Q: How did you come up with
your novel The Girl Who Wouldn't Die, and for your main character?
A: Like many writers of
historical fiction, I seemed to have latched onto a certain period. In my case,
it’s World War II and the myriad stories therein. Several of my previous novels
take place during the war, only on the Homefront, here in the USA.
Most writers learn to live on
a shoestring. That means shopping thrift stores and garage sales. At many
garage sales, there is a “free box” at the end of the driveway.
Several years ago, I was
pawing through a “free box” when the orangish color of an old paperback caught
my eye. The Cigarette Sellers of Three Crosses Square came home with me - free,
compelling and perhaps the basis for a novel.
This little-known story about
a handful of kids surviving the Nazi-occupied streets of Warsaw by selling
cigarettes grabbed me from the start.
Coming up with my character,
Arab, took some doing. At first Arab was an adult male, then Arab was a teen
male, then I thought, nope! Arab has to be a girl. A street-wise, dangerous,
capable girl who stands up, stands out, and resists - which, oddly, were themes
that seem to fit today - even though first drafts were done well over 10 years
ago.
And for those 10 years,
Arab’s story was the last thing I thought about at night and the first thing I
thought about in the morning.
Q: What kind of research did
you need to do to write the book, and did you learn anything that especially
surprised you?
Q: What do you hope readers
take away from the novel?
A: Outside of enjoying a good
story, a writer always wants readers to see things from a different point of
view - what was it like? How do historical events relate to things happening
today? How would they react?
And with this book
specifically, what would YOU do? How far would you go to save a child? I
wrestled with that during at least seven major revisions of this book.
Q: Your previous novel, Incommunicado,
is also set during World War II. What inspired that book?
A: Ha! I love Incommunicado!
(Pour a drink and sit down.) Years ago - I would say at least 30 - my husband
and I were in a small town on the Oregon coast, having a drink in a cheesy bar.
There was a couple, very drunk and very much in love, dancing to no music. His
face, his smile, his moves - who was this guy? Old beach bum.
Which begged the question -
what is it about a small beach town that seems to attract such types? And that
was the beginning of the book - only, just like with The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die,
it took years and several incarnations of the story before I got it right.
Finally, it occurs to me -
who best to tell the story of a war within a war - Japanese internment - than
an innocent? The drunk dancer of decades ago became Jewels, 12-year-old girl
trying to save her best friend, a Japanese-American, from the FBI and
internment authorities.
Q: What are you working on
now?
A: I have a new middle grade
novel coming out October 2018 from HarperCollins. After working for so long
(and so hard) on my last two releases about wartime, I wanted to write
something completely different and, well, more funner!
Again, going back several
years - An earlier novel, The Likes of Me, was about a half Asian, half
Caucasian, all albino girl becoming a sideshow sensation. Her stepmother, Babe,
was a giant who had a rough childhood being exploited.
For all these years, I have
wanted to return to Babe’s story and see what life as a girl giant might have
been like. So, right now I’m meeting editing deadlines for Professor Renoir’s
Collection of Oddities, Curiosities, and Delights. The world’s largest and the
world’s smallest girls run away from a cheap carnival, taking with them three
aging animals, destined for the taxidermist.
Q: Anything else we should
know?
A: Since I write primarily
historical fiction, I have been cultivating Slangmaster, my interactive
database of slang and expressions. Each entry has the definition, the date it
came into the written lexicon, a viable source of that information (over 220
sources), the type of slang it is (over 200 categories) and a sample sentence.
I am just this week closing
in on 40,000 entries. I need to get a life. Therefore, I play a wicked game of
handball three times a week.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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