Caroline Leavitt's Blog, page 26

Can machines really be kind? Judith Newman talks about why we should all embrace weirdness and about her "everyone-is-going-nuts-for-it" book about her autistic son and his incredible relationship with Siri--To Siri With Love

When my friend, the acclaimed journalist/author Sheila Weller tells me about a book, I always listen. She lead me to Judith Newman, who it turns out, I was already friends with!  To Siri With Love is an astonishing book about her son Gus, who is on the autism spectrum, and how Siri opened up his life. It's warm, funny, astute, and you need to read it.


Judith writes about entertainment, relationships, parenthood, business, beauty, books, science, and popular culture. Her work has run in more than fifty publications, including The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Harper's, The Wall Street Journal, Allure and more.  Newman's books include the 2004 memoir You Make Me Feel Like an Unnatural Woman: The Diary of a New (Older) Mother.


I'm so thrilled to have her here!  It's great when you love both the book--and the author, right?
I’m so happy you wrote about Gus, but what was the why now moment when you decided you were going to do a whole book?  
Because someone asked?  Embarrassing but true.  I’m so frightened of rejection when it comes to a personal topic like this that I would never have gone out there and tried to sell a proposal if an editor in the UK, Jon Butler, hadn’t approached me first.  But I do feel now that this is a good moment for a book like this.  Even if I didn’t have an autistic child I might be reading it – because right now, given the prevalence of autism, we all know and/or love someone on the spectrum.
I love it that the book is a memoir made up of essays. I want to know why you used this form?
Originally I thought of a year-in-the-life kind of thing, but that was just unsatisfactory.  It seemed to me that there were very particular issues around family life and autism that leant itself to thematic telling.  That sounds high-falutin.  Basically I wanted to be funny and throw in a bit of science, so this is how I did it.
What does Gus think about the book? Did he know that you were writing about him?

I was just telling him yesterday, “Honey, people seem to really like the book I wrote about you” and he said.  “That’s great Mommy.  Do you know how many kinds of sea turtles there are in the Bahamas?”   So, safe to say, he doesn’t care.
There truly seems to be more awareness about autism. There is a new series Atypical, about an autistic teen-ager, which I think is pretty well done. Have you seen it? Am I wrong?

You’re not wrong, but I haven’t seen Atypical.  Maybe I don’t watch things about autism because I live it!
You also wrote about how adults could be unknowingly clueless or cruel, and how doctors could be judging (I bet because they had no good answers for you and didn’t want to dare imagine they might be at fault or that they simply didn’t know. ) If you could educate people, what would you want to tell them about responding to Gus?
Nothing!  I want people to be who they are, and let me work with my son to understand kindness and cruelty.  But I would say this to people who are neither kind nor cruel but a little fearful:  Don’t be.  My son might not be looking at you, but it doesn’t mean he’s not paying attention; he can just listen better that way.  (Well, usually.  He’s a teenage boy.  Sometimes he’s really not paying attention)  He might be hopping when he talks to you, but it’s just because he’s happy.  He might not get the joke  Explain it to him!  There is nothing wrong with information.  Most fear is caused by misunderstanding.  Plus:  weirdness is just funny.  Embrace weirdness
What’s obsessing you now and why?
Our political landscape and, right this moment, Steven Mnuchin’s wife, Louise Linton.  She marries  my two very favorite qualities in a human being:  cruelty and social climbing.  Is there anything worse than a person who claims a posh background who is completely and utterly classless?  

What question didn’t I ask that I should have? And what questions would Gus ask?  He wouldn’t ask.  He would tell you these things:  the temperature, the chance of thunderstorms, the types of sea turtles in the Bahamas (five --green turtles, loggerhead turtles, Hawksbill turtles and oh my god my eyes have glazed over now)),  and the news on ABC-7.  He reads us the headlines every night, and wants to discuss them, which is enormous progress for a person with very limited interests.  It’s because he wants to connect more with other people, people who, say, are not interested in, say, the eyebrows on Disney villains.   A few nights ago he was shouting from the other room that a ‘Prius was graping a teenager.’  a teenager.  A car?  And what’s graping?.   Gus pronounciation isn’t always so good.   I asked him to spell the words, and it turns out it was a priest, and he was groping.  That became a very different conversation.

Want to raise thoughtful, wonderful kids? And have a gorgeous book to boot? Deborah Copaken and Randy Polumbo talk about THE ABCS OF PARENTHOOD

I first fell in love with The ABCS OF ADULTHOOD, with text by the amazing Deborah Copaken and photographs and design by the equally amazing Randy Polumbo ( Check out his web page.) And now they have a new, most wondrous book, THE ABCS OF PARENTHOOD.

I've always been a total fangirl to Deborah Copaken.She's brave, she's funny, she's incredibly smart, generous and creative, Her bio she wrote for her website is so funny, I'm letting it speak for itself here: Wrote bestselling Shutterbabe, followed by unpublishable drivel, followed by Between Here and April, Hell is Other Parents, and the New York Times bestselling The Red Book, which was nominated for the Women’s Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize); published essays in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Nation, Elle, More, Slate, Paris Match, O, and others; shot photo assignments; produced and shot a documentary in Pakistan for CNN in the wake of 9/11; became a columnist for The Financial Times; performed live on stage with The Moth, Afterbirth, Six Word Memoir, and Eve Ensler’s tribute to Anita Hill; adapted Hell is Other Parents for the stage, starring Kate Burton, Sandy Duncan, Tovah Feldshuh, Julie Halston, and Rita Wolf; wrote several screenplays and a TV pilot that were never produced; watched Shutterbabe (the big and small-screen versions) languish in development hell; had another baby; lost appendix, uterus, father, Upper West Side home, bearings, socks, sanity, and several nouns; found Harlem, yoga, and occasional serenity. But not the socks. Or the whatchamacallit. Nouns.

2013-2015: The upheaval years; separated from husband and life partner of 23 years; sent the two eldest off to college; received a diagnosis of stage 0 breast cancer; got sucked into the vortex of job turmoil, twice, while single parenting the little one 24/7; seriously contemplated emigrating to Scandinavia; instead, moved across the street from the Inwood Hill Forest, the greatest city refuge no one in Manhattan has ever heard of; granted three miracles: 1) sold Shutterbabe as a TV series and was hired to co-write the pilot for NBC/Universal; 2) landed new full-time job plus three-book deal to co-create, with artist Randy Polumbo, a series of ABC books; and 3) love.

Thank you both so very, very much.



