TBR: Hollows by Tommy Dean

 

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe.

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

In these 45 flash fictions, you’ll find the last two people on Earth, wondering if love or ramen will keep them both alive; two brothers racing the clock of the millennium, as they consider their fear for the future; a son trying to convince his father to abandon a decrepit house while the father demands to die among his things. These stories thrum with the electricity of wonder, challenged by the open wounds of love for parents, of desire to strike out in a world without reason or guidepost, threatening to harden players into their desperate natures. Clear and urgent prose unites reader and character as they travel down dark and shaky paths toward the fading light.

 

Which story did you most enjoy writing? Why? And, which story gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

“You’ve Stopped” is one of those miraculous stories that I was able to write in thirty minutes and only changed the last line through the advice of Kim Magowan, who published it first in Pithead Chapel. The voice of that first line just invited me directly into this hot spot moment for these characters. Not sure this has happened so perfectly again.

 

“Three Boys in the Woods” was one of the hardest stories to write because I feel like I was trying to write a novel in flash, and that this story isn’t quite done yet in that there’s so more I’d love to explore about these characters and the events that lead up to the hot spot of this story!

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

One of the hardest things about trying to publish a story collection, especially a collection of flash is that you never know when it's done. There’s this desire and a normality of publishing a chapbook or multiple chapbooks for flash. But I wanted something that felt more like a full collection. Ten years of indecision, constantly putting stories in and taking stories out, all to create the best cohesive collection. Then the process of publishing a collection or chapbook with a small press usually involves submitting to contests, which not only usually have fees to keep the publisher going, but also long waits. Publishing is often a game of numbers and attrition even when the writing is really good.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

"When you reach a place where you feel blocked, lower your standards and keep on going. There is no possible way to do permanent damage to a piece of writing. You cannot ruin it. You can only make it a little better a little at a time.” ― Richard Bausch

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

I was surprised by the connections in the stories, how they feel like they belong together even though I wrote them over a ten-year period. How the themes repeated much conscious thought or planning on my part. I rarely thought about specific themes or characters, but my subconscious brought me back to these obsessions.

 

Who is your ideal reader?

 

My ideal reader is someone who loves to be immersed in small moments in characters lives, who likes to make inferences and judgments about the characters based on the character’s actions. I love reader’s who want to feel as if they are in the world with the character, that they can feel themselves being empathetic toward the character.

  ****

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS WRITER: www.tommydeanwriter.com

 

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://altcurrent.square.site/product/hollows-flash-stories-by-tommy-dean/43?cp=true&sa=true&sbp=false&q=false

 

 

READ A STORY FROM THIS BOOK, “Candy: A Teenage Gospel”: https://lascauxreview.com/candy-teenage-gospel/

 

 

 

TBR: The Other Ones by Dave Housley

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe.

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

The Other Ones is a book about a group of people whose fellow office workers win the lottery. The novel follows the people who did not win (aka, the other ones), and the ways they react to this rather cataclysmic event, for better or (mostly) worse, over the course of a year.

 Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why? And, which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

There’s a character named after Peter Gibbons, who is the main character in the movie Office Space, and he mostly sits at his desk and works on his fantasy football team or thinks about getting another cup of coffee or what he’s going to eat for lunch. There’s a section where he’s just running through all the possible lunch options, and I think that’s my favorite part of the entire book, and really the culmination of thirty years of me working in offices. He’s just entirely a creature of the office. We never see him in any other situation and it’s only hinted at that he has a life outside of the building. I wrote him in after an agent gave me the feedback that there was too much office stuff in my office novel, so I leaned in and wrote a character who only exists in the office, at his desk and the break room. This is, also, one way to not get an agent. I love Gibbons, though, and I think he’s hopeful and wistful and I’m really rooting for him. He recites a poem by my friend, the great writer Meghan Phillips, called "Yellowshirt Elegy," which is from the point of view of one of the worker bee “yellowshirts” in Star Trek, part of which goes ”the heart of the ship, the heart of the ship, you are working in the heart of the ship.” In many ways I think Gibbons is the heart of the Other Ones ship.

