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 

July 27

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

July 27, 1916: Elizabeth Hardwick born. 

Q&A with Brent van Staalduinen

  

Photo by Melanie Gillis Photography

 

 

Brent van Staalduinen is the author of the new novel The Peace Thieves. His other books include Do Not Count the Days. He is also an educator, and he's based in Hamilton, Ontario. 

 

Q: In The Peace Thieves’ author’s note, you describe the novel as “my imperfect attempt to capture the spirit of Canada's troubled peacekeeping legacy.” Can you say more about that?

 

A: There are simply so many peacekeeping stories, one novel couldn’t possibly do justice to the full spirit. I call it a composite or hybrid tale, where I use my fiction writer’s license to pick and choose to serve my story, and as a result it has to be incomplete and therefore imperfect.

 

Paradoxically, that it can’t possibly tell every story and will fall short is also what makes it good fiction—being drawn into the myopic world of single characters is where novels and short stories sing the loudest.

 

This also extends to the reality of peacekeeping itself, too, which at its best shows how people can protect and care for the vulnerable, and at its worst can abandon and harm the very people it is meant to protect, as happened in Croatia, Rwanda, and Somalia.

 

Before I resigned from the armed forces, I applied to deploy, and many of my friends were actually sent overseas, and they experienced the immeasurable highs and lows of the missions themselves and through the years following.

 

They’re all incredibly grateful and proud of their service, from the most noble to the most difficult, and each will carry these multitudes for the rest of their lives. 

 

Q: How did you create your characters Francis and Viva, and how would you describe their relationship?

 

A: Francis is an imagined version of someone like me, a reservist sent into an incredibly difficult and tragic environment, combined with real stories of how hard it was for many reservists to regain their bearings after they returned home.

 

Like me, he’s a man of conflicted faith and family history, but who still believes in helping others and making his small world a better place.

 

Viva was a bolt of lightning flashed into Francis’ middle age to utterly upend his safe but troubled existence, and force him to confront a past he thinks he can ignore. She is strong and bold, a whirlwind.

 

They’re strangers connected by blood, drawn into an unexpected, hesitant relationship and, ultimately, a new breed of family. 

 

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

 

A: The entire novel asks the reader to imagine trying to keep peace where there is no peace to keep, and in my explorations to find an appropriate epigraph (a tradition I employ in all my books), I encountered the stunning work of Bosnian poet Selma Asotić, and in particular her poem “My father’s skin looks like the surface of the moon.”

 

These lines leapt out: 

 

They told you shrapnel made men
celestial, that’s why you joined
the army. In midsummer, when weathervanes
carousel, you pull your silence
taut over our house. Nothing bad
will happen to us now, not with you
standing sentinel at the edge
of our sleep, guarding
against the peacethieves.

 

I was absolutely shattered by the trauma and sadness, the distance of war-damaged men, and those final lines…wow. I was knocked back a few feet. When I pondered who can, does, and might steal peace, I knew I needed to live in this space for a long while.

 

I approached Selma to see if I could use a few lines for the epigraph and she agreed because The Peace Thieves is at its heart an anti-war novel. She also granted permission to title my novel with words from the poem. I am incredibly grateful.

 

This poem and a few of her others can be found here: https://www.fusionmagazine.org/poems-by-selma-asotic/

 

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 knew that I would build the two narratives to merge at the battle fought between Canadian peacekeepers and the Croatian army, and the heinous ethnic cleansing committed against Serb civilians by the Croatians in the Medak pocket.

 

But I did leave the ending beyond that unknown until I arrived, not knowing how Francis and Viva would process things until after they’d gone through their individual and shared challenges and victories. 

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m working on a historical novel called Child, the origin story of a notorious member of the Dutch resistance during WWII who is reluctantly drawn into the darkest and most violent corners of the underground conflict, and who is haunted by his abusive upbringing in a boarding school for troubled boys.

 

After the war, he’ll be drawn back into the darkness, using the deadly skills he gained in the Netherlands fighting the Nazis against war criminals permitted to settle in Canada without due process or consequence.

 

(Which actually happened: in the 1960s, frightened and distracted by the rising threat of communism, the Canadian government decided to quietly allow former Nazis and collaborators to enter and gain residency.)

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I’m pretty excited about this book, which is, as far as I’m aware, the only fictional account of Canadian peacekeepers—imagining my work filling a hole in the Canadian literary landscape is very cool indeed.

 

Also, even though I was a medic, I was a very good shot as well, gaining a gold level marksman badge with my C7 rifle, which I named Zoriana, or Zoe for short. (I know, I know… young and dumb and cliché all at once. Very cringe, as my daughter says.)

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Alyssa Day

  

 

 

Alyssa Day is the author of the new novel Nobody's Quest. Her many other books include the Warriors of Poseidon series. She also writes under the name Alesia Holliday. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Nobody’s Quest, and how did you create your character Soli?

 

A: I've always love, love, loved epic fantasy! Especially quest stories. And I've lived with chronic clinical depression since I was 13 years old.

 

I always wanted to find someone like me as the hero of her story: the one who solved the puzzle, succeeded in the quest, and saved the world … despite her mental health issues. No special "Issue of the week" sadness or darkness, just someone trying hard to perform to the best of her abilities and triumphing.

 

Soli came to me in vivid 3-D. She was sitting on the floor of the royal library, cleaning mold off bookshelves, when the king's guards came for her. Her world branded her (literally) as a Gray Mind, stigmatized by society, for her depression, but she found quiet, small ways to rebel.

 

I knew I had to write her story.

 

Q: How did you create the world in which the story is set?

 

A: Worldbuilding is one of my favorite things! I started building a map, because I needed to see the terrain to plot my quest across Altarra. Then I designed the ruling systems of the different kingdoms and territories, the laws, the people, the festivals, the games they play …

 

I build so very much that never makes it into the books. But knowing the rich tapestry of the world helps me follow the threads to where they need to go.

 

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

 

A: I knew the title was Nobody's Quest from the beginning of writing it. She's a literal nobody in her world--an indentured servant. The prophecy says, about the war between goddesses that's destroying Altarra: Nobody can defeat the goddess of war.

 

When a brilliant sorcerer decided to take that literally, the king's guards came for Soli and the quest was born.

 

Q: The author Jade Presley said of the book, “Alyssa Day does a wonderful job weaving depression representation into the fantasy world, offering a unique perspective in the romantasy genre.” What do you think of that description, and can you say more about why you chose to include mental health issues in the novel?

 

A: Jade is as kind as she is talented! She and I have been touring across the country, since our books came out close together.

 

I love that she said that. I'm not unique; other authors are portraying mental health issues in their books. Particularly indie authors. But traditional publishing has been reluctant to feature a heroine with depression.

 

I will always be grateful to Liz Pelletier and Red Tower Publishing for saying yes to my band of found family and their dangerous quest.

 

But I also want to emphasize that this is, at its heart, a romantasy novel. Thrilling adventures, dangerous monsters, deadly swordfights, and spicy romance. Plus, it's a lot of fun! I've gotten lots of reviews mentioning the humor. Soli just happens to have the additional battle within.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I'm finishing Nobody 2, and it is so much fun! Prince Kaelen is OFF THE LEASH after a vicious betrayal separates the companions at the beginning of the book.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Well, I wrote romantasy before they called it that (editors called it “too much romance in your fantasy” or “too much fantasy in your romance” lol, and I've recently re-released the Warriors of Poseidon series in eBook, print, and audiobook.

 

The completed series follows a group of very hot and alpha warriors from Atlantis who swore to protect humanity and never, ever fall in love with a human. You can imagine how that goes!

Thanks so much for inviting me! I always love to talk about Soli, mental health, gorgeous princes, and Nobody's Quest!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

July 26

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
July 26, 1856: George Bernard Shaw born.