Michelle Major: Discovering the Home of the Heart

The Writer’s Life

Michelle Major is the best-selling, RITA award winning author of over 20 contemporary romances. She loves second-chances love stories, smart heroines and strong heroes. A Midwesterner at heart, she's made the Rocky Mountains her home for over 25 years.

I had the pleasure of reading and reviewing (for Shelf Awareness) The Magnolia Sisters, her first book in the series. You can read my review by linking HERE. Michelle Major has since published two novellas in the series. The second, full-length novel, The Merriest Magnolia is now available. The story centers on a North Carolina home-town girl who is forced to come to grips with her first love, a real estate developer with designs on remaking the whole town. 

 

What motivated you to start writing romance novels?

I came to romance later than many avid readers I know. I didn’t pick up my first romance novel until I was 30-years-old (which seems young to me now!). I traveled each week for my job in Human Resources and developed a huge fear of flying. On a whim, I bought a Johanna Lindsey book in an airport bookstore, and the story captivated me so much I forgot to be scared. From there, I had a lot of catching up to do in the genre. The more I read, the more I realized that the stories I’d always told myself in my head were romance plots. I’d worked in journalism and always liked to write, so once I found my passion for romance, it was like coming home.

What’s the inspiration behind your creation of the Magnolia sisters?

There was a period of time where it felt like I was reading a number of similar stories of siblings coming together who didn’t realize they were related. I became fascinated with the idea of the “instant family” and how to navigate those sorts of relationships. One theme that’s an aspect in most of my writing is the idea of the heroine discovering the home of her heart—partially through falling in love, but also as a result of the friendships and connections she develops in the community where a book is set. I had so much fun creating the small town of Magnolia, North Carolina, and working through where each of the sisters fit into that world.

Is there a certain chapter or scene in The Merriest Magnolia that you particularly enjoyed writing?

The scene that was the most emotional for me was just a tiny snippet where the hero, Dylan Scott, is getting pressure from the teenager--for whom he’s become guardian--to adopt a puppy. It’s Thanksgiving, and he’s reluctantly agreed to celebrate the holiday with Carrie Reed, the heroine, and her sisters. Her younger sister, Meredith, runs an animal rescue, but instead of a puppy, Dylan ends up rescuing an older dog that’s been overlooked by potential adopters. I have a couple of rescue dogs and I also foster kittens for a local animal shelter near my home in Colorado so those “perfectly imperfect” fur babies mean a lot to me. And it was a scene that revealed so much about his heart—which he keeps closely guarded—to Carrie and was the start of her falling for him all over again.

Do you have a favorite character from the Magnolia Sisters series?

That’s like picking a favorite child! Each of the Magnolia Sisters’ books is a standalone story, but because it’s also a series, I really enjoy focusing on one couple for each book but then also getting to revisit them throughout other stories. Second chance stories are some of my favorites to write and I always love a holiday romance, so Carrie and Dylan are certainly special to me.

How do you research your novels—or do you?

The details of occupation, weather, and setting are important research. However, emotional motivations play a bigger role in my books, and I typically do a few deep dives on why a character makes the choices he or she does. This isn’t technically “research,” but music is important for me as far as accessing emotions while I write. I do a playlist or choose a few special songs for each story. If I get stuck, I’ll walk the dogs or drive up into the mountains near my house and let the music take me away to that space of feeling.

What was your playlist while writing The Merriest Magnolia?

A couple of songs I listened to on repeat -- “Photograph” by Ed Sheeran and “Come Over” by Sam Hunt.

Will there be a third book in the Magnolia Sisters series?

Yes! After The Merriest Magnolia, there is one more book in the sisters’ trilogy—The Last Carolina Sister will release in March 2021. I’m so excited that I’ll be expanding the world of Magnolia with three more books after these. We are spinning off the series and the new books will be called The Carolina Girls. I hope readers will love getting to spend more time in this world.

Connect with Michelle Major at www.michellemajor.com or on Facebook and Twitter (@michelle_major1).

To Purchase THE MAGNOLIA SISTERS on Amazon link HERE

To Purchase THE MERRIEST MAGNOLIA on Amazon link HERE

 

Kate Racculia: The Journey Changes Your Perception

The Writer's Life

Kate Racculia is the author of the novels This Must Be the Place and Bellweather Rhapsody, an ALA Alex Award winner. Her third novel, Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts (reviewed below), centers on an adventurous treasure hunt through the city of Boston.

Why did you set the story in Boston?

I moved to Boston to get my MFA from Emerson College. After grad school, I spent 11 years working there--first as a marketing writer in financial services, then as a prospect researcher. It was a niche fundraising job that involved researching and profiling wealthy donors--very similar to the job Tuesday Mooney holds in the novel. It was only after I moved out of Boston and settled in Bethlehem, Pa., that I really began to miss the place where I'd become a young adult.

So, the novel pays homage to your affection for the city?

The novel is a love letter to Boston and my life there, which I treasured. I wrote the book during the 2016 election, the constant cruelties of the Trump presidency, #MeToo--under increasing distraction, destruction and pain, and my own anger, confusion and alienation. I believe that art can be an agent for change, a political action, a comfort in the face of brutality. The novel also deals with adventure, friendship, a capacious understanding of human connections and family, work and responsibility, and wealth.

Wealth and money are central to the story?

Without ever intending to, I learned an awful lot about wealth in the jobs I had: how wealth works in America, its inextricable connection to power, how inequitably both are distributed. What having a lot of money can do to people, namely: insulate them from the world, destroy their perspective and make them paranoid and selfish--or allow them to be incredibly generous, and give them tools to remake the world around them.

Is this where the idea for the novel hatched?

I always try to write with a question in mind rather than an answer--to create a series of givens about psychologically realistic characters, to place them in high-genre situations and learn who they are by what they do, how they react and feel, and how they're capable of surprising even themselves--especially when they encounter the uncanny, the strange, the heightened. There's a terrific tension there that I love to play with, and I do use the word "play" intentionally; at its best, writing for me is a form of play and discovery.

Your characters are always infused with layers of eccentricity.

I love other people--characters--in all the ways that loving other people is itself complicated, endlessly interesting, frustrating, weird, heartbreaking and hilarious. So, I write both to get to know and get to experience many other people, to tease out my own identities and curiosities, but also explore imagined lives and adventures beyond my own. I tend to share with characters my own loves and worries, so we can almost investigate those mysteries together.

What draws you to creating ensemble casts?

I was an only child, and lived 30 miles away from the district where I went to school (and where my mother was a teacher). That degree of remove gave me a unique point of view on groups, the mystery of where and how I or any one person fit in (or didn't), and how everyone brought their own, often secret story into this combined larger tale that we were all a part of. It was fascinating and confusing--I've found many, many people who are "My People," but growing up I was an outlier, which was much easier for me to process and understand in fiction rather than in real life.

Did this inspire you to create Tuesday Mooney as a "loner"?

I have always loved stories about human connections--friendships, teams, and found families, whether at work, school or from neighborhoods. And I am, constitutionally, an introvert loner, so stories where introvert loners are essential parts of a group--while retaining their unique identities--really interest me.

Why are grief, loss and memories from the past recurrent themes in your work?

I think I'm just drawn to the mysterious--the dark, unexplored corners in people, in history, in the world around us, and how the attempt to plumb those depths, the work of seeking and trying to understand (even though full understanding may never be possible), can be the work of a whole life.

In terms of the "mysterious," a ghost figures prominently in this novel.

I flat out love a ghost story; always have. Ghosts were people, after all, with all the desires and fears and complexities of living characters, with that added flair of morbid mystery.

A puzzle resides at the heart of this novel. Off the page, do puzzles interest you?

Ha! Funnily enough, I'm not much of a puzzler. I'm a ringer at pub trivia and would love to get on Jeopardy! one day, but I'm not a big puzzle-as-a-pastime person. Although, I've always had an appreciation for seeking solutions.

Aha, seeking solutions... is that what inspired the treasure hunt that propels the mystery of the story? 

