Maw Books:  Hi Jean!  Always My Brother is a very personal book for you which was inspired after the death of your nineteen year old son. Can you tell us more about that?   Why this story?  Why now?  Did it help your family through the grieving process to write about it?

Jean Reagan: Following a challenging year four years ago, we lost our son John to a drug overdose.  Initially it was very difficult to re-form our family as a threesome; the absence of John dominated every aspect of life.  By now I think we have successfully recreated ourselves as a family of three, even though we still miss John, of course.  As I portrayed a healing family in my book, I felt hope for us, as well.

I write picture books and I knew there was a need for one about sibling loss.  This project helped pull me out of my initial paralysis following John’s death.  My husband has not and will not read the book, because he knows for him it would be too painful.  I’m okay with that.  Following John’s death, HE wrote the obituary and HE gave talks about drug addiction.  There was no way I could have done either.  We all do what we can, and don’t do what we can’t.  Being gentle with ourselves and each other is so important.

Maw Books:  Always My Brother is about the often unrecognized grief of siblings.  Did you receive feedback from your daughter while you were writing it?

Jean Reagan: My daughter Jane wanted to see the story only after it was a completed book, when as she said, “I know I can’t change anything.”  Squeezing a true story into a fiction picture book requires decisions and choices that she recognized might be painful for her.  Jane did name the characters in the book.  (Having a sister and brother named “John” and “Jane” would just seem too unbelievable!)  She kept her brother’s name and for the sister chose “Becky” who is a dear, dear friend to Jane and our whole family.

Maw Books:  What type of research, if any, went into Always My Brother? Was it written solely on your personal experience or did you reach out to others to make sure that you got the “it” factor just right?

Jean Reagan: I interviewed therapists, grief counselors, teachers, librarians, parents who had lost children, people who had lost siblings as children, and a director of a children’s grief center (The Sharing Place).  Many of them also critiqued the manuscript.  Three adult grief books were helpful:  The Empty Room, A Broken Heart Still Beats, and Comfort: A Journey Through Grief. I even interviewed a woman who has a three-legged dog to make sure my depiction was accurate and respectful.

Tilbury House Publishers create Teachers Take Note guides to expand the content of all their children’s books.  They extensively research the topic and post these guides on their website.

Maw Books:  What was the hardest part about writing a book that draws so deeply into your personal experience and grief?  Was there a greatest joy about it as well?

Jean Reagan: By far, the hardest part was the after-the-party scene where Becky feels bad that she “forgot to miss John.”  How should the mom respond?  Whoa!  That went through many, many revisions.  I had to dig deeper and deeper emotionally as a writer and as a mother.  The second hardest part was the ending.  I wanted the family to show some healing, but I didn’t want to erroneously convey that they were “all better now.”  Some children’s books about loss so desperately want a happy ending that I feel they error on the side of “we-planted-a-tree or we-got-a-replacement-puppy, so we’re all better now.”  I wanted Always My Brother to offer hope, but only realistic hope.  I still grapple with whether I found the ideal balance.

When I first saw the sketches for the book, I had to catch my breath because they forced me to revisit my own painful weeks following John’s death.  That’s how accurately the illustrator, Phyllis Pollema-Cahill, “got it.”

One unexpected joy I experienced writing this story was that I could rewind John’s life to a younger, happy and healthy period before he was tortured by drug addiction.  This experience was, of course, tinged with a bittersweet sadness, too.   I find comfort, too, knowing that perhaps my book can help lessen the pain experienced by bereaved families.  This thought makes me smile.

Maw Books:  Your unexpected joy makes me smile.  I noticed that in the book there is no indication as to the cause of John’s death nor was there any scenes of a funeral or burial.  Can you go into the thought process on why you chose to write it that way?

Jean Reagan: Because there are very, very few picture books about sibling loss, I wanted my book to be accessible to as many children as possible, for the story to be universal.  The picture book format allows for only a limited number of scenes, so each one had to be absolutely core to the story and my overall goal of portraying a family’s healing process.  Often books and media focus on the details of a death and ignore the grieving and healing that follows it.  Therapists and bereaved people will tell you, “It doesn’t matter how/why someone died.  What matters is the loss.”  In fact, at my son’s memorial service my daughter said, “I don’t want John to be known just for how he died, but for who he was.”  I wanted to honor her, because I think she’s right.  For all these reasons I chose to leave out the cause of death.

Originally I did have a funeral scene, but I took that out for two reasons. One, what accurately reflects the dramatic shift in life for a surviving sibling is not the funeral, but how the home fills with people.  Then the home scene returns to “normal” which of course is no longer normal at all.  Two, a funeral scene would inadvertently exclude some religious traditions.  I wanted this story to leave open the possibility of all religious traditions.  (Just last week my book was read amongst adult students at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York when they suffered an unexpected loss.)

Despite the limited number of pages in a picture book, my editor, Audrey Maynard, wanted the final scene to be wordless.  An illustration-only page gives readers a pause before they transition out of the story.  Wonderful!

Maw Books:  Obviously, children who have lost a sibling to death will react differently to your book than those who have not. Can you talk a little bit about your target audience and what you hope children will take away from the book?

Jean Reagan: My primary target audience is children who have lost a sibling.  I wanted to honor their loss by portraying and affirming their often confusing, contradictory emotions.  And, I wanted to offer realistic hope that with the passage of time the gripping, paralyzing pain would ease, as they continue to honor and cherish their loved one. I also wanted to create opportunities for shared conversation because grieving can often be an isolated, lonely experience.

My second target audience is people surrounding the bereaved family—friends, classmates, teachers, neighbors, etc.  I wanted to provide a window for them to understand the internal grief of the family.  Hopefully, this would foster courage in them to reach out to the bereaved child and family.

But I hope my book is helpful broadly.  People of all ages can find comfort in it for all kinds of losses, I think.

Maw Books:  What are some books that you would recommend to those who are grieving?

Jean Reagan: Besides the adult books I mentioned earlier, for young children I would recommend Saying Goodbye to Lulu, Freddy the Leaf, Goodbye, Mousie, and Grandad Bill’s Song.

Maw Books:  If I’m not mistaken, Always My Brother is your debut picture book. Has writing always been an interest of yours or did you find that it was an new outlet for you after the death of your son?  Why start writing books now?

Jean Reagan: I have been writing children’s books for about six years.  All my other manuscripts are very lighthearted by comparison!  When I told my daughter about my acceptance phone call for a manuscript she immediately asked, “Which one?”  When I told her it was this one, she hugged me hard and said, “That’s the one I wanted.”  I couldn’t agree with her more!

I just signed a contract with Knopf for my next picture book, How to Babysit a Grandpa.  (May, 2011).  It’s wonderful to send a purely happy, silly book into the world, as well.

Maw Books:  I love that title.  How to Babysit a Grandpa! Describe yourself as a reader. What books influenced and inspired you as a child?  What book are you currently reading now and another that you just finished and would recommend.

Jean Reagan: As a child, reading was difficult for me.  It wasn’t until third grade, that Smiling Hill Farm unlocked the magic for me.  I can still feel that excitement.  Another book that captured me as a child, I read in Japanese.  It wasn’t until a high school English class that I realized the story was King Lear!

I just finished a delightful mid-grade novel, Jungle Crossing, by Sydney Salter.  Her characters’ honesty and humor remind me of the early books in Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s Alice series.  I’m in the middle of Bobbie Pyron’s compelling YA novel, The Ring.  (Full disclosure:  I critiqued an early version of the manuscript three years ago.) I’m wowed by how Bobbie and her editor transformed this powerful story about a troubled teenage girl who takes up boxing.

It’s a good thing I’m in an adult book group, because otherwise I’d never read an adult book.  Speaking of book groups, my daughter and I were in a mother/daughter book group for nine years.  I SO recommend parents organize similar opportunities with their children.  And remember it’s a chance to act silly, be honest, and have a blast, NOT to analyze literature!

Maw Books:  Your personal background is fascinating. You grew up in Japan, have now lived in Salt Lake City for 25 years and spend every summer as backcountry volunteers in the Grand Teton National Park without water or electricity.  Can you tell us some more about your background, your interests, and what  you do when you’re not writing?

Jean Reagan: I think everyone has a fascinating background!  They’re two unifying things through out my life:  I love nature and I love connecting with people.  So, my absolutely favorite thing is hiking with other people!

Maw Books:  I’m sure you have some crazy stories from spending summers up in the Tetons.  I’d love it if you’d share a really crazy but true story with us.

Jean Reagan: Once when I was alone at the cabin, I spotted a cougar nearby along the lakeshore.  Not knowing how dangerous cougars can be, I got in the canoe and paddled within fifteen feet and watched it through the bushes.  I even saw it move a kit by the scruff of its neck.  Later, feeling a little spooked, I forgo my evening dip in the lake and used a “chamber pot” instead of the outhouse fifty feet behind the cabin.
The next morning when I went to the outhouse, there were fresh paw prints four feet up on three sides of the outhouse.   I immediately hiked to a high spot where we have cellphone reception and called the chief biologist.  He said the paw prints were most likely bear, not cougar, so I felt relieved.  Be then as he signed off he said, “Oh, and with cougars, don’t play dead.  Fight them off with all you’ve got.  Have a nice day!  Bye!”  Yikes!  You can bet I did NOT have a nice day!  Fortunately, that’s the only cougar I’ve ever seen, although I know they’re around.

Maw Books:  One of my features on my blog is to ask each author I interview for a recipe which I’ll then make and blog about later. Would you mind sharing with us one of your favorite recipes?

Jean Reagan:

“Radical” Spinach Casserole

Mix together:
two 10-oz frozen spinach, thawed
three eggs
one cup shredded extra sharp cheddar cheese
one fourth cup of melted margarine (or canola oil)
twenty-four ounces of cottage cheese
three tablespoons of flour
three teaspoons of nutmeg
juice from one lemon

Bake in a  9 by 14 glass pan at 350 degrees for about one hour.  Serve with lemon slices.

I bring this casserole to every writers’ retreat!  The recipe is called “radical” because it originated with potlucks organized by activists during the Great Depression.

Maw Books:  I love spinach! I can’t wait to make it.  So what’s next?  What are you currently working on and when can we see another book published from you?

Jean Reagan: Besides the Knopf book due out in May, 2011 I’m working on a picture book about a dog who’s scared to swim, one about a mom who has a disastrous day, and one about a mom who is lacking in the “fancy” department.  All, fun silly stories!

Maw Books:  Anything else that you’d like to share with the readers of the Maw Books Blog that I didn’t cover?

Jean Reagan: If you want to find out more about the true story behind Always My Brother, or my childhood in Japan, or my life as a park ranger in Grand Tetons National Park, visit my website, www.jeanreagan.com.  To access the Teachers Take Note guide for helping bereaved children, visit Tilbury House Publishers’ website.

Maw Books:  Thank you Jean!! I’m definitely going to get in touch when we make a trip up to the Tetons!

Tilbury house is giving away copies of Always My Brother.  Check out details on how to enter and read my review of Always My Brother.

I’m thrilled to share an interview with Sandra Dallas today.  Please give her a warm welcome . . .

Maw Books:  Welcome Sandra!  It’s my pleasure to be able to ask you some questions today about your newest novel, Prayers for Sale.

I’m fascinated by where ideas come from and choosing a particular storyline and characters over all the other books you could potentially write.  Where did Nit and Hennie and their relationship come from? How long did you live with them before committing them to paper?

Sandra Dallas: Those are difficult questions to answer.  I don’t plan ahead of time what I’m going to write, don’t outline.  I just let things evolve as I sit at the computer.  The idea for the book came from three sources.  I lived in Breckenridge, Colo., in the early 1960s and knew men who’d worked on the dredges.  I’d always wanted to write about them but had never found a way to do so.  Another idea in the back of my mind was writing a book similar to a quilters’ classic, Aunt Jane of Kentucky, a 100-year-old book in which a quilter tells stories of her life.  I’d wanted to write such a book about Colorado.  But those two ideas didn’t come together until I read a Civil War story about the death of a baby and realized I could tell that story against a background of the brutality of dredging combined with the warmth and friendship represented by quilts.

As for the characters, I don’t know where they came from.  I had to have a very old lady tell the stories, and it just seemed that she should pass them along to someone who was young and new. Once I had the idea for Prayers for Sale, I just sat down and wrote it and let the characters reveal themselves to me as I went along.

Maw Books:  Middle Swan, Colorado is as much as a character in Prayers for Sale as any of the other characters and influences every aspect of their lives.  Two questions:  what led you to choose this setting and how does one create such a strong sense of place?

Sandra Dallas: The setting is always a character in my books.  In fact, I usually get the setting before the plot or the characters.  I chose Breckenridge, as the background for Middle Swan because I know Breckenridge, and I know those rock piles. It’s also one of the few places in America that had extensive gold dredging.  I think you create a sense of place by going there and soaking up the atmosphere (my favorite thing to do when writing a book.  I much prefer that to sitting at the computer.  In fact, it I were smart, I’d set my books in Hawaii or the South of France.) I believe place defines people, and I find it hard to separate the characters from the background.

Maw Books:  Prayers for Sale is the first book of yours I have read (Tallgrass has been on my to be read list forever – on some amazing recommendations from my fellow bloggers).  I understand that many of the characters in Prayers for Sale are from your other books.  Can you talk more about what made you decide to use them and how they helped shape Prayers for Sale?

Sandra Dallas: I don’t like letting characters go, so I give them walk-on roles in subsequent novels. Prayers for Sale is set in 1936, because that was the only year that worked for bringing back characters for previous books.  I like using them because they’re old friends.  Tom Earley turned out to really shape the book.  He was a character from The Diary of Mattie Spenser, and I gave him only a few lines, but he objected and stayed on, and he turned out to be very important in Prayers for Sale.

Maw Books:  I read how you came up with the title of Prayers for Sale but I’d love for my readers to know as well.  Will you expound on what inspired your title?

Sandra Dallas: The working title was The Quilter, which I didn’t like.  Then I ran across a story in one of the WPA slave narratives about a former slave, an old man who went around with his pockets filled with prayers for all occasions and a sign reading “Prayers for Sale.”  I thought that would make a great book title.  Because of the title, the book took on a more spiritual tone.

Maw Books:  Quilts play such a large part in Prayers for Sale.  Are quilts a large part of your own life?  Do you quilt?

Sandra Dallas: I’m a very poor quilter.  But I love quilts because they represent women and are women’s art.  I collect doll quilts, many in poor conditions.  Dolls are very hard on them.

Maw Books:  If you had to describe Prayers for Sale in just one word, which word would you choose?

Sandra Dallas: Friendship.

Maw Books:  Historical fiction is one of my favorite genres because it literally transports me to a different time and learn how people talked, what they did, what they ate,etc. What was the research like for Prayers for Sale?  How do you have the confidence to know that you did it right?

Sandra Dallas: Well, none of those people are around to challenge me.  I used notes from two Breckenridge writers, Helen Rich and Belle Turnbull, who lived in the mountains in the 1940s.  I read period writing and books on the Great Depression to get language.  I go through old magazines, and I love to research in antiques shops.  And while I wasn’t born until 1939, I do remember the 1940s, and things weren’t so much different then.

Maw Books:  If you could have one of your characters from Prayers for Sale step out from the pages of your book and have dinner with you, who would you choose and why?

Sandra Dallas: Oh, Hennie, of course, because she would entertain us with her stories.

Maw Books:  Is the finished book of Prayers for Sale anything like what you envisioned it when you started?  How did it change along the way?

Sandra Dallas: It’s much different, because it started out as a series of short stories.  But my agent, Danielle Egan-Miller, told me it was a novel, and she was right.  So I had to rewrite the manuscript several times to make it the story of Hennie and Nit.

Maw Books:  Prayers for Sale is stitched together from many short stories narrated by Hennie.  Were there any stories that you loved but had to be cut?  Do you have a favorite among them or no?

Sandra Dallas: There was a story about a bank scam, based on a real event in Telluride, Colorado, that I cut out, because the book was getting too long, and I was starting to be annoyed that Hennie talked too much.  I think my favorite was the one about Hennie’s childhood friend, Martha Merritt Grove.  She and her husband are based on Colorado prospectors, but the end is strictly made-up. I also liked the stories about hookers, most of them based on fact.

Maw Books:  This is a question that I ask every single author that I interview and that is to share a recipe with us, particularly if it’s talked about in the book.  I later make the recipe and blog about it. In Prayers for Sale, food is often shared because it’s the way that the woman take care of each other in their moments of grief and hardships and also in their moments of celebration especially when they gather together to quilt.  I know I was drooling over that raspberry pie, raspberry jam and even wonder what half moon cakes or Kentucky Pie are. Would you mind discussing the food a bit and if you have a recipe, would you share it with us?

Sandra Dallas: 1930s cooking is pretty awful, and I’m not sure you’d want to eat some of those things, although who could resist raspberry jam?  Kentucky Pie is really Chess Pie, a southern delicacy so rich that it sets your teeth on edge (not to mention it contains a week’s worth of calories.)  Here is a recipe for it from an 1883 edition of Practical Housekeeping:  “Three eggs, two-thirds cup sugar, half cup butter (half cup milk may be added if not wanted so rich); beat butter to a cream, then add yolks and sugar beaten to a froth with the flavoring; stir all together rapidly, and bake in a nice crust.  When done, spread with the beaten whites, and three table-spoons sugar and a little flavoring.  Return to oven and brown slightly.”  You can also make it without the meringue.  Incidentally, I collect mining-town cookbooks and love to include food in my stories.

Maw Books:  I’m assuming that flavoring is vanilla?  I’ll have to follow up with you on this one.  But wow!  Sounds rich and delicious!  If somebody asked you which single one of your books you would recommend as a gateway to your other books, which book would it be?

Sandra Dallas: My favorite was always the Diary of Mattie Spenser, but I think I like Prayers for Sale better.

Maw Books:  How do you balance your life as a writer with the responsibilities (speaking, promotion, etc.) of being an author?

Sandra Dallas: I probably spend as much time on promotion as I do on writing. I look at the whole thing as a job.  I was a reporter and editor for Business Week Magazine for 35 years.  Writing books even with all the promotional stuff is easier.

Maw Books:  Do you have a particular writing process or any writing rituals?

Sandra Dallas: I sit down and do it, 600-750 words a day.  Journalists don’t have writers’ block.

Maw Books:  I love that attitude!  What’s the last book you finished and what’s on your nightstand right now?

Sandra Dallas: I just finished Jim Schroeder’s Life of a Political Spouse, which is about his life with our long-term congresswoman, Patricia Schroeder.  I’ve known the Schroeders since the days when Pat and I exchanged maternity clothes.   I’m about to read Margaret Coel’s  The Silent Spirit, the latest in her mystery series set on a Wyoming Indian reservation  Margaret, another Colorado author, is also a friend.  As an aside here, it’s interesting to me how supportive writers here in Colorado are of each other. You’d think there might be jealousy and backbiting, but mostly, we read each others’ books and go to each others’ signings. I love reading books by Margaret, John Dunning, Diane Mott Davidson, Robert Greer, Arnold Grossman, Warwick Downing, and other Colorado authors.

Maw Books:  That’s the way it is with children’s writers in Utah!  You see them together all the time at each others signings.  It’s wonderful.  If you could go back and talk to yourself when you were beginning writer, what advice would you offer?

Sandra Dallas: I would have turned to fiction earlier.  As it was, my first novel wasn’t published until I was 50.  But  maybe I wasn’t capable of writing a novel worth publishing before then.

Maw Books:  It’s better late than never!  What do you do outside the world of books and writing?

Sandra Dallas: We’re restoring an historic house in Georgetown, Colorado.  That makes writing look like a snap.

Maw Books:  Wow, what a job!  So what can your fans look forward to next?  Are you working on another book and when can we expect to see it?

Sandra Dallas: The next one, Whiter Than Snow, comes out in April.  It’s about a 1920 avalanche in a small town just down the road from Middle Swan, the town in Prayers for Sale.  The avalanche sweeps up nine school children.  Four of them live.

Maw Books:  I’m looking forward to both that one and exploring your backlist.  Thanks so much Sandra!

Sandra Dallas: No, thank you.  Your questions focused me.  I don’t think a great deal about how or why I write.  I just do it. You’ve given me a chance to think about it.

Links of interest:   Maw Books review of Prayers for Sale, Sandra Dallas’s website, and thank you to Authors on the Web for coordinating this interview.andra’s  Sandra is also the author of Tallgrass, The Chili Queen, New Mercies, Alice’s Tulips, The Diary of Mattie Spencer, The Persian Pickle Club, and Buster’s Midnight Cafe.  Prayers for Sale is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s and Amazon.
Who’s brave enough to attempt that Chess Pie?

I met Kaleb at BookExpo America and I’m happy to have him on my blog today.  This guest post/interview was conducted by Paul Samuelson, exclusively for the Maw Books Blog.

On the third night of the third month in 2003, 14-year-old Kaleb Nation had a sudden idea that began the story of Bran Hambric, a novel that would take most of his teenage years to write. Kaleb hosted his first radio show in Texas at age thirteen, and has since launched several websites, including KalebNation.com and TwilightGuy.com. Aside from writing, Kaleb enjoys creating music and blogging. A home-school graduate and a former black belt in taekwondo, he currently attends college in Texas and turned 21 in 2009.

Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse is as funny as it is action packed. It reads like a Terry Pratchett novel for middle grade readers. Kaleb Nation, whose two websites have over a million hits each, delivers an exceptional debut novel where a boy living in a world where magic is banned discovers he has inherited dangerous gifts from his criminal mother, and must uncover a dark secret in his past in order to make sense of his future.

“No Mages, No Gnomes, etc.” Dunce has all of the accommodations the world can offer: TV, cars, computers, and more. The three things it will not have, ever, are mages, gnomes, or anything that might be an “etcetera.” The rest of the world might accept mages, gnomes, and etcetera, but the Duncelanders never would! Which might explain why Bran is having SUCH a tough childhood. Check out www.BranHambric.com for more information!

FULL DISCLOSURE: This interview of Kaleb Nation (@kalebnation) was conducted by Sourcebooks publicist Paul Samuelson (@psamuelson01) specifically to introduce readers of Maw Books to Kaleb Nation and the first installment of the new Bran Hambric series.

Samuelson:  Who is your favorite author?

Kaleb Nation: Hard to pick! I think I’m an equally avid fan of Lemony Snicket and Eoin Colfer.

Samuelson:  As the “twilight guy,” you are obviously well read in the YA genre, and have a lot of followers who are also huge YA fans. Why did you decide to make this a middle grade book?

Kaleb Nation: When I wrote Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse, I wasn’t really thinking of it being for any specific age. I started it when I was 14 and wrote it all the way up until I was 20, and my main readers were my younger siblings and friends. I would always know which parts were good and which parts were not by watching how they reacted to the new chapters as I wrote them! So the book was formed in a way where it would appeal to my brother and friends (essentially in a YA age group), my sister (who was a middle grade level reader) and me. Inadvertently, I think I really wrote a YA book that can be enjoyed by middle grade readers.

Samuelson:  People always say the first book is autobiographical. Are you really a magician in disguise? (Is Bran somewhat modeled after you, or is he completely fictitious?)

Kaleb Nation: In spite of my greatest attempts, I think Bran ended up a lot like me (except, of course, the magic!). Not so much in literal ways, but more in how he reacts and what he does. For me, writing can sometimes be an escape: for Bran, his escape is drawing. I think also that Bran being 14 and me being 14 when I started writing impressed into his character bits of who I was back then. I am also somewhat claustrophobic, so it’s obvious where Bran got that from!

Samuelson:   The city of Dunce is a very unique setting. Can you tell us a little bit about the city, and how the inspiration for the city came about?

Kaleb Nation: When I had the first idea for the book, I imagined a boy and a banker on a roof, waiting for a burglar who was actually a creature trying to kidnap Bran. That image immediately conjured up questions I had to answer: one of the biggest was about the world Bran lived in. I knew immediately that Bran lived in a modern world, but that he lived in the one city that had outlawed magic. I think the basis of Dunce is that they are strictly opposite to the rest of the world, and it was Bran’s fate to end up in the middle of it.

Samuelson:  For a young person, you have quite an impressive and varied work history. Did you always know you wanted to write, or is this just another career option you’re exploring?

Kaleb Nation: Actually, I really enjoyed writing growing up, but I didn’t know how much of a career I could build with it. I went through a phase of career hopping: I thought I wanted to be a web designer, so I started a company, got a client list, and then closed it after a few years. I thought I wanted to be a radio broadcaster, so I got a show when I was about 13 and was nationally syndicated when I was 17, but two years later became somewhat bored because I felt I had already reached my goal. The one thing that I stuck with through all of that was writing — what I really, truly enjoyed doing. So in September of 2008 I quit my show to focus on YouTube and writing Bran Hambric books! That’s when I found out it had been what I wanted to do all along.

Samuelson:  So, you’ve had a hit radio program, currently have several websites that get millions of hits every month, you have a YouTube channel and a BlogTV show, as well as a legion of Twitter followers-what is your secret? (i.e. what is the secret to creating a following)

Kaleb Nation: It’s really hard to say! I didn’t go into this planning on building a following: I thought it would take legions of marketing people and publicists to make anyone notice me. But I think the one thing I’ve learned (especially online) is that you have to do something that is different from everyone else if you want to be noticed. To succeed online, you have to market yourself and promote the aspects that set you apart from everyone else.

Samuelson:  What is the first thing you check online when you get up in the morning?

Kaleb Nation: Twitter! I am obsessed.

Samuelson:  What are some of the challenges you’ve had to overcome in managing so many disparate social media venues?

Kaleb Nation: Time management, absolutely. When I’m writing for two blogs, filming YouTube videos, doing live shows, and getting lists of emails a day, it doesn’t leave much time to actually write books (much less go to the store, see friends, etc)! Some nights I have to stay up until 3 AM just to finish. It took me a while, but thankfully now I’ve got most of it sorted out — though my email-answering is backed up to June of last year!

Samuelson:  We often hear horror stories about how difficult it is to get published. What was your experience finding a publisher?

Kaleb Nation: Mine was actually quite smooth. I started querying agents right after I finished the book (via email queries, using the amazing website AgentQuery.com) and had nine interested in just a few months. One day, my future agent Richard Curtis replied asking for the full manuscript about five minutes after I emailed my query, and made an offer that evening. We had a lot of rejections (which is typical for new authors) and sold the book about 6 – 9 months later. Certainly not a horror story, even with all the waiting!

Samuelson:  Being a published author and internet celebrity takes a lot of work. What is your favorite part of the job?

Kaleb Nation: My favorite part is when I meet people who like my writing and videos. I love doing shows on BlogTV.com because I can interact with readers directly, and I try to make it to events where I can meet people in person. It’s always great to know they enjoy what I do!

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ENTER to Win!!

Pre-Order Prize Giveaway– (US ONLY) Any person who pre-orders Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse, and sends their e-receipt or scanned receipt to sbpublicity@sourcebooks.com will be entered into a drawing to win one of the following prizes:

- Personalized copy of The Farfield Curse (give your copy to a friend!)

- Personalized early reader copy of Book 2

- Personalized Bran Hambric poster

- Half Moon Necklace

- Signed CD of soundtrack

- $25 gift certificate to local bookstore

- Kaleb Nation event at local bookstore (fall 2010)

One entry per book ordered (so as many entries as books ordered). Receipts must be dated prior to pub date – September 9, 2009 and bear the subject heading “Bran Hambric Pre-Order Competition.” Winners to be announced September 30, 2009!

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Thank you Kaleb and Paul! Kaleb can be found at KalebNation.com and TwilightGuy.com.

Maw Books:  Can you share with us how you ended up being an American living in Japan, marrying into the culture and raising a family there?

Suzanne Kamata: I originally came to Japan on the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) Program, an initiative by the Japanese Ministry of Education to bring native speakers into the English classroom. I worked as an assistant English teacher at junior and senior high schools in Tokushima Prefecture, on the island of Shikoku. I’d asked to be placed outside Tokyo, or other big cities so as to experience “the real Japan.”  My second year on the program, I met the man who would become my husband. I’ve been here ever since.

Maw Books:  Given this background much of your writing is set against a multicultural backdrop and explores the topic of cultural differences.  Share with us how being transplanted and immersed into a different culture has influenced your writing.

Suzanne Kamata: I’ve now lived in Japan for twenty-one years! Even now, I can’t say that I fit in here, or that I understand everything about Japan. I’m always dealing with cultural differences, and this preoccupation makes it into my writing. It’s harder and harder for me to write fiction set in the United States, though I try, sometimes.

Maw Books:  Of all the stories that you have in you, what led you choose the story that you shared in Losing Kei?

Suzanne Kamata: I wrote Losing Kei just after I became a mother, so I suppose all of my anxiety about becoming an expatriate mother in Japan (and moving in with my mother-in-law) made it into that story.

Maw Books:  Losing Kei is about Jill, who wants to flee her crumbling marriage in Japan, but doing so means giving up her own child because she has no custody rights as a foreigner.  Can you share with us a little bit about the custody laws in Japan?  Is there anything currently being done to try to change any of those laws?

Suzanne Kamata: In Japan, there is no such thing as joint custody. I suppose Japanese officials think it’s too confusing or harmful for children to be shuttled between parents. What frequently happens, however, is that children of divorced parents are often cut off entirely from the non-custodial parent. Since I first conceived of Losing Kei, many similar real-life custody cases have gotten attention from the press.  While most of those stories ended badly, rumor now has it that Japan has reconsidered its stance on the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which, among other things, protects visitation rights of non-custodial parents.  Perhaps happier days are ahead for international families like Kei’s – and for Japanese families everywhere.

Maw Books:  I hope happier days are ahead.  What was the most difficult moment that you had while writing Losing Kei?  And how you were able to push through it?

Suzanne Kamata: Maybe the hotel scene where Jill loses her son. I suppose knowing that she would pick herself up by her bootstraps and try to get him back helped me to continue.

Maw Books:  How is the reaction to Losing Kei different or the same depending upon whether your reader lives in Japan or the United States?

Suzanne Kamata: Readers in Japan are more sympathetic to Jill. One reviewer wrote that after a year, Jill should have known what she was getting into by marrying a Japanese man. That’s so not true. I’ve lived here for over two decades, but I only learned recently that if my husband died, custody of my children would go to his parents.

Maw Books:  The husband in the book is entirely fictional and in now way resembles your husband, but I know your Japanese husband was concerned that people would think that the husband that you created in the novel is based on him. What do you do to ensure others, including your husband, that not all Japanese men are like the one that you described?

Suzanne Kamata: Hmm.  I guess I’m trying to make up for that now by writing a very sympathetic Japanese male character in my novel-in-progress.

Maw Books:  But based on that question, do you see any of your friends or family personalities influencing the characters?  In particular, the overbearing mother-in-law?

Suzanne Kamata: The overbearing mother-in-law is not based on my own mother-in-law, but on other mother-in-law stories that I’ve heard over the years. Several women I’ve talked to said that they came close to divorcing their husbands because of their mother-in-laws.  Another character, Eric, is a composite of happy-go-lucky surfer guy babe-magnets that I’ve worked with over the years.  One in particular went through a kind of spiritual transformation. He started out as a curry-and-rice-eating lad, and became a urine-sipping yoga teacher.

Maw Books:  A urine sipping yoga teacher?  Yikes!  What was the best piece of writing advice that you received while writing Losing Kei?

Suzanne Kamata: My publisher made some very good editing suggestions which I incorporated.  I tend to be subtle to the point of obscurity. At his suggestion, I also cut a scene where Jill goes back to her husband  – and is rebuffed. I decided that that was out of character.

Maw Books:  I don’t know how I’d feel if she went back.  That’s interesting to think about.  What is the greatest comfort or joy in being a writer?  And what’s your biggest insecurity?

Suzanne Kamata: Writing is fun, and there is always joy in finishing a story or an essay or a novel. It’s also very satisfying when readers respond to my work, when they enjoy my stories and love my characters, or when they find something that they can relate to. Of course not everyone likes the same thing, and negative reviews can make me feel bad for days. As for my insecurities, I worry that fans of Losing Kei (including my agent) will be disappointed by my work-in-progress.

Maw Books:  Can you tell us a bit about Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs. What inspired you to put together this volume of writing and why was it so important to you to share these stories?

Suzanne Kamata: My twins were born 14 weeks premature and, as a result, my daughter is deaf and has cerebral palsy. When she was diagnosed, I was eager to read stories concerning families of special needs kids. I found a lot of “don’t worry, be happy” type essays – and I acknowledge that there is a need for uplifting, inspirational material – but what I really wanted to know was how having a child with special needs would impact my marriage, my son, my life. I wanted an idea of what was to come in the years and months to come. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, and I wanted to hear it (or read it, rather) straight. I also wanted confirmation that others had gone through the same emotions – anger, sorrow, grief – that I had, and somehow survived them. In conversation, most people don’t want to hear about the difficulties. People say “You must be a saint,” or “Bless your heart” or “You must be so strong.” Nobody wants to hear about what a drag it is to be caught in the rain with a wheelchair.

I often turn to literature to make sense of things, but I couldn’t find any literary collections on the subject. I decided to put the book that I needed together on my own, and as I got started, I discovered that there were others hungry for just this kind of book. As I wrote in the introduction, Love You to Pieces is intended to be a portable support group for readers  in far-flung places, but I also hope that it will help relatives, teachers, and caregivers to understand the lives of families of special needs kids. I think it also stands alone as a literary collection.

Maw Books:  Your newest anthology, Call Me Okaasan: Adventures in Multicultural Mothering is a collection of stories as the title suggests about raising children within two cultures.  What has been your experience raising children who are bicultural?  Difficulties, highlights?  And how has those experiences shaped your worldview on parenting?

Suzanne Kamata: I’ve found that raising children bilingually isn’t as easy as most people think.  So much effort is required! Also, I’ve found that my son’s identity is constantly shifting. Sometimes he identifies as Japanese, sometimes as American, sometimes as mixed – which is fine. My identity shifts quite a bit, too.

It’s hard to say what kind of parent I would be if I were raising monocultural kids in suburban America, for instance, but here, I often feel that I am parenting in opposition to Japanese culture. Where we live, at least, in rural Japan where there are few foreigners, ideas about gender roles tend to be very conservative. My son sometimes says things like, “Even though she’s a girl, she’s a doctor.” I can’t imagine a kid raised in the U.S. saying something like that!  I’m always trying to remind my children that there is a world beyond Japan, that there are many ways of thinking, and many different kinds of people.

I find sometimes that it’s hard to maintain my authority because I’m a foreigner. For example, my son’s second grade teacher told the class about the time he saw a ghost. My son was very scared and I tried to reassure him, but of course he didn’t believe me when I said there was no such thing as ghosts.

Maw Books:  That was a fascinating answer!  A three part question about literacy in Japan:  How is literacy different in Japan and the U.S, especially for children?  Are there different teaching methods that work or don’t work? What is expected of a student in Japan that you wouldn’t find in the U.S?

Suzanne Kamata: The Japanese written language is composed of two phonetic alphabets – one for Japanese words and one for words borrowed from foreign languages – and Chinese characters (kanji). Kanji can be read in different ways, and there are really no clues as to how to pronounce a character, so in order to learn the Japanese written language, you have to memorize a lot of things. While I think that rote memorization can be really boring, it seems to work with Japanese kids. Japan enjoys a literacy rate close to 100%.  I can’t tell you exactly, but it’s the nineties – much higher than that in the U.S.

Maw Books:  A question that I ask of every author I interview is to share a recipe with us, especially if it appeared in their book or is a family favorite.  I later make and blog that dish.  Is there a recipe that you would like to share with us?

Suzanne Kamata: In my novel, the main character’s mother-in-law teaches her how to make miso soup.  We eat a lot of miso soup in our house, too. It’s very easy, healthy, and there are endless variations. I usually use boil a sauce pan full of water (or use fish broth), and then chop up whatever vegetables are on hand and then throw them in the water and boil until tender. Some combination that I like are julienned carrots, sliced onions, and dried seaweed; daikon radish and green onions; and tofu and dried seaweed. After the vegetables are as tender as you want them to be, scoop some miso (I use about 1/3 cup) into a strainer and push it through with a spoon or something.  You can also make the miso paste dissolve by stirring with a spoon or with chopsticks. There are many kinds of miso here in Japan. I use a reddish one with dashi (broth) already included.

Maw Books:  We eat a lot of Asian food in our house.  I’ll be sure to pick up miso paste when we are out next.  What are three books that you loved as a child?

Suzanne Kamata: Little Women, The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland

Maw Books:  And what are three books that each of your children love?

Suzanne Kamata: I asked my son, and he said the biography of Ichiro that he recently read, the Vampirates series, and WINTER OF THE ICE WIZARD by Mary Pope Osbourne from the Magic Treehouse series.

My daughter loves the Miki Falls series by Mark Crilley, Momotaro, and Cinderella.

Maw Books:  Have you found that growing up in different countries, that your children’s reading selections or habits are different then what yours was as a child?

Suzanne Kamata: I was never all that interested in comic books, but my children love manga, and my son learned to read Japanese via manga. I was worried for awhile that he would never progress beyond comics. (There are a lot of adults in Japan who only read comic books, not novels.) However, he now reads novels. He really loves the Vampirates series. He reads a lot, though, which I think (hope) he got from seeing me read.

Reading is harder for my daughter because of her disabilities, but she definitely has an interest in books. She likes books with lots of pictures, such as manga.

Maw Books:  What the last book you read, what are you reading now and what do you hope to read soon?

Suzanne Kamata: I just finished Sound + Noise, a novel by Curtis Smith, one of the contributors to Love You to Pieces. He’s a wonderful writer, and I appreciate that he writes about unglamorous types, such as families with disabilities and middle-aged people falling in love. I’m currently reading Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch, which I requested from the local library. They also ordered The Help by Kathryn Stockett for me. I will read that next.

Maw Books:  What are you working on now and what can we expect from in the future?

Suzanne Kamata: I’m working on a novel that I’m calling The Baseball Widow, another family drama set in Japan. I’m pretty close to finishing a first draft. I also have the beginnings of a couple of young adult novels which I hope to work on next.

Maw Books:  Anything else you’d like to share?

Suzanne Kamata: I really enjoy your blog! Thank you for having me as a “guest.”

Maw Books:  Thanks Suzanne!

Links of interest:  Suzanne Kamata website.  Maw Books review of Losing Kei.
Losing Kei is available from your local independent bookstore, Powell’s, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.

What I found fascinating about The Secret Keeper is that the author Paul Harris is also a journalist who covered the war in Sierra Leone.  I wanted to know how much of his personal experience played into the writing of this book and was thrilled to be able to ask Paul some of those questions.  Please welcome Paul to the Maw Books Blog . . .

Maw Books:  How and why did you become a journalist? Can you briefly share a few highlights from your career?

Paul Harris: I always wanted to be a journalist and I think I have been lucky to have had that ambition from a young age. When I was about 9 years old I started a newspaper at my school (it lasted one edition!). So it was simply a matter of doing student journalism, getting a journalism qualification and then battling to get a job. The reasons why I  wanted to be a journalist are a mix. Every journalist (I would hope) wants to change the world a little bit for the better. But every honest journalist should admit that it’s a chance to have an awful lot of fun, see some exotic places and get to see your name in print. My main highlight would be covering the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. It was a panel set up by archbishop Desmond Tutu to examine apartheid era crimes by all sides. It was a privilege to watch a nation try to heal itself like that, with all the moral compromises and complexities that that involved.

Maw Books:  Starting a newspaper at nine?  It’s no surprise you became a journalist!  You spent a month in Sierra Leone covering the civil war.  It is obviously this experience that drove you to write The Secret Keeper.  But you’ve also covered many other conflicts across Africa and elsewhere. Why did you choose this story over any of the other stories that you could have told?

Paul Harris: I think Sierra Leone held the most fascination because for me it was the most extreme experience.  More so than two months embedded with the military during the invasion of Iraq or other conflicts which I just dipped in and out of.  In Sierra Leone I was operating alone, in a strange country amid utter chaos.  It was a heady mixture of excitement and fear.  It was also the conflict that put a full stop on my African experience. I decided to leave shortly after.

Maw Books:  I can only imagine the things you must have seen and heard.  Why write a novel in the first place?  Is it something that you have always wanted to do or have been interested in?  What led you to turn from journalism writing to novel writing?

Paul Harris: I always wrote fiction, especially when I was a child. I fell in love with Tolkien and spent many hours writing my own stories set in fantasy worlds (writing a fantasy book is still a secret ambition of mine). Then, after I had left Africa, I decided to take my desire to write a novel seriously and followed the dictum: write what you know. So I began the process of taking some of my own experiences as a setting and starting to work what sort of themes I wanted to explore.

Maw Books:  Was it easy or difficult to switch to a different style of writing for The Secret Keeper from your journalism writing?

Paul Harris: It was very liberating actually. Fiction is an opportunity to play around and say exactly what you want. Journalism has rules to stop that sort of thing.

Maw Books:  I imagine being an war correspondent stationed abroad can be very frustrating when faced with the ignorance of others who either have little to no interest in the stories that you are risking your life to bring to them.  Do you think you can reach a new demographic with a novel (as opposed to journalism writing), to those who may not be aware of some of the current conflicts around the world?

Paul Harris: Definitely. The best fiction can bring the most obscure parts of the world to people’s attention and reach people that don’t consume too much news or have become disillusioned with it. I imagine that Khaled Hosseini has done more to bring Afghanistan alive for people than a thousand news stories.  Perhaps, hopefully, what happens is someone will read the fiction and then be inspired to find out more about the reality.

Maw Books:  I must admit that Hosseini spurred my desire to read more books that take place in Afghanistan, which I’m lucky to say I have.  What do you hope the reader learns, if anything, after reading The Secret Keeper?

Paul Harris: I think, at heart, it’s a story about moral complexity. That very few things are black and white. Good people do bad things, bad people do good  things. Everything is a shade of grey.

Maw Books:  What was the personal emotional impact on you from your experience in Sierra Leone?  How does covering war stories change you?  And how do you suppress this emotion in your journalism writing?

Paul Harris: It was pretty intense. I thought I was fine but after I left (and was incredibly relieved to get out) I noticed that I was behaving in certain strange ways: edgy, short-tempered, constantly nervous. I remember walking through a Nairobi street when a car exhaust backfired several times and it set my heart racing so much I thought I was about to have a panic attack.  But I think for most journalists the impact of covering conflicts will be as varied as the person. Some very fine friends make their whole careers out of it. Some of them thrive, others become very damaged. For me, it gave me a great sense of perspective and the preciousness of life and a feeling that war truly is the greatest folly of mankind. As for suppressing the emotion in writing, I think the simple rules of writing journalism will keep a lot of it out. But also a little bit of emotion – and breaking those rules – is generally a good thing. There is no such things as true objectivity, especially about tragedy, and nor should there be.

Maw Books:  Was the experience of writing The Secret Keeper cathartic in any way?  A way for you to release some of the emotions that you felt while in Sierra Leone or any other war torn country?

Paul Harris: I think it was. It felt good to get it out on the page, probably more than I realized I needed.

Maw Books:  After witnessing so much real-life drama how do you recreate that drama in The Secret Keeper?  How are real life emotions different than emotions as written on a page?

Paul Harris: What a fascinating question. I think (I hope) that I tried to recreate that drama as accurately as possible and give my characters emotions that would ring true. I think authors should aim to recreate authenticity. Because readers are not fools and will spot a fake. So I guess it is up to the readers to say if I have succeeded or not.

Maw Books:  How have the real life people you met in Sierra Leone influenced the characters/personalities in your book?

Paul Harris: A lot, but not all. The romance between Danny and Maria was inspired by an affair that a colleague and a local aid worker were having.  Kam, Danny’s driver and fixer, was based entirely on my driver in real life. Ali was inspired by a guy I met on a helicopter trip.  I did not even speak to him, but he just looked so… shady and yet totally at home in his environment. I just extrapolated him from there. The scenes in the hotel bar were all taken from real life. That place was a real “Star Wars” bar that everyone went to every night. Covering a conflict like that at leaves gives one a vast amount of exotic source material.

Maw Books:  I thought Kam was quite the character!  How much (if any) of you is there in Danny?  Is there anything specifically that happened to him that is based upon your real life experiences?

Paul Harris: I think inevitably there is a lot there. A friend pointed out that there is very little physical description of Danny in the book and I guess that is because in my mind’s eye he was basically me. There are several specific incidents inspired by real life events: the shooting outside the RUF leader’s house, the trip to Bo and the fire fight up country towards the end of the book. Mining those events for fictional purposes did feel a little surreal at times.

Maw Books: Knowing what your author photo looked like I have to admit that I kept picturing Danny as you.  And what fascinating experiences!  Was there a particular scene that you knew you had to write about?  That never changed from the moment you conceived it?

Paul Harris: Weirdly, the last sentence was pretty much the first sentence that came to my mind. Writing the book felt like a journey to get to that point and though it took lots of turns and twists, I felt I never really lost sight of it.

Maw Books:  What surprised you most about your book and/or characters as you were writing? Did anything turn out radically different than you’d originally thought it would?

Paul Harris: This is a tough one. I had an unusual experience writing the character of Danny’s girlfriend, Rachel. I wanted her to be a sympathetic, good person.  But at the end of the first draft my editor said she didn’t really care for her at all, saying she came over as negative and complaining. With that in mind I went back and reread those bits of the book with a fresh eye and was astonished to discover she was right. I had written her in print in a way completely different than what I thought I had. So I went back and rewrote her parts to do her more justice.

Maw Books:  While I was reading The Secret Keeper I kept visualizing the story as a movie playing out in my head.  If The Secret Keeper were a movie, who would you cast as your characters?

Paul Harris: That’s a fun question. A lot of people say it feels very cinematic. Perhaps Penelope Cruz as Maria. As Danny is inspired by some of my own experiences, I think modesty forbids me making any suggestions. I’ll leave it to readers’ imaginations. They are likely to be more honest than mine.

Maw Books:  I could totally see Penelope Cruz as Maria.  Good choice!  Can you briefly share with us what you think the current state of Sierra Leone is and what you think is in it’s future?

Paul Harris: Sierra Leone – I am delighted to say – is doing well. It is still desperately poor and has huge needs, but the war is over and has been for almost a decade now. Progress is slow but with such a history any sort of progress is to be celebrated. The same can be said of much of the rest of the region where equally devastated countries, like Liberia, are also recovering and stable. It is good news in a troubled world.

Maw Books:  I was haunted with the blank stares and listless ex-child soldiers as you wrote about them in the book.  Maria, works for an orphanage that took in ex-child soldiers in an attempt to rehabilitate them and place them into homes.  Will you share with us some of your experiences with child soldiers in Sierra Leone? Is enough being done for them?  What, in your opinion, needs to be done?

Paul Harris: My experiences were mostly limited to meeting them at  roadblocks and trying to negotiate my way through them. It is incredibly scary and also incredibly sad, to meet such young children, armed with machine guns, drunk and high and dangerous, and yet fundamentally still children who respond to a laugh and a smile. It is a problem that felt almost impossible to solve and I am no expert. But they need all the help and understanding they can get to help them recover from traumatising experiences that we can never imagine and yet not lose sight of the fact that they remain children.  Like everything else in Sierra Leone, resources are small and the need is great.  But, at the very least, no more child soldiers are being created.

Maw Books:  I have a special interest in Sudan.  You have spent some time in Sudan.  Can you briefly share a little bit about some of the stories that you covered there?

Paul Harris: I spent some time traveling with Christian missionaries who were buying back black African Sudanese who had been captured in slave raids by Arab Sudanese. I know that sounds incredibly medieval but the South of Sudan back in the 90s was just that kind of place. It is a different world.  I also covered a lovely story on a sort of ‘Olympics’ that aid groups organized in the area for local kids who had little else to enjoy in tough childhoods defined by the ongoing civil war. I loved south Sudan.  People were generous and kind and it really felt like going back in time.  My favourite moment was sleeping in a south Sudanese village, deep in the bush and being awoken by terrible screams and shouts. In the middle of a war zone, you could imagine all sorts of horrors. But the next morning we discovered one of the village elders had had too much to drink and his wife had kicked him out of their hut. It was their argument we had heard.  As someone who fundamentally believes that every human being is basically the same, it was a good lesson in the universality of human experience!

Maw Books:  I’ve read a bit about the slave trade in South Sudan.  It’s just so crazy!  And now for a few more “lighter” questions.  What’s the last book you finished and what’s on your nightstand right now?

Paul Harris: The last book I read was the excellent Columbine by Dave Cullen. I have not got anything on my night stand just yet as I am about to start doing research for a new book and am going to draw up a long non-fiction reading list based around US politics to kick things off.

Maw Books:  What is the best writing advice you have ever received and in turn the best writing advice that you could give?

Paul Harris: The best advice I got was write what you know. It was a great help in giving me the focus to write a book after several false starts over the years on less solid ground. My advice would simply be: a writer writes.  So many people say they have books in them, but never finish what they start.  You have to persevere. To the end. It sounds blindingly obvious, but the main reason most people don’t get published is because they don’t write a book.

Maw Books:  That makes perfect sense.  If you could have dinner with any five people, dead or alive, who would they be and why?

Paul Harris:

Jesus Christ (just to solve the mystery of who he actually was)
Archbishop Desmond Tutu (the most ‘good’ person I have ever met) Aristophanes (great sense of humour)
JRR Tolkien (he created an entire world inside his head)
Mae West (she would make it a proper party)

Maw Books:  Speaking of dinner, a question that I ask of every single author I interview is to share with us a recipe that I will later make and blog about.  Do you have a favorite from your world travels that you would care to share with us?

Paul Harris: Food during a lot of my travels has not been that good (two months of military rations in Iraq!). But here is a dish from Cape Town in South Africa, with its origins in the Cape Malay community, people descended from Malaysian slaves brought over by the Dutch in the 17th Century.  It is called Bobotie and is a bit (only a bit) like a moussaka.

Link to Bobotie recipe.

Maw Books:  Seriously, sounds delicious.  I’m going to try to get everything I need for it.  So what are you doing right now?  Do you have any more books in your future?

Paul Harris: I am just starting a second book. Set against the backdrop of an American presidential campaign. I covered the 2004 and 2008 elections and want to capture some of that amazing excitement and drama. As I said earlier: write what you know.

Maw Books:  Anything else you would like to share with the Maw Books readers?

Paul Harris: Just to say thanks for reading and commenting.  The experience of doing this sort of thing online is a lot of fun and also blogs like Maw Books are so important these days. For readers and for authors.  We’re entering a whole new world together.

Giveaway: I was able to pick up a second copy of The Secret Keeper that I would love to pass on to you.  To enter, leave a comment on this post telling me what you found the most interesting from this interview with Paul Harris.  If you would like to double  your chances of winning, also leave a comment responding to my book review of The Secret Keeper.  Giveaway is open world-wide and I’ll pick a winner on May 27th.

Links of interest:  The Secret Keeper website.  Maw Books review of The Secret Keeper.
Genre:  Mystery/thriller.
Publisher:  Dutton Adult.  April 2nd, 2009
Hardcover, 336 pages.  ISBN: 0525951024
The Secret Keeper is available from your independent bookstore, Powell’s, Barnes and Noble and Amazon.
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Maw Books:  You say you wrote Crocodaddy based on your own memories with your own father and watching  your two sons play in the backyard pool.  What was the moment like when it “clicked” and you realized that you had the base for a fun story?

Kim Norman: Many of my inspirations come from wordplay. I just love words, especially made up words, which kids are good at inventing.  So I kept thinking Crocodaddy MUST be in a book, and probably in rhyme, but… what KIND of book.  That took a bit more time.

Maw Books:  Did you start writing it right away or did you let it “stew” for a bit?

Kim Norman: Yes, I’d say as much as a couple of years. I like to walk in the early morning, and I’d think about it then, during my walks. Not every day for two years, of course, just now and then. Finally I drafted a version that had some solid rhymes and a bit of suspense, but my critique group thought it might be a bit too intense for toddlers, maybe even scary. So during another walk, the rhythm of that refrain came to me, (”Crocodaddy, Crocodaddy, whatcha gonna do?….”) and somehow that added extra playfulness to the story.

Maw Books:  The illustrations for Crocodaddy by David Walker are adorable.  What is it like to put your book into the hands of an illustrator in hopes that they have the same vision as you?

Kim Norman: You know, that is such fun. I always wait with anticipation to see what they come up with. Not just how the characters will look, but also how they add to my story. So far, none of my illustrators have disappointed me in that regard. I often show students during school visits how the illustrators have added to the story beyond my words on the page. I’ve already begun to see sketches for TEN ON THE SLED, one of the two books I’ve got coming out next year. Again, the illustrator made me laugh out loud with humorous touches she added to flesh out my story. And, of course, with CROCODADDY, David Walker’s paintings are so lush, I want to jump into the paintings and join the fun.

Maw Books:  What is your favorite spread in Crocodday and why?