I always want to know the why now reason for a book? What was going on that made you feel, “Oh my God, I have to write this now, now, now.” (Psst, I know the answer, but readers will want to know--)
Randy and I sat down to map out the letters for this book (A is for acceptance, B is for boundaries, etc.) in the late summer of 2015, long before the current hate-filled rhetoric of a certain small-handed dictatorman began filling our airwaves and twitter feeds, so it wasn’t a reaction to him or the news per se. And yet clearly, as my two eldest and Randy’s daughter were busy flying the nest; as we looked around at the competitive, helicopter parenting environment of New York, where getting your kid into the right college starts before preschool and escalates as they move through the years, we both felt that there was a real need for a book about compassionate parenting. About starting from a place of love and acceptance instead of blindly trying to mold your child into something they’re not. About embracing what we called the “J is for jazz” of parenting, meaning there’s no sheet music, no roadmap, no one best way to raise a child. About finding peace amidst the beautiful mess of glitter, dog hairs, and toys and finding joy in the small moments: a walk outside, an ice cream cone. I’m a big fan of Thich Nhat Han’s mindful essentials books (How to Love, How to Eat, How to Sit, etc.) as well as Buddhist tracts in general, although I wouldn’t call this a Buddhist book so much as a book whose roots are similar to those of Buddhism: kindness, love, empathy. I think we also felt we both knew what we’d done wrong or things we wished we could have done better as parents and wanted to impart that hard-earned wisdom.
You’re a critically acclaimed, majorly accomplished writer. But does every book- including this one—feel like a new book with new problems, etc. in it? Were you writing it differently at all? Did anything surprise you about the writing?
Absolutely! Each book is its own unique puzzle. What’s the voice? What’s the tone? How is it organized? This was the first book I co-wrote and co-shot. Randy wrote and photographed 13 letters, I wrote and photographed 13. But then, insofar as the writing was concerned, we each had ultimate editing and veto power over the others’ entries to the point where it’s impossible to point to any one sentence and say, “I wrote that,” or “He wrote that.” We wrote it, passing the manuscript back and forth over email—and then once, toward the end of the process, in person at Randy’s studio in Gowanus—and it was not always easy. We’ve been good friends for three years now, so we were able to criticize one another without worrying about hurting the others’ feelings, but we’re still human, and it was sometimes challenging for each of us to hear what the other didn’t like, even if we ultimately knew the criticism was valid.
Sending your kid off to college is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. We see my son every few weeks, but realizing that your child is now an adult is mind-bending. And so is the way you give them advice, which is why I loved your book so much. It talks about what is important but in a way that respects young people. I also love that it’s a great little gift for adults, too.
I’m pretty sure you’re talking about our first book, THE ABC’s OF ADULTHOOD, here, so I’ll speak to that. I wrote THE ABC’s OF ADULTHOOD just before my own eldest left for college, so it was one of those from-the-heart, oh-god-I-can’t-believe-he’s-leaving mash notes from a mother to a child. But that book, too, started from a place of acceptance. So often I see parents trying to give advice to a young adult child that does not take into consideration who that child is. “You should go to law school!” is bad advice if your kid has no propensity for logical thinking. And trying to keep your college-aged student from ever drinking alcohol is a fool’s errand, but you can tell them to try an experiment of sobriety, just to see how it feels.

What was it like working with Randy Polumbo? Which came first, the prose or the image?
I feel extremely fortunate to have collaborated with Randy. He reminds me of a modern-day Willy Wonka, only less cynical, smarter and more grounded in reality. His studio in Gowanus literally looks like Wonka’s factory, and it was recently featuredin New York Magazine. His compound in Joshua Tree, constructed solely from recycled materials, is, to my mind, the 8th Wonder of the World. But beyond his artistic brilliance, talent, and whimsy is a man who cares deeply about our world, about his fellow humans, about his daughter, about art, and about the future of our planet. His generosity is unbridled. I happened to mention to him, in passing, that I’d somehow lost my large-format, analog camera in the move from my marital home into my so-called “divorced lady apartment,” and that I would never be able to replace it, as it was an antique. A few months later, he presented me with a replacement he’d somehow magically found online. That’s just one instance of many. As for which came first, the prose or the image, the prose absolutely came first. Then we had to come up with an image to match. For example, the first one, the deformed apple for A is for Acceptance, was an apple Randy found in his own garden on his studio’s roof. It was oddly perfect in its imperfection: not only because the imperfection was in the shape of an A, but because most kiddie alphabet books begin with A is for Apple, so this is a beautiful subversion of that. The H is for helicopter is an h-shaped bit of fence in front of an actual helicopter at an army recruiting station near my mom’s house on the Delaware shore. The Q is for quilt (a rolled-up tape measure) was our editor, Christine Carswell’s, idea. The Y is for yelling I spotted around the corner from my apartment. The J is for Jazz is Randy’s daughter Nico’s saxophone atop his silver couch. In other words, it was a real joint effort involving thought, luck, and paying attention to simple props at home and the built and natural environment.
What’s obsessing you now and why?

This hideous administration, for obvious reasons. Thawing permafrost, because I worry about the world my children will inherit. Healthcare, because my own health has been challenging this summer. And focused breathing, as a stopgap measure antidote to it all.
What question didn’t I ask that I should have?
I’m not sure, but I’m betting it falls somewhere between 1) “What’s the meaning of life?” (no idea, but love, presence, and ice cream come close) and 2) “Who’s on first?” (What, duh.)

Christopher Swann talks about boarding school, trauma, why you don't want a reader who just says, "love it!" with a smiley emoji, and his brilliant novel SHADOW OF THE LIONS

