Author, CJ Lyons, is wrapping up one nationally bestselling and well-received series to turn around to start another promising venture with a co-author whose name we think you’ll recognize. While the buzz builds for CRITICAL CONDITION, the last in Ms. Lyon’s set of medical thrillers, we get to chat with her again about her work and how she views the art and business of publishing fiction.

We’d like to thank her for returning to another installment of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: Your medical mystery series is winding (and sizzling) to a close.  Tell us about this last installment, CRITICAL CONDITION.

CJ: CRITICAL CONDITION is the finale of the Angels of Mercy series, so it wraps up all four characters’ storylines in a whiz-bang of a thriller ride…think Die Hard in a hospital. The action takes place in real time, everything happens in less than five hours, which made it so tightly plotted (with four main characters and stories to tell) that I literally wrote the book backwards, starting with who was left alive at the end.

Followers of the series will be amply rewarded but newcomers should also enjoy the thrills and twists…can you tell, I had a great time writing this one?

AuthorScoop: Has the ride of a career novelist, so far, been what you’d dreamed it would be?

CJ: Leaving medicine to become a full-time writer was a huge leap of faith, so I was basically ready for anything and everything. That being said, it is an absolute pleasure to be able to wake up everyday smiling because I’m doing exactly what I want. It truly is a dream come true.

It’s still work–in fact, I probably work longer hours than when I was a doctor–but it’s also tons of fun, so it doesn’t feel like work.

AuthorScoop: Momentum being what it is, your life as a writer has probably changed in many ways.  But what’s been the same for you?

CJ: The one thing that hasn’t changed (and I hope never will) is the thrill of getting fan letters–I can not describe the sense of awe that fills me every time I hear from a reader who has enjoyed my books or been inspired or empowered by my characters.

AuthorScoop: And with the accomplishment of these successes secured, what new advice would you offer to aspiring novelists?

CJ: Last time I was here, I think I said: Never surrender, never give up.  Now I have a new mantra, courtesy of the great thriller author, Jeffery Deaver. He once told me: the Reader IS God.

I try to keep that in mind with every decision I make–what will give my readers the most satisfaction and enjoyment? It’s really served me well, especially now that I have tighter deadlines and need to get things right the first time around.

AuthorScoop: What’s next for CJ Lyons?

CJ: CRITICAL CONDITION is out November 30th, followed by the first in my new series co-written with Erin Brockovich, ROCK BOTTOM, due out March 1, 2011. I’m hard at work on the second in that series.

I’ve also released electronic versions of several works that I’ve gotten my rights back to, available on Kindle, Sony, and Nook. The latest of these is a women’s fiction/thriller blend called BLIND FAITH.

My writing students have asked me to arrange my lectures into books, so I’m also working on those as well….in my spare time, lol!

***

CJ Lyons has more to share on her website, where you’ll also be able order any and all of her books (including securing your pre-order copy of CRITICAL CONDITION) right from the front page.

It’s always a pleasure to see a good thing keep going and so AuthorScoop is proud and pleased to welcome back Dr. Christopher Johnson.  At the top of his field in pediatric intensive care, Dr. Johnson has employed his expertise in hospitals around the country, but also now in three books that bring parents, or really anyone with an interest in digging a little deeper, into the science and philosophy of medicine.  His latest release, HOW YOUR CHILD HEALS, has already earned accolades here, so we’re doubly pleased to get more insight into the book.

We’d like to thank him for returning to another installment of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: Three times now, you’ve laid out your expertise in layman’s terms to bridge medicine and parenting. Tell us about your latest, HOW YOUR CHILD HEALS.

Chris: This is a different sort of book than my last ones. First, a little background on how I came to write it. After I completed my medical training I spent a couple of decades both practicing medicine and doing basic biomedical research, splitting my time more or less fifty-fifty between my lab and the pediatric intensive care unit. What I did was cellular and molecular biology: I grew in plastic dishes specialized cells from the heart and from blood vessels, lining cells called endothelial cells, and then studied how they responded to and recovered from various kinds of stresses and injuries. It was exciting and rewarding, particularly because I began my research career during the earliest days of our current era of molecular genetics and gene cloning. They were exciting times. I ultimately found, though, that instead of two part-time jobs – the lab and the PICU – I really had two full-time jobs. One of them had to go. So fourteen years ago I gave up the lab work.

I still miss the lab sometimes. You could turn off your beeper, refuse to answer the phone, and just spend the day at the lab bench. It had intellectual satisfaction. Plus, it let you do stuff with your hands, which was also satisfying for those like me who enjoy tinkering. It was before today’s internet existed, so if you wanted to look something up in a scientific paper you had to go to the library. And nobody could find you there, holed up for an afternoon in a corner.

I found cellular biology to be more than satisfying; it is mysterious in wonderful ways. You look down at the cells through your microscope, even watch them move a little, and know they are talking to one another – conversing using both touch and secretion of various signal substances. The basis of my research was figuring out what these heart and blood vessel cells were saying to one another. We still only know small bits of their language because it can take years to identify just a single word or grammatical principle. And, of course, the whole time I’m looking at them their relatives, that is, the equivalent cells inside me, are going about their ordinary and unsung business of keeping me alive minute to minute. The cellular drama inside us is enormously complex, with billions of cells meeting, greeting, and interacting with each other. It’s an alternative universe.

So, what is the book about? The book is constructed as a series of imagined journeys deep within the body to watch the body at work. The reader resembles an anthropologist studying a strange, yet familiar society. I use the conceit of a magical combination submarine and ATV that carries the reader, for example, on swims in the bloodstream, crawls between the body cells, and reconnaissance missions inside the intestines. Most chapters comprise several visits: the first one is to normal tissues, the second revisits the same place when something has happened, such as an asthma attack, an ear infection, or a broken bone, and the last is a return trip after things are back to normal. In this way you watch how cells and tissues heal.

Although there are no journeys in it, one of my favorite parts of the book is the last chapter. In it you read about how healing, on the cellular level, goes back to the dawn of life itself, billions of years ago. You read, for example, how a random event, most likely in a single germ cell in a single primeval shark hundreds of millions of years ago, allowed the miracle of our present immune system to happen.

I suppose the best way to describe the book is that it is my personal valentine to an old and dear lover – the astonishing internal world of the human body we take for granted, and to which I devoted a good chunk of my professional life.

AuthorScoop: How has writing these books affected the way you practice medicine and view your career?

Chris: I told you about the fascination I have for the science of medicine. But it is clear that the more we know about how the body works the more we are mystified; each small answer asks many more questions. A philosopher might say that, actually, we know nothing: the amount to learn is infinite, so any fraction of that infinite quantity is statistically indistinguishable from zero – nothing. I began my medical career as a medical scientist; I think writing the books has made me more and more into a medical humanist.

AuthorScoop: Have the rigors of writing changed the way you read?

Chris: I don’t think significantly so, although I think I appreciate particularly skillful writing more than I did in the past. Now I am more likely to pause to admire a well-constructed auctorial building than I would have in the past.

AuthorScoop: With the accomplishment of these three books, what new advice would you offer to aspiring writers?

Chris: Since I ostensibly write nonfiction, I can’t speak much to fiction writers. I say ostensibly because my latest book really is a kind of detective fiction, masquerading as nonfiction: there are heroes, villains, victims, innocent bystanders. I would like to write a little fiction now and then, and now I have in a way. So my advice to nonfiction writers is to think about what kind of book you want to write and then devise a way to do it. All the how-to books about writing nonfiction proposals tell you to study the market, identify a niche, and then write a book that fills it. That always seemed boring to me; you’re letting the market tell you what to write. Since the odds of getting published are generally dreadful (sorry about that, but they are), I think it’s better to write a book you enjoy. It’s the journey that’s important, after all.

AuthorScoop: What’s next for Christopher Johnson, MD?

Chris: Another book, of course. It’s too early to say just what it will be about, but likely it will be more along the prescriptive nature of my second one, How To Talk To Your Child’s Doctor. Maybe it will be about how to keep your kid out of the emergency department, or, if you can’t manage that, how to understand and negotiate that particular and baffling subculture of medicine.

***

Learn more about Dr. Johnson’s work and books, and follow his excellent blog, here.  If you’re in a hurry, though, please feel free to use this shortcut to get to your copy, in hardbound or Kindle format, of HOW YOUR CHILD HEALS.

Alice Eve Cohen racked up accolades and and awards in 2009 for her memoir on an unexpected later-in-life pregnancy, WHAT I THOUGHT I KNEW.  With it gaining new fans in paperback, Ms. Cohen has another book in the works and a film option on WHAT I THOUGHT I KNEW to occupy her writerly facet.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Alice: In 1994, an excerpt from my play, Philomela’s Tapestry, was published in ‘Monologues for Women, by Women’, a very cool book of scenes by women playwrights, which is still widely used for acting classes and auditions. A college student once told me, “My acting teacher advised the class not to do the Philomela’s Tapestry monologue in auditions, because everybody does that one!” I told her I was honored to find out that my monologue was done too frequently!

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Alice: I’m writing a new book now; the working title is MY LEFT EYE. Only my muse knows when I’ll finish it. (Muse? Can you hear me, Muse?) WHAT I THOUGHT I KNEW came out in paperback (Penguin) this summer.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Alice: Everyone in my family—my wise husband and my two amazing daughters—is supportive of each others’ creative endeavors, whether or not those endeavors are successful. I grew up in a family that valued the arts, so my unconventional career path always felt like a natural choice. At The New School MFA Program, I studied with brilliant authors who really influenced my writing—especially Abigail Thomas, Francine Prose, Ben Taylor, and David Gates. And I’m continually inspired by my students (I teach solo theatre and playwriting at The New School). When they take creative risks, it emboldens me to do the same.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Alice: I’m a morning person. Generally, 8am to 1pm are my best writing hours.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Alice: Find a writing class that interests you. Having the structure of a weekly class motivates you to write on a regular basis; it’s great to get feedback from peers on your work; and participating in discussions of other students’ work is a great learning opportunity. I continue to take writing workshops. It exposes me to new ideas and deepens my practice, both as a writer and as a teacher.

***

WHAT I THOUGHT I KNEW is available in bookstores and Amazon.com has got an electronic copy for your eReader (or you can always order a hardcopy for delivery.) Find Alice Eve Cohen on Facebook and Twitter to find out even more.

Tasha Alexander is becoming a staple on the bookstore shelves and bestseller lists for top-tier historical suspense.  Her well-researched catalog is refreshed this month with her latest, DANGEROUS TO KNOW, and Ms. Alexander is back from globe-trotting for research just in time to go globe-trotting for readings and signings.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Tasha: AND ONLY TO DECEIVE.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Tasha: DANGEROUS TO KNOW is the fifth book in my Lady Emily series. Emily has come to the lush Norman countryside in search of respite. Instead, she finds a brutally murdered woman, a ghostly child, and a family being destroyed by hereditary madness. Not to mention a disapproving mother-in-law…

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Tasha: My parents brought me up to love books, and without them, I could never have become a novelist. Writing is an isolating endeavor, and it’s also a consuming one. If my husband weren’t so fantastic, it would be much harder to do. He’s also an author, so understands what the job requires and couldn’t be more supportive. He even provides an endless supply of tea and cheese sandwiches when I’m working…

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Tasha: I go for extremes—early in the morning or else late into the night. It tends to switch from book to book. DANGEROUS TO KNOW was middle-of-the-night, but the manuscript I just finished was early morning (due partly to excessive jet lag!). The main thing for me is to work every single day. You can’t sit around waiting for a muse if you want to be a writer–muses are notoriously unreliable.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Tasha: READ! There is no better way to hone your craft than to read widely, across genres.

***

DANGEROUS TO KNOW is in bookstores now and you can find an electronic copy for your eReader (or order a hardcopy for delivery) by following the links from Macmillan to your favorite online retailer. Find Tasha Alexander on Facebook and Twitter to stay in the know about what’s cool in historical fiction.

Julie Metz rocked The New York Times bestseller list last year with her memoir, PERFECTION, the story of a shocking loss that lifted the lid on a personal Pandora’s box and changed her life forever.  Now PERFECTION resurfaces in its paperback incarnation and we’re lucky enough to snag a few moments of Ms. Metz’s day for a glimpse inside the practical life of a writer with a hit on her hands.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Julie: My first published piece was a short nonfiction essay about a day in my New York City childhood. When I was eight and my little brother was six, we traveled together on two city buses each day to go to school.  One day, after a huge blizzard, the crosstown bus stopped running and we walked across town through Central Park. No cellphones of course.  In fact our parents had no idea what had happened until that evening. I contrasted this adventure with an episode from my own mothering experience—my nine year old daughter wanted to walk three blocks to her bus stop, and I was having trouble letting her go. The piece was published on a New York City story site called mrbellersneighborhood, founded by writer Thomas Beller.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Julie: My memoir PERFECTION has been released in paperback by Voice/Hyperion. It tells the story of the revelations of infidelity that followed the sudden death of my husband. As a 43 year old single mother, I found myself in the middle of my life starting over again. I hear from many readers who find comfort in the idea that you can remake your life after such great upheaval. My book was a New York Times bestseller and has been optioned for film—details to come!

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Julie: I have a tremendously supportive family and I was lucky enough to work on my manuscript with the guidance of a wonderful and dedicated editor and publicity team.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Julie:I try to work in the mornings, right after my daughter goes to school, before the day gets too crazy…

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Julie: Make an effort to get enough physical exercise and sleep, take your vitamins, and write every day, even if you throw out everything (but know that I do not always take my good advice…). If you haven’t already, familiarize yourself with online networking as this can be a real help for writers who spend so much time alone.

***

PERFECTION is in stores now and you can find an electronic copy for your eReader (or order a hardcopy for delivery) by following the links in the website’s left sidebar to your favorite online retailer.  Find PERFECTION on FaceBook to keep up to date with what’s happening - for the book and its author.

This really is a pretty scene
But could you ask your kid to smile, please?
Sorry, what exactly do you mean?
Can you say it English?
– Joe Jackson, “Jet Set”

Now and then, I think about how it is that language is both a prism and a blind. It’s language that enables art in verbal expression. The facets and nuances of language - how we sense words in meaning, sound and feel – enable us to create and feel poetry, for example. The beauty of words, the musicality of syllables, the tension created by what is left unsaid – give a pulse, a thrill, to dumb data. Through our language, the ray of a thought refracts and plays, sometimes marvellously, on whatever blank wall we choose.

But only if we speak the language. Otherwise, all we have is a string of ciphers. Even with a technical grasp of a language, without a native speaker’s feel for the idiom, our ability to feel the full beauty of a piece of literature is heavily compromised and even perverted.

And it’s this barrier of language, the living quality of how we speak and write, that led me to wonder: How much do we owe to translators for the beauty of a work? More than that, is translation itself an art worth celebrating? Should we praise talented translators as much as poets or novelists?

Until a few weeks ago, I’d have to say that I’ve taken the skill of translation for granted. Intuitively, I knew there must be an art to it. Translation is much more than simple transcription. Otherwise, we might all be speaking one language now anyway, no work would ever be translated into a given language more than once, and BabelFish translations wouldn’t have become the Internet equivalent of a parlour game. If translation were straightforward, there’d be one edition of the Bible, no questions asked.

But there are questions asked.

The touchstone for my inquiry was a book of poems. A while back, in an effort to practice a little more of what I preached about reading poetry, I bought a copy of Les Fleurs du Mal, by Charles Baudelaire. This edition, a 1987 Picador Classics edition reprinted from a 1982 Harvester Press edition (Pan Books, London, 1987), contains the translated English versions followed by the original French versions.

In the foreword, translator Richard Howard discusses his approach to translation. To start with, he set out to remain loyal to meter, but not to rhyme. He acknowledges others’ views of forsaking rhyme, citing another writer who observed that translation without retaining rhyme was like a tightrope walker stretching his wire along the floor. But his view was that there were other, higher purposes in Baudelaire’s work, and it was those to which he was more committed to staying true. He writes of different casts of ‘Baudelairean’ – “a sensational Satanism, is of course not the same thing as… a fashion of convulsive and confessional energy”.

Which all sounded logical and noble, but I wondered whether the distinction might be arbitrary - the translator feeling that rhyme was too constricting and not so important, but meter was significant. Perhaps, then, the translation might be pinched between retaining the meter and the meaning. Then I noticed that, for one poem I’d particularly enjoyed, he’d actually changed the title – from Bénédiction to Consecration. That, to me, seemed a liberty on the translator’s part.

So I thought I’d look up some other translations of the poem. This search was so easy that I realised my epiphany is no news at all. But what news really is news?  It’s still an epiphany to me, and it needed exploring.

There is at least one site dedicated to this particular volume – fleursdumal.org – and it contains four separate English translations of “Bénédiction”, from 1936, 1952, 1954, and 1958. (The original poem was first published in 1857.) The first thing I noticed is that, in contrast to Howard, all four of these translations retain the title’s cognate, Benediction. After that, though, the versions diverge greatly.

In this discussion, I look only at the first two stanzas. This cursory glance cannot support or sustain the philosophical heft, nor the experience, insight or talent, that Howard brought to the translation. Furthermore, they may lead me to outright erroneous conclusions about the translators’ works themselves. But they illustrate my point for the sake of this essay, and they minimize my imposition on the reader.

Here’s the original, in French (and yes, the Picador Classics edition and fleursdumal.org render it identically):

Bénédiction

Lorsque, par un décret des puissances suprêmes,
Le Poète apparaît en ce monde ennuyé,
Sa mère épouvantée et pleine de blasphèmes
Crispe ses poings vers Dieu, qui la prend en pitié:

«Ah! que n’ai-je mis bas tout un noeud de vipères,
Plutôt que de nourrir cette dérision!
Maudite soit la nuit aux plaisirs éphémères
Où mon ventre a conçu mon expiation!»

William Aggeler (The Flowers of Evil, Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954), it appears, took a literal approach.  Based on my textbook knowledge of French, he appears to have translated verbatim:

Benediction

When, after a decree of the supreme powers,
The Poet is brought forth in this wearisome world,
His mother terrified and full of blasphemies
Raises her clenched fist to God, who pities her:

“Ah! would that I had spawned a whole knot of vipers
Rather than to have fed this derisive object!
Accursed be the night of ephemeral joy
When my belly conceived this, my expiation!”

There’s nothing of rhyme or meter here; in places, it reads awkwardly to me, like a tourist squinting into a phrasebook, trying to order lunch.

Howard’s Picador/Harvester version, by contrast, goes for blank verse: he generally retains the original iambic pentameter, but ignores the abab rhyme scheme. The title change, I think, is significant – a consecration is somewhat more serious (or pompous) than a benediction, or blessing:

Consecration

When by an edict of the sovereign powers
the Poet enters this indifferent world,
his mother, spurred to blasphemy by shame,
clenches her fists at a condoling God:

‘Why not have given me a brood of snakes
rather than make me rear this laughing-stock?’
I curse the paltry pleasures of the night
on which my womb conceived my punishment!’

He uses richer vocabulary and adjusts meanings, which clearly alters the colour and tone of this anguished rant of a poem: “indifferent” for “wearisome”, the active voice and alliteration of “I curse the paltry pleasures”. There’s more beauty and life to this version, but the vocabulary is a strange mix: we have the semi-colloquial “rear this laughing-stock” and the abstruse “condoling”.

Roy Campbell’s version (Poems of Baudelaire, New York: Pantheon Books, 1952) appears to be the only one that appeared not in a re-rendering of the original collection, but in a more general anthology. Campbell has kept the rhyme as well as the meter (with exceptions) in his version:

Benediction

When by an edict of the powers supreme
A poet’s born into this world’s drab space,
His mother starts, in horror, to blaspheme
Clenching her fists at God, who grants her grace.

“Would that a nest of vipers I’d aborted
Rather than this absurd abomination.
Cursed be the night of pleasures vainly sported
On which my womb conceived my expiation.

Campbell wanders further afield from literal meaning (“this world’s drab space” as opposed to “this wearisome [or bored] world”), and even contradicts it (“aborted” versus “spawned”).  Arguably, the original “mis bas” - “put down” - could be read as “aborted”, though it sounds as though the others read it as “laid down” or “spawned”. He keeps that vexing word “expiation”; but, unlike Aggeler’s version, Howard’s reading provides the context that would allow a general reader to infer the meaning of expiation. This version is, to me, coherent, eloquent, and powerful by comparison.

Jacques LeClercq’s rendition (Flowers of Evil, Mt Vernon, NY: Peter Pauper Press, 1958) is looser in metric exactitude, but is thoroughly lyrical and retains the rhyme:

Benediction

When by decree of the almighty powers,
The Poet walks the world’s wearisome sod,
His mother, blasphemous and fearful, cowers,
Clenching her fist against a pitying God:

“Ah, would whole knots of vipers were my spawn
Rather than this woeful abomination!
Cursed be the sweet swift night and evil dawn
Wherein my womb conceived my expiation!

The last half of the second stanza recasts the night and adds the morning after, but this passage, even with its lofty expression - sweet swift night and evil dawn is particularly seductive - stays fairly true to the original literal meaning (except, notably, that the Poet isn’t merely born: he’s walking already).

Edna St. Vincent Millay (Flowers of Evil, NY: Harper and Brothers, 1936) also keeps meter and rhyme, but she changes the shape – she changes to past tense, moves elements between lines (note the first two lines, for example – the “harassed world” is in line 1, and “decree of the high powers” is in line 2), adds another foot to each line, making iambic hexameter – and uses the extra space to magnify the rhetoric:

Benediction

When, on a certain day, into this harassed world
The Poet, by decree of the high powers, was born,
His mother, overwhelmed by shame and fury, hurled
These blasphemies at God, clenching her fists in scorn:

“Would I had whelped a knot of vipers — at the worst
‘Twere better than this runt that whines and snivels there!
Oh, cursèd be that night of pleasure, thrice accurst
My womb, that has conceived and nourished my despair!

Of all the versions we’ve considered, Millay’s - with its “runt that whines and snivels there” - is possibly the most vivid in its expression of the mother’s catharsis. It’s certainly the one in which the translator exercises the greatest flourish. Is it what Baudelaire meant? Again, I wonder – is that the central question?

Which translation of these two stanzas reflect Baudelaire’s original the most accurately – and which make the best reading? I felt the Aggeler version, while the most literal, was opaque; it didn’t charm me. I originally hadn’t been concerned with Howard’s not rhyming – but the others have demonstrated so well that rhyme is no impediment to retaining (or refracting) the poem’s soul. The remaining three all moved me, and I’d choose either the Millay or the Leclercq as my favorite.

What does this exercise reveal to me?

First: Translation isn’t a mundane mechanical exercise, but an art like writing.  It can attract writers and literati of the very highest calibre (at least for work of the quality and éclat of Baudelaire’s). After having formed my opinions, I looked a bit into who these translators were. The results are more than humbling:

Howard studied French literature at the Sorbonne, won a Pulitzer prize for poetry in 1970, and won an American Book Award for the very volume that prompted this essay. He’s also won a PEN Translation Prize. And the French Government made him a Chevalier of l’Ordre National du Mérite.

Aggeler, in addition to his translation of Les Fleurs du Mal, has written several articles on Baudelaire and a scholarly book, Baudelaire Judged by Spanish Critics, 1857-1957.

Campbell, a poet from South Africa, was highly regarded by some of the most renowned of modern poets: T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, and Edith Sitwell thought him one of the Twentieth Century’s best.   Jorge Luis Borges said his translation of the poems of St. John of the Cross were in some ways an improvement on the originals.  He knew C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, and they took very different, enthusiastic views of him. Blacklisted from publication for some unpopular political stances, Campbell is less widely known than he might have been.

LeClercq was the godson of Georges Clemenceau, Premier of France (he carried his godfather’s name as his middle names), but became an American citizen early in life (graduated from Berkeley and taught at Columbia, among other credits). He published poems under the pseudonym Paul Tanaquil and was known for his translations of poetry.

Millay was a Pulitzer Prize laureate as well – one of the first women to win a Pulitzer - and a recipient of the Frost Medal for lifetime contribution to American Poetry. Thomas Hardy once said that the skyscraper and Millay’s poetry were America’s two greatest contributions to the Twenties.

Second: Meaning isn’t always lost in translation, but it can certainly be gained.  Whether that’s a good or bad thing depends on the translator’s purpose. It wouldn’t be so good, for example, for military orders or technical instructions, but here we’ve seen several different routes (not all of them successful in my view) to the same end.

Third: Translation isn’t necessarily transparent, and transparency may not even be the translator’s goal. In sport, it’s often said that the best referee is one whose presence isn’t noticed. I used to think that the same applied to translators, but going through this exercise has changed my mind; I’ll pay a lot more attention in future to the quality of a translation, and I’ll know not to judge the poet by the translator.

Last: It’s clear to me that a translated poem is not the same as a poem; it’s an interpretation of a poem. In retrospect, that’s obvious.  Given how much time I spend listening to music, where cover versions can vary so completely and interpretation can be just as interesting and enthralling as the original composition, this point shouldn’t surprise me at all.  But it does.

And that’s the thing with epiphanies: sometimes they’re a matter of finally understanding - really getting - something you already know.

I’d like to close with a poem written, in English, by Mark Wakely at AbsoluteWrite. He eloquently expresses the complementary position, that sometimes translation is a bridge too far - no, you can’t say it in English.   What I hope to see now is translation as what it is - either an interpretation or an approximation, and to appreciate its value in a big world.

Chinese Poets Paint

Chinese poets paint words with
learned brushwork that capture
precise images in miniature
our translations fail to reveal.
Pots of paint, a cup of water,
paintbrushes– some with but
a few shaved hairs!– in wise hands
seize the poet’s vision in characters
that defy English, deride it.
But still we try to render
the images, our language tools
sterile and thoroughly inadequate.
All we’re left with is the ghost
of the poem, its hollow bones,
not enough to know how
birds taking wing in winter that
disturb the snow on frozen branches
can fill our hearts with joy or sorrow
like the poet’s when the poem
was composed.

Pregnancy, childbirth, and parental attachment metaphors abound in this business. Strain at the plot arc and grind your teeth through the editing pains and you’ve given birth (or at least served as midwife) to a new thing, a wobbly creature you christen with a title, then swaddle in cover art. Endure criticism and it stings like having your baby defamed as hard-on-the-eyes. Ask many a writer and you’ll hear that the task of peddling a manuscript is nothing short of turning out your very flesh and blood into the cold, cruel world.

Life is hard, but literature is a nursery of horrors.

Or is it?

AuthorScoop has invited authors of every stripe to weigh in on Thursdays, on one question:

Is your book your baby?

(view the entire essay collection here)

……………………………………….

Q: How do you, as a writer, relate to the gestation, childbirth, and parenting metaphor as it pertains to your work? In short, is your book your baby?

A: I hate this metaphor. How’s that for the short and simple answer?

I know, that doesn’t sound very nurturing, coming from a former pediatric ER doc who writes suspense novels all about everyday heroes who find the courage to change their world. Maybe that’s because after seventeen years of seeing babies and kids and parents and the crazy, tragic curveballs life throws their way, I understand how very difficult it is to nurture and support a baby (much less a marriage or a family) and transform it from a mass of wrinkles and snot and hungry bleats to a functioning, caring human being. Writing a book? That’s easy.

Writers like to be seen as “artists” who suffer for our work–this gives us a great excuse to act out our neuroses, to selfishly lock ourselves away from the rest of the world as we “gestate” and create. And yes, it’s the perfect excuse for acting childish. Maybe the metaphor is reversed. Maybe our novels are creating and raising us? Maybe it’s our stories that school us and provide structure for our worlds, bringing control to the chaos, and guiding us through life? That I could believe. Because without stories, the ones in my head as well as the ones written by others, I would have no way to make sense of this crazy world…..much less all the crazy stuff that came through the doors of my ER. Think about it. With books, we have generations of knowledge, guidance, moral lessons to help us create our society. Where would we be without the wisdom of Homer, Dickens, Shakespeare, Buck, Twain, Dumas, Bradbury, and so many others? What kind of world would we be living in if we didn’t have their stories?

What kind of world will our children live in, if we don’t give them the gift of reading and instill in them a love of stories? Scary thought, isn’t it?

-medical suspense author, CJ Lyons

***

My books are not my babies. I prefer to think that I play the role of a god and not the role of a mother in creating a book. I create the landscape, the atmosphere, and people the land with characters who need me to show them the way, to lend my influence. It’s my own little world, and I make the rules. Of course, in giving characters lives, I give them the power to make their own choices and think for themselves. Sometimes, they break my commandments and take my name in vain. Occasionally, I will smite them. Usually, I let them live and go along to see what decisions they make along the way. I try to guide them back into my influence, but some characters are too strong willed and questioning of my authority and their very existence. I can’t make them believe. I can offer them judgment once they’ve reached their destiny. All good characters go to heaven, a bookshelf near you. And the others? Some find redemption in purgatory, a reworking. And yes, some go to a far darker place, the hell at the bottom of my desk drawer.

-Sherri Browning Erwin, author of the vampire mash-up, JANE SLAYRE

Pregnancy, childbirth, and parental attachment metaphors abound in this business. Strain at the plot arc and grind your teeth through the editing pains and you’ve given birth (or at least served as midwife) to a new thing, a wobbly creature you christen with a title, then swaddle in cover art. Endure criticism and it stings like having your baby defamed as hard-on-the-eyes. Ask many a writer and you’ll hear that the task of peddling a manuscript is nothing short of turning out your very flesh and blood into the cold, cruel world.

Life is hard, but literature is a nursery of horrors.

Or is it?

AuthorScoop has invited authors of every stripe to weigh in on Thursdays, on one question:

Is your book your baby?

(view the entire essay collection here)

……………………………………….

Insofar as a book is a complex, separate, unwieldy, difficult, beloved, independent creature, then yes, my book was my baby. But now that my children are in their twenties, I find it more relevant to compare the process of completing a book to the entire scope of parenting, which for me began when those tiny individuals popped out and I instantly knew  two things: I was hopelessly in love, and they were going to require more resources from me than I possessed at the time. That disquiet and passion also pretty much sums up the beginning of writing My Name is Mary Sutter. I can never say that I was certain, at any given moment of parenting or writing, what the right choice might be for any given problem. Sometimes I guessed, sometimes I followed a primal, maternal or literary instinct, sometimes I floundered, and on the good days—which I hope were more frequent, not less—I tried to make intelligent choices based on that underlying, enduring love. What I learned over time was that my characters, like my children, had their own truths, their own lives, and it was my job to discover who they were, what they wanted, what they needed from me, and then at moments of intense pressure, summon spontaneous wisdom to figure out how to equip them so that they ultimately could become their best selves. And after I had given each of them every chance, every attention, every ounce of love I could squeeze from my exhausted soul, I sent them all out into the world. It was then that I knew what a folly the concept of “finished” was, because my worries for my book, like those for my children, including whether they will flounder and sink far from my the reaches of my arms or whether anyone will ever love them as much as I do, are never-ending, and that in choosing to write a book, I have risked my heart once again, fool that I am.

-Robin Oliveira, author of MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER

***

I do feel that my books are indeed, very much my babies. As far as gestation goes, not really. I wish I had only carried my kids for around a month. After that though, very much so. I am always very protective of my work and will only give it out to a limited number of eyes, like trusting your kids to only the best babysitters. I have nightmares about dying before I get to see their full potential. ie: published vs graduation, great jobs & grandkids. I drive with my laptop in my passenger seat, protecting my novels within and use the “mom arm” with it if I have to hit the brakes fast. I love each one for it’s own differences and try not to love one more than another. * grins * After receiving the news that I was going to be published, I did refer to it as “my baby” because it was going to take nine months for anyone else to be able to see it.

So yes, freakazoid sounding as it may be, my books are my babies. * throws cover art over shoulder and burps it *

-June Donaghy Kramin, author of the just-released paranormal romance, DUSTIN TIME

“Is that book entertaining or informative?” my eleven year old daughter asked, as I snatched my copy of Tana French’s, FAITHFUL PLACE, from the table.  I was making another run for sanctuary, to read in peace and make this a vacation of books-for-lunch, sand between my toes, and excellent whiskey taken in holiday moderation (which isn’t as much about upping the limit as it is about liberating some of the daylight hours for sipping.)

Her question was a reach for the very basic distinction between fiction and nonfiction that the public school has drilled into her head.  My answer ended up resolving an ongoing philosophical itch I’d had for years – what makes me love a book?  In short, it has to be both.

First off, FAITHFUL PLACE, is plain excellence in crime fiction, or suspense, or literary intrigue – whatever you’d like to brand it.  Tana French reeled me in with her wonderful debut, IN THE WOODS, (which won The Edgar for Best First Novel in 2008) and thrilled me with her sophomore outing, THE LIKENESS (a tantalizing premise that, in less capable hands, probably would have collapsed in a self-conscious heap.)  She’s made the big list over at The New York Times each time she’s gone to print and I’ve never once had the how-the-hell-did-that-happen flinch when I see her books there.

And now FAITHFUL PLACE has brought into bold focus what makes a great read for me.  The book opens with the discovery of an abandoned suitcase that pulls a police detective back to his old haunts to re-examine the conclusions he’d drawn two decades earlier when he’d cut anchor (and all ties) from the neighborhood of Faithful Place, his childhood home, in one of Dublin’s crustier corners.  At the heart of the revelations kicked off by the find is the luminous Rosie Daly.  A handful of hopeful balloon strings has kept her alive in the memories of the tenants of Faithful Place, but the investigation turns a facet of each of the players towards the light, ultimately sending the truth flashing through the tensions in the streets, and behind all the slammed doors.

So, back to the question – is it entertaining or informative?  Some books are all about the story and some books are all about the words.  The best books are about both.  The older I get, the less willing I am to wear uncomfortable clothes (even if they look good) or to devote eight or more hours to novels that pander.  If it’s all breathless Bruckheimer written in see-spot-run syntax or, conversely, a quicksand of impenetrable brooding and no plot, it won’t suit me.

Tana French seems devoted to the idea that only the right words will make you see what Frank sees, make you laugh at what he finds funny, and that only through the precision and music of the right words will you be convinced to throw your lot in along with his, for better or worse.  The people of FAITHFUL PLACE live so vividly through French’s words that the book practically breathes in rhythm with their sighs, huffs, and rages.  Their dramas are entertaining in the way that makes a comfy-chair Olympic sport out of a racing mind and a raised pulse.  And they are real enough (because of the right words) that we’re informed of our own minds as we live a brief parallel existence in Faithful Place.  Above all, if we can learn through the mistakes of others in ‘real life’, we can definitely come away smarter at the closing of the back cover of a book – if only it’s built of the right words in the right order.

I don’t often write book reviews.  My mother’s admonition to keep it zipped if I hadn’t anything nice to say is a terrific cover for my cowardice.  I’m too wimpy to whet my grump on someone else’s hard work.  So most of my literary carping is done off the record. Thank you, thank you, Ms. French, for writing books that let me unpack an opinion in public.  It’s been a pleasure.

***

FAITHFUL PLACE is likely sitting on a front table or endcap at your local bookstore, or you can have it delivered by your postman (or through the magic of 3G or WiFi directly to your eReader) from Amazon.com or Barnes&Noble’s online store.

Also see Ms. French’s thoughts on FAITHFUL PLACE and writing in general in our ‘5 Minutes Alone’ feature and ‘Is Your Book Your Baby’ essay series.

Author Jenny Nelson takes the heat in the kitchen and wrestles its romps onto the page through the heart and adventures of Georgia Gray, the chef and heroine of this debut novel, GEORGIA’S KITCHEN.  Tapping into our love of love and fine cuisine, it’s likely to find its target wide and eager.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Jenny: Way back when, I was editorial assistant for a short-lived Time Inc. start-up magazine called Talk TV Weekly. This was during the heyday of talk shows, when Maury Povich, Montel Williams and Sally Jesse Raphael ruled the airwaves. I wrote a column called “Really!” where I was supposed to reveal wacky factoids about the different hosts. The problem was, nothing was all that wacky, and each week I struggled to turn the mundane into the madcap, with little success. Still, I got a huge kick out of seeing my byline week after week and working at a weekly was a terrific experience.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Jenny: Georgia’s Kitchen tells the story of thirty-three-year-old Georgia Gray, the soon-to-be married head at a trendy New York City restaurant. When Georgia suddenly finds herself unemployed and unengaged, she takes her bruised ego to Tuscany, where she sharpens her skills at a new trattoria, turns up the heat with Gianni, the owner of the winery next door, and embarks on a crash course in self-discovery. Though Gianni tempts her to stay in Italy indefinitely, the desire for something more looms large in Georgia’s heart – the desire to run her own restaurant on her own terms in the city she loves.

If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to be a top chef, or make it in New York, or what really goes on in a professional kitchen, or dreamed of chucking it all and moving to Italy, Georgia’s Kitchen is for you. It’s packed with heart and humor, glamour and guts (not to mention food and cooking galore!) and a heroine you’ll root for to the very end.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Jenny: I am incredibly lucky to have a terrific family who supports me in every possible way. My husband, my parents and my sister have encouraged me from the get go, urging me on and bucking me up when I needed it most. And my twin daughters, now six, are the most loyal and enthusiastic cheerleaders any mother could ask for. I sometimes think they’re even more excited about Georgia’s Kitchen than I am (despite its glaring omission of any cool pictures). Also, I would be absolutely nowhere without all the incredible authors out there who inspire me to be better, help unlock my creativity when I feel tapped out, and provide hours of pure pleasure and joy through their wonderful books. And finally, the many amazing writers I’ve befriended through classes, online or just by chance. Writing is such a solitary experience and connecting with other writers helps me feel like I’m part of something much larger than myself.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Jenny: It really depends. I like to write in the morning, but it sometimes takes me a while to get going. I check email, make a phone call or two, drink a cup of tea or two, and before I know it, half the morning’s gone and I haven’t written a word. The afternoon is a little better, probably because the pressure’s on to write something, anything, before my kids come home from school. If I’m really wrapped up in a scene, I find it hard to leave, and will write after I put my kids to bed. But usually by the time evening rolls around I’m totally spent and want nothing more than  to hang with my kids until they go to sleep, and then zone out with some mindless TV or  a flick, or lose myself in a good read.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Jenny: Write! Sit down at your computer and get those words out. The biggest impediment to writing is not writing, so turn off your email, along with your inner perfectionist, and just get the words down – you can fix them later. If there’s a writing class nearby, sign up for it. Classes are great for learning craft, imposing deadlines, connecting with other writers and making you feel like a writer. I’ll leave you with some advice Michael Cunningham shared with me when I took his creative writing course as a high school student: Never use the word beauteous (he hated it), and never compare a redhead to a tomato (I did and boy, I’ll never make that mistake again!).

***

GEORGIA’S KITCHEN is ready when you are, so swing by the bookstore as soon as you can, or the Nook and Kindle people will beat you to it.  And have a look online for more info on what Jenny Nelson’s up to at her website, www.jennynelsonauthor.com.

Pregnancy, childbirth, and parental attachment metaphors abound in this business. Strain at the plot arc and grind your teeth through the editing pains and you’ve given birth (or at least served as midwife) to a new thing, a wobbly creature you christen with a title, then swaddle in cover art. Endure criticism and it stings like having your baby defamed as hard-on-the-eyes. Ask many a writer and you’ll hear that the task of peddling a manuscript is nothing short of turning out your very flesh and blood into the cold, cruel world.

Life is hard, but literature is a nursery of horrors.

Or is it?

AuthorScoop has invited authors of every stripe to weigh in on Thursdays, on one question:

Is your book your baby?

(view the entire essay collection here)

……………………………………….

Is my book my baby?  Initially I thought, emphatically, no.  I found it very easy to say why not.  But, with time and reflection, I found that the answer depends heavily upon perspective.  If the question is whether writing and parenting are analogous, I don’t think so.  But if it’s about what happens to the author?  I might say yes.

A written work will naturally develop in fits and starts, as children do.  But time and age carry children with them.  If I put away a draft for lack of knowing what to do next, it will stay as it is - and when I come up with the idea, it’s there waiting, as I left it.  And I can be satisfied that it’s been improved.  Children will grow and learn, with or without me.   Many of the questions change from moment to moment - as do the answers.  There is much greater peril in waiting or sitting idle for a parent than there is for an author.  In fact, a parent is scarcely an author at all, much as one might like to be; I’d say a parent is more an editor anyway, and one who will never see the entire manuscript.

In either case, there’s a sense of personal investment - if they’re coolly received or, far worse, unnoticed, I’ll take it hard.  But with a written work, it’s a personal disappointment: maybe I feel misjudged, or deflated because my best isn’t good enough - or that I could’ve given better, and I’m disappointed in myself.  But that’s nothing like the wrench I feel on behalf of my children when they encounter disappointment or rejection; my hurt has nothing to do with me.  It’s the futility that stings.

When I write, if the work ends up well, I’m delighted.  If I run into trouble early on, I may abandon it and start another.  It’s not easy to give up on a nascent work, but it’s possible.  Fatherhood, though, is one long final draft with no chance to edit, no rewrite.  It’s no good just banging out any old words just to unblank the page, knowing I can fix them later.  And I can’t just take a hiatus, stick the work in the drawer until inspiration strikes again, or give it up and go back to whatever the day job was.  I have two works going at once, and there’s no switching between them.  They all need my full and best attention, now.

But, rather than looking at the work, consider the creator.  What happens to a writer through the creative process?  How is one engaged, moulded, enlightened?  What happens to us as our children grow, with us, next to us, beyond us?

As a poet, I’m altered by anything I write; I can’t be unaffected by it.  Every line, whether I use it or not, advances my experience and informs my consciousness somehow.  Every poem that follows is in the context of what I’ve already written.  As a father, I’ve been unceasingly amazed and in love with each of my children, from the moment I learned they were imminent.  I revel every moment in the beauty of their imperfection and the imperfection of their beauty. Sometimes it doesn’t look or sound like I’m revelling.

But I’m a work in progress too; I learn and grow with, and thanks to, my children.  Because of them, I view life and the world - and myself - much differently.  It’s not just their perspectives as people; it’s the fact of my responsibility as a father.  I must always consider how they see and feel the world, and how my own childhood experience should - or should not - inform my role in our relationships.  I see things differently because they are here, and because of them, I am changed.

There’s no chance, for me, that my written work could ever fit the baby metaphor. But what I write shapes me as truly as I shape it.  And that’s startlingly like parenthood.

-Rob McCreery, poet and AuthorScoop contributing editor

***

The Question: How do you, as a writer, relate to the gestation, childbirth, and parenting metaphor as it pertains to your work?  In short, is your book your baby?

The Short Answer: No.  Writing a book does not make you fat.

The Long Answer: In which I compare gestation and childbirth to the writing process.

(Disclaimer: I write this while 8 months into my fourth pregnancy.  Which, as I’ve written about before, means that I am now a constantly grumpy person.)

Below you will find my very scientific research comparing several components of the two situations.  I did this by fabricating conducting a completely unbiased and very real interview with myself a writer and a pregnant woman.

***

Me: First, I’d like to ask you about conception.  What was that like for you?

Writer: Well, it depends on the story.  Writer sits back and sips a cup of hot, fresh coffee. Often I have a dream, or sometimes the big “What if?” question pops out at me.  Every once in a while I’ll have this revelation in that moment before waking up, and I’ll jot down thoughts in my little writer’s notebook.

Usually, there’s a seed of an idea, and I take it from there.

Pregnant Woman: Eyes coffee enviously.  Fidgets with glass of ginger ale. Um…really?  Do we need to talk about this?

Me: Right.  We’ll move on to the physical nature of your job as mother and as writer.  Could you please describe the changes that happen to your body during the gestation process?

Writer: Long pause and furrowed brow. I guess I can get a stiff neck if I sit at my computer for too long.  Carpal tunnel on the days when I’m really typing fast.  Sometimes a headache if my characters don’t cooperate.

Pregnant Woman: Pushes ginger ale to the side and launches in with obvious delight. Well, it starts with several months of intense nausea.  Throwing up at unpredictable moments.  Ravenous hunger paired with momentary food aversions.  Then there’s the heartburn, insomnia, headaches, and mood swings.  The second trimester is a little better, but that’s when the weight gain starts in.  The swelling.  The back pain and the round ligament stabbing pain and the shooting pain down the sciatic nerve.  Sometimes there’s carpal tunnel or a tingling in my hands.  Hemorrhoids.  Toward the end, the insatiable need to pee returns.  The hugeness of my belly and the stretch-marks.  The internal jabs of another person inside growing.  More heartburn.  Less room for anything.  The impossibility of hoisting myself off a couch or rolling over in bed.  And then –

Me: I see.  What about the actual process of gestating.  How do you personally contribute to it?

Pregnant Woman:   Rubs belly fondly. I try and eat right and exercise.  But, you know, it always feels like such a miracle.  A tiny person is forming, complex cellular division leading to the formation of organs and bodily features.   Did you know that you can see the little heart beating as early as 8 weeks?  And I don’t plan that.  My body just knows what to do.

Writer: Pulls out notebook with outlines and penciled in charts. Well, I’m a plotter.  Which means once I have an idea I sit down and write a detailed outline of how the events will unfold.  Sometimes things change, which means I’ll have to rewrite the entire manuscript.  But, if all goes well, I set aside two hours a day to really focus on my writing.  Once the first draft is complete, then the endless round of revisions comes into play.  It really is time-consuming but so very worthwhile.

Me:  Hmmm.  Finally, let’s talk about delivery.  How do you know when you’re finished?

Writer: Sits back in chair and stares dreamily off into the sunset. You’re never finished.  It’s like this journey of editing and revising, and, even when your work is ready to be sent out there in the wide world, you’ll always be engaging with the creative process.

Pregnant Woman: Seriously?  I push an eight-pound human out of my yoo-hoo.

***

The Conclusion: And there you have it.  Given this incredibly insightful data-finding interview, I think we can conclude that the merit of the pregnancy/writing comparison lies in the carpal tunnel connection.

Can someone call a book their baby?  I suppose so, but the last time I checked, a book won’t poop on your favorite shirt.  Or wake you up to be fed in the middle of the night.  Or give you a heart-melting smile first thing in the morning.  Or a sticky, jammy kiss after lunch.

I get why people make this comparison between parenting and writing, I really do.  And I see the usefulness of a word-picture to help capture the challenges and rewards of the creative process, the mysterious formation of a story out of nothing, and the long, drawn out days of writing and waiting and writing some more.  But, please, for the sanity of all the pregnant women out there – especially, the pregnant writers – let’s put a quick end to this metaphor.  Or, if you must tout it, pack on 40 pounds for every book you write, and then we’ll talk.”

-mid-grade author of the upcoming THE TALE OF UNA FAIRCHILD, Marissa Burt

June Kramin hits the last high crest of this summer’s reading wave with her paranormal romance debut, DUSTIN TIME.  As it gets its legs, AuthorScoop snags a chance at a peek to see how it all came about.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

June: DUSTIN TIME is actually my first published work. For me, writing novels is where my heart is. Querying them is time consuming enough. I have never written short stories or poetry so I haven’t submitted to magazines, newspapers and such. Makes for a short publication history but I hope my other novels will follow soon.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

June: DUSTIN TIME was actually the fifth novel I completed. It was everyone’s favorite so that’s when I decided to shelve the others for the time being and hit it hard. Dusty is a character you just have to love, while Kaitlyn is so strong – you just have to cheer for her. Kaitlyn tries to leave Dusty on her thirtieth birthday, but fate strongly disagrees. She travels between the birthdays of an altered present and past, which leave her more confused than ever about her feelings for Dusty, who seem to be the only constant in all of the trips.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

June: I have a lot of writer friends on my forum and facebook that have been the best sounding boards for everything. It’s more helpful than you could imagine knowing that you are not alone out there in this process.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

June: I get 98% of my writing done during my workday. My job isn’t usually of high demands. My boss said, “It may get boring there, bring a book,” so I write them instead. Sometimes on the drive home I get a thought that pops into my head or the dreaded shower “OMG! I gotta get that down quick!” and my husband & daughter will end up watching a movie without me, but for the most part, all day is my time to shine. I try to make the best of it. I feel very fortunate to be getting an hourly wage while I write. Please don’t hate me.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

June: Run!!!! Run while you can!!!! Just kidding. It is a world of ups and downs – prepare yourself for letdowns. In all honestly, I swore I had sent out my last query and thought I was about to give up when I got my acceptance letter. I always cheered people on with “Never give up!” but sometimes it’s hard to follow your own advice. All I can say is keep writing if it’s what you love to do. That has to be enough. You’ll only make yourself miserable always living for that next step.

***

DUSTIN TIME is ready for download from Champagne Books - no waiting at red lights or in line, so no reason to put it off!  Have an early look at a brand new author on the scene.

Heather Sharfeddin comes to us just as her latest novel, SWEETWATER BURNING, gets rolling with a timely and layered story that’s some literary heavy lifting in the summer reading aisle.  All the better to strengthen and entertain you with, my dear.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Heather: My first publication credit was a short-short titled “Birdshot” in Sacred Stones, an anthology edited by Maril Crabtree. It was a semi-autobiographical piece I wrote about a Nez Perce arrowhead I found as a kid in central Idaho and have carried with me since. I didn’t get paid, though I was (and still am) proud of the piece. In 2005, the following year, my first novel was released, and I haven’t written many short stories since, though I often think I ought to. I love to read short fiction, and with the rapid pace of life they are a great way to discover new authors.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Heather: SWEETWATER BURNING just hit the store shelves on June 22nd. It’s the story of Chas McPherson, a social outcast and self-proclaimed loner in a small Idaho town. His character is drawn on the quote (and I can’t remember who said it) “Show me a loner, and I’ll show you someone who tried to fit in.” By the time we meet Chas, he’s done trying to fit in. He’s built a sturdy wall of crusty attitude, fueled by hard-drinking, to protect a tender and generous heart.

Chas’s journey takes off when he reluctantly hires a homecare nurse for his estranged father, allowing the former preacher to die at home. While Chas deals with the presence of this man he fears, even as the elder McPherson is paralyzed by Parkinson’s Disease, and that of Mattie Holden, a woman who could only have taken the job if she were crazy or hiding something, he is accused of burning down the home of a local Muslim family. Only Sheriff Edelson, new to Sweetwater, is able to look past long-held resentment toward the McPherson men, and learn who Chas truly is.

SWEETWATER BURNING has received starred reviews from Kirkus and Library Journal and was recently honored at the San Francisco Book Festival.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Heather: My family has been very supportive of my writing, allowing me hours, days, and weeks away from them. And by “away” sometimes that means holed up in the library. I face the same challenges of writing while holding a day job, raising children, etc. Being surrounded by people who believe in you can be the difference.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Heather: For years I wrote in the middle of the night because I battled insomnia. When you’re tired, you write stuff you might never put on paper in the light of day. I went down some dark rabbit holes and plumbed the depths of heinous crimes during those wee hours. The cool thing about writing at night is that my inner critic was usually absent. Then I changed my eating habits and started sleeping like a baby! That was a challenge to overcome, and it actually took me several months to find my balance again. Now I get my best traction from late morning through early evening. Fortunately, I’ve written enough by now to know how to turn the critic off manually when necessary.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Heather: If you are unable to take college and graduate-level creative writing classes, hire a professional editor with publishing experience (not to be mistaken for a publishing service–be sure the editor is not affiliated with vanity press). Storytelling is not easy. There are so many intricate parts that must come together; it’s like a symphony. Don’t be afraid to seek help. Critique groups can sometimes be good, and sometimes they can be very bad. Paying for an editorial service ensures that you get professional advice and not simply random opinions. And never stop honing your craft. Even after you’ve gotten published, there is so much yet to learn.

***

SWEETWATER BURNING is out now in bookstores and ready for delivery from your favorite online outlet.  Learn more about Ms. Sharfeddin on her website and Amazon.com author profile, and find her on FaceBook and Twitter for even more.

Pregnancy, childbirth, and parental attachment metaphors abound in this business. Strain at the plot arc and grind your teeth through the editing pains and you’ve given birth (or at least served as midwife) to a new thing, a wobbly creature you christen with a title, then swaddle in cover art. Endure criticism and it stings like having your baby defamed as hard-on-the-eyes. Ask many a writer and you’ll hear that the task of peddling a manuscript is nothing short of turning out your very flesh and blood into the cold, cruel world.

Life is hard, but literature is a nursery of horrors.

Or is it?

AuthorScoop has invited authors of every stripe to weigh in on Thursdays, on one question:

Is your book your baby?

(view the entire essay collection here)

……………………………………….

“Are my novels like my babies, or even my child?

I have to say no.  More like each tale is a new best friend. They’ve got the keys to a fast car and a wicked look in their eye.  They have a journey in mind, some destination with adventures along the way. I get to go along for the ride.  Sometimes I get to drive for a short while, but mostly I’m in the backseat, with a keyboard, trying to keep up.  Now and again I’m back there praying we don’t run out of gas.

Sad to say it, though, I am a fickle friend. When the adventure is done and the story is told?  I’m looking around for a new best friend, hoping they’re driving something cool.”

-author and writer-tech expert, Eldon Hughes

***

“Are my scripts my babies?  Eh… no.  No, they’re more like… I don’t know… circus monkeys.

What do you mean, “go on”?

Well, work with me here.  See, I’m the guy in the red dangly coat with the top hat, you know, the important one with the loud voice, and my monkeys are the ones that run around doing all the tricks, impressing the audience and drawing investors (hopefully), and all with the minimum of screeching and tossing of faeces—though that happens more often than you’d ever want to know about.  Think of them as prizes.

Anyway, when my monkeys go out there and perform and do well, I couldn’t be happier. They’re mine—I did that.  I trained them and nurtured them and ran them over with a floor-buffer for that final polish.  It’s the closest I come to feeling parental towards them and their cute little fanged faces. (They’re all for sale, by the way.)

But some of the time, the monkeys fail and I’m left to deal with it.  “I didn’t connect with your monkey,” says one. “Your monkey threw his peanuts at me,” says another.  “One went in my eye and I’m going to sue.”  OK, that was an actual real monkey incident which I’m unwilling to discuss but you get the idea.

See, I can believe in them.  I can be sure they’re the best they can be and that people will love them.  But come show-time, it’s out of my hands.  I can’t account for the fact that it’s just the wrong time for a monkey-show right now, or that the audience has seen it all before, or that all the frothing at the mouth really was rabies.  Again.  (Did I mention they’re for sale?)

I can be hard on my monkeys then.  I’ve been known to take a belt to them and yell things like, “You call that a midpoint?!  Don’t you know a good midpoint falls around page 55-60?  What the hell are you doing up there in the 70s? Gah!”

Sadly, the show must go on and only the best get to perform.  If something’s not working, you’ve got to be tough about it.  Yank that monkey.  Get a dress on it.  Teach it the harmonica.  Anything.  Sometimes they can be whipped into shape.  Other times I have to let them go—relegated to the cage in back where maybe one day they’ll buck their ideas up and do something original before my circus licence expires.

It’s not always easy—you try getting a shako on a monkey—but when all is said and done, it’s my job and it’s a job I love.

So no, my scripts are not my babies.  But they are my monkeys.

Now, how many monkeys do you want?”

-screenwriter, Chris Hyde

***

Never! Writing is a labor of love, I’ll give you that. But it takes a hard, cold eye to be successful. I would be the Susan Smith of the writing world if they were my babies. I’ve neglected, abused, and killed too many fully formed manuscripts to subscribe to that idea.

They are more like marathons to me. I start out hyped and zoom along feeling great for about the first third, then comes the hill. During the second third of the book I alternate between believing I’m an Olympian and contemplating slitting my wrists. I like to call it the Hemingway-Moron pendulum. It swings one way, then the other. Day by day, mile by mile, I am either a genius or an idiot, but I take comfort in knowing that neither is permanent. At some point it becomes a one-foot-in-front-of-the other sort of race. Write the next scene. Write the next scene. Write the next scene. As I near the end, my energy surges again and I find new momentum, usually because I’m sick to death of it and I can’t wait to ditch it. When it’s finally done, I’m tired but elated, and I remember every excruciating step. But that’s just the process. I may have to stuff it in a closet and pretend I never conceived of such a horrid thing.

-Heather Sharfeddin, author of SWEETWATER BURNING

I liked the book.  I liked the interview. And now, we’ve got 5 minutes of our very own with Robin Oliveira on her debut novel, MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER.  A rich historical narrative like this can only come from excellent research married to strong talent.  Ms. Oliveira’s got both well in hand and brings us the story of a young woman’s progress over the hurdles of tradition, heartbreak, and the Civil War to achieve her dream of becoming a surgeon.  There’s lots to talk about at the closing of the back cover of MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER.

We’d like to thank Ms. Oliveira for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Robin: My first credit was an article in the local newspaper on the building of a road behind my home on Cougar Mountain outside of Seattle. The new road spanned a lovely, quiet creek and displaced cougar, bear, deer, and coyote in order to serve the new homes springing up in what had once been dense woods. My home was one of the newly built houses. The story was one of regret about how, in choosing a place of beauty in which to live, I had unwittingly contributed to its destruction.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Robin: MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER is a book of historical fiction about a young woman who risks everything to become a surgeon during the Civil War. It’s a family saga, a love story, and an epic about the unpreparedness of both sides of the divided country for the political and medical apocalypse that was to come.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Robin: Several institutions and people contributed to my success. I could not have written this book without the fine education I received in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. An enormous encouragement was winning the James Jones First Novel Fellowship in 2007 for my book when it was still a work-in-progress. And I am deeply grateful to my family, who never questioned the value of what I was attempting to do.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Robin: I write best during the day, usually before two p.m. After that, I find I spin my wheels. However, during the final draft of writing MARY SUTTER, I stayed at my desk from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. I had just dropped my son at college, and was determined to write one more draft before Christmas. During that time, I did not see my friends, exercised rarely, and did not answer the telephone. That approach worked and I finished on December 14th. I remember the date because I was so happy to know that I was finally done, until, of course, I learned that “done” was a relative term.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Robin: Believe in the vision for your book even when you don’t yet have the skill to execute it. Persevere in learning the craft of writing and have patience with yourself in the terrible years of apprenticeship. Persist, but persist with purpose, reading literature to learn from the masters, seeking help when necessary, and never ceasing to work for the truest and best incarnation of your story.

***

MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER is in bookstores everywhere and also available for eReader instant gratification from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the Sony eBookstore. Find more on Robin Oliveira at her website and on her author profile at her agent, Marly Rusoff’s, website.

We’ve already spotted him in last Friday Evening’s Book Reviews for the glowing commentary in the San Fransisco Chronicle, but one quick peek and we find Adam Langer reaping praise for his latest novel, THE THIEVES OF MANHATTAN, in The LA Times and The Chicago Sun Times - and that’s without even digging around.  There’s much buzz over this satirical skewering of the publishing industry - and the critics love it.  It’s a morality tale that puts a disillusioned writer in cahoots with a disillusioned editor to burn the pretense out of the pockets of the business’ worst offenders.  We’re quite lucky to snatch our 5 minutes.  Mr. Langer’s going to be a very busy guy in the coming months.

We’d like to thank him for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Adam: Hmm. I guess that depends on how you define “publication credit. Probably my mom—who has always kept somewhat better tabs on this stuff than I do—would be better qualified to answer. I was thinking that it might have happened in second grade when all students in Mrs Hersh’s class at Boone Elementary had their critiques of the school assembly posted to the bulletin board. But since mine was the only negative critique, Mrs. Hersh chose to leave it off the wall, so I guess that doesn’t count. When I was about ten, I wrote a review of the Mel Brooks movie “High Anxiety” for my grade school paper, which was called “The Demonstrator” and appeared in glorious white and purple fresh off the ditto machine. But if “publication credit” means first byline in a professional publication, that came when I was a sophomore in high school and wrote an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune about book censorship (I was opposed to it).

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Adam: THE THIEVES OF MANHATTAN is intended to be a literary thriller, a satire, a love story, a comedy, a quest novel, a wild adventure with gunplay, betrayal, complex villains, con games, and buried treasure. It’s a novel in which just about every detail should be worth paying attention to.  In short, it’s intended to be just about every sort of novel I love told in a fast-paced format that shouldn’t take longer to read than a nonstop flight from Chicago to Los Angeles. Oh, what’s it about? It’s about this thirtysomething, Indiana-born writer who gets involved in a complex con game when he receives a tempting offer to make a bundle by putting his name to a fake memoir. Complications ensue.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Adam: I’m going to leave aside that S word since success is relative and all that. But there are a lot of people who contributed to the publication of “Thieves of Manhattan.” Here’s how it worked. When I was 14, my mom and dad agreed to let me use my sister’s Evanston address so that I could go to high school in Evanston. When I was attending Evanston Township High School, my best friend’s name was Paul Creamer and he and I ate lunch in North cafeteria with a number of other guys, including one named Chip Wadsworth. I didn’t see much of Chip after high school until he hired me to become editor of a Chicago arts and culture magazine called Subnation, and after it folded, Chip helped to introduce me to a guy named Mark Gleason, who was starting a magazine called Book with his college pal Jerome Kramer who hired me as an editor. While working at Book, I met Harold Bloom, whose editor was named Cindy Spiegel (who would later become my editor) and also a friend of Mark’s, whose name was Marly Rusoff (who later became my agent). After I had written and published a number of books, I decided to start work on a screenplay and asked advice from my Hollywood agent Rich Green and from a writer friend of mine named Laura Moser and her friend, an editor named Claudia Herr. I started work on a screenplay that was inspired in part by a Scandinavian film called Reprise (which I saw with a writer friend of mine named Jennifer Gilmore) and Sunset Boulevard (which I saw with Jerome Kramer). I got feedback on the script from an early supporter of mine named Mary Herczog, along with Jennifer and my mom and my brother and my spouse, and also Jerome, who said that I should rewrite it as a book. When I was done doing that, I sent it to my agent Marly, who sent it to my editor Cindy. And those are just a few of the people I have to thank (or blame).

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Adam: Right now. At 10:34 PM when spouse, daughters, and dog are sleeping. Also, between the hours of 10 AM and 2 PM, particularly in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts or the Hungarian Pastry Shop and Café in Morningside Heights.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Adam: Oh, gosh, how about these:

1. Read work that inspires you, challenges you, entertains you, angers you.
2. Learn how to shut off your internal critic when you’re writing and how to turn him or her back on when you’re editing.
3. Learn how to become your own best reader.
4. Write the book you want to read, not the book you feel you have to write.
5. Screw writers’ block; just keep going—you can fix it later.

And above all:
6. Never take advice from another writer unless you feel it rings true for you because soon, you’ll be answering this question in a whole different way, though you might well be telling new and unpublished writers to be very wary of advice from other writers.

***

THE THIEVES OF MANHATTAN, by Adam Langer, is everywhere.  So, better grab a copy to bring you up to speed on what’s making all that happy racket in all corners literary.  It’s also available for Kindle, Nook, and Sony eReaders.

Think women’s fiction and beach read, and if you think hard enough, you’ll conjure something along the lines of Christine Lemmon’s fourth novel, SAND IN MY EYES.  Or you can just read on and let her take you there.  You’d be in good hands.  She’s an expert.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Christine: A poem I wrote in high school was published in the year book.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Christine: SAND IN MY EYES is the story of a woman so overwhelmed by life that hardly is she seeing the beauty around her. It’s as if she is walking around with sand in her eyes until her elderly neighbor brings her flowers, and wisdom related to womanhood.

I let the characters in this story be who they wanted to be and do what they wanted to do without following an outline. It was a bit hard for me to create a woman so overwhelmed and on the brink of misery, especially while in that stage of life when her children are small. I find a tremendous amount of joy being a mother to three young children but also have those hard mommy moments, too. There is a balance in the story between the mother who is spinning around her house like a top, answering the demands of her children while desiring to write a novel, and the wise woman next door who tells her this phase will pass, that she might as well look for the daisies hidden within the weeds.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Christine: If it weren’t for my husband, my manuscripts would be tucked away in a drawer and hidden from the world. When we were dating I would write of him in my diary and then dangle it in front of him, reading only that which I chose to read and substituting ‘blank blank’ for the juicy parts. But I have read every one of my manuscripts to him line by line in a monotone voice, hitting him with a pillow whenever he’d fall asleep. He is honest about my stories, what he likes and doesn’t like but through it all, he is the one who has coached me on tenacity, hard work and pursuing my dreams. When I have felt down with regard to my writing, my husband tells me to get over it and get writing.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Christine: Either early in the morning, right after I wake and pour myself a cup of coffee, or at night from nine until eleven. I write best when I have a daily and consistent uninterrupted chunk of time and when my room does not have sunlight coming through the window. I find it is easier to enter into the story when there is not that bright light coming into the room. If I do try writing when my husband and children are awake, I often turn on classical music to tune out the noise in the house.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Christine: Discover your best time to write and write each and every day regardless of how hectic life becomes. Life only enhances the writing, so write through good times and through bad. Don’t wait for the right time to start writing; just write and enjoy the process. It might takes years to finish your story, or to get published, so make writing your special time and enjoy it. And don’t feel bad about all those stories you wrote that didn’t get published. Writing is like practicing the piano. No one hears all those times a pianist’s fingers hit the keys. They only hear the recital. All those hours you have spent writing in solitude, those pages no one will read, have only gone into making you a better writer.

***

SAND IN MY EYES is summer reading to the letter and is available now.  Ms. Lemmon’s web page has the lowdown on getting a copy into your beach bag.

Holly Christine unveils her latest, TUESDAY TELLS IT SLANT, a cautionary tale of self-criticism, ambition, and being careful what you wish for.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Holly: A spritual fable, THE NINE LIVES OF CLEMENZA. The story begins in heaven and follows one soul through its journey of life. It’s a tale of reincarnation, but with a special twist: Clemenza can become anything that she wishes. She begins as air.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Holly: TUESDAY TELLS IT SLANT is the story of a girl with a past that is less than desirable. During an especially traumatic moment, she decides to ditch her real past and create one that she has always dreamed of. She becomes thin, popular and desired. In doing this, she loses herself. The book unravels through diary entries, third person narratives and the poetry of Emily Dickinson as Tuesday strives to find her true past.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Holly: My family is incredibly supportive. I also have a few college professors that guided me through the editing and publishing process.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Holly: I start very early, especially from a night of tossing and turning with bits of storyline and dialogue, and down a pot of coffee. I let the caffeine do the work and I work until I’m exhausted.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Holly: Never, ever give up on your dream. Everyone says it, but write every day. Start a blog. Share your dream with others. Sometimes sharing makes it all the more real.

***

TUESDAY TELLS IT SLANT is available now, so check out Holly’s handy link to find the print or e-version that suits you best.

Pregnancy, childbirth, and parental attachment metaphors abound in this business. Strain at the plot arc and grind your teeth through the editing pains and you’ve given birth (or at least served as midwife) to a new thing, a wobbly creature you christen with a title, then swaddle in cover art. Endure criticism and it stings like having your baby defamed as hard-on-the-eyes. Ask many a writer and you’ll hear that the task of peddling a manuscript is nothing short of turning out your very flesh and blood into the cold, cruel world.

Life is hard, but literature is a nursery of horrors.

Or is it?

AuthorScoop has invited authors of every stripe to weigh in, three at a time on Thursdays, on one question:

Is your book your baby?

(view the entire essay collection here)

……………………………………….

“I don’t view my book as my baby. If it was, I’d be the most callous parent on the planet. I’d have CPS called on me in a heartbeat. I have high expectations for my books, and if they don’t reach those expectations, they can anticipate being shredded to pieces and rebuilt into something better, or else they’re trunked, never again to see the light of day. I’m proud of my work, and I do get attached to it, but I’ve never quite made the connection between book and baby.”

-erotica author, L.A. Witt

.

***

“God no. My book is my teenager. Unruly. Uncooperative. Determined to go off in its own direction. Surprisingly mature at the odd moment. Poignantly lost and confused and fragile at other moments. Something of which I can be proud and something whose neck I can as quickly want to wring.

A baby can’t make it out there in the real world on its own…and of course, this is precisely what a novel must do. I can’t hold its hand. It has to go out there and make friends all on its own…as well as manage with whatever unpopularity it might encounter. By the time the work - the novel - has emerged, there’s no time remaining for any parenting.

I take it that ‘childbirth’ - in the metaphor - is intended to stand in for the bursting forth of the creative act. But for that, aren’t we really talking about conception. I guess I’m a little amused that the metaphor neglects to take us back to that heady moment. The - sorry - creative explosion(s), the - sorry - juices flowing, those rapturous feelings of power and potential.

So yeah…the metaphor doesn’t really work for me. In my view, we have this gestation process, followed by the act of creation (not the other way around). There’s no gestation as a book is being written…only moments of indigestion mixed with moments of intoxication. At best, ‘childbirth’ might be representative of the publication of the work…but I suspect the metaphor is not working on that particular angle of things. God help us. This would make ‘parenting’ the marketing of the book!

So, I’ll stick with my twist on the question. No babies. Fully-formed creatures with minds and personalities of their own. Sometimes you want to sit own and have a drink with them…sometimes you wish they’d go bug somebody else. (and sometimes, that’s exactly what they do)”

-Tim Cockey (aka Richard Hawke)

***

“Some authors do feel toward their books as parents do toward their children. Their books are conceived, birthed, and then sent out into the world. Throughout, authors are more than occasionally overprotective and irrational about their offspring. Just as every parent’s kid is a genius, every author’s book is brilliant.

But let’s unpack this metaphor a bit. First off, if the book begins as a gleam in someone’s eye, whose eye is that? Doesn’t it take two to conceive? A co-author, so to speak? And do end-of-life metaphors apply? Does a book mature to adulthood, totter into old age, and then die? And then does the author go through all those grieving stages psychologists say we should when the thing goes out of print?

I don’t regard my books as children. Rather, they’re interesting projects, fun diversions; children are occasionally like that, but only occasionally. If books weren’t fun, I wouldn’t write them. Perhaps my own writing background contributes to this. I write nonfiction, in which making stuff up is discouraged. Or perhaps it’s because before I published any books I spent a couple of decades doing scientific paper and grant writing, in which one routinely gets smacked by often anonymous critics. Some of this criticism can be quite nasty. The experience tends to make you less protective of the words you write.

So, although I like my books, I’m glad I don’t need to raise them up, send them off to college, and then pay for their weddings. It would be nice if they could support me in my old age, though.”

-Dr. Christopher Johnson

One of my very favorite contemporary writers, Edgar Award winner, Tana French, is gearing up for the much-anticipated release of her third novel, FAITHFUL PLACE.  Just as a character from her debut novel, IN THE WOODS, steered THE LIKENESS (Ms. French’s second book) in FAITHFUL PLACE we’re drawn into an intrigue involving a detective that we’ve already met and found fascinating.  Each novel stands alone, but Tana French’s people, places, and insights will have you craving to connect all the dots.  Clever.  Very.  Honestly, I can’t wait to read it and it doesn’t hurt a bit that Booklist tagged their review of FAITHFUL PLACE with a star and proclaimed it, “Her best book yet.”

We’d like to thank Ms. French for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Tana: IN THE WOODS. I wrote short stories when I was a teenager, along with your standard-issue terrible poetry – I actually submitted one short story to a couple of places and even got a great rejection letter from The New Yorker saying they’d like to see more of my work, but that was as far as I got. When I started drama school, the acting took over and the writing went out the window – till I had the idea for IN THE WOODS, years later.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Tana: It’s called FAITHFUL PLACE, and it’s out this July. This time the narrator is Frank Mackey, who showed up in my second book, THE LIKENESS, as Cassie’s old undercover boss. Back in 1985, Frank was nineteen, growing up poor in Dublin’s inner city, living crammed into a tenement flat on Faithful Place. But he had his sights set on a lot more. He and Rosie Daly were all ready to run away to London together, get married, get good jobs, break away from factory work and poverty and all their old lives.

But on the winter night when they were supposed to leave, Rosie didn’t show. Frank took it for granted that she’d dumped him – probably because of his alcoholic father, nutcase mother and generally dysfunctional family. He never went home again.

Neither did Rosie. Everyone took it for granted she had gone to England on her own and was over there living her shiny new life. Then, twenty-two years later, Rosie’s suitcase shows up behind a fireplace in a derelict house on Faithful Place, and Frank is going home whether he likes it or not.

Getting sucked in is a lot easier than getting out again. Frank finds himself straight back in the dark tangle of relationships he left behind. The cops working the case want him out of the way, in case loyalty to his family and community makes him a liability. Faithful Place wants him out because he’s a detective now, and the Place has never liked cops. Frank just wants to know what happened to Rosie Daly – and he’s willing to do whatever it takes, to himself or anyone else, to get the job done…

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Tana: The obvious, and wonderful, people: I’ve been lucky enough to have an amazing agent and three amazing editors. And my husband is my first reader – he’s got an incredible sense of pace and structure, and somehow he can tell me ‘You know you need to cut that scene and rewrite the whole chapter in a different setting, right?’ without making my head explode.

And drama school. I had a great acting teacher, and I think that, deep down, acting and writing (specially writing in the first person, like I do) are basically the same skill: you’re aiming to create a complex, three-dimensional character, draw your audience into that character’s world and bring them the story through the lens of that character’s needs, fears, biases and preconceptions – you’re aiming to have the audience go away feeling like that character is someone they know deeply and intimately. Plus, in drama school you spend a lot of time observing the nuances of behaviour and relationships, and a lot of time working in minute detail on some of the best plays ever written, which helps to develop your instinct for what works in terms of structure, plot and character. It was great training.

And I never forget to be grateful to pure dumb luck. I believe that talent and/or hard work can get you to the right place to grab hold of luck when it goes past, but then you’re going nowhere until and unless it does.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Tana: Late at night. I’m nocturnal. Which is unfortunate, given that I have a baby so night writing is out. These days I write at whatever time I get the chance, including early mornings. Up until my daughter came along, I thought the only reason for early mornings to exist was when they were actually very, very late nights…

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Tana: You have absolute licence to screw up. For me, this was one of the big revelations while I was writing IN THE WOODS: if you need to rewrite a paragraph fifty times because the first forty-nine versions are so awful they make you cringe, that’s OK. I guess I was conditioned by doing theatre, where the show has to be right every single night, because that audience will never get another chance to see it. It took me a while to figure out that writing doesn’t count as the show until it goes to print; until then, it’s all rehearsal. It’s really easy to get discouraged when something just isn’t working, but that doesn’t mean it’ll never work. You can get it wrong as many times as you need to; you only need to get it right once.

***

FAITHFUL PLACE hits the shelves July 13th and is more than ready for preorder at your favorite online bookseller if you can’t trust yourself to remember to put it on your errand list.  (Yes, that would be me.)  Get it.  Get it soon.  And learn more about Tana French and her work at www.TanaFrench.com.