Kim Norman: Gosh, hard to pick just one. Can I cheat and pick 2? The first is “slowly, s-l-o-w-l-y Crocodaddy sinks.” I like not only David’s painting, but the design of the whole page, including the way the book designer arranged the text. (Oh and let me just put in a plug for book designers everywhere, at this point. At Sterling, a young man named Scott was in charge of the book’s overall design. It was he who chose that delightful crocodile-bumpy typeface for the cover, the text arrangements and all that other great stuff. Such an important contribution to the quality of the book.)

Number 2, a page that’s so sweet it speaks for itself without a single word from me, is the final page where dad and son are walking off at the end of a fun day. I won’t give away the delightful surprise on that page, but students always gasp with satisfaction when I point it out.

Maw Books:  That end illustration is wonderful.  You have illustrated books for other authors.  Do you ever intend to illustrate one of your own books?

Kim Norman: Well, to be honest, I just did that one book, THE MUSEUM DUCK, which is sold locally in our county museum. It was a great experience and a nice credit to get me started, but the longer I watch the amazing illustrators in my critique group as well as the illustrators of my own books, the more I know I’d still have to learn if I were ever to illustrate my own books. I’m a graphic artist, but my drawing muscles have withered in the past decade or two thanks to clip art. So, while I’d be very capable of designing the layout and choosing typefaces, I think I’ll have to leave the illustrating to the real pros until I’m closer to retirement, with more time to hone my skills.

Maw Books:  Crocodaddy is the perfect book to read-a-loud to a child because of the tempo and rhyme.  I’m not a writer so I’m clueless on all of this but is getting it just right difficult to do or does it come naturally to you?

Kim Norman: I adore writing in rhyme. It seems to come naturally to me, although I probably picked up many tips and tuned my ear to it by reading old poets when I was a child. Our house was full of my dad’s poetry books, like A Children’s Garden of Verse and A Treasury of the Familiar. Rhyme is the only type of writing I find addictive. I have to keep at it until it’s just right. Other types of writing… I tend to procrastinate. The one downside of writing in rhyme is that — if you change a word — you often have to go up and change the whole stanza above. But that’s fine, too. I always tell my editors, who are a bit apologetic asking me to change things — knowing the extra work of rhyme — that it’s okay. There are always other words to choose from.

Maw Books:  What is the best thing about writing books for children?  And what are some of the challenges of writing books for children?

Kim Norman: Probably the best thing is the kids themselves. Getting to meet them and interact with them at schools, once my book is published. And I seem to still have a childlike outlook about many things — humor, fantasy and imagination — so children’s writing just felt like home to me when I decided to give it a try after dabbling in several genres.

The biggest challenge of writing for children, especially picture books, is that EVERY word must count. There’s no room for extraneous plot points, or even unnecessary words, in a picture book. So editing a picture book usually involves cutting — which can be fun and excruciating at the same time. It’s kind of fun, seeing how tight and spare I can make it, but sometimes that means cutting a phrase or sentence I thought sounded especially nice.

Maw Books:  You were really active in musical theater and love to sing and dance. How has that background influenced your presentations when you go into schools to talk about books and reading?

Kim Norman: It has been immensely helpful. No one ever has to ask me to speak up. Unfortunately for my friends, I tend to speak too loudly on the phone, probably because of all those years of having to project to an audience. I also perform a few songs I wrote myself, so the music always adds a nice highpoint at the end of the presentations — to the younger students, anyway. I usually skip the songs with older students who would think they’re too babyish.

Maw Books:  It’s better to have an outgoing presenter than one who you can hardly hear.  Why do you love to visit schools?  What do you think you get out of it in addition to the kids walking away with a “spark” for the love of books.

Kim Norman: I do love it, probably because I’m a natural-born show-off. I’ve also been a home schooler for about a decade, including teaching classes at several co-ops, so I love teaching, too. I’m pretty good at controlling a crowd. In fact, I had a proud moment last week at a small school, where I’d been warned the 2nd grade class can be rambunctious. At one point, they were all listening intently to the story of my struggles with an “Evil Inner Editor.” (I also show pictures of her, which are good for some laughs.) At the end of that section of the talk, a woman who’d been sitting in the back of the room took a second to introduce herself. Turns out she was the principal, who said she was very impressed that I’d tamed those famously energetic 2nd graders.

Maw Books:  Do you have a funniest moment from your school visits?  A time when a child said something really funny or you had an embarrassing moment?

Kim Norman: Can’t think of anything particularly embarrassing; maybe because I’m hard to embarrass after all those years onstage, rolling with the punches. You’ve got to be prepared for anything in theater, ready with an ad-libbed line if something goes wrong, like the time I played the evil Miss Hannigan in ANNIE. I opened a door at the appointed time and found a chagrined policeman who was supposed to be delivering Annie back to the orphanage. He was alone because “Annie” had forgotten her entrance.

Gotta be quick with the rewrites in a situation like that, so countering a silly question or even a student who is being flippant & rude, (a fairly rare occurrence) — it’s all part of the think-on-your-feet training I had in theater.

I don’t want an audience that’s TOO tame, though. I like enough action and noise to know they’re enjoying the performance. (I do consider it a performance, although there is much more student interaction and participation than if I were simply giving a one-woman show). So there are many places where I invite laughter, especially when I show images of my homely “Evil Inner Editor,” created by a computer program which distorts images like a funhouse mirror.

Maw Books:  I’d love to see you in action!  What were you like as a young reader and what are you like now?  Same?  Different?

Kim Norman: I AM different now. I read almost no nonfiction as a child. I was addicted to fiction back then — absolutely INHALED books during what I call my “golden age of reading” around 5th grade. Read all the great series: Little House, Oz, The Black Stallion, even Freddie the Pig. Then as a young adult I spent about half a decade reading thru 19th century classics: Dickens, Austin, Elliott. Some I liked, some not so much. Now I find myself reading more nonfiction, particularly memoirs, (which — I realize — are probably closer to fiction sometimes!)

Maw Books:  I love memoirs.  Some of my best reads.  What is one book you will never be too old to love?

Kim Norman: Oh dear, do I have to pick only one? In that case, I’ll cheat and pick one from picture books and one from midgrade. In picture books, anything with cumulative verse/repetition, like The House that Jack Built. (Both my books coming out next year are based on cumulative verse classics.) And in mid-grades, I love stories set in the early to mid-20th century. I’m fascinated by the Depression and WWII eras. Not the war part, but the way families were living on the home front. (At which point, I should put in a plug for my friend Doris Gwaltney’s marvelous midgrade set in that time frame, HOMEFRONT, Simon & Schuster, 2006.)

Maw Books: I love books set during World War II too.  I’ve just put Homefront on hold at the library.  If you could have anybody illustrate one of your books, dead or alive, who would you choose and why?

Kim Norman: When my kids were little, and we were checking out books from the library, I always loved Steven Kellogg’s jolly illustrations. So much to see on each page! Someone sent one of my early manuscripts to him, and he kindly responded with a handwritten letter. What a sweet guy. He DID illustrate the book of my good friend Debbie Guarino, Is Your Mama a Llama?, which is still in print after nearly 20 years. That’s amazing in this industry of sometimes yogurt-length shelf life.

After that I discovered Stephen Gammell. You could spend hours looking at  one of his books and still find something new next time you opened it. He illustrated I Know an Old Teacher by Anne Bowen, a member of my critique group, and since I love her, I try not to be too jealous.

But so far, I have been very happy with all the illustrators hired by my publishers. My editors are more familiar with all the talent out there, so I’m content to let them do the choosing.

Maw Books: By the way, I recently met Ann Bowen, she’s a local author to me. This is a question that I ask of every author I review and that’s to have them share a favorite recipe of theirs, whether they appear in their book or not. I try to make it and then blog about it later.  Do you have a yummy favorite recipe that you’d like to share?

Kim Norman: How fun! In the past year or two, I’ve been trying to shake up my side dishes. The same old frozen vegetables can get boring. So one of my favorites is roasted vegetables. Any root vegetables will do, although an absolute MUST for me is parsnips, which I discovered a only couple of years ago and wondered, “Why didn’t someone tell me about this delicious vegetable years ago!!?” In roasted vegetables, the natural sugars in the vegetables caramelize, increasing their sweetness.

Cut the parsnips and other vegetables, (carrots, potatoes, turnips, sweet potatoes, etc.) into chunks, maybe an inch or so. I like to include large slices of red pepper for added color. Place in a baking dish and drizzle with olive oil, then sprinkle with kosher salt, (and black pepper, if you wish.) Cook in oven, 400 degrees, for about 30 to 40 minutes, turning with a spatula at least once during that time. The parsnips will turn a golden brown and the peppers might blacken in a few spots, but they’re still pretty and yummy that way.

Another great thing about this dish is that the flavors combine, so the veggies taste even better the next day, if you’re lucky enough to have some left over. I’ve been known to eat them for breakfast before anyone else is up, so I don’t have to share. (Bad mom! Bad bad mom!)

Maw Books:  I don’t think I’ve ever had a parsnip in my life.  This sounds delicious!  Tell us a bit about your two upcoming books, I KNOW A WEE PIGGY WHO WALLOWED IN BROWN and TEN ON THE SLED?  And when can we expect to see them?

Kim Norman: Oh, one of my favorite topics: upcoming books! Well, as they say, “the good Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise,” both books should be released on 2010. Dutton has hired Henry Cole to illustrate WEE PIGGY, which tickles me no end. He is such a prolific and popular illustrator. WEE PIGGY, as the longer title implies, is a variation of “I know an old woman who swallowed a fly,” with colors replacing foods in the repetition pattern. At a county fair, Wee Piggy dashes from one colorful adventure to another, wallowing in brown (mud), yellow (butter), red (canned tomatoes… maybe), etc. I say “maybe” because many of those choices will be left up to Henry Cole to illustrate. I built in a rhyme scheme that allows the reader to guess the color coming up on the next page. (Thank you to my critique group buddy, Joe Kulka, for that great suggestion.)

And TEN ON THE SLED is a phrase that popped into my head one day as a variation of the old favorite “Ten in the bed.” In my version, ten arctic animals find themself in a race with an ever-growing snowball filled with the animals who have been recently ejected from the sled. Liza Woodruff is illustrating that, and I’ve already seen her marvelous first sketches. Sterling is hoping to have the book out by the fall of 2010, in time for the winter/holiday season.

Maw Books:  They both sound fantastic!  I look forward to checking both of them out when the are published.  I wish you the best of luck!  Do you have anything else you’d like to share?

Kim Norman: Can’t think of a thing. You’re a terrific interviewer!

Maw Books: Ah, shucks . . thank you Kim!

Kim Norman: Thank YOU, Natasha!

Links of interest: My book review of Crocodaddy,  Kim Norman website,  David Walker website.
Genre:  Picture book, ages 4-8 (I would put it more like ages 3-6 though)
Publisher:  Sterling.  May 5, 2009
Hardcover, 32 pages.  ISBN 978-1402744600
Crocodaddy by Kim Norman is available from your local independent bookstore, Powell’s, Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

Check out what other bloggers are saying on the Kidz Book Buzz tour:  A Christian Worldview of Fiction, A Mom Speaks, A Patchwork of Books, All About Children’s Books, Becky’s Book Reviews, Booking Mama,Cafe of Dreams, Dolce Bellezza, Elizabeth O. Dulemba, Fireside Musings, KidzBookBuzz.com, Looking Glass Reviews, Maw Books Blog, Never Jam Today, Olive Tree, Our Big Earth, Reading is My Superpower, SMS Book Reviews, The 160 Acrewoods, Through a Child’s Eyes

Nicki Richesin:  Congratulations on the success of your new novel EVERYONE IS BEAUTIFUL.  You must be excited to finally see this baby in print.  I want to talk a little about the heroines in your life and your work.  In your incredibly moving essay “Things To Remember Not To Forget” in BECAUSE I LOVE HER, you describe your mother’s influence and how you often feel like an impostor and she’s the “real” mom you hope will show up for spaghetti dinner to save you.  Why do you think, even as adults, we often feel like our mothers were the real deal?  Gen Xers were labeled as the slacker generation early on, but I get the sense that there’s something deeper than this at work.

Katherine Center: Oh, I’m definitely not a slacker!  Especially when it comes to mothering.  I’m trying as hard at mothering as at anything I’ve ever done.  It is possibly the only thing I’ve ever worked this hard at and not aced flat-out.  I mean: I think I’m doing a good job, but only time will tell.

I actually think young moms feel this way because we’re kind of like Velveteen Rabbits waiting to become Real.  You can’t wish it overnight.  You can’t take a seminar on it.  You can only become a real mom-a competent mom-by putting in the hours and evolving into that role.  My mom assures me that her generation had the exact same feeling about their mothers.

Nicki Richesin: The first time we spoke on the phone, your kids were screaming and begging for treats in the background.  Your life in that moment doesn’t seem that far removed from Lanie your heroine in EVERYONE IS BEAUTIFUL.  Did you draw on your own experience as a mother to create this character?

Katherine Center: Heck, yes!  I could never have written her character if I didn’t have kids and know inside and out what it feels like to be torn between what’s best for your kids-who you love so desperately-and what’s best for you.  Because sometimes those two things are in direct opposition.  Everyone Is Beautiful is kind of a “How Mama Got Her Groove Back” story, and it’s all about that struggle to take care of everybody-including yourself.

Nicki Richesin:  At your recent reading in Oakland, you explained how you found your agent through your friends urging you to talk to “the lady novelist” in your neighborhood. Could you share that story again?

