Omnivoracious

Recently Discovered Novel by Nobel Prize-Winning Author Pearl S. Buck

A new book by Pearl S. Buck, "The Eternal Wonder," found 40 years after it was written, will be introduced to readers this coming October.

The recently discovered book, The Eternal Wonder, by Pulitzer Prize– and Nobel Prize–winning author Pearl S. Buck is a rare and truly esteemed find in the book world.

Buck wrote this moving and mesmerizing book shortly before she passed away in 1973. Forty years later, in January 2013, the manuscript was found in storage and brought to Open Road, Buck’s digital publisher. The Eternal Wonder will be published by Open Road on October 22, 2013, both in digital format and in a beautifully packaged paperback edition.

Jane Friedman of Open Road, Michael Carlisle of InkWell, and Edgar S. Walsh, Buck's son, said, “We are thrilled to discover and publish a novel by one of only two American women to ever win both the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes. The Eternal Wonder is as brilliant and inspiring as Pearl Buck’s most famous works, and we look forward to readers across the world getting to enjoy this long-lost masterpiece this fall along with Buck’s other wonderful books.”

The Eternal Wonder is a personal and passionate fictional exploration of the themes that meant so much to Buck in her life. It tells the coming-of-age story of Randolph Colfax, an extraordinarily gifted young man whose search for meaning and purpose leads him to New York, England, Paris, a mission patrolling the demilitarized zone in Korea that will change his life forever—and, ultimately, to love.

Open Road currently digitally publishes 28 other titles from Pearl Buck, including The Big Wave, The Promise, A House Divided, and Buck's Pulitzer Prize–winner, The Good Earth. Born in Hillsboro, West Virginia, Buck was the daughter of missionaries and spent much of the first half of her life in China, where many of her books are set. In 1934, civil unrest in China forced Buck back to the United States. Throughout her life, she worked in support of civil and women’s rights, and established Welcome House, the first international, interracial adoption agency. For her body of work, Buck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938, the first American woman to do so.

Read more about Pearl Buck and her novel, The Eternal Wonder, available on pre-order.

Caitlin R. Kiernan, Mort Castle, Joyce Carol Oates among 2013 Bram Stoker Award Winners in Horror

It was a frightfully fabulous weekend for the Horror Writers Association, which spent the last few days in New Orleans hosting the Bram Stoker Awards™ Weekend 2013, as well as the World Horror Convention. Amid the panels and art shows, readings, and signings, the gala presentation honored writers in 11 categories, including Novel, Graphic Novel, Nonfiction, Screenplay, and Poetry.

Caitlin R. Kiernan won best novel for The Drowning Girl, Joyce Carol Oates shared an award, and Mort Castle walked away with two haunted house trophies. Lifetime Achievement Awards went to Clive Barker and Robert R. McCammon.

The complete list of 2013 category nominees and winners were as follows:

Novel

Caitlin R. Kiernan -- The Drowning Girl (winner)

Benjamin Kane Ethridge -- Bottled Abyss

John Everson -- NightWhere

Bentley Little -- The Haunted

Joe McKinney -- Inheritance

 

First Novel

L.L. Soares -- Life Rage (winner)

Michael Boccacino -- Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling

Deborah Coates -- Wide Open

Charles Day -- The Legend of the Pumpkin Thief

Peter Dudar -- A Requiem for Dead Flies

Richard Gropp -- Bad Glass

 

Young Adult Novel

Jonathan Maberry -- Flesh & Bone (winner)

Libba Bray -- The Diviners

Barry Lyga -- I Hunt Killers

Michael McCarty -- I Kissed A Ghoul

Maggie Stiefvater -- The Raven Boys

Jeff Strand -- A Bad Day for Voodoo

 

Graphic Novel 

Rocky Wood and Lisa Morton -- Witch Hunts: A Graphic History of the Burning Times (winner)

Cullen Bunn -- The Sixth Gun Volume 3: Bound

Terry Moore -- Rachel Rising Vol. 1: The Shadow of Death

Ravi Thornton -- The Tale of Brin and Bent and Minno Marylebone

Peter J. Wacks and Guy Anthony De Marco -- Behind These Eyes

 

Long Fiction

Gene O’Neill -- The Blue Heron (winner)

Kealan Patrick Burke -- Thirty Miles South of Dry County

Jack Ketchum and Lucky McGee -- I’m Not Sam

Joe McKinney and Michael McCarty -- Lost Girl of the Lake

Norman Prentiss -- The Fleshless Man

Short Fiction

Lucy Snyder -- "Magdala Amygdala" (winner)

Bruce Boston -- "Surrounded by the Mutant Rain Forest"

Joe McKinney -- "Bury My Heart at Marvin Gardens"

Weston Ochse -- "Righteous"

John Palisano -- "Available Light"

 

Screenplay

Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard -- The Cabin in the Woods (winner)

Jane Goldman -- The Woman in Black

Sang Kyu Kim -- The Walking Dead, "Killer Within"

Tim Minear -- American Horror Story: Asylum, "Dark Cousin"

Gary Ross Suzanne Collins and Billy Ray -- The Hunger Games

 

 

Fiction Collection

Mort Castle -- New Moon on the Water (winner, tie)

Joyce Carol Oates -- Black Dahlia and White Rose: Stories (winner, tie)

Jonathan Carroll -- Woman Who Married a Cloud: Collected Stories

Elizabeth Hand -- Errantry: Strange Stories

Glen Hirshberg -- The Janus Tree

 

Anthology

Mort Castle and Sam Weller -- Shadow Show (winner)

Eric J. Guignard -- Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations

Eric Miller -- Hell Comes to Hollywood

R.J. Cavender, Mark C.Scioneaux, and Robert S. Wilson -- Horror for Good: A Charitable Anthology

Stan Swanson -- Slices of Flesh

 

Non-Fiction

Lisa Morton -- Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween (winner)

Michael Collings -- Writing Darkness

Les Klinger -- The Annotated Sandman, Volume 1

Kim Paffenroth and John W. Morehead -- The Undead and Theology

Kendall R. Phillips -- Dark Directions: Romero, Craven, Carpenter, and the Modern Horror Film

 

Poetry

Marge Simon and Sandy DeLuca -- Vampires, Zombies & Wanton Souls (winner)

Linda Addison and Stephen M. Wilson -- Dark Duet

Bruce Boston and Gary William Crawford -- Notes from the Shadow City

Michael Collings -- A Verse to Horrors

Mary A. Turzillo -- Lovers & Killers

 

The 2012 Bram Stoker Award® winners: Top row (left to right): Mort Castle, L.L. Soares, Jerad Walters, Rocky Wood, Jonathan Maberry. Lower row/middle: Sam Weller, James Chambers, Lucy Snyder, Marge Simon, Robert McCammon, Caitlin R. Kiernan (seated), Charles Day, Lisa Morton
(Not pictured: Gene O'Neill, Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard, Joyce Carol Oates, and Clive Barker)

R.I.P. Iain (M.) Banks, Seminal Scottish Genre Jumper (1954-2013)

You may have heard that Scottish novelist Iain M. Banks passed away on Sunday at age 59, having announced on his blog in April that he had terminal gall bladder cancer.

Upon learning of Banks's death, fellow author and convention buddy Neil Gaiman wrote on his own blog, "His work was mordant, surreal, and fiercely intelligent. In person, he was funny and cheerful and always easy to talk to."

Banks was known equally for his science fiction writing and his general literature, and he ammassed an oeuvre of 28 books in his career, beginning with his acclaimed debut The Wasp Factory. His 29th and last, which will be released on June 25, is The Quarry--the story of a teenage boy who longs to learn about his mother, but has limited time since his father is dying. What a poignant final work of humor from a man who brought so much joy to his readers over the last three decades.

"If you've never read any of his books, read one of his books," Gaiman advises. "Then read another. Even the bad ones were good, and the good ones were astonishing."

 

The Part-Time Vegan: Mark Bittman Talks VB6

As a long-time food writer for the New York Times and the author of several best-selling cookbooks--including the essential How to Cook Everything--Mark Bittman is all about food. So when mounting weight and health issues prompted doctor's advice that should consider a vegan diet, he said (somewhat incredulously), "Come on. You know what I do for a living."

But as he thought about it, he came to a career-friendly solution: If he was good most of the time, maybe he could be a little less good part of the time and still reap the benefits of a healthful diet. He called his plan VB6, or Vegan Before Six. In short: eat good foods from waking until 6:00 p.m. (or as good as you can get/abide), then do whatever you want after. And through four years of living the "Flexitarian" lifestyle--during which he lost 35 pounds and gained the attendant rewards of a plant-based diet--he realized he had a book on his hands. The result was VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00 to Lose Weight and Restore Your Health ... for Good.

Bittman stopped by the Amazon offices for a chat with Senior Editor Mari Malcolm and our guest  Makini Howell, a Seattle restaurat eur and the author of Plum: Gratifying Vegan Dishes from Seattle's Plum Bistro, her new book from Sasquatch Press. Even though he was coming to the end of a long book tour, he thoughtfully commented on the challenges of part-time veganism (and how it's changed his non-vegan hours), the wider implications of industrialized farming, and the despair of engineering a no-regrets meal at a typical airport restaurant.

Watch the interview:

Sara Says: Give Me An Angry Heroine Any Old Time

In Claire Messud's ferocious The Woman Upstairs, middle-aged Nora, an artist-wannabe who is actually a frumpy suburban schoolteacher, announces her rage in the very first pages. "How angry am I? You don't want to know. Nobody wants to know about that."

But as the book goes on, she doesn't need to announce her feelings: every move she makes signals that the overwhelming impulse that drives her is rage. What's she so mad about? Everything, it seems. Or, as author Messud said in an interview in her publisher's office, "She had perhaps accepted that certain opportunities had been foreclosed [i.e. the ability to marry and certainly have children] and all of a sudden [when she met the young family with whom she became obsessed and immersed] somebody came along and opened the doors and said, 'Well, actually, you have one more chance'... But when those relationships fall apart, she's angry in exact proportion to how excited she was. She's angry about what she has lost."

Similar but different, Noa P. Singleton, the eponymous heroine of our debut this month is also angry, although she masks her rage as a smart alecky but blasé lack of concern for her fate as a prisoner on death row. She isn't moved when a young lawyer comes to try to get her sentence reversed; she isn't impressed when her long-lost father tries to establish a relationship with her; she doesn't jump when her victim's mother comes to her defense.

Noa and Nora--hmmm. What would Dr. Freud say about the echo of those names?--are both cut off from connection, and when either woman gets close to engaging with life, by choice or by chance, she can't help screaming her head off.

There's already been plenty written about whether Messud's heroine is so unlikable as to sink the success of the book. (Messud herself says she worried that people might be turned off by this character whom she says is neither biographical nor autobiographical, but is, nonetheless, "real.") And many have opined that an angry, unlikeable voice will never attract much of an audience, especially if that angry, unlikeable voice belongs to a female. ("Women's anger, in particular, is unseemly to some people," Messud understates.) And yet, the books keep coming--and keep selling.

There are few more likable, readable, perhaps even justifiably angry heroines than, Nora (hmm...that name again) Ephron's doppelganger in Heartburn. Or Fay Weldon's in the delightfully vicious, Lives and Loves of a She Devil, arguably the most delicious revenge novel of all time. See also, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. Or what about the predatory, rageful woman in Zoë Heller's spectacular What Was she Thinking: Notes on a Scandal? (Decent movie, but better book!) There are, of course, angry men, too. And while the therapists might say male rage is more societally accepted, if that were true, a novel like Kate Christensen's The Epicure's Lament, about a furious, broken down guy who decides to eat and drink himself to death, would be better known than it is.

"It is human to make choices against your own best interest," Messud says. By that definition, Noa is certainly human: she has plenty of opportunities to exonerate and excuse herself, but can't quite bring herself to do so because she's guilty of some things, if not the exact crimes for which she was convicted. Most of us, I think, would agree with Messud’s comment that "bad choices, as much as good ones if not more so, are what our lives are made of." Likewise, "bad," angry characters are what the best books can be made of.

Deep in the Heart of Texas: Philipp Meyer on the "The Son"

Philipp Meyer's 2009 debut novel, American Rust, earned numerous accolades (including a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship) and marked him as a writer of exceptional potential. With The Son--a 150-year saga of family, oil, and power set against the birth of Texas and the modern West--Meyer has seemingly fulfilled that promise. He took time to answer a few questions about the new book, including some of his unusual things he did during the course of his research, and violence as an inseparable reality of North America's past.

The Son is available May 28.

The Son is an immense novel, spanning generations, a wide swath of Texas (and American) history, and incredible cultural change. Did you always intend for it to be this ambitious, or did it grow out of a more particular idea?

I always knew it was going to be an ambitious book. The problem, when I began writing it, was that I didn’t know nearly as much I thought I did about the history of Texas and the history of the American West. And the more I learned, the more I realized I didn’t know, and the slower the writing became. There were a lot of moments of slapping my head and realizing I needed to research a whole new period of history before I could write the things that belonged in the novel, and at some point I realized that the book was basically going to take place over two hundred years. That was exciting but also a bit depressing—I was thinking I’d finish this book in three years, like my last one. It ended up taking five years.

 

The Son is thoroughly entertaining (and revelatory) in its period detail and vernacular, especially Eli’s experience with the Comanches. How much—and what sort of—research was required to achieve such a level of realism?

There was so much research that it all became a blur. I know I read at least 350 books, though I likely read more; I took weeks of animal tracking classes, spent a month at Blackwater (the private military contractor) learning combat skills and soaking up the warrior culture for the sections on both the Comanches and the early Texas Rangers; I taught myself to bowhunt and killed several deer, ate them, tanned various deer hides. I shot two buffalo (whose meat was destined for restaurants and grocery stores) and because the Plains tribes sometimes did it for survival purposes, I drank a cup of warm blood from the neck of one of the animals. Not recommended. And I spent months in the woods, mountains, and deserts of Texas—I slept outside, hiked, or hunted almost everywhere the book takes place, took careful notes on and pictures of all the plants and animals I saw, then realized that the ecology of Texas had changed so enormously over the past 150 years that my notes weren’t necessarily valid. So had to go back to the historical and archeological record to research about exactly how and where and why it changed—the plants and animals I was seeing between 2008-2013 were not necessarily the plants and animals that were there in 1850 or 1870 or 1915.  Texas used to be a much wetter place—much of what is now desert or brushland was grassland in 1850. The landscape has changed radically in a very short period of time.

 

There’s a lot of violence in this book, and scenes that might make some readers uncomfortable. That’s part of the tale, of course, given both the era and setting. Did you have any reservations about not holding back? Is there intent to the way you want readers to face that violence?

I’m reluctant to talk about this too much, and to make too big a deal of it, but here goes:

I’m not sure the book is any more violent than any other book set in this time period, but I made an effort to not glorify it or gloss over it. A lot of books about the American West, about our creation myth, are full of blood and gore but there is no real sense of loss—they are like Quentin Tarantino movies. I wanted to address that tendency. I wanted the reader’s sympathies to shift from one side of the conflict to the other. I wanted the loss on both sides to be real.

That said, the politically correct part of me definitely considered toning it down—especially the scenes of combat between the Comanches and the various settler groups. But doing so would have come at such a cost to truth and accuracy that I couldn’t bring myself to do it—the historical record was too clear. The Native Americans were at war for their very survival and the European-American settlers were at war to make their fortunes and expand their country. Neither side committed any atrocity that has not been committed at some other period in history—whether earlier, during the Spanish Inquisition, or later, during the big wars of the 20th century. And I was careful that whatever violence there is in the book—whether committed by Texas Rangers, ranchers, or settlers, by Comanches or U.S. soldiers—was based on real events. It was not me imagining how things might have been.

It’s important to remember that people have been living in America for 15,000 years; thousands of cultures have risen and fallen here in that time, and, while no one was taking notes, it’s not that hard to guess that most were overthrown by force. In Texas alone, since the Spanish arrived and began writing things down, the Apaches came in and overthrew most of the other tribes and then the Comanches came in and overthrew the Apaches (and to some extent, the Spanish). The land we live on is quite literally soaked in blood; you can’t really understand American history, and what we come from, until you come to terms with that. And equally until you come to terms with the fact that, regardless of the winners or losers, the degree of brutality was basically equal on all sides. I think it’s easy to say that this brutality—the ubiquitousness of it—is the great point to be taken from human history. But that is not how I think of it. The point is that despite all that bloodshed, here we all are, still breathing, still falling in love and having children, still living our lives.

 

Both of your novels have a strong sense of geographical identity: American Rust in Pennsylvania and The Son in Texas. How does location shape your books? That is, does the story grow out of your experience of a place, or do you start with a story that you want to tell?

With the story. I didn’t grow up in Pennsylvania or in Texas. I just knew that this is where those books were going to be set. So I had to go and learn those settings. The location is crucial—you have to understand the economic history, the natural history, the philosophical history of a place before you can write about it. You have to know how the people look, speak, think, move, what they hope for, how they vote, how they eat, where they sleep, what they do for work.  You have to know everything. Not necessarily when you start the book, but definitely before the book is done.

 

Who are your greatest influences? Do you read for inspiration for your own work, or to take a break from your own work?

Overall my biggest influences, and the people who I see myself as learning the most from, are the modernists, basically Woolf, Faulkner, Joyce, Hemingway, Welty, etc. But I will read anything I find compelling. I’m going through a Vargas Llosa kick and right now and just finished a few books by Lobo Antunes. As a reader, there is nothing more satisfying than coming across an under-appreciated master, or a new book by an emerging master.  

As for the way I read, what happens when you cross the threshold after which you are a practitioner, or a working artist—whatever you want to call it—is that you don’t really read the same way. Probably not so different from the way a professional athlete watches a game. You are constantly observing, learning, zooming in and out on what people are doing. You’re not quite as lost in the magic of it, because you’re thinking: “holy ----, how did she/he do that!” Maybe that’s a loss. When I say it out loud, it seems like it. But in truth it doesn’t feel like it. I guess it feels like the natural evolution of my relationship to writing, or art, or the world. Somehow the pleasure of writing has supplemented or augmented the pure pleasure I used to get from reading. The amount of happiness is the same, but it comes from a slightly different place.

 

--Jon Foro

Translation as an Act of Love: Ursula K. Le Guin and Squaring the Circle

Acts of translation are often truly international efforts. In the case of Squaring the Circle: A Pseudotreatise of Urbogony, this is doubly true. Iconic writer Ursula K. Le Guin selected and translated 24 "Fantastic Tales" by the highly decorated Romanian writer Gheorghe Sasarma in this collection--but not in quite the usual way. Instead of translating from the original language, Le Guin translated initially from the Spanish edition of the book, La Quadratura del Círcolo.

Squaring the Circle, which consists of several short tales each set in a different fantastical city, is perhaps the author's most controversial book. First published in 1975, it fell afoul of Communist censors, who cut about one fourth of the collection. In 1983, as a result of continued censorship, Sasarman left Romania to live in Munich, Germany. Since then he has continued to write, but only published in Romania again in 1989 after the fall of the dictator Ceausescu. He is a potent reminder of the constraints placed on many writers of that era, especially in Romania, where repression was particularly acute.

