peace with those truths and acknowledged them, and learned to use them and live with them.

What do you most enjoy about creating new worlds like this one for adults?
My other books have been very historically based. I really like that because I’m a history person, and I love the groundedness of that, of being able to go, “Yes! People acted like that.” But this book was much more of a branching out for me. It could really be anything, and I was very surprised at how freeing that was, that I could really make anything be that I wanted to be. If the sun didn’t need to set for 80 days, it could be 80. If I needed the sun to set in 70 days, it could be 70. I could really make it be what I wanted it to be, and that was actually really fun. It gave me lots of scope.

Do you think you’ll continue with this style?
I don’t think I’ve ever done anything that’s completely the same, yet. I would never say that I’m not going to do something. I like not being limited.

The book that I’m writing right now is a companion to The Forgetting. It’s not a sequel, but it’s the same world, different time period, different characters, sort of opposite questions.

What’s something your readers might be surprised to know about your writing process?
I’ll tell you what I was most surprised to discover about my writing process, and that is that I never know what I’m doing. (laughs) I never have the feeling that I actually know what I’m doing or anything that I’m writing is any good. When I first started to write, I viewed published authors—and I’m sure other people feel this exact same way—as, And I figured that I would get two or three books out, and I would have this confidence of, Oh, yeah, I know how to write a book. I’ve never felt like I knew what I was doing at all. I’m always so surprised when it turns out well. (laughs)

This book had a very short deadline, so I was really having to write quickly. I’ve never had to push myself quite that hard to write quickly, and I was consumed with self-doubt on this book. I didn’t know if I could do it. Be fast and be brilliant! No pressure. I saw Margaret Peterson Haddix when she was here. She’s a friend, and we were having dinner together. I was telling her these things, and she said, “Well, I have 20-something books out”—I can’t even remember the number she used, and she said, “I never know if I can write a book or not.” It made it alright, and it gave me the confidence to doubt what I’m doing and keep going.

As a local author, what’s your favorite literary event in Nashville?
I’ll give you two things. My very favorite thing that goes on for writers and anyone who loves kid lit is SCBWI’s conference, which is happening next weekend. . . . That is the most fabulous group of people—supporting writers, supporting people who love books. They are vibrant and amazing and my best friends in the world, and I love to spend a weekend with them. There is nothing more rejuvenating and wonderful that spending a weekend with the SCBWI Midsouth people. I get to give a keynote this year, and I’m super excited because I went to that conference for the first time 10 years ago. I had written one chapter and had never written anything before in my life. What I knew was zero! I went into that place, and I came out thinking, Yes, I can do it. I can absolutely do this. It’s a very special thing for me.

And who cannot love the Southern Festival of Books? That’s also a thing of beauty and wonder!

Questions and answers have been edited for length.

Just prior to The Forgetting book launch event at Parnassus Books in Nashville, we spoke with author Sharon Cameron about her thrilling new sci-fi adventure, its questions of memory and truth, and what it’s like to belong somewhere you never expected.

YA FictionYAFantasy

Ransom Riggs

Interview by Becky Ohlsen

“I guess I had a lot of peculiar people in my life growing up,” says Ransom Riggs, author of the Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children series of novels. “Probably the most influential, and peculiar in her own way, was my grandmother.” A farmer’s daughter who became a farmer’s wife, she also went to university and was a teacher of Latin and French. “She infected me with a love of books.”

Riggs, 37, spoke from his home in Los Angeles about the upcoming Tim Burton film adaptation of his dark YA fantasy debut, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, a surprise 2011 hit that spent more than two years on the bestseller list. We also talked about his new collection of short stories set in the same world, Tales of the Peculiar. Readers of the series, which includes two other bestselling novels, Hollow City and Library of Souls, will recognize that title: It’s the name of a book that the peculiar children consult for advice and comfort. Riggs says he wanted the new book to seem like an artifact from the peculiar world, an imaginary object that readers somehow discover in their real-world bookstores. 

The design of Tales of the Peculiar helps achieve this effect. Where you’d normally find the copyright details, instead there are instructions on things not to do while reading the book (whatever you do, don’t dog-ear the pages) and some unlikely production notes (“Printed in a nomad’s tent in the desert of Lop”). The foreword maintains this conceit: It’s written by Millard Nullings, the invisible boy at Miss Peregrine’s home. In it, Nullings explains why he decided to edit and annotate this edition of the Tales. The stories are not just folklore, he writes: “They are also the bearers of secret knowledge. Encoded within their pages are the locations of hidden loops, the secret identities of certain important peculiars, and other information that could aid a peculiar’s survival in this hostile world.”

On the surface, the stories are moral tales, bedtime stories designed to be read aloud. In most of them, someone behaves cruelly toward a peculiar child because of his or her peculiarity, and that bad behavior is eventually, inventively, punished. In a few, the peculiar child himself is the one acting foolishly and must slowly learn his lesson. In one story, a girl discovers she can take away people’s nightmares; in another, a beautiful princess with scales and a forked tongue spits venom at her enemies. A big-hearted boy turns into a locust. A man may, in fact, be an island.

Riggs wrote Tales of the Peculiar “for fans of the series who want to know more about the world,” he says. “It casts a much wider net narratively.”

“There are some Easter eggs for peculiars hidden throughout,” he adds. “They’re waiting for me in case I need them.” (This is as much as he will say about the possibility of future Miss Peregrine novels.)

The fairy-tale format suits Riggs’ style—each character in these simple tales is richly drawn and memorable. We sympathize with them; even their bad decisions are understandable. 

It doesn’t hurt that each tale is illustrated with a gorgeous woodcut by the artist Andrew Davidson. “I knew I wanted a classic, wood-engraving style,” Riggs says. He had admired the covers on the adult hardcover editions of Harry Potter in the U.K.; maybe something like that, he told his publisher. A few weeks later came the reply: How about the guy who did those? “Great!” Riggs said. 

Davidson was “amazing to work with,” Riggs says. “His ideas were out of this world—so dynamic and detailed.”

The engravings add to the sense of Tales of the Peculiar as a weighty, otherworldly artifact, something that was important to the author. Even as a kid, Riggs says, “I liked how big, musty old books felt and smelled.” And ever since Quirk Books published his Sherlock Holmes Handbook in 2009—he has considered himself lucky when it comes to his books’ aesthetic: “I’ve been able to make books that look like they belong on my grandmother’s bookshelves!”

Working with an illustrator also affected Riggs’ writing process. The three Miss Peregrine novels are built around old photographs the author had collected over the years. Writing them, he says, “I had a fixed number of pictures and had to find stories that would fit them.” In the new book, though, “I could tell whatever story I wanted.”

The magical world created by Riggs has just been adapted for film by director Tim Burton. “Everything they did services the heart of the story,” Riggs says.

From an early age, Riggs sought out books that opened doors in the imagination, whether that meant fantasy or otherworldly realism. “C.S. Lewis, big-time,” he recalls when asked about his early influences, and “Tolkien of course,” not to mention Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. King’s work, Riggs says, “was never just horror—it was always also about discovering another world.”

He read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, a decades-spanning saga about forced-labor prison camps in the Soviet Union, at age 13. (“Intense!” is how he understatedly describes that experience.) At the opposite extreme, Riggs also loved reading James Thurber, a favorite of his grandmother’s.

Was it strange for him to entrust the world he’d created to filmmaker Tim Burton, who has an equally strong aesthetic? Not really, says Riggs: “I knew it was in good hands.” Unusually for Hollywood, the movie has only one screenwriter (Jane Goldman), and Riggs says he’s pleased with how it turned out. “I didn’t feel like they needed my help,” he says.

As always with an adaptation, certain changes were made along the way, but they’re all superficial, Riggs says. “Everything they did services the heart of the story.” He explains that the film adaptation has allowed for some “wonderful visual irony.” For example, the character of Bronwyn, a girl with super-strength, is no longer the bruiser shown in the novel’s antique photograph, but instead a comically tiny girl.

The main challenge in taking the story from book to film, Riggs says, was getting the tone right. The books have a “veneer of gothic horror,” but also bits of Monty Python and other lighter elements. “It’s a very strange balance of tone,” he says. With his penchant for the gothic as well as romantic wistfulness and visual comedy, Burton proved to be the perfect fit.

The film, which stars Asa Butterfield (Hugo) as main protagonist Jacob Portman and “Penny Dreadful” actor Eva Green as Miss Peregrine, arrives in theaters on September 30. As for Tales of the Peculiar, it was published on “Loop Day”—September 3, the same date of the 24-hour time loop in which Miss Peregrine’s home for peculiar children safely hides. Riggs visited several bookstores on Loop Day, and is currently on tour with his wife, the YA novelist Tahereh Mafi, whose latest book, Furthermore, was published in August.

“It’s an exciting time at our house,” he says. “It’s going to be really peculiar.”

 

This article was originally published in the October 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

“I guess I had a lot of peculiar people in my life growing up,” says Ransom Riggs, author of the Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children series of novels. “Probably the most influential, and peculiar in her own way, was my grandmother.” A farmer’s daughter who became a farmer’s wife, she also went to university and was a teacher of Latin and French. “She infected me with a love of books.”

Science Fiction & FantasyYA FictionYAFantasy

Anna-Marie McLemore

Interview by Jill Ratzan

When Miel first appeared as a sobbing girl in the ruins of the town’s old water tower, it was Sam who comforted her, even before she was adopted by Aracely, the local peddler of cures for the lovesick. It was Sam who assured her that she would never again be without the light of the moon. Since that day, they’ve never been apart. Miel loves Sam even though his body is shaped like a girl’s; Sam loves Miel despite the roses that grow and flourish, unwanted, on her wrist. But some residents of their small town have little tolerance for Sam, and others seek the magic that Miel’s roses are rumored to possess. When four local sisters threaten to reveal Sam and Miel’s secrets—many of which they refuse to face—the result might destroy them both . . . or it might bring new understanding to all involved. Morris Award nominee Anna-Marie McLemore combines Latin-American and Pakistani legends and customs, magical realism and romance in a tale of painted moons, giant pumpkins and stained glass that speaks to the inescapable power of self-awareness.

BookPage asked McLemore about the vivid details, spirituality and metaphors that characterize When the Moon Was Ours, which was recently longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.

Miel’s most distinguishing feature is the roses that grow from an opening in her wrist. These roses are alternately feared and coveted for their possible powers. How did you get the idea for such an unusual biology?
Miel’s roses were inspired by stories I heard growing up about lesser-known Mexican saints. I wanted to honor their stories and to honor that their miracles—whether answered prayers for rain, or flakes of metal appearing from a saint’s skin—have often been viewed with as much suspicion as wonder.

Sam, who identifies as a boy but was born a girl, repeatedly alludes to a Pakistani custom called bacha posh, in which girls dress and act like boys until marriage. Can you tell us more about this custom, and why Sam might have such a complicated relationship with it?
Many who live the practice of bacha posh understandably struggle when, as adults, they’re expected to then adopt women’s traditional roles. This becomes even more painful and complicated if an assigned-female-at-birth child who lives as a bacha posh later identifies as queer, transgender, non-binary or gender-non-conforming. And in Sam’s case, he chooses bacha posh himself; his mother doesn’t choose it for him. But his mother has the wisdom to understand what his relationship with bacha posh will become.

Taken together, Miel’s roses and Sam’s gender create a running theme about bodies that function in ways that mystify, mismatch with or otherwise unnerve their occupants. What made you decide to tackle such a complicated and potentially difficult theme?
The trans* narrative we see most often in literature, unfortunately, is one in which there’s a trans* character, and almost everyone around them are cis characters freaking out about this character’s gender identity. Vee at the blog Gay YA writes about this as “The Acceptance Narrative,” and they’ve fostered some incredible discourse about how harmful it can be. I wanted to write a story in which, instead, those closest to the trans* character love him, accept him and think his trans* identity is beautiful in its truth, even if he’s not yet ready to declare his own identity. Transphobia exists in this book, just as it sadly does in real life, but those closest to Sam—his family, his best friend, the girl he’s falling in love with—love him and his authentic self. That’s not to say Miel, his best friend and the girl he loves, doesn’t make mistakes. She does, and a lot of them come from the trauma she’s experienced to her own body and her own sense of how she’s been allowed to exist in the world. And as with Miel with Sam’s gender identity, Sam is ready to accept Miel and her history long before she is. That’s really a theme at the heart of this book: other people being ready to love you even before you can.

“That’s really a theme at the heart of this book: other people being ready to love you even before you can.”

Magic and religion coexist comfortably in the world of When the Moon Was Ours—the same townspeople who go to church on Sundays also seek cures for lovesickness from a bruja (Spanish for witch). How do you reconcile what at first seem to be such different approaches to spirituality?
I’m a Christian, and also a Latina woman who holds reverence for the practice of curanderismo [traditional folk healing], and I knew both these traditions early on. Many practitioners of curanderismo are also Christians, and often their practice is faith-based. Though many details of Aracely’s lovesickness cures are fictional, her profession as a curandera is very real. Curanderismo is so important to so many Latinx communities both because of its own merits, and because curanderas often practice where doctors’ visits either aren’t possible or are cost-prohibitive. Curanderas and curanderos hold especially important roles in communities who have trouble accessing physical and mental health services.

In your author’s note, you mention the legend of la llorona, a mythical mother who, after drowning her own children, seeks to kidnap half-Spanish, half-Native Latin-American girls. This sounds like a frightening legend indeed! Can you elaborate on how it helped inspire your story?
I’ve heard the name la llorona for as long as I can remember, though my mother saved the story’s more chilling aspects for when I was older. It’s a story a lot of us in the Mexican-American community heard growing up, and it stayed with me. When I felt drawn toward writing a reimagining of the story, I wanted to give weight both to la llorona’s own narrative, to what might have driven her to commit acts she never imagined, and also to depict the awful consequences that her actions have on those around her.  

Sensory descriptions abound in When the Moon Was Ours, especially surrounding food: Blood oranges, blue eggs and dulce de leche are cooked and eaten (and used in magic spells) in wisteria and violet-colored houses. How did you come up with such vivid details?
So many of the details in the book come from or are influenced by cultural tradition. Either my own Mexican-American heritage, which Miel and Aracely share. Or Sam and his mother’s Pakistani-American heritage, for which I owe a huge debt to the author friends who spoke from their own experiences and helped shape how I depicted Sam’s cultural identity. The things Aracely uses in her practice as a curandera, the food both Sam and Miel have grown up making, the way small details become markers of home and heritage, all felt like a natural part of the story.

Although Miel and Sam dominate the narrative, other characters—like Miel’s loving guardian Aracely, the manipulative Bonner sisters and the perpetually lovesick Emma Owens—also play important parts. Who was your favorite minor character to write, and why?
Sam’s mother Yasmin. She values and respects her family’s traditions while also deciding the kind of life she wants, and she makes brave, hard choices for herself and for her son while also giving him space to figure things out on his own.

What was the first thing you did when you heard you were longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature?
It was early on the West coast, so I jumped up and down on the edge of the bed to wake up my husband and tell him!

What projects are next on your writing agenda?
Right now I’m working on my 2017 novel, Wild Beauty, as well as short stories for a couple of upcoming anthologies. They all involves themes of queer and Latinx identity, so I’m excited to work on them and share more soon!

Thank you so much for talking with me! 

 

Jill Ratzan teaches preschoolers through teen readers the power of stories, both traditional and new.

Author photo credit J. Elliott.

Morris Award nominee Anna-Marie McLemore combines Latin-American and Pakistani legends and customs, magical realism and romance in a tale of painted moons, giant pumpkins and stained glass that speaks to the inescapable power of self-awareness. BookPage asked McLemore about the vivid details, spirituality and metaphors that characterize When the Moon Was Ours, which was recently longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.

FictionHistorical FantasyDebut Fiction

Katherine Arden

Interview by Trisha Ping

Katherine Arden conjures the spirit—and spirits—of medieval Russia in The Bear and the Nightingale, her enchanting fantasy debut. Motherless Vasya Petrovna grows up unfettered on her father’s rural estate, but once she reaches womanhood, she discovers that she has inherited the magical abilities that run through her mother’s line. As the uneasy balance between traditional pagan beliefs and the newly embraced Christianity wavers, Vasya finds herself on the front lines of a struggle to ensure the survival of her village.

Arden, who studied Russian language and literature, talked to us about the inspiration for her remarkable first novel, the harsh beauty of Russia’s winters and why she prefers the fairy tales of Pushkin to those of Perrault.

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
I read nonstop as a child, as most writers probably did, and my favorite part of the day was bedtime, because I would lie awake in the dark and make up stories. When I was in high school I wrote a fantasy novel with shapeshifting dragons and a sort-of-like-Iceland world of snow and volcanoes.

But I never seriously thought I am a writer or even I want to be a writer. Not the kind who writes books you find in a bookstore. I hadn’t made the connection between what I did in my own head for fun and the work of others that I read.

In college I didn’t do any creative writing at all. I studied foreign languages, wrote earnest essays and wanted to be a diplomat. But after I got my degree, I realized I was burnt out and I didn’t want to race into a career right away. So I moved to Hawaii to work on a farm. It was supposed to just be for a few months while I gathered steam and figured my life out. But I got bored on the farm, and as a remedy against boredom I decided to write a book.

I discovered that really enjoyed the writing process. I started thinking, well, I could do this with my life. Might as well try.  So I promised myself that I would finish my novel and at least try to get it published. Getting a book published is hard, and it took a lot of work to get there and there were setbacks along the way. But I just found myself getting more and more determined as the process went on.

I would say there was no moment that definitively told me I wanted to be a writer, rather a series of decisions and outcomes and realizations that cumulatively made me realize that was what I wanted to do with my life.

You weave in so many creatures from Russian folklore—a few of which are unique to the culture (I’d never heard of a domovoi!). How did you research these legends?
I took a course in college as part of my Russian degree, ambitiously titled “The Russian Mind.” This class started us off in Slavic prehistory and took us through more than a thousand years’ worth of events, ideas, and pieces of literature that shaped the thinking and the culture of the Russia we know today.

Early in the class, we studied Slavic folklore, including household spirits like the domovoi. We also examined the notion that Slavic paganism never really disappeared from the Russian countryside after the arrival of Christianity; rather they coexisted, with some friction, for centuries. I was fascinated by the tensions inherent in such a system, as well as the notion of a complicated magical world interacting so subtly with the real one. I decided that I wanted to explore these notions in the context of a novel. I did my research, as one does, in libraries and online. I have also amassed a small library of obscure academic texts on such topics as medieval Russian sexual mores, magical practices and farming implements.

"Slavic paganism never really disappeared from the Russian countryside after the arrival of Christianity; rather they coexisted, with some friction, for centuries. I was fascinated by the tensions inherent in such a system."

Were there any creatures you wish you had been able to include?
Wow, there are so many characters from folklore that I wanted to include but couldn’t! Some of them will make an appearance in future novels. There is a guardian spirit for everything in Russian folklore. The domovoi guards the house; the dvorovoi guards the dooryard. The bannik guards the bathhouse, the Ovinnik, the threshing-house. Their areas of influence are almost absurdly specific. And each creature has a certain appearance and personality, and people must do certain things to placate them.

Do you see big differences between Russian folklore and that of Western Europe?
Yes, there are marked differences between Western European and Russian fairy tales. To me the most interesting difference is between the recurring main characters of these two fairy-tale traditions. For example, the classic hero of Russian fairy tales is Ivan the Fool. He is not a muscular and martial figure like the heroic kings, princes and woodcutters that feature in Western European fairy tales. Rather, he is usually of ordinary birth, lazy and good-natured, and he gets by on his wits and native innocence.

For me, the heroines in Russian fairy tales absolutely outshine their Western counterparts, in terms of initiative, courage and interesting storylines. Vasilisa the Beautiful, for example, defeats the Baba Yaga with her cleverness and the help of her mother’s blessing. Marya Morevna is a warrior queen. Even Baba Yaga, the prototypical villain, is a powerful woman, who is sometimes wicked but always wise. For that reason, especially, I prefer the fairy tales of Pushkin or Afanasyev to those of say, Perrault, which value passivity in girls (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, etc).

"The heroines in Russian fairy tales absolutely outshine their Western counterparts, in terms of initiative, courage and interesting storylines."

Vasya is a truly compelling heroine. She is strong enough to embrace her differences, but she still reads as a woman of her time. How did you maintain that balance?
How does any writer maintain balance? Scene by scene and moment by moment. I brought my own modern biases, and understandings to this historical period that I was trying to write about, but also allowed my ideas and beliefs to be shaped by my best guesses about the attitudes of the time. There was a constant friction between what I wanted my main character to do, and what I believed she would be able to do, given the era, and I hope some of the tension made its way into the storytelling.

As is often the case in fairy tales, the introduction of a stepmother brings conflict to the Petrovich family. Yet the reader ends up having a great amount of sympathy for Anna. How do you feel about this character?
Anna was one of the first characters that really came into focus for me, and it is often really interesting to get readers’ reactions on her. Some people feel sympathy for her, some hate her wholeheartedly. I personally fall into the former category. I think she is a person wholly trapped in a world that allows her no choices, and she is not a strong enough person to carve out happiness for herself in those circumstances.

“What makes the evil stepmother evil?” is perhaps an old or cliched question, but it was one I felt was important to ask and to answer, to give the story depth.

The Russian wilderness—and the Russian winters in particular—are vividly described in your novel. Can you talk a bit about that and how it affects your characters?
People living in the middle ages, in an environment as harsh as Northern Russia, were intimately acquainted with the weather. Their lives literally depended on it. In The Bear and the Nightingale, the weather is pretty much a character in and of itself, personified, in a way, by the various spirits that populate the novel. Every action and event in the book is some way tied to the land: heat, bitter cold, snowstorms, fires.

Also, I think my personal experiences of Russia (I lived in Moscow for a gap year after high school, and again my junior year of college) come through most in my descriptions of weather. The Russian weather has a quick and capricious quality that really captivated me, and the sky seems HUGE. If the natural world has a powerful presence even in modern Moscow, can you imagine what it was like for people living in the wilderness in the 14th century?

"If the natural world has a powerful presence even in modern Moscow, can you imagine what it was like for people living in the wilderness in the 14th century?"

Even though her family sometimes has a hard time understanding Vasya, there is so much love and loyalty in their relationships. What was your favorite relationship in the novel?
I really love the relationship Vasya has with her older brother Sasha and her younger brother Alyosha. I have a brother, and so those relationships were the easiest for me to write. I wanted their mutual affection to be a powerful driving force, even though they don’t always understand, or agree with, each other. I think that is how families function in the best sense, where love and loyalty wins out, even though no one is perfect.

The conflict between Christianity and the old traditions is a big part of this book. What do readers need to know about this period in Russian history?
I think it’s important to realize that this period of Russian history doesn’t have a lot of primary sources. Literacy was extremely low, and the few literate people lived in cities and were mostly clergy, concerned with copying Greek religious texts. Everything was built of wood, so architectural evidence is limited as well. It gives lovely scope to a writer, because you can do your research, align all your facts, step back and say, well, how do we know this didn’t happen?

But what we do know: at this time period (mid 14th century) Muscovy was rising rapidly, buoyed by a long collaboration with the Golden Horde, which had taken power in Russia about 200 years prior. At the time, the Horde was preoccupied by succession problems (Genghis Khan had a really absurd number of descendants), and the Grand Princes of Moscow were quietly expanding their territory and bringing lesser princes into the fold.

During this period, much of Muscovy’s conflict was with other Russian city-states (notably Tver), but Dmitrii Ivanovich (who is still a boy in The Bear and the Nightingale) is the first prince who will successfully oppose the Golden Horde and Mongol dominance in Russia.

You’ve lived in so many places! Where are you now, and how long do you plan to stay there?
I’m live in Vermont just at present, where I promised myself I would stay and not budge until I’d finished my second novel! I’ve done that now, and so I am eyeing the horizon a bit. You never know. Norway next, maybe? Bali? My absolute favorite thing about being a writer is that you can live wherever you want.

We hear this is the first in a series. What can you tell us about Vasya’s next adventure?
Her next adventure, The Girl in the Tower, is written already. It covers a much shorter time frame than The Bear and the Nightingale (two months instead of 16 years) and it takes place largely in the medieval city of Moscow. It features Vasya and also her two older siblings, Sasha and Olga, who were only briefly in the first book, along with new characters from Russian history and Slavic mythology. Some you may recognize, some you probably won’t.

RELATED CONTENT: Read our review of The Bear and the Nightingale.

Author photo © Deverie Crystal Photography.

Katherine Arden conjures the spirit—and spirits—of medieval Russia in The Bear and the Nightingale, her enchanting fantasy debut.

Science Fiction & FantasyFictionScience Fiction

Confessions from the guy who screwed up the future

Interview by Cat Acree

Screenwriter Elan Mastai’s debut novel, All Our Wrong Todays, is a hugely entertaining time-travel narrative and tale of alternate reality. In a techno-utopian world very different from our own, a grieving scientist’s son travels back in time and accidentally alters history, only to return to 2016 and find himself in our reality. This novel is his memoir, and while it includes plenty of physics (although these sections are limited and brief), it’s also full of romance and provocative explorations of self.

With film rights sold before the book even published, All Our Wrong Todays offers an abundance of juicy theories and questions of consciousness and paradoxes. Here, Mastai discusses his Vonnegut inspiration, time-travel pet peeves and possibilities, and the beauty of storytelling in a far-from-perfect world.

When did you love affair with time travel begin?
Probably when I was visited by my future self with an urgent message about preventing the terrible crime I would one day commit. So, the usual way.

No, as a teenager, I read Slaughterhouse Five, an old paperback borrowed from my grandfather’s extensive collection of 1950s and 1960s science fiction. I’d never read anything like it. When Kurt Vonnegut describes how the Tralfamadorians experience time as a continuity, able to experience the past, present and future simultaneously, and how that affects their storytelling and philosophy—that was a formative concept for me. As a writer, I like to think about untapped wells of storytelling hidden inside well-worn tropes. If I’m going to ask readers to try another time travel story, I want it to have the same effect on them that Slaughterhouse Five had on me. That’s the hope anyway. Each reader will, of course, decide for themselves if I succeeded.

What’s your greatest time-travel pet peeve? Favorite time-travel possibility?
My pet peeve is that time-travel stories typically behave as if the Earth is stationary. You open a door in time, walk through it, and you’re in the past. But of course the Earth is constantly moving. And fast. Like, really fast. Our planet spins on its axis at up to 1,000 miles per hour, while orbiting the sun at around 67,000 miles per hour, which itself moves within our galaxy at 1,300,000 miles per hour. So traveling back in time also means transporting yourself across vast distances—millions, even billions of miles—and precisely landing on the spinning outer crust of the planet, rather than up in the atmosphere or embedded inside the planet or at the bottom of the ocean or in the vacuum of outer space. Since any of these possibilities would make for a short, gruesome end to the story, most time-travel tales just ignore it.

My favorite time-travel possibility is the most obvious of all: a second chance. Time-travel stories are usually stories about regret. We all have regrets. We all have pain, loss, humiliation, error. The chance to fix our mistakes. To erase the worst of our decisions and replace them with better, wiser, less hurtful or more graceful choices. It’s impossible in life. But not in fiction.

Talk to me about Tom. Was his voice always so forthright in your mind? Particularly when he discovers his new timeline in our 2016 and starts to learn more about himself, he’s so honest about the realization process, about his failures and why he tells the story the way he does. Why do you think he’s so straightforward with his audience?
I had the idea for this novel many years ago, but I couldn’t quite figure out how to tell the story. One summer day, I was walking my dog down the street and it occurred to me that I could write it as a first-person narrative. That might seem evident, but my background is as a screenwriter and movie scripts are always written in the third person. And in Courier font. I’ve spent so much of my life staring at Courier font. As soon as I realized it could work in the first person, the opening sentence of the book popped into my head in Tom’s voice. I stopped on a bench and wrote it down, then the next sentence, and the one after that, until I’d written the first chapter, while my dog whined to continue her walk. Her name is Ruby Slippers and her whine is extremely high-pitched, so the fact that I endured it to keep writing tells you how strong and clear Tom’s voice was right from the start.

I think Tom is so candid because he wants what we all want: to be understood. For who we are, in spite of our many faults and blunders. The novel is written as a memoir, but really it’s a confession. In the beginning, he’s honest because he has nothing to lose. In the end, he’s honest because he has so much to lose.

The male characters seem to be driven by the pursuit of greatness or the love for a woman in their life. Therefore, the men’s actions drive the plot, but the women determine its direction. (And it should be noted, the women here are all brilliant, and quite a bit more impressive than the men, even the genius ones.) Was this something you intended to explore with this book? (Is there a personal connection here?)
My mother was a brilliant and impressive woman. She was an art critic, a curator and a museum director, until she died when I was 26. My father followed her across the world to start a new life in Canada, where I was born. Is there a personal connection? Yes. But I also like to write about the kinds of people I like to spend time with, regardless of gender. Smart, complex, shaded women. And men, too. As a first-person narrative, all the characters are presented through Tom’s point of view. But since he’s a man—and one with a lot to learn about a lot of things, particularly how he relates to the women in his life—it was important to me to craft rich female characters that suggest vivid lives beyond the frame of Tom’s perspective.

“What I like about books is that sometimes you’re told things you don’t want to hear by people you’ve never met. That’s how you change your mind.”

Tom’s world is arguably better than ours in every way—except when it comes to stories. It’s a staple of utopian worlds for stories, art and music to lose their power, and while socio-economic disparity has been mitigated in through your utopia’s power source, there’s still death (even sudden, horrible deaths, at that), and so there’s still a mortal drive to create art. But why did you decide this techno-utopia would change how we experience novels?

Well, I love books. So any alternate reality worth thinking about begs the question: Sure, OK, that’s cool, but what are the books like?

Tom’s world has no war, no illness, no poverty, no prejudice, but also no books. Not the way we have them in our world. Instead of books or movies or video games, it has storytelling media based on brain scans that port your personal psychology into a narrative framework, like a waking dream. It’s not about an author exorcising their demons or beguiling their angels. It’s all about you. Your fears, your kinks, your longings. I imagined Tom’s world as a technological utopia based on the social outlook of the 1950s. So postwar consumerism thrived, while antiauthority skepticism never took hold as it did in our version of reality. I saw this storytelling technology as the result of a certain kind of egocentric consumerism that tells you there’s nothing more important than what you want. What I like about books is that sometimes you’re told things you don’t want to hear by people you’ve never met. That’s how you change your mind. In Tom’s world, nobody thinks they need to change their mind.

One of my absolute favorite moments in the book is when Greta (who is amazing, by the way) goes off on a hilarious rant about trying to control our world. “It just pisses me off,” she says, “these f_cking sci-fi allegories where, you know, if we just stick with the plan, we’ll fix it all and live in a futuristic paradise. When, actually, our one chance at saving our only home in the universe is quitting the plan.” But Tom’s choice is much more complicated than that. If you had Tom’s choice, would you try to fix the timeline you broke?
I love Greta. It’s funny because she’s the one character I didn’t plan for before I started writing the book. When she shows up in the story, it was actually the first time I’d even thought of her. She just kind of asserted herself as absolutely necessary. But I have two sisters and I can’t separate who I am from the experience of growing up with them. When I was establishing who Tom is in our world versus the one he’s from, Greta became the key to figuring that out.

We break timelines all the time, in the choices we make and the consequences we endure. If I could change certain decisions I made in the past, I would. But I can’t. It’s out of my control. In Tom’s case, he has the power to change history because of the time machine. Except, as Greta’s rant suggests, the power to control is often a delusion. Controlling a person. Controlling a country. Controlling a planet. Does the history of humankind tell us that usually works out? Fiction is the respite. In fiction, I can revisit my mistakes and search for better choices. Sometimes I find them.

What’s the main gripe you expect about your time-travel physics, and what’s your response?
Probably that my model of time travel requires a form of radiation, what I call tau radiation, that is theoretically possible but doesn’t actually exist. Or at least hasn’t yet been discovered! My response would be that I’m pretty sure the physics bear out, but time travel would definitely be more difficult without tau radiation to provide a breadcrumb trail through time and space. Also, I’d suggest the griper relax a bit and enjoy the speculation, since actual time travel would likely be a disaster for humanity.

Is there a visual component of this story that you’d especially love to see in the movie?
Well, kind of the opposite. In the book, the reader can picture what things look like based on their imagination. Despite hundreds of pages spent inside his point of view, I never describe Tom’s physical appearance. I like that the reader can picture him however they want. It’s the same with all the characters. Unless there’s a specific physical trait that’s relevant to the story, I intentionally left their appearance open to interpretation. But a movie is specific. Tom will be played by a particular actor and his face will forever be Tom’s face, not just in the movie but for a lot of potential readers. Likewise all the characters. I’m in no way complaining about having a movie made from my novel. Far from it. But that’s one of the things you give up in the adaptation.

What’s next?
I’m currently working on the movie adaptation of All Our Wrong Todays and writing a new novel.

Read our review of All Our Wrong Todays.

Author photo credit David Leyes.

Screenwriter Elan Mastai’s debut novel, All Our Wrong Todays, is a hugely entertaining time-travel narrative and tale of alternate reality. Mastai discusses his Vonnegut inspiration, time-travel pet peeves and possibilities, and the beauty of storytelling in a far-from-perfect world.

Science Fiction & FantasyYA FictionYA

Laini Taylor

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

A vital element of Laini Taylor’s sweeping, dramatic, exciting new novel is travel in many artfully rendered guises, including flights of imagination via books in an amazing library, a grueling but thrilling road trip to a forgotten city and nocturnal tours of people’s dreams.

Journeys near and far have been central to Taylor’s own story as an author as well, with the wonders of travel first opening to her through her father’s job as a naval officer.

“It definitely had a huge impact on me,” Taylor says during a call to her home in Portland, Oregon. “I was so lucky to be able to live in Europe as a kid. . . . I wish everyone had the opportunity to see the world from different perspectives at a young age.” She adds: “As an elementary school student, I went on field trips to Pompeii! We were living in incredible places, and I had a blessed childhood.”

“I had to honor the darkness I’d created, but still make the story a place readers enjoy being. Kissing helps!”

Taylor’s literary career began in 2004 with the graphic novel The Drowned, followed by the Dreamdark series, the National Book Award finalist Lips Touch: Three Times and the New York Times bestselling Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy.

That’s a lot of writing over the course of a decade, and Taylor’s work certainly doesn’t tend toward the spare. She creates highly detailed, multilayered worlds populated by complex characters engaged in grand-scale endeavors.

She’s at it again with Strange the Dreamer: 500-plus pages of poetic prose, finely crafted fantasy and oodles of adventure, peril, romance, redemption, gods, royals and warriors. It’s a fantasy lover’s delight, with ever-higher flights of fancy brought crashing to earth and then soaring anew as the pages turn and the characters journey on. It all builds toward a shocking ending—and maybe, a beginning. Fans will be happy to hear that it’s the first book in a duology.

Readers meet Lazlo Strange, orphaned during a war in Zosma and adopted by monks. Around age 5, Lazlo became fascinated—obsessed, really—with the lost city of Weep, a faraway land with a mysterious story. At age 13, he begins work at the Great Library, “a walled city for poets and astronomers and every shade of thinker in between.” (Be warned: Taylor’s descriptions of the place are sure to awaken a great longing in avid readers.)

Just when life is starting to seem a bit routine, Lazlo learns that a man known as the Godslayer has come to town, and he’s leading a band of people with special skills to Weep. Lazlo leaps at the chance to join them, and so begins a journey to a beautiful, damaged place where strange contradictions abound: Beautiful temples and a “cityscape of carved honey stone and gilded domes” share space with “butcher priests . . . performing divination of animal entrails.” It’s a setting of great mystery and wonder, where it becomes clear the travelers’ challenges have only just begun.

In the meantime, Taylor introduces us to some of the residents of Weep, including a beautiful young woman named Sarai who has a most unusual ability (she can enter and manipulate dreams), a decidedly untraditional family situation and jewel-toned skin. She is one of the children of gods, left behind after a long-ago war between gods and men. And she lives in secrecy with her siblings (also in possession of singular talents) in a giant citadel that floats in the sky miles above Weep.

With such a marvelous backstory, it’s easy to see why, at first, Taylor intended to begin the duology with Sarai’s story (and there’s so much more to it than we’ve touched on here). When she first began work on Strange the Dreamer, Taylor thought about “children of war, like children of soldiers left behind in Vietnam, and their struggles.”

But as she tried to write Sarai’s story, about someone “living someplace where they look down on the population but aren’t part of it,” Taylor says, “I knew I wanted to enter [Weep] through the eyes of an outsider.”

Lazlo was that outsider, Taylor explains. “He totally took over the story. All of a sudden, after weeks and weeks of struggling, I had a lightning bolt: His nose was broken by a falling book of fairy tales—and I had him! In that moment, it was his book, and everything shifted. I fell in love with the librarian.”

Speaking of love, fans of Taylor’s work will be happy to hear that there’s romance to be found amid the trauma and fear in Weep. “[A kiss] is a tiny, magical story, and a miraculous interruption to the mundane,” muses one character.

That’s exactly what Taylor says she was going for when she imbued this often dark tale with the lightness and joy of new love: “It was a hard lesson to learn [as I became an author], that I had to honor the darkness I’d created, but still make the story a place readers enjoy being. Kissing helps!”

So, too, do those fairy tales: The book that bonks Lazlo on the nose contains the kinds of narratives that have long fascinated Taylor. “The only books I have in my office are folklore and fairy tales!” she says. “Reading folklore from other countries is a great way to expand your imagination. One line of a folktale from a country you don’t know about could be the seed of an entire novel.”

Certainly, Lazlo’s dedication to reading and research helped expand his mind beyond the walls that surround him. As for Sarai, Taylor says she travels through peoples’ dreams into greater waking consciousness for herself. “She could learn more about the people she’d been taught to hate when she sees their dreams and nightmares. How could she not feel for them?”

There’s much to ponder and relate to in Strange the Dreamer—in addition to simply enjoying (and marveling at) the fantastical fruits of Taylor’s imagination. It’s a compelling, engaging mix of super-fun adventure and timely allegory. As for how to pass the time while awaiting Taylor’s next book, The Muse of Nightmares? Well, there’s always reading and traveling . . . and dreaming.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Author photo by Ali Smith.

A vital element of Laini Taylor’s sweeping, dramatic, exciting new novel is travel in many artfully rendered guises, including flights of imagination via books in an amazing library, a grueling but thrilling road trip to a forgotten city and nocturnal tours of people’s dreams.

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