Katherine Center: Well, I’d written The Bright Side of Disaster and I literally had on my To Do list: “Find agent!  Sell novel!”  And people kept telling me there was a novelist who lived just a few blocks over and saying I should call her.  And I was like, “I am NOT stalking the neighborhood novelist.”  So I never called her.  And then I had another baby and the novel wound up in a drawer.   I almost forgot all about it.  But then I ran into her at the park one day with my kids.  My friend told her about my novel in a drawer, and she offered to read it.  I sent her the first three chapters, and she liked them and offered to pass them along to her agent.  Her agent read them and offered to represent me, and before I knew it Random House had bought the book in an auction.  I owe all the writing I’m doing now to this woman’s kindness, and I feel grateful for that every day.  Her name is Vanessa Del Fabbro, and she’s a lovely writer.

Nicki Richesin:   In your essay from Because I Love Her, you beautifully express this yearning we all have to hold onto the moment and preserve the beauty of our children’s youth, but recognize this is impossible. You even wonder whether gadgets like camcorders and cameras prevent us from fully experiencing these shared moments. How have your reconciled this loss?

Katherine Center: I can’t reconcile it.  I think about it constantly-about how life slips through our fingers.  It’s a depressing thought, I know, but being around children and watching them grow and change forces you to notice time passing.  We cut off my daughter’s very long hair last weekend, and my eyes filled with tears.  Even though I knew it was time, and even though she looks like a completely adorable 1920s girl detective with her new bob, I want my long-haired girl back.  I want them both.  And while I’m at it, I want my babies back, too-those plump little muffins that I took for granted when I was so sleep deprived.  I’d give anything to pick up one of my 3-month-olds again and feel that peach-fuzz hair and those little thighs.  It’s the same reason I can’t get rid of some of the baby clothes.  I just have to keep them forever in the attic.  Even if I never take them out again.  I just need to know they’re still there.

Nicki Richesin: If Hollywood were to adapt THE BRIGHT SIDE OF DISASTER for the screen, who would you cast as the lead characters?

Katherine Center: It has been optioned! Varsity Pictures optioned it last fall, which was cool.  And I could see a lot of different people playing Jenny Harris.  But it would have to be somebody with sass-somebody who can banter and sort of crook her eyebrow.  This topic comes up a lot at book clubs.  People have suggested Rachel McAdams and Reese Witherspoon.  I’ve heard Ellen Page-if she were older-and Janeane Garofalo-if she were younger.  Ben Affleck always comes up as an option for either of the guys-since I met him once at a reading and have a photo of him carrying the book.  It would actually be fun to see Jennifer Garner as Jenny and Ben as Dean-the bad boyfriend.

Nicki Rishesin:: Have you ever read a book, and thought oh man, I wish I had written this or it seemed to be a story you wanted to tell?

Katherine Center: When that happens, it’s really exciting.  I recently read a screenplay by Jane O’Brien (Conan’s sister) that had me pacing around the house in the wee hours of the night because I was so thrilled about how good it was that I couldn’t sleep.  There are all different kinds of great writing out there, but the kind that can keep me awake at night is usually writing that’s funny and authentic and sad all at the same time-which of course is exactly the kind I try to do.  David Sedaris, Tina Fey, Catherine Newman, and Marisa de los Santos all do this-make you laugh and break your heart at the same time.  It’s not an easy thing to do, and when I see it done well, I just want to stand up and cheer.

Nicki Rishesin:  Publishers Weekly praised BRIGHT SIDE for its “sharp dialogue and a narrative that’s heavier on the sass than the diaper rash.”  I couldn’t agree more!  How did you create such a rich vibrant and spunky character in Jenny Harris?  Have you ever felt similarly abandoned and been forced to keep calm and carry on?  I know your devoted hubby teaches at your childhood alma mater. Not exactly Jenny’s background?

Katherine Center: No-not Jenny’s background.  I am very lucky that my sweet husband has stuck by me.  But I have had my heart broken a couple of significant and horrible times.  And I’ve certainly faced all kinds of sadnesses and challenges that I feared I wasn’t up to.  And then I surprised myself.  Those moments of rising up beyond my capabilities have often been the ones that stuck with me or changed me or taught me the most.  Those are my favorite stories-about people surprising themselves.  But those moments of surprise don’t come easy.

And as for how I created Jenny: I don’t know.  It’s a good question, and I just don’t know.  It’s magic.  (Or possibly lunacy.)  I’ll just be going about my day and suddenly hear someone talking in my head.  And so I just write down what they’re saying.  I actually can’t imagine writing a book in the 3^rd person, because the main character is usually talking to me, and I’m just writing it down.  It’s not a conscious process.  Characters talk in my head, and then they start doing things, and then other characters come in and say things.  Mostly, I’m just watching them, and listening.  I get to know them slowly-the way you do with friends.

Nicki Rishesin:  Could you explain how you work- your practice, discipline?   How do you carve out the time to churn out so many novels with two little rug rats running around?  Do you have a favorite place to work or a writing retreat?

Katherine Center: Here’s how things would look if I were in charge:  I’d get up at the crack of dawn, take a brisk walk, come home, shower, have a cup of coffee with a tasty and nutritious breakfast, and sit down to write for several uninterrupted hours.

Here’s how things actually are:  I get up, and get the kids up, and scramble around looking for missing shoes and library books.  I think about the coffee, but rarely get to it.  I think about breakfast, too, but usually don’t get that either.  I send one kid off to carpool and then drop the other one at pre-school.  Some days I get a walk after that, some days not.  Some days I can arrange a good block of uninterrupted time, some days not.  Lots of times I’m just getting into a groove when it’s time to go to the grocery or pick up carpool.  That’s why I do a lot of my writing with crayons or in the carpool line.

But the kids are also endless sources of inspiration and laughs.  I didn’t know what I wanted to write about until I had them.  And I truly believe that the tension between your real life and your creative life-on a good day-is really great for both.

Nicki Rishesin:  Could you share some of your favorite childhood books and reading memories?

Katherine Center: My parents read to us all the time when we were little, and I remember Go, Dog, Go, Eloise, How Droofus the Dragon Lost His Head, and all the Dr. Seuss books as particular favorites.  As we got older, my dad read chapter books to us-Alice in Wonderland, The Jungle Book, Tom Sawyer-and made up stories, too.  My dad is a terrific reader.  When he reads, it sounds like he’s just talking.  He also loves words and language-the feel and the sound of them-and I got that from him.  As I got older, I remember loving Fantastic Mr. Fox, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, The Secret Garden, and A Little Princess-as well as Deenie, by Judy Blume and The Pistachio Prescription, by Paula Danziger.

One great thing about becoming a mom is getting to revisit all those books and stories.

Nicki Rishesin: You’ve been a big supporter of Writers in the Schools. How have you supported them within your community?

Katherine Center: I used to teach for them, so I know about the organization from the inside out.  And I love what they do: teach children about the “pleasure and power of reading and writing” through positive interactions with working writers who come to their schools.  I loved being a WITS writer, because there was no grading and no criticism.  Just finding the things each kid was doing well and praising the heck out of them.  Now, I talk about WITS at every opportunity.  I keep in touch with them and taught at a recent writer training and spoke at their Young Writers Reading series.  I also did a TV commercial for them where I got to read a beautiful poem by a child in the program.

Nicki Rishesin:  Who were your early influences? Did they inform your first story you won for the Vassar College Fiction Prize?

Katherine Center: When I was first learning to write, I loved the minimalists: Raymond Carver and Amy Hempel and Lorrie Moore.  I loved how they stripped everything down to the essentials.  And, of course, Lorrie Moore is so wickedly funny.  I loved her story, “How to Become a Writer” (”First, try to be something-anything-else.”) because it was so funny and heartbreaking at the same time.  I also loved poetry early on: Edward Hirsch and Anne Sexton and Sharon Olds, in particular.  I kept a blank book that I copied poems I loved into. And song lyrics-I still love the sweet melancholy of many of Paul Simon’s lyrics:  “She comes back to tell me she’s gone.  As if I didn’t know that–as if I didn’t know my own bed.  As if I’d never noticed the way she brushed her hair from her forehead.”  I also absorbed so much from funny women writers-Texas political columnist Molly Ivins was absolutely hilarious, and I think I have memorized every single line from Nora Ephron’s When Harry Met Sally.  One time my friend Nicole and I watched it and just talked along with the actors.

Nicki Rishesin: You just finished your third novel GET LUCKY about a woman who offers to have a baby for her sister. How did the idea for this novel first come to you?

Katherine Center: I had this thought once-many years ago-about my sisters.  That if either of them ever wanted a baby and couldn’t have one, I’d act as a surrogate for them.  It seemed like a no-brainer.  But then I actually got pregnant-twice-and re-thought my idea.  I mused on it a lot while I was pregnant, actually-about how pregnancy doesn’t seem like a big deal until you are actually doing it.  And then it’s a huge, all-encompassing deal.  I loved the idea of a character getting herself into something like that-so life-changing and irreversible–with such high stakes.  It seemed like a situation rich for both comedy and heartbreak.  My two favorite things.

Nicki Rishesin:  I know you, like thousands of little girls in the eighties (including me!), had a not-so-secret crush on Duran Duran. Fantasy date night with Simon Le Bon or Nick Rhodes? Candlelit dinner followed by moonlit serenade to “Hungry like the Wolf” or “Rio”?

Katherine Center: This cracks me up!  What was it about Duran Duran?  I honestly can’t tell you.  I go back and look at those videos now and they seem so completely ridiculous.  Women crawling around like animals and all that.  Simon LeBon was my favorite by far, even though John Taylor was technically the handsomest.  That said, in all our defense, they were not nearly as cheesy as many of the boy-bands to follow.  But the idea of me, as a sixth-grader, singing along with my entire soul to lyrics like, “Some people call it a one night stand, but we can call it paradise,” that’s just hilarious.  And so sad.  Just the way I like it.

_____________________________________________________

Katherine Center is the author of two novels, Everyone Is Beautiful and The Bright Side of Disaster, and she has two more forthcoming.  Everyone Is Beautiful was featured recently in People, Redbook, and USA Today.  Katherine started writing fiction in the 6^th grade, when she wrote a novel about how all five members of Duran Duran fell in love with her and she was forced to pick one.  Later, she graduated from Vassar College, where she won the Vassar College Fiction Prize, and earned a Master’s in fiction from the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program.  She now lives in her home state of Texas with her husband and her two feisty little kids-a daughter and a son.  For more about Katherine, or to find out which member of Duran Duran was the lucky winner, please see her website: www.katherinecenter.com.

Nicki Richesin is the editor of four anthologies, Because I Love Her: 34 Women Writers Reflect on the Mother-Daughter Bond; What I Would Tell Her: 30 Male Writers on the Father-Daughter Relationship (May 2010); the forthcoming Crush: Real-life Tales of First Love Gone Wrong by our Best Young Adult Novelists; and The May Queen: Women on Life, Work, and Pulling it all Together in your Thirties. Her anthologies have been excerpted and praised in The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Redbook, Parenting, Cosmopolitan, Bust, Daily Candy, and Babble. She lives with her husband and daughter in northern California. Visit www.nickirichesin.com for more information.

Natasha here. Check out my book reviews of Everyone is Beautiful, The Bright Side of Disaster, my interview and a guest post with Katherine.  As if that’s not enough, make sure you go make her favorite soup (I wonder if I can ever talk about Katherine without mentioning that soup!).  I loved this interview!  Because I Love Her would make a perfect mothers day gift for the mother or daughter in your life!  It sounds great and I’m convinced that I need to read this book.

Two video trailers that feature excerpts from Katherine Center’s essay Things to Remember Not to Forget:

Book trailer for Because I Love Her:

Chicken Butt!

Maw Books:  Where in the world did you get the idea to write a book that’s well . . . mainly about a chicken butt?!

Erica Perl: I always thought the nonsequitur joke “You know what? Chicken Butt!” was funny, and I wanted to figure out a way to put it in a book.  Originally, I thought it could be a board book (with flaps) for hipster parents.  But then, when I worked on it, the voices of parent and child just came to me, and it became more of a book told from both a kid and a grown-up’s perspective.  I like writing books that both kids and parents can enjoy, so I was pleased at the direction this one took… it ended up feeling like the scene at our house!  Minus the chicken, that is… we don’t have one.

Maw Books:  Describe you new book in just one word.

Erica Perl: Cluck!

Maw Books:  Chicken Butt! is a great read-a-loud book.  It must be so much fun to do school visits and presentations.  What are some of your favorite experiences from sharing Chicken Butt! and your other books with young readers?

Erica Perl: I LOVE doing Chicken Butt! with school groups.  Basically, I divide the group in two and assign one group the role of “kid” and the other group the role of “grown-up”… they immediately start throwing themselves into it, hamming it up on both sides.  And without realizing it, they do all the reading… I’m just the conductor.  Also, I always pause between the page turns and ask kids to guess the rhymes.  I’ve gotten some great ones, like “chicken stew!” and “chicken hair!”  So we go over the concept of rhyming, which kids love to play with.  And then I always encourage everyone to read the “chicken” lines… everybody loves to read the “Chicken Butt! Chicken Butt!  Chicken Butt!” page together.

Maw Books:  I bet that gets really loud!  Could you talk with us a little about why books with a tempo/rhyme are excellent choices for young readers learning how to read.

