Q&A with Daniel Hurst

  

 

 

Daniel Hurst is the author of the new novel The Doctor's Widow. His many other books include The Doctor's Wife. He is based in the UK. 

 

Q: Why did you decide to write The Doctor’s Widow, a sequel to your novel The Doctor’s Wife?

 

A: Mainly because the first book was so well received with readers. The Doctor’s Wife went to #1 in the UK Kindle store upon its release, and that popularity made it clear that readers were really responding to these characters.

 

I quickly realised there was still a lot for Fern, the main character, to do and once the idea of her as the devious widow was in my mind, the story for the sequel just flowed!

 

Q: Did you need to do any research to write the novel, and if so, did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: I relied a lot on my experience of visiting doctors and how it felt being in their presence. The types of questions they would ask, how they made you feel when you went to see them, the environment and atmosphere in their office as they sat you down and got you to discuss your symptoms.

 

We all trust a doctor with our health, so I really wanted to make Drew, the doctor in these books, seem like a good guy, though as readers will know, he is far from it in secret!

 

I do also know a couple of doctors in my personal life, so that made it easier to write and differentiate the personal life of Drew from his professional one. But I will make it clear the doctors I know are nothing like the doctor in this book, thankfully!

 

Q: Do you think a reader would need to read The Doctor’s Wife before turning to this new novel?

 

A: The sequel is written in a way that would allow a reader to understand and enjoy the story without necessarily having read the first book.

 

But of course, ideally, you will be fully up to date with events for maximum enjoyment, but it’s not vital. It may even be fun to read the sequel first and then go back to read The Doctor’s Wife, revelling in the knowledge of what is to come for these poor characters!

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I have recently finished writing a trilogy called The Hunt Family Series, which is now available on Kindle and paperback via Amazon.

 

The first in the trilogy is called I Want Your Family and it tells the story of what happens when a woman called Luna takes a serious interest in a particular family. She decides she wants to take the place of Sadie, the wife and mother in the family, so sets about concocting a dangerous plan to do just that.

 

Considering that the second book in the trilogy is called I Stole Your Family, you might be able to guess how the story develops!

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Fern, aka The Doctor’s Wife, is my most popular character with my readers, not necessarily for all the right reasons. She is cunning, unpredictable and often outrageous, so if you are looking to read a memorable character who does all the things that none of us normal people can get away with in real life, read about Fern and her life as a Doctor’s Wife/Widow!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Daniel Hurst. 

Q&A with Shannon Morgan

  

 

 

Shannon Morgan is the author of the new novel A Penance for Crows. Her other books include Grimdark. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write A Penance for Crows, and how did you create your character Grizela?

 

A: I store up weird little experiences and snippets of history that fascinate me, but I don’t have a story to go with said weird snippets.

 

One of these was the diabolical signatures. I read about them years ago while doing research for another book, then put it to the back of my mind.

 

It wasn’t until I was driving around the tip of the Beara Peninsula in Ireland, and there, looking over Dursey Island (one of the most wonderfully, desolate places that fed my little gothic heart), I was seeing another island, that existed only in my head, and the diabolical signatures just slotted into place.

 

The crows, however, were what really gave me my story, and all due another weird experience.

 

While living in Wiltshire, we lived on a farm with a small wood to one side and a field out front. Hundreds of crows lived in the wood, and every evening they would fly over the field like a murmuration of starlings. However, one night they all landed in the field at once, facing away from me.

 

I’m not sure what happened, what they heard, but they suddenly all turned to face me and stare for what felt like an age. Then, with a hive mind, they took to the air. I must admit I was freaked out, but that little experience never left me and it’s why the crows on Beanna Dubh behave the way they do.

 

Grizela was one of those characters that stepped into the story fully formed – very unusual for me. I had this idea of a wild, grey-haired woman scurrying across the island in her hobnailed boots, and she pretty much wrote herself.

 

Q: The novel is set on a fictional island near Ireland’s Beara Peninsula--how important is setting to you in your writing?

 

A: Setting is as important – particularly in gothic fiction – as character and plot. In many ways the setting is a character in its own right, and this is something I try to portray in my gothic novels.

