Q&A with Janice Hadlow

 

 

Janice Hadlow is the author of the new novel Rules of the Heart. Her other books include The Other Bennet Sister. She spent most of her career as a television producer and commissioner. 

 

Q: Why did you decide to write a novel based on the life of Lady Harriet Bessborough (1761-1821)?

 

A: Harriet’s story - inspired by real events - is so extraordinary, so compelling and so unfamiliar that I wanted to bring it to as many readers as possible.

 

It’s very much not the usual C18th romance - its heroine is no innocent young girl seeking the right man to marry, but an experienced older woman, buffeted by the world, but still hoping against hope to find love.

 

Harriet is unhappily married, the veteran of several affairs, and knows all there is to know about the many ways in which men can and will disappoint you - and yet she still hopes to find the lover she believes will complete her.

 

When she meets Granville Leveson Gower, she thinks she’s found him. During their long affair, she endures a great deal in the name of love - but she never loses the generosity of spirit, the open-hearted warmth and the yearning for affection that were central to her character.

 

With all her complexities, I found Harriet a deeply sympathetic woman, struggling against all the odds for a connection that would give meaning to her life.

 

Q: How would you describe the relationship between Harriet and Granville?

 

A: From the very beginning, it’s an intensely passionate connection, founded on a powerful mutual attraction. Granville is very candid about the strength of his desire for Harriet - and once she surrenders to him, it’s clear she fully returns his ardour, that she’s never before experienced anything so exciting.

 

But the physical pleasure they enjoy together is only part of what draws Harriet to Granville. He satisfies a need in her to belong utterly to one person and she’s soon entirely in thrall to him.

 

She knows they can never marry - but she’ll do almost anything to keep him near her. She realises she’s become obsessively devoted to this man- but can’t imagine life without him.

 

Q: How did you research Harriet’s life and what did you learn that especially surprised you?

 

A: Like most educated women of her time, Harriet was a prolific letter writer, and I discovered a great deal about her from reading her correspondence.

 

Her character - her wit, her intelligence, her courage - blazes out from everything she wrote, and I was soon captivated by her. She describes her situation with an immediacy and candour that brings her world alive and reveal it to be not quite the place we think it was.

 

I was most surprised to discover how common it was, in the wealthy circles in which Harriet moved, for older women to have much younger lovers. She’s 12 years older than Granville, and many of her friends also had relationships involving similar differences in age.

 

I hadn’t appreciated the extent to which, amongst high society, older women were acknowledged to possess a sexual allure all of their own, and were avidly pursued by much younger men.

 

Q: The author Stephanie Butland said of Rules of the Heart, “Janice Hadlow has created a character who I loved and was frustrated by in equal measure. Harriet’s desire for love is so human and the world she loves in almost impossible for women to traverse unless they give up any hope for their own happiness.” What do you think of this assessment?

 

A: I absolutely agree with her judgement - Harriet is indeed both extremely lovable and sometimes very frustrating! There are times when you long for her to behave differently, when it’s hard not to wonder if she’s sacrificed too much of herself to preserve her relationship with Granville.

 

Harriet herself was very aware of the price she paid for his love - she often berates herself for giving in to him as she does, understanding only too well the true costs of her submission.

 

But, as Stephanie observes, the time in which she lived offered her few other choices than submission or separation and I wanted to present her as she really was, not as we might have wished her to be. I think it’s important to understand how even a woman as intelligent as Harriet was shaped by the ideas and expectations of her world.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m writing a successor to my first novel, The Other Bennet Sister, which is again set in an Austen-adjacent world.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I’m delighted that The Other Bennet Sister is currently in production as a television drama for the BBC in the UK and Britbox in the US. It will probably appear sometime in 2026. So exciting!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Rebecca Wait

 

 

 

Rebecca Wait is the author of the new novel Cry Havoc. Her other books include I'm Sorry You Feel That Way. She lives in Buckinghamshire, UK. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Cry Havoc, and how did you create your characters Ida and Eleanor?

 

A: I think the first seeds of the book came after I developed an obsession with this insane public information campaign the UK government ran during the late stages of the cold war called “Protect and Survive.”

 

They issued these leaflets to UK households instructing people what to do if a nuclear bomb was dropped (including handy tips on how to create a fallout shelter out of odds and ends in your own home).

 

I found copies of these leaflets online, and spent ages reading and re-reading them; they’re hilarious and disturbing in equal measure, and there seemed to me something peculiarly British about the “make do and mend” attitude, the sheer silliness of suggesting people protect themselves from radioactive fallout using old cardboard and stacks of books. I started thinking about how to use this kind of fusion of comedy and fear as the backdrop for a novel.

 

Then in addition to that, I’d been teaching English in London secondary schools (our high schools) for over a decade by then, and knew I had good material there!

 

With Ida, I wanted someone whose character would be slowly revealed: someone quite reserved and self-contained, not just where other characters are concerned, but also the reader.

 

I find it more of a challenge to write a character like that than someone more immediately “open” or accessible, because if you withhold too much from the reader, you risk making the character a blank.

 

Eleanor was easier to write; she’s reserved in her interactions with other characters, but emotionally honest and self-aware, so more accessible to the reader as a viewpoint character. And I gave her a lot of my own anxieties. The contrast between these two characters kept things interesting for me while I was writing.

 

Q: The Publishers Weekly review of the novel says, “Wait crafts an intriguing and mordantly funny glimpse of life in closed communities where groupthink and gossip thrive.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I quite like it! I’m particularly interested in the impact of closed environments – I set one previous novel on a remote Scottish island, and another in an isolated cult on the Yorkshire moors.

 

I’m fascinated by the way our behaviour can be altered/ heightened when we find ourselves in particular group settings, especially ones that are to some extent sealed or self-contained. Humans are a social, cooperative species, and we’re vulnerable to social contagion.

 

It’s best if we recognise this about ourselves, rather than considering ourselves to be independent, rational beings; our brains are very susceptible to peer influence. I was interested in the possibilities a boarding school might offer for exploring these ideas. 

 

Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?

 

A: I read a lot of books and medical papers on various aspects of neurology, and neurotropic viruses. Fortunately, these are areas I find interesting, so it was a joy rather than a chore.

 

I also spent a long time reading the minutes of various health authority meetings from the early ‘80s (which was incredibly boring, but weirdly I also quite enjoyed).

 

And I spoke a lot to my dad, who was working as a hospital doctor in the time period the book is set, and to another consultant neurologist I know. My brother – another doctor, can’t get away from them – was helpful in suggesting a particular virus that ended up being important to the plot.

 

I also read a lot about psychogenic illness and functional neurological disorder, illnesses that would once have been characterised as “hysteria.”

 

It was my research here that surprised me the most. It blew my mind that someone can be experiencing really dramatic and debilitating physical symptoms – tics, or seizures, or even paralysis – without there being any underlying organic or structural abnormality in the brain. Amazing the way our brains can betray us.

 

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

 

A: No, I never really know at the start. I usually have a clear(ish) premise in my mind when I begin writing, and a couple of vague navigational points in mind that I’m heading towards, but then the plot works itself out properly along the way.

 

I’ve tried planning in more detail in the past, but it doesn’t work for me – I always go off in an unexpected direction. But that’s half the fun, anyway.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m working on a book set in Gloucester, England, in 1994, which was during the investigation into Fred and Rose West (their names might not be as familiar to American readers as they are to English readers, but they’re a touchstone of horror over here). A girl is looking for her mother, who went missing years before.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: There’s a small, low-budget British film called Threads that came out in 1984, the year Cry Havoc is set. It’s a nightmarish vision of the aftermath of a nuclear attack on Britain, and it’s the single most terrifying film I’ve ever seen.

 

I watched it several times while writing Cry Havoc, whenever I wanted to bring the idea of nuclear attack more vividly to life for myself.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Graham Robb

 

 

 

Graham Robb is the author of the new book The Discovery of Britain: An Accidental History. His other books include The Discovery of France. He lives on the English-Scottish border. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Discovery of Britain?

 

A: First, an emergency bicycle ride in 2018 after an Atlantic storm cut one half of Great Britain off from the other. Second, my decipherment of a startlingly accurate map of Britain created in the first century BC. 

 

Q: How would you compare your experience working on this book with that of working on The Discovery of France?

 

A: The Discovery of France covered a shorter period, from the French Revolution to the First World War. The Discovery of Britain runs from “500 million BC to the next election.”

 

I occasionally used my earlier self (from infancy to early adulthood) as a witness of the past who either didn’t know what he was seeing or who saw things an adult would have missed.

 

Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?

 

A: I researched the book by digging as deeply as possible into particular places and moments rather than starting with broad surveys and foregone conclusions. Long cycle expeditions then served as what archaeologists call “ground-proofing.” In those forms of research, everything is surprising.

 

Q: The author Garrett Carr said of the book, “A history where everything is somehow still present and all at once, colourful and jostling along, like a tapestry that draws you close.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: No one lives their life in chronological order. We are always in the past, a little in the future, and almost never in the present.

 

Histories composed of separate blocks of time can be useful but profoundly misleading. They can also serve the purposes of politicians who, like Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, believe that “we should not try to unpick our history.”

 

Q: What are you working on now? Will you write another “Discovery of” book?

 

A: Both “Discoveries” were founded on several decades of accidental and deliberate experience. Another “Discovery” would require an additional half century of existence or a realization that all along I had been living a parallel life in a different part of the Earth. I doubt that in either case the results would have been of much value to a reader.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: This book, like The Discovery of France, was researched and ground-proofed with my wife, Margaret, who was born and grew up in the United States. This shared binocular vision made it easy to reconceptualize my native country as a foreign land.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with T.M. Logan

 

 

 

T.M. Logan is the author of the new novel The Room in the Attic. His other books include The Mother. He lives in Nottinghamshire, UK.

 

Q: You’ve said your friends’ house-moving story was an inspiration for The Room in the Attic--can you say more about that?

 

A: The initial idea came from a casual conversation with some American friends about their house move in Boston. Some time after they moved in, they were decorating and getting the house the way they wanted it, and noticed that one of the rooms seemed an odd shape, not quite as big as it should be.

 

When they explored further, they found a hidden space behind a false wall, which was not on the realtor’s plans of the house. It was a curiosity of the house that presumably had been put there many years, or perhaps decades, earlier. And to this day, they’ve never found out who built it that way, or why.

 

But it got me thinking: what if you moved into a house with the very darkest secrets? What if you inadvertently stirred up old ghosts, old crimes? And what if the perpetrator of those crimes was still out there? That was the little anecdote that initially got me started on The Room in the Attic.

 

Q: How did you create your character Adam?

 

A: He’s a father and a family man, like me, and there is some of me in him. He also loves history and old architecture, and has a real curiosity about the house he moves his family into.

 

Also like me, he doesn’t like to leave questions unanswered – he develops a real fascination with finding out why the room in the attic has been left untouched for so long.

 

I loved writing about the family dynamic of the parents and their three children, and I always like to reflect on my own experience as a parent when I do that. In some respects, Adam is also an everyman so he’s quite easy to relate to.

 

Q: The writer Sarah Pearse said of the book, “A darkly gripping and addictive read, [The Room in the Attic] skilfully plays on a new homeowner’s worst nightmare - that something deadly is lurking beneath the welcoming facade as the home’s past echoes into the present.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: It’s a great description! We always hope that home will be our sanctuary, but that’s not always the case.

 

On one level, the novel reflects a fairly universal experience of moving house, of leaving the old behind and embracing something new, of trying to find your feet where everything is unfamiliar.

 

But moving house is also a step into the unknown. There’s a sense of discovery, of trying to make a new place your own even as you discover more about its quirks – or perhaps about the people who lived there before you.

 

I wanted to capture that feeling with The Room in the Attic, that feeling of secrets slowly revealed, of the history contained within those walls. And the danger of stirring up the past.

 

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

 

A: I had a good idea of how it would end when I was planning out the arc of the story, but there are always changes along the way. No matter how much planning I do, I find there is always a certain amount of organic growth within the story once I start writing, as I get to know the characters better and how all the elements fit together. 

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m in the planning stage for my 11th novel, which will come out in the UK in 2027. My 10th is coming out here at the end of February 2026 so I’m also looking forward to that! The next one to be published in the USA will be The Daughter, which will be coming out in early 2027.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: The Park – the suburb of Nottingham where The Room in the Attic is set – is a real place and has some of the most stunning Victorian architecture in the county. It’s also one of the only places in Europe to retain old-style gas lighting on the streets, which gives it a really unique feel – especially at night!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with T.M. Logan. 

Q&A with Peter H. Reynolds and Paul A. Reynolds

 

 

 

Peter H. Reynolds and Paul A. Reynolds are the creators of the new children's picture book Our Treasures Within. The book was a collaboration with the late Pope Francis.  

 

Q: What inspired you to create Our Treasures Within, and what role did Pope Francis play in the creation of the book?

A: We’ve been long-time collaborators with Loyola Press, and when they reached out to us with the idea of helping bring Pope Francis’ messages to children in a fresh, accessible way - our hearts both skipped a beat. 

 

We both deeply admire Pope Francis and the work he did to invite all on a journey of faith, love and service - in a way that seemed to transcend all faith traditions.

Then came the enormous gravity of how to do that. There was one particular metaphor that Pope Francis used when speaking with children that really lit the spark in both of us.  He would talk about the “treasure box” we each carry inside us - and how we’re all called to discover those gifts within, and then share them.

 

Pope Francis’ exact words are in the book, but they then also formed the foundation for our creative adaptation in both word and illustration. 

 

In an ideal world, we would have loved to have been in the same room with Pope Francis while we were creating the book, but distance, and then his medical situation, prevented our physical meeting. But we truly feel that we were called to bring this book to the world - no matter what the obstacles we were presented with.  

 

Q: How did the two of you collaborate on the book, and what was your writing/illustrating process like?

 

A: As twins, Peter and I work very closely together. While I shape the narrative framework, Peter provides feedback for enhancements, all while he is sketching images to capture the essence of each line of text.

 

We would meet - usually over cups of tea - and be inspired by each other’s work - exploring the synergy between the unfolding verse and Peter’s gentle illustrations. 

 

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

 

A: The title grew from Pope Francis’ use of the metaphor, which invited children to look inward and discover the “treasures” already within them: compassion, curiosity, courage, imagination. 

 

We were both mentored by Jesuits, and I’ve been teaching at Boston College for over 30 years, so Our Treasures Within was a poetic way to convey the very heart of Ignatian spirituality and formative education. In just three words - it reminds us that our job as humans (both kids and the grown-ups reading with them) is to discover one’s gifts, talents and strengths, and then use them in positive, purposeful ways to move the world to a better place.  

 

Q: What do you see as Pope Francis’s legacy today?

A: Pope Francis reshaped global conversations around empathy, inclusion and care for our shared planet. His leadership has encouraged people of all backgrounds — not only Catholics — to value dialogue over division, to lift those on society’s margins and to remember that dignity isn’t negotiable.

 

His legacy, in our view, is a call to a kinder, more courageous humanity.  If we truly use our “treasures within,” we will help bring that legacy and mission forward. 

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Peter and I continue creating stories and media that nurture creativity, compassion and community.

 

We’re expanding our work at our nonprofit Reynolds Center for Teaching, Learning & Creativity, supporting educators and young creators - including support for our International Dot Day festival celebrating creativity, confidence, and community, which has now attracted over 35 million participants in over 190 countries. 

 

There are also new books in the pipeline, new digital tools being developed, and a steady stream of projects that keep us busy. 

 

Paul is working on a sequel to the brothers’ award-winning picture book Going Places. Peter’s next picture book is called When You Dream Big, published by Scholastic, which is about a little girl who is not sure about her life’s direction, but who learns to keep moving forward, no matter what. 

 

Peter has another collaboration with Yusuf Cat Stevens in the works - bringing the song, “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out” to life as a picture book, which follows the New York Times #1 bestselling Peace Train collaboration a few years back. 

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: This project dovetails perfectly into the work we set out to do when we launched our own educational media and interactive company 30 years ago.

 

FableVision Studios opened its doors with a goal to “create and share positive storytelling, media and technology” - with an enduring tagline: “Stories That Matter, Stories That Move.”

 

From the get go, the stories FableVision produced moved through the power of digital animation, but more importantly, they were designed to help people think and act differently - in ways that would make this world a better place.

 

After three decades of work, we’re proud to say we never wavered on that mission. Our Treasures Within is a very important picture book in that work.  And this “moving book” may soon be moving with animation!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Linda Bass

 

 

Linda Bass is the author of the new book A Tiny White Light: A Memoir of a Mind in Crisis. She worked in the workforce development field for 30 years, and she lives in Western Massachusetts. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write this memoir?

 

A: My peak/transcendent experience and the psychotic episode that followed about a month later were together probably the most fascinating experience of my life (so far) and my goal was to depict it as accurately as possible.

 

I didn’t intend to write a memoir at first—my primary goal wasn’t to share my life or reveal all about myself. In fact, worried about the potential impact on my career, I originally wrote it in third person, changed names, and considered using a pen name and publishing it as fiction.

 

In the end, I decided I wanted readers to understand it was a true story, and so it evolved into a memoir written in first person and using my actual name as author.

 

The content of my psychosis was meaningful and could be traced back to elements of my family’s dysfunction, my brother’s experience while schizophrenic, my dreams, and my therapist’s own phobia, which he had inadvertently disclosed to me.

 

Although A Tiny White Light is written as a story, I conceived of the book as a case history of sorts that would show how these threads converged with stressful life circumstances to contribute to my psychotic break.

 

I hoped the book might be of value to anyone whose life has been touched by mental illness, either their own, or that of friends, family, or colleagues, but that it  might also be of particular interest to clinical psychologists and other psychotherapists—to see that psychotic content can be useful in identifying underlying issues and might even suggest new forms of treatment to help clients find their way back to themselves.

 

Finally, over the years, I’ve read many accounts of psychosis/mental crises, and have often felt that much was left hidden, glossed over, or treated as simple misfiring of synapses in the brain—gobbledygook, which was not my experience at all. Instead there was an inner logic to it all, even though it was at a sort of precognitive level.

 

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

 

A: I went to see Sam, a clinical psychologist, to be hypnotized to help me quit smoking, but I had other issues I needed to talk about, and after a couple of sessions he suggested we try an unguided hypnosis to see what came up.

 

A white light appeared to me, a tiny one that floated down to my hands. I thought it symbolized life or vitality, and that I was meant to absorb it, but I couldn’t—it had nothing to do with me. Now I think it might have represented my very soul.

 

The book is about my psychotic episode and its precursors, but at base it’s also about my search for meaning and a sense of purpose.

 

Q: The writer Dori Ostermiller said of the book, “Truly the most authentic, disturbing and riveting description of psychosis I’ve ever read, barring perhaps Jack Kerouac’s depiction of alcoholic psychosis in his memoir Big Sur.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I loved that she found the depiction “authentic” and “riveting,” and I’m unsure about “disturbing.” Since the reader is immersed in my psychotic point of view, it might literally have felt disturbing as she read.

 

But also I think some readers, knowing I wasn’t myself, might have worried about my children’s well-being. But as a mother I was always protective of my kids, even during that experience.

 

Regarding Jack Kerouac’s book—I immediately bought it so see what she meant, but (apologies to Kerouac fans) found it unreadable. Apparently he’s controversial these days, but still he is iconic, representative of the newly developing counterculture of his time.

 

I’m guessing Dori was reacting specifically to how well his stream-of-consciousness approach conveyed the interior of his psychosis. Overall I thought her comment was a pretty glowing testament about my book and I appreciated that very much.

 

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

 

A: I didn’t write this for catharsis, although I suppose I feel relieved that I no longer have to keep what happened to me a secret. But as I wrote I was revisited with shame, mostly for falling in love with my therapist—it was so cliché—but also for the psychosis itself, even though it was beyond my control.

 

Despite those feelings, the psychologist in me felt compelled to write this story—to help others understand what the experience was like, what led up to it, and that it could be overcome.

 

And that, I suppose, is the biggest takeaway—that someone can have an extreme experience like this and yet still go on to live a successful, contented life.

 

The book also underlines the toll that emotional abuse takes on children—in some cases taking their very lives, and in others, relegating them to the ongoing pain inflicted by internalized messages that undermine relationships, careers, and their sense of well-being, unless they are able to get the help they need.

 

On a societal level, I think we need to broaden our approaches to treating mental disorders. Acutely distressed people are still primarily medicated and/or housed temporarily in psychiatric facilities to keep them safe, busy, and manageable, but we need better long-term therapeutic solutions so they have the opportunity to be their fully functioning selves.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Honestly, my life is still consumed with publishing-related activities, but my intention is to fine-tune and publish a compilation of short stories I’ve written over the years, and then I plan to write another longer form work, a novel or another memoir.

 

The short stories are lighter or at least more humorous than A Tiny White Light, but, alas, I am still me, so there’s some darkness floating around in them, too!

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: If readers are interested in learning more, they can check out my author website: https://lindabass.com. I’m also an artist. Readers can see my work on my art website: https://lindabassart.com.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with David Guterson

 

 

David Guterson is the author of the new novel Evelyn in Transit. His other books include the novel Snow Falling on Cedars. He lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Evelyn in Transit?

 

A: As a child I had an accidental proximity to Tibetan Buddhism. This came about because of a friendship I shared with a Tibetan boy of about my age who lived in my neighborhood.

 

His name was Ani Sakya. He and his family had fled Tibet for India in the late 1950s, and from there had made their way to Seattle, where Ani's father, uncle, and great-uncle were employed by the University of Washington to assist in research.

 

Ani's great-uncle was Dezhung Rinpoche III, a highly respected scholar and also a tulku, meaning the reincarnation of a prominent lama. The extended family included Dezhung Rinpoche's sister Ane Chime, a nun. Both Ane Chime and Dezhung Rinpoche wore robes.

 

I was in their house a lot. There were five Sakya sons, and we shared common interests. Sometimes when I showed up, Dezhung Rinpoche would be seated on the floor in the corner, looking out a window while saying mantras and fiddling with prayer beads.

 

My approach to this circumstance was to creep as quietly as I could along a far wall so as to get out of the room without disturbing him. It never worked. Dezhung Rinpoche always turned and smiled at me. It's hard to explain how penetrating his smile was.

 

This is going to sound wu-wu, but a few years ago I started seeing him, in my mind's eye, smiling at me from his corner by the window. Call that what you will, but Evelyn in Transit started with it.

 

I think it's appropriate that there's ambiguity as to whether there's something mystical in that, or whether it's just the result of a penetrating smile, and worth asking how much difference there is between those two things--which is a question Evelyn in Transit asks too, if more expansively.

 

Neither Dezhung Rinpoche or Ane Chime learned much English, but both made themselves clear in their conduct and manner. I was a child who knew little and was therefore incapable of romanticizing Tibetans in the way they've often been romanticized in the West.

 

I had no idea who these people in robes were. I only knew that in their conduct and manner was an openness, kindness, generosity, and love that impressed itself on me. Those two monastics set me on the path to writing Evelyn in Transit simply by being who they were.

 

Q: How did you create your characters Evelyn Bednarz and Tsering Lepka?

 

A: To create Evelyn I conducted interviews with, and pursued research about, parents of western tulkus, and as well spoke with Tibetan friends who sent their son into monastic life. The interviews were enormously inspirational, as was the research, but in the end Evelyn--and Tsering--are products of my imagination.

 

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

 

A: A title is a perilous concern, because once you commit to one, you can't take back its implications, and besides, everything that follows will have to be of a piece with it, which means you're probably better off not having one at outset, or having only a working one.

 

If you invent its title before your book invents itself, you risk wearing it like an albatross, because a book wants to be what a book wants to be, and it can get angry with you for putting a lid down on it by dint of a precious a priori title, and even refuse to show itself for the simple reason that it doesn't identify with the name you gave it before it coalesced.

 

So, I had no title for this book until it was done. At that point I collaborated with my editor on finding one, and after going back and forth on possibilities, we landed on Evelyn in Transit. I like it for its sense of a journey and of transformation, both of which are central to the book.

 

Q: The writer Paul Harding said of the book, “What a beautiful, strange, soulful spell David Guterson casts in Evelyn in Transit. . . . The modest, intimate, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deadpan funny, always perfectly observed day-to-day details build up and resolve into an inspired portrait that is both cosmic and sacred.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: This is a generous and beautiful description of the novel and I'm grateful to Paul for it. In a remarkably succinct way, it captures the book perfectly. I particularly like the idea that Evelyn in Transit casts a strange, soulful spell. It's really important to a novel's success that it compels readers to keep turning pages, so I'm happy to know that, for Paul, it worked that way.

 

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 never know where a novel is going. Every sentence is a surprise to me. I don't think I could do it any other way. Striking into the unknown with every word is critical in my case. I just keep asking myself questions about characters, and never worry about plot, in the belief that character is fate.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: A million different things, as usual! I spent a big part of 2025 engaged as a freelance journalist writing features and op-eds about immigration and agriculture. I just finished a new short story. I'm developing ideas for a children's book. I've completed, but am still tinkering with, a book about writing fiction.

 

I've put together 50 entries for a free weekly newsletter on fiction writing that lands in your email box if you sign up for it on my website…

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: As a writer I don't have a theory or a method. Each of my works of fiction came into the world differently. Each moment of each presented me with its singular dynamic. There was nothing to anchor to. There were no principles to apply. There was always only here and now.

 

A good metaphor for fiction writing is Indra's net. This image first appeared in Vedic scriptures--specifically in the Atharva Veda, sometimes called the "Veda of magical formulas."

 

Indra's net is an infinite web of multi-faceted jewels, each of which reflects the others. It's a hall of mirrors--an endless shimmer. When something happens at a single point there, it happens everywhere.

 

Which means that, as a fiction writer, you have no choice but to take everything into account before you touch the next word.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb