Q&A with Anne Broyles

  

Photo by Amy Ijams

 

Anne Broyles is the author of the new young adult novel Words Spoken True, which is based on the story of a teenage Cherokee girl, Jane Bushyhead, who was part of the Trail of Tears. Broyles's other books include I'm Gonna Paint. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Words Spoken True, and how did you first learn about Jane Bushyhead?

 

A: I grew up proud of my Cherokee heritage and thought it was very cool to have my blue Cherokee Nation citizen card. When I began to write books for children and young adults I wanted to share the story of the Cherokee Trail of Tears with contemporary readers.

 

Sometime in the early 1990s I traveled to our tribal headquarters in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, to search for a real-life young person who survived the 1838 forced march. An encouraging librarian at Oklahoma’s Northeastern State University’s Special Collections brought me piles of books and files. I sat at a long table and spent hours leafing through pages in search of my protagonist.

 

When I discovered Jane Bushyhead’s March 1838 letter to a White school friend I knew she was the right lens into my story. Jane was almost 14 years old, extremely articulate and conscious of the events that were leading to the Indian Removal.

 

She wrote things like “If we Cherokees are to be driven to the west by the cruel hand of oppression to seek a new home in the west” and “It is thus all our rights are invaded.” I could feel her pain at being separated from her friend and the dread that she might be forced to leave her homeland. Jane was real to me right from the start.

 

Q: What did you see as the right balance between history and fiction as you wrote the novel?

 

A: It's important to share important historical information without giving "info dumps" that take away from the fictional narrative. I tried to see everything from Jane Bushyhead's point of view, to know only what she knew, overheard or discovered.

 

Because her father, Rev. Jesse Bushyhead, was a well-known tribal leader and Baptist preacher, I had numerous primary and secondary sources that informed me about his experience before, during and after the Trail of Tears. All I had of Jane was the one letter and the fact of her death six years after reaching the end of the Trail.

 

With her great-great-grandson's permission and support I created a fictional representation of who Jane might have been. In my back matter I am clear about who and what is historical fact and what is imagined.

 

Historical fiction can be tricky because even with diligent research there are bound to be mistakes. Primary and secondary sources often don't agree and the author must choose what version of history makes the most sense.

 

Even when there is an immense amount of material available about an historical person or event, the author must use their imagination to portray that person or event in details that make sense and feel real to contemporary readers. That's always a challenge.

 

I relied on numerous readers who are knowledgeable about the Cherokee Trail of Tears and took their comments seriously as I revised. I strived to find the right balance of history and fiction. And it is always my desire that readers of historical fiction will be inspired to search out more of the real history of whatever era they have discovered in novel form.

 

Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: In Words Spoken True Jane Bushyhead wants to be a teacher and is devastated when she has to leave school and return home.

 

While incarcerated in a prison camp with thousands of other Cherokees she begins to teach younger children about Cherokee history and culture through storytelling, but when she begins the 900-mile walk across the country in one of the coldest winters of that century no one has time or energy for anything but survival.

 

By keeping a diary Jane sees herself as the keeper of stories about the people on the Trail with her, both those who survive and those who die. When she jumps into a river to save a drowning child she loses the diary.

 

Here's some of the dialogue between Jane and her father after the loss of her diary:

 

“I’d written down everything,” I gasped through wobbling lips. “Months of my life, my poems, everything.”

 

Papa gathered me close. His scratchy coat smelled of campfire, sweat, and damp wool. I felt the big bearishness of him and leaned into his solid strength. 

 

“The worst is, I lost everyone’s stories,” I told him. 

 

Papa’s voice vibrated against my cheek. “Stories aren’t beasts to be captured, Jane. The words in your diary came from your strong heart and reside there still.” 

 

“My words are important.” 

 

“Without question.” Papa’s strong hands tightened around my back. “As articulate as you are, I’m sure those were important words, words spoken true,” he said. “But your words aren’t lost.”

 

The title signifies the moment when Jane feels her father's validation of her words and understands that what she has learned from writing and speaking her truth matters in the present moment and also the future.

 

Q: What impact did it have on you to write this book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?

 

A: Even though I grew up hearing about our tribe's forced removal from the homelands of the southeastern United States, the extensive research I did for Words Spoken True taught me much I hadn't known about the Trail of Tears. I am even more in awe of the strength of our Cherokee ancestors and also angrier about the way the U.S. government mistreated all indigenous people throughout history.

 

I hope readers will appreciate the courage and resilience it took for the Cherokee people to endure and survive the Trail of Tears. The descendants of those ancestors live and thrive today both in northeastern Oklahoma where our tribal headquarters are and around the world.

 

Most North American indigenous nations endured hardships and forced removal and yet are today strong and relevant in contemporary society and culture.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I am co-writing a humorous younger middle grade series. It has been great fun to work with a colleague. Neither of us had co-authored before but we found a method that worked for us. Before we started writing we worked hard to know our characters and setting, then took turns writing scenes. Next, we each edited the other's work in track changes and the original writer could accept or reject changes.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I have been a huge fan of historical novels ever since I started reading. 

 

I still have two of my elementary school Scholastic Book Fair favorites, A Lantern in her Hand by Beth Streeter Aldrich (first published in 1928) and Gertrude Finney's The Plums Hang High (first published in 1955). So it was exciting to sign a contract with Scholastic that included "Scholastic Book Fair" and "Scholastic Book Club" provisions.

 

(I doubt these books would be marketed toward elementary students now since they feature adult protagonists, both women pioneers in the 19th century.)

 

I chose to write an historical novel from the point of view of a protagonist more likely to be the age of my readers. Jane Bushyhead was only 14 when she walked the Trail of Tears, but teens in those days often shouldered adult responsibilities more than today's teens do.

 

I gave Jane some things in common with readers 12 and up (attachment to a best friend, experiencing first love, resenting parental authority) so they could relate to her even though her life experience on the Trail of Tears was very different from that of most teens today.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Anne Broyles. 

Q&A with Kathleen Furin

  

 

Kathleen Furin is the author of the new story collection The Loneliness of Glass. She is also an editor and consultant, and she is based primarily in Philadelphia. 

 

Q: Over how long a period did you work on the stories in your new collection?

 

A: Almost 20 years! Some of these stories are quite old so it is exciting to see them finally being published.

 

Q: The author Jonathan Vatner said of the collection, “The Loneliness of Glass casts an incandescent gaze on women on the fringes of American society, struggling with disappointing husbands, execrable jobs, messy desires, and the specter and lure of death.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: It is an apt description, and I really appreciate Jonathan’s perspective and willingness to engage with my work.

 

One of the things I try to explore in my writing is the idea of desire and how so many women are taught to deny our own desires, or pretend to not even have desires, at least in the world that I was raised in.

 

It is fascinating to explore how so many women so often try to pretend like we don’t want things that we really, really want. I think this is a function of a patriarchal system which teaches us that our value lies in service to others rather than in taking care of and developing our whole selves.

 

Generally, in the dominant culture in which many of us live, neither women’s ambitions or desires are respected, and women who are ambitious or open about their desires are often disrespected and treated with disdain. Therefore we end up lying to each other about what we want, and often we even lie to ourselves.

 

Would things be easier if we just owned up to what we truly wanted? Maybe. I’m not sure, but there is a kind of honesty in that which might make us much less stressed.

 

Desires can be messy in and of themselves, and our natural responses to the ways our desires are demonized make those messy things even messier.

 

I also think we are taught to desire things that are socially acceptable or useful, and so this whole issue is not just around pretending to not have desires, or suppressing our desires. Some women pretend to want things we actually don’t want.

 

My story “Sanctuary” is probably a good example of that. The protagonist in that story thinks she wants sex, but does she really? She was just socialized into thinking that she is supposed to want sex, that wanting sex makes her a certain type of woman, a type of woman she thinks she should be but is not really who she is.

 

I love complicated women who want messy, unexpected things, and I think this shows up in my work.

 

Q: How did you decide on the order in which the stories would appear in the book?

 

A: I did take some time with this; I know my work can be heavy and intense. I knew I wanted to end with “The Loneliness of Glass,” and because “Animal Control” had been recognized as a “Coolest American Story” I thought I should start with that. Everything else just kind of fell into place.

 

My editor suggested moving “The Cookie Jar” because it is just so weird, and she thought people needed a few stories before that one to get used to my voice and style. I agreed with her!

 

Q: How was the book’s title--as you noted, it's also the title of one of the stories--chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: I am terrible at coming up with titles. I work as an editor and book coach and people often want help with titles. I do have some strategies I was taught in terms of thinking about titles that I share with writers, but this is not one of my strengths.

 

This title is a line taken from one of the stories, which at the time I wrote it was my favorite story. I liked the story because it was just so weird and magical, but also because of the process of writing it — it literally just flowed through me.

 

I wrote that story during a fellowship at the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and I can tell you how I came up with the idea, but I can’t really explain how that story just sort of fell out of me, fully formed.

 

One of the characters in the story is an alligator who swam north after her daughter died because she wanted to die, too. She could not live with her grief and she thought for sure that she would freeze to death almost immediately, but somehow she manages to survive.

 

I am really fascinated with characters who want to die, and ideas around what it means to live versus what it means to survive. We live in a society in which the dominant culture tends to be hyper-focused on violence and death in some ways and yet does not really honor or accept death as a natural, inevitable outcome in other ways.

 

The alligator in the story hides herself from people because she knows that no one will kill her — they will “save” her, put in an exhibit somewhere for people to come to stare at, under fluorescent lights on a harsh tile floor…. For that character living like that would be torture, and she would rather just be dead, but she doesn’t trust anyone to grant her a death, dignified or not.

 

When I was writing from her POV she described being in that type of enclosure and ended her description of that kind of life with a line about “the loneliness of glass and tile.” And that line just stayed with me. I think it speaks to a kind of sanitized disconnection that would be hell for many people, or creatures of any type.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I am having the best time right now writing a psychological thriller/mystery novel! It’s set in Havana, and it focuses on students from a dance school in the USA who travel to Cuba for a salsa retreat. When one of the students disappears, everyone becomes a suspect.

 

It’s unlike anything I have ever written before. Every single character is unreliable — I am at the point in the writing process where I want to spend every free minute I have working on that book!

 

Q:  Anything else we should know?

 

A: I feel hopeful that readers will see my work as an invitation into spaces of discomfort in which we can explore issues that really matter in ways that elevate growth and grace. I love characters who are getting it wrong, like mine are, because they may offer an impetus for us to try harder to get it right.

 

I think my hope is for my work to be a reflection of collective racism and what society is like at this time. It is so easy for those of us who are white people to be casually racist, to not think about race, to not do real work around it.

 

I think stories which don’t show white fragility and saviorism and cooptation are not honest reflections of who and where we are. It’s like an all-white sitcom which suddenly adds a Black character with no discussion of racial realities.

 

It’s just sanitized BS and I think we can do better and be better in terms of showing up honestly, and I hope my work is an invitation for more conversation around these issues, which are really important to me. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Alex Behr

  

 

 

Alex Behr is the author of the new story collection Animal Kingdom. Her other books include Grief Stick. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

 

Q: The writer Mary Rechner said of your new book, “Behr’s writing, fact or fiction, is sui generis. If her protagonists are damaged, medicated, and vulnerable, they’re also driven and wily, undaunted by risk or cost.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: Well, I used it on the front cover, so I love it! But the full quote resonates more with me when she compared me to Persephone.

 

Even in fiction stories that seemingly have little to do with my fiancé’s sudden death in the fall of 2020, they have reverberations of that confusion and deep loss I felt for years. Writing helped save me -- as did Mary wrapping me in a blanket and feeding me after Chris died.

 

Q: I’m so sorry for your loss…

 

How was the collection’s title--also the title of the first story--chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: In a Corporeal Writing workshop I took long ago, we had an exercise, or “portal,” to write about an animal. I started riffing about a dead brown bat that my godmother had wrapped in cabbage leaves. She named it Eeyore, one of my favorite storybook characters.

 

As I was deconstructing and adding to writing fragments that appear in the title story, “Animal Kingdom,” I brought in bats and other creatures whose fate, like my fiancé’s, seemed tied to our essential porousness.

 

The disease Chris died of is present in the animal kingdom, a wasting disease caused by misfolded proteins. I also researched that COVID, possibly transmitted by bats, could activate those misfolded proteins.

 

But uncovering the mystery of a death is little solace. I’d rather create art. Writing is porous and both a contamination and a contaminate. A meal and a potential poison. I wanted a title that was more neutral in tone than my books Planet Grim and Grief Stick, so I chose Animal Kingdom. 

 

Q: How did you decide on the order in which the stories would appear in the book?

 

A: When I handed in the manuscript I talked to Leland Cheuk of 7.13 Books about a few stories that needed more TLC. I trust his instinct. A couple I cut altogether, leaving a big hole.

 

I decided to add more autofiction in the front and transition to the fiction stories with a set of real fragments, called spectacles, as a bridge. However, the fiction stories are also infected by what I’ve seen, heard, or experienced. Genres have little interest to me (but I don’t like invented dialogue in memoirs -- personal peeve).

 

Q: Over how long a period did you write the stories in this collection?

 

A: I am a palimpsest, to use a word my friend Lidia Yuknavitch loves. I’ve obsessively written in diaries since elementary school, and I’ve repurposed some of that material in the comedy show Mortified as well as in “How Not to Be a Groupie” and some of the spectacle snapshots in Animal Kingdom. Some “autofiction” pieces were started around 2010 or 2011. 

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Good question! When I recently meet with my writing coach, Margaret Malone, I brought a story fragment that seemed too internal and rambling. I’m going to work on an entry into the story and see what happens. I have 100 pages of unpublished fiction roaming around my hard drive, but since I have ADHD, I always like the new, shiny thing.

 

I also thought about “retaking” a poetry class by Matthew Dickman, one of my favorite teachers. We took a cool class called Belief Diagrams. I created three, and I’d like to create 26 for a chapbook.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I love teaching innovative workshops. I taught one at Literary Arts called “Summer Flâneur: Strolling and Writing.” And I’ve taught through Corporeal (“Eno/Ono” and “Antlers and Beehives: Writing in Natural Patterns”). I’m open to working with writing clients via zoom or in person.

 

And I’m always looking for places to screen the short documentary Grief Stick (trailer is on my website). I’ve screened it with readings and live music and with other grief writers with an invitation for audience members to write and reflect. As a piano player and bass guitarist, I love collaboration. www.alexbehr.com

 

And, finally, rock on. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Nov. 3

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Nov. 3, 1903: Walker Evans born.

Q&A with Jacqueline White

  

 

 

Jacqueline White is the author of the new novel Souls in Ruin, the first in a series.  

 

Q: What inspired you to write Souls in Ruin, and how did you create your character Mireille?

 

A: Souls in Ruin actually came to me in a dream!

 

I remember watching, almost like a fly on the wall, as a woman reached through the bars of her dungeon cell to hold the hand of the prisoner beside her. I didn't know who either of them were, why they were imprisoned, or what had brought them to that moment, but there was something so hauntingly intimate about it that I couldn't stop thinking about it.

 

Mireille really grew from that single moment. I knew I wanted to write a heroine whose strength wasn't measured by how much power she possessed or how easily she could overcome her circumstances, but by her determination to hold on to herself when everything around her was trying to strip that away.

 

I also wanted her to feel heartbreakingly human. She's stubborn, compassionate, angry, occasionally naive, and sometimes makes decisions that aren't necessarily in her best interest. She isn't always brave, although she outwardly shows it, and she certainly doesn't always make the right choices.

 

But I think that's what makes her compelling. Her strength doesn't come from being fearless or unbreakable. It comes from the fact that, even when she's terrified, even when she feels completely defeated, she still refuses to surrender her humanity.

 

Q: How would you describe the dynamic between your characters Mireille and Valen?

 

A: Complicated. And that's probably the understatement of the century!

 

Mireille and Valen's relationship is built on a deeply unequal balance of power. He's a being who has spent all of existence taking whatever he wants, and she's a woman whose entire life has been shaped by the choices other people have made for her.

 

Neither of them enjoys being defied, which, as you can imagine, makes for a rather volatile combination.

 

What I love most about their dynamic is the constant struggle between control and defiance. Valen is accustomed to obedience, and Mireille, despite everything she's endured, refuses to give him the satisfaction of complete submission.

 

But their relationship is also deeply psychological. There's an uncomfortable intimacy that develops between them, and their interactions often blur the lines between hatred, obsession, desire, and a bond neither of them fully understands.

 

I never wanted to make their relationship easy to categorize, nor did I want to excuse Valen's cruelty simply because he becomes fascinated by the woman he's using for revenge.

 

I wanted readers to sit with that discomfort and explore the contradictions of two characters who are, in many ways, incredibly similar in terms of their desire to be loved.

 

Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: I wanted a title that captured the emotional heart of the story without necessarily revealing what happens within it.

 

To me, Souls in Ruin represents what remains of a person when everything they once knew has been taken from them. It's about the destruction of identity, the loss of innocence, and the ways suffering can fundamentally change someone.

 

But I also think there's something beautiful about the word “ruin.” We tend to associate it with destruction, something broken beyond repair, but ruins have history. They were once something whole. And even in their destruction, part of it still remains.

 

That's really what Mireille's story is about to me. Not what it means to break, but what it means to exist afterward. Whether the pieces of who you once were are worth reclaiming, or whether you can become something entirely different.

 

And, of course, the title has a few other meanings within the story, but I'll let readers discover those for themselves!

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: More than anything, I hope readers understand that strength doesn't always look the way we've been told to recognize it.

 

Sometimes strength is fighting back. Sometimes it's refusing to kneel. But sometimes it's just making it through another day when every part of you wants to give up.

 

I think there's a tendency, especially in fantasy, to equate a strong heroine with someone who is physically powerful, fiercely independent, or capable of overcoming every obstacle thrown her way. And while I love those heroines, I wanted to explore a kind of strength that exists in vulnerability, in compassion, and in the decision to keep going.

 

Mireille doesn't always win. Sometimes she makes choices she regrets. Sometimes survival requires things of her that she never imagined herself capable of. But none of that makes her weak. In fact, I think that makes her more beautiful in her humanity.

 

Ultimately, I hope readers walk away knowing that what happens to us doesn't have to define who we are. That tenderness can coexist with rage, that vulnerability isn't the opposite of strength, and that even when the world tries to take everything from you, your will can still be your own.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Oh, a few things! I'm currently working on the second book in the SoulBound Trilogy, and I'm so excited to share what comes next for Mireille and her gods. If Souls in Ruin was about surviving, book two is about what happens afterward, and what it means to reclaim yourself.

 

I'm also working on something a little more... chaotic.

 

That's all I'll say for now, but there will be more details to come! I have a feeling readers are going to have a lot of fun, and, of course, devastation with this one.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Only that I am so incredibly grateful to everyone who has given Mireille and her story a chance.

 

When I first started writing Souls in Ruin, I had no idea where it would take me. I just knew there was a story I desperately wanted to tell, and I hoped that someone out there might want to read it.

 

Seeing readers connect with Mireille, defend her, cry for her, and occasionally threaten me over the things I've put her through (understandably!) has been one of the most surreal and rewarding experiences of my life.

 

So, thank you for embracing this beautifully dark, devastating world I've created. There's so much more to come, and I cannot wait to ruin you all a little more.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Connie Senior

  

 

 

Connie Senior is the author of the new novel Blue Moon. Her other books include The Wolf's Den. She is also an engineer.

 

Q: Blue Moon is the third book featuring your character Caleb O’Connor--do you think he's changed from the first book to now?

 

A: In the second book, Caleb, who is a werewolf, returns to his hometown of Bar Harbor, Maine after six years of self-imposed exile in Romania. He’s hunting an old vampire nemesis.

 

At the end of the book, he defeats his enemy, but he hasn’t resolved the trauma that drove him from Bar Harbor originally, and he’s not sure of how he’ll find a place for himself or the young werewolf boy he adopted.

 

In the beginning of Blue Moon, the third book, Caleb is building a new life: he’s fallen in love with Sophia, his childhood friend, and has been helping the werewolf packs in New England lead better lives—as well as trying to get them to stop biting people when the moon is full.

 

He thinks he knows what path he’s on, until a teenage girl is bitten by a mysterious werewolf pack, and he’s called in to investigate. Then things veer off course for Caleb, and the fun begins.

 

Q: What inspired the plot of Blue Moon?

 

A: I know and love the characters in this fantasy universe I’ve created over the last 20 years. (I’m a slow writer!) In one sense, the inspiration for the plot of Blue Moon arose from asking: what’s next for the characters from the first two books, knowing what I know about them?

 

However, going back to my earliest notes about the book, I can see that one idea niggled at me from the beginning: the idea of kidnapped children, who must be brave and clever enough to escape, even as Caleb searches for them.

 

The plot started as an answer to the question of who would kidnap children and why. Then it got complicated.

 

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: Yes and no. Early in the writing process, I created a complete outline of plot points at the level of index cards. I had a goal, but a lot changed along the way.

 

For example, new, secondary characters created themselves during the writing process. At least, that’s how it felt to me. Of course, all characters are products of my imagination, but imagination draws from the murky darkness of the unconscious mind. I needed those new characters, but didn’t know that I did until they arrived.

 

Also, some of the new characters made me laugh. We can all use a laugh while mired in the middle of writing a book!

 

As is often the case, the themes of the book didn’t become apparent until late in the writing process. For the first three or four years (slow writer…), I was focused on making a complicated plot work: Time tables! Maps! New characters!

 

When the first draft was completed, I could contemplate the book from a distance. I was very fortunate to have a group of other writers who read the entire first draft and provided feedback. The next four drafts shaped the plot into what it needed to be.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: If I had to limit myself to one thing that the book is “about,” it would be the importance of finding and creating family, not necessarily the family one is born into. This is as true for a werewolf finding a pack as it is for the rest of us humans. I hope that sticks with readers.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: An idea is niggling at me for another book that would exist in the fictional universe of the other books. But currently, I’m having fun posting the backstories of the books’ main characters on my Substack.

 

The three novels I’ve written follow Caleb from ages 17 to 27, but Caleb’s childhood and the friends he’s known since age 12 motivate critical plot points. I wrote biographies for Caleb’s friends, but that wasn’t enough for me.

 

To hear their voices in my head, I wanted to know more: the nicknames they called each other, the pranks they pulled, what they argued about, how they stood up for one another, how they failed one another.

 

As a way of finding out, I wrote and wrote and wrote: not lists or biographies, but stories about the characters’ early lives. The stories didn’t make it into the books, but taught me more about them and their friendships than any biography could. I hope readers of the books will enjoy these stories.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: In addition to a lifelong passion for reading and writing fantasy, I’ve always been interested in the environment. I have a Ph.D. in environmental engineering and worked for decades as an engineer. For much of that time, writing fiction took a back seat to technical writing.

 

Eventually, the use and misuse of science found its way into my fiction: a vampire grad student studying high energy physics; experiments on mice aimed at making humans immune to vampire bites; better ways to kill werewolves with science. Fun things to dream up!

 

Blue Moon will be released in November 2026. There’ll be updates on my website or Instagram. Thanks!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Rick Williams Sr.

  

 

 

Rick Williams Sr. is the author, with Cherry-An Somoso, of the book Story Writing: A Workbook of Creative Writing Prompts for Kids 8-12. His other books include Star Life Keepers. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Story Writing?

 

A: All seven of my grandchildren live nearby, and writing stories with them has been one of the great joys of my life.

 

Again and again, I see that kids are bursting with ideas but often don’t know how to shape them into a finished story. Story Writing: A Workbook of Creative Writing Prompts for Kids 8–12 gives them an easy, structured way to do just that—while building imagination, confidence, and communication skills along the way.

 

The workbook grew out of our family’s Dragon & Dinosaur Chronicles, which began with Star Life Keepers in 2024 and continued with Orion Fire Storm. It can be used on its own or alongside the novels.

 

Throughout its development, my grandchildren, our Story Apprentices (young writers who help shape our books), and education experts offered ongoing guidance.

 

Cherry-An Somoso, an experienced English teacher and tutor, played a key role in developing this workbook.

 

Q: As someone who writes both fiction and nonfiction, do you have a preference?

 

A: I don’t really see them as opposites—good storymaking matters in both. I learned that from Edwin Bearss, Chief Historian Emeritus of the National Park Service, while writing my first history book, Chicago’s Battery Boys, which tells the story of six Union artillerists who received the Medal of Honor.

 

Ed was a master storyteller who went far beyond facts and dates. With his guidance, I wove narrative around firsthand accounts—letters and diaries—to bring untold Civil War stories to life. Years later, I used that same approach to blend fiction and nonfiction in Story Writing.

 

Q: How has your own fiction writing affected your ideas about teaching fiction writing to kids?

 

A: Writing with my grandchildren has been my laboratory. Years ago, I interviewed Jim Henson’s mother for a book project and learned how his grandmother nurtured his creativity.

 

I took the same approach with my grandkids, setting up an arts-and-crafts center and a kidlit library in my home. We focus on hands-on, non-digital storymaking, but I’ve also taught them to use online searches and generative AI selectively for research.

 

Respect is at the heart of it. When I write with my grandsons Brady and Caleb, they get 49 percent of the vote on characters, civilizations, and plot. (They get an even bigger say when we develop their creatures!)

 

Workshops at International Thriller Writers conferences taught me a great deal about suspense, heroic arcs, and pacing. Lisa Gardner, a bestselling author, helped me develop strong female protagonists so that Elisa and Amanda are determined and resilient in Dragon & Dinosaur Chronicles—and victors, not victims. I want young writers to see that their characters can have real agency, too.

 

Q: What do you hope readers will take away from the book?

 

A: I hope kids discover that they already have stories worth telling. Story Writing uses our sci-fi/fantasy novels to inspire and equip young writers—we call them Young Creators—to make their own stories. They can start simply, writing about holidays, vacations, sports, hobbies, or family history, and build toward more complex tales.

 

Story Writing also reflects our family’s belief in adults and kids creating side by side. Many parents are short on time, but they can effortlessly work through the workbook with their children and make their own storymaking memories.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Our next workbook is for ages 10 to 14 and dives into story development, world-building, character development, and the Hero’s Journey.

 

Story Apprentices continue to support our projects. One of them continues to remind me that our stories need moments where we “let teens be teens,” and another helped build an Encyclopedia of Creatures for Orion Fire Storm.

 

I’m also writing Young Dragonriders, Book 3 in the Dragon & Dinosaur Chronicles (coming spring 2027), with my granddaughter Mia. It includes characters and subplots inspired by ancient Chinese scientific innovations—a tribute to my many years of working in China and to our family’s adoptions.

 

We’re also developing a crossover series set at the Orion Realm Academy, where children learn to become astronomers and explorers.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: One of my favorite moments came while Mia and Caleb were critiquing Story Writing. I took them out to a restaurant, seated them in the booth next to mine, and our server kindly treated them like grown-up customers while they worked through the workbook on their own.

 

Watching them collaborate, think critically, and stay focused was a perfect picture of Young Creators in action.

 

Families and educators can find thirty free downloadable resources, roadmaps, and Progress Trackers at our Creative Writing Lab at thestorymakinghub.com.

 

And for anyone in The Children’s Book Review community who would like to bring our family’s storymaking model into their home or classroom, I’m happy to answer questions at rick@rickwilliamsbooks.com.

 

As we say in our family, “It’s all about the kids.”

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. This Q&A was conducted in partnership with Legacy KidLit Press. Here's a previous Q&A with Rick Williams Sr. Readers who follow along on this virtual book tour will have the chance to win one of three Young Creator's Storymaking Kits! Each kit includes a signed hardcover copy of Story Writing: A Workbook of Creative Writing Prompts for Kids 8-12, a signed hardcover copy of Star Life Keepers, a blank writing notebook, a four-color pen, and a spot in a one-hour group Zoom with Rick on how stories are made and how to get started with the workbook. (Open to U.S. residents.)