Q&A with Shannon C.F. Rogers

 

Photo by Lalita Abhyankar

 

Shannon C.F. Rogers is the author of the new young adult novel Eighteen Roses. She also has written the YA novel I'd Rather Burn Than Bloom. She lives in Brooklyn.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Eighteen Roses, and how did you create your character Lucia?

 

A: My main characters tend to share a lot in common with me in terms of identity, so navigating cultural differences is often at the heart of their internal conflict.

 

I’m interested in cultural rites of passage so I knew I wanted to center a story around a Filipino debut in an American setting. A debut (pronounced /dɛˈbuː/) is a traditional coming-of-age celebration of a young woman's 18th birthday. (Much like the quinceñera, but for 18th birthdays instead of 15th).

 

I wanted to explore all the ways that cultural rituals like these coming of age ceremonies seek to reinforce and preserve cultural norms in the diaspora, so as I thought about creating the character of Luz, I was thinking about what kind of character would be interesting to watch go through that process, someone who might bristle at the attempt to be put in that kind of box.

 

My main character, Lucia (Luz), begins the book actually as a self-described hater of these traditions with big opinions on the matter– she tells her best friend at the beginning of the novel that the whole enterprise is rooted in colonialism, it’s gender restrictive, it’s too expensive and wasteful, just a way to flaunt your supposed monetary success in society and pretend you’re doing better than you actually are, it’s like this false twisted American dream pageant, etc., etc.,– she’s insufferable, really.

 

Even if there’s truth to that perspective, her journey is about recognizing that it’s not emotionally correct to deliver what is essentially a mean-spirited sociological thesis to your mom when she really just wants to give you something that she didn’t have. It’s about Luz recognizing what is really going on underneath all her defenses. 

 

I love fiction because it’s a way to explore all the ways people and relationships are complicated and that we don’t need to throw out cultural norms wholesale even if we find them troubling, we can recalibrate the norm, make it our own, take the good stuff. Young people do that all the time– and it’s inspiring to me.

 

Q: The Kirkus Review of the novel says, “Rogers’ sophomore novel features rich, deep representation of Filipino experience in the U.S. as well as strong character development, as it follows a loner who finds connections one small, imperfect step at a time...” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I’m honored by that description. Originally when I conceived the book I was thinking about how someone with zero friends could somehow make having 18 friends on a deadline, and the answer is: imperfectly.

 

As far as representation, it means a lot to me to be able to create stories that might resonate with young people who have similar experiences to mine. Books were a lifeline to me as a teenager (in fact, they still are right now) so if I can pay that forward even a little bit, I feel grateful for that opportunity. 

 

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! I don’t usually know how the story is going to end, but this time I knew I wanted to end up at Lucia’s 18th birthday party. I knew that I wanted her to be surrounded by love and for her to be able to accept at least a measure of that love.

 

So, the problem of writing the novel became figuring out how someone like Lucia, who has a difficult time with all of that, is able to open up by the end. 

 

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

 

A: It’s been humbling to hear from adult readers who have said that reading my books has made them think about their relationships with their children differently. It’s not something that I thought about explicitly when I was writing.

 

When I was writing I was thinking about the experience of the young person. I really wanted to center that experience: how it feels to be confused, hurt, and unheard. To be full of potential and wanting to do well but scared of failing– which is how I felt then, and honestly, still how I feel now in a lot of ways. 

 

Looking back on my adolescence I also wish I could have been gentler with my parents who were carrying so much unhealed stuff from their own growing up. So, maybe I let my characters do that– a little bit– to heal myself as well.

 

The flip side is also true, especially with Filipino culture. Talking back to your parents is not acceptable, but sometimes parents mess up and they should admit that, so I write that scenario too.

 

I suppose what I hope readers take away is the idea that there are many possibilities within relationships and within ourselves. Nothing is fixed.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: My third book, The Oceans Between Us, which is scheduled for release in fall 2026! I wanted to explore another kind of family dynamic, one that is also common within the Filipino diaspora, a multi-generational family of OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers).

 

The story is set in contemporary Albuquerque, New Mexico, after 17-year-old Liezel’s grandmother suffers a stroke, and Liezel and her mother must come together after living apart for more than 10 years to deal with the aftermath. Like my first two books, it’s about mothers and daughters, the immigrant experience, and growing up.  

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: The precarity of the immigrant experience is especially front of mind for me in the current U.S. context and if you’re looking for ways to support these communities, I would look into local groups like AFIRE Chicago, New Mexico Immigrant Law Center (NMILC), RAICES Texas, New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), and Immigration Equality, who provide resources and advocate for immigrant rights. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Margie Zable Fisher

 

 

Margie Zable Fisher is the author, with her late mother, Rona S. Zable, of the new novel The Cabernet Club. Fisher lives in Florida.

 

Q: How did you and your mother come up with the idea for The Cabernet Club, and how did you collaborate on the project?

 

A: The Cabernet Club was 20+ years in the making.

 

My mother originally had the idea to write about a group of older women surviving a New England winter. It was called “Prozac Winter,” and pretty depressing!

 

When she moved to Florida, she decided to change the location and focus of the novel. Her experiences, my experiences, and things she heard about living in South Florida helped her create the world of Palmetto Pointe and Banyan Beach, where the novel takes place.

 

In this version of the novel, happily, Mom used her terrific humor, often to soften some of the serious issues her characters had to deal with.

 

We changed the title many times over the years.

 

Over the years I would read what she wrote and provide input. Fifteen years ago or so she joined a South Florida writer’s group, too. 

 

In the last few years before she passed away, I sent the book to agents for her, but she never got a contract.

 

Q: How did you create your character Debbie, and how would you describe the dynamic between her and her family?

 

A: Debbie is somewhat autobiographical. My mom also moved to Florida from New England after she retired, and was the single parent of a daughter (me). Mom was also hopeful that she would be living her best life in Florida.

 

My mother also spent a wonderful year living in New York City and had to move back to her hometown. 

 

My mother’s family was also very dysfunctional, for very different reasons. The dynamic between Debbie and her family, like my mother and her family, was strained.

 

Q: You’ve said that you made a deathbed promise to your mother to get the book published--can you tell us more about that?

 

A: In February 2023, a few days before Mom passed away, I made her a promise: that I would get her novel published. I suggested self-publishing it since we hadn’t gotten an agent, but she didn’t want that.

 

The reason: in the 1980s and 1990s she had three young adult and one middle-grade novel published by major NYC publishers. Even though the publishing world had changed dramatically since then, she still held out hope of getting a publisher.

 

After she passed away, I knew I would have to make changes to the novel. I thought because I was already a freelance writer and a voracious reader, that I could make a few changes, find an agent or publisher, and fulfill her promise. Not! 

 

I had never written fiction before, and I didn’t know what I needed to do. I ended up taking three months off from my regular writing work and spent that time learning how to write fiction. I listened to podcasts, researched information online, and hired a developmental editor.

 

By the end of that time, I had added 20,000 words, new characters, new plotlines, a tighter timeline, a new opening, and more.

 

During that time I also grieved the loss of my mom, and often wrote through my tears. But it was comforting to know that I was doing something to honor Mom.  

 

When the novel was finished, I spent a year pitching agents and publishers. 

 

I wasn’t having much luck and then stumbled across a new, small press. Sibylline Press only publishes books by women over 50. What a great fit! To this day, I’m still not sure how I found out about it. I think Mom guided me to it.

 

Sibylline Press published The Cabernet Club, co-authored by Rona S. Zable and Margie Zable Fisher, on January 31, 2025. The print, ebook, and audiobook are available on Amazon and many other retailers. 

 

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

 

A: Mom always said her life began at 50, and I also believe my best years are ahead of me.

 

We want readers to know that even with the negatives associated with aging, there is still so much joy to be had as we get older.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I thought that getting The Cabernet Club published would be a “one-and-done” project. But I ended up falling in love with the characters and the story, plus many readers have told me they would like to read more about The Cabernet Club.

 

I’m currently writing Book 2 of The Cabernet Club series and I also have a third book planned.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Mom and I had a dream that this would be made into a TV series. We often described it as a cross between Schitt’s Creek and The Golden Girls (if they were on a budget). 

 

We are actively looking for people interested in making that happen.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Peter Gribble

 

 

 

Peter Gribble is the author of the novel The City of the Magicians: Threat, the first in a series. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write The City of the Magicians: Threat?

 

A: The initial inspiration was the early experience as a 9-year-old standing in the midst of thousands of little white crosses stretching as far as the eye could see. This was the Normandy War Memorial site in France and I was stunned by the catastrophic waste of life.

 

Decades would pass before I ever thought of writing about such a subject but it seeded the opening premise to the series: What does a pacifist, non-violent city-state do to prepare for a barbarian invasion coming in six months?

 

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

 

A: I was interested in switching up the familiar fantasy trope of the lengthy arduous journey or quest. I thought, Skip the journey; the City is the destination and, for the reader: home. I liked the idea that simply by the act of reading, the reader becomes a Citizen. A map of the City’s streets and laneways was a must so I drew one for the front page’s verso.

 

Second was to establish that the City is roughly in a late medieval or early renaissance level of development. From the beginning, the world building was integral to the characters and plot. One item or another would spark another.

 

For example, City writing is in glyphic form, which suggested a game they play: Spheres, a cross between Scrabble and billiards. I had a large octagonal board made to determine how gameplay would function. It’s an interesting concept but impossible to play––at least I can’t.

 

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 like writing towards endings, even chapter endings, despite not necessarily knowing how I’ll get there––it’s part of the fun and mystery of writing.

 

However, the ending I had roughly mapped out for wrapping up the first trilogy (now book 3, Quickening) I thought rather tame. As I sketched a vague outline for it, my quiet, little writer’s voice said, “Okay you’ve got that out of the way, now write this!”

 

I was shocked. I was suddenly possessed and wrote the finale in a furious 10-hour non-stop period. When I was finished, it was complete, intact and needed no editing. In some thrilling way I had taken dictation.

 

But the book wasn’t finished. It took another five years of constant editing and revision to bring the rest of the manuscript up to the standard of that last chapter.

 

Only then, did the book––now enormous––undergo what I like to call a literary mitosis, a cellular division into the first three books of the series. The series usurped the original title The City of the Magicians, while the three books became Threat, Within, and Quickening.

 

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

 

A: The two protagonists undergo a struggle to keep their integrity intact while being pressured to submit to compromises. How can we do this? One character wears his Citizenship on his sleeve despite discovering how badly he has been manipulated while the other, entrapped in a secret society, hides her integrity away just to survive.

 

As I say on the back cover: “Both are pawns in the strategies of others. Yet it only takes a pawn to change the game.” It’s a hint that anyone; everyone can make a difference.

 

The other take away is the City’s notion of Magic, which for them is a completely natural phenomenon accessible to all. Magic, like, consciousness, appears mysterious only because it is unexamined.

 

You recognize it when, maybe for mere moments, beauty enhances existence, love warms the heart or for some reason, you cross the street where you never have before and bump into a friend you haven’t seen in years.

 

Sentient Reality––“Magic” if you will––facilitates this. City culture acknowledges this but comfort and complacency has allowed the disciplined practice of active conscious Magic to lapse. Unfolding crises in the series instigates a renewal.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Feel free to visit the website (which is undergoing some changes and additions): www.petergribble.com

 

The second trilogy is slowly taking shape but no word yet when book 4 is coming out. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Kimberly Heckler

 

 

 

Kimberly Heckler is the author of the new biography A Woman of Firsts:  Margaret Heckler, Political Trailblazer. It focuses on the life of the late congresswoman, ambassador, and Cabinet secretary, who also was Kimberly Heckler's mother-in-law. Kimberly Heckler lives in Arlington, Virginia.

 

Q: Why did you decide to write a biography of your mother-in-law, Margaret Heckler (1931-2018)?

 

A: Because the story has not been told and she is an American success story. She has a place in American history as a bipartisan role model for our times. She is relevant today. Her story offers a living history of competence, excellence, and leadership.

 

Q: The author Elisabeth Griffith said of the book that it “illuminates [Heckler’s] feminism, political acumen, personal losses, and Irish charm in an account that recalls how hard it was for women to break through so many doors and ceilings.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: It is very accurate. This is a story about a woman, from the time she was given away at birth by her Irish immigrant parents during the Great Depression in Queens, New York, in 1931.

 

Her early childhood losses and challenges are what helped to build her character for others, utter compassion wherever she could extend herself for the greater good, touching the lives of millions of Americans.

 

Q: As a biographer and family member, was it difficult to separate the two as you wrote the book?

 

A: No. I many times felt that I was in the presence of greatness, having known her for 35 years, but opening up her papers and discovering the Margaret Heckler as a young congresswoman with only 11 women in Congress, reading about the battles she faced being a woman in a man's world and a Republican in a Democratic state [Massachusetts] was fascinating. It is an unbelievable story.

 

Also to discover that she is the first and only triple crown woman in American politics, serving in three high-level capacities: in Congress, in a presidential Cabinet, and as an ambassador.

 

Q: What do you see as Margaret Heckler’s legacy today?

 

A: Her greatest legacy is that she accomplished what she wanted to do in life. She brought fairness, equality, and justice for millions of people.

 

The Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 - Women finally receive credit/credit cards in their own names. Title XI. The Equal Rights Amendment - her work getting it passed in the House and the Senate. The Heckler Report for minority Americans. The first federalized Hospice Program under Medicare. Women in the military. The WASPs. Veterans.

 

And she did level the playing field for so many.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I am very busy with my book launch. It is a full-time job.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Her life provides a foundation for how we should live today. As a woman of faith, she believed in listening to all sides of the argument: “The answer is somewhere in the middle.” The importance of excellence.

 

This story is for everyone, but really resonates with women and tomorrow’s daughters. It should be required reading in political science, history, and women’s studies departments.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

March 31

 

Photo by Ira Wood

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
March 31, 1936: Marge Piercy born.

Q&A with Jonathan B. Losos

 

 

Jonathan B. Losos is the author of the book The Cat's Meow: How Cats Evolved from the Savanna to Your Sofa. His other books include Improbable Destinies. He is an evolutionary biologist at Washington University, and he lives in St. Louis.

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Cat’s Meow?

 

A: I’ve always loved cats, but as my scientific career progressed, it never remotely occurred to me to study cats, for two reasons.

 

First, I wanted to go out into nature and study what animals do as they go about their day, and anyone who’s tried following a cat knows just how impossible that is. Lizards seemed like a better choice.

 

In addition, I was under the impression that there was no interesting research being done on domestic cats (both pets and unowned outdoor cats).

 

Then, about a dozen years ago, I learned that I was completely mistaken—many people were researching cats (again, domestic cats, not lions, tigers and ocelots) and using all the same cutting-edge approaches that I and my colleagues use to study lizards, eagles and elephants: GPS tracking, genome sequencing, etc.

 

Then I had what I humbly submit was a great idea: I’d teach a class for college freshmen called “The Science of Cats”—I’d lure them in on cats, and then teach them how we study nature, using cats as the vehicle.

 

The course was a great success and a lot of fun, and it occurred just as my book Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance and the Future of Evolution was published.

 

It wasn’t much of a leap to the idea of writing a book for the cat-interested public about where cats came from, why they do what they do, and what the future may hold—and how we know what we know.

 

Q: The writer David Quammen said of the book, “If you have ever lived with a feline long enough to reach an accommodation, you’ve probably asked yourself: Am I training the cat, or is the cat training me? That question is a gateway to the labyrinth of fascinating riddles explored by Jonathan Losos—himself a lifelong ailurophile as well as an eminent  evolutionary biologist—in this engaging and very smart book.” What do you think of that assessment?

 

A: I love it! And coming from David Quammen—one of the world’s great writers about nature and science—I am extremely flattered.

 

As for who’s training who, Quammen is absolutely correct. I learned that lesson at a young age: whenever our cats scratched the living room furniture, my father would throw them out the door. It wasn’t long before they turned this to their advantage by making a token swipe at the couch with a single claw and promptly darting to the door, where my father would promptly show up to fulfill his role.

 

Like father, like son: I now find my daily schedule dictated by the whims of my feline overseers (as the old saying goes, “dogs have owners, cats have staff”).

 

But it is a little known fact that cats are eminently trainable—after all, they’re very food-motivated. You can even train them to use the toilet (though not, sadly, to flush afterwards). Check out the Savitsky Cats to see the incredible tricks they can learn.

 

Q: Has writing this book changed how you see your own cats?

 

A: Absolutely. There were so many things I learned.

 

For example, I always assumed that cats meow to each other, and the fact that they meow to us means that they’re including us in their social network, treating us as honorary cats.

 

But, in facts, cats rarely meow to each other (other than momcats and their kittens): they communicate using plenty of other sounds, but not meows. The fact that they meow to us is a trick they evolved during domestication.

 

Also, their meow has become shorter and higher-pitched compared to their ancestor, the North African wildcat, making it more pleasing to our ears.

 

They also evolved a type of purr, called the solicitation purr, that they use when they really want something (think the sound they make when they’re winding between your legs as you open a can of wet food in the kitchen). This purr shares acoustical properties with the cry of a human infant, a sound to which we are innately sensitive.

 

Another fun fact: unowned outdoor female cats often mate with multiple males, which means that kittens in a litter can have different fathers, which may explain why my Winston and Jane are so different in appearance and temperament.

 

Q: At the end of the book, you raise the concept of bringing back the saber-tooth tiger in a smaller housecat-sized form--has anyone taken you up on this idea?

 

A: Not that I’m aware of. But saber-toothedness evolved at least four times in mammals—once in cats, twice in species very closely related to cats, and once in marsupials in South America (producing a species that was a dead ringer for a cat), so evolving such a trait doesn’t seem that difficult.

 

All kinds of breeds of cats and dogs have been produced, so it strikes me as possible that this could be done if someone really wanted to (not that I’m suggesting it!).

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: A topic I originally intended to tackle in The Cat’s Meow was the impact that cats have on the environment. It’s a highly controversial issue, pitting animal welfare advocates versus conservationists, and it’s a lot more complicated than most people realize.

 

Moreover, there are a lot of interesting twists—coyotes, for example, keep cats out of natural areas in most of North America—as well as a lot of fascinating research: what about the possibility of the Australian quoll (sometimes called the “marsupial cat”) as an alternative felinesque pet?

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Well, I could go on for hours about all the fascinating aspects of cats. I’ll leave you with one last story: it’s long been accepted that the cat was domesticated somewhere in the Middle East, possibly as recently as 3,500 years ago.

 

What is clear is that they didn’t start moving out to the rest of the world until after this point, spreading north to Europe, south into Sub-Saharan Africa and East to Asia, where they first showed up in China about 2,000 years ago.

 

Archaeologists were shocked, then, when skeletons of cats were discovered a decade ago in village sites in Central China dating to 5,500 years ago. How could this be? It seemed to turn our understanding of cat domestication on its head.

 

The answer was figured out a few years later. The skeletons were not of domestic cats, but of a different feline species, the Asian leopard cat (ASL).

 

On the one hand, that the ASL might have been domesticated wouldn’t be all that surprising: like the North African wildcat, they can be found today in the vicinity of villages, feasting on rats and other prey in agricultural areas. So, the stage would have been set for domestication to occur.

 

On the other hand, contrary to the NA wildcat, which can be very friendly, the ASL cannot be tamed—it has a very unpleasant temperament, leading the New Yorker to describe it as “a foul-tempered little beast with a gorgeous spotted coat.” How domestication occurred—if it did—is a great question.

 

And there’s a kicker: one of the most popular breeds today—the gorgeous and affectionate Bengal—is the result of hybrid matings between ASLs and domestic cats, with the offspring crossed back to domestic cats for several generations.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Neil Mathison

 

 

 

Neil Mathison is the author of the new book Airstream Country: A Geologic Journey Across the American West. He also has written the book Volcano, an A to Z. He is a former naval officer, nuclear engineer, and businessman.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Airstream Country?

 

A: Place inspires my writing. Airstream Country is about the American West. When my wife Susan retired, when we bought our Airstream Bambi, one of our goals was to reconnect with the West, from its coast to its mountains; from its ice-shaped north to the layer-cake geology of its Colorado Plateau and the basin and range of its four major deserts.

 

We wanted to understand the bones of the West: how one region connects to another, how the West’s geology and geography came to be. To achieve this, we needed to drive its highways. Highways are the West’s sinews. Airstream Country is the story of that quest.

 

Q: The writer Adrienne Ross Scanlan said of the book, “From the Pacific Coast to the Southwest, up the Rockies and across the Cascades, Airstream Country is a journey of married joy and American history, of geologic time and the serendipity of an unplanned day, of letting each exploration reveal where the next journey needs to take us.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: Adrienne’s words capture much of what we sought in our travels. We were traveling for nostalgia, serendipity, simplicity, and science.

 

Nostalgia because we grew up in the West and we wanted to visit places we’d visited before in addition to those we hadn’t.

 

Serendipity because we wanted to linger if we were inclined to linger or move on if we wished to move on without the schedules and obligations that had governed our pre-retirement travel.

 

Simplicity because simplicity makes travel lighter and therefore freer.

 

Science because we wanted to understand what we were seeing.

 

And, as Susan insists on pointing out, not always with “married joy,” but there was much joy, and companionship between two souls who love travel and who travel in the same manner.

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

 

A: My working title was “Bambi Diaries” I wanted the book to have the day-to-day sense of a diary; “Bambi” because it was the name Airstream assigned to our model Airstream trailer.

 

The staff at the University of New Mexico Press suggested that perhaps my working title would elicit Walt Disney’s Bambi rather than an Airstream journey, and that it conveyed nothing about the geological science, which was such an important element of the book.

 

The UNM Press team was right. The title we chose conveys what the book is about. “Airstream” because Airstreams have become as iconic for 21st century highway travel as the VW Bus was iconic for 1970s highway travel. “Geologic Journey” because geology is such an important element in the book and what makes the West so unique.

 

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

 

A: Airstream Country is a travel book, a natural history book, a cultural exploration, and a personal memoir. The book is organized into 12 chapters based on 12 different highway routes.

 

Each route can be a template for readers who plan to travel the West, or some part of the West. But each route is also an account of the West’s extraordinary geography, of the planet’s evolution revealed in the West’s geology.

 

The book answers questions of what I call Big-Picture Geology. Why is a mountain range here and not elsewhere? What do the layers in the Colorado Plateau tell us about the ancient history of the continent? Why is Yellowstone one of the world’s most dangerous volcanoes?

 

Each chapter explores not only the route’s geology, but its ecology, national parks and forests, literary, cinematic, and historical aspects, as well as the sociology of Baby Boomers, ten-thousands of whom are retiring each day, and who are creating a recreational vehicle culture.

 

Because Susan and I are native Westerners the book also offers insights into the West’s past as well as its present. What has changed? What has remained the same? What still inspires us? What has been lost?

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: A collection of essays, many already published, about places that have been important to my life: Hawaii, the Grand Canyon. the San Juan Islands. the Salish Sea. I’m also working on a series of linked stories set in British Columbia’s Inside Passage, several of these already published.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: We launched the book at Elliott Bay Bookstore in Seattle on March 12, 2025. The book is shipping and may be ordered through most bookstores and online retailers. I will be attending AWP in Los Angeles in late March.

 

Readings are being scheduled and will be posted on my website, www.neilmathison.net , which also includes chapter excerpts from Airstream Country, as well as selections from my previous book, Volcano, an A to Z, and many of my published essays and short stories.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb