The Qwillery

TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

Ethan:  As a kid, to be honest. This may sound corny, but I remember my mother helping me set up a lemonade stand when I was about seven. She baked cookies, helped get the table going, and then I spent the afternoon crafting comic books for sale alongside the treats. I only sold one, but I remember the gentleman to this day. Later, I was a bit of a punk in high school. I had an English teacher who wasn’t overly fond of me until we started with the writing portion of his class. He took me aside and told me I should think about being a writer. That continued through undergrad, and later in graduate school. I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t writing. I don’t know how I would exist without it.



TQ:  Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Ethan:  Oh, do I have to chose? I love the idea of being a pantser. Or maybe I just love the naughtiness of the word. I’m probably a plotter. My wife laughed at me when I replied to another interview saying I was meticulous in my plot creation. Obsessed was the term she used. I spend a lot of time plotting the manuscript out before I start writing. Besides really needing to know the end, I have certain elements each book part and chapter must contain before I sit down and start cranking away.



TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Ethan:  Finding the time to shut out the rest of the world and just write? I love every aspect of writing, from creation to revision to getting notes from my editor and starting the process all over again. But the way a writing career works in today’s world, so much time gets spent in social media, etc, that I feel it interferes with writing. I rarely even find the time to blog, sadly.



TQ:  Who are some of your literary influences? Favorite authors?

Ethan:  I love this question! I have so many. Stephen King was huge for me when I was younger. Clive Barker. Anne Rice. Richard Matheson is one of my favorites. Such craft. Michael Crichton. Ray Bradbury. H.P. Lovecraft was a great inspiration. William Gibson. Joe R. Lansdale. Scott Smith. Of late I’ve been enjoying Andrew Pyper. Of course I also read the current biggies -- Susan Collins, George R.R. Martin.



TQ:  Describe The Undying.

Ethan:  After a mysterious event plunges Paris into darkness, a young American must lead her friends to safety—and escape the ravenous undying who roam the crumbling city.

Jeanie arrives in Paris for New Year’s Eve, partying until midnight when the lights go out. By morning, fireballs rain from the sky and temperatures rise. Hearing word of a comet strike, her journey takes her from the Latin Quarter to the catacombs and the Louvre. Yet she knows the worst is yet to come as she’s the only person who has witnessed the pale, vampiric survivors.

These cunning beings are known as les moribund and their numbers increase by the hour. When fate places a newborn boy in her care, Jeanie stops at nothing to keep the infant safe and escape Paris—even if she must leave all hope of rescue behind.



TQ:  Tell us something about The Undying that is not in the book description.

Ethan:  Jeanie travels to Paris from Seattle with her good friend, Ben. A lot of the book centers around their relationship, and how they deal with the horrible events they are witnessing. They make their journey in the book with a group of friends they’ve met in Paris, one being an exchange student who lived with Jeanie for a short while. There is also a little bit of a love story.



TQ:  What inspired you to write The Undying? Why did you set the novel in Paris, France?

Ethan:  I have family living in the Latin Quarter and have been lucky enough to travel to the city many times. I simply adore Paris. In part I wanted to convey that feeling of discovery one gets when they reach a new city in a foreign country for the first time. And then have it all come crashing down, when the you-know-what hits the fan.



TQ:  What sort of research did you do for The Undying?

Ethan:  I had to research the catacombs, which isn’t as easy as one might think. And the history of Paris. I love adding little tidbits of history here and there. Jeanie is an Art History major, so she gets to give her own outlook on the city, and its fabulous history, as it is literally blown to bits before her. I enjoyed doing the technical research, too . I won’t give anything away, but after a worldwide electromagnetic pulse, communication – and how quickly humanity can reestablish those links – is paramount to survival.



TQ:  In The Undying who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Ethan:  At first I wanted to say Zou Zou, Jeanie’s Parisian exchange student. She has a lot of fire in her, born from a difficult life. She is also the yin to Jeanie’s yang early on, and as the story progresses, must lean more and more on Jeanie to try and live through the day. When I just read that last part aloud to my wife, she told me I was way off and that my voice is better within Ben. I guess Ben is in some ways my hardest yet easiest character to write, given how complicated he is. I’ve found Ben can also be a lynchpin for readers. In the end, Ben is Ben. He can’t change who he is.



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery lines from The Undying.

Ethan:  Can I start with the top? Here’s the first paragraph in Chapter One:

Her flight from Seattle arrived in Paris on New Year’s Eve, touching down at Charles de Gaulle Airport shortly after noon. Enough time to negotiate customs, catch the train to the Latin Quarter, find the hotel and unpack -- even split a bottle of red wine with her travel companion, Ben Rosenfeld, before heading out for the party. After the last twelve months, saying goodbye to a shit year was exactly what the doctor ordered. 

And the next few lines come from the morning after New Year’s, when Jeanie awakes after the city-wide blackout to find the power still out:

Jeanie awoke to a headache and the rolling sound of crashing waves.

The hotel room was so dark, she thought it was still night. With a groan, she sat up, her temples throbbing in protest. Stupid, she thought, not downing her mandatory three glasses of water after an evening of indulging, afraid of what may lurk in Parisian pipes. 

Guessing the odd noise was the morning commute, she grabbed her father’s watch from the nightstand. 8:42 a.m. Jeanie sighed. She should ring Ben, meet for the hotel’s complimentary continental breakfast before ten. Instead, she fell back and pulled the duvet tight. Being on vacation meant she could do what she wanted, when she wanted, darn it. 

Everything heats up rather quickly after that.



TQ:  What's next?

Ethan:  I’m off to the NY Comic Con in New York, appearing on a panel two days after The Undying‘s release date. I’ll be at the Simon451 booth, if anyone wants to drop by! I’m also editing the second book in The Undying series, set for a 2015 release, while writing the third.



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Ethan:  You bet, thanks for sharing!

The Undying: An Apocalyptic Thriller
The Undying 1
Simon451, October 7, 2014
eBook, 272 pages

THEY HAVE COME FROM THE STARS…
In this riveting apocalyptic thriller for fans of The Passage and The Walking Dead, a mysterious event plunges Paris into darkness and a young American must lead her friends to safety—and escape the ravenous “undying” who now roam the crumbling city.

Jeanie and Ben arrive in Paris just in time for a festive New Year’s Eve celebration with local friends. They eat and drink and carry on until suddenly, at midnight, all the lights go out. Everywhere they look, buildings and streets are dark, as though the legendary Parisian revelry has somehow short circuited the entire city.

