Matthew Turbeville: Hi Megan! I’m so glad I got to reach out to you about your marvelous new novel Sin Eater.  Before I begin with the questions, can you tell us a little about the novel and why you felt it was so important to write this novel now? 
Megan Campisi:  Sin Eateris a historical fiction mystery set in a reimagined Elizabethan England.
It follows 14-year-old May Owens who is condemned to be a sin eater. In this role, she hears deathbed confessions and, at the funeral, eats ritual foods representing the confessed sins on the dead’s coffin, thereby taking the sins onto her own soul. As a sin eater, she becomes a pariah in her own community. But as the novel progresses, she turns this curse into an unexpected source of power. She uncovers a series of murders that reach all the way to the queen and sets out to solve them using her untouchable status. It’s a story about an isolated young woman finding her strength and also finding her people.
 
While Sin Eater’s story is proving very timely (a young woman persevering through intense isolation), the reason I wrote the book when I did was very practical. My background is in theater, and I am mostly a playwright. When my first child was born, getting to rehearsals in addition to my day job (teaching at a theater conservatory) became so challenging, I decided to give long-form prose a try. I had been mulling over writing a coming-of-age historical mystery with a sin eater protagonist, and it seemed like the perfect project for the moment.
 
MT: I was pulled into this book, in a way I was pulled into some books by Avi when I was younger, and some other books with historical settings by adult authors like Lyndsay Faye.  One really captivating way was how you were able to use different forms of language but still captivate the reader—how do you feel you did this effectively, what was your greatest struggle with establishing this strong sense of language? 
MC: In creating the language of Sin Eater, I was inspired by nursery rhymes and fairy tales. For me, nursery rhymes are magical snippets of cultural history that get passed down from generation to generation like a game of telephone. And like telephone, the story becomes distorted as one generation shares it with the next. Some words remain the same, but others lose their meaning or take on new meanings. I’ve always loved this mix of mystery, invention, and history. I’ve tried to bring those qualities to Sin Eater.  
 
MT: Similarly, you also had a strong sense of character for the protagonist, May, and who she was from the very beginning.  Can you describe you develop character, and how long it took to find a voice and character for Meg? Did you develop the book from character, or develop the character from the book? 
MC:The story and main character evolved in relation to one another. I knew I wanted May to be a “late bloomer” and possess a vulnerability that made me protective of her. At the same time, I wanted her to be resourceful and resilient. It took time to find that balance. Similarly, her journey follows the transformation in how she sees herself, the world, and her place in it. I tinkered with that journey throughout the writing and editing processes. 
 
MT: Where did the idea of a “sin eater” come from? How did the idea evolve—from sins translating to food, and women responsible for eating these sins? How did you relate all of this back to Eve? 
MC: I’m a history nerd, so when I encountered sin eaters, I was hooked. But for my story to work, it couldn’t remain a post-mortem ritual, as it was historically. Sin eating needed to be a deep communion between two people that was woven into the fabric of society. The ideas evolved from there. Eve seemed like the perfect representation of Lucifer in this “alt history” because she embodies the Christian concept of original sin.  
 
MT: What books and authors influenced Sin Eater most? What books, authors, and genres influenced you most during your formative years, and what book or author influenced you most in general, and is your favorite? 
MC: For Sin Eater, I was influenced by historical fiction writers like Peter Carey and mystery writers like C.J. Sansom. As a child, I loved Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicornand M.M. Kaye’s The Ordinary Princess. As for a favorite author, it’s so hard to choose. I am a huge fan of David Mitchell and George Orwell. But if I have to choose just one author, it’s Toni Morrison.  
 
 
MT: May has a clear understanding at one point of the book that there is a concept of light and darkness within every person.  What do you think is important about this concept and why is it so important to who May is? 
MC: Good and evil were concepts that occupied a lot of my thoughts as a child (I was raised Catholic). It took me many years to understand how subjective these qualities are, and that my own view mattered. That, to me, is the heart of May’s journey. 
 
MT: What do you want readers to ultimately take away from Sin Eater, and why do you feel this is important in today’s world? What do you think is the most important part of Sin Eaterand how did you come across this idea, theme, or subject in your writing of the book? 
MC: May’s story is about deciding who you are for yourself and about finding your people. These themes are deeply rooted in my own experience growing up and choosing to lapse as a Catholic. 
 
MT: What is your writing process like? Are you a big planner? Do you outline or write as you go? How many rewrites and revisions do you go through in your rewriting process? How long did it take to make Sin Eaterthe amazing book it is today? 
MC: 
I’m a visual, physical person. When I outline, I paste sticky notes all over a large board. Then I can “see” the plot and move it around as I like. As for my process, I write whenever I can, as much as I can. When I began Sin Eater, my first child was nine months old, I was pregnant with my second child, and I had a full-time job teaching at a theater conservatory. I couldn’t be precious about when, where, and how I wrote. It took two and half years to write the book. The last six months was just editing. 
 
MT: There are strong connections to Christianity and Christians both then (the historical period when Sin Eatermight be set) and now, and there are strong connections to cult thinking, and the way we are affected by cult mentality.  What’s so important about the reason young and older people need to think for themselves and not fall into a cult way of thinking, and what do you think May is in this type of thinking, and does she defy cult thinking or does she play into it over the course of the book? 
MC: This gets back to what I want people to take away from the story:May learns to decide who she is for herself. She also finds a community that accepts her for who she is. 
 
MT: What was your favorite part about writing this book, and what was the hardest part about writing Sin Eater? Were they the same thing? What did you learn from writing Sin Eaterand are there any parts of the writing process you’d never want to go through again? 
MC: I love world-building. Creating the “alt history” was a pleasure. The hardest part was the mystery: it took time to figure out how much to reveal when. I learned so much from the process, but would gladly do it all again. I truly loved writing the book. 
 
MT: Were there any parts of the book you felt you had to fight to keep in place when writing the novel? Were there any parts of the book you didn’t want to keep in the book that are now a part of the final product? 
MC: The editing process was remarkably smooth (in large part thanks to my fabulous editor, Trish Todd,at Atria Books.) The published book completely reflects my choices.
 
MT: Would you ever return to the world of Sin Eater in your future books? 
MC: I don’t have any plans to right now.
 
MT: Do you have a new work in progress or a book on the way to being published? I know I for one cannot wait to read whatever you publish next.  Will you give us any hint to what this next book or work in general may be about? 
MC:  I work on multiple things at once. One is another historical fiction novel about women spies in the American Civil War. It centers on women’s relationships with each other across a deep political divide and whether that divide can be bridged—something that’s been on my mind a lot lately. 
 
MT: In May’s world, and in Sin Eater, whether resulting in death or just the testing of morals and ethics, what do you feel is the greatest crime in the book, and why do you feel it’s so important to readers? 
MC: The greatest crime is a society taking away a person’s voice and personhood. In Sin Eater, I’ve tried to chart an individual revolution in the way one woman sees herself to remind people that change can start at home and grow from there. 
 
MT: I loved your book so much, Megan, and I’m so glad you agreed to talk about the book with us.  We are so thrilled to have you talk to Writers Tell All. We wish you the most success with this book.  Feel free to leave us with any lingering thoughts or ideas you feel weren’t discussed or talked about in depth, and thank you again for working with us and being involved in an interview for this website.  We loved your book and encourage all of our readers to buy or preorder and read this book! 
MC: Thanks so much for reading and for your great questions!! Stay safe and well!
 
Megan Campisi is a playwright, novelist, and teacher. Her plays have been performed in China, France, and the United States. She attended Yale University and the L’École International de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. The author of Sin Eater, she lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family.
​

I had the amazing opportunity to sit and talk with Robert Doyle about his new novel, Threshold, which I'd describe as a nice collision (it's intense at times, which is great) between the odd and vivid writings of Marilynne Robinson, the more autobiographical novels of Mario Vargas Llosa (more Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter), and some of the philosophical nature of writers like Iris Murdoch (only sadly without the murders and suicides and dramatic plot twists!). A brilliant book, something to consume slowly and all at once, Threshold is yet another reason to contact your local indie bookstore and purchase something by a great writer. 

Matthew Turbeville: Hi Rob! I’m excited to interview you, so I’ll go ahead and begin.  This--Threshold—isn’t normally what people imagine when they think of their favorite novels.  Yet, it’s absolutely absorbing and amazingly well written.  Were you ever scared writing the novel—something like this, a travel log of sorts, a discussion of work, of authors, of creativity—that this novel would never see the light of day? 
 
Rob Doyle: Not really, the reason being that it’s my third book and so I knew readers (and my publishers) had a certain confidence in me to try something new, something different. The first two books (Here Are the Young Menand This Is the Ritual) gained a gratifying amount of praise, which internally gives you a certain degree of licence. Also, three books in, you know what you’re doing, you’re not a rookie, and so when I embarked on writing a book that blended personal confession, humour, essay, fiction, and various other elements, I was reasonably confident it would be given the green light.
 
MT: Lev Grossman, I believe, made a case that there are too many people writing so much that great literature is hard to find, or becoming devalued.  You touch on this briefly, with conflicting feelings.  How do you feel about the state of literature today, and how do you feel all groups of people are being represented, and not just white men like you and I? 
 
RD: I think literature is doing just fine, and will always do just fine: along with art in general, and perhaps religion too, it’s humankind’s great adventure into the unknown, into the abyss which turns out to be made of pure light. Which is not to say that a vast quantity of bad books aren’t getting written – more than ever, even. But you have to trust that the good stuff will get a hearing, and devote yourself to seeking out and relishing it, books from the past as well as the present. As Schopenhauer wrote, the art of not reading is of vital importance: that is, the art of not being distracted by whatever the great reading public happens to be getting in a lather over at a given moment, because they’re more than likely excited over something rubbish. Unless of course they are excited about mybooks, in which case I urge everyone to join in the adulation and the book-buying! As for the question of representation, I’ve always been a very international reader, reading a lot of stuff in translation, and because there’s a greater demand these days for diversity, there will likely be ever more of it available, which I welcome.
 
MT: You talk extensively about Bolano, who is at once a very publicly troubled and interesting person, and now a mysterious deceased author hipsters choose to read to stay cool. What drew you to Bolano, and why do you feel he fit into the novel so well? Would you consider him a character in the novel, even? 
 
RD: Far from being merely an author for hipsters, Bolaño is a friend for life! I go back to his books regularly – in fact, all this week I’ve been reading a few pages of his collection of non-fictional writings Between Parentheses every morning, as a sort of tuning fork for my own writing day. I love how his mind works, that sense of humour, the combination of lunacy and control. I love his generosity, his endless fascination with all-but forgotten writers - minor poets, doomed novelists and so on. In Threshold I take a trip to Blanes in Spain where he lived, and reflect on his life and work, but mainly this is a means to get to grips with more personal questions of my own (and an excuse to take a nice long train journey from Paris to the Costa Brava and back again). 
 
MT: While you do talk about literature extensively in the novel, what are the books that you feel shaped you in your formative years? What are the books you look to for inspiration now? Who do you feel are the most important authors working today, fiction or nonfiction (or anything else)? 
 
RD: Here are some key writers for me: Friedrich Nietzsche, Roberto Bolaño, Rachel Kushner, Michel Houellebecq, Geoff Dyer, Svetlana Alexievich, J.L. Borges. As for books that shaped me in my formative years, all through last year I wrote a weekly column in The Irish Times, on precisely this question. It can be read on the ‘Column’ section of my website robdoyle.net. Needless to say, many of the books that formed me are also the ones that deformed me.
 
MT: The novel defies so many typical conventions, and you’ve received lots of praise for Threshold.  Why do you think people are attracted to this book, and do you think it will last—honestly speaking, since you’re so honest about yourself in the book—and might it have a big effect on literature in the now, and in the future? 
 
RD: Lord only knows. I think there’s no way of ever knowing the answer to those questions – you just have to give it your all while you have it in you to write, and hope that posterity shows favour on you. I mean, in the long run, we’re all bound for oblivion, what with the eventual heat-death of the sun and all of that. Even Shakespeare will eventually disappear, if the species which is his native audience wipes itself out. Our only hope, then, is the Singularity.
 
MT: You talk frequently about women, masturbation, sex, adventures (often with women)—so many men, male authors I mean, have thought of women as distractions to their work, but I don’t know if that’s the case here.  Do you feel women, or rather sex and romance in general, is beneficial or detrimental to the design of one’s writing and the power of a novel today?
 
RD: For all the carnage and chaos of my life, most of the goodness in it has been brought into it by women. Most of the badness in it too, come to think of it. But yes, I’ve always found love and romance highly inspiring, and more than inspiring, nourishing and a source of meaning. That’s what love is, a kind of nourishment. And it nourishes writing and art as much as it nourishes the spirit.
 
MT: What do you think is the truest part of the book? How hard is it to write about oneself and remain true, if you try to remain true about yourself and your experiences at all?
 
RD: I would say that allof the book is true - even the parts that are invented or exaggerated. Furthermore, I would say that all my books are true, even the ones that are more explicitly fictional. What I mean by this, of course, is that fiction, if it’s any good, expresses truth in the form of illusion. That said, the ‘Rob’ who is the narrator of Threshold both is and isn’t me: he’s a persona of myself, like me in many ways, but not absolutely identical with me.
 
MT: Who do you want to read this? Every writer, I think, has one writer, one celebrity, one person in their life they’re secretly writing for.  I really believe this to be true, but you can correct me if I’m wrong.  Do you think you really wrote this novel for someone, or at least hoped a certain person would pick the book up and read it, and perhaps learn from it in whatever way imaginable?
 
RD: Wooh! An interesting question, though I’m not quite sure if there is an answer, or if there is, what it might be. Well, I guess there is one obvious answer, which is that I want everyoneto read Threshold, and then to buy copies for their mother, their cousin, their spouse and their self-isolating neighbour.
 
MT: My mentor, a wonderful and amazingly talented and famous author, loves Malta.  It’s her favorite place. What do you feel your favorite location is (you definitely said NO to the US) and do you think it’s beneficial to your writing? What is your writing style like, when establishing a writing pattern, when including or excluding something from a book, when developing characters and voice? What’s the most important thing for a writer to remember when creating something like this brilliant novel? 
 
RD: The latter question first: for me, trial and error is absolutely the most important thing. That’s how I create each book, and of course ‘trial and error’ means not being afraid of error, of going down a blind alley before retracing your steps and striking out in another direction. As for my favourite location, well, there is more than one - there are quite a few really. As I imagine becomes clear in Threshold, I have a great love for the cities of Paris and Berlin (though for quite different reasons – they are as unalike as two European capitals could be). Right now I’m in quarantine in Rosslare Harbour, County Wexford, in the southeast of Ireland. My favourite location at the moment is this lovely house, and the beach and cliffs just past the harbour, where I go walking every day.
 
MT: What is the hardest part of writing a novel, and what was the hardest part of writing Threshold?Was there a scene, a series of discussions, a whole chapter you considered removing from the book, and if so, do you still wish you had, considering the critical acclaim you’re receiving now?
 
RD: All the parts of writing a novel are the hardest part! Well, perhaps that’s not true – some scenes or voices or passages come easily, and that’s a joy, but not a frequently occuring one. I tend to splurge out a rough draft of a chapter or scene first, and then rework it over and over till it’s as close to perfection as I can get it. I kind of sort of partially vaguely considered thinking about removing the penultimate chapter, ‘Psychopomp’, which concerns taking LSD in Paris while researching the work of the surrealist André Breton. Arguably Thresholdwould have been a somewhat tighter read as a whole if I had done so, but that’s okay: it is what it is, as the Zen-like saying goes.
 
MT: What would I be surprised to find on your bookshelf? 
 
RD: Perhaps The Holy Bible. I was raised a Catholic, but fell out of the faith as a teenager and never looked back. However, over the years I’ve come to hold a new respect and admiration for many aspects of Christianity and the teachings of Jesus. I bought a bible a couple of years ago with the idea of reading it through, one book at a time, but I never got round to it. Every now and then I’ll dip in and read a massacre-scene or some arcane list of laws. There’s a lot going on in that book.
 
MT: Toni Morrison is often accredited with the quote regarding writing the book you’ve always wanted to read but never have found.  What’s the book you’ve always wanted to read but never been about to find? Do you feel Threshold, or one of your other previous works, fits this bill? 
 
RD: Absolutely, Thresholdfits the bill! Morrison is right, it’s imperative to write exactly the kind of book you want to read. If you do that, you can’t go far wrong. Another way to say this is that artists, or good artists anyway, become masters at following their instincts, being true to their natures, their preferences and aversions, their boredoms and fanaticisms. I hope to continue to do this for the rest of my life, with each book I write.
 
MT: Threshold is so strange and wonderful, about something and nothing, everything at once and so little at the same time, and it’s brilliantly written and wonderfully absorbing (I believe I’ve used all these words before), but what would you say the book is about, and why is it necessary today? Why do you think people should read the book, and what do you feel you’ve accomplished in this writing that hasn’t been done before? 
 
RD: I would simply say that Threshold is the most intimate, personal, revealing book I’ve yet written – but also the most fun, the most colourful, the most humourous and the most expansive in terms of its themes and settings. It’s got a bit of everything: there’s travel and philosophy, art and humour, mysticism and psychedelic drugs, madness and optimism, sex and loneliness. It’s a book about the struggle to write, also the struggle to live, to find some sort of transcendental truth in the midst of the turmoil and confusion of being alive.
 
MT: At the end of the book, there’s mention of a tomb, which reminds me of a New York Times article I read on the death of books, and I wonder which books you think will die and fade away in time, and what you think literature and the literary world needs more of nowadays.  Why end with a tomb, other than some metaphor for the end of the book?
 
RD: That’s the ancient pre-Christian tomb in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, I believe. It’s where the narrator and his friends go to undertake one final and major experiment with DMT, the incredibly powerful psychedelic drug that some people even believe permits us to travel to other dimensions of reality. I didn’t intend it as a metaphor for the end or the death of books – but if you want to read it that way, who am I to say you’re wrong!
 
MT: Do you have another work-in-progress on the way? I have to admit, I think my readers will be buying your books for the first time, which is exciting, and when they’re done I bet they can’t wait for more. 
 
RD: I’m very superstitious around talking about what I’m working on before I at least complete a first draft, so I’m afraid all I can say for now is that I’m working on something entirely non-fictional. In the meantime, my first novel Here Are the Young Menwas adapted for a film starring Anya Taylor Joy, Dean Charles Chapman and others. It’s not out yet but when this coronavirus situation is over, I hope you’ll be able to see it.
 
MT: Rob, thank you so very much for being interviewed by me here for Writers Tell All.  I love being able to interview great minds like yours, and I hope we get to meet one day, and maybe be included in some of your wild adventures (preferably not too wild).  Until then, I hope you have so much success with this new book, and I hope you enjoy all of the acclaim and hopefully sales you’ll be getting, and I hope I can contribute to that in some way.  Please feel free to leave us with any lingering thoughts or ideas or anything else you have left to say.  Thank you again, Rob.  Writers Tell All loves you.
 
RD: Hah! Thank youvery much Matthew – it’s been a pleasure. I promise that if I do write about you, I won’t get you to do anything too wild. At least, nothing I wouldn’t do. Stay safe, stay healthy, and thanks again for your questions.

Matthew Turbeville: I know you’re perhaps the most raved about debut standalone of the year, and so I want to keep this brief.  Can you tell me when you decided to write this story? It takes a lot for a story, a character, a plot, anything to push a writer through a whole novel.  When did it occur to you Your House Will Pay had to be written, and why did you push so hard to write it? I know it took longer than your average book. 
Steph Cha: I decided to write it in 2014, though my first foray into the material was through a short story, written for an anthology of Asian pulp. The story was about a young woman finding out her mother murdered a child during the L.A. Uprising in 1992. When I finished it, I knew there was a lot more in there that I wanted to explore, and once I decided to follow the brother of the victim as well as the daughter of the shooter, I felt like I had a novel to write. It was enough to consume my working life for the next four and a half years. 
 
MT: Very few authors have the ability to stand on all sides of a very political, very divisive issue and look at things objectively, but you do things so well.  Other authors I can think of include Attica Locke and Laura Lippman, who do a really great job at listening and not just telling.  What do you think is so important for everyone who wants to write about someone who’s not themselves, and what do you think you had to keep telling yourself to do when you were writing Your House Will Pay? 
SC: Alexander Chee has some great advice on this subject (https://www.vulture.com/2019/10/author-alexander-chee-on-his-advice-to-writers.html). I think it’s important to question your own motives on the front end, to interrogate and edit yourself as you write, and to be open to critique when you think you’re done. You have to be willing to put in the work and accept the responsibility that comes with writing someone else’s experience. It took a long time for me to flesh out Shawn and his family in Your House Will Pay, and I’ll admit it was much harder than writing Grace and the Parks. I did a lot of research, and I did a lot of work, and whether or not I did Shawn justice, I can at least say I poured everything I could into his character. I know him viscerally well.
 
MT: Who are the most underrated novelists today? Especially crime novelists, too? What books do you think should be read, and possibly celebrated or studied, but don’t receive the recognition they need? Who are the authors really breaking through and necessary to our country and world today? 
SC: In the crime world, I’d say Nina Revoyr, Sara Gran, Elizabeth Hand, Lisa Brackmann, and Rachel Howzell Hall—all have some devoted fans but are not as widely read or celebrated as I personally think they should be.
 
MT: You’re a seasoned writer.  You’re an expert writer.  You’re young.  What is your advice to fellow young writers, why do you feel you’ve succeeded so young, and what do you think the best advice you’ve ever received is, even if it took you forever to take the advice?
SC: I mean to be honest I got to start young because my parents are rich and I got to start a risky career with no debt and the knowledge that I had a safety net should I fail. This isn’t true of every young writer, of course, but it’s often a factor, and it makes me wary of dishing out sage advice. I guess one piece I will mention is that I always thought of fiction writing as a magical pursuit when it’s really just a lot of work—you don’t have to be some special writerly person to do it. It’s entirely possible to write a novel if you have the time, inclination, and follow-through. Also, definitely read as much as possible.
 
MT: This book took you a while to write.  I can understand a lot of what must have taken a while to struggle with, but what might readers be surprised to learn you struggled with, and what was the hardest thing about writing a novel like Your House Will Pay? 
SC: Coming from a mystery background, I always thought of myself as a natural plotter, but it turns out the genre conventions are an enormous help, and I had a much harder time plotting once I could no longer rely on them for the structure of my novel. I did much better when I gave in and outlined, something I hadn’t felt much need to do for my earlier books.
 
MT: Do you have a work in progress or finished book ready to publish, coming soon maybe? You know all of your super fans (aka me) are really ready for this. We love your writing and wonder if we’ve said goodbye to Juniper Song as well. 
SC: I wish I did, but I haven’t even started my next novel yet. I keep putting it off, and now we’re in a global pandemic and I’m having a baby. It’ll happen, but will probably be a while until I have a new book out again. I do know it won’t be a Song novel, though I can see myself circling back to her one day, many books down the line.
 
MT: Years from now, alive or dead, when there’s a great American book list of the 21stcentury and one of your books (probably more) is featured on the list, what’s the one word you hope will be used to describe you and your work? Do you think crime novels will be featured more heavily this century? Thank you for having me, Steph.  You know what your writing means to me personally, and I speak for myself and not the crying fangirls who make up the rest of Writers Tell All. All my best-- 
 
SC: Shoot, let’s go top shelf—how about ingenious? Really, I hope people read my work and find it thoughtful and illuminating and hopefully entertaining, even though it’s kind of grim. I think that’s how I think of my favorite crime fiction, so that’s what I aspire to write. I hope crime fiction continues to flourish this century and I see no reason it shouldn’t. Crime and injustice are not going away.

It's rare I get to interview someone so important and essential in the literary industry, and it's rare that this person gets to be a part of my life.  I won't gush, even if I want to, but I will acknowledge that Alex Marwood has had one of the greatest influences on my life, and I'm so incredibly thankful she writes and is in my life.  Every book she writes is incredible, and I cannot wait until you discover her.

I also want to thank Erin Mitchell, an essential part of the literary industry and the person THE POISON GARDEN is dedicated to.  The dedication is there for a reason.  Erin is a rockstar.  No one does it better--this is true for both these women.

Buy the US version of THE POISON GARDEN here, and purchase her other books here. ​

Matthew Turbeville: We’ve talked about cults, and I’ve read some of your interviews and thoughts and research on cults, and it all seems really relevant to what’s going on in the world today. People thinking in this binary black-and-white pattern, a commitment to one way of thinking without questioning any of their beliefs, etc—I’ve seen a lot of people contribute a rise in the popularity of cults in media as just a fascination with groups pictured more in horror movies than they are in real life.  What are your opinions as to why cults are so popular, and why did you choose to make this part of the subject of The Poison Garden? 
 
Alex Marwood: I’m not sure that popular’s the right word for it. Prevalent is more like it. And there’s no question that cults, or at least a rigid and often aggressive, cultish adherence to belief systems, are on the rise at the moment, and I think the whys will be the subject of hundreds of PhDs in the future. 
My own theories: governments and other bodies the world over have been inflicting social engineering on their populations for decades now – see, for instance, the way smokers have gone from ordinary people to wicked villains in the course of a generation – and social engineering necessarily involves the employment of slanted information, half truths and misrepresentation intent. It’s hardly surprising that a population that’s been trained up from birth to allow themselves to be gaslit should fall for the same techniques used by less well-intentioned organisations. Postmodernism and the moral relativism it promotes have left a lot of people casting about for stability, but ill equipped to tell the difference between an objective fact and an opinion. And the  internet, far from exposing us to other people’s views as we believed it would, has made it increasingly possible to convince yourself that “everyone” thinks the way you do. There are 4.13bn internet users worldwide. If you hold a view that’s held by, say, 1% of the population, that still gives you the ability to find 14.3m people who think like you. Honestly, you’d get greater variety of thought and opinion in your local bar than in most people’s follower lists on social media. Add on top the fact that every conceivable organization on the planet, from political parties to flat-earthers, has adopted the bullying tactics of denunciation, deliberate miscontrual, word salad and hyperbole formerly generally seen in teenagers, Stalinism and Scientology, and you’ve something close to a perfect storm of gullibility and conformity.

MT: You have this haunting effect on people--hat do you think about your books disturbs people in particular? 
AM: I don’t really set out to gross people out, but I don’t think there’s much to be gained from shying away from accurate description, especially in books that are, after all, addressing some pretty disturbing topics. So, you know – I just describe stuff. That, after all, is what Stephen King does, and he’s the best of all at this. And I keep qualifying words – my adjectives and adverbs – to a minimum. If you have to tell the reader that something is disgusting, or frightening, then you’re failing at describing it properly. Also, I research. And I tend to employ all five senses in my descriptive writing; people often leave one or more out, and most things one experiences involve the full sensory bag. 
 
 
MT: There’s a lot of talk about how to make unlikable characters “likable,” whatever you take that to mean. Yet your books are some of the very best, and people often comment there are no likable characters in the books. The same goes with so many of crime fiction’s best novels.  Where do you draw the line with likability, and what do you think is so attractive about a character who isn’t perfect? 
 
AM: It’s like that great Tolstoy line “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” – still up there in my top ten opening lines. It’s as simple as that. And realism. Unerringly nice people don’t exist, except in their own heads. One person’s “nice” is another person’s “prig”. One person’s heroic soldier is another person’s fascist. But it’s also true that the unerringly evil person is also a very rare thing. Many a gulag guard has been a loving parent; the serial killer Harold Shipman’s patients (he was a GP) still sing his praises to this day. 
 
I think this really came home to me when I read Anne-Marie West’s memoir of growing up with her father Fred and stepmother Rose, two of the UK’s most horrific serial murderers. When Fred committed suicide in prison, Anne-Marie, who had been abused throughout her childhood, was absolutely devastated, just as most ordinary children are at the death of a parent. I’m interested in the fact that people are complicated. I don’t really care, honestly, if some people find it hard to deal with that reality.
 
MT: Continuing on the idea of “unlikability,” is there an exercise, method, or trick you use to help us follow along a story with such unlikable characters? (I’ve stopped using quotes by now, I think.  They’re annoying.) It seems few people have problems buying your books and speeding through them, and yet they don’t like characters they feel aren’t redemptive in some way.  Do you think this is a trick of yours, a secret relationship between the reader and the character, a combination of the two or something else?
 
AM: I think most of my books are redemptive, in their own rather elliptical way. Certainly I think all my books before The Poison Garden contain a character or characters who grow in some way, learn about love, or sacrifice, or forgiveness, or simply about themselves. The Poison Garden  is a bit different: it’s certainly the bleakest book I’ve writer, but the world of cults is a bleak one and the path we’re going down as a society is a bleak one too, if we don’t manage to correct. And even in TPG, Romy gets what she is seeking. But it’s a book about obsession and broken minds, so Romy’s sense of fulfilment might well not be to most people’s tastes. But look – with this book I wantto scare us! I really want people to wake up and start questioning all their assumptions, before it’s too late! So if I’ve sent shivers down your spine by the end of that book, I’ve done as well as I can.
 
I don’t really have a trick, as such. I just… if I’m getting bored myself, it usually means I’ve gone wrong somewhere, so I’ll go back and pick what I’ve done apart until I can continue without doing so. 
I think a lot of people mistake redemption for “being caught and punished”, by the way. If you’re that sort of person, I’d humbly suggest that my books aren’t for you!
 
MT: This book was a particularly grueling process for you, or so it seemed from the outside—it produced this masterpiece, but it was taxing.  Can you talk about your process in creating The Poison Gardenand how you got it to the place it is today, where we can see it in print? 
 
AM: It took me three years to write. Partly because I went down a bit of a rabbit-hole with the research – honestly, I could read about cults for the rest of my life and still not know all there is to know. Partly because seeing the stuff you’re writing about playing out in front of you all over social media is quite a disturbing sensation. But mostly because I was prescribed a drug that had horrendous side-effects that left me basically non-functional for eighteen months. Anyway, it’s done now, and I don’t really want to go back there. But one day soon I shall murder an arrogant doctor in a novel, and everyone who knows me will cheer.
 
MT: In my opinion, your darkest book—for me, the one I actually felt sick while reading, but couldn’t stop because it was so good—was The Killer Next Door. I remember repeating to myself, “Wow, she isn’t afraid to go there.” Is there a place you are too afraid to go to, and if you don’t mind sharing, would you explain why? 
 
AM: Oh, plenty of places. Paedophilia. And torture porn. And on a personal level, I’m unlikely to do anything that sparks my quite horrendous levels of claustrophobia. I keep a pair of scissors in every room at home, and in every suitcase, in case I have to get out of constrictive clothes in a hurry – no, really, and I’ve used them, several times, and needed a lie-down with a beta blocker afterwards – and the one type of horror movie that is guaranteed to really pump my adrenalin is caving movies. Can’t do it. Nope.
 
MT: Which of your Alex Marwood books has not necessarily been your favorite but perhaps your most personal? You don’t need to share details, but I’m interested in what book pushed you hardest, and perhaps made you examine parts of yourself you didn’t think to look at before.  What book threw you for a loop? 
AM: Different questions! The one that pushed me the hardest was The Poison Garden. The most personal? The Darkest Secret. Mila is the character the most like me – or me at that age anyway – I’ve written, and though I didn’t start out intending to, I spent a lot of time working through my own history, and my grief at the impending death of my father, through her. I’m still really fond of her, and wish her well.
 
MT: Is there a book or subject you haven’t written about yet which you want to write, and possibly can’t wait to write about next? What interests you the most right now, and quite honestly, what do you find scariest about the world today?
 
AM: So much. It’s always a question of fining stuff down to something that will actually make a book at the time when you’re embarking on the next one. At the moment I’m a bit obsessed with grooming. Not the way you’d think, though. Like I said, I don’t do paedophilia. But it’s a huge issue, particularly here in the UK, and I really want to explore what happens to the groomed, what becomes of their lives afterward, because there are many ways to be so.
 
MT: How did you get started writing, and what were your formative books? (I say “formative books” like I know what this could mean, what age range this would be, and I think it’s something our beloved Laura Lippman mentioned to me once—but however you take that, what were your formative books, what were the books which shaped you to be the great writer you are today?)
AM: Oh, God, literally everything. I was a lucky kid with an adult library card, and a rural (ie, long periods of boring) family home stuffed to the rafters with generations of books, so my reading was constant and eclectic. Stephen King, obviously. But I think James Herbert’s The Ratsreally got me going down this path. And Jaws. And several dozen horror anthologies – I really started out as a horror enthusiast more than crime. But then, you know – Agatha Christie (the whole of my tenth summer), Kurt Vonnegut (over and over again, all of my teens), Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens and George Elliot. But also Rider Haggard and MR James and the First World War poets and the Victorian Gothics and Isaac Asimov and Patricia Highsmith and Daphne de Maurier and Dorothy Parker and Saki and Wodehouse and my granny, Margaret Kennedy. And tons and tons and tons of non-fic: memoirs of derring-do, histories, murderers’ biographies, war stories, explorers’ tales, psychology books, pirate yarns, anthologies of disasters and inventions and unlikely deaths. Here’s the No1 thing with getting to be a writer: read. Greedily and adventurously and taking your time before you dismiss an entire genre as not your sort of thing.
 
MT: What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given, and what’s the worst piece of advice you’ve ever been given? What do you think—for struggling debut writers, or those just beginning a work in progress—is essential for any writer to know when beginning this sort of life—a life of writing, of creativity, of loneliness at times, and joy and love at others? 
 
AM:    Best: you will never write anything that everybody likes, so stop worrying about it.
Worst: write what you know. Seriously, stop with that. If we did that, the literary world would consist of nothing but navel-scratching (and mostly dull, as writers often lead quite small lives) memoir. If you don’t know about something, find out about it. We live in a wonderful world where you can find out about anything.
Essential thing: for me, I’d say be careful who you show your work to. I only ever show my uncompleted stuff to people who have (or might have) a vested financial interest in its success. This is for two reasons: one, the people who love you might well mislead you about the quality of your work from entirely good intentions, and you’ll never improve that way. Two, more people want to put hopeful creatives down, for a million different reasons, than you realise. Why put yourself in a position where someone who isn’tout for your best interests (or whose best interests don’t combine with your own) can take a bludgeon to your tender heart and leave you sobbing on the floor?
Other essential thing: you need to be tough in this game. If you can’t handle rejection and criticism, even the unfair kind, you’re probably best off out of it.

Matthew Turbeville: Alexandra! It’s so great to interview you for Writers Tell All.  This is extra special because you’re also a recording-artist/voice actress. Can you tell us what it’s like to record for books and works by other authors as opposed to recording for your own novels? Do you have more freedom recording for your own novels? 
Alexandra Monir: Thank you so much!! I actually have only recorded my own audiobooks. But I am a recording artist/songwriter, so I am very much at home in the studio, which made the audiobook recording process so much fun.
 
MT: This book is about hope.  Possibly a last hope for those on Earth.  Many of your characters are traveling in hope of reaching alien life.  Can you tell us where you got the idea for the first and second book, and if you do believe in this hope, and where this also might spring from? 
AM: I got the idea for The Final Sixwhile listening to a radio interview with an aspiring astronaut who had applied for the experimental MarsOne mission. This was a woman who was married, with a family and a full life on Earth, who was willing to leave it all for the chance to see and to colonize Mars. That was so wild to me, and then I had the thought—what if it wasn’t a choice? What if people were drafted to space, just like people have been drafted into war? And the reason for this particular draft would be to find a new home for humanity, after all the climate change crises here on Earth. A lot of this theme came from my own concerns about climate change, though I certainly have a lot of hope that our current and next generation can save the Earth. But I also have hope for what lies beyond our planet, too.
 
MT: One person is left on earth, and the other narrator is sent on the mission to search out alien life.  You’re writing from two different point of views—how do you summon the ability to write from two very different voices, and what is writing this like? How hard is it to switch back and forth between the voices? Do you work with outlines and heavily plotted details so you can do one voice all at once, or do you have other methods? 
AM: It is definitely a challenge- I hope I managed to succeed at it! The best way I could think of to differentiate the voices was to wear my actress hat while I wrote—to put myself in each character’s shoes while writing their chapters. Reading aloud also helped a lot, too—that’s usually when I would notice the spots where Leo’s voice might sound too much like mine, and then I’d revise to fit his character better. And yes, I do work with outlines! 
 
MT: What books influenced this and what other books were the most influential during your “formative years”? Which book or books would you say most influenced this series?
AM: I’ve always been fascinated by space, so I think that longstanding interest was the biggest factor influencing and motivating me to keep writing this story! As far as particular books and movies that inspire me: Contact, Interstellar, The Martian, Gravity, and Arrival are all amazing and furthered my love of space-set stories!
 
MT: What’s the hardest part about writing these novels, and any novels? I have come across writers—and even have this problem myself—of challenging my own characters because in a way they’re your babies. You want to protect them.  What do you find the hardest about writing these great characters, voices filled with such life, and what necessary evils do you have to do in killing your darlings?
AM: I actually don’t mind throwing difficult stuff at my characters—I feel like that’s the only way a good story gets told!—but if I struggle with anything in terms of killing your darlings, it would probably be that I often get attached to certain scenes that may or may not work with the plot, but because it’s a beautiful character scene, I’ll have such a hard time cutting it! But I’ve learned that when something doesn’t move the story forward, alas, it has to go!
 
MT: When setting up a series like this, how do you map things out? Is the whole series mapped out, or are you unable to plot more than one book at once? Are you more in the mode of jumping from one place to the next without planning much ahead? The books seem so well thought out and crafted, I’m sure you must do a lot of planning? What is it like writing such well-written series? 
AM: I usually have an overall view of where I’m going across the series, but in terms of detailed plotting, I have to go one book at a time, especially because you can have an idea of what you want the story to be, but it inevitably evolves as you’re writing. So if you outline too far ahead, in my experience that can sometimes box you into a corner!
 
MT: When you write these novels, you push the limits of characters and usually have cliffhanger endings to chapters to keep the readers going.  How do you arrange to keep readers turning the page, and what do you think the hardest part of this aspect of writing novels might be? 
AM: I think cliffhanger chapter endings are so important, because you have to give your reader a reason to keep turning those pages! I like to end my chapters on either an exciting reveal or an intriguing question, and in either case, it has to up the stakes of the story. The challenge is making sure it’s organic to the story and not just throwing in an “Omg!” twist out of nowhere- you have to read through the manuscript a number of times to make sure your cliffhangers are authentic and serve the story.
 
MT: What do you think is so appealing about being chosen? In so many great young adult series, including your own, the protagonists are somehow singled out, incidentally or purposefully, and they are considered chosen, some characters even called “the chosen one” or “the chosen ones”? What do you think the draw is like for young people who read these books? 
AM: Great question! I think the answer is that it’s wish fulfillment. At all levels of life, but especially in adolescence, we’re dying to be chosen: to be noticed and asked out by the guy or girl we like, to be chosen as the lead in the school play, to be voted Homecoming Queen, to be picked by a top-choice college, etc. I think book series like Harry Potter and so many others take that wish fulfillment and dial it up to 100- you’re being chosen for something so huge, which creates a lot of drama and story complications, but underneath all that is the wish fulfillment we’re all secretly hoping for. To be the special one, plucked from obscurity for a great adventure!
 
MT: Your dialogue is great, and as I mentioned, your voice is alive and refreshing.  Do you ever feel that there’s a character you prefer writing, and are there ever any characters you dislike writing? What about scenes? What are your favorite scenes to write, and what are your least favorite scenes to write? Do you relate to any characters in particular, and if so, how? 
AM: Thank you so much!! I had a lot of fun writing the snarky dialogue between Beckett and Naomi, actually! ;) Overall though, it was the conversations between The Final Six that I loved writing the most—their banter, friendships and fights allowed me to write normal teenage emotions and relationships in the midst of such a heightened, high-stakes world. Those relationships helped keep the book grounded, I think!
 
MT: A famous writer once told me never to view a character as a complete villain, as all people are complex and very few are completely evil.  She instead implied that I should look at one’s wants versus another’s.  How do you feel characters and their different wants play out in the novel, both for themselves and against one another? What do you think is important to having any sort of conflict exist for characters? 
AM: That’s a great way of looking at it. The characters’ differing wants really are the crux of the conflict in this story. For example, what Beckett is after is diametrically opposed to what Naomi and Leo want, and that conflict has MAJOR repercussions. You have to have the conflict, because that is the key to a story- there really is no story without it!
 
MT: Again, there’s a sense of hope in this book. How do you see hope playing out in the novel and the series, and do you think any of this is influenced by what’s going on in the world today, and do you see hope in our world, a potential for hope, or the need for hope? The book offers some beautiful possibilities and I wonder what all this means both inside and outside the realm of The Life Below. 
AM: I absolutely see hope in our world, and a perfect example of that is the young climate activist, Greta Thunberg. I think with people like Greta in our next generation, fighting for our world, we can and will make it a better one!
 
MT: Is there a book as a follow up to The Life Belowplanned? Do you have a work in progress already in your hands, on your desk, in your iCloud perhaps? Maybe you’re just already beginning to plan the novel? You seem like a hard worker!
AM: I do have a new novel coming out, in December of this year actually! It’s unrelated to The Final Six and The Life Below—it’s a superhero novel based on a well-known character, and I’ll be announcing the details soon! I have some other projects in the works, too- lots more to come! J
 
MT: Alexandra, thank you so much for being interviewed for Writers Tell All.  We are thrilled to be able to talk with you and understand  (or hope to understand!) your books, your writing process, your characters, and so much more about your writing style.  Thank you so much for letting us have a look into your brain and your creative process.  Feel free to leave us with any parting words!
AM: Thank you for this wonderful and thoughtful interview! I love reading other writers discuss their process, so hopefully mine can be helpful to your readers too. JAnd while there is no one “right” way to write a book, the key is to just keep writing—even when it’s hard, especially when it’s hard, because that’s when the breakthroughs often happen!
​

As a crime writer, a crime reader, someone who reviews crime novels and interviews crime writers (as obviously seen below), I love a great mystery, whether this lies in the actual murder or the characters who commit crimes.  I never miss a novel by the Lori Rader-Day (please see her books all out on Audible here and you're going to want to order the print version of The Lucky One here), a woman who is always changing, adapting, evolving. Each book is the previous book squared, a great mystery with a delicious plot line and unforgettable characters, always resulting in a conclusion you won't forget.  Her last novel, Under a Dark Sky, ​absolutely destroyed me with its conclusion.  She's a tough act to follow, and possibly the only author to top her own work.  Enjoy this interview where Lori opens up about writing The Lucky One and how real things get--in so many ways. 

Matthew Turbeville: Lori, this book, The Lucky One, is phenomenal.  You’re coming off what I consider a really successful time with your last novel, Under a Dark Sky, and I see that you had real-life inspiration (perhaps a lot of real-life inspiration) for The Lucky One. Would you mind talking about the real-life inspiration and how it played a role in this novel? 
 
Lori Rader-Day: The idea originated with a conversation with my new neighbor, an adorable young mother who announced one day that she had been kidnapped as a child. That certainly got my attention, and started the story of Alice Fine, kidnapped as a child and returned safely (as my neighbor had been, as well). I had been casting around for story ideas and considering a story among the real online sleuths who solve long-cold missing persons and unidentified cases. The story started to form from those two concepts. Later, I did some research about a missing case from my hometown, someone I had known, to see what kind of information was easy to find, what was reported, what was not reported. What was most useful about that research was really this feeling I got whenever I thought about my hometown case. That girl, who went missing at age 12 and was called a runaway, but wasn’t, is still missing. Her case reminds me that my characters are fiction, but they represent real people who have not had justice.
 
MT: A lot of the book deals with the elusive connections we have to the past—these things we remember, or perhaps think we remember, that may be true and may not.  What’s the importance in the book about what we remember, what we remember being true and not true, and how do you think this plays out in the genre as a whole? 
 
LR-D: Memory is elusive and faulty—we have learned in the last decade that eye witness testimony is almost entirely without merit, for instance. In our genre, so many of our stories rely on characters’ memories because they are characters with troubling pasts—story-wise, that just gives us something to work with—and because we want them to be as human as possible. Humans happen to have bad memories, patchy memories, and in the case of childhood memories, their own closely held interpretations of events they were too young to understand or to question. I try not to use flashbacks for this reason because I think flashback scenes aren’t true to how memory actually works. Real memories are fleeting, not fully fleshed-out scenes. That’s just my taste, though, not a rule.
 
MT: I saw a lot of true crime influenced the book, which makes sense.  I was recently informed by the Jamie Mason—the brilliant Jamie Mason, I might add—that a book I was writing, based heavily on fact and true crime, needed to be toned down.  Fiction often has to be more subtle than the often more unbelievable true crime.  How do you feel about fact being stranger than fiction, and what influence (more specifically) did true crime novels, documentaries, podcasts, and so on have on your writing? 
 
LR-D: Truth is totally stranger than fiction, so strange it’s hard to imagine how some kinds of crime novels will ever top what’s happening in the headlines right now. I have always had a true crime interest; I especially love true-crime books but I’ve also gotten into podcasts in the last year. When I discovered the Doe Network and some of the stories of unsolved missing persons cases getting matched with unsolved unidentified remains cases, I definitely tucked the idea of that site and its online community away. And then when my neighbor announced she had been kidnapped—true crime lived next door! Luckily, I’m writing fiction and can stretch and distort that bit of truth however I want. That was a lesson I had to keep re-learning with my next book, which is also based on a bit of history. In that case, the crime aspect of it was entirely fiction, so I had the necessary room to write the story I wanted. I just had to be careful with the characters who were based in truth. I didn’t want them embroiled in the fiction aspect of the novel.
 
MT: This book, The Lucky One, is so much darker than your previous books, all genius. This book though feels almost dirty to touch at points, but in the best way. I’m reading the storyline following Merrily, one of the protagonists in the novel, and at times I want to look away but I also can’t stop reading. What about the darkness in storylines is so appealing to you and to other readers? 
 
LR-D: It’s a little dirty. I wanted Merrily to have her own online community, much like the one Alice has. It’s just…Merrily’s community wants something different from her, and provides something much different to her in return. It was pretty easy to imagine her situation and to make all the excuses she needs to make it fine. She isfine. She’s in charge of it until she changes things up and risks her safety. I like dark stories and always have, but not darkness for darkness’s sake. I don’t particularly enjoy serial killer fiction, for instance. People read fiction to put on other lives for a few hours, to live vicariously, to see and taste parts of life they don’t really want to encounter, and the lives readers want to take on vary greatly, from reader to reader and from day to day.
 
MT: What other books do you feel inspired The Lucky One? What authors do you feel need to be read more now, and are there any books or authors you want to give shout outs to?
 
LR-D: I read Deborah Halber’s book The Skeleton Crewas research for this book. It’s about the online amateur sleuth communities; about a third of the book is about Todd Matthews, one of the founders of the Doe Network. It’s a fascinating book. I also read James Renner’s True Crime Addictand Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Darkto write this book. Generally, I’m a big fan of crime nonfiction and highly recommend David Grann, Gene Weingarten, and anything by Susan Orlean (who doesn’t write crime specifically, but sometimes does. Sometimes she writes about dogs or libraries). I don’t know that I can say The Lucky Onewas inspired by any specific novels, but I learn something from a lot of my friends’ books. I would suggest Lou Berney’s November Roadfor learning about making every word count, Elizabeth Little’s Pretty as a Picturefor how a fully realized character feels on the page. For a modern thriller, Layne Fargo’s Temper. For a modern cozy, Kellye Garrett’s two Detective by Day books. For a modern private eye books, Kristen Lepionka’s Roxane Weary series. I could do this all day.
 
MT: Reading this book—and without too many spoilers—you often offer ways in which women knowingly or not are able to access power they may not be aware they have.  Two characters find they have much more power in their own everyday business life than they might think, and I am wondering how you think this reflects on women in today’s world, especially given the limitations imposed on these women either before, during, or after they learn the truth about power they might be able to exert.
 
LR-D: I can’t speak for all women, but I can speak for some of them, I guess, since that’s what I do for Sisters in Crime. I’ll just speak for myself. I’m far more comfortable in that position. In The Lucky One, at least one character has power she doesn’t realize because it was never actually given to her—she’s infantilized in a way—and another thinks she has total control until she doesn’t. She’s innocent of where the limits of her power are and how to protect herself. I don’t think I meant to speak for all of womankind when I created those two characters, but I think a lot of women might understand how the characters could allow themselves to be led along. Our default, if we were allowed to live it, would be to trust those who should be trusted, to give people the benefit of the doubt. But girls aren’t allowed to stay trusting. The world comes for them much too early and always has, and I guess that’s the book I’ve been writing this whole time, since the first one.
 
MT: What was the toughest struggle you had to overcome when writing this novel? What was your favorite part about writing this novel? 
 
LR-D: For this novel, the struggle was absolutely real. My dad died between the time I turned in the first draft and when I got my edit notes back, and let’s just say that grief is not a great writing partner. It was also a challenging book to write for a couple of craft reasons. I had chosen a different point of view than my previous novels, and then also the story I imagined was complex, so I had to map it out a bit. I’m usually a writer who just sees where the story goes, but I had the good/bad fortune to understand where I wanted the story to go early in the process, but then I had go write already knowing a lot. That doesn’t sound like a problem, does it? Except what I love about writing is the discovery, and knowing too much where I’m going can make the actual writing a drag. My favorite part about writing this novel, as with any novel, is anything but drafting the middle. The revisions were fun for this one. On my final edit, I took out 5,000 words. Not mandated by my editor—I just decided I wanted to reel in Alice’s sections to be a little leaner. Merrily got more room to play; she’s a more playful character. 
 
MT: You have a talent from writing from many points of view and in many perspectives, like first person, third person from different characters’ points of view, and so on.  What do you think is the most important part of deciding a perspective and point of view, and what do you feel is your greatest strength when writing from a person’s mindset, and occupying the character’s being? 
 
LR-D: Point of view is my pet craft topic because I think it matters so much to how the reader experiences the story. It confines the writer in how they can tell the story and reveal information, so it’s not a small decision. I like being able to get into a character’s skin, so I will probably always want to write first person or third close, so that I can let the character’s thoughts play a little and tell us who she really is. I usually find the story there. For The Lucky One, I chose to write for the first time in a novel in third person, close. That was entirely because I had two points of view who needed to tell the story, but they were two women of about the same age. I didn’t think they would sound that different to the reader. So instead I used third-person point of view and let them keep a lot of their thoughts to themselves, which was a lot of fun. It’s all about keeping myself amused or I won’t do the work.
 
MT: What’s your current work-in-progress about? What can we expect from the great Lori Rader-Day next? Can you give us any hints, perhaps big hints even? 
 
LR-D: I’m finishing up my next book now, and it’s a departure. It’s set in 1941 England and 1974 England, and I’ve had to do a ton of research to write it. The title isn’t finalized yet, so I can’t even tell you much, but… it has Agatha Christie in it. Briefly. And I stayed in her summer house as part of my research. I can’t wait to see what people think of it. That’s a lie. I have a lot of self doubt about this one, so I’m nervous to see what people think of it.
 
MT: Lori, thank you for letting me interview you once again.  I really love your books, always try and champion them, and want all readers to know they should pick up copies of all your novels and read them immediately. It’s hard not to just inhale your books, the way we can race through the pages so quickly.  Thank you again and please feel free to leave any notes or thoughts for the site or your fans below.  We adore you and cannot wait for this book and all of your novels to come!
 
LR-D:  Thanks for inviting me, Matthew! And thanks for the ongoing support!

Note: While Amy is one of the friendliest people I know, she's also incredibly mysterious, just like her novels.  The Familiar Dark, her new novel out soon, is one of the best novels of the year and likely the decade, a revenge-drug-dark novel where you root for the character to go darker, showing exactly how to execute the perfect novel about a mother wanting justice for her murdered daughter.  This is not a book you read slowly, but instead will pull you in immediately and you'll keep pushing toward the spectacular ending, which she nails perfectly.  I hope you all will preorder the novel, and read Amy's other work as well! She's a phenomenal writer and person.

Matthew Turbeville: Amy! You are one of my very favorite authors working today, and one of the best writers period.  I loved your new book, The Familiar Dark.  Can you talk about what helped you come up with this premise or where the idea first initially began to develop for you?
 
Amy Engel: I’m never very good at pinpointing where or when an idea comes to me. I knew I wanted this novel to be set in the Midwest, which is where all my novels take place. And I’ve spent plenty of time in the Missouri Ozarks, so it seemed like the perfect spot for this book, a dark, character-driven mystery with lots of secrets. I came up with the opening first, and from there the entire story unfolded. 
 
MT: You write a lot about family and issues involving trust/distrust within family systems. After all, this book is essentially all about blood, mothers and daughters, the ties that bond.  What do you think your writing says about family in your area of the country (as you do represent your own region in such a great way) and also in America in general? What draws you back to this idea of family and the values within family, the protection and the loss, the need and the want of everyone involved? 
 
AE: I don’t always set out to write about family dynamics, but somehow family ends up at the heart of every book I write. I think family is important in all parts of this country, and all parts of the world, but in the rural Midwest family can sometimes take on a bigger role than in other places. We see each other often, we have traditions that are passed down and glorified, we tend to stick together. And I find those family relationships endlessly fascinating. The ways in which we love each other, but also the ways we hurt each other. And the lasting imprints that both those things leave on us. 
 
MT: The book is rather slim, which makes for both a quick beach read but also an engrossing stay-up-all-night thriller. And yet every character feels so well drawn out and wonderfully crafted.  What are your tricks to helping push the characters to the surface with so little? What do you suggest to rising authors? 
 
AE: First of all, thank you, what a lovely compliment. And second, I wish I had a good answer to this. I’ve always been a “less is more” writer. I don’t think I could write a 600 page book if I had a gun held to my head. The characters are always what I start with. I’m more interested in the people--their relationships, their flaws, and wants, and needs—than in anything else. Maybe that somehow just floats to the surface as I write? For me, the trick is probably not over-thinking. I try not to think too much about the book before I write it, and that includes the characters. They speak to me on the page and I just sort of channel them. 
 
MT: What books or movies inspired The Familiar Dark? What do you think inspired you in real life—not just as far as the plot, but the people, the world the book is set in? How close to reality is this to where you are from? You are so familiar with the landscape, the town, the people, and this desperate loneliness and need for hope akin to Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show.
 
AE: I think most current rural noir authors owe some sort of debt to Daniel Woodrell. And Laura McHugh does an excellent job writing rural noir novels. But I didn’t have a particular book or movie that inspired The Familiar Dark. It was inspired more by time I’ve spent in the Ozarks. Although I don’t live there, I do live in Missouri and the Ozarks are only a short drive away. It’s a forgotten part of the world, really, once you get beyond Branson and the tourist trap lake resorts. There’s real poverty there and people who have no way out of it. There’s no “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” because there are no bootstraps. I don’t think rural poverty is represented very often in crime fiction and I wanted to try and tell a story about a woman, and a family, who live in that reality every day. 
 
MT: When writing a novel like this, how do you go about mapping this out? What do you have figured out from the beginning and how far ahead do you plan on the ending? Do you know the guilty party the whole time you’re writing? What pushes you forward toward this great, cathartic, epic climax? 
 
AE: I don’t map out my books at all. I know how they start and generally how they will end, but other than that it’s a blank slate. Occasionally I’ll write myself into a corner, but that doesn’t happen as often as you might think. It’s like my lizard brain understands which way to go when I’m writing. I do usually know the guilty party, but I don’t know how it’s all going to play out. With this book, I had a pretty good idea of what Eve would do in the end, but up until the moment I wrote the scene I still wasn’t 100% sure. 
 
MT: Having written for different age groups before, what advantages do you think you had over other writers who might write a similar story? How did you understand certain characters better due to your previous writing, or were you ever limited to understanding other characters as well? 
 
AE: Honestly, I don’t think having written young adult novels previously gives me any sort of advantage. I always try to think about my characters at every age, even if I’m not writing about them as teenagers or young adults. As I’m creating them on the page I’m viewing their whole lives in my mind. Why they’ve turned into the adults they are, what experiences have led them to certain places. But I think that’s how I’ve always approached my writing, no matter what age I’m writing for. 
 
MT: My mother once sat me down when we were in Boston and explained she loved me so much there would never be a situation where (she referenced a Sally Field movie where the daughter is murdered and Sally has to go on the hunt) the film’s story would never happen. What do you think is so strong about a mother’s love, especially contrasted with the narrator, Eve, and her own mother and the toxic relationship between the two? How can two worlds exist like this, worlds within people I mean? How can one love her daughter so much, and the other claim not to? And, of course, I don’t want to spoil anything else. 
 
AE: I think despite the cruel and hurtful things Eve’s mother says and does, I would argue she loves Eve in the best way she can. She’s just not equipped to love in a way that doesn’t cause damage, if that makes sense. But if we were basing love on a person’s willingness to fight for someone, then I’d say Eve’s mother definitely loves. But Eve’s love for her own daughter, Junie, is purer and less toxic, absolutely. I think every mother in this book is doing the best she can for her daughter given the circumstances she finds herself in.
 
MT: If readers want to read more like your own work, and you had to pick out a few authors similar to your own writing, what authors would you suggest and what books might you recommend to readers waiting eagerly for your next book?
 
AE: Winter’s Boneby Daniel Woodrell; The Weight of Bloodby Laura McHugh; Sharp Objectsby Gillian Flynn. They’re all amazing examples of rural noir and I’ve read them all multiple times. I’m also a huge fan of Tana French’s novels. They’re set in Ireland and are wonderfully written examples of character-driven mysteries.
 
MT: Even though Eve’s mother only lives a short way down the road from her in a sense, she is also worlds away. The novel functions as a sort of homecoming novel, a subgenre (sub-sub?) in the crime community.  What is so important about the homecoming novel now, and why do you think people are so often drawn back into these dark places, other than to face their own past demons? What is Eve’s reason for returning to her own dark space? 
 
AE: I think home is a powerful thing. The place where we’re raised and grow up and learn about the world can have a vise-like grip on a person. Sometimes the darker that place is, the tighter the hold. I think for Eve the pull to return is in part because she knows she needs her mother’s brand of wisdom and cruelty if she’s going to do what needs to be done. And she knows her mother is the one person who won’t try and talk her out of following a very dark path. 
 
MT: There are so many twisted, dark stories about family—far beyond incest—and I wonder what you think it is about family, no matter which family member we refer to in the book, which can hurt us the most? Why do you think crime writers are so drawn to this idea, and why do you think you’re pulled back to idea of family in a crime narrative again? 
 
AE: That’s a good question. Maybe because family relationships can be so fraught. All that love tangled with all that history and sometimes pain. I think family as a centerpiece for crime novels will be something I return to again and again. There are so many variations to explore and relationships to dive into. The people who love us the most, or who are supposed to love us the most, have the greatest ability to hurt us. And if those relationships go wrong, it can be very difficult to move on until we’ve confronted that pain. 
 
 
MT: I mentioned earlier how often in the “#metoo era,” authors are hitting people over the head with pretty on the nose rhetoric regarding rape, women’s rights, etc.  It’s not that there’s not a place for this in fiction—you deal with this so perfectly in fact—which makes me ask: why do you think you’re able to tackle such heavy issues and ideas so well without actually coming out and saying, “Hey, rape and toxic masculinity isn’t cool, and this is why people are murdered”? How are you able to so vividly show that through your writing and story and characters so well, and so subtly but so powerfully? 
 
AE: Well, thank you for saying that. All novels have themes or ideas they’re trying to get across, but I find I work much better when I don’t think about that too much at the outset. Just as I don’t over-think the characters or outline the plot, I don’t like to sit down and lay out what messages I’m trying to convey. When I’ve tried that, it does come out in a “hit the reader over the head” sort of way. I find that when I just concentrate on the characters, keep the focus small and tight, the bigger issues find a way to organically weave themselves into the story. I think if you really understand your characters, even if they are very specific to a certain place or way of life, their stories apply broadly. I never had a conscious thought that this book would look at misogyny or toxic masculinity, but the characters took me there in ways that I can only hope are both subtle and powerful. 
 
MT: What was the hardest part about writing this novel? Did you ever almost give up? What do you feel was the easiest part of writing this novel, or perhaps the most fun, and what suggestions do you have for flourishing writers out there in the crime writing community today? 
 
AE: I have a daughter who is only a few years older than Eve’s daughter who is killed, so writing this book was absolutely wrenching at times. I had to walk away for longer periods than I’m used to just to get my head on right so I could continue. There was one point where I wasn’t sure about the book, but my agent gave me some tough love and from that moment on the writing came a lot easier. Sometimes I just need someone to tell me I’m on the right track. The easiest part was writing Eve’s anger. Women aren’t allowed to be angry all that often. And Eve is an unapologetically angry woman. She does not care what anyone thinks about her or her rage. That was actually very interesting to write and somewhat cathartic. 
 
MT: Do you have another book or work in progress in mind? Can you tell us anything about what’s coming next? 
 
AE: I am working on my next novel. I’m going back to rural Kansas for this one and it deals with a woman serving a life sentence for the murder of her family when she was a teenager. I don’t like to talk about my books too much before they’re done, so that’s all I’ll say for now. 
 
MT: Amy, thank you for stopping by Writers Tell All.  I for one loved your new novel and I know everyone reading this will too.  I hope they take the time to go out and buy a copy, request a copy at their local library, or both.  Maybe buy lots of copies.  Thank you so much and if you have any questions, comments, concerns, or thoughts for your fans, please feel free to leave them below!
 
AE: Thank you so much for the great questions and for all your support of writers and their books!

Matthew Turbeville: Hi, TJ! I am so excited to get to talk to you about one of my new very favorite books, The Reign of the Kingfisher.  Can you talk to me first about how you came into writing, when you started writing, and also how many novels or stories you’ve gone through before getting to this masterpiece (published or not published!)? 
 
