Book Review: Janet Roger’s Shamus Dust

Posted on by - Fiction Favorites & Awesome Authors

 

Excuse me while I teleport back to New York of April 2020, into this surreal mix of pandemic grief and lockdown amid a gently emergent spring, pink blossoms and fragrant air. My transport is experiencing delay. I’m still walking the streets of war-ravaged London, Christmas 1947, where the foundations of bombed-out buildings, under a light frosting of snow, suggest the outlines of ancient Roman ruins—the key to a puzzling series of murders.

Give me another sec. Almost here, still a bit there. Let me knock back the last tumbler of gin and crush out my red lipstick-stained cigarette. Unfiltered.

 

Janet Roger is to blame. Her debut novel, Shamus Dust, pulled me in and keeps running like a 40s black-and-white film noir on the brain.

 

I’m no fan of categories and hesitate to apply a label or “genre” to this work of art. Hard-boiled, gritty, and atmospheric, yes, but also poetic and literary. Roger confesses a Raymond Chandler influence, and the similarities are evident, but her prose isn’t as spare and tough when she’s in the mood to embellish. There are moments when this book is purely about the writing. While some reviewers say that it takes them out of the story, this lover of language found it right up her alley. More on that later.

The story is told from the point of view of an American private investigator called Newman, or Mr. Newman—a man who possibly lacks a first name. An insightful interpreter of human frailties and dark motives, Newman moves in a world of distinctive characters from every stratum of society. By the end of the book, the upper crust is looking seedier and far less heroic than the inhabitants of London’s underbelly. Roger has created a large cast of characters, gradually dropping tidbits to reveal their back stories and relationships. To mention a few: Councilman, archaeologist, entrepreneur, architect, lawyer, medical examiner, police commissioner, detective inspector, nurse, barber, haberdasher, pimp/blackmailer, various prostitutes, and a homeless shell-shocked WWII vet. Add several murders, a rotating field of suspects, a complex web of clues, and you’ve got one hell of a novel, with an ending you won’t see coming.

Shamus Dust is not a beach read or superficial entertainment to pick up when you’re mildly distracted. You’ll need to take this one slowly to savor the language, its sophistication, wit, irony, unique metaphors, and turns of phrase. You’ll need time to ponder the complexity of the plot. The author honors the reader’s intelligence, never overstates, poses one intriguing puzzle after another. She follows Newman through London without revealing what he’s up to in a scene until, several pages on, the reader is allowed to discover the meaning of the interaction. There are many of these “ah-ha” moments, opportunities to marvel at the cleverly interlacing intricacies.

The writing style. The word choices. Here are just a few.

Physical descriptions that instantly evoke an image:

“The kind of room where you’re meant to sit at night in a cravat and a quilted robe reading Kipling by firelight until the Madeira runs out.”

A woman with a “mouth that made the fall of dark-red hair look incidental.”

“Littomy’s nose was built for a profile on old coins.”

A man’s “hair shone in flat stripes across the dome of his head, where you could count them if conversation ran thin.”

At a party attended by the one percent, a young scion is “wearing black-tie as if he’d been weaned in it.”

Chandleresque:

A volatile thug looks like “he could hurt a man and enjoy the work.”

Witty dialogue:

The butler to a sloshed hostess asks Newman what he would like to drink. He replies, “Not a thing. Mrs. Willard will be taking cocktails for both of us.”

And how are these lines for poetry?:

“Night was crawling in a deep, wet hole.”

“She put a hand flat against my chest and her gaze dipped back in an ocean, then surfaced again, dripping its dark purple lights.”

“He looked wild-eyed around a room so hushed you could hear him blink away the tears.”

The book opens with one of my favorite, longer passages. Newman says he has never had trouble falling asleep and “sleeping like the dead” until now:

 “Lately, I’d lost the gift. As simple as that. Had reacquainted with nights when sleep stands in shrouds and shifts its weight in corner shadows, unreachable. You hear the rustle of its skirts, wait long hours on the small, brittle rumors of first light, and know that when finally they arrive they will be the sounds that fluting angels make. It was five-thirty, the ragged end of a white night, desolate as a platform before dawn when the milk train clatters through and a guard tolls the names of places you never were or ever hope to be. I was waiting on the fluting angels when the telephone rang.”

Wow. Any insomniac (namely, me) can relate.

Now, don’t you want to read something like this? I may teleport back there now.

Discovering America Travelogue (4) — February 2020

Posted on by - 2020, Travelogue

 

I started writing this travelogue a month ago. Now, as we shelter in to flatten the curve, the crowded restaurants and traffic jams mentioned in this post are from a past world. Let’s hope we’re all on the move again soon.

What do Charlotte, Atlanta, Naples, Savannah, and Washington D.C. have in common? They were all stops on our latest mileage consumption, February 13-25. Twelve days of great discoveries.

First leg, New York to Charlotte, N.C., mostly on I-81. Back roads are nice, but if you must take an interstate, I-81 is quite scenic, especially in the rolling hill country of West Virginia.

Charlotte is a sizable city with a small-town feel. The skyscrapers are beautifully lit at night.

We enjoyed dinner at Duckworth’s (I’ve never seen so many beer pulls and TV screens), where the waiter carded me when I ordered a glass of wine. Yes, you say, that’s because I don’t look a day over 20. (Has nothing to do with Duckworth’s carding policy.)

The next morning we had breakfast at the Red Eye Diner, where the motto is: “Life is Short. Eat Great Food and Have Fun.”

At the Red Eye, you’ll enjoy your comfort food surrounded by iconic photos and souvenirs of rock ’n roll legends.

Then, on to Atlanta, mostly on I-85, where entry into peach country is marked by the tall “Peachoid” water tower in Gaffney, South Carolina.

By late afternoon, we settled into our Airbnb apartment on Peachtree Street NE, then headed to the Cumberland Mall for dinner. It has tons of restaurants and is close to the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center, where we had tickets for the Atlanta Ballet. Got there, and oops, little did we know that 99% of Atlanta descends on the Mall for Saturday dinner. After circling like raptors, sheer luck got us a spot in the outer reaches of the enormous parking lot. Our trek began. A sea of shimmering cars, inquiries at half a dozen restaurants, all with an hour wait. Time to pull out our tried-and-true strategy. The trick is to spy a couple of empty seats at the bar and waltz past the crush of people at the door. We did this (with the hostess’s blessing) at Ted’s Montana Grill and had a delicious dinner. Seats at the bar can be just as comfortable as a table and far more interesting: You get to watch the bartenders at work.

The Atlanta Ballet was simply excellent. We saw “Elemental Brubeck” (delightful choreo by Lar Lubovitch, music by Dave Brubeck), “Tuplet” (unique, contemporary, surprising, and funny choreo by Alexander Ekman, music and sound by Mikael Karlsson), and “Sunrise Divine” (contemporary ballet Complexions-style by Dwight Rhoden, arrangement and original music by Dr. Kevin P. Johnson, awesome live gospel performance by the Spelman College Glee Club). And (reality check), at the Cobb Center (unlike Lincoln Center), there are no lines for the ladies’ room at intermission. I commend the architect.

The next day, Sunday, was rainy and cold (45-50˚), not the best for outdoor sightseeing. We started the morning with toasted bagel and coffee at Einstein Bros. Bagels (a favorite of ours when on the road!), and went to the Atlanta History Center. Really interesting. A refresher course on the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s abysmal opinions, 1870s to 1950s, which gutted the early Civil Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause. Here is a good historical summary of Court decisions on civil rights.

On the museum grounds, we visited the historic Swan House, maintained in the style of a wealthy Atlanta family in the 1930s. My favorite room was the kitchen.

Later that afternoon, my husband gave in to my repeated demands to see the Georgia Aquarium. Once we were there, he had to agree—fish are fine entertainment. They come in an amazing variety of shapes, sizes, and colors, and appear to be just as happy in those large tanks as they would be in their natural habitats, unlike caged and restless zoo animals that stir up your guilt feelings.

Here is the cool place where they swim on top and all around you.

The Aquarium is in Centennial Olympic Park where the 1996 Summer Olympic Games were held. By the time we finished with the fish it was dinnertime, so we walked across the park to Ruth Chris’s Steakhouse.

A chilly night, but the fog, obscuring parts of the buildings, was very beautiful.

 

The huge restaurant was half empty, but they still denied us a table. “Reservation only.” (Did we look that bad?) The real reason seemed to be the limited staff for a Sunday. So, again, we grabbed seats at the bar and had a delicious dinner. The best steak I’ve ever eaten. No kidding.

 

While packing the next morning, I narrowly escaped death from a hidden hazard in our Airbnb: a huge picture came crashing down. Only after the crash did we see that it had not been fastened to the wall but merely propped on a table.

I was so unnerved that I left my travel buddy behind on the bed—not my husband, my favorite memory-foam pillow. A hundred miles down I-75, I noticed the loss. At our next stop, Brooksville FL, I bought another pillow at a Bed Bath and Beyond, and then we had dinner at Carrabba’s Italian Grill. The food was good, but the service somewhat hilarious. The very young, eager-to-please waitperson was so intent on delivering her rehearsed lines that she was deaf to our needs. For example, “Take your time,” was her cheerful directive upon delivering the check as she swept away, with a smile, our coffee and pie, only half-consumed and still desired.

The next morning, we started the last leg to Naples, taking a scenic route. At Tampa, we took I-275 across the bay, picked up to-go lunch at a Publix, and went to Indian Rocks Beach to eat. Finally some warmth after the chilly temperatures in Charlotte and Atlanta! After lunch, I couldn’t resist a stop for ice cream at Tropical Ice Cream & Coffee, on Gulf Blvd. Highly recommended!

 

Then, down the peninsula on Routes 699 and 19, through the resort beach towns, to St. Petersburg and onto the amazing Sunshine Skyway Bridge, I-275. Spectacular. Later, I Wikipediaed the Skyway and learned of the disaster in 1980, when a freighter slammed into the southbound span of the old bridge, causing its collapse, killing 35. They used the northbound span until the new bridge opened in 1987, and kept a small section of the old bridge for a fishing pier.

Got to Naples and spent three gorgeous days of sunny weather, 80-85˚, much better than our trip in January 2019, when it was unpleasantly cold and rainy. Naples isn’t new to us, a place to visit family, to have good times, great food and conversation either at home or on the beach or by the pool. A new experience this trip was a pleasant boat ride on the Gordon River at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. Our boat captain/tour guide, who may have been 101 years old, was very knowledgeable about the mangroves and wildlife. I was only mildly nervous about his navigating abilities.

On Friday, Feb 21, we left Naples and drove to St. Augustine, arriving about 6 p.m., after construction and traffic jams around Orlando. Goodbye warm weather. Freezing and windy! We crossed the Tolomato River on the Francis and Mary Usina Bridge from St. Augustine to Vilano Beach. Do I look like I’m having fun?

As you might guess, our “walk” on the beach lasted two minutes. I’d like to visit the beautiful Vilano Beach again someday—when it’s warm.

We had a nice dinner at 180 Vilano Grill (seafood for me, pizza for Kevin). The food was delish, but we were seated in the last available booth, directly across from the bathroom door, which I kept closing when people left it open. Our tendency to choose crowded restaurants must be a sign of our instinct for finding the best ones!

That night, we stayed at the Hampton Inn & Suites in Vilano Beach, where dozens of ladies wearing pirate hats were having a convention, eating pizza and salad in the lobby and ballroom. Our room was very nice, but gave us an unpleasant surprise. As usual, I got out of bed in the middle of the night, not bothering to turn on the lights. Too blinding. Then, very strange. Was I dreaming? In the dark bathroom, I padded through a thin layer of water. There’d been a slow leak in a pipe under the sink. The bottom of my PJs got wet. Luckily, I had another pair.

The next day, Saturday Feb 22, we left St. Augustine and drove north on Route 1, a nice wide parkway (part of the “Dixie Highway”) Near Jacksonville, we took I-295 over the St. Johns River on another impressive cable bridge, the Dames Point Bridge (officially the Napoleon Bonaparte Broward Bridge).

About 2 o’clock we stopped in Savannah GA for lunch. The historic district was hopping with live music and people shamelessly imbibing on the streets, already half drunk. Then it dawned on us, oh, yeah, this is the weekend before Mardi Gras (either that, or Savannah is a 24/7 party town). Drinking and carousing didn’t appeal to us, so we got in line for a table at Vinny Van Go-Go’s Pizza. Yes, another crowded restaurant. The pizza was pretty good. Cash only! Not many places like that are still around. Luckily, we had the cash, and not much was needed. Conveniently next door was a fabulous ice cream place, Savannah’s Candy Kitchen. As you might guess, I was not about to resist.

Thus refreshed, we drove to our next stop, Fayetteville NC, for an overnight rest before completing the drive to Washington D.C. The next day on I-95, there was an accident near Richmond VA, and the Google lady told us to take exit 104 to US 301. A lovely detour. We enjoyed this nice little highway with cows and farms and hills before getting into D.C., late afternoon. Checked into the Washington Court Hotel on New Jersey Avenue. Comfortable and very convenient to the Mall. After a stroll at sunset, we had a lovely dinner at the bistro in the hotel.

Monday February 24, legislators were back at work after their Presidents’ Week break. We went to Kirstin Gillibrand’s office in the Russell Senate Office building, and an intern gave us passes to the House and Senate Galleries. The Russell building, like all the government buildings we visited, is fitted with opulent amounts of marble, hallways as wide as two-lane highways, and ceilings 20 feet above our heads. Grand and beautiful, with its implicit statement of lofty purpose, but undoubtedly a fortune in tax dollars to heat, cool, and maintain.

Our next stop was Congress, where nothing was happening. We saw the empty House chamber and decided to return at 3 p.m., when the Senate would be in session. We walked past the U.S. Supreme Court, where oral argument was underway in the case of U.S. Forest Service and Atlantic Coast Pipeline LLC v Cowpasture River Preservation Assn. At stake in this case (read here) is a permit for a right-of-way for a natural gas pipeline to tunnel 600 feet beneath the Appalachian Trail. Outside the Court were a few news reporters, demonstrators opposed to the pipeline, and a blocks-long line to get inside for a three-minute look at oral argument.

We declined the opportunity to spend hours in that line, instead going next door to the Library of Congress, resplendent with beautiful art and inspirational quotes on the walls, ceilings, lunettes. Here is one of the paintings of the ideals (all female, of course) Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge, and Philosophy.

Another favorite of mine is the mural panel “Courage” by artist George Willoughby Maynard, not to be mistaken as COVERAGE, spelled with a typo. I suppose our desire to look erudite is the driving motivation behind adherence to the ancient Roman convention of using V’s instead of U’s.

The Library houses several interesting exhibits. We spent the most time in Exploring the Early Americas (read: Invading the Early Americas), with its interactive maps of indigenous peoples dealing with and defending against self-entitled Europeans.

Here is the Gutenberg Bible, the first book printed from movable metal type in 1455.

We had lunch in the spacious 6th floor cafeteria in the James Madison Memorial Building. Tons of food choices, a wall of windows on the city, and swarms of government employees (giving me flashbacks of my lunch breaks in years gone by). We returned to the Supreme Court (oral argument now over), and sat in the courtroom, listening to an energetic former federal law clerk, who finished her lecture about the Court with a punchline: The highest court in the land is not the one we were sitting in but the one directly above us on a higher floor—a basketball court for the Justices and their staffs. Yours Truly, Esq., did not learn much of anything new from the lecture, but my curiosity was satisfied, seeing the space where important cases are heard. The magnificence of the courtroom does not outclass the beautiful New York appellate courts where I have argued and worked, the First and Second Department Appellate Divisions, respectively.

We were back on Capitol Hill at 2:30, hopefully in time for the pledge of allegiance and opening prayer at 3:00, but security took too long. When we tiptoed into the Senate gallery (balcony) at about 3:20, Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) was standing at the podium, facing the empty chamber, reading a speech. We were mystified. Was this a rehearsal of some kind? All 100 seats were empty, each desk with a little white booklet in the middle. Behind Senator Baldwin sat the presiding officer (not VP Pence or President Pro Tempore Grassley but a designee). At the long desk in front of her sat a few officials (e.g. legislative clerk and secretary), and on the carpeted steps on the sides sat a dozen or more 16-year-old pages, eager for something to do. Occasionally, one would jump up and deliver a glass of water to the presiding officer, who seemed to need four or five cupsful during the speech. It was quite long.

Soon enough, it became clear that the speech was a relic of the past. I peeked over the shoulder of the woman sitting next to me, who was following along in one of those little white booklets. (How did we miss getting one of those?) It was President Washington’s Farewell Address from 1796. Later, I learned of the yearly Senate tradition, dating back to 1888, for a different Senator to deliver the Address during the week of Washington’s birthday. Perhaps it’s time to reconsider this tradition? We could save on printing costs for all those wasted little booklets. The Senators aren’t interested.

To give you a flavor, here is the opening paragraph-long sentence of Washington’s speech:

“The period for a new election of a citizen to administer the executive government of the United States being not far distant, and the time actually arrived when your thoughts must be employed in designating the person who is to be clothed with that important trust, it appears to me proper, especially as it may conduce to a more distinct expression of the public voice, that I should now apprise you of the resolution I have formed, to decline being considered among the number of those out of whom a choice is to be made.”

Translation: “I’m not running for a third term.”

Washington’s advice, designed to inspire and guide future generations (i.e. us), is to beware the forces of geographical sectionalism, political factionalism, and foreign influence as potentially undermining our national interest, our independence, and republican form of government. Here is Washington’s Farewell Address, just in case you are dying to read it.

Still awake when the speech ended, we stuck around for another hour and saw several senators speak for about 10 minutes each. One by one, they addressed an empty chamber, as a stenographer stood nearby, typing on a steno machine hanging from her neck. Sen. McConnell recognized the career of retired Navy Adm. Joseph Maguire whose service as acting Director of National Intelligence “concluded last week” (read: he was replaced); Sen. Casey honored three people from Pennsylvania for Black History Month; Sen. Cornyn spoke in support of bills to prohibit abortions after 20 weeks and to protect babies born alive during late-term abortions; and Sen. Boozman spoke in support of a bill to improve delivery of veterans’ health care, then paid tribute to the author of True Grit, Charles Portis, who had just died in his home state of Arkansas. At the outset of each speech, the presiding officer granted, “without objection,” the senator’s request, stated differently by each, that “the quorum call be rescinded” or “be dispensed with” or “be vitiated.”

This experience disabused me of my impression that a quorum of senators is present in the chamber during speeches like this. If you watch Senate proceedings on TV, it’s not so obvious that no one is in the room. At about quarter after five we had to leave, not knowing that (found out later) the session went on until almost 8 p.m. You can watch the entire five hours here on CSpan.

We met our nephew at Reren Lamen & Bar for delicious Asian fusion cuisine and good conversation. The wall with the big green dragon is great background for selfies. The next morning was rainy and cold and we were all vacationed out. We abandoned our tentative plans for more touring and hit the road home.

A final, very important note: With all those hours in the car, audiobooks are essential. We listened to two. On the way to Florida, it was The Accident by Chris Pavone, about an anonymous manuscript that contains a dark secret about a powerful mogul and the various people who get murdered for trying to publish or profit from it. Entertaining for a car trip, but I found Pavone’s first novel, The Expats, a better thriller. On the way home we listened to the classic, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. I highly recommend this audiobook, read by John Slattery, who brings the characters alive with his excellent narration.

Yes, this has been a long blog post, something to fill up the stay-at-home-itis. Congratulations are due anyone reading this to the end. Email me for your free prize, an e-book of your choice!

Let’s hope we’ll all be traveling and dining out again soon. Stay safe and healthy.

 

The Contest: Book Review and Conversation with Kate Robinson

Posted on by - Fiction Favorites & Awesome Authors, Literary fiction

I recently made an exciting discovery I’d like to share with you, a story collection by authors new to me, Joe DiBuduo and Kate Robinson.

 

The Contest and Other Stories is exceptional in every respect: concept, writing quality, and pure entertainment value. The nineteen stories in this volume could stand alone as an exquisite collection of short fiction, but the authors have added so much more, framing them, uniquely and imaginatively, in the context of an engaging novella about a struggling art magazine in the 1960s. The magazine holds a monthly short fiction contest, challenging writers to submit tales inspired by classic oil paintings. The nineteen winners of the contest, with the artworks that inspired them, alternate with chapters of the novella.

The short stories run the spectrum from the delightful and fanciful to the macabre and horrific. A few of my favorites: A bone-chilling alternate history of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo’s demise while exploring Santa Catalina Island in 1542. A look inside the mind of a hallucinating, mad artist, Vincent Van Gogh, negotiating with his muse. A seemingly sweet, romantic nineteenth century tale aboard a passenger ship that surprisingly creeps into a nightmare on the power of memory. A slowly unfolding mystery about the significance of an artifact from the time of Napoleon. A heartwarming paranormal story of reincarnation and transformation, from dead-of-winter tragedy to a sunny future of hope and life.

After each story, I thoroughly enjoyed the ensuing chapter of the novella, eager to learn what would befall the art magazine and its engaging cast of characters, eager to learn, after that, which artwork the editors would choose for the contest and to read the next “contest winner,” assured that it would be something entirely new and outstanding. The novella itself ends in a surprising twist. In short, this was a page-turner, and even better than that, a testament to the value and necessity of art and creativity.

The Contest is for anyone who loves great storytelling, a unique and different reading experience, and thought-provoking themes that honor your intelligence and spur your imagination. I’m thrilled that Kate Robinson, one half of the writing team, has graciously agreed to answer my burning questions about this unique, creative project.

Welcome to VBlog, Kate! Tell us a little about your background and that of your co-author Joe DiBuduo.

We like to say that Joe has the vivid imagination and I have the word-whacking toolbox, as stated in the book bio. Of course, in reality we both have the imaginative and editorial sides of author mind, though we often see things differently. That presents some challenges in collaboration, but it also brings many strengths—the ability to see characters and plots from various angles is helpful.

Joe and Kate

I began writing poetry in childhood and didn’t become interested in writing fiction until my forties, and my initial immersion in poetry fostered a lyrical aspect to my prose, or so I’m told. Joe began writing fiction in his sixties and later adopted poetry into his daily writing routine after he had a good feel for the mechanics of story. He’s developed a style he calls “poetic flash fiction”—he’s partial to telling stories within the confines of many of his poems.

I’m more an anything goes type of writer—I’m game for whatever my subconscious channels at any particular time, and my body of work is smaller than Joe’s but more diverse in that I experiment with many different styles.

How did you and Joe develop the concept for The Contest?

Joe is an artist who works in many media—glasswork, sculpture, and painting. So he has a natural bent for art and a strong interest in art history. He has a great love of coffee table art books and visiting art galleries and museums, and his walls at home are filled with paintings and his front yard is filled with his massive sculptures.

As Joe was learning to write fiction, he chose to use artwork as story prompts. While he worked with these stories inspired by paintings, he envisioned a connected collection of historical stories linked with a more contemporary story about a young man struggling to find his way in the world. And so, The Contest and Other Stories was born.

When I began crafting story, I used my dream journal entries rather than visual art as prompts.

I’m also a museum aficionado, but I lean more toward appreciation of the historical and anthropological aspects of museum collections. I have a BA in Anthropology with emphasis in Museum Studies and a big interest in indigenous peoples’ cultural stories and in their modern fiction.

So we each brought our unique interests and talents into this quirky collection of stories.

Tell us a little about how your collaboration worked.

Joe began presenting the artwork prompted stories to the critique group we both belonged to in the early ‘00s. I felt these stories were his best work at the time (and I still feel that’s true today). I was thoroughly intrigued with the stories and greatly enjoyed critiquing them. Eventually, Joe had a rough draft consisting of the connecting novella and nearly three dozen stories in various stages of completion. He felt bogged down with the enormity of fleshing out the incomplete stories and paring the collection down to a manageable size, and knowing I loved the stories, he invited me to share his vision as a co-editor and co-author. By this time (early 2011), he still lived in north-central Arizona and I had landed in California after a year of working on a Master’s degree in Wales. So the collaboration became one done via lots and lots of emails forwarded back and forth over the next several years.

In retrospect, Joe had the initial vision and the initial go at writing the collection draft, and I followed up with my two cents. In some cases, I simply line edited nearly finished stories, and in other cases, I did substantial research and writing to complete them. I also designed the book interior and did some marketing in the form of submitting stories to journals and anthologies to drum up interest in the collection. We had a half-dozen stories published in advance of the book.

Each story in this collection is unique. Do you have particular favorites?

I’m partial to the stories in which the artists appear, especially those in the context of magical realism or alternate history—or both. “Night Café” is my personal favorite. “Masterpiece” and “A Life in Flowers” are two others I enjoy reading time and time again.

Joe is also particularly proud of “Night Café” because he’s particularly fond of the work of Vincent van Gogh, and because the story won a quarterly New Short Fiction Award at a music website, Jerry Jazz Musician, in 2012.

Kate, thank you for this insight into your collaboration!

Dear Short Story Lovers,

I highly recommend The Contest! Get it here.

Stay tuned for more short story news, coming your way soon! I have three new stories, to be published this year in a magazine and anthologies. And…wish me luck. My latest collection, Your Pick: Selected Stories, is currently a finalist for the 2019 Montaigne Medal. The award, named for French philosopher Michel de Montaigne, is for “the most thought-provoking books. . .that either illuminate, progress, or redirect thought.”

Your Pick is a 5-star Readers’ Favorite and “recommended without reservation” by Book Viral.

The Blue: Book Review and Conversation with Nancy Bilyeau

Posted on by - Fiction Favorites & Awesome Authors

For this installment of Fiction Favorites and Awesome Authors, I welcome author Nancy Bilyeau to VBlog.

Nancy’s recent release, The Blue, is a novel of suspense set in the rivalrous art and porcelain worlds of 18th century Europe. The protagonist, Genevieve Planché, is an English-born descendant of Huguenot refugees, a young artist who resorts to extreme measures in her quest to follow her dream. Her journey follows an unpredictable path of intrigue, danger, crime, and romance. The characters we meet along the way have their own personal agendas, whether political, commercial, scientific, artistic, or romantic.

“We see blue everywhere in the natural world, in the sky and the sea and the lakes…but what do we really see? It’s ephemeral. A reflection of something else.” So explains the chemist who feverishly works to capture the most desirable shade of blue and successfully apply it to the decoration of porcelain. In the midst of the Seven Years’ War, England and France are in a race to develop this elusive formula for their lucrative porcelain industries.

The Blue is meticulously researched, bursting with colorful details that draw you into the story, from the wild boar hairs in Genevieve’s paint brushes to the dangers of mining cobalt ore deep in the mountains of Saxony. In the month since its release, much has been written about The Blue (see blog tour links, below). It was the Goodreads’ Recommended Choice for Historical Novel in December 2018 and a BookBub Editors’ Choice for New Releases.

No spoilers here! I will simply say that if you enjoy historical fiction, crime and suspense, romance, plot twists, interesting characters, or just a great story, The Blue is for you! And now, to give us some fascinating details behind the scenes, Nancy has graciously agreed to answer some of my burning questions.

Welcome to VBlog Nancy! I understand that you drew on your own Huguenot background in writing The Blue and named a character, Pierre Billiou, after an ancestor. Tell us a bit about your ancestry and the part it played in your inspiration for this work.

I named a character, Pierre Billiou, after my own ancestor, though it is not his life I am describing. I wanted to pay homage to my Huguenot background by using his name. The Pierre in my novel fled France for England as a young child after Louis XIV took action against the Protestants in his kingdom in 1685—it’s called the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Basically, the King was canceling the measures of tolerance for Protestants. He wanted France to be One King, One Faith. Pierre and his family settled in Spitalfields, in London. My book takes place in England and France, so I needed to make these changes.

Now the real Pierre Billiou, not the one in my book but the one I am descended from, left Europe even earlier. France was not too welcoming to Protestants even before Louis XIV took such an action, and there were a great many Huguenot immigrants coming to America. They gathered in New York, South Carolina, and Virginia.  Pierre immigrated to New Amsterdam (now New York City) in 1661. One of his children was born on the boat crossing the Atlantic—I am actually descended from that son. I have two kids, and I can’t imagine giving birth on a boat crossing the Atlantic in the 1660s! I’m very curious about what life was like in all ways for him. What I know is that he built a stone house on Staten Island—it’s still standing today and is on the National Register—and he was involved in colonial government. But when the English sailed into the harbor, they took over. Changed the name of the city and demoted the Dutch and the Huguenots who were running things.

I was able to research Huguenot lives, beliefs, and values—which I was already interested in—while working on this novel, which gave it an extra level for me.

Some writers begin with the creation of character, letting the characters guide them to the story, other writers begin with the creation of plot. How would you describe your writing process for this novel?

I didn’t come up with my main character, Genevieve Planché, and then create a story for her. I came up with the idea of a spy story set in the porcelain world of the 18th century and then I figured out some specifics that led me to the characters. First, where is the story going to take place? I decided to make it about the rivalry between France and England that was so intense during the entire century (and longer!), extending into the porcelain business, so the story would begin in England. What kind of spy did I want to write about? Once I read that Huguenots and their creativity and artistry were essential in several English porcelain factories, Genevieve took shape in my mind. As for Sir Gabriel Courtenay, the “master spy,” he is based on research I did about espionage of the time—can’t say more because of spoilers. But espionage during this time is fascinating—and largely undiscovered country to readers today. I find with historical fiction you can’t come up with fully developed characters until you know your period well, otherwise they might not be grounded in reality. For me to say, I’ll write a brilliant police detective in the 1750s, pretty quickly I would run into the fact that the Bow Street Runners, the forerunners of the British police force, were in very early stages then. You have to avoid a modern mindset in character creation.

The Blue has wonderful passages about the creation and importance of art, and you’ve dedicated the novel to your father, “who loved art so very much.” Tell us about the place of art in your life.

My father from a young age loved art and wanted to paint. He came from the opposite of an artistic family. My grandfather moved his family from Tennessee to Detroit, Michigan, in desperation for work during the Depression. He got a job at Henry Ford that he was proud of. He thought the fact that my father wanted to be an artist meant he wasn’t manly and he was abusive about it. My father enlisted in the US Navy in World War II in its final months as soon as he turned 18. When he returned to Detroit, he went to art school on the GI Bill. He worked as a commercial artist in Illinois and Michigan to support his family, but he had an art studio in our basement and I have many memories of his painting watercolor landscapes down there. He sold his watercolors at art fairs, principally the Ann Arbor Art Fair, and a few Midwest galleries. I used to help out during the Ann Arbor Art Fair; he had a booth on Main Street. Those were long days! But it was a happy exhaustion. So for me, art was the heart and soul of my father, and I was part of that through watching him and helping him a bit. I understood that it was a calling for him that he almost couldn’t control. He always wanted to create. I absorbed the struggle to succeed as an artist and the intense competition and classism. A Michigan factory worker’s son is not going to have an easy path into the art world.

I am not an artist myself, but I am an avid museum goer; I love to look at great art.

In reading the novel, I felt Genevieve’s pain and frustration at the roadblocks to her aspirations as an artist. In your research of 18th century female artists, did the story of any single artist serve as inspiration for your character Genevieve?

I probably drew on some of my own frustration over roadblocks in success as a writer as well as watching my father struggle. He wanted to be acknowledged as a fine artist but he wasn’t treated as one or reviewed as one in his lifetime. His work did sell fairly well, and is still selling on eBay. I read an interesting analysis of his technique online that went with one of these paintings that I think would have made him happy.

I researched a few women artists who had to overcome the disapproval of their being artists in the 18th century because of their gender.  I found the life of  Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun enlightening in several ways. She was successful in the late 18th century and is famous for her portraits of Marie Antoinette. When she was in her teen years, she was painting professionally in France and her studio was actually seized for her practicing without a license! After that she married a painter and he helped her; that was a way for women to surmount the obstacles. She made use of family connections too. Once Marie Antoinette decided to give her commissions, she was obviously set. But what is interesting is that I went to an exhibit of Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and while admiring her body of work I thought some of the faces lacked expressiveness. Here’s the problem: In the 18th century, to be a great artist you needed talent and drive but you also had to have intense training. In my novel, Genevieve realizes she needs to work as an apprentice; she is clear-eyed about the technique she must master to reach a desired level. Her inability to find someone to teach her is what sets her on a certain risky path.

Masterfully woven into your story of riveting suspense are several thematic elements relevant to mid-18th century Europe, including political intrigue, industry and the economy, the roles of gender and social class, and the interplay of art and science. Did you set out to incorporate all these elements into your story?

I didn’t explicitly do that, no. But by being drawn to spying and politics and art and science when they were at this exciting juncture in the 18th century, these other issues naturally come out of that. And I am always drawn to social class in my novels, I think. After four books, I clearly can’t stay away!

I’m very heartened by the readers who like the fact that my novel delves into these areas. I’ve been criticized for it in the past. One industry professional said, “You’d have a much easier time if you’d write romances about dukes and pirates.”

Well, Nancy, I’d say that The Blue has far more to give than a romance about dukes and pirates! I so enjoyed it and look forward to reading whatever you have in store for us next.

I’m with Nancy and writer friends at Mystery Writers of America, NY chapter, holiday party

Dear Readers,

Historical Fiction Virtual Blog Tours is hosting a Giveaway of The Blue. Click here to enter by January 18. Visit the blogs on the tour schedule, listed below.

Nancy is also the author of three, very well-received novels in a Tudor mystery series, The Crown, The Chalice, and The Tapestry. Discover all her books on Goodreads and Amazon.

Blog Tour Schedule

Wednesday, January 9
Review at A Bookish Affair

Thursday, January 10
Review at 100 Pages a Day

Friday, January 11
Review at Passages to the Past

Saturday, January 12
Interview at Passages to the Past

Sunday, January 13
Interview at V.S. Kemanis

Monday, January 14
Review at Let Them Read Books

Tuesday, January 15
Review at Historical Fiction with Spirit

Wednesday, January 16
Excerpt at Umut Reviews

Thursday, January 17
Review at Reading the Past

Friday, January 18
Review at Tar Heel Reader

Legal Eagles, Attorneys Writing Fiction (4): Kevin Egan

Posted on by - Book review, Legal Eagles

Midnight by Kevin Egan

I’m pleased to welcome author Kevin Egan to VBlog for this installment of Legal Eagles. I first met Kevin a few years ago at a meeting of the Mystery Writers of America, New York chapter. We soon discovered a few things we have in common. Not only are we attorneys who write crime fiction, we also have years of experience working for New York courts and judges. We know what it’s like to juggle a demanding legal career with a passion for fiction writing, squeezing the current work-in-progress into the cracks at either end of the workday and on weekends.

In our careers, we’ve both held positions as judicial law clerks. Don’t be fooled by the word “clerk.” This position is held by an attorney who works closely with a judge in a confidential capacity. While the degree of authority delegated to the law clerk varies from judge to judge, many law clerks exert considerable influence over the court’s decisions.

When Kevin explained the premise for his novel Midnight, I had to read it! The unique plot is built around the relationship between a law clerk and his judge in a setting I know very well, the courthouses in lower Manhattan. Unlike many crime novels, Midnight opens not with a murder but with the judge’s death from natural causes, which serves as the catalyst for a series of progressively serious crimes.

You won’t anticipate the many twists and turns in the domino spiral, set in motion by the slowly unfolding secrets of the characters and their conflicting motivations. Tom, the judge’s law clerk, is in debt to a loan shark and feels no serious ethical qualms in rewriting the judge’s opinions to buy his way out of trouble. Carol, the judge’s secretary, carries the financial and emotional weight of caring for her son and her mother while harboring secrets of past sexual affairs. A couple of court officers are anxiously awaiting the judge’s decision in a lawsuit that could abolish their overtime pay. Add to these characters the loan shark’s collection thug, a corrupt union boss, and a brutal mobster, and the resulting web of criminal intrigue spins out of control.

Fans of noir and legal thriller will thoroughly enjoy this compulsively readable tale of desperation and consequence. Legal details are deftly woven into the plot in a way that is easily understood without sacrificing accuracy. Midnight was a Kirkus Best Book of 2013 and is the first of three novels to feature the character Foxx, one of the court officers in the tale. You bet, I’ve put the next two novels on my “to-read” list! They are The Missing Piece (2015), and A Shattered Circle (2017), which received the coveted starred review from Publishers Weekly.

Welcome to VBlog, Kevin! I really enjoyed Midnight. How did you come up with your idea for this novel?

A law clerk and confidential secretary—the standard judicial staff in New York state courts—are personal appointments, which gives the judge free rein to hire and fire without an agency like the EEOC stepping in. However, if a judge dies or retires mid-term, an actual law—Judiciary Law § 36—determines the employment fate of the judge’s staff. It may be an oversimplification, but in dramatic terms, if the judge dies or retires, the staff keep their jobs until the end of that calendar year. So Midnight starts with a premise—what is the worst day of the year for a judge to die? Answer: New Year’s Eve. Tom and Carol’s plan to save their jobs for another year is simple enough: remove the judge’s body from chambers, place him in his bed in his apartment, then begin to “worry” about his failure to return to work until mid-day on January 2. But the plan turns out to be anything but simple.

Do you tend to write an outline first or just take the idea and run with it?

I have published 8 novels, and 7 of them have been written in the “take the idea and run with it” method. The lone exception is Midnight. Midnight first appeared as a short story in the January 2010 issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. By that point, I was already working on expanding the premise into a novel. It was the only time I created a full outline, which I then followed with only minor deviations. The structure was rigid. It was to cover a period of four days, from December 31 to January 3. Each day presented a problem that Tom and Carol seemingly overcame by nightfall, only to have a more serious problem arise the next day.

Tell us a bit about works by K.J. Egan and Conor Daly. What went into your decision to use pseudonyms? Do you have any advice for writers on this subject?

My first book was a science fiction novel called The Perseus Breed. I started writing a sequel, but then switched to writing what would become a three-book golf mystery series. My agent insisted that I needed a pen name for the mysteries because, in her words, bookstores don’t want the same author on different shelves. And so Conor Daly was born. Having a pen name seemed problematic at the time, though I can’t recall any specifics other than a reader who persisted in writing letters to me as Conan Doyle.

Twelve years intervened between the last Conor Daly book and Where It Lies. By then, I decided to nudge my pen name closer to my real name. There also was a strategy. Since Where It Lies featured a first-person female narrator, I wanted a gender-neutral name on the cover. Using my initials filled that bill.

As for advice, I’ve come to believe that a pen name is a necessary evil. Publishers are much less patient with poor sales, and sales figures now hang onto an author like Jacob Marley’s chains. A pen name can offer a fresh start.

What’s next for you? Is another novel in the works?

I also write short stories. “The Movie Lover,” appearing in the July/August issue of AHMM will be my 26th published short story. I started this year on a short story tear, writing three in the month of January. As for novels, remember that science fiction novel I put down to become Conor Daly? I’ve returned to it.

Thank you for joining me on VBlog, Kevin!

Dear Reader, do you love legal thrillers? Pick up one of Kevin Egan’s books! Also, check out the other entries in the Legal Eagles series on VBlog to learn more about these attorneys who write crime fiction: Manuel Ramos, Allison Leotta, Allen Eskens, Adam Mitzner, Jerri Blair, Brian Clary, and of course, Yours Truly.

The Summer Before the War: Book Review and Conversation with Helen Simonson

Posted on by - Book review, Fiction Favorites & Awesome Authors

For this installment of Fiction Favorites and Awesome Authors I share with you an outstanding read by the bestselling author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Helen Simonson.

Her second novel, The Summer Before the War, set in the idyllic English town of Rye in 1914, is beautifully written and meticulously researched. Much of the tale is a social comedy of manners, an insightful, if subtle, exploration of gender and class, full of wit, humorous dialogue, and masterful characterization. The traditions and biases of the upper middle-class are juxtaposed tellingly against those of the servant classes, Gypsies, a spinster schoolteacher, and impoverished war refugees from Belgium.

In 1914, gender equality is advancing in baby steps. Simonson aptly illustrates the status of women with several well-drawn characters, most prominently Agatha Kent and Beatrice Nash. The indomitable Agatha, married to a well-respected civil servant, is one of two women on the local school board. She takes the revolutionary step of seeking the board’s approval to hire a woman, Beatrice Nash, as Latin instructor. Beatrice is an independent woman in her early twenties, nearly penniless after her father’s death, unable to make ends meet on a meager inheritance controlled by patronizing trustees. The teacher position is bread and butter to Beatrice, but this reality clashes with Agatha’s tenuous position in recommending her. Agatha warns, “let’s not mention any such awkward necessity” as money when seeking board approval—better to emphasize “teaching as a service rather than a profession.”

Another “awkward” subject is Beatrice’s desire to become a published writer. Agatha tells her to keep this yearning under wraps because it would be “an absolute disaster for a lady in your position to earn a reputation as a bohemian.” Beatrice has no trouble following this advice the first time she’s introduced to Mr. Tillingham, a renowned novelist in Agatha’s social circle. When the subject of female writers comes up, the arrogant and pompous author says he has received “several slightly hysterical requests to read such charming manuscripts” and “would rather cut off my right hand” than read them. He gives the manuscripts to his secretary “to compose her own diplomatic replies and to consign the offending pages to the kitchen stove.” Later on, a publisher sends Beatrice a condescending missive, rejecting her proposal to publish an analysis of her father’s work. Ironically, the publisher has decided to commission Mr. Tillingham for the project!

Agatha is childless but is close to her two nephews, Hugh Grange, a young surgeon, and Daniel Bookham, a poet. Growing up, the cousins spent summers and school holidays in the Kent household. Their chosen professions foreshadow later events during the war. In these characters, we see the personal turmoil wrought by social convention and judgment: in Daniel’s case, discrimination against homosexuality, and in both characters, the pressure to forge marital unions based on class and status rather than love and compatibility. The relationships between the cousins and with their Aunt Agatha are the highlights of the novel, believable and emotionally compelling.

In the first part of the novel, the townspeople live in polite denial of impending war, as hints and irony foreshadow tragic events on the horizon. When spoken of, the war is romanticized as a great adventure. The son of a nobleman joins the Royal Flying Corps because he doesn’t want to enlist in “an ordinary war” and thinks that flying airplanes is “damned good fun!” To complete his image, he shops at Burberry’s because “they do a very good aviator helmet with goggles.” Marriageable young women launch a recruitment brigade, shaming any reluctant young man into enlisting by handing him a white feather (symbol of cowardice), along with a subtle bit of sexual bribery: no offer of marriage will be accepted unless the man is marching off to war. For a proper sendoff, the town hosts a parade with a brass band, displays “model trenches” on the fairgrounds, and tops it off with a grand ball.

The last part of the novel takes us to the front, into the real trenches and a battleground hospital. A strength of the narrative lies in the gradual loss of innocence of the main characters, the contrast between the naivety of their grandiose expressions of patriotism and the tragic reality they ultimately experience. The novel also touches on divided loyalties of family and nationality when the German husband of a British woman is called home for military service. This is an intriguing theme that is so wonderfully explored in William Burton McCormick’s book, Lenin’s Harem, which I reviewed here on VBlog.

Fans of historical fiction are sure to love Simonson’s sweeping novel full of colorful characters, scintillating dialogue, and insightful exploration of relationships during an era of great social change. In this video [click here], the author aptly sums up the major theme: the book is ultimately about “what you think is important to build in your lives, what remains when everything is falling apart, and more specifically, what is destroyed by war and what is burnished in the fire.”

And now, I welcome Helen Simonson to VBlog. Thank you for joining me, Helen! I loved The Summer Before the War, and Major Pettigrew is now on my ‘to-read’ list.

From a writer’s perspective, I have a few questions I’m dying to ask you, especially because our writing processes are apparently so different. In your videotaped presentation, you mentioned, “I don’t write what I know—I write to ask questions and explore them and hope to find some answers for myself.” The historical setting for your characters required painstaking research, yet an intuitive knowledge of human nature and social interaction underlies your characterizations. Do you feel that you write what you “know” on an emotional or personal level?

I try to write about the characters in my head and they seem to be real people to me.  What is funny is that on an emotional level I can see that I am using my characters to work out things that puzzle me about the world and about how we treat each other. Social comedy as moral philosophy?  I do also have great fun slipping in small personal details—like my grandfather’s name or a house I’d like to own in Sussex—but I am not writing autobiographically. I think books are wonderful because they allow us to travel to places we cannot go.  Writing a book is no different; every page is a new adventure for me.

You also mentioned that you don’t write an outline of the story first but create the characters and let them lead you where they want to go. Did you have a broad sense of the plot when you started out, or was this story a complete adventure of discovery along the way?

Simply following the characters around is a frightening way to write a work as long as a novel.  But now I’m in the midst of a third novel I have no idea where I’m going—again!  With The Summer Before the War, I knew World War I was coming but I did not know how we were going to go there.  It was a great relief to realize my surgeon, Hugh, would go and I could simply follow him to the hospitals and trenches of the Western Front.  I don’t recommend my way of writing but it forces one to noodle about, leaving room for literary themes to arise and be explored.  If I had a plot outline I’m afraid I might rush along too fast.

I wonder if you can place yourself in Beatrice’s shoes and imagine what it might have been like to face the prejudice against female writers, as depicted by the character Mr. Tillingham and the publisher that rejected her project. Given your evident talent and love of writing, do you think you would have been daunted in such an environment or would have persevered?

The more I wrote about Beatrice the more I wondered if we have really come as far as we thought in terms of women being free and equal.  The pay gap and the #metoo movement suggest we are still fighting for basic respect.  I would have been daunted then and I’m still daunted now.  No writer I know has escaped rejection, and since writing is an act of great vulnerability it can be very painful.  It was not hard to imagine Beatrice’s hurt.  Just the term ‘female writer’ carries its own put-down.  I was thrilled to discover, in taking intermediate French conversation lessons recently, that the French word for writer doesn’t carry a pronoun.  There is no ‘le’ or ‘la’ so in French I am fully a writer—Je suis écrivain.  It feels good!

And it feels good to read your work! Thank you for this insight into your writing, Helen. We look forward to your next novel!

White Plains: Book Review and Conversation with Author David Hicks

Posted on by - Book review, Fiction Favorites & Awesome Authors, Literary fiction

“When it comes right down to it, I’ve decided, almost every relationship involves two people with intense insecurities masked by whatever behavior it takes to keep those insecurities from being exposed, while at the same time revealing their equally desperate need to have them exposed, even embraced.” – from White Plains

White Plains by David HicksI’m pleased to welcome David Hicks to VBlog for this installment of Fiction Favorites & Awesome Authors. His debut novel White Plains is the story of a young man’s search for himself. We first meet the protagonist, Flynn Hawkins, when he’s twenty-two, a graduate student and teaching assistant in the English department of a fictional New York college. In the final chapter, we see Flynn at age forty, just beginning to internalize some valuable life lessons. He has taken a big step closer to self-knowledge, openness, and honesty with himself and others, but he still has a distance to travel.

Flynn’s journey is told in a series of connected stories from different viewpoints. As a fan and writer of short fiction, I relished each chapter as a standalone piece of great writing. Many of the chapters were previously published in literary journals. Most are told from Flynn’s viewpoint, in first person or third person, and several others are told by the people in Flynn’s life: a professor, a close male friend, a high school coach, Flynn’s sister, wife, son, and daughter. This technique renders the most fully-drawn character I’ve seen anywhere.

The stark contrast between Flynn’s perception of himself and how others see him is a variation on a theme that intrigues me and is woven into my courtroom fiction: what is truth or reality but a set of widely varying, subjective points of view? At a criminal trial, ten witnesses will describe the same event ten ways, often inconsistently. In the context of personal relationships, the inability to appreciate the impact of one’s behavior on others can be self-destructive. Flynn’s story, as told from different viewpoints, serves as a wake-up call for the need to step outside oneself as a means of self-examination.

What did I think of Flynn? I flip-flopped between loving and hating him, losing all respect for him and regaining it. He tries so hard that I wish him well. I don’t count my wildly shifting feelings for him as a detraction from the quality of the read. Quite the contrary. This book draws you in. There’s intensity, wit, depth, tenderness, and beauty in the prose. The good and the bad—that’s what makes a complete person. Throughout Flynn’s journey, dear reader, you are going to feel a lot of emotion, and that’s the stuff of great fiction.

I enjoyed this book right through to the last paragraph of the afterword. The author acknowledges his family for co-authoring the story of his life, “which, thanks mainly to them…, seems to be building towards a happy ending. May it, like the final chapter of this book, be just a tad too long.” The last chapter of the book may be the longest, but for me, it was the best. After all the ups and downs, I was glad to see, at last, that Flynn made some real progress in his quest for self-actualization. The people in his life are going to start feeling a whole lot better about him too.

And now, I’m happy to welcome David Hicks to VBlog. Thank you for joining me!

It’s my pleasure! A big hello to all your readers.author David Hicks

White Plains is a resonant work of art. Tell us about its conception and your process. Did the project start as a single short story that begged to be expanded, or did you plan a novel in the form of linked short stories from the start?

Neither! I was just going about my business as a short story writer, publishing in some wonderful literary magazines, when I decided I had enough stories for a collection. Most of my published stories are somewhat autobiographical—I tend to write about times in my life when something shifted for me—and while I was at an artists’ residency in Wyoming I made it my goal to put the stories together in book form. I tried out different arrangements, but it was when I experimented with putting the stories in chronological order (not according to their publication dates but according to the main character’s life) that I realized it could be a novel instead of a collection—there was, in other words, an overall conflict, crisis, and resolution to the whole book. But since it wasn’t written as a novel, I now needed to revise it as a novel, and that meant “filling in the gaps” of the overall narrative. I did that by adding chapters from other characters’ points of view. (I got that idea from a wonderful book called The Last to Go by Rand Richards Cooper.) After that, it felt more like a novel, and I felt justified pitching it as such.

Some of the chapters from Flynn’s point of view are written in first person and some are written in third person. How did you decide which to use?

As a general rule, when I write something that’s a little too autobiographical, I write in third person. It gives me a little distance from myself. I am able to say, “Wow, look at you, what the hell were you thinking when you did that?” And it also helps me to craft my real-life event as a story rather than emotionally “dumping” onto the page. And when it’s not very autobiographical, I narrate in first person, to force myself into a more intimate voice. It also depends on the situation: for example, the chapter that shows when everything changes for young Flynn—when he’s living in Manhattan during 9/11—was originally written in second person (my editor advised me to change it to third person), because it evokes the kind of shell-shocked feeling that seems appropriate for the subject matter.

Do you consider Flynn a reliable narrator? Tell us about your decision to incorporate other voices.

Absolutely not—he’s completely unreliable, especially at first. (Towards the end, he becomes more reliable.) Isn’t that how we all are? And that’s what we like; we like hearing unreliable accounts of events from our friends and family. (How many of us, when hearing a friend’s story of an argument with their spouse or a terrible boss, actively set about contacting the spouse or boss to get a fair version of the story?) It’s the same when we read. Think of Nick Carroway in The Great Gatsby (who has very little idea what has really happened during key scenes), or Dostoevsky’s narrator in Notes from Underground (who’s view of himself and others is irreparably distorted)—we enjoy it when narrators “tell the truth but tell it slant.”

One of my favorite chapters, a very suspenseful one, involves Flynn driving through a snowstorm and getting stranded in the Colorado Rockies. Did you have a similar experience that informed this scene?

That’s a good example of what I was talking about earlier: I wrote that story in third person because it’s almost one hundred percent autobiographical. For two years I lived in one of the most beautiful places in the country, but it’s also quite remote. I got a teaching job over four hours away and proceeded to “commute” there via an isolated route that traversed several mountain passes. I had no money (I was giving my ex-wife the bulk of my paycheck for child support), so I was driving on bald tires, and one week we got some serious snow and I almost died, both on the way there and on the way back. But at my worst moment, stranded in my car in a snowbank, I stepped out at four a.m. and witnessed a spectacular meteor shower in the clear night sky. And after that, I knew what I needed to do.

Do you have another novel planned or in the works?

I’m currently finishing a novel called The Gospel According to Danny, about the death of America as told by a waiter in Yonkers. It’s quite different from White Plains in that it’s a long, linear narrative with many dramatic events. I’m in love with it, but it’s been a very difficult novel to write, so I can’t wait to send it off to my agent.

Thank you for these illuminating insights, David!

Dear reader, to learn more about David Hicks and White Plains, visit his website by clicking here. To pick up a copy of White Plains, click here.