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He's another Algonquin author, which means he is family from now on!  I'm so thrilled to have him here!</i></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>I loved all the material about boarding school. Did you attend one yourself? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if so, did you find it freeing?<br /></b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small; mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;">I’m glad you liked the boarding school material. I did attend boarding school—Woodberry Forest, in Virginia. Blackburne is kind of based on Woodberry, especially physically, but I made several alterations. Let’s say that a lot of the good aspects of Blackburne come from Woodberry, and the bad aspects of Blackburne I made up.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small; mso-tab-count: 1;">           <br /> </span><span style="font-size: small;">Did I find boarding school freeing? Now that’s an interesting question. Usually people who aren’t familiar with boarding schools think of them as some sort of elite prisons, like dumping grounds for Holden Caulfield-esque teens. This isn’t true in my experience. If you attend a place like Blackburne, you have access to incredible teachers and mentors. Living at your school as a teenager, without the freedoms available to you as an older college student, can feel isolating. A boarding school a contained environment. And yet the whole experience of boarding school is pretty freeing. It may not feel that way at the time. However, I am very much who I am as an adult in large part because of my boarding school experience. It’s not that I was shaped by my school, exactly, although that’s part of it. It’s that at boarding school I was allowed—encouraged, even—to grow and develop as a student and as an adolescent male in ways that I probably would not have been at a traditional day school. I write in my book that classmates at boarding school can establish close-knit friendships that, on a platonic level, may not be experienced again until marriage. The other aspect, of course, is that you spend the majority of your adolescence, from age 14 to 18, away from home and your parents. Of course you go home for vacations, but for nearly eight months out of the year you live away from home. You grow up and learn responsibility a bit sooner than you might otherwise, and you form tight-knit relationships that can last your entire life. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small; mso-tab-count: 1;">            </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>I’m haunted by the things we do as kids that we would never do as adults—and how those crimes shadow us. If we’re lucky, as in a way Matthias is, we get to reconfront them—but what do you think would have happened to Matthias if he never had that chance?</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">That is one of the shadows the title alludes to—in this case, Matthias’ fear that this one event clouds his entire life. Luckily, I didn’t experience any kind of traumatic event like Matthias does, but I often think <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">there but for the grace of God go I</i>. I have always enjoyed mysteries, and when writing this book I spent a lot of time thinking about Fritz and what happened to him. But I was even more interested in what would happen to Matthias, and to everyone else affected by Fritz’s disappearance. What kind of effect would that have on you? <br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small; mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;">My senior or sixth form year at Woodberry, a girl I knew died in a car crash. I had known her for a few years and our parents were friends, although she and I were more like friendly acquaintances. But she was cute and vibrant and fun to be around, and when I got the news she had died, I was gutted. She was the first person I knew in my age group to die. I remember thinking how utterly unfair and wrong it was. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">How did this happen? </i>For several weeks her death haunted me, and at first I wasn’t sure why. I hadn’t been secretly in love with her, and we weren’t even especially close, although she was always kind and friendly to me. It was that I was young, and like all young people I thought I was immortal, and when that fantasy was stripped away, which happens to all of us at some point, I was shaken. The girl’s parents and younger sister now had this horrible truth that they had to bear for the rest of their lives. It was just an awful, tragic loss.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small; mso-tab-count: 1;">            </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Without being conscious of the connection, I wrote my book in part to explore the uncomfortable aftermath in the wake of a tragedy. But I wanted the tragedy in my book to contain a mystery. Death is final. Disappearance is not, and always leaves a question behind: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what really happened?</i> Fritz’s disappearance affects Matthias in ways he cannot imagine. He, too, is gutted by the loss of his missing friend. But Matthias has the sense that he can do something—even if he isn’t certain what that something is—to make amends, to put things right. It’s always dangerous to predict what fictional characters would do—my own characters often surprise me with the choices they make! But if Matthias had not had the chance to confront his past, I think he would have wound up bitter, gnawed by a sense of failed promise and culpability. Then again, maybe he could channel that into his writing and find success again. Who knows?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Matthias believes he is a failed writer, which of course is every single writer’s fear. With the praise you are getting for Shadow of the Lions, this certainly isn’t a worry of yours—but was it ever? And what did you do about it?</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Hold on a sec . . . just knocking on wood. You’re very kind, Caroline—thank you. Of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">course</i> I was afraid of being a failed writer—not just of failing in a particular instance of writing, but failing at the entire endeavor. I knew in eighth grade that I wanted to be a writer. And for every passing year, and for every story about a newly discovered literary <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">wunderkind</i>—you know, the genius novelist who’s an undergraduate at Yale and still not old enough to legally drink—for all that, I just shrugged and put my head down and wrote. Not continuously, not every day. There were months that went by when I didn’t write any fiction, maybe a solid year at one point. I don’t know why I kept going, honestly. Stubbornness, I suppose. And in retrospect it seem that at every crucial step, something happened that buoyed my confidence. A teacher encouraged me. A classmate I admired said something complimentary about a story I had written. After dozens of rejections, I had my first short story published. Et cetera.<br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small; mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;">Last year Alison Umminger, a grad-school classmate of mine at Missouri, published a wonderful YA novel, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">American Girls, </i>which you have to read. (Her original title for it was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My Favorite Manson Girl, </i>which is what the U.K. edition is called.) I attended a reading she gave at Underground Books in Carrollton, Georgia, where she is a professor at West Georgia. I hadn’t seen her in nearly twenty years. At Missouri she was a great writer, funny and honest and so damn smart. Of course she hadn’t changed a bit, and we visited with each other briefly before she gave her reading to a packed house. In her opening remarks, she talked about the long road to publication, and then to my surprise mentioned me and my own upcoming novel. “I guess for both of us, slow and steady really does win the race,” she said, or words to that effect. And I think that’s true. Johnny Evison, who I met on the Internet years ago and who has been such a guide and inspiration, wrote for years before he got published. His agent—who was also my first agent—had to send him a box of food at one point. And now he’s the author of four amazing novels, a fifth in the pipeline, and a sixth in the works. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small; mso-tab-count: 1;">            </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I do have a secret weapon, though. And like many successful writers, my secret weapon is my better half. My wife Kathy is one of the most patient women in history. She’s my fiercest critic and my biggest cheerleader. She will tell me when I’ve written something terrible. I’ll give her a scene and she’ll read it and say, “Real men and women don’t talk to each other like this,” and I’ve learned instead of huffing or arguing about it, I should listen. That’s wisdom, I guess.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>I always want to know about the creative process. Do you write on scrap paper, on a computer, pen or pencil? Do you have rituals?</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I write almost everything on a laptop. My handwriting is lousy, although I’ll occasionally jot something down on a scrap piece of paper or in a notebook. But my mother sent me to typing lessons one summer when I was thirteen. It was a class full of housewives going back to work. I was the only male. The next youngest student was maybe twenty-six. But by God, I learned how to type. And I’ve been typing ever since.<br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">For maybe the second half of my novel, I stuck to what my wife refers to as “sacred writing time.” Usually it’s from eight o’clock in the evening to ten or so. Nora Roberts—she didn’t invent this idea, but the first time I heard it was from her—she said that the secret to her success as a writer was “Ass in the chair.” There’s something to that. And I know it works, because when I would skip watching TV or playing on my phone or reading a book and instead put my ass in the chair in front of my laptop, I would produce writing. And for the past several months, various events have conspired against sacred writing time, and I’ve written very little on my second book. This summer, before I go on book tour, I plan to reinstate sacred writing time. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small; mso-tab-count: 1;">            </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What’s it like for you being a debut author?</i></b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Surreal. A few weeks ago my editor said we needed to choose a narrator for the audiobook version of my novel. She had two voice actors in mind and sent me their audio files. So I sat in my classroom during a free period and listened on my phone to two different voice actors reading the opening pages of my own novel.<br /><br />I’m still a little self-conscious about saying “my agent” or “my editor.” A friend or colleague will ask about my book, and I’ll say, “Well, I was just talking to my editor,” and then I’ll think I sound like I’m bragging. I’m letting that go, though. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small; mso-tab-count: 1;">            </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Algonquin has been absolutely fabulous—I could not have asked for a better publisher on my first go around. A few months ago I was on a group call with maybe a dozen or so people at Algonquin—my editor, the publicist, marketing, copy editors, the whole nine yards—and I just wanted to hug all of them. I’ve wanted to be a novelist since I was in eighth grade, and now it’s actually happening. How often do you have a life-long dream and then you achieve it, and then you can keep on doing it (knock on wood again)?<br /><br />Mainly I’m just consciously trying to enjoy the whole experience, appreciate every moment. I have friends who are consultants and fly to other parts of the country every week, they spend their weeknights in hotels—it’s part of their job. Me, I’m going to go on book tour, and when I stay in a hotel, I’m going to be the guy who’s all delighted that there’s an iron in my room. “I have an iron! Wow, that’s so thoughtful! Wait, there’s a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mini-fridge, </i>too?” I’m like that right now about everything having to do with the publication of my book. And I want to keep that feeling for as long as possible. And I’m both excited by and terrified at the prospect of giving a reading. What if they don’t like it? What if they don’t laugh at my jokes? But then I remember that I make a living, in part, on getting up in front of groups of people who may not care about what I have to say, and I have to engage them and convince them that what I am going to say might be interesting.  <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><br /><br />Almost everyone I have met in this business—editors, agents, publicists, booksellers, and especially authors—has been so generous and supportive and kind. It’s like I’ve found my people, you know? And I got my first review on Goodreads, by someone I did not know, and she gave <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Shadow of the Lions </i>five stars. It was the loveliest feeling, to know that a complete stranger had read my story and enjoyed it. That’s part of why we write stories, isn’t it? Because we want to write something that will have the same kind of impact that another book or author had on us.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>What’s obsessing you now and why?<br /></b>Politics, although I’m trying to cut down on the amount of political news I read. There’s only so much healthy outrage I can maintain before I start feeling ill.<br /><br />The book series <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Expanse</i> by James S. A. Corey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The TV series is on SyFy and it’s awesome, season two ended this spring, but the books are these incredible plot-driven stories with great characters that, at the same time, wrestle with some really big metaphysical questions about humanity and conflict and community. And they also manage to realistically depict the hard science of living and traveling in space. Any one of those things is difficult to pull off; to do all three is amazing. And my own book and the book tour and everything around that. It’s not that I’m being narcissistic or super-anxious. It’s just that I want it to go well. I want people to like my book, and so I have to do my best to promote it and I want people who come out to hear me read to enjoy the experience.<b><br /><br />What question didn’t I ask that I should have?</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small; mso-tab-count: 1;">            </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small; mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;">Everything I’m coming up with sounds so lame.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Which is probably why you didn’t ask me those things. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small; mso-tab-count: 1;">            </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I will add some advice for people who have been writing for years without success. If you love stories and you love writing, don’t quit. If you <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">don’t </i>like writing, or you don’t love stories, then for God’s sake move on to something else. But if you do, don’t quit. Read widely, write regularly, and show your work to someone you trust who won’t just write “Love it!” in the margins or send you a smiley face emoji. Slow and steady wins the race. And it’s not really a race, except with time, which always wins in the end. But you can sidestep your own mortality by writing something that a stranger will pick up years from now and think, “Now <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that’s </i>a good story.” And the only way to achieve that is to put your ass in the chair and write.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small; mso-tab-count: 1;">            </span></span></div>

Surfing to explain philosophy? Yep, yep, yep, Aaron James talks about Surfing with Sartre: An Aquatic Inquiry into a Life of Meaning

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style><br /><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CZCoFzGoge..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="730" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CZCoFzGoge..." width="216" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-k3M66iUTRC..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="315" data-original-width="210" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-k3M66iUTRC..." /></a></div><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>How could I ever resist a book with this title? So I didn't. And then I loved the book so much, I asked Aaron if he would come on the blog. Aaron James is an associate professor of philosophy at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Univers..." title="University of California, Irvine">University of California, Irvine</a>,and the author of Assholes: A Theory, and I'm delighted to have him here. Thank you, Aaron.</i></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Why do you think that surfing lends itself to philosophizing?</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I think surfing is all about what I call bodily “adapative attunement” to the changing movements of a wave, and the ocean and coastline that creates and shapes them in certain way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Whether you are thinking about it or not, this often brings a deep appreciation of the sublime and the beautiful, drawing you out of yourself, in awe, respect, and wonderment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>In that way you naturally transcend the mundane, even on the most ordinary day, often with a profound sense of fortune, or even gratitude, that the circumstances of one’s life have coalesced as they now have.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Which is already a kind of reflection of a philosophical sort.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>But then ideas can be sublime, or even beautiful, as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>And being attuned to them through skillful philosophical thought or discussion is also a way of transcending the drab or the blah in the mundane, a way of being more attuned to what’s wonderful or curious or puzzling in ordinary life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>So although surfing and philosophizing draw on different skills, to me at least, the enterprises are valuable in much the same general way.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>I love the title, though the idea of Jean Paul Sartre surfing is delicious—and maybe that’s part of the delight of your essays, getting us to think about things in a new and fun way. Care to talk about this</b>?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It is really fun that, deep in his long masterwork _Being and Nothingness_, Sartre has these long passages about snow skiing and freedom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>He writes in this excited rush, as he often does, just enthralled with looking at skiing in a deep, fresh way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I thought I should do something like that with surfing, picking up from Sartre’s comments about waterskiing, which he thinks of as even better than skiing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>So I’m trying to do phenomenology in something of the way Sartre understood it, in hopes of looking at things in a new way and discovering what would otherwise be obscure, which is delightful and fun in itself.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>What was it like writing these essays? Any snags along the way?</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">To me the idea of the book was exciting for its scope and ambition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>It could be like an olden style treatise of the sort you can’t write in specialized academic philosophy these days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The general reader might want to just see big connections, so I thought the book should “surf” through any and every big issue in philosophy that surfing might illuminate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>But it took me a long time to figure out how all the topics and parts might fit together, with some sort of progression that adds up to a grand picture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>It helped a lot when I realized the chapters could mainly be general, single-word topics, like Freedom, Control, Flow, Being, Transcendence, Society, Nature, Work, etc..<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Then I could just focus on the ideas that seemed to develop that particular topic, and stack the topics across the chapters so that they build upon each other over the course of the whole book. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>I’m curious if your personal philosophy ever changes—and why?</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Well, I think of myself as constantly learning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>A lot of the time you feel like you’re gradually understanding more fully what you were already inclined to think, what you previously had a bare grasp of, or saw dimly, in the distance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>But the new learning also gradually shifts other things you feel like you might have mostly sorted out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>In working on the book I became much clearer for myself about what exactly I have always loved about surfing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>And in reading around all the various areas of philosophy, which go beyond my usual specializations, I was led into some new research interests.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I now think professional philosophers haven’t really appreciated certain connections, which I’m hoping bring out in my academic writings.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>What’s obsessing you now and why?</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I’m tacking back to some of my core interests in political philosophy at the moment, planning what will be another academic book on international socio-economic issues. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m also thinking more about a pop book that joins asshole and surfer theory by offering ideas about how to get from our present culture of assholery to a more leisurely, less competitive kind of capitalism.</span></span></div>