By the next morning, all hell has broken loose. Fireballs rain down from the sky, the temperatures are rising, and people run screaming through the streets. Whatever has happened in Paris—rumors are of a comet striking the earth—Jeanie and Ben have no way of knowing how far it has spread, or how much worse it will get. As they attempt to flee the burning Latin Quarter—a harrowing journey that takes them across the city, descending deep into the catacombs, and eventually to a makeshift barracks at the Louvre Museum—Jeanie knows the worst is yet to come. So far, only she has witnessed pale, vampiric survivors who seem to exert a powerful hold on her whenever she catches them in her sights.

These cunning, ravenous beings will come to be known as les moribund—the undying—and their numbers increase by the hour. When fate places a newborn boy in her care, Jeanie will stop at nothing to keep the infant safe and get out of Paris—even if it means facing off against the moribund and leaving Ben—and any hope of rescue—behind.

About Ethan

Photo by Mitja Arzenšek

Ethan Reid received his BA in English with Writing Emphasis from the University of Washington and his MFA from the University of Southern California’s MPW Program, where he studied under author S.L. Stebel, Oscar-nominated screenwriter Sy Gomberg, and Oscar-winning screenwriter Frank Tarloff. Ethan is a member of the Horror Writers Association, the International Thriller Writers and the Pacific Northwest Writers Association. Ethan currently lives in Seattle.





Website ~ Twitter @WriterEthanReid ~ Facebook

TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

Karina:  I started writing seriously when I was thirteen, after falling into a writing “flow state” for the very first time. The real world fell away; I was truly in the fantasy world of my imagining, seeing the characters, listening to them talk – and scribbling as fast as I could to keep up. I’d never experienced anything like it before. I decided then and there that I was going to be an author, and started trying to get published shortly thereafter. (Of course, the journey from there to here took twenty years!)



TQ:  Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Karina:  Pantser. I actually think that many authors’ processes rightly belong somewhere between those two extremes, but I definitely live near the pantsing end of the scale. I do enjoy freewriting about a scene or character before diving into the next big story arc, but find that my experience is more like driving into the light from a car’s headlights than having a map for the whole trip.



TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Karina:  Finding the discipline to write consistently – especially on those days when the words refuse to flow.



TQ:  Who are some of your literary influences? Favorite authors?

Karina:  Oh, so many! When I was learning to write, I studied the works of Octavia Butler and Sean Stewart, trying to figure out what made their books so elegant and captivating. Usually, though, I’d just end up caught up in the story again, and forget to analyze entirely.

While I try to read widely, my heart truly lives in the fantasy genre. A few of my current favorites include Robin McKinley, Guy Gavriel Kay, Daryl Gregory, Michelle Sagara, Laini Taylor, and Mike Carey.



TQ:  Describe Radiant in 140 characters or less.

Karina:  A homeless girl in a magic-run city attempts to save the ghost of a girl who hasn’t died.



TQ:  Tell us something about Radiant that is not in the book description.

Karina:  At its heart, Radiant is the story of a very unlikely friendship that develops between two young women. There are so many things about the world that I hope to explore in more detail in future works, but this is really a character story about love and sacrifice and the connection between two people from wildly different places and backgrounds.



TQ:  What inspired you to write Radiant? Please tell us a bit about how your magical system works in Radiant.

Karina:  Radiant is actually based on a short story I published a number of years ago, “An End to All Things.” It was written in a blaze of inspiration – but even after it was published, the characters stayed with me. I knew that there was more to Xhea and Shai’s story, and more to their world. Since I don’t plot my work out in advance, the only way to know what happened next was to keep writing.

As for the magical system, the novel takes place in a world where everything runs on magic. Magic is currency and identification; you need magic to open doors, to buy food, to call a taxi.
Everyone generates some magic – some just a little, some in unthinkable quantity – but the magic that your body creates is something that you cannot change. Being rich is not a thing you earn, it’s a thing that you are, while poverty is literally in your blood. And into this world comes Xhea, the main character, who has no magic at all.



TQ:  What sort of research did you do for Radiant?

Karina:  My favorite kind: all about the apocalypse! While the novel itself takes place many years after a new civilization has risen from the ruins of our world, much of the story is set in the Lower City, where people live in crumbling buildings on the ground rather than in the floating Towers above. I wanted to get all those little details of decay and destruction right – and make sure that any deviations from what “should” happen were planned consequences of the world and its magic, rather than accidents.

The workings of the City and Lower City were also very much influenced by the daily news. Radiant is a fantasy novel, yes, but it’s also all about poverty and economics and corporate warfare. (And ghosts. Lots of magic and ghosts.)



TQ:  Who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Karina:  I think that the easiest and hardest both was Xhea, the main character. In some ways, writing from Xhea’s point of view was effortless; the ways she saw her world, the rhythms of her thoughts and voice, were always so clear to me. Yet her life had never been an easy one, and her character was definitely shaped by her years of poverty and ostracization. It was a tough balance trying to write the character authentically – her mistrust and defensive reactions and the hurt underneath it all – while still trying to keep her accessible and sympathetic for the reader.



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoliery lines from Radiant.

Karina:

Before her the ground was black and grey, the cracked roadway darkened by the shadow of her bowed head and slumped shoulders. She stared at the image she cast—no face, no will, only a puppet to the sun’s slow fall. Just the shape of a girl where no light fell.



TQ:  What's next?

Karina:  Radiant is the first in a trilogy, and books two and three, Defiant and Towers Fall, are both due out in 2015. I’m so excited to share these stories, and hope that Xhea and Shai find readers who love them as much as I do.



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Karina:  Thank you for having me!

Radiant
Towers Trilogy 1
Talos, September 30, 2014
Trade Paperback and eBook, 400 pages

Xhea has no magic. Born without the power that everyone else takes for granted, Xhea is an outcast—no way to earn a living, buy food, or change the life that fate has dealt her. Yet she has a unique talent: the ability to see ghosts and the tethers that bind them to the living world, which she uses to scratch out a bare existence in the ruins beneath the City’s floating Towers.

When a rich City man comes to her with a young woman’s ghost tethered to his chest, Xhea has no idea that this ghost will change everything. The ghost, Shai, is a Radiant, a rare person who generates so much power that the Towers use it to fuel their magic, heedless of the pain such use causes. Shai’s home Tower is desperate to get the ghost back and force her into a body—any body—so that it can regain its position, while the Tower’s rivals seek the ghost to use her magic for their own ends. Caught between a multitude of enemies and desperate to save Shai, Xhea thinks herself powerless—until a strange magic wakes within her. Magic dark and slow, like rising smoke, like seeping oil. A magic whose very touch brings death.

With two extremely strong female protagonists, Radiant is a story of fighting for what you believe in and finding strength that you never thought you had.

About Karina

Photo by Lindy Sumner-Smith

Karina Sumner-Smith is a fantasy author and freelance writer. Her debut novel, Radiant, will be published by Talos/Skyhorse in September 2014, with the second and third books in the trilogy following in 2015.

Prior to focusing on novel-length work, Karina published a range of fantasy, science fiction and horror short stories, including Nebula Award nominated story “An End to All Things,” and ultra short story “When the Zombies Win,” which appeared in two Best of the Year anthologies.

Though she still thinks of Toronto as her home, Karina now lives in a small, lakefront community in rural Ontario, Canada, where she may be found lost in a book, dancing in the kitchen, or planning her next great adventure.

TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

Rajan:  I've been telling stories my whole life but the first time I can actually remember writing a whole story was in 7th grade, for an assignment. It was a horribly cliche and moralistic tale, filled with elements lifted from D&D, but it is the first actual written story that I can remember. As for the why, as mentioned I've always told stories -- through action figures, roleplaying games, whatever. I had all these ideas inside my head so once I realized I could capture them in stories it put me on the path to writing.



TQ:  Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Rajan:  I am mostly a pantser. Part of the joy of writing for me is figuring out the story, and even being surprised by it. However, I will say that after working on novels, I now appreciate the benefits of having a road map to work from, especially for longer works.



TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Rajan:  Aside from never seeming to have enough time, I'd say it's sometimes seeing the ending to a work. Because I don't outline, sometimes I jump into a story without knowing where it will go. Sometimes that means not knowing the ending for months. Or more. Luckily, as was the case with Falling Sky, sometimes it just seems to fall into place.



TQ:  Who are some of your literary influences? Favorite authors?

Rajan:  Roger Zelazny, Fritz Leiber, and Michael Moorcock are three of my favorites and influences. I'm also a fan of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Dune is probably my favorite SF novel. Contemporary writers include Richard Morgan, Jeff VanderMeer, China Mieville, George R. R. Martin, and Gene Wolfe, and Jeffrey Ford is my favorite writer of short stories.



TQ:  Describe Falling Sky in 140 characters or less.

Rajan:  I hate talking about my own book so I'm going to quote Tad William's blurb: " It’s a fast ride, scary and twisty-turny, and it also has plenty of airships, zombies, and sarcasm, three of the best things in the world."



TQ:  Tell us something about Falling Sky that is not in the book description.

Rajan:  I sometimes base character's physical appearances on actors. That is not the case with Ben, my POV character, but it was the case with two of my secondary characters, Diego and Claudia, who are based on two of my favorite actors. I don't want to give away who they are based on, but I will provide clues. The actor who inspired Diego is mostly known for his television roles but has appeared in movies, including two recent Marvel movies. The actor who inspired Claudia has likewise done both television and movies but has also done video game voices as well. Most of her work has been in science fiction. I wonder if anyone will be able to guess...



TQ:  What inspired you to write Falling Sky? How would you describe the genre(s) of the novel?

Rajan:  Falling Sky is based on a short story of the same name that I wrote at the Clarion West Writers Workshop back in 2008. I had a vague sense of a story where people lived predominantly in the sky, using airships to get around, to avoid something on the ground. One night that became a story and the response to that story was largely that it should be expanded into a novel.

In terms of genres, it is a bit of a mishmash. The setting is post-apocalyptic, taking place after a pandemic which has regressed most of humanity into bestial creatures called Ferals. It's not steampunk at all, but it does have airships. The Ferals are not zombies but bear a little resemblance to their undead counterparts. And it draws as well from thrillers with a touch of western and noir in there as well.



TQ:  What sort of research did you do for Falling Sky?

Rajan:  I mostly did research into modern airships and the geography of the western U.S. Not to downplay the research at all, but setting it in the near future meant that I had a bit more freedom (compared with other projects set in the past which have to stand up to more scrutiny).



TQ:  In Falling Sky who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Rajan:  Ben is the POV character and there's more than a little of me in Ben so I'd say he was the easiest. Other than him, I had a lot of fun with Claudia. As for the hardest, I think that it took me the longest to connect with the character of Rosie. I could visualize her pretty well, I had a good sense of her, but she wasn't coming through very well. Turned out I had to give her a little more space and that definitely helped.



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery lines from Falling Sky.

Rajan:

"The thing you have to understand for this to all make sense is that Miranda’s a little crazy. Back in the Clean, they would have called her idealistic, but back in the Clean idealistic wouldn’t have gotten you killed. Or maybe it would. I’ve never been too good at history."

TQ:  What's next?

Rajan:  I have a few projects that I'm working on at the moment. One of those is a sequel to Falling Sky. I'm also working on a young adult mystery novel. Then there are a few more projects after those including a weird western and something that might turn into a horror novel.



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Rajan:  Thank you so much for inviting me.

Falling Sky
Pyr, October 7, 2014
Trade Paperback and eBook, 260 pages
Cover Artist: Chris McGrath

Ben Gold lives in dangerous times. Two generations ago, a virulent disease turned the population of most of North America into little more than beasts called Ferals. Some of those who survived took to the air, scratching out a living on airships and dirigibles soaring over the dangerous ground.

Ben has his own airship, a family heirloom, and has signed up to help a group of scientists looking for a cure. But that's not as easy as it sounds, especially with a power-hungry air city looking to raid any nearby settlements. To make matters worse, his airship, the only home he's ever known, is stolen. Ben must try to survive on the ground while trying to get his ship back.

This brings him to Gastown, a city in the air recently conquered by belligerent and expansionist pirates. When events turn deadly, Ben must decide what really matters-whether to risk it all on a desperate chance for a better future or to truly remain on his own.

About Rajan

Photo by Ellen B. Wright

Rajan Khanna is a graduate of the 2008 Clarion West Writers Workshop and a member of a New York-based writing group called Altered Fluid. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer magazine, GUD, and several anthologies, and has received Honorable Mention in the Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror and the Year’s Best Science Fiction. He writes for Tor.com and LitReactor.com and his podcast narrations have appeared on sites such as Wired.com, Lightspeed magazine, Escape Pod, Podcastle, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Rajan also writes about wine, beer, and spirits at FermentedAdventures.com. He currently lives in New York.



Website  ~  Twitter @rajanyk

TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

Peyton:  For me, writing came out of reading. I loved to read as a child and often I felt a bigger connection with the stories than I did with reality.



TQ:  Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Peyton:  I’d love to be a plotter. But I can’t stick to an outline. I get caught up in a scene and then write something that destroys all of my best-laid plans. I long for predictability and surety in writing but perhaps that’s only because I experience it so rarely.



TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Peyton:  Finding the time. Or allowing myself to have the time to make mistakes—to explore.



TQ:  Who are some of your literary influences? Favorite authors?

Peyton:  I’m an omnivore. My dad got me hooked on historical military fiction, on adventure stories, on history books. But I like to read classic novels—and pulpy ones, as well. Recently, I read The Goldfinch, and I’m not sure which category that fits into.



TQ:  Describe Goodhouse in 140 characters or less.

Peyton:  Goodhouse is a book about how society treats its most vulnerable constituents. It's a book about how hope can endure—and survive—trauma.



TQ:  Tell us something about Goodhouse that is not in the book description.

Peyton:  Despite the fact that Goodhouse is set in a speculative future and despite the fact that the novel’s protagonist, James Goodhouse, is subject to the pressures of a very different world—the book is really about James struggle to reach outside the confines of his childhood, to define his own truth. It’s about the difficulties of doing this—within the confines of a system.



TQ:  In Goodhouse, who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Peyton:  Bethany was the easiest to write. I wanted to her to stand in contrast to James’ world, to be somebody for whom he would have no context.

Often, I just got out of the way and let her talk—let her be her devious, determined, and unpredictable self.

In some ways, Bethany’s father was the hardest character to write. I couldn’t decide how to build him. I kept changing my mind about his motivations. It was almost as if the character was withholding information from me, the writer; it wasn’t until the end when the plot really came together that I fully understood him, understood where things had been going all along.



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery lines from Goodhouse.

Peyton:  The boys are preparing to go out on their first day in the community:

        “Just keep your mouth shut,” Owen said. “And look really grateful, no matter what they say. And don’t touch anything,” he said. “They hate that and it’s hard to do when they have candy dishes and little glass elephants and once this kid had a plastic box full of ants that he said he was farming.”
        I stared at him. “Farming?” I asked. “For food?”
        “Who knows,” he shrugged. “It’s always a freak show and they write detailed reports about you afterwards and staff pays a lot of attention to them.”

TQ:  What's next?

Peyton:  A trip to Morocco.

I’m moving overseas for six months with the family. Should be interesting. I’ve already started another book and I look forward to sitting in a café in Marrakech—drinking that strong coffee.



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Peyton:  Thank you!

Goodhouse
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, September 30, 2014
Hardcover and eBook, 336 pages

A bighearted dystopian novel about the corrosive effects of fear and the redemptive power of love.

With soaring literary prose and the tense pacing of a thriller, the first-time novelist Peyton Marshall imagines a grim and startling future. At the end of the twenty-first century—in a transformed America—the sons of convicted felons are tested for a set of genetic markers. Boys who test positive become compulsory wards of the state—removed from their homes and raised on "Goodhouse" campuses, where they learn to reform their darkest thoughts and impulses. Goodhouse is a savage place—part prison, part boarding school—and now a radical religious group, the Holy Redeemer’s Church of Purity, is intent on destroying each campus and purifying every child with fire.

We see all this through the eyes of James, a transfer student who watched as the radicals set fire to his old Goodhouse and killed nearly everyone he’d ever known. In addition to adjusting to a new campus with new rules, James now has to contend with Bethany, a brilliant, medically fragile girl who wants to save him, and with her father, the school’s sinister director of medical studies. Soon, however, James realizes that the biggest threat might already be there, inside the fortified walls of Goodhouse itself.

Partly based on the true story of the nineteenth-century Preston School of Industry, Goodhouse explores questions of identity and free will—and what it means to test the limits of human endurance.

About Peyton

Photo by Mike Palmeri

Born in 1972 in Pennsylvania, Peyton grew up near Washington DC -- in a wooded, leafy town that is now part of the sprawling DC metroplex. She attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Before enrolling in the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Peyton spent many years remodeling Craftsman-style homes.

​Her work is rooted in ideas about love and the potential brutalities of human life -- in the ways people misunderstand each other. Goodhouse is her first novel.


Website ~ Twitter @PeytonMMarshall

Rajan Khanna

Falling Sky
Pyr, October 7, 2014
Trade Paperback and eBook, 260 pages
Cover Artist: Chris McGrath

Ben Gold lives in dangerous times. Two generations ago, a virulent disease turned the population of most of North America into little more than beasts called Ferals. Some of those who survived took to the air, scratching out a living on airships and dirigibles soaring over the dangerous ground.

Ben has his own airship, a family heirloom, and has signed up to help a group of scientists looking for a cure. But that's not as easy as it sounds, especially with a power-hungry air city looking to raid any nearby settlements. To make matters worse, his airship, the only home he's ever known, is stolen. Ben must try to survive on the ground while trying to get his ship back.

This brings him to Gastown, a city in the air recently conquered by belligerent and expansionist pirates. When events turn deadly, Ben must decide what really matters-whether to risk it all on a desperate chance for a better future or to truly remain on his own.

The Final Results

The September 2014 Debut Covers

TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

Chrysler:  It’s a pleasure to be here, in the virtual world of The Qwillery. Thank you for having me. I love virtual worlds, after all, and write of them often.

I began writing as a kid. I wanted to be an actor or a writer; I used to pen poems and stories about horses and put on plays in the back yard for an audience of stuffed animals. My parents were always too busy to attend as they had to work hard to keep me well supplied with books.



TQ:  Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Chrysler:  Oh, definitely a pantser. My characters tell me what to write. I can’t do anything without them. I’m actually not sure I would write with any regularity, only I’ve somehow, luckily, managed to tap into this very cool world that’s half real and half fantasy, with all these brilliant characters who spur me on.



TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Chrysler:  Revising. Because after they tell me their stories and a little bit about themselves, my characters head back to the western Massachusetts hilltowns where they live and leave me to it. They run off to ride their horses in the cool haunted forests of Hawley, and hang out at Pizza by Earl or the Perpetual Tag Sale, and have all kinds of further adventures with evil magicians, and I get stuck messing about with bits of paper filled with their thoughts that I then have to sort out and make some sense of.



TQ:  Who are some of your literary influences? Favorite authors?

Chrysler:  The list is really endless. I love the creepy New England writers so much I had to become one. Nathaniel Hawthorne and H.P. Lovecraft and Shirley Jackson and Stephen King and Alice Hoffman and early Annie Proulx—before she moved to Wyoming, she lived in Vermont and wrote brilliantly and creepily of New England. And I’ve always loved the nineteenth century Brits, especially Charlotte Bronte. She was pretty creepy, too (what is a Gytrash, does anyone know?). And now, I work at an amazing indie bookstore, the Odyssey Bookshop, and I help choose the First Edition Club picks, so I’m always getting to read brilliant writers I hadn’t read before: Cynthia Bond and Emily St John Mandel and Lauren Francis Sharma and Jess Walter and John Vaillant, and the new books of my old favorites, Ruth Ozeki and Julia Glass and John Irving and I could go on, but suffice it to say my favorite writers remain, in no particular order, Annie Proulx and Stephen King and Louise Erdrich and Barbara Pym, whose books I read when I am anxious.



TQ:  Describe The Hawley Book of the Dead in 140 characters or less.

Chrysler:  A woman magician with real powers is the reluctant heroine, a wife and mother, who must fight an unknown evil nemesis in a haunted forest.



TQ:  Tell us something about The Hawley Book of the Dead that is not in the book description.

Chrysler:  It’s the first in a series called The Revelation Chronicles. I think that’s the most important thing that gets left out of many of the descriptions of the book, oddly. And there’s falconry and Irish mythology in it, too. But it’s subtle in this book. This is not high fantasy. Not yet.



TQ:  What inspired you to write The Hawley Book of the Dead? Why did you set the novel primarily in Massachusetts?

Chrysler:  So many things inspired me and allowed the characters to come to me. Riding my own horse in the actual Hawley Forest. The title, which I had stuck in my head for years before I found its story. Reading Robertson Davies, and his very cool Deptford Trilogy, which is about magic and a magician (also saints and rural Canada). NaNoWriMo (that’s the very cool National Novel Writing Month) inspired me. But I guess just living in the hilltowns, among the people and the landscape. That’s what inspired me the most. I have this whole half real, half fictional world going now, with all its characters. And I can’t stop writing about them. And we all just live here, in western Massachusetts. It’s a magical place. After all, so many writers lived here and got inspiration from the landscape and the people – Emily Dickinson, Hawthorne, Melville, Robert Frost, Richard Wilbur. It’s kind of a mecca for writers.



TQ:  What sort of research did you do for The Hawley Book of the Dead?

Chrysler:  I got to go to Las Vegas. Everything else I just kind of knew. I know western Mass and the people who live here. I know enough about Irish mythology, as I’ve spent a bit of time in Ireland. But I didn’t know much about magic, and the history of magic, despite being a magician’s assistant for about two minutes in the ‘80’s (I was terrible). I really only started researching stage magic when my heroine, Reve, told me she was an illusionist in Las Vegas. I actually hated the thought of going there, it was never a place that held any attraction for me. But it was amazing. It was this over the top city springing up from the desert. It was actually about five cities, Paris and Venice and Cairo and New York and Florence. And it is the city of magic. I had an amazing time there, in the city and the surrounding desert. There’s real magic there, as well as in Hawley.



TQ:  Who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Chrysler:  The easiest was Caleigh, I think. She is the most direct, maybe because she is the youngest. She’s very open. Reve was really hard. She has these different personas; there are different levels to her. The wife and mother. The performer. The woman with a special power that she doesn’t want to give any room to in the real world, because she’s afraid of it and it has burned her in the past. And she is also the character of mine who is most like me. Not that I have a super-power, but we see the world in the same way and have similar ways of expressing ourselves. I didn’t even see it until a good friend pointed it out, though.



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery lines from The Hawley Book of the Dead.

Chrysler:  Well, the first sentence is kind of cool: “On the day I killed my husband, the scent of lilacs startled me awake.” A lot of people seem to like it.

And I love a lot of things Falcon Eddy says, like: “You’ll never plow a field by turning it over in your mind, missy.”



TQ:  What's next?

Chrysler:  The second book in The Revelation Chronicles, which is so far called Dreamland. It’s the further adventures of Reve and her daughters.



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Chrysler:  Thank you so much for welcoming me to your world!

The Hawley Book of the Dead
The Revelation Chronicles 1
Ballantine Books, September 23, 2014
Hardcover and eBook, 352 pages

For fans of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane and A Discovery of Witches comes a brilliantly imagined debut novel brimming with rich history, suspense, and magic.

Revelation “Reve” Dyer grew up with her grandmother’s family stories, stretching back centuries to Reve’s ancestors, who founded the town of Hawley Five Corners, Massachusetts. Their history is steeped in secrets, for few outsiders know that an ancient magic runs in the Dyer women’s blood, and that Reve is a magician whose powers are all too real.

Reve and her husband are world-famous Las Vegas illusionists. They have three lovely young daughters, a beautiful home, and what seems like a charmed life. But Reve’s world is shattered when an intruder alters her trick pistol and she accidentally shoots and kills her beloved husband onstage.

Fearing for her daughters’ lives, Reve flees with them to the place she has always felt safest—an antiquated farmhouse in the forest of Hawley Five Corners, where the magic of her ancestors reigns, and her oldest friend—and first love—is the town’s chief of police. Here, in the forest, with its undeniable air of enchantment, Reve hopes she and her girls will be protected.

Delving into the past for answers, Reve is drawn deeper into her family’s legends. What she discovers is The Hawley Book of the Dead, an ancient leather-bound journal holding mysterious mythic power. As she pieces together the truth behind the book, Reve will have to shield herself and her daughters against an uncertain, increasingly dangerous fate. For soon it becomes clear that the stranger who upended Reve’s life in Las Vegas has followed her to Hawley—and that she has something he desperately wants.

Brimming with rich history, suspense, and magic, The Hawley Book of the Dead is a brilliantly imagined debut novel from a riveting new voice.

About Chrysler

Photo by Tracey Eller

Chrysler Szarlan lives in western Massachusetts with her family, works part-time as a bookseller at the Odyssey Bookshop, and rides her horse in the Hawley Forest whenever possible. An alumnae of Marlboro College, she jogged racehorses and worked as a magician’s assistant before graduating from law school, after which she worked as a managing attorney with Connecticut Legal Rights Project. She is deep into her next novel.

TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

Lauren:  I've been writing pretty much every day since I was nine! I started because, as an avid reader, I wanted to spend more time in the worlds of books I loved. It was really a kind of fan-fiction!



TQ:  Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Lauren:  I'm a combination of both! I start out with just writing, and then after I get a firm foot in the story I'm telling, I force myself to write a really detailed outline of the rest of the book.



TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Lauren:  Every book has its own challenges, just like each one has its own joys. It really changes from story to story.



TQ:  How different is it writing a book for adults vs. young adults?

Lauren:  Again, I think it is really a matter of the individual book rather than the age it's meant for. Adult books are obviously tonally and thematically different than children's book, but the process of writing remains pretty similar.



TQ:  Describe Rooms in 140 characters or less.

Lauren:  Here is EXACTLY 140 characters!

After the death of the patriarch, a family goes home to clean out the house. They are watched by the ghosts that inhabit the walls. SECRETS!



TQ:  Tell us something about Rooms that is not in the book description.

Lauren:  There is a story within the story called The Raven Heliotrope.



TQ:  Rooms is described by your publisher a "ghost story." Why ghosts?

Lauren:  I'm kind of obsessed with ghosts! Rooms is my third published novel to include a character that speaks from the afterlife (after Before I Fall and Liesl & Po). I think we're all interested in exploring what an afterlife would be like.



TQ:  Who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Lauren:  That's a difficult question to answer. I guess in some ways, Trenton was easiest. He'd existed in various permutations of the novel, since its earliest inception. I knew him very well when I sat down to write. And I think Sandra was possibly the hardest. Her vocabulary and her experiences were so distinct from mine, and I wanted to give her sections resonance while having to restrict myself to her kind of curt, somewhat crass voice.



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery lines from Rooms.

Lauren:  That is what it is to be alive: The dust doesn’t blow backward for you. The roads remain. For the shortest time, shorter than the shortest second’s breath, you get to stand up to infinity. But eventually, and always, infinity wins.


TQ:  What's next?

Lauren:  My next YA Novel, Vanishing Girls, is coming out this Spring! After that I have a new Middle Grade series that I'm very excited for. :)



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Rooms
Ecco, September 23, 2014
Hardcover and eBook, 320 pages
(Adult Debut)

The New York Times bestselling author of Before I Fall and the Delirium trilogy makes her brilliant adult debut with this mesmerizing story in the tradition of The Lovely Bones, Her Fearful Symmetry, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane—a tale of family, ghosts, secrets, and mystery, in which the lives of the living and the dead intersect in shocking, surprising, and moving ways.

Wealthy Richard Walker has just died, leaving behind his country house full of rooms packed with the detritus of a lifetime. His estranged family—bitter ex-wife Caroline, troubled teenage son Trenton, and unforgiving daughter Minna—have arrived for their inheritance.

But the Walkers are not alone. Prim Alice and the cynical Sandra, long dead former residents bound to the house, linger within its claustrophobic walls. Jostling for space, memory, and supremacy, they observe the family, trading barbs and reminiscences about their past lives. Though their voices cannot be heard, Alice and Sandra speak through the house itself—in the hiss of the radiator, a creak in the stairs, the dimming of a light bulb.

The living and dead are each haunted by painful truths that will soon surface with explosive force. When a new ghost appears, and Trenton begins to communicate with her, the spirit and human worlds collide—with cataclysmic results.

Elegantly constructed and brilliantly paced, Rooms is an enticing and imaginative ghost story and a searing family drama that is as haunting as it is resonant.

About Lauren

c. Charles Grantham, 2014

Lauren Oliver is the author of the New York Times bestselling YA novels Before I Fall, Panic, and the Delirium trilogy: Delirium, Pandemonium, and Requiem. Her books have been translated into thirty languages. She is also the author of two novels for middle-grade readers, The Spindlers and Liesl & Po, which was a 2012 E. B. White Read-Aloud Award nominee. Lauren's first adult novel, Rooms, will be published in September 2014. A graduate of the University of Chicago and NYU's MFA program, Lauren Oliver is also the co-founder of the boutique literary development company Paper Lantern Lit. You can visit her online at www.laurenoliverbooks.com




Twitter @ OliverBooks  ~  Facebook

TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

Maria:  Pleased to be here! I started playing with stories when I was 8 years old while I was recovering from chicken pox. I wrote on and off throughout my childhood, but I was more of a musician until I was in college. That’s when I co-founded a company called Dead Earth Productions that designed and ran fully immersive, live-action horror games. We were based in the San Francisco Bay Area. This meant many of our players came from the big RPG companies, like Chaosium, R. Talsorian and White Wolf. Because I loved games and creating interactive experiences more than anything, I devoted my nascent writing talents to that. I didn’t start writing fiction seriously until Neil Gaiman and I started corresponding years later.



TQ:  Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Maria:  Having spent a long time as a screenwriter, I’m a hopeless plotter. But I’m not so locked into my plotting that, if something cool jumps out of my head and it feels right, I can’t be flexible.



TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Maria:  Typing. Right now, I have hand problems and I write with voice technology. You would never know it based on my output. Ask my publisher!



TQ:  Who are some of your literary influences? Favorite authors?

Maria:  Gabrielle Garcia Marquez. Clive Barker. Michael Marshall Smith. Tim Powers. Neil Gaiman. I recently realized how much Julio Cortázar has shaped my creativity. I first read him in college and he is astonishing. “The Night Face Up” is one of the greatest stories ever written, I think.



TQ:  Describe Mr. Wicker in 140 characters or less.

Maria:  Alicia Baum is missing a deadly childhood memory. She must get it back before it destroys her life — again.



TQ:  Tell us something about Mr. Wicker that is not in the book description.

Maria:  At the midpoint of the story, Mr. Wicker shares with Alicia a story about who he used to be before the Library. He takes the reader on a brutal, chilling adventure in ancient Gaul on the eve of the Gallic Wars. The fate of those ancient people is entwined with Alicia’s in ways she could never guess.



TQ:  What inspired you to write Mr. Wicker? From the description of the novel it appears to be a genre bender. Is it essentially an Urban Fantasy? You also touch on suicide on the novel. Why did you go there?

Maria:  Mr. Wicker is quite similar to American Gods in that it’s mostly urban fantasy with parts that are historical fantasy. (Now that I think about it, I wonder if American Gods is considered cross genre.) The difference is that the historical fantasy in Mr. Wicker is one larger story, rather than several shorter, individual stories distributed throughout the book.

As for inspiration, I had a close encounter of sorts with Mr. Wicker himself back in 1997. If you solve the puzzle at the end of the book trailer, it unlocks something that ultimately reveals the bizarre yet true tale. Two people have solved it so far: legendary “Monkey Island” game designer/online community guru Randy Farmer, and brilliant actress/puzzle aficionado Whitney Avalon. (Remember the mom in that controversial Cheerios commercial? Yep. Her.) The puzzle is really not that hard. You’ve seen that sequence before…



TQ:  What sort of research did you do for Mr. Wicker?

Maria:  I haunted mental health forums looking for information about suicide and lockdowns. I wish there was more transparency in the mental health profession about what it’s like in a proper lockdown environment. The book is set in 2005. When I started writing the book in 2004, we didn’t have as much information about mental health treatment online as we do today. It was very difficult to get a solid idea of what happens inside mental health facilities from a professional perspective, and still is. Eventually, a friend of mine who’d recently obtained her medical degree graciously shared with me her experiences as a med student on rotation in a lockdown, but I could have used more information.

As for the historical fantasy, I initially started researching ancient Gaul and Rome according to guidelines that Tim Powers gave me for historical research. However, I encountered difficulties because the Gauls were so obscure and my Roman interests so particular. I went to the UCLA library, where I found journal articles written by a classicist named Dr. Maurice James Moscovich at the Western University in London Ontario, Canada. His scholastic specialty covered exactly what I needed to know. I got in touch with him and he took me under his wing. I’m truly lucky. He even read what I wrote and gave me feedback. (I took at least 90% of it.) He’s retired now, thinking more about golf than the Gauls, but he considers me one of his students.



TQ:  Who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Maria:  Alicia was both the easiest and the hardest because, even when I thought she was being an idiot, I understood her. I got the most blowback about her from male agents. One jackass in particular, who had obviously read the entire book, sent me a long letter explaining how much he disliked her and that no one would ever like a female character who is angry. When my friend Edith Speed committed suicide in 2009, she was incredibly angry. (She was a very strong woman most of her life, by the way.) There was no way I was going to soften Alicia to please anyone’s aesthetic palate, especially after Edith’s death. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s honest, and I think readers prefer that. I know I do.



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery lines from Mr. Wicker.

Maria:  From Chapter 40:

      She’ll die if you don’t come.
      The words rolled before him and retreated like a riptide into the darkness. His will got caught in the undertow and he could not resist the plea.
      Dr. Farron put down the water cup and sized up the hallway, the portrait glimmering. Forget sanity. Eat me. Drink me. Vomit me. Scorch me. Love me. Remember me...
      He ran.



TQ:  What's next?

Maria:  I’ve just finished writing a dark, action-packed YA novel called Snowed. It’s about a 16-year-old engineering prodigy named Charity Jones whose social worker mother brings home a mysterious boy named Aidan to foster for the holidays. But as Charity and Aidan fall in love, violent deaths occur that Charity investigates with her Skeptics Club. They wind up battling a terrifying twist on the Christmas myth that changes their lives — and human history — forever.

I recruited a team of teen beta readers and their moms for notes to help make the book more authentic. They gave me great notes, but I was not prepared for their overwhelming, unrelenting excitement. Not even the moms were able to put down the book. I also got resounding approval from my 13-year-old male beta reader. (He says it’s a mystery, not a romance. I’m good with that.) I’m querying agents now, as well as plotting the second book in the trilogy.



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Maria:  You’re welcome! Thank you for having me.

Mr. Wicker
Raw Dog Screaming Press, September 16, 20414
Trade Paperback and Kindle eBook, 236 pages

Alicia Baum is missing a deadly childhood memory.

Located beyond life, The Library of Lost Childhood Memories holds the answer. The Librarian is Mr. Wicker — a seductive yet sinister creature with an unthinkable past and an agenda just as lethal. After committing suicide, Alicia finds herself before the Librarian, who informs her that her lost memory is not only the reason she took her life, but the cause of every bad thing that has happened to her.

Alicia spurns Mr. Wicker and attempts to enter the hereafter without the Book that would make her spirit whole. But instead of the oblivion she craves, she finds herself in a psychiatric hold at Bayford Hospital, where the staff is more pernicious than its patients.

Child psychiatrist Dr. James Farron is researching an unusual phenomenon: traumatized children whisper to a mysterious figure in their sleep. When they awaken, they forget both the traumatic event and the character that kept them company in their dreams — someone they call “Mr. Wicker.”

During an emergency room shift, Dr. Farron hears an unconscious Alicia talking to Mr. Wicker—the first time he’s heard of an adult speaking to the presence. Drawn to the mystery, and then to each other, they team up to find the memory before it annihilates Alicia for good. To do so they must struggle not only against Mr. Wicker’s passions, but also a powerful attraction that threatens to derail her search, ruin Dr. Farron’s career, and inflame the Librarian’s fury.

After all, Mr. Wicker wants Alicia to himself, and will destroy anyone to get what he wants. Even Alicia herself.

About Maria

Maria Alexander writes pretty much every damned thing and gets paid to do it. She’s a produced screenwriter and playwright, published games writer, virtual world designer, award-winning copywriter, interactive theatre designer, prolific fiction writer, snarkiologist and poet. Her stories have appeared in publications such as Chiaroscuro Magazine, Gothic.net and Paradox, as well as numerous acclaimed anthologies alongside living legends such as David Morrell and Heather Graham.

Her second poetry collection—At Louche Ends: Poetry for the Decadent, the Damned and the Absinthe-Minded—was nominated for the 2011 Bram Stoker Award. And she was a winner of the 2004 AOL Time-Warner “Time to Rhyme” poetry contest.

When she’s not wielding a katana at her local shinkendo dojo, she’s on the BBC World Have Your Say radio program shooting off her mouth about blasphemy, international politics and more. She lives in Los Angeles with two
ungrateful cats and a purse called Trog.

Explore her website: www.mariaalexander.net. You won’t regret it.

Twitter @LaMaupin

TQ:  Welcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

Chloe:  I'm one of those annoying people who's been writing as long as she (I) can remember. As for why, hmm--I think I've always had an overactive imagination and a ferocious appetite for knowledge, as well as more curiosity than is probably healthy, and in combination they've led me to reading and writing.



TQ:  Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Chloe:  Is it embarrassing that I had to google "What is a pantser"? I'd say I'm a combination of both. I always have some idea of where the story is going; I tend to know the beginning and have a hazy idea of the end, as well as some twists and turns along the way. But I'm also a believer in the notion that writing a novel is like driving through a dark tunnel at night--you can only see as far as the headlights will show you, but you can make the whole trip that way. For me, plotting a book out entirely ahead of time would reduce the possibility of discovery and surprise, which are (for me, at least) the chief delights of writing a first draft.



TQ:  What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Chloe:  Oh, there are so many things. I find revision really grueling. As I mentioned above, I really love the process of writing early drafts: there is so much to be uncovered, so much room to invent and play. Revisions are about taking that pulpy mass of invention and turning it into something with shape and cohesion--in other words, narrative and structural integrity. That process is absolutely necessary but it's simply less fun and less intuitive for me.



TQ:  Who are some of your literary influences? Favorite authors?

Chloe:  I tend to fall for authors who explore human relationships with insight and style. That's a really big umbrella, and I suppose it could cover all authors ever, but I'm thinking of people like Alice Munro and Lorrie Moore. I also love authors who push the limits of speculative or genre fiction, like Kazuo Ishiguro, Tana French, Judy Budnitz, Lev Grossman, Margaret Atwood, George Saunders and Philip Pullman.



TQ:  Describe The Anatomy of Dreams in 140 characters or less.

Chloe:  Couple pursues experimental dream research beneath a charismatic but ethically-questionable professor; trouble ensues.



TQ:  Tell us something about The Anatomy of Dreams that is not in the book description.

Chloe:  The book actually doesn't veer into sci-fi or even speculative fiction--it stays firmly in the realm of what's possible within our world, though I do think it nudges those boundaries.



TQ:  What inspired you to write The Anatomy of Dreams? What is lucid dreaming?

Chloe:  I've always had very vivid dreams, and I find dreams in general so fascinating--they're such evidence of the human brain's tendency toward narrative. And because we have little control over that narrative--it's so subconscious--dreams can be very revealing.

Lucid dreaming is the act of knowing that you're dreaming while in the midst of a dream. The researchers in the novel think this presents an opportunity for patients with sleep disorders to regain some control: they reason that if disordered dreamers can become aware of their dreams while inside them, they'll be able to intervene in their own behavior and better process their subconscious fears and urges.



TQ:  What sort of research did you do for The Anatomy of Dreams?

Chloe:  I did a few different layers of research. I wanted to be grounded in the history of dream theory, so I read Freud and Jung, whose ideas still influence the way we think about sleep and the subconscious. Then I read the work of current dream researchers, both those who work on sleep disorders and those who work on lucid dreaming--people like Rosalind Cartwright and Stephen Laberge. Finally, I researched the nuts and bolts of sleep studies: how to operate polysomnography equipment, for instance, as well as academic papers that explore methodology for lucidity studies.



TQ:  Who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Chloe:  What an interesting question! I'm going to be a cheater and say that Sylvie was both the easiest and the hardest to write: the easiest because her voice came to me immediately, and the hardest because it took a lot of finessing and revision to make sure that she didn't come off as too much of a wet blanket. That was a big part of what I hoped to convey with her character--that even someone who seems utterly practical and conventional can have many layers of weirdness--but in early drafts she was, in my agent's words, somewhat pathetic. In later drafts, I tried to bring out her voice and give her more agency.



TQ:  Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery lines from The Anatomy of Dreams.

Chloe:  Another great question! It's so easy, as an author, to focus on self-criticism and forget to highlight the things you're proud of. I've always liked these lines:

"I’d heard about the power of striped bass, how they grew as heavy as sixty pounds; mature, they had few enemies. But the one in Keller’s hands was docile, resigned. Its eyes--even larger than a human’s, the black irises pits in pools of yellow--stared out at the room with what seemed like attention, as if Keller were offering not death but a privilege. Here, he seemed to say, was life on land."



TQ:  What's next?

Chloe:  In addition to promotion for ANATOMY and a few short writing projects, I'm working on my next novel. I'm superstitious about sharing plot info, but I will say that I'm researching divination, vaudeville and sex work in 1980s San Francisco. My Google searches are getting pretty sketchy!



TQ:  Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Chloe:  Thank you!

The Anatomy of Dreams
Atria Books, September 16, 2014
Trade Paperback and eBook, 320 pages

Long-listed for the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize

“A sly, promising and ambitious debut.” —Publishers Weekly

“Chloe Benjamin is a great new talent.” —Lorrie Moore, author of Bark: Stories

It’s 1998, and Sylvie Patterson, a bookish student at a Northern California boarding school, falls in love with a spirited, elusive classmate named Gabe. Their headmaster, Dr. Adrian Keller, is a charismatic medical researcher who has staked his career on the therapeutic potential of lucid dreaming: By teaching his patients to become conscious during sleep, he helps them to relieve stress and heal from trauma. Over the next six years, Sylvie and Gabe become consumed by Keller’s work, following him from the redwood forests of Eureka, California, to the enchanting New England coast.

But when an opportunity brings the trio to the Midwest, Sylvie and Gabe stumble into a tangled relationship with their mysterious neighbors—and Sylvie begins to doubt the ethics of Keller’s research, recognizing the harm that can be wrought under the guise of progress. As she navigates the hazy, permeable boundaries between what is real and what isn’t, who can be trusted and who cannot, Sylvie also faces surprising developments in herself: an unexpected infatuation, growing paranoia, and a new sense of rebellion.

In stirring, elegant prose, Benjamin’s tale exposes the slippery nature of trust—and the immense power of our dreams.

About Chloe

Photograph © Nicholas Wilkes

Chloe Benjamin is a graduate of Vassar College and The University of Wisconsin-Madison MFA program. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Atlantic, Pank, Whiskey Island, and The Washington Independent Review of Books. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.








Website  ~  Twitter @chloekbenjamin