I adore mysteries themselves, whether a procedural television show, a P.D. James novel, or a larger, less-solvable puzzle about the things in life we can't understand, explain or account for--tackling those puzzles, even when they're painful or tragic, gives me an enormous amount of pleasure. I almost prefer a mystery that doesn't have a straightforward solution, a prize that gets refracted and redefined by human messiness and isn't what you thought it would be. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was a huge influence on this novel. The true grail isn't the object you seek, it's what--and who--you discover along the way, and how the journey changes your perception about what you value.

This interview is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this Q&A on Shelf Awareness for Readers (October 15, 2019), link HERE 

Julia MacDonnell: A Search for Truth

The Writer's Life

photo: Gabriel P. Chang

Throughout her life, author Julia MacDonnell has been "trying to piece scraps of secrets and stories" together. The fact that her mother never spoke about the experiences of her own painful childhood and upbringing--she was one of five daughters, losing her own mother in childbirth when she was six; her father died just a few years later; and she and her sisters were "taken in" and raised by a paternal grandmother--seems a "take-off point" for MacDonnell in the creation of her novel Mimi Malloy, at Last! (See review below).

MacDonnell's first novel, A Year of Favor, was published in 1994 and centers on a young journalist caught up in a dramatic saga set in Central America. MacDonnell has worked as a freelance reporter, journalist and is a tenured professor of Creative Writing at Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J.

It's been 20 years between books. Why such a large gap?

Believe me, it wasn't a gap I ever planned for or wanted! The reception of my first novel was a heartbreaking experience. At the time, my publisher was in the midst of a huge transition. My editor left, and my novel ultimately became something of an "orphaned book." In the end, it fell through the cracks. It wasn't championed as I had hoped, and it was a crushing experience. But I never stopped writing, never stopped longing to be published, and never stopped believing that I would, sooner or later, be published again. During those years, I wrote about 15 short stories, eight of which have been published. My story "Dancing with Ned" was recently published in the spring issue of Alaska Quarterly Review. I also have two other novels in various states of completion.

How did Mimi Malloy, at Last! germinate? What was the inspiration?

I recently found journal notes dated 1992 that I wrote right after my mother's death. I'm the second oldest in a brood of eight children. My mother and I had an enduringly contentious relationship, though we squeezed in a few happy years after my kids were born. But once she'd passed--unexpectedly from a stroke at the age of 64--I realized I knew almost nothing about her life. And by then I could not ask. Years of confusion and false starts passed. Then I wrote a story called "Diana's Dresses," in which a 40-something daughter takes her ailing, grouchy mother to an exhibit of Princess Diana's gowns. I found Mimi in that story. But only once my novel was finished did I realize that I'd imagined for myself the necessary mother, a mother I understood, loved, appreciated and respected, and who returned all those feelings back to me.

Tell us about how you write.

Before I begin to write, I stake out certain perimeters and parameters for the story. Sometimes, I'll scribble these out by hand and tack the pieces of paper to the wall. As the late John Gardner said, a bad plan is better than no plan. Usually, I know how the story will end, but I don't know how I'll get there. For me, everything that really matters happens during the writing itself, and everything is open to change. I listen hard to my characters--I'm a good listener--and I've learned to let my stories grow and change; to not impose my ideas on them or try to control them too much.

The setting and characters are always easiest for me. As with Mimi, the characters come at me, hooting and hollering like hungry children, demanding to be taken care of. Then I've got to figure out how to entertain and appease them, keep them busy, give them something worthwhile to do. Figuring out the plot and structuring the novel are always the hardest things for me.

Did the story of Mimi Malloy change over the course of the writing?

Drastically! Yes! The first time through, I imposed upon Mimi my own, much harsher, perspective on her life story. But then I began to hear her voice--a pungent brew of wisdom, snark and cliché--that emerged during the writing. She began to talk to me and tell me how she wanted her story to unfold. The early drafts of Mimi were quite dark. She was, in a sense, foretelling the story of her own death.... But Mimi mutinied. She told me in no uncertain terms that she wasn't done with life, with love, with mothering her children.... She was mad as hell about me trying to kill her off, and she switched on a big torchlight to show me where the story had to go. Mimi insisted that her life take a more joyful path. Thank God I had the good sense to listen to her, though we argued often.