And now for something even more different! Joyce Maynard and I video chat about her memoir THE BEST OF US, plus a giveaway

I first met Joyce Maynard through email. She was kind, gracious, and really funny. But best of all, we got to meet at a Book Fest, and I was having such a good time talking with her that I impulsive said, "Let me film you for my blog!" She agreed, and of course, my phone screwed up. BUT, we did the interview later. And it's there in the link at the bottom! AND here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8DYP...

And there's more! Bloomsbury and Joyce Maynard are offering to send a personalized, signed book plate from Joyce to anyone in the US and Canada who sends in proof of preorder before publication. This can be from any retailer. To enter submit a photo of a receipt, an email receipt, or a screenshot of an order.  They need to be sent in before September 5, 2017  in order to qualify.
More information and submission form here: https://www.formpl.us/form/4858672448536576

And here is the refrain of Joyce's very first song , from songwriting camp--which she sings in the video.. 
It’s a year since you left meI sold your guitarGave your boots to your sonSmoked your last good cigarAnd I’m not going to die hereI’m back out on the road, But I wear your blue shirt, dearIt feels good.
And if someday I loveThough there’s none here for nowI will know how I got thereIt was you showed me how.It’s a skill newly learnedIt was you showed me how. 




HERE is the video !

And now for something different! Anne Korkeakivi and I talk about promoting hardcovers and then paperbacks, and lots of other stuff, too!

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mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14.0pt;"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yA1y5ONGyj..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="200" data-original-width="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yA1y5ONGyj..." /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Portrait of the gorgeous, genius author Anne Korkeakivi</td></tr></tbody></table></span></b></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vZtPARjsiQ..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="300" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vZtPARjsiQ..." width="268" /></a></b></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8oZGRR1LPh..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="218" data-original-width="218" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8oZGRR1LPh..." width="400" /></a></b></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style></div>--> <div class="MsoNormal"><i>I love Anne Korkeakivi's work, especially Shining Sea, a transcendent novel about great love and great loss. I met her at a book event, and then I got to love her, too. We got to talking about our paperbacks and decided we would share the conversation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>We hope it's helpful and fun to read.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>Caroline: Let's talk about the hardback/paperback thing. Are you exhausted after promoting your hardback? Paperback is much less, but it feels to me that I am always promoting. Do you feel the same way? Do you have strategies to deal with it? <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Anne: As a largely expat author, here’s my strategy: transmutation. I look at, for example, social media outreach not as promotion but as a chance to interact with other bookish people, something I don’t get to do much in my day-to-day life overseas. Same for events and book festivals. This is all life, right? I make a point of enjoying it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Tessa Hadley told me once that no sooner does she send a manuscript off to her agent than she starts work on a new one. That new work-in-progress becomes a psychological buffer. This doesn’t fit with my process, to date--I like to spend a long time researching and getting to know my characters before I start writing--but it seems incredibly smart to me.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">How about you? Have you developed an effective strategy? And how about paperback promotion? The book is the same, but both the book-selling and book-buying process are different.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Caroline: I totally agree with having something new to work on, otherwise I just get obsessed with all the details. How is the book doing? What can I do to make it do even better? Plus, what I love the most is that deep state of being in the zone and writing. I feel like I killed myself doing publicity for the hardcover of Cruel Beautiful World, all those planes, trains, and Lyfts! Paperback is a lot different. People are more apt to wander into a bookstore and grab up a book, and I think essays out there do a lot to get the word out. And maybe pleading on social media, too!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Mostly, though, what is so lovely is I am writing my next novel, it's sold already, but I still have to write it and it's scaring me! Did writing your novel scare you at all? And how did you deal with that?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Anne: Very first, congrats on having sold the next novel!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Writing my novels has never scared me. It’s the thought of not writing them that scares me. But I've not been in your position; perhaps it’s more frightening when you have a deal and deadline for a novel in hand. How do you balance working on the next novel while getting the last one into publication? My characters tend to populate my head so thoroughly that I find I need to put them to bed before I can start hanging out with a whole other crew. Or do you mean that you start something new as soon as the former book has gone to press?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Caroline: That's so fascinating, Anne. The thought of not writing is scary, indeed. I had a four-month period a few years ago where I was so overwhelmed, I actually said, that's it, I give up. And I didn't write, and then that damned hunger started up and there I was. It's half and half. On the one hand, I love having a deal because then I can sigh and say, oh thank God, I don't have to worry for two years. But then there is the HUGE worry of "Oh my God, I spent my whole advance and I have to deliver a novel and I have no idea what I am doing!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I always start thinking of a new novel when I am nearing the end of the 67th draft (yeah 67...) so I cannot give myself space to panic.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So, if you hadn't been a writer, what would you have been? I have been a failure as a receptionist (gave Dr. Foot the podiatrist the calls from Dr. Foot the obstetrician and was fired), a worker at a factory that made dirty puzzles (I left after a woman had her hair caught in the glue press), a copywriter for a public TV station, a teacher for juvenile delinquent boys (Total failure)... So it's lucky I found something I can do!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Anne: I’m glad you didn’t give up writing, Caroline. It sounds as though being a novelist is much better suited for you than working as a medical receptionist! My childhood dream was to be a musician. As I matured, many people assumed I’d become a classicist, because I was a dab hand at Ancient Greek translation and I really did love it. But there was never any question in my mind that I’d be a writer. In a way, the predetermination of it bothered me. But it just was.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So, here we both are—novelists. What you said about paperbacks being bought differently is so true. Paperbacks also are very much about book groups. Bless the book groups! Still, I’ll be doing some events. It’s fun to celebrate. I’ll have a launch on August 8 in Brooklyn and do something in the Boston area two days later. Then in September I’m going out the west coast--San Diego, the Bay Area, and Los Angeles--which I didn’t do for the hardcover. I’m incredibly excited about it, because Shining Sea is about a SoCal family, so it feels like bringing the book home. Also each event is different, and I like trying things. I’m particularly happy that one event involves fundraising—as writers we need to do what we can.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">How about you? It’s a little tricky doing a summer release.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Caroline: Do you think there is such a thing as summer books? I don't. I don't think emotions have a season. I don't want lighter books in summer. I still want the dark, thorny ones that crack your heart open. I do, however, think that paperbacks make a difference because people are more willing to take a chance on them--and they often buy doubles! I saw that happen with my first two novels for Algonquin, Pictures of You and Is This Tomorrow, which were paperback originals. This upset me at the time because I thought I'd lose reviews and sales, but instead, both were New York Times Bestsellers! I was thrilled. So when Algonquin told me they were going to put Cruel Beautiful World in hardback, I begged them not to! So I'm really looking forward to it being out in paperback.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Except that all my PR feels like it was done already for the hardback!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Anne: In a recent article in Broadly, Ilana Masad suggested that the idea of “summer” books might be tied to a vision of the world as a place where women take the summer off while the men are working. I agree with you—and Masad—that there’s something fishy in the very concept. I asked my publicist once, though, in what way Shining Sea might be a “summer” book and she said because the story takes the reader many places, and in summer people are dreaming of traveling.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">At any rate, the nice thing is if you’re pretty well done with promotion already, Caroline, you don’t have to worry about those planes, trains, and Lyfts you mentioned. Enjoy!</div>

Oh. My. God. This book. What Are We Even Doing With Our Lives: The Most Honest Children's Book of All Time by Chelsea Marshall and Mary Dauterman is some kind of insane genius.

You want this book. You need this book.
Genius at work

 In this a charming, satirical "children’s" book, BuzzFeed’s lead animal editor Chelsea Marshall and acclaimed art director/illustrator Mary Dauterman introduce us to Digi Valley and 21st Century urban life. It's a town filled with animal people who run vegan cafes, Uber around, and stay on their cell phones, and it is total genius.

I'm thrilled to have them here, and I loved this book so much, I bought extra copies for friends so we can obsess about it together.



I loved this book so much, I want to marry it. It’s so slyly witty and so spot on about how and why we live the way we do. So when was the “we have to write and draw this book” moment? What happened right before the big decision? 

Mary: I had been drawing some of these characters for a while when I asked Chelsea to come onto the project. 

Chelsea: We both have really similar senses of humor and we started brainstorming where we could take all these characters and knew there was so much fun to be had with it. A lot of this process was “does this make you laugh?” and if it did, we went with it. 

Why a children’s book for all ages? (I bet I know the answer, but I want to hear you both talk about it!) 

Chelsea: A lot of our favorite cartoons (Rugrats + Spongebob for instance) were so funny and great as kids growing up, and then you watch them as an adult and they’re still really funny and great in a new way because you notice more of the adult themes. The world is a really weird place and it’s kind of a relief when you realize someone else is like “OMFG I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO NOTICED.” 

Mary: It’s pretty great to be the adults hiding multiple layers of jokes in the story. Lots of jokes buried in the phones and characters’ interactions within scenes. 
 
I bet it was hilarious fun to write and draw this book. Which came first, words or pictures? Did you brainstorm together? What thing do you now wish you had done that you didn’t? 

Chelsea: We did brainstorm a lot together. We’re BFFs IRL so it just came naturally and random jokes that we had ended up making it into the book. It’s was so fun to work with someone you can just go “hey can a parrot eating salami be renting out this room?” and without batting an eye she draws a character even greater than your imagination. Some brainstorms just turned into drinking wine and talking about how much we love Beyonce though. 

Mary: We had a long list of “scenes” and jobs, then Chelsea made a proper outline/flow of the book while I started drawing scenes and backgrounds. 

Chelsea: The flow is based off of an improv game where you have two characters in a scene, one leaves and a new one comes in. So each scene in the book has a character from the last one, even if they’re just in the background. 

Mary: There are a lot of stories woven together and recurring characters that we hope people discover and love as much as we do! Sometimes Chelsea would write something and then I would draw it how I was envisioning, then Chelsea would be excited about another character or part of the drawing and tweak the writing a little or add more weirdness. I kept drawing this one kind of depressed looking bird and Chelsea came up with a whole backstory and made him kind of a perv, haha. 

Chelsea: The whole process was all very fluid and fun! If we had more time, we would have made more characters based on our friends, and a bigger storyline around Diana Flurmph, who is running for mayor of DigiValley. We had a lot to say post-election but the book was almost done by then. 

The characters are hilariously real from a beauty blogger to a freelancer (sigh, aren’t we all?) to a realtor (real estate in cities is always big, big, big). Was there any character type you considered but then rejected? And if so, why? And please will you do a sequel? 

Mary: There were definitely more characters, and most didn’t make it into the book just due to timing! We were talking about a baby DJ, food cart vendor, a college student, a dispensary, and a bunch of others buried somewhere in our emails. 

Chelsea: Of course we’d love to do a sequel! One of the first characters created was “Cat Landlord” and we’d love to explore his weird life as a reality TV star/cat landlord in depth. 

The Internet going down is one of my biggest fears—and it actually impacts Digtown. I love my iphone, but I also hate the zombification of everyone staring at their phones, and I resent being bumped into 50 times a day by people on the city streets watching their phones rather than sidewalk traffic. Is there a happy Medium? 

Chelsea: I love that technology can keep us connected to people we may not see everyday, and access to things we may never have seen or known otherwise. (full disclosure: this book was largely shaped over a series of google docs) Of course, that also means we can forget to connect with people in front of us or accidentally find the new 2 girls, one cup vid but there definitely is a balance. We suggest airplane mode from time to time. 

Digtown is totally busy! It reminded me of the Richard Scary Busytown books that my son adored—and in comparing and contrasting the two books, you can see a huge difference in how we live, or how we aspire to live...can you talk about this please? 

Chelsea: We were definitely influenced by Richard Scarry’s Busytown and we nod to it a few times. A thing we wanted to address that most kid’s books gloss over is how boring the everyday can be despite being hyperconnected all the time (every character has a phone nearby). The mundane is absurd and hilarious when you pull back from it a little bit and ask what the hell are we even doing?

Jane Rosen dishes about NINE WOMEN, ONE DRESS, now out in paperback--and guess her shoe size!

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Arial; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859905 -1073711037 9 0 511 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:inherit; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:auto; mso-font-signature:0 0 0 0 0 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 13.5pt; padding: 0in;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DW5-iOFZKY..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1150" data-original-width="1600" height="228" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DW5-iOFZKY..." width="320" /></a></span></b></div><br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WGFcQoELzX..." imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="720" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WGFcQoELzX..." width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="border: 1pt none; color: #444444; padding: 0in;">I first met Jane in a car driving us to a book festival and we happily dished about little black dresses (okay, EVERYTHING in my wardrobe is black, except for the few daring white shirts I bought because summer can he High hell..). I liked Jane --and her book--so much, I wanted to spread the word.  She's a writer, screenwriter and also the author of The Thread. AND she's hysterically funny.  Thank you Jane! Now everyone go out and buy this book!</span></i></span></span><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="border: 1pt none; color: #444444; padding: 0in;">Natalie is a Bloomingdale’s salesgirl mooning over her lawyer ex-boyfriend who’s engaged to someone else after just two months. Felicia has been quietly in love with her boss for seventeen years and has one night to finally make the feeling mutual. Andie is a private detective who specializes in gathering evidence on cheating husbands—a skill she unfortunately learned from her own life—and lands a case that may restore her faith in true love. For these three women, as well as half a dozen others in sparkling supporting roles—a young model fresh from rural Alabama, a diva Hollywood star making her Broadway debut, an overachieving, unemployed Brown grad who starts faking a fabulous life on social media, to name just a few—everything is about to change, thanks to the dress of the season, the perfect little black number everyone wants to get their hands on …</span></i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: small; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>What's obsessing you now and why</b>?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: small; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I would love to say something deep and cerebral but I'm currently obsessing over black Coconut Ash ice-cream that contains detoxifying charcoal from a place called Morgenstern's in the East Village. Aside from being delicious I have convinced myself it's an ice cream cleanse. So when I finish off the pint in my freezer that is meant to be for my whole family I feel as if I'm doing my body good. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">So, do you have the perfect little black dress yourself?</span></b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: small; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I do. Well it was perfect before all of the ice-cream, now it spends more time on the back of my oldest daughter. It's a Fendi dress that I bought in Vegas with my husbands blackjack winnings. It was my 40th birthday and he was on an unusual streak and just kept throwing cash at me. I blew most of it on an ankle length silk dress with an open back, a long slit up the side and thin leather piping.  </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: small; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>What question didn't I ask that I should have</b>?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: small; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My shoe size is an 8.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>

Remember the books that transformed you as you grew up? Ann Hood talks about MORNINGSTAR: Growing Up With Books, eating gourmet meals with her new husband, her obsession with Maggie O'Farrell, and more

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Times; panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-alt:Times; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-alt:Cambria; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style><br /><div class="font_8" dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3em;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-O6rgtuxCDz..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="341" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-O6rgtuxCDz..." width="218" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RO7gydq0tl..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="268" data-original-width="191" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RO7gydq0tl..." /></a></div><div class="font_8" dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3em;"><br /></div><div class="font_8" dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3em;"><br /></div><div class="font_8" dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3em;"><br /></div><div class="font_8" dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3em;"><i>I first met <a href="https://www.annhood.us/">Ann Hood</a> in an airport. Or, at least I think I did, and we've agreed that since it SOUNDS like something Ann would do, that I did. I was sitting in an airport reading when this flight attendant in gorgeous brown suede books stopped mid-stride to ask, "What are you reading?"</i></div><div class="font_8" dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3em;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="font_8" dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3em;"><i>I've been with her at book fests, where she saved me with Emergen-C. We both dressed in Khakis and baseball caps for the Pulpwood Queens, and she's newly married to a wonderful cook/writer/knitter(!)</i></div><div class="font_8" dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3em;"><br /></div><div class="font_8" dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3em;"><i>Ann is the author of  SOMEWHERE OFF THE COAST OF MAINE, AN ITALIAN WIFE, THE BOOK THAT MATTERS MOST, THE KNITTING CIRCLE, THE OBITUARY WRITER, COMFORT, THE RED THREAD, PLACES TO STAY THE NIGHT, SOMETHING BLUE, and RUBY.  </i>She's won two Pushcart Prizes, two Best American Food Writing Awards, Best American Spiritual Writing and Travel Writing Awards, and a Boston Public Library Literary Light Award.  </div><div class="font_8" dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3em;"><br /></div><div class="font_8" dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3em;"><br /></div><div class="font_8" dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3em;"><i>Comment here and you could win a copy of Ann's book, MORNINGSTAR: Growing Up With Books. It's incredible,a bout the books that change as, stay with us, transform us.</i></div><div class="font_8" dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3em;"><br /></div><div class="font_8" dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3em;"><i>Ann, welcome, welcome. And thanks so much for being here.</i></div><br /><div class="font_8" dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3em;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Why do you think books from our childhood have such a huge impact on us even through adulthood? Is it because we are just forming our selves then?<br /></span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: small;">I think it's a couple things. First of all it's the sheer joy of discovering the magic of reading. And then it is finding those books that seem to be about us, but either show the world to us and help explain it or that show us to the world in someway.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">I grinned when I saw the Harrod Experiment, a book my older sister gave me when I was 15. I was totally stunned by it back then, but now it seems ridiculous.<br /></span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: small;">It was  really tame--and stupid, too! Are there other books that did that for you? It was just considered so racy back then! There was another book, Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones, about a high school girl who gets pregnant on prom night and the couple gets married. I remember in it she's making curtains and rubbing her belly and it seemed so racy and exotic to me. The main characters name is July, which I found the most interesting name in the world. This book is still in print! I should we read it and see what I think today.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">I also loved you talking about Marjorie Morningstar, a novel I still love today (I love the film with Gene Kelly and Natalie Wood as well.) The fascinating thing was how so many modern women hated that Marjorie gave up her screen dreams to be a suburban housewife--but you could look at that novel another way--it's of its time, and the last scene belongs to--I forget his name--the writer who loves her. Also interesting was how the movie changed the ending so that Marjorie and the writer are together. Which proves my point, I guess--that books don't just transform us. We transform them by our own experience sand thinking. Care to talk about this?<br /></span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: small;">As you can guess from the title, this was perhaps the biggest impact on me in high school. I sobbed when Marjorie gave up her dreams and move to the suburbs. I do think, looking back at it now, that perhaps it was a little sexism going on and Marjorie have to be punished for being a sexual person and having such grandiose dreams. And the punishment was maybe life in the suburbs? But I swear I cannot walk past a lilac bush without thinking of the scene in the chapter called a kiss under the lilacs. I also love this book because here I was when I read it, in a blue-collar Italian American immigrant family, Reading about an upper-middle-class Jewish girl in New York City, and I thought that book was about me. I swear to you it seems like Herman Wouk  looked into my soul.  And remarkably, I have reread that book many times and it still has the same impact on me. Which I guess speaks to your point. Who transformed whom?<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">How did you decide what books to discuss? I would be overwhelmed! Which ones did you miss that you wish you had talked about?<br /></span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: small;">You know it was easier than you would think. They were so many books that I read and loved, from the outsiders to Valley of the dolls to the aforementioned Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones. Yet when I had to think about the ones that Most helped me become me, the person I am now, these came to me readily. But if I could have added more, I would've included books by Evan Hunter, in particular a book called Sons, and books by Fred Mustard Stewart, A little know – I think? – – writer who wrote a book called the Mephisto Waltz that I loved. And I would also add in there Edgar Allan Poe, whose dark vision really spoke to me.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">What's obsessing you now and why?<br /></span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: small;">I am a little embarrassed to admit this, but as you know I just got married last month, and I am really obsessed with my new husband. He's an incredible cook and we are having long delicious dinners with great wine. He also loves theater and so we have been going to every play that we possibly can. And! I taught him to knit! He just finished his first  dishrag.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">What question didn't I ask that I should have?<br /></span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: small;">I suppose what I'm reading now? Or maybe what I'm writing now? To the first, I am reading everything that Maggie O'Farrell has written. I am absolutely in love with her books. And I just finished a new YA a novel, called she loves you yeah yeah yeah, which as you can gas concerns another obsession of mine: the Beatles. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>