Erica Perl: Rhyming books are great because kids can anticipate the rhyme, which helps emergent readers decode more easily.  And rhymes are fun – kids love to play with words and have more ease than grown-ups, who get caught up in what is a “real” word.  Also, I always talk to kids about meter, because I like to make the connection between rhyming verse and musical rhythm.  It’s important that the tempo of a piece is consistent (as you see in Dr. Seuss, for example) so the reader can really lose him or herself following the beat of the words.  This is one of the reasons I like to sing my book NINETY-THREE IN MY FAMILY with kids, and I always point them to the recording of the song, which can be found on my website: www.ericaperl.com (it is on the “and more” page).

Maw Books:  Did you test your book out on any young readers before submitting it for publication?  Do you have certain young reviewers in your life that you trust?

Erica Perl: I always read everything out loud, alone and to kids.  I trust my own kids, but I try to read to other kids as well… classmates and friends of my kids.  And I get kids to read stuff aloud, to see how they read it.  Always a lot of research before I take a book to the next step.

Maw Books:  Reading out loud definitely makes a difference.  And now you saw how I read it!  Have you had any feedback from parents, librarians, or booksellers expressing dissatisfaction with the subject matter of Chicken Butt! Personally, I thought it was cute when my three year old starting repeating the words chicken butt back to me and laughs real big at the monkey butt.  But I’m sure not all parents would say the same.

Erica Perl: So far, no complaints.  I too am waiting for it, but the teachers and parents I’ve met have been very positive about it.  One parent did tell me that her daughter was surprised that “the governor” would let me put “BUTT” on the cover of a book.  But no complaints from the authorities yet either!

Maw Books:  Phew!   So much of a picture books personality comes through its illustrations.  What is it like when you first saw your words put to the illustrations and are you happy with the way they turned out?

Erica Perl: Extremely happy.  I love Henry Cole and was thrilled with his illustrations.

Maw Books:  What is it with you and chickens anyways?!

Erica Perl: I’m not sure.  This is my second chicken book.  I guess I can’t run that fast… the chickens always catch me!

Maw Books:  Ha, ha!  One of my regular features in my author interviews is to ask for a recipe, either one featured in their book or a family favorite.  Later I make that recipe and blog about it.  I didn’t think Chicken Butt, gave me much to work with as far as recipes but then I saw your adorable Chicken Butt! cookies that you made on your blog. They are so cute!  Can you share the recipe with us?

Erica Perl: They are gingerbread cookies and I made a royal icing for them (egg whites, powdered sugar, lemon juice and a drop of glycerin, which you can buy in specialty stores, for shine).  They were yummy!

Maw Books:  What are some of the challenges and rewards of being a children’s picture book writer?

Erica Perl: I love writing my books and sharing them with kids!  The hard part is how long it takes for a book to come out… I’m impatient and it is hard to wait.  But worth it!

Maw Books:  What’s your earliest reading memory?  And a few picture books that you think nobody should miss?

Erica Perl: I have always loved books and my childhood favorites included SYLVESTER AND THE MAGIC PEBBLE and BREAD AND JAM FOR FRANCES.  I am currently doing a bunch of book events with Ayun Halliday, whose new book, ALWAYS LOTS OF HEINIES AT THE ZOO is terrific, so definitely check it out!

Maw Books:  I saw Always Lots of Heinies at the Zoo on display at a bookstore with your book!  Great idea to market them together!  If you could choose any illustrator, dead or alive, to illustrate your next book who would you choose and why?

Erica Perl: Perhaps James Marshall, who I love.  Or Simon James, or Emily Gravett (I’m partial to British illustrators, for some reason).  I also love Matt Phelan’s work.   And I’m very excited about JULIA DENOS, who is illustrating my next book, DOTTY!

Maw Books:  I love Matt Phelan!  What’s the last book you read, the book you’re reading now and a book that you are looking forward to reading?

Erica Perl: I just read KARATE PIG, which is an adorable board book, and THE GREAT PAPER CAPER, by Oliver Jeffers – fabulous.  I’m also reading THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, which is NOT for children but is highly enjoyable if you are a grown up.

Maw Books:  Share with us what it was like to serve on the Cybils judging panel for picture books.

Erica Perl: It was so much fun and I was thrilled that Bob Graham’s HOW TO HEAL A BROKEN WING was our winner – what an amazing book!

Maw Books:  Going off of the Cybils question, what role/influence do you think book bloggers are playing in the book industry?

Erica Perl: Kidlit bloggers rule!  I always tell parents that this is THE place to discover great new (and old) books for kids!

Maw Books:  They do rule!  What do you enjoy to do outside the world of books?

Erica Perl: Cooking, running, going to the zoo and embarrassing my children.

Maw Books:  So what’s next?  What are working on right now?

Erica Perl: My first YA novel, VINTAGE VERONICA, comes out next spring from KNOPF!  Until then, I’m writing more picture books and shaking my CHICKEN BUTT! wherever they’ll have me.

Maw Books:  A YA novel!  How awesome.  I look forward to it.  Anything else that you’d like to add?

Erica Perl: You know what?…  Just kidding!

Maw Books:  Thanks Erica!

Erica Perl: Thank YOU!!!

Erica will be on tour the rest of the week at  Tales from the Rushmore Kid,  Motherreader, A Pen and a Nest, Hen Blog,  Fuse # 8,  Write for a Reader,  Chicken Spaghetti, and Three Silly Chicks.  Erica is celebrating with a  prize drawing of Chicken Butt! and other fun prizes.  To register for the prize drawings, all you have to do is visit any of the participating tour blogs during the week (including this one!) and then leave a comment on Erica’s blog.

Erica S. Perl’s website & blog.
Genre: Picture book, ages 2-8
Published: Abrams Books for Young Readers, April 2009
Hardcover, 32 pages. ISBN: 978-0810983250
Chicken Butt! is available from your independent bookstore, Powells and Amazon.

I was super excited when I realized that Ingrid Law was going to be at the LA Times Festival of Books!  I even brought two copies of the book to get signed.  So then I was super bummed when I missed her panel and couldn’t find her signing at any other time.  So, so sad.  I would have loved to chat with her for a moment & get a photo as well.  So many authors there and I didn’t get to see half that I wanted to.

BUT I’ve got the next best thing: a fantastic interview with Ingrid today!  I’m thrilled to present another author who can claim a Newbery under their belt.  So please welcome Ingrid Law to the Maw Books Blog!

Maw Books:  You wrote Savvy in a relatively short amount of time (five months, I believe).  Was this a story that you had been thinking about writing about for awhile before you sat down to write it or did it just hit you with a force that you just had to get it all out?

Ingrid Law: I think of Savvy as a gift.  It came into creation so quickly and with so much excitement and love.  I had been submitting a different manuscript to agents for about six months but kept getting the usual “Dear Author” responses.  However, a couple of the agents who read the whole thing told me in personal notes that they like my writing and to send them future projects.  That boosted my confidence so much and made me realize I needed to start a “future project.”  I sat down to write Savvy without knowing a thing about what I wanted to write.  I decided to write the craziest sentence I could think of without judging it too much.  That sentence became the first sentence of Savvy and stayed the first sentence forever.  After that, the words just rolled out. I think it was a story that just wanted to be here. I just feel fortunate that I got to be the one to tell it.

Maw Books: I’d thought I’d share that first sentence with our readers:  “When my brother Fish turned thirteen, we moved to the deepest part of inland because of the hurricane and, of course, the fact that he’d caused it.”

What surprised you the most as you were writing Savvy? Did anything turn out different than what you intended or did any of your characters/story evolve on their/its own?

Ingrid Law: There were connections in the book to things that were happening for me through the writing process, connections I didn’t consciously recognize until after the book was in print and I had to start talking about it publicly.  That may sound strange, but sometimes I think we know things, yet don’t truly understand their impact until we talk them out.  As feelings become words they alter into concrete meanings.  The biggest example of this in Savvy is, while writing the book, I very consciously told myself to ignore any voices that popped into my head that whispered to me that it might not be good enough, that an idea might be too strange or weird, that told me not to trust myself and tell the story my own way.  Of course, it’s this very same thing that Mibs has to learn as well.  But I can’t remember making a conscious connection between these two things at the time.

Maw Books:  That is a fantastic lesson in follwing your own heart!  As a debut author, did you have the confidence or premonition that Savvy would do so well with readers and critics or were you taken completely by surprise with its reception?

Ingrid Law: Completely surprised!  I thought of it as such a little story.  Cozy and fun.  I knew it was quirky and had some unusual elements.  My sense of humor is usually one that comes out in mostly in my writing, but being a bit of a shy person, I wasn’t sure how other people would respond to it.  I’ve been really amazed and so incredibly thankful for the reception it has received.

Maw Books:  You say that if you could pick your own savvy, you would probably want to fly or breathe underwater.  I’d like to know more about that.  What about flying or breathing underwater would be cool to you?

Ingrid Law: I’m such an escapist and I love solitude.  Flying or breathing under water would allow me the ultimate escapes in beautiful, serene ways, into places where there aren’t a lot of people.  And both would feel weightless, which would be nice, being a fairly weighty person myself!

Maw Books:  I think I’d rather fly than breathe underwater.  Large bodies of water terrify me!  Where were you and what were you doing when ALA called to tell you that you Savvy received a Newbery Honor?  How did you react and what did you do to celebrate?

Ingrid Law: I was sitting in bed hoping that they would call, but not wanting to hope too hard so that I wouldn’t be too disappoint if they didn’t.  They called at about 6:55am.  I was playing a game on my iPod–one that keeps my mind focused when I’m anxious.  After the call, I immediately woke up my daughter to tell her, then cried for fifteen minutes (you would have thought that someone had died), called my family, talked to my fabulous editor, agent, and publishers.   To celebrate, first my daughter and I went and filled a shopping cart for the local food bank–spreading the good, you know?  Later, we had fondue dinner with some wonderful friends from Walden Media who were in town for ALA.

Maw Books:  I love hearing those stories!  Brandon Dorman, Savvy’s illustrator, is a BYU graduate – my alma mater. I loved this cover as soon as I laid eyes on it. After reading the book, I loved the cover even more. What was your reaction when you first saw the book cover of Savvy?  And likewise, what do you think about the other covers for the other editions.

Ingrid Law: Brandon is a genius!  I just got to meet him recently, too, and he’s such a great guy with a really beautiful family.  He is doing the cover of my next book as well and even the sketches are amazing.  I was over the moon when I saw his cover for Savvy.  But I’ve also loved seeing what other art departments for the foreign editions come up with.  In Finland, they used Brandon’s cover.  But the German, Dutch, and UK covers are all so different and interesting!  I can’t wait to see what kinds of covers appear in Korea or Croatia or China (not to mention Indonesia, Italy… am I missing any?).

Maw Books:  Savvy has been optioned for a feature film.  If you could control everything about the movie (ha!) who do you think would be the perfect actors/actresses to be cast into your characters roles?  And if somebody else were to write the screenplay, what would you say they weren’t allowed to change at all and something that you feel has a bit more of a creative license?

Ingrid Law: Oh, such a hard question about actors!  And I almost hate to say who I can imagine in the roles, because I know that if Walden Media does decide to greenlight the film, they will do a great job.  But…. since you asked. bI think Madeline Carroll might make a great Mibs, Luke Benward could match her well as Fish.  Rocket?  A younger, dark haired version of Zac Efron, maybe (he’s got to have those awesome blue eyes)… or maybe Ben Barnes (probably still too old)… who else? Bobbi?  I’m not sure.  Maybe Anna Sophia Robb?  Now you’ve got me thinking and having too much fun.  Someone like Robin Wright Penn, perhaps for Momma–but not quite so thin.  I don’t know!  I love to know what other people think, though.

Enough about actors.  The folks at Walden Media love Savvy and are very protective of the book, so I feel like it’s in good hands.  The screenplay is already close to done and I actually get to meet the screenwriter, Karen Janszen, in LA (or will have just met her when this interview goes up).  So, I’m excited about that.  In regard to changes, I’m doing my best to hold onto a kind of flexible open-mindedness for now. Rigidity makes things more fragile, right?  I am open to seeing what other people’s talents bring to the story.  But I do want it to have heart.

Maw Books:  I would see this movie the day it comes out!  This is a question that I ask every single author I interview and that’s to share a recipe with us – either a family favorite or a food that is featured in the book.  Later, I try to make the recipe and then blog about it.   In Savvy, Mibs wants the perfect cake for her birthday – a cake with pink and yellow frosting, and perfect sugar roses – which isn’t really asking for much since her mothers savvy is being perfect.  Are you the type of mom who would make a cake from scratch, out of a box or buy it from the store?  Do you have either a cake recipe or a family favorite that you could share with our readers?

Ingrid Law: Right now, I can barely manage ordering take out, I’m so busy.  A cake from scratch would be like climbing Everest.  My daughter’s birthday is at the end of the month.  I’ll be sure to buy her something beautiful and delicious.  For years, a dear friend always made my daughter’s cakes because she had mad cake skills!  I’ll make one now and then from a great gluten-free mix (I have a family member who needs this concession).  Then I’ll have fun decorating it.  But that’s pretty easy.

But a favorite family recipe?  I’ll give you a favorite pie recipe from when I was growing up, since Momma’s all about the pies…

Close to Perfect Chocolate Pie

Crust:
1 1/2 cups Nilla Wafer crumbs
6 Tbsp melted butter

Mix well and pat into pie pan. Chill for one hour (more or less) OR bake it at 375 degrees for 15 minutes.

Filling:
Blend for a minute with a mixer or in a blender:
1 package INSTANT (don’t make the mistake and not get instant) vanilla pudding
1 package INSTANT chocolate pudding
1 1/2 cups milk

Now add one pint (2 cups) of softened vanilla ice cream and mix it into the pudding blend. Pour this into the crumb crust and chill for several hours. Top it with grated chocolate, mini chocolate chips, mini marshmallows, or whatever your heart desires! I tried whipped cream once, but it put it too far over the top!

Maw Books:  Whoa!  Sounds too easy and too delicious!  Now that you have a Newbery Honor under your belt, for your debut novel no less, do you feel the pressure when you sit down to write your second book?

Ingrid Law: Yes. I’m going bald.

But . . . since I probably should elaborate a bit (not about going bald, that’s not true–yet): I didn’t think about awards or accolades at all when I was writing Savvy. I just wrote it because I loved it.  With the next book, I’m not trying to out-do Savvy.  I think Savvy will always be the most special book to me, and maybe to everyone else as well, because it came first.  I’m happy to have the chance to write more about this crazy family tree.  But again, while writing, I’m just trying to tell a good story.  After the success of Savvy, I couldn’t ask for more.  I just hope that kids enjoy reading the new book.

Maw Books:  Tell us a bit about the new book that you are writing now, which is a companion novel to Savvy and when we can expect to see it hit bookstores?

Ingrid Law: My second book will come out next year–in summer, I think.  Savvy will be out in paperback next March.  I wish I could tell you the title of the next book, but it’s still being tossed around.  Anyway, yes, it is a companion to Savvy and is told from the perspective of an all new character–a cousin of the Beaumonts–Aunt Dinah’s oldest son, Ledge.  I felt that Mibs’s story had been well told for now, and didn’t want to simply plunk her down into a new adventure just because the book was popular.  Since the books are just as much about the inner journey as the outer, I was ready to explore a savvy birthday from the point of view of someone with different concerns–someone with different things to learn.  Plus, I liked the idea of switching to the POV of a boy character.  It’s been fun to create a new “savvy” voice.  For those people who may be going “Wait! What about all the characters I love?” do not fear.  There will be some familiar faces along the way… only they will be 8-9 years older!  Rocket will be there, as will Gypsy.  And Samson will–and won’t–be there as well. *Mwaa-ha-ha* More savvy-powered fun on the way…

Maw Books:  Argh!  Now you made me want to read it!  Thanks so much for joining us today!  It was fantastic!

Ingrid Law: Thank you, Natasha!

Ingrid Law’s website and blog.  Many thanks to Kidz Book Buzz for coordinating Ingrid’s blog tour!  Check out what other bloggers are saying about Savvy: A Christian Worldview of Fiction, All About Children’s Books, Becky’s Book Reviews, Booking Mama, Cafe of Dreams, Dolce Bellezza, Fireside Musings, Hyperbole, KidzBookBuzz.com, Looking Glass Reviews,  Never Jam Today, Olive Tree, Our Big Earth, The 160 Acrewoods, Through a Child’s Eyes.

Want your own copy of Savvy?  (And why wouldn’t you?!)  Check back tomorrow for a giveaway of Savvy.  Don’t miss it!  Now you must excuse me.  I have a pie that I must go bake . . .

Maw Books:  If you could only use one word to describe your new novel Longhorns and Outlaws what would it be?

Linda Aksomitis: Western

Maw Books:  I’m always interested in knowing how authors come up with their ideas.  Where did you come up for the premise of Longhorns and Outlaws?

Linda Aksomitis: Natasha, I’d have to say Longhorns and Outlaws is a mesh of ideas. I always wanted to write something full of old west adventure and excitement, so when I was researching a book I wrote about Southern Saskatchewan (Backroad Mapbooks Southern Saskatchewan) and explored Outlaw Station #1 on the Outlaw trail, everything started to come together.

Maw Books:  Tell us about your background in ranching and horses and how that influenced you in writing Longhorns and Outlaws.

Linda Aksomitis: I grew up on a horse ranch, doing all the usual things – riding gymkhana, barrel racing, horse shows, and trail rides. Then I married into a rodeo family, so I continued to collect all kinds of valuable experiences for writing about the old west, from getting chased by cantankerous cows to branding calves in the spring. Without this background I wouldn’t have considered starting a novel like Longhorns and Outlaws, because there are just too many experiences involved to rely on third person research, at least for me!

Maw Books:  Tell us about researching Longhorns and Outlaws.  Did you do all the research first?  Combine writing and research?  How do you decide when and where to set your book and which historical events to include?

Linda Aksomitis: As you’ve guessed, Natasha, there was lots of research involved in writing Longhorns and Outlaws. The first was, of course, years of experience with horses and cattle, and just as important, getting to know others in these Western communities, so I can help my readers relate to how it feels to be part of that segment of society. I first discovered the outlaws I included in the story in 2004, on a couple of research trips through Southern Saskatchewan and Montana, so spent a year finding out all I could about them before beginning the first draft of the novel in 2005. Before I started the second draft in 2006, I took a week long trip through Montana, following the Yellowstone River from Billings to Culbertson, taking pictures, visiting museums, and talking to people. Then I took another few days to come from Culbertson up to Saskatchewan’s Big Muddy, finding tons more information in addition to what I’d gathered the year before. My final draft in 2007 focused on archival print materials, which I drew from to create a lot of Lucas’s past and perfect the voice and writing style I wanted for the story.

Maw Books:  What about young fictional heroes appeals to you as a writer?

Linda Aksomitis: I like stories that are full of adventure, so I find books with young heroes both more fun to write and to read!

Maw Books:  Lucas likes to learn by the book while his brother Gil is more of a hands on learner.  Which type of learner are you?

Linda Aksomitis: Natasha, what an interesting question! I’m really a cross between Lucas and Gil, I guess, since I do learn many things from books, while others I have
to get completely immersed in and do. I think it depends on what I’m doing, which may be part of what Lucas learns as he gradually becomes proficient at riding Ebenezer and riding drag behind the cattle herd.

Maw Books:  What’s your favorite scene from the book?  Or perhaps one which has changed the least since your first came up with it?

Linda Aksomitis: Ah, you’re right and many scenes changed during the various edits of this book! The one that changed the least was how Lucas managed to free Ebenezer from the outlaw corral. I’d say the scene was inspired by the many old westerns with daring rescues and escapes that I watched with my dad as a child, so it came to life in full detail when I started writing.

Maw Books:  Was there any point while writing Longhorns and Outlaws that you struggled writing the book?  And vice-versa a point where the creative juices just flowed?

Linda Aksomitis: I always struggle with the beginning, Natasha. In fact, I workshop it with my writers’ group, then rewrite the first chapter at least 20 or 30 times before it comes to its published shape. It’s challenging to get enough backstory included to set up a scene, but still have the excitement I want to pull the reader into the story. The first chapter is also the place where I need to establish the writing style and voice, so it takes a lot of revision to get the exact feel I want.

Maw Books:  Would you describe you book as being a good match for reluctant readers?

Linda Aksomitis: I think there’s a book for every reader and the ideal reader for Longhorns and Outlaws is one who’s drawn to the old west by interest or experience. My author visits in areas where the children come from horse and rodeo backgrounds have been very positive, since there really aren’t that many westerns for them to read. I also hoped that Longhorns and Outlaws would appeal to readers who’ve had some first hand experience with surviving hurricanes, as many in the coastal areas have. Reluctant readers should be drawn along by Lucas’s many challenges and adventures!

Maw Books:  And what do you want children to come away with after reading one of your books?

Linda Aksomitis: I hope children feel they have had a great old west adventure!

Maw Books:  Tell us about Kidnapped by Outlaws, the sequel to Longhorns and Outlaws and when can we expect to see it available in stores?

Linda Aksomitis: In Kidnapped by Outlaws, Lucas end up in even more trouble with the border outlaws, some of whom appeared briefly in Longhorns and Outlaws. Much of the conflict of the story, however, deals with the need to belong and how gangs have fulfilled that need for many young boys and men over the past few centuries. In terms of when it will appear in stores, not for awhile yet, as I hope to get a draft ready for my publisher to see by this summer.

Maw Books:  How many books do you plan on writing for this series?  And what is it like to write a series?  Do you know where the story is going to go?  Do you preplan all the books?

Linda Aksomitis: Natasha, great question, but I really don’t know the answer. I wrote Longhorns and Outlaws planning a series, which was one reason I took so many
drafts before publication. The continuing thread through all the books will be encounters with outlaws, rather than the cattle, so each book lets me explore a new stage and setting. In the Outlaws sequel, Gil appears briefly in the opening scene and Cousin Henry in the last scene, but otherwise it’s new characters and adventures. Currently, I’m searching for a real outlaw story somewhere in the west that draws my interest for book #3, since I like to base my historical fiction on real events of the past.

Maw Books:  What are some of your favorite experiences so far from book signings, school visits, interviews, and other promotional activities for Longhorns and Outlaws?

Linda Aksomitis: I loved doing the virtual tour with the school in Texas! It was awesome to be able to share my slide show and story with children thousands of miles away, then answer their questions.

Maw Books:  This is a question that I ask every single author that I nterview and that’s to share a recipe with us, particularly if it was in the book and then I try to make it later.  Coming to my mind is pan fried bread and beans.  Is this something that you know how to cook or is there another “western-style” recipe that you could share with us?

Linda Aksomitis: Baked Beans & Ham

Ingredients:
1 pound dried navy beans
6 cups water
1 small ham bone with 1/4 pound ham (I usually use leftovers from a large baked ham, including the juice)
1 teaspoon salt (if you use ham juice no salt is required)
1/2 cup of molasses
1/2 cup ketchup

Preparation:  Cover beans and ham with water in a small roaster, casserole dish, or crockpot. Add all ingredients and stir. Bake at 350 degrees for 3-4 hours, until beans are soft. Check periodically to ensure beans are covered with fluid, adding water as required.  Serves 6 to 8.

Maw Books:  Mmmm.  I can’t wait to try this one!  I couldn’t help but notice that with the exception of one color we use a very similar color scheme on both of our websites!  And here I thought I was so original.    Great minds think alike!  How has having an online presence affected you personally and as a writer?

Linda Aksomitis: I’ve been online since 1995 and owe many of my current books to contacts I made via the Internet. Right now I teach a course called Introduction to
Internet Markets where I help other writers take that all important leap to getting established on the Internet.

Maw Books:  Tell us a little bit about the other books that you have published.

Linda Aksomitis: I have nineteen books out right now, but I’ll just focus on my children’s historical fiction here. Run (Pearson Education), which came out in 2007, was a finalist in the 2008 Saskatchewan Book Awards for YA fiction.  Adeline’s Dream (2005), from the same publisher (coteau Books) as Longhorns  and Outlaws, was part of the very popular From Many Peoples series. All three novels are set in the same decade: Longhorns in 1901, Adeline’s Dream in 1910, and Run in 1911. I love this era because it’s a time just before the changes in technology and society that followed World War I.

Maw Books:  Great!  You say you have held 45 jobs for pay and they are all fascinating!  Which of those jobs has been the most unusual, the most fun, the hardest, and the most rewarding?

Linda Aksomitis: I tell people I’m like a kid in a candy store, and I want to try every flavour. Most unusual job: racing snowmobiles (spent more money than I earned). Most fun: travel writing (travel writers can do pretty much anything in the name of “work”). Hardest: waitress (no kidding!). Most rewarding: teaching (I teach people about books and libraries, so what else could possibly be more rewarding?).

Maw Books:  I’d love to be a travel writer (well, maybe just the traveling part!).  I was flabbergasted with all that you have done.  Between all your amazing vacations, ranching, snowmobiling, writing, teaching, etc. it seems like you’ve just about done it all.  Two questions.  How do you manage your time to accomplish so much and what’s the one thing that you haven’t done that you still want to do?

Linda Aksomitis: I manage my time by prioritizing what I want to do, and then planning a year-ahead calendar to make the pieces fit together as well as possible. I also find that the more productivity I have out of each time investment, the more I can do. For example, by using a great deal of the research I did for the travel guide to Saskatchewan in Longhorns and Outlaws, I not only got to know my subject really well, I also maximized my effort in terms of returns on time invested.

Maw Books:  Describe yourself as a reader. What books influenced and inspired you as a child? As an adult?

Linda Aksomitis: I was a voracious reader as a child and read absolutely everything in sight. My favorite books were ones that stretched my experience and imagination, so I felt like I’d really been there. A Wrinkle in Time was my ultimate favorite as a young reader and now I can’t say enough for Kenneth Oppel’s Airborn series for young readers.

Maw Books:  I haven’t read the Airborn series, I’ll have to look into those.  What’s the last book you read, the book you’re reading now and a book that you’d like to read next?

Linda Aksomitis: The last book I read was Meggido’s Shadow (historical fiction from Arthur Slade, another Saskatchewan author); right now I’m reading Journey to a
Revolution (A personal memoir and history of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956) by Michael Korda; and next I’d like to read Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis.

Maw Books:  I loved Elijah of Buxton!  If you had a free day with no responsibilities and your only charge was to enjoy yourself, what would you do?

Linda Aksomitis: Sit on an open balcony overlooking a beautiful beach seascape in the sun and read a good book.

Maw Books:  Is there anything else you would like to share with the readers of the Maw Books Blog?

Linda Aksomitis: Nothing, Natasha, except to say that I’ve really enjoyed our visit and thank you so much for participating in the virtual tour for Longhorns and Outlaws.

Maw Books:  Thank you Linda!

Visit the Cowboy’s and Outlaw’s website and other stops on Linda’s tour to learn more about Longhorns and Outlaws.  My Longhorns and Outlaws book review.