Q&A with Antony Johnston

From my Q&A with Antony Johnston, author of The Exphoria Code:
:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

Photo by Chad Michael Ward

I spend a lot of time on titles, because they set expectations for new and returning readers alike. The word ‘Exphoria’ had come to me in a flash long before I even conceived the story, just sitting in my notebook for months.

In the book, terrorists attempt to steal the design for a top-secret military drone project, while our hero Brigitte — a hacker working for MI6 — tries to uncover the mole. When it came time to give that military project a name, I remembered that word ‘Exphoria’ and it slotted into place perfectly, like the universe was giving me a nudge.

From there the full title The Exphoria Code grew logically, as it has so many implications. First and foremost, taken as a whole it implies a thriller; without knowing anything about the book, the rhythm and cadence of the full title puts one in the right frame of mind.

Then there are the words. Exphoria is invented, and strikingly unusual, but close enough to a real word that it feels somehow genuine. The classic ‘x’ substitution hints at technology. And making this unusual word a Code invites questions as to what sort of code it could possibly be. Computer code? Coded messages? A code of honour? While one of those is strictly the correct answer, all three elements define the character of the book.

I also knew The Exphoria Code would be...[read on]

Visit Antony Johnston's website.

Q&A with Antony Johnston.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Emily Carpenter's "Reviving the Hawthorn Sisters"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Reviving the Hawthorn Sisters by Emily Carpenter.

About the book, from the publisher:

The bestselling author of Burying the Honeysuckle Girls returns to uncover a faith healer’s elusive and haunted past.

Dove Jarrod was a renowned evangelist and faith healer. Only her granddaughter, Eve Candler, knows that Dove was a con artist. In the eight years since Dove’s death, Eve has maintained Dove’s charitable foundation—and her lies. But just as a documentary team wraps up a shoot about the miracle worker, Eve is assaulted by a vengeful stranger intent on exposing what could be Dove’s darkest secret: murder…

Tuscaloosa, 1934: a wily young orphan escapes the psychiatric hospital where she was born. When she joins the itinerant inspirational duo the Hawthorn Sisters, the road ahead is one of stirring new possibilities. And with an obsessive predator on her trail, one of untold dangers. For a young girl to survive, desperate choices must be made.

Now, to protect her family, Eve will join forces with the investigative filmmaker and one of Dove’s friends, risking everything to unravel the truth behind the accusations against her grandmother. But will the truth set her free or set her world on fire?

Visit Emily Carpenter's website.

My Book, The Movie: Reviving the Hawthorn Sisters.

The Page 69 Test: Reviving the Hawthorn Sisters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six books by masters of interiority

Claire Messud's novels include The Emperor's Children, The Woman Upstairs, and The Burning Girl.

Her new book is Kant's Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write, an autobiography in essays.

At The Week magazine Messud tagged six works by masters of interiority. One title on the list:

Alice Munro: Selected Stories (1996).

Munro knows her world, and every facet of her characters, to bedrock. She conveys more in a single story than most writers do in a novel. Her prose is glorious — concrete, restrained, with the occasional, always justified, lyrical fillip — and her insight pitiless. She sees everything but knows that life is mysterious, that self-knowledge and the knowledge of others are fractured and partial.

Read about another entry on the list.

Alice Munro's Selected Stories is among Meg Wolitzer's five favorite books by women writers, Carolyn Cooke's top ten legendary short story collections, and Andre Dubus III's five most essential books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: David Menconi's "Step It Up and Go"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Step It Up and Go: The Story of North Carolina Popular Music, from Blind Boy Fuller and Doc Watson to Nina Simone and Superchunk by David Menconi.

About the book, from the publisher:

This book is a love letter to the artists, scenes, and sounds defining North Carolina’s extraordinary contributions to American popular music. David Menconi spent three decades immersed in the state’s music, where traditions run deep but the energy expands in countless directions. Menconi shows how working-class roots and rebellion tie North Carolina’s Piedmont blues, jazz, and bluegrass to beach music, rock, hip-hop, and more. From mill towns and mountain coves to college-town clubs and the stage of American Idol, Blind Boy Fuller and Doc Watson to Nina Simone and Superchunk, Step It Up and Go celebrates homegrown music just as essential to the state as barbecue and basketball.

Spanning a century of history from the dawn of recorded music to the present, and with sidebars and photos that help reveal the many-splendored glory of North Carolina’s sonic landscape, this is a must-read for every music lover.

Visit the author’s blog.

The Page 99 Test: Ryan Adams: Losering.

My Book, The Movie: Ryan Adams: Losering.

The Page 99 Test: Step It Up and Go.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Kimiko Guthrie

From my Q&A with Kimiko Guthrie, author of Block Seventeen:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

The title of the book refers to the place where the main trauma of the story occurred – so the location and point in time from which everything ripples out. During WWII, when Japanese Americans were made to leave their homes and give up their possessions to be imprisoned for an indefinite period of time in confinement centers, known as the internment, or “Camp” as people referred to it then, the barracks were arranged into numbered blocks. Block Seventeen is the number of the block where our main character Akiko’s mother was held as a child, and where she witnessed something horrible that haunts her to this day. So, in a way, Akiko’s mother has never really left Block Seventeen. Akiko, a mixed race woman in her mid-thirties who is attempting to...[read on]

Visit Kimiko Guthrie's website.

Q&A with Kimiko Guthrie.

--Marshal Zeringue

Cathy Marie Buchanan's "Daughter of Black Lake," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Daughter of Black Lake: A Novel by Cathy Marie Buchanan.

The entry begins:

Daughter of Black Lake tells a story and love and survival in the northern misty boglands of pagan Britain.

Black Lake lies far beyond the reach of the Romans invading hundreds of miles to the southeast. Here, life is simple—or so it seems to the tightly knit community. Sow. Reap. Honour Mother Earth, who will provide at harvest time. A girl named Devout comes of age, sweetly flirting with the young man she’s tilled alongside all her life, and envisions a future of love and abundance. Seventeen years later, though, the settlement is a changed place. Famine has brought struggle, and outsiders, with their foreign ways and military might, have arrived at the doorstep. For Devout’s young daughter, Hobble, life is more troubled than her mother ever anticipated. But this girl has an extraordinary gift. As worlds collide and peril threatens, it will be up to her to save her family and community.

The narration alternates between Devout and Hobble. Devout’s chapters take place during her youth, and as they progress, we learn of a complicated love triangle that has far reaching implications. Hobble’s story unfolds years later as the Roman invaders inch their way westward across Britannia, drawing ever closer to the remote settlement.

Because the story moves back and forth in time, two of the novel’s main characters—Devout and her mate Smith—appear both as youths and as adults, adding an extra layer of challenge to casting the movie. For youthful Devout, I choose Kiernan Shipka, and for her adult counterpart, Emma...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Cathy Marie Buchanan's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Painted Girls.

My Book, The Movie: The Painted Girls.

Writers Read: Cathy Marie Buchanan (February 2013).

My Book, The Movie: Daughter of Black Lake.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top art heist novels

Carol Orange has worked in the art world for more than twenty years. She began as a research editor on art books in London and later became an art dealer in Boston. She lived in Paris for two years, where she researched George Sand's life and writing. Her short story "Delicious Dates" was included in Warren Adler's 2010 short story anthology. Another story, "Close Call," appeared in the Atherton Review. She currently lives in Chicago near her daughter and her family.

A Discerning Eye is her first book.

At CrimeReads, Orange tagged seven great art heist novels, including:

Carson Morton, Stealing Mona Lisa

Multi-talented Carson Morton (writer, musician, children’s book author and illustrator) is a man obsessed with the thefts of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. He has written two art heist novels on the subject. The first one, Stealing Mona Lisa, was a big success. It was published in 2011, exactly one hundred years after the actual crime took place at the Louvre. The story follows Eduardo de Valfierno, a strangely likeable charlatan who makes his living selling forgeries of masterpieces to clients who believe they are receiving the original paintings. Valfierno begins his career in his birthplace of Buenos Aires, but he assembles his team of con artists in 1911 Paris for their final and most ambitious theft, one that he hopes will enable them to leave the game forever: Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Morton’s descriptions of early twentieth century Paris are cinematic and his language is poetic at times. My favorite character, Valfierno’s partner-in-crime Julia, is a beautiful and savvy American pickpocket. She can be clever and funny, but I also took her seriously as Julia saves the other con artists more than once. Morton is a good storyteller and he kept me guessing until the end.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Stealing Mona Lisa.

My Book, The Movie: Stealing Mona Lisa.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Anna Ellory's "The Puzzle Women"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Puzzle Women by Anna Ellory.

About the book, from the publisher:

Berlin, 1989. Siblings Rune and Lotte are shaken awake by Mama and told to follow her quietly into the night. Last time they snuck away from Papa, with Mama bruised and broken, they were back within a week. But this time they are starting a new life, Mama says—where nobody can ever hurt them again.

Ten years later, the memories of their escape are blurry; Mama is long gone and the siblings are back at Papa’s house. But when they receive a mysterious notebook that seems to have come from Mama, Papa tears it apart. Could there be more to their past than they’ve been led to believe?

With Rune paralysed by fear, Lotte takes their fate into her own hands. When she learns about the ‘Puzzle Women’ working tirelessly to reconstruct files shredded by the former secret police, she begs them to help her piece Mama’s story back together. But as Papa’s threats against both siblings escalate, can they unite to learn the full, brutal truth in Mama’s own words at last?

Visit Anna Ellory's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Puzzle Women.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Niklas Frykman's "The Bloody Flag"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Bloody Flag: Mutiny in the Age of Atlantic Revolution by Niklas Frykman.

About the book, from the publisher:

Mutiny tore like wildfire through the wooden warships of the age of revolution. While commoners across Europe laid siege to the nobility and enslaved workers put the torch to plantation islands, out on the oceans, naval seamen by the tens of thousands turned their guns on the quarterdeck and overthrew the absolute rule of captains. By the early 1800s, anywhere between one-third and one-half of all naval seamen serving in the North Atlantic had participated in at least one mutiny, many of them in several, and some even on ships in different navies. In The Bloody Flag, historian Niklas Frykman explores in vivid prose how a decade of violent conflict onboard gave birth to a distinct form of radical politics that brought together the egalitarian culture of North Atlantic maritime communities with the revolutionary era’s constitutional republicanism. The attempt to build a radical maritime republic failed, but the red flag that flew from the masts of mutinous ships survived to become the most enduring global symbol of class struggle, economic justice, and republican liberty to this day.

Learn more about The Bloody Flag at the University of California Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Bloody Flag.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twelve mystery novels featuring BIPOC protagonists

Jennifer Baker was named the 2019 Publishers Weekly Star Watch “SuperStar” because her “varied work championing diversity in publishing has made her an indispensable fixture in the book business.” She is the recipient of a 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship and a 2017 Queens Council on the Arts New Work Grant (as well as the QCA Jr. Board Artistic Excellence Award) in Nonfiction Literature for her WIP essay collection. Her essay “What We Aren’t” was also listed as a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2018. Her short story “The Pursuit of Happiness” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for 2017 by Newtown Literary Journal and is featured in the anthology What God Is Honored Here? Baker is the editor of Everyday People: The Color of Life—A Short Story Anthology with Atria Books. Her YA novel Forgive Me Not will publish with Putnam Books for Young Readers in 2022.

At Electric Lit, Baker tagged twelve mystery novels featuring Black, Indigenous, and POC protagonists, including:

Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden

No holds barred, cussing up a storm, and ready to knock some heads, enforcer Virgil Wounded Horse has a personal stake in finding out who’s distributing heroin on his reservation when his nephew is involved. Wounded Horse’s investigation reveals many shady dealings and disturbing alliances along the way.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Winter Counts.

My Book, The Movie: Winter Counts.

Q&A with David Heska Wanbli Weiden.

--Marshal Zeringue

Emily Carpenter's "Reviving the Hawthorn Sisters," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Reviving the Hawthorn Sisters by Emily Carpenter.

The entry begins:

I envisioned Florence Pugh playing both roles of Eve Candler and Dove/Ruth. Several times in the book, people comment about how Eve resembles her grandmother and I love the idea of them being almost identical looking and using it as a connection between the two. As Eve comes to learn more and more about her grandmother Dove, she realizes they are a lot alike - and both have very good reasons for keeping secrets and hiding things from the people they care about.

I think Florence Pugh is...[read on]

Visit Emily Carpenter's website.

My Book, The Movie: Reviving the Hawthorn Sisters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Sarah McCraw Crow

From my Q&A with Sarah McCraw Crow, author of The Wrong Kind of Woman:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

My novel’s title is The Wrong Kind of Woman, and I hope it raises a few questions, like “Who is this wrong kind of woman?” and “What does that phrase even mean?” and “Who gets to define the right kind of woman?” I think titles are difficult for many, if not most, writers—I went through long brainstorming lists with my agent and editor. My earliest titles referred to the fictional town (Westfield) and college campus (Clarendon College) where the novel is set, and to a character’s death (After Oliver), because my character Oliver dies on the first page. But none of those early titles took the reader into the story, because the story isn’t really about the campus, the town, or even Oliver. At its heart, The Wrong Kind of Woman is about Virginia, a 39-year-old widow, and her quest to...[read on]

Visit Sarah McCraw Crow's website.

Q&A with Sarah McCraw Crow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five SFF titles about flawed gods

Rin Chupeco has written obscure manuals for complicated computer programs, talked people out of their money at event shows, and done many other terrible things. She now writes about ghosts and fantastic worlds but is still sometimes mistaken for a revenant. She is the author of The Girl from the Well, its sequel, The Suffering, and the Bone Witch trilogy.

Her new novel is The Ever Cruel Kingdom.

At Tor.com, Chupeco tagged five sci-fi & fantasy books about flawed gods, including:

The Inheritance Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin

Enslavement is the worst thing to happen to any god, and it’s especially fatal to the people who incur the wrath of those who control them. Such is Yeine’s situation in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, the first book in the series, where she is summoned to the floating city of Sky and named its ruler’s heir along with two other competitors for the throne. In the struggle to survive the captive gods long enough to solve her mother’s murder and ascend the throne, Yeine will discover her connection with these powerful deities and make a fateful choice. The brilliant way Jemisin carries out the plot, resulting in that ultimate, final choice, cements this for me as one of my favorite reads, and enforces my love for trickster gods (I’m looking at you, Sieh!)

The second and third books also deal with the fallen beings who’d been rendered powerless and human from the events of the first book, and their fight to regain their godhoods by whatever means they can in their much more vulnerable bodies.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Christopher Cosmos's "Once We Were Here"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Once We Were Here: A Novel by Christopher Cosmos.

About the book, from the publisher:

As World War II intrudes upon their home, three young friends risk everything for freedom, love, and a chance at a better life.

On October 28th, 1940, Mussolini provides Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas with an ultimatum: either allow Axis forces to occupy their country, or face war, and Greece's response is swift. "Oxi!" they say. "No!"

In a small village nestled against the radiant waters of the Aegean Sea, we find Alexei, the son of a local fisherman, and his best friend Costa, who were both born on the same night eighteen years earlier and have been like brothers ever since, though now, like all the other young men in their village and throughout Greece, they will leave their homes to bravely fight for their country.

But before they go, Alexei asks Philia, the girl that he's loved his entire life, to marry him, which sets into motion the events which will change the lives of these three and their family and friends forever, and begins an epic and unforgettable story of courage, survival, sacrifice, the strength of the human spirit, and of a love and friendship that will echo across time and generations.

A spellbinding novel and sweeping romance that performs the remarkable feat of creating action-packed scenes, characters that we care deeply about, and revealing in vivid detail the untold true story of how Greece helped the Allies to win World War II, Once We Were Here is an unforgettable tale that pays tribute to the brave men and women who fought and gave everything for their country, for each other, and for freedom.

Visit Christopher Cosmos's website.

The Page 69 Test: Once We Were Here.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Tony Keddie's "Republican Jesus"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Republican Jesus: How the Right Has Rewritten the Gospels by Tony Keddie.

About the book, from the publisher:

The complete guide to debunking right-wing misinterpretations of the Bible—from economics and immigration to gender and sexuality.

Jesus loves borders, guns, unborn babies, and economic prosperity and hates homosexuality, taxes, welfare, and universal healthcare—or so say many Republican politicians, pundits, and preachers. Through outrageous misreadings of the New Testament gospels that started almost a century ago, conservative influencers have conjured a version of Jesus who speaks to their fears, desires, and resentments.

In Republican Jesus, Tony Keddie explains not only where this right-wing Christ came from and what he stands for but also why this version of Jesus is a fraud. By restoring Republicans’ cherry-picked gospel texts to their original literary and historical contexts, Keddie dismantles the biblical basis for Republican positions on hot-button issues like Big Government, taxation, abortion, immigration, and climate change. At the same time, he introduces readers to an ancient Jesus whose life experiences and ethics were totally unlike those of modern Americans, conservatives and liberals alike.

Learn more about Republican Jesus at the University of California Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Republican Jesus.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight thrillers featuring fictional children with freaky powers

C. J. Tudor is the author of the newly released The Other People as well as The Hiding Place and The Chalk Man, which won the International Thriller Writers Award for Best First Novel and the Strand Magazine Award for Best Debut Novel. Over the years she has worked as a copywriter, television presenter, voice-over artist, and dog walker. She is now thrilled to be able to write full-time, and doesn’t miss chasing wet dogs through muddy fields all that much. She lives in England with her partner and daughter.

At CrimeReads, Tudor tagged eight thrillers featuring a child with a mysterious supernatural power, including:

The Passage by Justin Cronin

A sprawling apocalyptic epic about a world overrun by humans infected with a virus that gives then immortality, makes them hunger for blood and vulnerable to light. They are called ... Virals. Of course!

Amy Harper Bellafonte is a very special child who has been infected with a form of the virus and acquired some of the traits of the other infected such as immortality but not their bloodlust or their morphology.

The plot spans centuries and several stories—and the insistence on never mentioning the other ‘V’ word is a bit of a pretension – but at the heart of it is Amy and her unique abilities.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Passage is among Anthony Horowitz's top ten apocalypse books and Annalee Newitz's ten works of science fiction that are really fantasy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Christiane M. Andrews's "Spindlefish and Stars"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Spindlefish and Stars by Christiane M. Andrews.

About the book, from the publisher:

In which a story is spun.
And unspun.

Clothilde has lived her whole life in the shadows with her (sometimes) thieving and (always) ailing father. But when he fails to meet her one morning, sending her instead a mysterious ticket of half-paffage, Clo finds herself journeying across the sea to reunite with him. The ticket, however, leaves her on a sunless island inhabited only by creaking fishermen, a rumpled old woman, a piggish cat, and a moon-cheeked boy named Cary.

Clo is quickly locked away and made to spend her days in unnerving chores with the island’s extraordinary fish, while the old woman sits nearby weaving an endless gray tapestry. Frustrated and aching with the loss of her father, Clo must unravel the mysteries of the island and all that’s hidden in the vast tapestry’s threads — secrets both exquisite and terrible. And she must decide how much of herself to give up in order to save those she thought she’d lost forever.

Inspired by Greek mythology, this spellbinding fantasy invites readers to seek connections, to forge their own paths, and to explore the power of storytelling in our interwoven histories.

Visit Christiane M. Andrews's website.

My Book, The Movie: Spindlefish and Stars.

The Page 69 Test: Spindlefish and Stars.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Danielle Girard

From my Q&A with Danielle Girard, author of White Out:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

For me, titles are the hardest thing about any book. I almost never have a title before I have a completed story and, even then, the title will change multiple times before it’s finalized. My preference is a title that is only a vague indication of what to expect from the book, something that can be interpreted several ways. White Out is a good example. A white out is a snow storm is the obvious definition of the title, but the words also allude to other things. White out is a metaphor for being unable to see clearly, the idea of something hidden or even lost or erased, as in whiting out words on a page. My goal is to make the book do the work of informing the title, not the other way around.

What's in a name?

Unlike titles, a character’s name is...[read on]

Visit Danielle Girard's website.

Writers Read: Danielle Girard (August 2018).

My Book, The Movie: Expose.

The Page 69 Test: Expose.

The Page 69 Test: White Out.

Q&A with Danielle Girard.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books about creative writing

Anthony Anaxagorou is an award-winning poet, fiction writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator. He has published several volumes of poems and essays, a spoken word EP and a collection of short stories whilst having also written for theatre.

His poetry has appeared on national television and radio as well as being published in various literary magazines and anthologies. He has judged several literary prizes with the most recent being the 2016 BBC Young Writers Award. Currently he works as the writer in residence in several London schools where he teaches poetry and creative writing while also guest lecturing at universities on the subject of poetry, race/identity politics and social inclusion.

In 2015 his poetry and fiction writing won him the Groucho Maverick Award and in 2016 he was shortlisted for the Hospital Club’s H-100 award for most influential people.

Anaxagorou's new book is How To Write It.

At the Guardian he tagged ten top books about creative writing, including:

Feel Free by Zadie Smith

These astute and topical essays dating from 2010 to 2017 demonstrate Smith’s forensic ability to navigate and unpack everything from Brexit to Justin Bieber. Dissecting high philosophical works then bringing the focus back on to her own practice as a fiction writer, her essay The I Who Is Not Me sees Smith extrapolate on how autobiography shapes novel writing, and elucidates her approach to thinking around British society’s tenuous and often binary perspectives on race, class and ethnicity.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Christiane M. Andrews's "Spindlefish and Stars," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Spindlefish and Stars by Christiane M. Andrews.

The entry begins:

Inspired by Greek mythology, Spindlefish and Stars tells the story of a girl named Clothilde who goes in search of her missing father. Taking the ticket of “half-paffage” he left for her, she journeys across the sea and finds herself trapped on small gray island inhabited only by ancient, creaking fisherman, a piggish cat, a moon-cheeked boy named Cary, and an apple-faced old woman who locks Clo away. Though Clo is desperate to escape the island and the old woman—who sits weaving an enormous gray tapestry day after day—she soon begins to realize that the island may be the only place she can truly help her father, as well as all those she left behind.

Many of the characters of Spindlefish and Stars are meant to appear as not exactly human. The islanders, especially, have attributes that suggest they’ve been crafted out of objects: the old woman’s face is “shriveled and shapeless as a dried apple”; others look like “misshapen lumps of clay” or have skin of parchment. Even Clo’s father, who is very much of the “real world,” should not seem realistic, as he has aged in an impossibly rapid way.

The island also has many fantastical elements, in particular the fishing grotto Clo chances upon, as well as the tapestry that she will eventually discover is not, in fact, gray at all. For this reason, I think Spindlefish and Stars would work best as an animated film, perhaps something like one of the stop-motion films by Henry Selick (or, just generally, the Laika studio), or as a film that...[read on]

Visit Christiane M. Andrews's website.

My Book, The Movie: Spindlefish and Stars.

--Marshal Zeringue