Q&A with M.J. Rose

M.J. Rose is the author of the new novel Cartier's Hope, which takes place in New York in 1910. Her other books include Tiffany Blues and The Library of Light and Shadow. She lives in Connecticut.

Q: How did you come up with the idea for Cartier's Hope, and for your character Vera?

A: I was doing research for another novel, taking a class on talisman and amulets, and the professor said something about how in the early 1900s it was considered chic to thumb your nose at bad luck and how many women started wearing good luck charms upside down to tempt fate.

She mentioned that the Hope had been sold in just that way - that its bad luck had been a selling point in 1910. 

As for Vera, she came out of my lifelong fascination with Nellie Bly. I've been waiting to write about a journalist in the Gilded Age for ages.

Q: What kind of research did you do for this novel?

A: I worked with several jewelry experts and read a lot of source material written by people of the day. Including a lot of articles, letters and stories written by women journalists at the time.

Q: What do you think Vera's experiences say about women journalists in the early 20th century?

A: How difficult it was for them to be treated equally to the male reporters and how exploited they were by their bosses and editors. 

Q: The novel takes place in New York City in 1910. How important is setting to you in your writing?

A: Setting is critical to me. If I can't fall in love with the setting and time of a book, I can't write it. 

There is still so much of New York from 1910 that you can see walking around and that is very special to me. The Plaza Hotel, Central Park, some of the restaurants Vera and her fellow journalists frequent... are all still there. 

Q: What are you working on now?

A: A book about another famous jewel that I can't wait to share with readers, but for now I want to focus talking about Cartier's Hope.

Q: Anything else we should know? 

A: After you read Cartier's Hope, read Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone -- Pierre Cartier had read it, and the stories he told about the Hope have a lot in common with Collins’ book that was written decades earlier.

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with M.J. Rose.

Q&A with Susan Lewis

Susan Lewis is the author of the new novel Home Truths. Her many other books include One Minute Later. She lives in Gloucestershire, England.

Q: You note that the inspiration for Home Truths came from email exchanges with a reader who helped homeless people move toward independent living. How did that conversation lead to the creation of your character Angie and her family?

A: The process of creating Angie and her family was extremely complex owing to the need for combining likeability, sympathy, realism and the effects of gangland culture and government cuts on a family. So they represent an amalgam of many cases I read about and ultimately I feel that Angie found me rather than the other way around. 

Q: What kind of research did you do to write this book, and did you learn anything especially surprising? 

A: I read and viewed a great deal of information about the subject, most of it online, in order to gain an insight into how the system works for someone like Angie. It was a very sober study that opened my eyes to hardship in a way I hadn’t seen it before.

I also visited a men’s shelter where I talked at length to those who ran it, and to a few of the residents. I was shocked by the number of men who clearly suffer from mental health issues and receive no proper support from government agencies.

I also met with a group of women who’d either considered prostitution to keep roofs over their families’ heads, or who’d actually done it. For obvious reasons they wanted to remain nameless. It was heartbreaking hearing how far a mother will go to stop the authorities from taking her children away – and they weren’t always successful.

Q: In our previous interview, you said, "As you can tell I often weave an issue into my stories. I hope that by getting to know the characters you will gain a better understanding and empathy for those whose lives are a struggle for many different reasons – and usually through no fault of their own." How do you balance the characters and the issues as you write your novels, so that the issues don't overwhelm the characters or vice versa?

A: I think I often do overwhelm the characters with the issues. I certainly did with this book, but that’s what an editor is for.

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

A: I think it’s important for us all, in our affluent and privileged strata of society, to know how far some women are forced to go to prevent their children from being taken into care. Obviously, a book won’t change anything, but raising awareness and making us think more about those in need is a start. 

Q: What are you working on now?

A: My next book doesn’t have an issue, as such. My Lies, Your Lies is about manipulation, mind games and battles of wits between an established author and a ghostwriter. Although it made my head spin at times it was a nice change to get away from the soap box for a while.  

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: I realize – with sadness – that most stories of people in Angie’s situation do not end the way the book does. It was felt that portraying reality to its very worst levels was not the way to go for a work of fiction. So, I hope the reader will forgive or applaud the ending I’ve chosen.  

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Susan Lewis.

Q&A with Ged Adamson

Ged Adamson is the author and illustrator of the new children's picture book Bird Hugs. His other books include A Fox Found a Box and Douglas, You Need Glasses!. He lives in London.

Q: How did you come up with the idea for Bird Hugs, and for your character Bernard?

A: The idea for Bernard and Bird Hugs came from me doodling and sketching things in my notebook. I had this idea about someone having a collection of strange animals.

Bernard was one of these creatures and I’d drawn him looking sad on his perch with his big long wings. There was also a tortoise who told bad jokes.

I didn’t do anything else with the odd animal collection idea but I kept thinking about the bird with long wings.

Eventually I came up with a story for him—though one with a different ending. Originally, I had Bernard get so strong from his hugs that he finally gets to fly. But then I realised this wasn’t the best message that the story could give.

Q: How did you create the illustrations?

A: Most of the time I use a Faber-Castell “B” pencil for the basic drawings. Then I’ll do colour with either Caran d’Ache pencils or watercolour—or both. But for large areas of colour I’ll pretty much always use watercolour.

When I started doing picture books I used ink but I found it slightly limiting—though the truth is probably that I’m not that skilled with the pen!

I then transfer all the art I’ve done onto the computer and fix mistakes and play around with arrangement and background.

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

A: I hope kids take away the idea that, even though you may not be suited to doing a particular thing, there might be another equally valuable and wonderful thing you are totally made for. Life is about finding out what that thing is—or maybe it’s more than one thing.

And being kind and good and helpful are the best skills of all!

Sometimes, like Bernard, we can’t do the things we’d really like to do, no matter how hard we try and this is a difficult topic, certainly if you’re a parent or a teacher.

The “trying” part is the valuable learning experience—even if the outcome is different to what you first wanted. Getting involved in life can lead to lots of unexpected nice things.

I think a much better saying than “You can do whatever you set your mind to” is “You will find you can do things you didn’t know you could do. All you have to do is try!”

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I’m working on a new story about an elephant and I’m also doing the final artwork for a picture book for HarperCollins called Scribbly.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: I’ve illustrated a lovely funny picture book story by Simon Philip for Simon & Schuster UK. It’s called I Have To Start At School Today and it’s out late summer.

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Ged Adamson.

Jan. 28

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Jan. 28, 1935: David Lodge born.

Q&A with Karma Brown

Karma Brown is the author of the new novel Recipe for a Perfect Wife. Her other novels include The Life Lucy Knew and Come Away with Me, and her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Self and Redbook. She lives near Toronto.

Q: How did you come up with the idea for Recipe for a Perfect Wife, and for your characters Alice and Nellie?

A: I own quite a few vintage cookbooks—the more food splattered and well-loved the better—and had this idea of how an old house, a dark secret (or two), and a shared cookbook would link together the lives of two women—one modern and one from the past.

Having a young daughter, gender roles are often on my mind, and I also wanted to explore the expectations we continue to place on women, wives and mothers even in these more progressive times.

Nellie was the first character to come to mind, and she arrived in my brain fully formed and ready to tell her story. Alice was murkier in the beginning—particularly because gender roles are not as clear cut as they once were—but she was the character who ended up surprising me the most.

Q: Why did you decide to focus on recipes from the 1950s, and do you cook these recipes yourself?

A: I wanted to set Nellie’s story in the 1950s, and so it made sense to focus on recipes from that era.

Plus, much like the retro advice epigraphs that open each of the modern-day chapters, I decided these recipes needed to be integrated into Nellie’s chapters, as the cookbook was such an important part of her life and story.

I’ve tried a few of the recipes so far, including the Baked Alaska, which my daughter and I made. It was tasty but quite finicky to make, so the end result was likely not as impressive as Nellie’s would have looked!

Q: What kind of research did you do to recreate the 1950s portion of the novel, and did you learn anything especially surprising?

A: I spent many hours reading articles and stories from that decade, as well as watching endless home economics videos that used to be played in school during the 1950s.

I also grilled my parents and friends, who were teenagers in the ‘50s, on everything from birth control to entertainment and culture to clothing to etiquette.

And I have a large stack of vintage magazines from my stepmother, so I combed through those for the language and flavor of that particular decade.

Probably the thing that continued to surprise me (even though I was well aware of it) was simply how women were perceived at that time—one beer advertisement that still stands out in memory featured a husband and a wife (holding a spatula, with a chastised look on her face), and the caption read, “At least she didn’t burn the beer!” 

Q: How was the novel's title chosen, and what do you think it says about marriage in the 1950s and today?

A: A title is always tricky, because it needs to do a lot of heavy lifting.

While I was drafting, the book was called “The Good Wife” and then my agent and I decided that wasn’t compelling enough. So I put it out to a group of author friends, and this was one of the options we came up with--luckily my publisher also loved it!

As for what it says about marriage, both then and now, it’s a tongue-in-cheek statement based on the idea that women should be striving for perfection in the role of “wife”…even though there is no such thing as a “perfect wife” (or “perfect husband” for that matter).

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I’m working on my first non-fiction project at the moment, which is titled Time for Change and is about owning your time (and reclaiming it) in the age of increasing urgency, when many of us feel like we don’t have enough of it to even get the day-to-day stuff done. It will be out end of 2020 with HarperCollins.

I’m also working on my next fiction project, but it will remain a secret for now!

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Karma Brown.

Jan. 27

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Jan. 27, 1931: Mordecai Richler born.

Q&A with Alison Donald

Alison Donald's picture book for kids include AdoraBULL and The Spacesuit. A pediatric occupational therapist, she lives in Surrey, England.

Q: How did you come up with the idea for AdoraBULL, and why did you decide on a bull for one of the two main characters?

A: Alfred is real! Well sort of. My husband grew up on a farm and he told me about a bull named Alfred. I started wondering what if a boy and a bull were best friends.? What could that be like? 

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

A: Empathy for others.  That’s a tall order, I know, but I hope it gets children thinking…How would I feel if I was Alfred. What would I do if my best friend was lonely?

Q: You also have another recent book out, The Spacesuit. How did you research this book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?

A: With The Spacesuit I switched gears completely and wrote my first narrative non-fiction book. When researching the book, I read books and articles about the fabrication of the A7L spacesuit, and I also got in touch with ILC Dover (the manufacturers of the A7L spacesuit). 

I learned a ton about how spacesuits are made.

I love the true story of how Eleanor Foraker and a group of seamstresses who worked at Playtex (a division of ILC DOVER years ago) won a competition that enabled them to handmake the spacesuits worn for the iconic 1969 moonwalk. I learned about latex, properties of spacesuits, sewing techniques and so much more. 

I was surprised to learn that an x-ray machine was used to detect any pins that may have been accidentally left in the suit. 

Q: What do you think the illustrators--Alex Willmore and Ariel Landy--add to the books?

A: Illustrators breathe life into a picture book. I have been so lucky to work with some excellent illustrators. 

I love the humor that Alex brought to AdoraBULL and I love how Ariel really captured the fashion and style of the mid-1960s in The Spacesuit.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: My next book, by me and Rea Zhai, A Super Sticky Mistake, will be out in the spring. It tells the story of how Harry Coover Jr. accidentally invented Superglue.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: I’m very excited to say that The Spacesuit has been included in A Mighty Girl’s top book list for 2019.  

--Interview with Deborah Kalb