 

 Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

Have you heard about the global pandemic? Does everybody whose books have been published in the past eighteen months say that? So that’s actually the second part. I signed a contract with Alan Squire Publishing in early March 2020, just before the last in person AWP, and then the pandemic went into full boil and two weeks after signing a contract for my office novel none of us were working in offices anymore.

 

Prior to that it was kind of a long road. I’ve written a lot of strange books, and I try to be honest with myself about the potential marketability of, say, a book about two old men sitting outside an abandoned factory waiting for their jobs to come back (my novella Howard and Charles at the Factory) or a book of short stories that all end in a massive cleansing fire (my collection Massive Cleansing Fire). But I thought this book was marketable. I thought it was an agent book. I remember talking to you about it, which must have been AWP 2019, and feeling like this is the one book I’ve written where there actually is an elevator pitch and it doesn’t sound ridiculous, where I don’t feel kind of like an asshole telling somebody what this book is about. So I did the agent query thing with it, and I felt somewhat confident that I might at least get some interest, and it just…didn’t happen. A few people read it and passed, for various reasons. I kept on querying and kept on getting rejected or just ignored – the agent thing is brutal, even for somebody like me who is pretty clear-eyed, I think, about the process, and has developed a thick skin about being rejected. You learn to live with the call (submission) and response (rejection), but the agent thing is more like call (query) and…just nothing. At a certain point this had gone on for months and I realized I was just blind-querying and it could go on forever – literally, I could still be doing it right now, with maybe a thousand rejections or non-responses behind me. So I turned to small/medium presses that had open calls for submission, and Alan Squire happened to be open. It had been rejected by maybe ten or so other presses by that time, and I was starting to get my head around the idea that this might just never connect with a publisher when they accepted it. They’ve been an absolute joy to work with, just really great, and they’re pushing very hard to get the word out about it, so in the long run I’m very happy with how it all played out, but like I said, it was a long and very unsure road.  

  

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

I’m a big butt in the chair person. I think its just work. For me writing is like exercise – you just have to do it, there’s nothing mystical about it, just elbow grease. I think my own advice to people is that you don’t need a lot of time, you don’t need a big desk in a summer house by a lake and days stretched out in front of you to write. I write a lot on lunch breaks. I go to breakfast on the weekends and write. Last night I went and had a Manhattan by myself at a bar and wrote a thousand words. Sit down and write. The thing about driving at night is true. You can only see in front of you but you can get all the way home.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

A few things. The ending kind of came together in a way that I never would have predicted. I don’t want to spoil it but a few of the pieces that I put on the table just kind of fell into place and clicked together in a way that my conscious brain never thought about at all. I don’t outline anything, and I don’t think too much about how the pieces will fit together as I’m writing a first draft, at least, which is not a terribly efficient way to write, but the only way I know how. And I remember sitting in the coffee shop writing the ending and thinking holy shit this is actually just kind of falling into place, the ghost and the guns and the gala.

 

That’s a teaser. That’s some marketing right there.

 

It was really interesting editing this book, because like I said I wrote most of it over lunch breaks while I was working in my office, and then I edited it while we were all working from home. I imagined that I was kind of skewering the office setting in general, and there’s definitely a lot of dark humor in the book, a lot of things that have annoyed me over thirty years of working in offices are in here. But the surprising thing to me was that there’s a lot of heart in there, too. There’s one character in particular who really leans into her work, and she, along with Gibbons, who sits at his desk and thinks about lunch, really became the heart of the book in a way that I didn’t see when I was writing it.

 

What’s something about your book that you want readers to know?

 

I want readers to know that this book is very much a direct result of my very real fear that I would forget to play the office lottery one week and would walk into the building to hear the sounds of celebration. This is the first scene in the book. When we were working in the office – I’m the Director of Web Strategy for Penn State Outreach and Online Education – I always played the lottery with our office group and it was 100% about that fear of missing out and the question of what would it be like if these other people actually won the lottery. It’s almost like a rapture-like event. How could you keep on going if you knew that you could have been raptured if you had only just remembered to throw a few dollars into the pot? That was always a fear of mine and it’s what the people in this book are wrestling not so gracefully with.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book?

 

Mostly donuts. Offices are big on donuts. One of the things I miss about the office is the shared foods that you probably wouldn’t care about at all if they weren’t sitting there in the break room and free. Donuts and bagels and cookies.

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.housleydave.com

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS PUBLISHER: https://alansquirepublishing.com/

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK: https://bookshop.org/books/the-other-ones-9781942892304/9781942892304

 

READ AN EXCERPT, “Did You Play?”: https://therumpus.net/2021/10/rumpus-exclusive-did-you-play/

 

 

Best Books (I Read in) 2021

 

Best Books (I Read in) 2021

 

Another year of good reading, and after I drafted this write-up, I noticed how often I used the words “in conversation with,” which is one of my favorite ways to think about books and about art in general, as a wide-ranging, open-to-all, free-flowing, connect-the-dots, ongoing conversation in my own head. So here’s a randomly-ordered list of favorite books I read in 2021, culled down in a cold, agonized sweat to 10(ish).

 

I long ago determined that I won’t include a book by a friend in my top 10, so I’ve moved those books to a separate list (which I stress over nevertheless because I’m not always timely about reading a friend’s book in the same year in which it was published).

 

Finally, I should note that in the spirit of honesty, here’s the place where I can mention that, ahem, another book that I liked this year is my OWN book, published in 2021 by Unnamed Press—ADMIT THIS TO NO ONE, linked(ish) stories about “official” DC—so it seems silly not to mention it or to point out that it got some very good reviews. You can buy it through the press, at your fave indie bookstore, or Amazon.

 

Anyway: you’re here for the books, not shameless self-promotion. Do I mean “best,” or do I mean “favorite,” or do I mean “book that was exactly right for the moment I read it”? Maybe I simply mean that each of these is a “book I literally and truly recommended to others at least once over the year.”

 

~~~

 

BEST BOOKS

 

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride [novel]: I watched (and loved) the Showtime limited series and had to immediately read the book, which I also loved. John Brown is a fascinating, complicated pre-Civil War character, and as with many larger-than-life people, he’s best viewed through the POV of someone else, and here it’s a young Black boy called Onion (mistaken by the whites for a girl) who travels with John Brown’s militia. This voice-y book is funny and provocative, and here’s one time where I can’t quite say the book is significantly better than the show because the show is so excellent. Honestly, try to carve out time for both.

 

Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague by Maggie O’Farrell [novel]: Hmmm…do you think that “A Novel of the Plague” might have been added by the marketing department?? Nevertheless, this book is an immersive look at 16^th century England, when a writer we know to be Shakespeare (he’s never named) is working on plays as his wife tries to keep the family surviving and thriving. Then…a great loss. The writing is gorgeous, and I’m a sucker for a book where art and grief are intertwined. One favorite section is the set-piece that follows the path of a plague-carrying flea, shows how a global pandemic winds its way toward intimate (a lesson we’re now all too familiar with).

 

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker [nonfiction]: What a big and terrible and terribly sad and rippling story about a single family in the 50s and 60s in which 6 brothers out of 12 kids are afflicted with schizophrenia. Despite the vastness of these events, the book is perfectly organized and structured; the family’s bravery as they sift through the secrets and family myths will break your heart; and you’ll emerge with a deeper ache over the toll of mental illness. One bright spot is the usefulness of this family as a case study in medical research.

 

*Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Raddon Keefe [nonfiction]: I knew only the broad parameters of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, and this book was riveting. Again, perfectly structured and organized, especially given a massive cast of “characters” and long-time span and, well, a big, huge history of several cultures and countless events. If you’re someone who thinks you only like novels, this book reads like one. Note: There are many lenses through which to view The Troubles, and this book focuses on the IRA…not that this is a rosy view, not in the least. I remembered reading an early, chilling piece of this book in The New Yorker that never left my mind. *One of my most-recommended books this year.

 

Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football by Nicholas Dawidoff [nonfiction]: Football?! Remember, I’m working on a novel about a football player, so reading this book started as research and ended up as pure pleasure. Journalist Dawidoff embeds himself with the coaching staff of New York Jets during the 2011 season, back when the Jets were enjoying glorious times with Rex Reed as head coach. Full access means fascinating observations and insight into an extraordinarily stressful life, where everybody gets a collection of elite, talented athletes to work with, yet only one coach emerges on the top of the heap come Super Bowl Sunday.

 

11/22/63 by Stephen King [novel]: I’m sure Mr. King will be as surprised as I am to find his book on my annual list. My husband and I watched the Hulu production of this book, which was enjoyable, and my husband—who cares deeply about all things JFK—kept telling me that I would really like the book. “Yet again, honey, (spoken in sing-song), you’re right, and I’m wrong.” This time travel book asks if one man might stop the assassination of JFK. How, and at what cost? The plot was compelling, smart, and well-built as I’d expect from King, but I actually responded more to the emotional storyline of the characters, and their depth and complexity. A clear case of the book being superior to the show. (Note: this one’s a doorstop at 849 pages!! Feel free to award yourself credit for reading 3 books as I did!)

 

*Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny [novel]. Cross Anne Tyler with Laurie Colwin and set this smart rom-com in small-town Michigan, and you get this charming, funny, joyful book that’s elegantly written without being show-offy. As I said when I recommended this novel at least 1000x, do NOT pay attention to the jacket copy, which is dopey. Just read this book if you want to feel happy! *One of my most-recommended books this year.

 

A Faithful but Melancholy Account of Several Barbarities Lately Committed by Jason Brown [short story collection]: These multi-generational stories are linked, though not so much so that one really needs the (admittedly scary-long) family tree in the front of the book; I suggest no more than a quick glance. Here’s a “good” but bedraggled, OLD—like, Puritan-old—family in Maine, trying to crawl out from under that historical burden of being “special” in that “shining city on a hill” Puritan founding fathers way. If you like reading work set in Maine, the author captures that rugged beauty and seems to know and understand the landscape and the culture. Sparse, elegant, cutting: every moment of triumph comes at great cost.

 

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw [short story collection]: Often there’s a reason that “everyone” is reading a book all year, and the reason everyone has been reading this book about Black women is that it’s INCREDIBLE. These stories aren’t linked per se, but they’re in important conversation with each other, adding layers to the collection as a whole. It’s a smart and deeply-rooted world; a super-voice-y book; and the author creates ordinary-yet-extraordinary characters living novel-deep lives in 20-30 pages.   

 

**Hell of a Book by Jason Mott [nove]: Is it “in conversation with” or a straight line from Ellison’s Invisible Man through Toni Morrison’s Beloved to the here and now, with maybe a nod to Huck Finn, if Jim had been allowed to take charge of his own story? There’s definitely plenty of humor here in this sharp and stylish story about a best-selling Black author traveling on book tour, reckoning with the life he’s lived and the life Blacks, especially Black men, live in America—but mostly there are worlds of pain and an insatiable ache. **I haven’t recommended this book much—only because I just finished it. (In fact, I held up writing this list, certain after 5 pages that this book would end up on it.)

 

~~~

 

A HALF-BOOK I’M ADDING TO THIS LIST BECAUSE I’M IN CHARGE AND I CAN

 

The first 3 stories of The Pugilist at Rest by Thom Jones [short stories]: Blistering stories about Vietnam; the kind of writing that makes you want to grab someone and say, “Read this right now.” I enjoyed many of the other stories, especially the voice, though too many felt dated to my contemporary eye and out of synch with modern times.

 

~~~

 

BOOKS I LOVED BY WRITER FRIENDS/FRIENDS-ISH

 

Woman Drinking Absinthe by Katherine E. Young [poetry]: These poems about an affair are dark and disturbing, mesmerizing and memorable, in exactly the right ways.

 

This Is What America Looks Like: Poetry and Fiction from DC, Maryland, and Virginia edited by Caroline Bock and Jona Colson [anthology]: Okay, I admit that there’s an excerpt from ADMIT THIS TO NO ONE in here, but setting that aside, this book captures the mood of the moment, in all its nuances.

 

The Escape Artist by Helen Fremont [memoir]: An honest and searing account of being disowned by one’s family following the publication of another memoir. So much emotional work for the writer to dive so deeply and cleanly into a tangled family and these secrets; I’m in awe.

 

Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother’s Journey by Karen Salyer McElmurray [memoir]: Lyrical and lingering, infused with loss and longing. This book about giving up a child for adoption burrows into your soul.

 

I Grape, Or the Case for Fiction by Brock Clark [craft book]: I’m a fan of books about the craft of writing, and these essays made me ponder and (re)consider my own work. Also, these essays made me laugh out loud.

 

Made to Explode by Sandra Beasley [poetry]: Lots of places and people familiar to citizens of DC and Virginia, and a poet asking lots of uncomfortable (but necessary) questions of herself and making uncomfortable (but necessary) observations about race and white privilege in these superb poems.

 

All These Hungers by Rick Mulkey [poetry]: Elegantly structured and thoughtfully organized, this collection of smart and dynamic poems speaks to hunger—for food, of the flesh—and every inexpressible hunger we all feel.

 

The Hive by Melissa Scholes Young [novel]: Four sisters in blue collar Missouri have financial worries and emotional woes as the family pest control business is threatened and their mother is retreating into survivalist prepping. An empathetic exploration of life outside the coastal siloes.

 

What Happened Was by Anna Leahy [poetry chapbook]: A stellar example of the small but mighty form of the chapbook; poems about chilling and complicated interactions women have with men, inspired by the #metoo movement.

 

Children of Dust by Marlin Barton [novel]: Set in the late 1800s in Alabama, a white mother may have murdered two of her own babies fathered by her hateful husband. Or perhaps her husband’s mixed-race mistress did the deed? Or…? Not a whodunnit, but a deep and affecting exploration of the interwoven complications of race and gender during Reconstruction, of how an uncomfortably shared past informs the present—still.

 

~~~

 

BLURBED BOOKS

 

This may be cheating?? I wrote blurbs for 2 books that will be published in 2022, and I hope you’ll keep an eye out for them:

 

The Other Ones by Dave Housley [novel; January 2022]: What happens when some of the people in the office are in the winning lottery pool but others aren’t? I’m a fan of books set in the workplace, and I love ensembles of characters. This crisp, funny book contains lots of heart.

 

You Have Reached Your Destination by Louise Marburg [short stories; fall 2022]: New Yorky stories with pitch-perfect dialogue that reminded me of Grace Paley and a forlorn ache that’s in conversation with an Edward Hopper painting.

 

TBR: Admit This to No One by Leslie Pietrzyk

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe.

 

Editor’s note: Why, yes, I’m interviewing myself for my own blog interview series! Seems about right when I’m the all-powerful editor here and the author of a book of short stories that examines power….

 

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

ADMIT THIS TO NO ONE is a collection of linked-ish short stories set in official DC. Recurring characters include (an imagined) Speaker of the House, his two daughters from various marriages, and Mary-Grace, his personal fixer. Family estrangement, race, gender, abortion…nothing is off the table as these characters grapple with the ways the pursuit of power ripples and informs personal, work, and societal relationships. Can anyone emerge unscathed?

 

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why? And which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

I love all my characters, especially because they’re each uniquely complicated and uniquely flawed and maybe a tiny bit annoying from time to time, just like the people I know in real life, just like I am in real life. Maybe my favorite to work with was Mary-Grace, the all-powerful, all-knowing fixer in the Speaker’s life (also known as the She-Beast). It was fun to contemplate someone who is so skilled yet content to remain in the shadows. She showed me the value of hiding one’s power and reminded me that yielding is sometimes the more powerful move.

 

The Speaker was tough to write. I didn’t want him to be a cardboard villain, and I didn’t want him to be what readers think of when they think “politician.” Nor did I want him to be some sort of idealistic hero. All that, and then I couldn’t find my way into first person POV with him, which meant I had to push myself to use third person, the POV that I find the most challenging to write.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

I don’t exactly have highs and lows with this book, but I do have a journey. First, some of these stories come from a failed political novel that I started working on in early 2015. I could never quite get to a plot, but I wasn’t overly worried because I loved the characters and the milieu. Then—you guessed it—Trump was elected, and in the spring of 2016, I realized that I didn’t want to be immersed in fictional politics (and I wondered whether readers would want to be either). What a relief when I decided to shelve this book, though I salvaged parts for short stories, one of which won a Pushcart Prize, giving me a boost of confidence.

 

Fast forward to late 2019.

 

I thought I had a book of random short stories—some published, some not; some from the failed political novel, some not—that I could enter in contests. Contractually, I was required to show the next book to my SILVER GIRL editor at Unnamed Press…who saw that the stories were linked more closely than I’d envisioned. I was intrigued. We were at the precipice of hammering out a contract and talking more about a vision when—you guessed it—the pandemic struck. As you’ll recall, that wasn’t really the time to be putting together book deals! Needing to surround myself with comfort, I decided to pull together some half-written pieces about some of these characters and themes and finish them, writing toward an evolving vision of how this book could coalesce into something more than a book of “random short stories.” In the fall of 2020, I reconvened with my editor, who was ready to talk about a future and ready to read what I’d done over the past months. She was excited about the direction the book was taking, and in the fall and winter of 2020-1, I wrote more stories, filling in the gaps…my book emerging as the vaccines were inching closer to general availability. Feels weird to say this, but the isolation and slowed-down life of the pandemic definitely helped me find the focus for this book, and working on this book definitely helped me cope with the pandemic.

 

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

You’ll see it below when I play interviewER, so instead I’ll offer one of the most concrete, useful bits of writing advice I’ve picked up along the way, about writing dialogue: when revising, always try taking off the first few words of each line of dialogue you’ve drafted. The result usually is tighter and truer to life.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

The last story, “Every Man in History,” surprised me with its hopeful note. I had in mind a whole involved plot with a bunch of difficult twists and turns and hidden (likely pompous) commentary about various social ills, but in the end, Madison, one of the Speaker’s daughters, demanded a better outcome for herself and, really, for the reader and the collection. I’ve never in my life been a writer to say that characters “take over,” but in this case I remember thinking as I typed out the draft of a scene, “Wait, what? This is the ending? Could this really be the ending? OMG…this IS the ending.” I do feel that Madison found this surprising yet inevitable perfect ending for me (though she was nowhere to be found when I spent an entire afternoon wrestling with the last paragraphs, eventually adding two words that finally clicked everything into place).

 

How do you approach revision?

 

I love revision, which is good, since this book required a lot of it—yes, even though many of these stories had been published already. I had to revise stories that I considered finished, needing them to capture the tone of the overall book and link in with the vibe of people working in “official DC”; it was hard re-entering a world I thought was complete. I also had to revise because various technologies and/or events and/or references were outdated or because some new and horrible thing happened that I wanted to acknowledge or because wily teenagers and their interests shift by the minute, affecting the POV and voice of a story. The structure of “Kill the Fatted Calf” almost killed me, trying to organize a non-linear, impressionistic story that contained the core of Lexie’s relationship with her father. Most of all, and most importantly, I did a lot of revising and hard thinking and listening because I wanted to get right the stories that involve race.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

This is my absolute favorite question on this list that I myself created, so it’s going to haunt me that though there’s plenty o’ food in this book—tuna tartare, overcooked fish, crab cakes, arena popcorn, an orange, a secret to frying chicken (that I’ve not yet tested), bagels, doughnuts, beef jerky, Talenti, shrimp, lobster at The Palm, Triscuits, martinis—there are no truly notable meals. In my real life world, good food is the highest currency, but these characters have a different agenda. Everyone here is on the run with no time to focus on cooking, which I hadn’t noticed until now. I suppose that’s how it’s going to be in a book that’s exploring power dynamics. In contrast, here’s a very humble recipe that I must admit comes from a surprising source:

 

https://www.lesliepietrzyk.com/books/admit-this-to-no-one/

(scroll to the bottom to learn how to make “Boys Town Chicken”)

 

*****

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.lesliepietrzyk.com

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS PUBLISHER: https://www.lesliepietrzyk.com/books/admit-this-to-no-one/

 

BUY THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: I’m not going to get worked up if you prefer the ease of ordering via Amazon, but if you’d like to support independent bookstores, try your favorite or Bookshop— https://bookshop.org/books/admit-this-to-no-one-collected-stories/9781951213411 -- or if you’d like to support small presses, order from Unnamed Press here— https://www.unnamedpress.com/books/book?title=Admit+This+to+No+One

 

READ A STORY, “Hat Trick”: https://www.storymagazine.org/hat-trick/

 

 

 

 

 

TBR: Thoughts and Prayers by Lee Anne Post

 TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe.

 

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

When Lily Jeong—smothered by her parents and ignored by classmates—unwittingly aids her secret boyfriend in a school shooting, she struggles to hide her complicity from investigators. Forced to face the devastated survivors, she hides in plain sight as their grief turns to vengeance.

 

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why? And, which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

Who wouldn’t enjoy Caitlyn Moran, the girl with a pink stripe in her hair whose dreams of becoming a fashion designer are cut short by the shooting? Her irrepressible spirit won’t be denied.

 

Joe Hernandez, the first police officer to enter the school his daughter also attends, gave us a little trouble trying to find the balance between his backstory and his current choices. A widower, Joe’s motivation springs not only from his love for his daughter but also from his continuing sense of insult from childhood traumas.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

Four co-authors (writing under the pen name Lee Anne Post) started this project on a lark in January 2018. A month later, the Parkland school shooting occurred, and we became highly motivated to complete the novel and see it published. The story is told from multiple points of view, with each of us drafting two characters. The most challenging part of co-authoring was agreeing on edits without killing each other!

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

“You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you’re working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success – but only if you persist.” --Isaac Asimov

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

The gun show loophole. It astonished us and our publisher that it is legal for unlicensed individuals to sell guns to unlicensed buyers without any limitations or record keeping in 33 states in the US.

 

On the writing side, although we didn't set out to upend any genre conventions, magical realism crept into the story.

 

 

What’s something about your book that you want readers to know?

 

Because we wanted to focus on the survivors, both students and adults, the shooter gets the least attention, only two short scenes toward the end of the book. The setting of the story is a typical American suburb, but we did not specify the city/state where the action takes place, because mass shootings can and do occur anywhere.

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK: www.thenovelthoughtsandprayers.com

https://www.sunburypress.com/collections/all-books/products/thoughts-prayers

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK:

https://www.amazon.com/Thoughts-Prayers-Lee-Anne-Post/dp/1620064979/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1626726138&sr=1-1

 

 

READ AN EXCERPT, Chapter 1:

www.thenovelthoughtsandprayers.com/book

 

 

TBR: Until We Fall by Nicole Zelniker

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

Isla Logan's history teacher Morgan Young is arrested for conspiring to take down the dictator that rules over the United States. The arrest sets off a chain of events that will lead to Isla, her fellow refugees from the U.S., and their allies partaking in the fight of – and for – their lives.

 

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why? And, which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

This is such a hard question. Different characters were fun to write at different points, and for different reasons. Zoe’s voice was awesome to develop, while I really enjoyed writing Isla’s story arc. As for the character that gave me the most trouble, that was probably Adam, for reasons you’ll have to read the book to find out!

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

The high was working with Jaded Ibis Press. They were so thorough in the editing process (I’m not ashamed to say the initial manuscript needed a lot of editing, as first drafts almost always do) and I love working with a press that has the same values as I do. The lowest low for this book was the same as the last few books I’ve worked on – imposter syndrome. I have a hard time seeing my own writing as worthy of publication, even if I think it’s a story worth telling. I think a lot of writers, especially young writers, feel this way.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

“Write what you know.” A lot of people I’ve spoken to dislike this advice because they interpret it as only being able to write characters exactly like them in situations they’ve experienced in real life. But I interpret it as, write stories based on what you care about. In this case, I’ve never been in a situation like the characters in Until We Fall experience, but I find American political history fascinating and pulled from my knowledge of that.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

My characters sometimes get away from me, so it’s always surprising how the story changes as I write. I’ll be writing a character one way, and then it’s almost like they’ll tell me they need to be written another way, if that makes sense. They’re never stagnant in my head.

 

What’s something about your book that you want readers to know?

 

It’s important to me that these characters be diverse, that they come from marginalized communities, and that they’re stronger for it. So often I see cis white people from privileged backgrounds star as the protagonists of a dystopia, like in Divergent or The Fifth Wave. If a totalitarian government were to take over, the first people targeted wouldn’t be the Tris Priors of the world, even if she was divergent.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? 

 

N/A. Sorry, foodies!

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://nicolezelniker.com/

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/until-we-fall-nicole-zelniker/1139740533?ean=9781938841996

 

WATCH A TIKTOK VIDEO ABOUT THIS BOOK:  https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdTJA8X3/

 

 

TBR: They Always Wave Goodbye by Katie Sherman

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe.

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

They Always Wave Goodbye is about women: the choices they make, the children they shape, and the lies they tell in order to survive. These award-winning stories are set in the heart of Appalachia.

 

Which story did you most enjoy writing? Why? And, which story gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

None of them were easy to write. But I would say “The Easiest Thing” was the quickest story I wrote within the collection. It’s about a mother who has a momentary compulsion to leave her family. I think you would be hard pressed — especially given the recent pandemic — to find a mother who hasn’t had one of those days where they thought, I could chuck it all and move to Mexico. “The Easiest Thing” perfectly encapsulated that rollercoaster of emotions. I loved the idea of looking at a myriad of small frustrations rather than one explosion of anger. So, to me it was the story and the character I most identified with.

 

“Love, Mom” was incredibly difficult to edit. This story is told in letter form with advice for future generations. There are so many things within the story directly from my life. The scene where the daughter has seizures was especially difficult as it’s something my daughter, Addie, struggled with. As I was putting together the collection, it was suggested that I dig a little deeper on this story and it didn’t feel as if that was possible. Thankfully, it was. I am truly proud of the end result. So proud, in fact, it was the story I read for my graduate thesis. (Editor’s note: link below.)

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

I like to say this book was always a bridesmaid and never the bride. It got flagged for a number of contests and named as a finalist in open reads but wasn’t ever picked up. I sent it to agents who would write back saying they loved the voice but couldn’t sell a story collection. After about two years, I was going to hang up my hat and call it. Then, I saw six different calls for presses looking for quality collections. I thought, why not? I submitted to all of them and was thrilled to hear from Finishing Line Press.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

I love Anne Lamont’s essay, “Shitty First Drafts.”  I sometimes need a reminder that no one writes a masterpiece on the first go round. My fear of creating something awful can often be paralyzing and keep me from writing at all. I read that essay once a month as a reminder that writers write, even when it’s bad.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

How personal I allowed it to get. Many of the characters had a fragment of myself within them.

 

What’s something about your book that you want readers to know?

 

Parenthood is complicated and this project started as a way to vocalize taboos, the things women never felt comfortable saying aloud. You’ll find stories about work/life balance and societal expectations. Hopefully, I have created characters women relate to and understand.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

In one story, a father and daughter are trying to recreate their matriarch’s fried cauliflower. Luckily, that is a recipe my family would never lose.

 

Ingredients:

1 head cauliflower

(12) Large Eggs

2 ½ cups Parmesan Cheese

½ cup Cracker Meal

1 ½ Tbsp. Parsley

Vegetable Oil

 

Cut the leaves and stalk off the cauliflower. Separate the florets into medium sized pieces. Bring a large pot of water to rapid boil. Add the salt and florets. Cook for 5 minutes. The cauliflower should be fork tender but still firm. Beat eggs well. Then beat in cheese, cracker meal, and parsley. Dip each floret into the batter. Heat vegetable oil (about a quart) or deep enough to cover half of the florets. Drop florets into the oil. Fry at 365 degrees until golden brown.

 

*****

 

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS AUTHOR:  www.katiepsherman.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/they-always-wave-goodbye-by-katie-sherman/

 

 

READ A STORY, “Love, Mom,”:  https://literarymama.com/articles/departments/2018/11/love-mom?fbclid=IwAR35BNZByVI19xtr8JHeXYzAn4GeUQmirDXMDCgBQA_SQ7chIA07FCkaKPE