 

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 that’s rare for me. I really struggle with endings, so it was rather a relief that I knew how Penance would end. I actually had most of the ending written before I’d completed the first three chapters – again, rare for me – and it didn’t change at all apart from light editing.

 

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

 

A: I try to tie my titles into the story if I can, so I will often start with a working title until something springs out of my while writing the first draft.

 

A Penance for Crows came about as a title while I was working out the history/folklore of the island. The crows are seen as penitents in the island’s folklore, which lent itself to the title.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Something totally different – a whodunnit.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Hah! A loaded question with way too many possible answers.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Erin O'Malley

  

 

 

Erin O'Malley is the author of the new memoir The Brat and the Bullfighter: A Love Story. It focuses on her relationship with her horse, Arty. She lives near Seattle. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Brat and the Bullfighter?

 

A: I wanted to give my horse a voice. Horses are always trying to communicate with us, but I’m just not so sure we always know how to listen. For example, I get pretty riled when I hear them described as naughty, lazy, or crazy.

 

We ask so much of them—so much that they never asked for, if that makes sense. We move them, isolate them, put them in strange environments, expect instant trust and compliance—then call them difficult when they react like the prey animals they are.

 

So often, what looks like defiance is really confusion or fear. Not a horse being a jerk, just one who’s overwhelmed.

 

By trying to imagine life through Arty’s eyes, I hoped to understand him better and tell his side of the story. To portray him as the incredible soul he is.

 

My touchstone was always: If this book could change even one person’s perspective about horses and the importance of not only their physical but also their mental well-being, I’ve done my job.

 

Q: How would you describe the dynamic between you and Arty, and can you say more about why you chose to tell part of the story from his perspective?

 

A: He’s one of the great loves of my life. To me, he’s extraordinary in every way—smart, generous, beautiful, talented.

 

Even the title of the book is a double entendre. Yes, he’s a Lusitano with bullfighting in his blood, but he also doesn’t suffer fools and will call you on any B.S. If you show up in a bad mood or get distracted, he’s all “wake up!” or “later, skater.” He’s challenged me to become a better partner and a better person. He’s also taught me to stand up for myself.

 

It was never my intention to write a memoir; I just wanted to tell my horse’s story from his perspective.

 

The memoir idea actually came from my developmental editor. I was telling her how, as an Army brat, I deeply empathized with horses being moved around without a choice. I felt like Arty and I had lived oddly parallel journeys. She suggested I weave my story into his, and voila, a love story was born.

 

Q: The writer Elizabeth Rosner said of the book, “As a truly original love story, it’s also a timely reminder to listen with our hearts and to find our teachers in unexpected places.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I’m so touched. Liz is an incredible talent and a beautiful human being, so for her to have felt and shared that means everything. It’s amazing to feel seen, especially by a writer of her caliber. 

 

I also think she’s spot-on. It’s so important to get out of our heads and into our hearts. Horses demand that we be present. They let you love with abandon, and they teach us so much about patience, kindness, responsibility, and the importance of consistency and commitment. Some of the greatest lessons I’ve ever learned, especially about love and loss, have happened in a pair of dusty boots and dirty breeches.

 

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

 

A: Writing this book completely expanded my community. I’ve met incredibly talented writers and artists, traveled to retreats and conferences, and crossed paths with people I never would have met otherwise. I credit my horses for all of it, because they were the ones who pushed me down this path.

 

I hope readers walk away thinking about what it means to truly listen to a creature whose experience of the world is completely different from their own. At its heart, the book is a story about empathy and finding home. As a Toad the Wet Sprocket song goes, “not the place where you live, but the place where you belong.” For me, horses = home.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m working on two novels. The first is a rom-com about a woman on the verge of 40 who returns to Paris to exorcise a ghost from her past but instead runs into him on the street on Christmas Eve. I’m pitching it as Before Sunset meets A Christmas Carol.

 

The second is a “he said/she said” novel I’m co-writing with my friend Wedge Martin. It centers on two longtime friends, now in their 50s, who begin writing letters to one another from half a world away—partly out of boredom—only to discover they have completely different memories of the same events.

 

Soon, they’re imagining what might have happened if they’d met earlier . . . like, way earlier. The French Revolution, the Wild West, wherever their imaginations take them.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: If you’re in the Bay Area, I’ll be at Book Passage in Corte Madera on August 1, in conversation with Brooke Warner. If you’re in the Seattle area, I’ll be at Barnes & Noble in Issaquah on August 8, in conversation with Carol Lynn McArdle. And just, thanks for reading.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

July 28

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

July 28, 1866: Beatrix Potter born. 

Q&A with Mindy Carlson

 

Mindy Carlson is the author of the novel Her Dying Day. She lives in the Washington, D.C., area.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Her Dying Day, and how did you create your character June?

A: In 2016, I read an article about the 1926 disappearance of Agatha Christie. In December of that year, she disappeared for 11 days. She was eventually found in a spa in Harrogate, Yorkshire. Her husband, Archie, announced he was leaving Agatha for his mistress and proceeded to leave the house. After a period of time, Agatha also left the house and disappeared. After a huge manhunt, and a cloud of suspicion hovering over her husband and his mistress, they finally found her. 

But, what if they hadn't? 

Or, what if she disappeared in the year 2000?

There would be podcasts, articles, Discord forums, and, of course, a documentary. 

And the idea of Her Dying Day was born. 

I wanted a smart, messy, funny heroine to look for this famous author, Greer Larkin, and came up with the plucky yet traumatized June Masterson. June escaped from a restrictive commune where she was raised and fled to New York City where she throws off the teachings of her childhood, makes horrible choices, and becomes determined to solve the disappearance of Greer Larkin no matter how dangerous it gets.

Q: What do you see as the role of humor in your writing?

A: Humor allows me to get even darker during the tense parts. It creates a release valve for the tension I'm building in the other parts. It's also fun! My books are meant to entertain people and who doesn't like a humorous story with twists and turns? 

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

A: I did know the ending. When I write a mystery, I write the beginning three different ways and then I write the ending. The location changed, but the action and spirit of the ending were the same. 

 

I like writing the ending first because it gives me a target to hit. It reminds me of what my destination is and keeps me on the path when I hit the soggy, uncooked ideas in the middle of the book. I read the end again and think up ideas that will take me there.

Q: The author K.T. Nguyen called the book "a racy romp enriched with real emotion"--what do you think of that description?

A: When she blurbed my book I was incredibly flattered with her impression. June is entangled in a love affair that is everything she thinks she wants and everything she knows her parents will hate. She's full of complicated contradictions. She's young and impulsive and passionate--both about her lover and about finding out what happened to Greer Larkin. 

 

And now that she's away from the influence of her family and their commune community she can grow and learn who she really is as a person. With that growth there are some hard lessons and emotional parallels between June and Greer's lives. 

Whodunits have to have an emotional pull to them. I want my reader to cheer June on, to hate her poor choices, and celebrate with her as she grows and succeeds. 

Q: What are you working on now?

A: So many things. I'm writing some short stories that will be published in some cozy anthologies, as well as a mystery about a woman who's failing in her career and returns home to re-center herself only to find that things with her father aren't as rosy as she's been led to believe. 

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: If you're a fan of humorous mysteries, my short story AITA for Using My Husband's Hobby to Teach Him a Lesson has just been nominated for an Anthony Award. Readers can find it in the anthology Myopic Duplicity, edited by Jeff Circle. Originally conceived as an audio-only anthology, it's read by the amazing Hillary Huber, and it's now been made available on Kindle. 

Also - my favorite foods are Chinese dumplings and Vegetable Malai Kofta. I like to have them with Prosecco while watching Taskmaster on YouTube.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Audrey Leishman

 

 

Audrey Leishman is the author of the new children's picture book Katie Koala's Biggest Fight. She and her husband, Marc, are the founders of the Begin Again Foundation, which helps people affected by sepsis. She lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Q: How did your own experience with sepsis inspire you to write Katie Koala's Biggest Fight?

I had never even heard the word sepsis until it almost killed me. I was 31 and healthy, a mom to two little boys who needed me. It started like the flu, body aches and a fever, the kind of thing you push through because you don't have time to be sick.

Within days I was in the ICU, then in a medically induced coma. I spent 10 days in the hospital, five of them unconscious. Doctors gave me less than a 5 percent chance of survival.

During my recovery, I learned just how much sepsis costs families and hospitals. It's the most expensive condition treated in U.S. hospitals, costing the healthcare system over $62 billion a year. A sepsis hospital stay costs nearly double the average stay for any other diagnosis, and it's the third leading cause of death in U.S. hospitals.

That's why I started the Begin Again Foundation. Awareness and early recognition save lives. Katie Koala grew directly out of that mission. I wrote it because the only thing worse than what I went through would be watching one of my own children go through it. I wanted families to have this knowledge early, in a way kids could actually understand, long before it's ever an emergency.

Q: Why did you choose a koala as the story's protagonist?

A: When I decided to write a children's book about sepsis, I knew I'd be walking a fine line between educating kids and scaring them. I wanted a story that felt gentle and empowering, something children would gravitate toward and ask to be their bedtime story.

My husband, Marc, is Australian, so a cast of Aussie animals felt like a natural fit. Katie is both cute and strong, which is exactly the balance I was after.

Q: What do you think Katie Jerabek's illustrations add to the book?

A: As the kids say, Katie understood the assignment. We'd worked together before on Sepsis Superheroes, a coloring book to help children in the hospital understand what was happening to them during treatment. 

 

When I sent her the manuscript for Katie Koala's Biggest Fight, I let her run with it. She illustrated characters that are cute and cuddly, and she made sure Katie and her friends could tell this story in a way that feels uplifting rather than scary.

Q: What do you hope kids, and adults, take away from the story?

A: For kids, I hope it's simple: your body can tell you when something is wrong, and it's always okay to say so. For adults, I hope it's urgency. Sepsis kills more children than pediatric cancer, and it can turn deadly within hours.

I dismissed my own symptoms because I didn't have time to be sick. I don't want any parent to have to learn what sepsis is in the middle of losing time with their kids.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Right now I'm developing a free educational guide for girls ages 10 to 13 about safe period products, using the same Katie Koala characters. A medical professional will review it before release. Alongside that, I'm continuing the work of the Begin Again Foundation, sepsis awareness, survivor support through our Financial Aid Fund, and events like the Begin Again Celebrity Classic.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: Sepsis awareness truly saves lives. It can develop from any infection, and every hour treatment is delayed, the risk of death climbs by as much as 8%. Early detection saves lives, and as parents, we're our children's best advocates. Asking "Could this be sepsis?" could save their life. Or yours.

Symptoms include a high fever or abnormally low temperature; rapid or labored breathing; skin that looks pale, mottled, or has a bluish tinge; lethargy, or being very difficult to wake; a rash of small purple or red spots that don't fade when pressed; decreased urination; and a racing heart. Learn more at www.beginagainfoundation.com

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with John K. Danenbarger

 

 

 

John K. Danenbarger is the author of the new story collection Waves of Light and Darkness. He also has written the novel Entanglement: Quantum + Otherwise.  

 

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

 

A: Good question. Since I have written in spurts, it is impossible to answer. I will have new collections coming which are more compressed in creative time. But this collection is probably spread over 10 years.

 

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

 

A: Sorry to make it so simple, but the title just came to me as right. It popped into my head and I never looked back. If only all titles were so easy.

 

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

 

A: I did not decide. My editor did, and I approved.

 

Q: Do you usually know how a story will end before you start writing it, or do you make many changes along the way?

 

A: My favorite question. I never, ever know how a story is going to end since I let the characters decide. But often I argue with the characters and we come to a friendly conclusion.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I have a long pipeline filled with stories. I think I have overloaded my publisher, but the next book should probably be a novel-in-stories titled The Dying Cat. I have enough short stories for two more collections so far, because I have had these stories pent up in me for years and, at age 84, I need to get them written before my brain turns to mush.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Market research shows that my existential literary fiction is most popular in Europe, Africa and Asia. I don’t know what that says about America except that, if I ever get the time, I will try to find translators for Italian, German, and French versions.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb