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‘The Rising,’ A talk with Heather Graham and Jon Land

January 17, 2017 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Heather Graham is an internationally renowned author of more than 150 novels and novellas. She has been honored with nearly every award available to contemporary writers.

Jon Land is the USA Today bestselling author of more than forty books, both novels and non-fiction, including the critically acclaimed series featuring Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong.

The Rising features Alex Chin, a classic, All-American football hero and his tutor Samantha Dixon who hopes to turn her NASA internship into a career. A football accident leads Alex to the hospital and suddenly, everything goes awry.

Alex’s doctor is murdered, as are his Chinese parents who adopted him at infancy. After the murders, Alex must flee, and Samantha refuses to leave him. They race desperately to stay ahead of the attackers, trying to learn why Alex is being hunted. The answer lies buried in his past, and it’s a secret his parents died trying to protect. Adopted soon after birth, Alex never knew the reason his birth parents abandoned him. Revelations await, and the fate of the world hangs in the balance.

The Rising has elements of different genres. Tell us about that.

Heather: I had great parents who read everything. One was a lover of the Gothic novel and the other loved Edgar Allen Poe. I grew up reading everything. The notion of something being strictly one genre was a surprise to me when I started writing. That concept has changed over time, and now many popular books straddle various genres.

Jon: I think when we conceived of collaborating on a book like this, the idea of melding genres and having young heroes as protagonists was a natural thing. We didn’t want to do precisely what either one of us is known for. We both wanted to write something neither one of us ever attempted. We wanted to assemble what each of us does best and put it into a new package. My first agent said to me, ‘If you know the characters, you can write anything.’ We got to know Alex and Samantha so well that we knew we had these great protagonists who were about to sacrifice everything for something far bigger than themselves.

Heather: We also have an editor who loves NASA and the concept of space exploration and the future. He arranged for us to tour the Goddard Space Center where we spent time with the astronauts.

Jon: The kind of science we’re writing about—the Robert Heinlein kind of story, involves a wish to go back to the roots of storytelling and science fiction. It’s like Stranger in a Strange Land. It’s like I Robot.

Heather: We’re all creatures in our galaxy, but on this planet, we don’t really get along very well. If you’re murdered by your neighbor or by an alien from outer space, the result is the same. The story relates not only to space, but to basic human foibles on earth.

Jon: Yes, science fiction storytelling has always served as a metaphor for what’s going on in the world, and that’s what The Rising does. Among many other things, this novel concerns xenophobia and the wish to isolate ourselves from outsiders who are automatically deemed to be ‘bad.’ Whether it’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or Bladerunner, the science fiction genre uses imagination to reveal basic truths about our lives.

In a sense, part of the novel is about globalism and multiculturalism. When you think back to the original The Day the Earth Stood Still, it was a film about different worlds coming together and the problems coming together can pose for people. And that’s in a sense, what a good part of this novel is about, aside from being a thriller and a science fiction novel.

As a collaborative effort, how did you go about writing The Rising?

Heather: We went back and forth. At first, the biggest problem was it was sometimes difficult to make critical comments or suggestions to each other because we liked each other so much. Once we got past that, we did fine. We’re very lucky because it was a lot of fun. We talked about each section, sent it back and forth, and the story moved on.

Jon: We’d done so much talking about the concept before actually beginning to write, it was less seat-of-the-pants writing and it went very smoothly.

Heather: It’s been a great collaboration because we melded our styles of writing and storytelling by finding common ground. Also, Jon is brilliant with tech, and I’m not. So, we each brought different strengths to the work.

You’re two of the most prolific authors I know. How do you account for your productivity?

Heather: I have five children and they were very expensive. [Laughter]. When I started writing, I had no clue about what I was doing. I tried many things and didn’t make any money. I was writing the kind of fiction that wasn’t what I really wanted to write. I then realized my strength was writing novels with murder, mystery and mayhem. I learned if I was going to survive as a writer, I had to produce a lot of books. I learned to simply sit down and write. And write some more. The notion of having a deadline keeps the fires burning.

Jon: For me, it’s really about chasing the dream. My dream is to be more successful than I’ve ever been. So, I write and then write more.

Heather: I would also say I can’t imagine not writing. It’s what I absolutely adore doing. If I won the Lottery, would I stop writing? No.

If you weren’t a writer now, what would you be doing?

Heather: I majored in theater and performed at dinner-theater for years. I was a backup singer, too. I started writing because going to auditions became too expensive. Auditions and dinner theater involved hours and hours, and I wasn’t making enough money to make up for the time I was missing out with my children. That was when I began staying home and writing.

Jon: I was headed towards law school in college.  I was bitten by the writing bug and my life changed. I’d probably have become a lawyer. A trial lawyer is also creating a narrative for the jury, and being a writer is sort of like being a lawyer without worrying about what the other side does. For me, the readers are the jury.

It seems to me a sequel should and will be coming for The Rising. Is that true?

Heather: Yes, most definitely. [Laughter].

Aside from a sequel to The Rising, what’s coming next from each of you?

Heather: Last year, Flawless was published. It will be followed this winter by Perfect Obsession.

Jon: I’m half-way through the ninth book in the Caitlin Strong series. It’s called Strong to the Bone.

Congratulations on writing The Rising, a genre-bending and gripping thriller involving murder, adventure and science fiction that’s received abundant and well-deserved praise from Meg Gardiner, James Rollins, Lisa Scottoline, Douglas Preston, Sandra Preston, and others.

Mark Rubinstein’s latest book, Bedlam’s Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope, is a medical/psychiatric memoir.

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Filed Under: About Books, Huffington Post Column Tagged With: heroes, Mixed genres, science fiction, thrillers, writing

‘The Travelers,’ A Conversation with Chris Pavone

January 10, 2017 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

‘The Travelers,’ A Conversation with Chris Pavone

Chris Pavone, formerly a book editor, is the author of two previous New York Times bestsellers, The Accident and The Expats, and winner of the Edgar and Anthony Awards. His latest novel is The Travelers.

The Travelers features Will Rhodes, his wife Chloe, and Malcomb, his boss at the magazine Travelers at which Will is an international correspondent writing about food, wine, foreign cultures, celebrities and expats. But Will has no idea of the secret agendas of some people, including those of his wife and Malcomb. When Will travels to Capri, Bordeaux, Paris, London and Argentina, he finds himself at the center of a dangerous web, one imperiling his marriage, career, and his life.

The Travelers takes readers from the beaches of France, to Barcelona, New York, Argentina and to Iceland, all places hiding a dark story of surveillance, lies and espionage. How did you acquire so much knowledge about clandestine espionage operations?

[Laughter] I don’t think I’ve acquired much knowledge about espionage.

I imagined this novel as a story about people who don’t really know for whom they work. We all live in a universe in which we’re either asked to or are forced to accept certain premises about our employment without having the opportunity to verify them. There are some types of employment where it’s perfectly clear for whom you’re working: for instance, teaching in a public school, your boss is the principal, who works for the Board of Education which is publicly funded, it’s very clear.

It’s less clear in the private sector. We go to work every day and often don’t know who owns the company or what their real agenda may be. We don’t truly know what kind of contribution we’re making to some hidden end-game. It took me a decade of working for a large company before I had the curiosity to find out who actually owned that company.

That experience became the premise of this novel. Espionage is somewhat incidental to the story I wanted to tell.

In most espionage novels, the characters risk their lives trying to save somebody, or while protecting a nation from some threat. In The Travelers, that’s not what’s going on. I used espionage as a device to heighten the characters’ personal dramas.

Self-interest thrusts the characters into conflict with one another. Deceit in both personal and business relationships results in their lives spinning out of control.

Speaking of conflicts, I loved your depictions of the inner workings of various characters’ minds, especially Will’s and his boss, Malcomb’s. Will you talk about that?

I try to construct each of my novels around one central theme—core tensions shared by the characters. In The Travelers, everyone is defined by his or her relationship to work. I put each character on a different rung of the ladder: from the lowliest assistant to a powerful man in the world of media.

Will occupies a middle rung; while Malcom, as the editor, is perched at the top.

Their seemingly comfortable and enviable lives have been intertwined for many years, and they consider each other friends; but certain tensions are added to the mix when Will finds himself working for Malcom. That tension is central to the drama in this book.

One man is lying to the other about something critically important to the other.

We’re not  worried someone’s going to get killed, but rather, we’re worried someone will be found out.

Much of The Travelers orbits around marital secrets, as did your novel, The Expats. Will you talk about secrets and lies in a marriage?

I think secrets are a compelling issue for a novel to explore. Most people are married and I don’t think Im going too far out on a limb by saying no one is completely truthful about everything. What if a particular lie your spouse is telling you has enormous consequences ?

What if he or she isn’t who they claim to be ? What if what they actually do for a living is not what you’ve been led to believe they do? What if you’re waking up each morning next to someone who at least in part, is a stranger?

Although I don’t have those concerns about my wife [Laughter]; at times, I  do have those irrational thoughts about people in general. And, I don’t think I’m alone in that regard. So, I like that kind of tension in a novel.  It allows the reader to root for both sides: on one hand, you want the person to be found out, but you also want the secrets to remain intact.

I was impressed by your rich descriptions of even the most quotidian things: an airport, a party, a yacht, a room, or a building’s basement or lobby. How would you describe your writing style?

I think my writing style is sensual. I attempt to engage all the reader’s sense memories when I’m writing descriptive passages. I use descriptions to set a mood and drive the reader to expect or worry about something. It helps to engage every sense—not just seeing things, but tasting, smelling, and hearing things. I try getting as much of that onto the page as is reasonable. I try to engage readers so it feels like they’re actually there, in the scene.

Who are the writers who have influenced your own writing?

That’s such a hard question to answer. The truth is that I’m influenced in some way by practically everything I read, and I read an enormous amount of fiction. I’m constantly taking notes on things that occur to me while I’m reading someone else’s book. The jottings have nothing to do with the book I’m reading, but something I’m reading triggers my own imagination in a completely different direction. There’s very little that makes me want to write more and better than my being immersed in a very good book.

What do you love about the writing life?

I absolutely love writing. As a kind of labor that people will pay you to do, I can’t imagine anything better. I love making things up and my favorite part of writing is when creating the first draft of a novel. I love making decisions and finding new plot twists. I love the invention. The one thing I don’t like is that too frequently, I get ideas in the middle of the night. I have to write them down or I won’t remember them. Then, I can’t get back to sleep because my imagination is all fired-up.

What’s coming next from Chris Pavone?

I’m writing a sequel to my first book, The Expats. This one is called The Paris Diversion and features some of the characters from the first novel.

Congratulations on writing The Travelers, a propulsive, richly imagined, insightful, literary thriller that had me guessing all the way to the last pages.

Mark Rubinstein’s latest book is Bedlam’s Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope, a medical/psychiatric memoir.

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Filed Under: About Books, Huffington Post Column, Interviews Tagged With: Conflict, espionage, lies, novel, secrets, writing

‘The Nix,’ A Conversation with Nathan Hill

October 2, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Nathan Hill’s stories have appeared in various literary journals and he has won or been nominated for many prestigious prizes. He is an Associate Professor of English at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he has taught creative writing and liternathan-hill_cr-michael-lionstarature courses He has worked as a newspaper and magazine journalist, and holds a BA in English and Journalism from the University of Iowa and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

The Nix, his sprawling, multi-tiered debut novel, is ostensibly about a young English professor and failed writer, Samuel Anderson, who undertakes reconstructing the life of his mother who abandoned him when he was 11 years old.

But from the realm of disturbed family dynamics, to youthful friendship and romantic obsession; to the radical Sixties, to Norwegian ghosts, politics, video gaming, academia; to the Vietnam and Iraq wars; to secrets and lies, and to many other things, the novel is about much, much more. It examines the idea “the things you love the most will one day hurt you the worst.”the-nix

I understand between research and writing The Nix, it was ten years in the making. Tell us how it came to be what it is now.

I was doing some very poor work during the first couple of years writing it. I started the novel in 2004 as a young man straight out of an MFA program. I wanted to write something that would give me the kind of career I’d imagined for myself. I was writing crap. When you write to impress agents and editors, you’ll write bad prose. My writing didn’t have any personal human truths. I was rejected everywhere, as I should have been.

I floundered for a couple of years. I was doing research but was also trying to figure out what kind of book I wanted to write. I moved from New York and took a teaching job in Florida, having dropped out of the whole publishing query letter-writing scene. I was teaching and playing a lot of video games, and was sort of mentally marinating for a long time.

I then thought I’d missed my chance at being published, so I decided to take that anxiety about ‘blowing it’ and put it into the book. I included some experiences I was having teaching as well as with video games. When I decided to tell a true human story, the writing took off. I had to tear down my preconceived notions about what a successful writer should be and simply became the writer I needed to be.

It’s difficult to pick out my favorite sections of the novel, there were so many, but I absolutely loved the interplay between Samuel and his student, Laura Pottsdam. I know you spent years in academia, so tell us what Laura epitomizes.

When I was teaching, there were a lot of Laura Pottsdams in my classes. She’s an amalgam of some students I dealt with. While most college students are hard-working and want to learn, there’s a number of students who will plagiarize, cheat and not feel badly about it. They won’t do the reading, and have trouble paying attention to anything besides their phone, and will ask about the utility of what they’re learning. ‘Why do I need to know Hamlet in real life?’… questions like that.

Frequently, that attitude, combined with a sense of entitlement since they’re paying tuition and feel they deserve to get a great job, is reinforced by parents who will provide a last measure of self-defense when the students get into trouble. Just Google the term plagiarism epidemic and you’ll know exactly what I’m describing.

As often happens, when I write and spend enough time with a character, I began to ask myself questions about Laura, which in turn made me realize something was going on with my students that made them fundamentally different from the way I was in college. I realize the world has changed—drastically. My students grew up during the Great Recession. Teachers and parents tell them it’s a competitive marketplace, not only here, but worldwide. Corporations won’t look out for them. Students now are enormously anxious about getting a job and moving out of their parents’ homes. The assumptions I could make sixteen years ago—about finding a job and living independently—no longer hold.

Today’s students feel they need to excel in everything, so some of them cheat. Once I understood that, Laura Pottsdam became a more sympathetic character for me.

The Nix has a kaleidoscopically sweeping quality, zooming from 1968 to 2011, then back to 1944, and is told from multiple points of view. How did you manage to organize this wonderful sprawl?

My first draft was one-thousand and two pages long. [Laughter] I chipped away about four-hundred pages. It was so long because I gave myself permission to go down whatever rabbit hole or cul-de sac I imagined. I figured I might as well entertain myself in the writing of this book.

If I don’t ask you about one chapter, I’d be remiss. The Nix has a ten-page chapter that’s one-sentence long. Tell us about that.

I started writing that chapter as depicting the day Pwnage—the video game guru—would stop playing video games. Then, I started listing all the reasons he couldn’t stop playing. I read the rough draft to my wife who asked ‘Is this all one sentence?” It struck me that maybe it should be one sentence. I wanted to capture how time could slip away when you’re so engaged in something. Pwnage was feeling claustrophobic and anxious. At that point, the video game was the only thing giving his life meaning and substance. I wanted to textually replicate his anxiety in the reader.

Critics have likened The Nix to works by John Irving, Jonathan Franzen, Michael Chabon, Donna Tartt, Thomas Pynchon, among others. How does that make you feel?

[Laughter] Obviously, it makes me feel wonderful. How could I not feel great about it?

Does it make you feel burdened by expectations about whatever comes next?

I’m looking forward to getting back to the material for my second book. After all the attention this book is getting, I still have to go back and face a blank page. That blank page doesn’t give a damn what the New York Times said about me.

Yes, it’s gratifying people are saying such nice things about the book, but when I go back and start working again, I have to forget about the praise.

The Nix contains reflections on the misguided literary ambitions of a young man who wants to write for the prestige and social recognition it will get him. Will you talk about that?

Samuel wants to write because he thinks it’s going to make people like him. In college, I tried using my writing to impress women, and it’s shocking how poorly that worked. [Laughter] I tell my creative writing students to write because you need to. There should be something about the activity itself that’s valuable. Writing for recognition, ego, or praise guarantees you’ll write poor stuff.

In some ways, I think writing a novel should be like planting and tending a garden. People don’t keep a garden to get famous. A garden isn’t a failure if thousands of people don’t look at it. A gardener loves gardening because it brings a measure of joy. The writing of this book brought me a great deal of joy. If there’s humor in the book it’s because I think a pre-requisite for setting a scene is it must delight me in some way. I feel it’s a healthier way of writing than the way I approached it as a young man. Being published, I think, should be viewed as a side-effect of the writing.

What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned about writing?

I once handed in a story in a creative writing class. The teacher looked at it and said, ‘You can do this, but you’re going to die soon, so you might as well write something that really matters.’ That was good advice. I think of that incident when I’m writing.

You’re hosting a dinner party and can invite any five people, real or fictional, living or dead. Who would they be?

That’s a cool question. I’d stick with writers and set up a literary salon. I’d invite Virginia Woolf, Donald Barthelme, David Foster Wallace, James Baldwin, and Gertrude Stein. I would just cook and listen. Now that would be a fun party!

 What’s coming next from Nathan Hill?

I’m working on a new novel. I have a premise and characters. I don’t as yet have a plot, but that will come. I’ll be writing about the things that interest me. Right now that happens to be marriage, authenticity, gentrification, and the nineties. We’ll see what that turns into. [Laughter]

Congratulations on penning The Nix, a soulful, hilarious, profoundly penetrating novel so brilliantly written, it took me on a head-spinning ride across a fantastic literary landscape.

Mark Rubinstein’s latest book is Bedlam’s Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope, a medical/psychiatric memoir.

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Filed Under: About Books Tagged With: 1968 Chicago riots, Afghanistan, creativity, Iraq War, John Irving, literary novels, mother-son relationships, Vietnam, writing

‘Goodbye to the Dead,’ A Talk with Brian Freeman

March 20, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

brian freeman cr. martin hoffstenBrian Freeman is an internationally bestselling author of psychological suspense novels. His books have been sold in 46 countries, and have been Main Selections in the Literary Guild and Book of the Month Club. His novels have been nominated for prestigious awards, and two have won the Macavity Award and an award presented by the International Thriller Writers Organization. Before breaking into the fiction writing world, Brian was a communications strategist and business writer, and served as director of marketing and public relations for an international law firm.

Read more on the Huffington Post >>

 

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‘Out Of The Blues,’ A Conversation with Trudy Nan Boyce

March 1, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Trudy Nan Boyce received her Ph.D. in community counseling before becoming a police ofTrudy Nan Boyce, Photo, Viki Hoang Timianficer for the City of Atlanta. As a police officer for more than 30 years, she worked as a beat cop, homicide detective, senior hostage negotiator, and in the Special Victims Unit, among other assignments.

Out of the Blues, her debut novel, introduces newly minted homicide detective Sarah “Salt” Alt who on her first day in homicide, is assigned a cold-case murder of a blues musician whose death was first ruled an accidental drug overdose. Sarah’s investigation takes her to unanticipated encounters ranging from Atlanta’s homeless to its richest and most influential citizens.

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Filed Under: About Books, book launch Tagged With: Blues music, community, creativity, crime, police novels, Reading, writing

‘The Ex,’ A Conversation with Alafair Burke

January 27, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Alafair BurkeAlafair Burke is the New York Times bestselling author of 13 novels. She is also the
co-author of the Under Suspicion series with Mary Higgins Clark. A former prosecutor, she is now a professor of law at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University.

The Ex is the story of Olivia Randall, a top-flight criminal defense attorney who receives a telephone call from the 16 year old daughter of a man who 20 years earlier, had been her fiancé and whose heart she broke in the worst way imaginable.

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Filed Under: About Books, Huffington Post Column, Interviews, Mark Rubinstein, On Writing Tagged With: column, Huffington Post, HuffPo, Mark Rubinstein, writing

‘Where It Hurts,’ A Conversation with Reed Farrel Coleman

January 26, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Reed Farrel Coleman (c) Adam MartinReed Farrel Coleman, known to thriller lovers everywhere, is the author of the New York Times-bestselling Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins, in addition to having written twenty-two other novels. Because of his writing style, he’s been dubbed a “hard-boiled poet” and the “noir poet laureate”. He’s received the Shamus Award three times for best detective novel of the year, and has also won the Barry Award and the Anthony Award, in addition to being a three-time Edgar Award nominee. His books include nine novels in the Moe Prager series.

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Filed Under: About Books, Huffington Post Column, Interviews, Mark Rubinstein, On Writing Tagged With: column, Huffington Post, HuffPo, Mark Rubinstein, writing

Tami Hoag and “The Bitter Season”

January 15, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Tami Hoag_creditJanCobbTami Hoag is an internationally bestselling author of more than thirty books. Over forty million copies are in print in thirty languages. She is known for crafting intricate and intense psychological thrillers probing the darkest corners of her characters’ minds.

The Bitter Season brings back Minneapolis detectives Nikki Liska and Sam Kovac in this five-book series. Nikki, injured in an earlier crime, is now working in the cold-case unit, trying to solve a case from twenty-five years earlier. A decorated sex-crimes detective was shot dead from a distance and there seems little hope of finding the killer who got away so many years ago.

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‘Written in Fire,’ A Conversation with Marcus Sakey

January 12, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Marcus Sakey’s thrillers have been nominated for multiple awards, including an Edgar AwarMarcus Sakey_Credit_Jay_Franco_high-resd nomination for Brilliance, the first book in the Brilliance Trilogy. His novel Good People was made into a movie starring James Franco and Kate Hudson. Brilliance is now in development with Legendary Pictures.

After graduating from college, Markus Sakey worked in advertising and marketing. His debut thriller, The Blade Itself, was published to wide critical acclaim, allowing him to work full-time as a writer.

Written in Fire is the gripping conclusion of The Brilliance Trilogy (following Brilliance and A Better World). In 1986, incredibly gifted people known as brilliants or abnorms were born, and thirty years later, constitute one percent of the U.S. population.

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What Acclaimed Writers Love About Writing

December 8, 2015 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Over the years, I’ve had the incredibly good fortune of interviewing many of the most widely-read novelists on the planet. I often (but not always) ask certain questions of each author. One of my favorites is: What do you love about the writing life?

Here are excerpted answers from some highly acclaimed writers.

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Robert Crais: What I love about the writing life–despite the bad days when I have to force my way through–is when I’m there ‘in the moment,’ when what’s happening on the page is real and true and good; and I’m there with Elvis Cole or with Joe Pike or with Maggie and Scott, and I’m in complete touch with my emotions. That’s when things come together and may burst into something I hadn’t necessarily planned. There’s no better feeling. That’s what it’s all about. ~Talking about his novel, The Promise

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Filed Under: About Books, creativity, Huffington Post Column, Interviews, On Writing Tagged With: creativity, satisfaction, writing

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