Faeries and banshees (female spirits) play a part in Mimi Malloy. What is your experience with beliefs of this nature?

Angels and faeries have so much in common as to be almost indistinguishable, especially to a child with a vivid imagination. They're both invisible winged creatures with great power. My Irish-Catholic family considered assimilation into the middle class of the United States the ever-to-be-strived-for goal: we were Americans; we were required to melt into the melting pot. Those left in the "old country" were uneducated, ignorant even if through no fault of their own, and not to be trusted for any information at all about how the world worked. In other words, we most definitely did not believe in faeries, which would have been a form of blasphemy, though we knew people, including family members, who did. We knew about faeries to the extent that we knew we didn't believe in them. What we believed in were angels, winged spirits who were everywhere, reporting back to God on our every move.

Your two novels are vastly different, yet both deal with a search for truth. Is this a coincidence?

I was trained as a journalist and, like the protagonist of my first novel, I worked as a reporter, determined always to find the "truth" behind the official story, whatever that might be. I think I became a reporter because I intuited that my truth hunger could be put to good use. No such luck. Rather, I was frustrated and constrained by hard news, by journalistic ways of telling a story. So I moved on to fiction and memoir. But my tireless and, at times, obnoxious "truth search" is an essential part of who I am--even though I learned long ago that "truth" can never be fixed and is as stable as the slush in my backyard after a big snow melt. My need to find out the truth, the real deal, has often marginalized me among my siblings and my work colleagues. But there you have it, I can't help myself.

To me, what the novels share--and they share this with my stories, too--is the struggle of the main characters, all of them women, to find a way to be in the world. These are smart, uncertain, anxious women, locked in combat with their intelligence, their sexuality, their empathies, their inchoate values...they search to find a meaningful way to be in the world.

Will readers have to wait another 20 years for your next book?

I'm refining my story collection, which includes stories about a couple of Mimi's daughters. I've also got two novels in the works--and the less said about them, the better! It's that fear they'll wither on the vine if spoken of too soon. No, it won't be another 20 years!

Note: This interview is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this Q&A on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (5/8/14), click HERE

Mary Kay Andrews: Creating Her Own World Order

The Writer's Life

photo: Bill Miles

Mary Kay Andrews started her career as a journalist, covering what would later become known as the Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil murder trial. After leaving the newspaper business, she turned to writing cozy mystery novels, including the Callahan Garrity series about a former cop–turned–struggling private eye–turned cleaning lady. After 10 mysteries, Andrews began writing women's fiction.

Christmas Bliss (St. Martin's Press, $16.99) is her latest--her 21st book, and the fourth in the Savannah series--more adventures featuring Eloise "Weezie" Foley and her Southern belle best friend, BeBe Loudermilk. Weezie is an antique dealer who has a cheating ex, an alcoholic mother, a forgetful father and a gay uncle who was a Catholic priest. BeBe is a thrice-married restaurant owner who is now expecting a baby. In Christmas Bliss, Weezie is pulled in many directions as she prepares for the holidays and her impending Christmas Eve nuptials to her long-time love, a chef suddenly being wooed by the New York restaurant scene.

Andrews's novels offer an absurdist, comic slant on serious issues, where quirky characters merge with plots that are always full of surprises, laughs and heartwarming endings.

How did the Savannah books come about? Did you know from the start this was going to be a series?

Savannah, Ga., was where my husband and I started life as newlyweds--way back when. It's truly a place of my heart. Evocative, parochial and dripping with Spanish moss and Southern charm. I had no intention of writing a series because I'd just ended the Callahan Garrity mystery series, with eight installments.

How do you come up with the clever names of your heroines, especially those in the Savannah novels?

Weezie is named after the heroine of the Kay Thompson's Eloise children's books, which I've always loved. I heard an Atlanta socialite referring to her youngest child as "bay-bay," which she informed me was French for baby--and I knew I would steal that for a character.

And speaking of names, your Callahan Garrity mysteries (published under the name Kathy Hogan Trocheck) have been re-issued under your name. Will you ever return to writing about Callahan?

I loved writing about Callahan and Edna and the House Mouse "girls," and I do sometimes miss them, so who knows? Maybe someday they'll reappear. After 21 books, I've learned never to say never.

You've delivered, on average, a book a year. How do you remain so prolific?

Fear is a great motivator. If I'm not working on a new novel, I start to worry that my readers will forget me and move on to the next hot thing. This past year was a two-book year, with the release of Ladies' Night and Christmas Bliss within five months of each other. Not a feat I want to repeat. Maybe it's the good Catholic girl syndrome that Nora Roberts talks about. You sign a contract, you deliver the goods. I always tell my agent I'll sleep when I'm dead.

Does your Catholic upbringing and faith inform your work?

I'm sure my faith informs my work--hopefully in subtle ways. I believe in family, in faith, in faithfulness. I want the world to be fair, and I dislike bigotry, gratuitous violence and cruelty. I suppose writing fiction is my way of creating my own world order.

If a character from any one of your books could live off the page, which one would you most like to spend time with and why? Is there any character you would try to avoid?

Mary Bliss McGowan, the protagonist of Little Bitty Lies who faked her husband's death in a boating accident, is somebody I'd like to share a drink with. I admire her gutsiness. Scheming, conniving females like Celia Wakefield, the romantic rival in Spring Fever, give me a rash. I'm always wary of women who distrust other women.

How has your journalism background influenced your career as a novelist?

Being a reporter teaches you to ask the hard questions and pay attention to the answers--not just listening, but watching. It teaches you the importance of story structure--beginning, middle and end. It teaches you there's no such thing as writer's block. And you learn the incredibly important skill of working with a good editor, allowing the give-and-take that can lift a so-so piece of prose into something special--or at least something that doesn't suck.

You're passionate about "extreme junking," the search for antiques at flea markets and estate sales--in real life and in your novels. Do you tend to keep things you find and restore, or has eBay become your best friend?

My mother was a junker, and as an impoverished child bride of 22, I learned that I could make a home with somebody else's cast-offs. I've been junking ever since, keeping what I love or passing it along to my grown children or even selling it in my booth in a gift shop on Tybee Island, outside of Savannah. I'm too impatient to wait on the outcome of an eBay auction.

Why do reinvention and the idea of "home" (literally and figuratively) figure so prominently as themes in most of your books?

Most of my readers are women, but I think all of us, deep down, long for home--for that sense of belonging, of being rooted in something, whether it's a physical place, or just an emotional attachment to someone or something. And reinvention is universal, too. Who doesn't dream of having a do-over in life?

You've had a long, varied and prosperous career. Is there anything else you'd still like to explore in your writing?

I joke about my evil plot for global domination, but sure, I'd like to try my hand at writing a screenplay and seeing my story on a big screen--or even a small screen. I've got a cookbook simmering at the back of my mind, and it would be really cool to write a children's book, too. So many ideas, so few hours....

What can readers expect from you next?

I'm working on next summer's book, set in Savannah, with a protagonist who is a wedding florist. Look for Save the Date in early June! 

Note: This interview is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this Q&A on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (12/17/13), click HERE

Beth Harbison: Believing in Happy Endings

The Writer's Life

photo: Chandler Schwede

Beth Harbison has been writing a novel a year (sometimes two) since 1997, when, under the name Elizabeth Harbison, she began writing and publishing series and stand-alone category romances with Silhouette Books. Along the way, she's also published four cookbooks, most notably on bread machine baking.

Harbison admits that series romance proved limiting. "The focus," she said, "has to be on the romance and romance alone. My thoughts eventually expanded beyond that... though the elemental 'love saves her' idea never fully leaves my consciousness."

Shoe Addicts Anonymous, published in 2008, launched the next phase of her career: she's written seven lively and engaging novels about contemporary women facing romantic challenges. Harbison's novels often explore difficult life situations, but each story is woven with humor and a sense of the absurd. Her latest, Chose the Wrong Guy, Gave Him the Wrong Finger (published by St. Martin's; see review below) is a bittersweet novel that centers on two very different brothers, and how they affect a woman's life and her ability to love.

The titles to your books are very clever--When in Doubt, Add Butter and Hope in a Jar, among others. How do your titles come about, and is there a story behind the title of your latest novel?

Usually my editor, Jen Enderlin, and I brainstorm what's next. We have total mind-meld, in general, so these

conversations are always fun and productive. As we talk, she'll often snap her fingers and say, "That's IT!" I remember we were eating at Tom Colicchio's Craft Restaurant in New York when she said, "What do all women want? To be thinner, richer, and prettier." And there it was, fully formed. Thin, Rich, Pretty--the title for my novel.

The title for Chose the Wrong Guy, Gave Him the Wrong Finger is to Jen's credit, as well. She'd read an article while on the train some years back about a woman who had called off her wedding and sent out a similarly snappish response.

You've been remarkably prolific in your career. Describe your process and inspiration.

I have a lot of emotions and thoughts, and if I don't write them down they rattle around inside my head and actually start to hurt. Too much still ends up in e-mails to my friends and family, but writing books is a great way to get it all out.

You've written in many genres, from romance to cookbooks to women's fiction. What are your feelings for each genre, and why does each appeal to you? Are there any more cookbooks in your future?

I'd love to do more cookbooks, but with Food Network and the like making celebrity chefs into major media stars, there's no room for an ordinary cook to do a cookbook, no matter how good. As for what appeals and why, it's always a mood thing, isn't it? Romance appealed at a time when my life was simpler.... My children got older, my life got complicated, and more issues came up--from health worries to divorce to death--and romantic fantasy alone no longer felt honest to me. I wish it did, though. I miss those days.

Your books are about women finding love and romance, and your stories' themes are fate, second chances and happy endings. What are your feelings about happy endings--in life and in literature?

I didn't think most of my women's fiction books were about finding love, but I guess you're right. More recently, they've certainly become more encompassing of the idea. At the risk of becoming too morose, I guess the answer is that I have always been a melancholy person. My first writing venture was re-writing the end of Black Beauty in the fourth grade and bringing all the horses back to life because I hated the sadness of having "watched"--through the story--the happy early days for them deteriorate into sad endings. Unfortunately, that seems to happen too much in life. When I was 17, I came home and found my father had passed away on the couch--my mother was out of town and my sisters were grown, so it was only he and I at home at the time--and that was an early indication of how hard and unfair life could be. This came directly after a very emotional breakup that I loosely chronicled in my novel Always Something There to Remind Me. I started thinking very seriously around that time about how easy it would be to dissolve into the negativity of life, but I couldn't afford to live like that, because eventually there's no more "up." I had to decide to believe in happy endings--chances of being happy are much greater if you expect happiness. The person who expects to be miserable is seldom disappointed.

What inspired you to write Chose the Wrong Guy, Gave Him the Wrong Finger?

This novel is set in Virginia, which is a landscape I know and love. I love horses. I love farms, but I pretty much

made up the rest of the story. Writing romantic tension is just plain fun, yet not a thing in the book actually happened to me.

In each of your novels, you write big scenes that are often peppered with small details and first-person point-of-view asides that intensify the overall charm of each story. Do these details emerge in early drafts or do you add them later during rewrite?

Ha! Details are usually all I have. I am a detail queen! Not in terms of handling the details of my life, alas, but that is my writing style. I can write a scene of stirring cream into your coffee that will make you feel like you're hyped up on caffeine. Unfortunately, that's not enough to write a book, so I always have to go back in and beef up those "slices of life" up with plot.

What's next?

Recently, my ex-husband passed away very suddenly after 25 years in my life, so everything turned upside down for the kids and me. There will definitely be a next novel, but the idea isn't solid yet. That said, I can't wait to come up with a meaty plot to dive into so I can get out of my own head and into a pretend world instead! 

Note: This interview is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this Q&A on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (7/9/13), click HERE

Jerome Charyn and BACK TO BATAAN

Author Michael Chabon (The Wonder Boys, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay) has called him, "one of the most important writers in American Literature."  Newsday has hailed him as "a contemporary American Balzac."  And the LA Times has described him as "absolutely unique among American writers."

Who is he? He's Jerome Charyn, an incredibly prolific, award-winning author who writes across genres and has published 30 novels, three memoirs, eight graphic novels...so far.

His latest undertaking is a novel of historical fiction, BACK TO BATAAN, an eBook (re-issued by Tribute Books) for middle grade readers (Grades 7-9): It's 1943 in New York City. Eleven year-old Jack Dalton is depressed and restless following the death of his father at Bataan (in the Philippines) during World War II.  Jack's mother is trying to keep body and soul together by working in a parachute factory and Jack, tossed aside by his girlfriend and left to his own devices, wants to enlist in the army.  When Jack finally runs away, he falls in with a gang of criminals.  This compact YA novel is filled with action, adventure and suspense.  To learn more, link HERE

Jerome Charyn was kind enough to chat about the book and share some of his ideas about the craft of writing.

Kathleen Gerard:  Thanks for joining us, Jerome.  You write across a realm of different genres, what excites you about connecting with different audiences? 

Jerome Charyn:  I’m not so sure that these are different audiences, I think we all love stories, whether we’re children or great-grandfathers and when you move from genre to genre you are still telling a story like Scheherazade and the king is always waiting for the next tale.

KG:  BACK TO BATAAN is a reissue of a print book, now being offered for the first time as an eBook.  Being a published author for nearly 50 years, what's your impression of digital books? 

JC: I think that this is a kind of logical step as we move from the internet into eBooks. Publishing is changing even as we speak. I think there now will be a more complicated dance between the eBook and the printed book, and as we’ve seen recently, successes in eBooks allow the author to move into print.

KG:  How much of your own life is embroiled in BACK TO BATAAN? Did you personally experience New York during World War II?
JC:  I think so much of the source of my writing comes from my childhood, I grew up during the War - so many of the terrors and the magic of certain films have remained with me.  And all of this appears in the character of Jack.

KG:  In reading the story behind this book, I understand that your brother was a detective. Did your experiences with him influence the plot of BACK TO BATAAN?

JC:  Not really, I think all writing is crime writing. And Back to Bataan is a crime novel with a very original twist.

KG:  In the book, why did you decide to include a fascination with famous people - Gary Cooper, Eleanor Roosevelt, etc. - as an underurrent?

JC:  These people were heroes to me as a child, particularly Eleanor Roosevelt, who was one of the most extraordinary women who ever lived, and of course as a child I fell in love with Gary Cooper’s face and with his very slow drawl, that seemed so exotic to me.

KG:  Jack, the main character of the novel, finds acclaim through his writing, yet he feels guilty for exploiting the lives of other people on the page. How does a writer bridge this gap?

JC:  You’re always cannibalizing other people and writers when you start to write, so it’s natural that Jack should be a young cannibal.

KG:  The New York Times plays a significant role in this novel. How important is New York Times in your own life and is there any special reason why you decided to make it a form of connection in the life of Jack, the main character?
JC:  As a child, I didn’t even know that the Times existed – I grew up in a neighborhood without newspapers and books, so that when I first fell upon the New York Times, I was very very greedy, and wanted to include it in Jack’s middle-class life.

KG:  Your writing is so precise, yet evocative - how do you work at crafting your unique style of prose?
JC:  Everything begins and ends with the word, with the music of the sentence and as Tolstoy once said, “I’m always composing.”

KG: What are your thoughts on the recent explosion and popularity of the YA genre?

JC: I think it might very well be that it started with Harry Potter, that young adult writers are trying to tell good stories and adults have moved into that kind of dream.

KG:  What advice would you give to young people who aspire to a literary career?

JC: It’s not worth the money – only write if you’re absolutely in love with it.

Well, there you have it, thoughts from Jerome Charyn, an acclaimed, dedicated writer who has made significant contributions to the literary community.  Reading Between the Lines thanks him for visiting and wishes him much continued success!  

Back to Bataan by Jerome Charyn
Tribute Books, $2.99, eBook, ASIN #B008DYK6C2, 101 pp
Publication Date: June 21, 2012
To order this book via AMAZON link HERE