TJ Martinson: I began writing seriously around the age of nineteen. It was one of those things where I had always been a voracious reader but never thought that I was capable of writing something like a novel and never gave it much thought. I’m not sure what changed my mind, but as soon as I began toying around with writing stories of my own, I knew it was what I wanted to do with my life. There’s a kind of euphoria that comes with creating something, and the joy of it (along with the frustrations) never diminishes; that is to say that those early years of writing were mostly done for the sake of it, and I knew I wasn’t anywhere good enough to publish anything I’d written. It wasn’t until I’d written a few novels that I felt like I was finding my feet and ready to start thinking about the publishing process. I got an agent when I was twenty-two and we worked together on a couple novels that we both loved, but they just didn’t quite take. It’s always hard to say why, but it’s often a combination of timing, luck, and, of course, the novel itself. But when I wrote The Reign of the Kingfisher, I think that my agent and myself both knew it had a different kind of potential. 
 
In total, I’d say there were about five unpublished novels written in the seven years leading up to my debut, and each of them was entirely necessary; the only way to really learn how to write is to write, stumble, and keep writing.
 
MT: What were the formative books that shaped your writing experience? What books do you read now, and given that I view The Reign of the Kingfisher as largely a crime novel, what are your favorite crime/mystery/noir (etc) books? 
 
TJM: I’ve always been drawn to books with strong, idiosyncratic, and lyrical prose. As I was revising some of The Reign of the Kingfisher, I was simultaneously re-reading Don Delillo’s Underworld because he’s able to capture gritty textures and cityscapes with what I consider to be masterful prose (which was useful in writing about Chicago). I also fawn over Donna Tart’s writing, especially as it serves her finely tuned plots. Not only can she ratchet up suspense with ease, but she does it with a prosodic scalpel—she’s a true master. Another inspiration was, of course, Alan Moore’s Watchmen, which is not only one of the best crime/mystery/noirs around, but also is invested in examining the superhero trope, which is obviously something in which The Reign of the Kingfisher is equally invested.
 
MT: Can you tell us a little about how this novel came into being? What was your initial idea like, and how did you come up with this fresh plot which seems to revive a lot of older mystery tropes and really revive something that may not actually be there—the nostalgia for something that didn’t exist, in a sense (which may be too close to some things of the novel!)? 
 
TJM: 
 
I’m a long-time admirer of all-things superhero, and I was excited by the idea of writing a superhero novel that tried to avoid some of the tropes inherent to the superhero genre while also not being a total rip-off of Watchmen or any other novel that dips into the genre. What I ultimately decided to do was to tell a superhero story from the perspectives of characters who, in a traditional superhero narrative, would occupy the position of minor characters. By elevating them to major characters and backgrounding the superhero, it immediately catalyzed the central mystery element—namely, why is the superhero in the background and, for that matter, where is he? That was an important epiphany in the conceptualization of the novel. 
 
As far as the nostalgia that permeates the novel, it’s something of a personal fascination of mine that I think subconsciously bled into the plot, which contrasts the realities of the past with the realities of the present. I find it to be a fruitful internal tension for characters to be forced to confront what they thought was true, but which now seems completely impossible (or vice versa). I think that’s an experience that everyone can empathize with to some degree, even if they aren’t necessarily confronting whether or not the actions of a supposedly dead superhero were warranted, just, or even real at all.
 
MT: You write from a lot of different POVs, and you make everything line up so well, even if the reader is challenged in the best way by your no bullshit storytelling.  Can you tell us how you mastered this, and what the writing process was like, and how long this book took to write? 
 
TJM: Lining up the POVs was, without question, the most difficult part of writing this novel. When you write like that, you’re constructing a delicate ecosystem where if you change or revise a detail in one character’s chapters it will likely affect the other chapters as well. That’s true for writing in general, but especially when you’re dealing with multiple characters on a similar timeline and working toward a similar goal. 
I can assure you and everyone else that I am not at all a master of the POV storytelling. But I will credit myself for being a relentless reviser, and that’s honestly what it takes. I wrote the first draft of the novel without paying too much attention to lining everything up carefully; after gaining a sense of the plot, that’s when I started to think more carefully about how each character would occupy the space of the novel and interact with each other. It’s a challenge, but I think that, when done well, its immensely satisfying for a reader to see the novel’s world through multiple perspectives.
 
MT: You’ve already faced issues with censorship. What do you think is the main issue censorship of literature or anything is causing in our country, and why do you think this is so dangerous? I often feel censored books are sometimes the books that need to be read the most—what are your favorite censored books, and why do you feel they’re important? 
 
TJM: I count myself lucky in that some of the issues I’ve faced aren’t nearly as consequential as others have faced. That being said, censorship is a funny thing because it often seems self-defeating. For instance, Ginsberg’s Howl is great, but I personally think that the reason it stands out as one of the landmark poems of the twentieth century is because it was brought before the Supreme Court. That is to say that, despite the glaring ills that drive artistic censorship, I take enormous comfort in society’s demonstrated tendency to absorb and grow from the very things that certain members of society once tried to outright reject.
 
But that’s a long-term view. In the short-term, I believe censorship of art to be extremely harmful, if only because it reinforces a deleterious binary logic of “good” and “bad” art that ultimately serves to marginalize experiences, voices, and expressions; under the guise of “concern”, it operates from an almost medieval practice of moral prescription that disallows and punishes whatever seems to challenge (however obliquely) the practice of prescription itself. It’s just ugly stuff that has the potential of stifling artistic freedoms and generating unimaginative art.
 
In other words, censorship of art creates a debate where there shouldn’t be one. Art is always going to challenge, because that’s in its nature. The question isn’t how to obliterate what we don’t agree with, but instead how to express that disagreement in a way that constructs; for example, if you disagree with themes in my book, feel free to take it upon yourself to convince the world I’m a dangerous fool, but erasing the work itself or demonizing its existence is just lazy.  
 
MT: You write an incredibly diverse cast (one reason for your censorship), you write about people who aren’tyou and you do it well, and you write with both compassion and distance from the writing—distance that is necessary in order to tell something true, and compassion and empathy to believe the truth. Can you talk about how you developed these qualities, what was innate and what wasn’t for you, and what you think the most important quality for a writer might be? 
TJM: This is going to sound trite, but I do think that avid readers develop a capacity for compassion and empathy simply by experiencing a world from someone else’s perspective for the duration of three-hundred pages or so. But I also acknowledge that I’m not the arbiter of experience. For The Reign of the Kingfisher, specifically, I took great care in crafting the characters that don’t look like me, but I also asked my publisher for a sensitivity reader who can speak to some experiences that I’m not able to (which my publisher allowed, because they’re great). Of course, a sensitivity reader is just one person, but its someone who I’m not and someone with knowledge I don’t have. To me, that’s invaluable, and she helped the novel a great deal. But at the end of the day, if a reader takes issue with my representation of different experiences, that falls squarely on me. That hasn’t yet been the case, but I feel it’s important for writers to bear in mind that representation is incredibly important for fostering an imagined world with bearings on our own; however, equally important to bear in mind is that just because a writer creates a more diverse cast of characters doesn’t mean that they are excluded from criticism if this representation was done poorly or, in some instances, harmfully. 
 
MT: When we think of superheroes—or even just heroes—we usually think of these amazing, sometimes flawless people (or aliens, etc) who can do anything, be anyone, and be perfect.  I found the book so timeless, but also so important now in ways I saw the novel and viewed how this might relate to our political and cultural climate.  When you write, are you often unintentionally influenced, or is everything included intended purposefully? Do you ever find you write large portions of characters or stories which reflect your own life, and what do you think this means about the piece you’re writing and its quality? 
TJM: When I finished my novel (especially when I revisited it after receiving edits), I began to see a lot of unintentional influences that had shaped its plot. I was writing the novel in 2015-2016, which were…tough years. I think the discourses that took shape in those years found their way into the novel without much, if any, design by myself. Lucky for me, though, the superhero figure proved to be an ideal way of navigating the complexities of a polarized cultural moment in that the superhero traditionally operates on the moral system of “good vs evil” that in recent years has proven frighteningly malleable, strategic, and dangerous.
 
As far as my own life goes, I do think some of it creeps in, but not very much. After all, my life is largely spent behind the computer, so there’s not much worth fictionalizing.
 
MT: What do you think a hero is, and do you think the idea of a hero—any idea of a hero as seen in popular movie sand book sand comic books/graphic novels—do you think any of these ideas exist? How do the other characters play a part revolving around this superhero in the novel, almost an oral history (even if the novel isn’t entirely oral/told from multiple perspectives in brief vignettes, etc) and so filled with truth as we see so many different versions of the truth.  I’ve always heard there’s your truth, their truth, and the truth.  What do you think was so important about having so many complicated and different characters in one novel, and why do you think they’re necessary to understanding this supposed superhero? 
 
TJM: In the novel itself, one of the characters seems to land on the conclusion that a hero, at their own peril, does something that desperately needs to be done for the welfare of others. I tend to share in that belief, and I touch on it further in the acknowledgments of the novel. But the issue, one that I’ve not been able to resolve for myself, is when someone who does something I find horrendous can assure themselves that they are operating from the very same precept I just described. That’s where the issue with truth emerges, I guess. And in the novel, one thing that I wanted to highlight and that speaks to the inclusion of different characters is the importance of collective action. Whereas superheroes don’t necessarily need to assert themselves in tandem to combat injustice, the rest of us typically do. And with collectivity comes a more refined and capacious understanding of what we mean when we say things like “good” and “bad.” 
 
MT: Returning to the same essential question but moving past the idea of the other characters and their roles in relation to superheroes, why do you think it’s so important these days to see the normal or average person and their view? I think in slashers of the final girl, which is very different and a complicated and sometimes divisive concept, but she’s the supposedly weak woman, the non-superhero, the one who can’t fight but outwits the killer.  In your books, and in any books, why do we need to see the stories of normal people fulfilled? 
 
TJM: I kind of touched on it earlier, but I do think that the greatest benefit of reading is the intimate empathic engagement that comes from assembling a character and their world from words on a page. That said, I think it’s always a good practice to be reminded that people inhabit and see the world differently, if only to be reminded that our sense of how things ought to be, the essence of others, and our place in the order of things is of our own devising and deserves to be challenged and expanded by others.
 
MT: I know one character is a lesbian (google TJM if you don’t know why I bring this up) and there are so many other characters who are, on a surface level, not you.            Do you ever feel that even though the characters are so not you, they still may reflect who you are the most? Who do you feel you identified with the most in your novel? 
 
TJM: I think that’s true. There are certainly personality traits in each of the characters that I can identify with, but the one who I identified with most strongly was that specific character—Wren. Notable differences aside, I think she shares in my own foibles. Just as she does, I tend to over-think things and justify it as anything other than a desire to postpone consequential decision-making.
 
MT: I’ve talked about superheroes, but why is crime fiction so important today? Why do you think it’s so necessary that women especially are taking control of the genre? This goes for so many minorities rising up inside the genre, and I’m wondering how you view this and what good it will do. 
 
TJM: Any time you add voices, the art form is going to both expand and improve. Crime fiction, as it presently stands, covers an excitingly expansive topography and readers are coming to the genre because they can find themselves where they couldn’t find themselves before, and that is good for everyone—writer and reader alike. 
 
MT: Say you were to give a copy of your book to every person in America.  What are a few things you hope they’d take away fromt eh novel in the hopes of improving the country? What truths do you hope they’d have to face? 
 
TJM: I wouldn’t hope that everyone who reads the book takes away the same thing from it. If that were to happen, I’d worry that I failed pretty drastically. The most I could hope for is that whatever people take away from it—if they take away anything at all—is something that resonates with them specifically and lasts beyond a day or two.
 
MT: What was the biggest struggle in writing this book, and what was the greatest relief? What do you feel most accomplished about—other than publishing the book itself (and to much acclaim!)? 
 
TJM: The biggest struggle was probably just the process of trying to write a superhero novel/crime novel in a way that didn’t feel derivative—the inner critic was a constant companion. The greatest relief was typing “The End,” which was also the biggest accomplishment. Not to say I didn’t enjoy, thoroughly, the actual writing of the novel, but all good things come to an end, which is in itself a very good thing sometimes. 


MT: This may be a spoiler question, so feel free to dance around this and answer however you want, but who do you feel is the true criminal (or criminals?) in the novel? 
 
TJM: I’m not much of a dancer, but I’d say that, aside from the obvious answer, there aren’t any true criminals in the traditional sense of the word. What you have are people either acting purely out of self-preservation or, in some instances, a moral goal, and the only differences between them are the magnitude and implications of the consequences.
 
MT: When you think of books in the past several years, crime or not, what do you think you’d recommend alongside your own book, even if they don’t share similar plots/stories, characters, themes, etc? Even if they’re totally different? 
 
TJM: Oh boy, I could recommend a lot of books, but what first comes to mind is Attica Locke’s Bluebird, Bluebird (2017), which is a superb work of crime fiction. Her new novel, Heaven, My Home (2019) is currently on my reading list, too, and I can’t wait to dive in.
 
MT: What can we expect from you next? PLEASE tell me there’s another novel on the way! Something to keep fans satisfied. 
 
TJM: There is another novel in progress! I’m very excited about it. Admittedly, it’s been slower-going than The Reign of the Kingfisher just because I’m simultaneously trying to finish my doctoral dissertation, but hopefully I’ll be able to share the novel sooner than later!
 
MT: TJ, thank you so much for being interviewed by Writers Tell All.  We loved the book.  LOVED. And I advise all readers to pick up the book as soon as possible.  I’m glad I made the choice to read it (and thank the people who recommended the book, and apologize to those who I’ve sent more than four copies to).  You are an amazing writer and I can’t wait to see what’s next.  Please feel free to leave any comments or anything else you feel like saying, and it’s been a delight reading your book and crafting questions for you! 
 
TJM: Thanks so much for all the kind words and support! It’s been a pleasure chatting with you and an honor to make an appearance at Writers Tell All. Hopefully I did, in fact, tell “All.”

MT: The book feels like a book about a woman whose life—or iives, made up or real, but here seeming made up, at least at first—is breaking down.  Wall shattering, the timelines coming apart, and I usually hate books like this, but even as I settled down into this book and reading it, I fell in love with the novel pretty immediately.  What do you think about the type of book I already mentioned, how it’s been used in the past and today—which essentially, I suppose, boils down to a woman being crazy, gaslighting her perhaps, all depending on the book you examine—and why did you use this idea (or, this was the idea for me) to draw the reader in?

SN: Well, I guess I feel like Kate isn't crazy. I mean, in the book her version of reality is correct and she is never confused about that; she just tries to go along with the idea that she's insane in an attempt to appease other people. I guess for me it's a Cassandra narrative, where she's just seeing the world for what it is, and (like all people who see the world for what it is) being treated as if she's the problem. Of course we also get Ben's point of view, and we can see why everyone thinks she's crazy. But I think the book doesn't really have a crazy. Different people just have different experiences, all of which are real. 
 
MT: You’re great at introducing the reader to the science fiction genre.  I’ve always viewed science fiction as a pretty intense genre—yes, I love A Canticile for Leibowitz as much as I love more literary, sometimes noir plays on the genre like Station Eleven—but why do you think the genre is so hard for people to get a hold on, and what books do you think are best as introduction? Why do you think The Heavens works so well as a book to introduce people to a genre with often incredibly unique worlds?

SN: As far as why people don't get into science fiction, I guess I don't know because I never had that problem. I suspect a lot of people just find it difficult to take a completely imaginary world seriously, even though obviously all fictional worlds are imaginary. Generally I think LeGuin's books are the most effective cross-over books for people who don't already like SF. I've also had some success with M. John Harrison's Light (though I try to recommend Harrison in every interview, so you may take that with a pinch of salt. But read his books.)

I think The Heavens isn't strictly speaking science fiction, though it's definitely getting close to being "real" science fiction. My trajectory as a writer has been to write books that are more and more science fictiony. I'm working my way up to literal spaceship. 
 
MT: There are so many things I want to ask you, but I have to remind myself to avoid spoilers, and to avoid ruining the book for new readers.  The novel’s modern day (“modern day”) timeline is set in a specific number of years leading up to an essential and tragic time in American history.  Can you tell me your favorite books which function around a specific time or incident in history, why they are important, and in a loose, general sense, why you chose to do this yourself?

SN: I just needed 9/11 (I care not for spoilers) so that people would be able to locate themselves in history and realize that we were finally in a completely recognizable contemporary world. And then of course it becomes a symbol for how the world is getting dramatically worse. I think all Americans who lived through 9/11 can identify with that feeling of the walls closing in, of mistakes being made that were irrevocable and obvious and yet somehow felt unavoidable. 

Books that function around a specific time or incident … in a way this would be most books? I mean, I love historical fiction (I'll mention Dorothy Dunnett and the inevitable Hilary Mantel). It's tricky to use historical events, of course, because they tend to feel bigger than the story you're telling. Unless they are the story. If they're not the story, then it can be a bit like having a horse on stage during a love scene.
 
MT: There’s this issue in the book—again, trying to avoid spoilers—perhaps the best way is to say one might try to fix things only to constantly change things, make things worse for what one wants, and never be able to achieve the life or future one wants.  There’s an extreme tragedy in this, and I feel like we see this here today.  On one hand, we have people actively working to make change and this often blowing up in their faces—so many politicians, activists, etc.  Perhaps their past actions (Clinton with her views on gay marriage, seen in the past, supposedly affecting her polls with queer people) or current indiscretions ruining things, and then we have people who sort of passively let change, change they don’t want, change they don’t like, all of this happen while they sit behind computer screens and sign petitions on Facebook.  Where do you think Kate would fit in today’s world, and why do you think her need to make change, but also things blowing up in her face are so important to the book, but also to the reader too? Gosh, that was a long set-up and question.

SN: I'm just going to say what I want to say here, which is that a lot of the time people think that they're being virtuous if they Do Something. It's like, "I actually Did Something, I am the hero here." Generally what they did is the thing they found most emotionally satisfying. We see this with politicians (notably those who start wars) and in ourselves. We also admire people who Do Something, even if we know the thing they are doing is counter-productive and stupid, and we tend to admire them more if the thing they did is flashy, feels heroic somehow, got a lot of attention, involves them being sexy and tough—absolutely regardless of whether it was harmful or beneficial. This is a real problem.

We really can't know all the consequences of our actions. But we have a responsibility to think about the likely consequences and to try to make choices that have good consequences—even if it doesn't feel good or particularly make us look good.
 
MT: As I mentioned, you and I both work inside two genres—separate genres, but two very popular and I like to think important genres (and yes, I know literary is a genre too, but for now I will focus on science fiction and crime).  While Attica Locke has said that all books are crime novels (she mentions Beloved as her favorite crime novel, for example), we also have to note how people limit crime and science fiction.  I understand genre in itself is a way of limiting how we fit a novel in a certain place, why do you think certain critics and readers frown upon or steer clear of “genre fiction” and what do you think the danger is in only reading purely literary fiction all of the time?

SN: Obviously some people are insecure about their intelligence or class status or education level, and that plays into the phenomenon of avoiding genres or looking down on them. But generally it's just a personality thing. I have trouble with many crime novels because I don't care who did the crime and I don't really believe in punishment, so the whole ending feels kind of gratuitous and annoying to me. My tendency is to think, "Leave the poor criminal alone, you weirdos." You know, to me the detective (where there's a detective) is just being nosy. But I recognize that this is a personal quirk, and I am the one who is wrong. And of course there are plenty of crime novels I like and admire despite this quirk, but if I didn't read hundreds of books a year, I probably wouldn't have gotten that far.

I think it's fine to just read literary fiction, just as it's fine to just read crime fiction. There are some limitations to any genre, but I don't think there's anything wrong with loving whatever you love. And there are always books within a genre that break through all the limitations, so I feel like ultimately you're fine. 
 
MT: Assuming this book was read by individuals all across America, what would you want the main takeaway from the novel be—in addition to being just an extraordinarily entertaining and interesting novel?

SN: The main takeaway in my opinion is that your life is history, and what you do affects the future. We have this trope of going back in time to change history (to kill Hitler or whatever) but we are already back in time, with the opportunity to change history. What we do matters, and if an apocalypse is coming, the mistakes we make now are the apocalypse.
 
MT: Sandra, I won’t keep you with many more questions, but do you have a work-in-progress or book you’ve already finished? I know we (your readers, your fans, your mega-psycho-fans) are all waiting for more from you.  Eagerly awaiting more writing!

SN: I'm working on another novel now, which starts from the premise that all the men in the world disappear, and the women are left to sort it out on their own. But the book really follows the women who can't give up looking for the men—or particularly for their husbands, sons, fathers, etc.
 
MT: Sandra, thank you so much again for agreeing to be interviewed for Writers Tell All.  This was magical—the book, the books that I later read of yours and also other books I revisited after being inspired by The Heavens—and I loved the experience so wholly.  Feel free to leave us with any words, thoughts, input on the novel or writing or your writing or anything else, and thank you so much again because reading your work and interviewing you has been such an enormously delightful experience. Thank you again.