Happy Pub Day to David Abrams who talks about his extraordinary new novel BRAVE DEEDS, being a soldier, and how a short story turned into an incredible book.

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-520092929 1073786111 9 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:8.0pt; margin-left:0in; line-height:107%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:11.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; margin-bottom:8.0pt; line-height:107%;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GDacMb0Mqe..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1027" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GDacMb0Mqe..." width="205" /></a></b></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GcFGJdqvUQ..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1067" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GcFGJdqvUQ..." width="213" /></a></b></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">David Abrams' debut novel about the Iraq War, Fobbitt, was a New York Times Notable book of 2012 and a Best Book of 2012 by Paste, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Barnes and Noble.  Everyone knows his wonderful blog, The Quivering Pen. His newest masterpiece, BRAVE DEEDS, is published today, so go out and buy a few copies!</span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Plus, he's one of the nicest guys around.  I'm honored to have him here. </span></span></i><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></b>  </span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">What was the why now moment that made you write this novel? And why do you think it took five years (says the writer who always takes four years...) Is this just the way you write, finding the story as you go along?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">For starters, I still work a 9-to-5, 40-hours-per-week day job (like the large majority of my fellow authors) and so that cuts into creative time. I write when I can—small pockets of opportunity—trying to maintain a flow and continuity to the story. Most of my daily writing consists of note-taking and long handwritten passages in my journal, and then a crazed, brain-on-fire, all-fingers-flying marathon session on the laptop when I can afford a longer stretch of time.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Other factors I can blame for slowing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brave Deeds</i> to a five-year crawl: blogging, my daughter’s wedding, travel, reading more and more books per year, a plot synopsis for a TV sitcom that never went anywhere, writing a play that never went anywhere (I’ve really got to start seeing things through to completion), jogging on the treadmill, and too many hours of bingeing on Netflix. In all fairness to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brave Deeds</i>, I honestly thought a previously-written novel would be my “second book,” but I realized that manuscript needed a surgical facelift, so I set that aside after devoting a year or so to it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In the meantime, I was making the first marks on a page for a short story that would eventually turn into <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brave Deeds</i>. That also might be part of the issue here, I was treating <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brave Deeds</i> as a short story, or more likely a novella, and not giving it my full attention. After separate lunches with my agent and my editor several years ago, I decided to get serious about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brave Deeds</i> as a longer project. It was when I was writing my characters’ backstories that I really fell in love with this book. I loved these flawed, foolhardy soldiers and wanted to spend more time with them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>And so, 250 pages later, here we are.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">You're such a critically acclaimed author, I wonder if each new book feels like the first? Or do you feel that you now have learned new lessons that you can apply to a new work?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Every blank page feels like the first time. I think to myself, “You have a wonderful opportunity here to tell a story. Don’t screw it up.” As I mentioned, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brave Deeds</i>started out in life as a novella told in a fairly traditional way, but then I started narrating it in first-person plural (the collective “we” representing the Army squad as a whole) and that changed the whole tone of the novel. First-person plural was risky and exciting, and I plunged ahead, eager for the stylistic challenge. In the last year, I think my very best day came when my editor said he loved the “we” of the book.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">What was your research like?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">My research consisted of going to war in Iraq in 2005. That sounds flippant, but personal experience can be the best kind of research. An immersive experience (like combat, like childbirth, like losing your virginity) can provide the kind of sensory details that dry facts and figures on a piece of paper or a screen could never duplicate.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">That being said, I should point out that, unlike <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fobbit</i>, the characters in my book have a very different war experience than I did when I deployed with the Army’s Third Infantry Regiment in 2005. My characters are infantry, I was a support soldier; they steal a Humvee, I never even drove a Humvee (at least not in Iraq); they walk through hostile territory, I only left the security and comfort of the Forward Operating Base once (and that was for a 20-minute ceremony near the Green Zone). I was out of my comfort zone writing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brave Deeds</i> and it felt good. I needed to stretch and take risks. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">As for the more traditional kind of research, I looked up information about weaponry, studied maps, and stared at lots and lots of pictures that showed daily life in Baghdad. But that’s about the extent of “research” for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brave Deeds</i>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">What's obsessing you now and why?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’m writing this on the eve of the publication of my second book, am about to embark on a tour to promote the novel at bookstores, and am writing essays and doing interviews like this one. I can’t imagine what kind of obsessions you’re talking about.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Eat. Sleep. Brave Deeds.</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Eat. Sleep. Brave Deeds.</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Eat. Sleep. Brave Deeds.</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">(Repeat as necessary)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What question didn't I ask that I should have?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What’s the best 2017 book you’ve read so far?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Hearts of Men</span></i><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> by Nickolas Butler. It’s about Boy Scouts, bullies, bugles, war, mothers, fathers, sons, camp counselors, cruelty, longing, love, duty, honor, joy, disappointment, and about a thousand other things that make up life as we know it. It shook me to the core and even now, all these many months after turning the last page, it has stuck with me.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>