Le Guin explains in her introduction that, for a while, the book "kept lying around in one place or another in my study." But gradually, the collection exerted an effect on her, as sometimes happens: "It's not rational, not easy to explain [this effect some books have]. They don't glow or vibrate...They just are in view, they're there... And even if I have no idea what it is or what it's about, I have to read it."

As she became absorbed in these tales, Le Guin realized she wanted to translate them into English. "I love translation because I translate for love. I'm an amateur. I translate a text because I love it, or think I do, and love craves close understanding. Translation, for me, is discovery."

Le Guin's "laborious" translation from Spanish into English was then checked against the Romanian original and a French translation. "Both were of use when my Spanish got stuck or I wanted to see the original wording (for Romanian is, after all, a Romance language, half-familiar even if unreadable by me)." The original Spanish translator, Mariano Martín Rodríguez was also of use, via email.

The result? A collection of quite beautiful and sometimes dark tales, sure to delight lovers of Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges—or aficionados of the work of Le Guin herself.

"We launched Squaring the Circle at the Seattle Library in mid-May," Le Guin told Omnivoracious. "The author's daughter came from Munich, his nephew from Canada, and the Spanish translator from Brussels, and we each read a story in English, Spanish, and Romanian. The audience was great. I think the high point was when the Spanish translator, reading the story 'Kriegbourg,' stabbed himself in the back, and bled to death (with my red scarf)."

As for Le Guin's favorites in the collection, she has several and found it hard to choose. "Maybe 'Arapabad' is the most beautiful single story, but I love 'Sah-Harah,' and 'Oldcastle.' And images haunt me--the greased slides in Vavylon, the doorways in Moebia..."

Squaring the Circle has been lovingly published by Aqueduct Press as an attractive small-sized paperback with copious geometric illustrations.

Writer's Blues: Bill Cheng, Author of "Southern Cross the Dog"

When eight-year-old Robert Chatham loses everything to the fast waters of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, he lights out across the country, a refugee seeking shelter with (and from) a Homeric cast of misfits, hucksters, and ne’er-do-wells: the ladies of a "hotel" of ill repute; a piano player whose talent for the blues matches his seemingly supernatural powers of healing; a close-knit clan of trappers, living in swampland itself marked for flooding, behind the wall of a WPA dam. Wherever he finds himself, Robert's gripped and propelled by his fear of the devil closing in behind. Cheng's novel fits comfortably in the tradition of the Southern Gothic, but such simplification shortchanges the power and originality of its language, the artfulness of its voice. Southern Cross the Dog is one hell of a debut.

Cheng took the time to answer a few of our questions about his book, the blues, and the origins of the phrase Southern Cross the Dog.

You’re from New York, and Southern Cross the Dog is about as southern as a book can get. What inspired you to write about that part of the country?

I started this novel as a kind of offering to country blues music. I wanted to be able to re-create in story the kind of experience I feel when I listen to someone like Son House, for example.  For me, the only way to do that in a way that felt sincere was to set it in Mississippi, during the era of the prewar blues. Set the book someplace else and at some other time, and it would've been like I was trying to get around something. And you can't do that if you want to write a book you’re proud of.

Your story begins 85 years ago at the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, moving through the early 1940s. Was there something about that particular era that interested you, something that you could build a novel around?

The Great Mississippi Flood was a great starting point, from a storytelling perspective. There's a largeness to it, and its impact shadows the characters throughout the book. For Robert and his family, the flood marks them in a way that's irreparable. The flood and the Mississippi River also occupies this amazing space in the music. There are so many songs about the river, about the levee camps, and about the flood. The idea first came to me when I was listening to John Lee Hooker sing and play "Tupelo." It's absolutely haunting.

How did you conduct your research for not only the finer details of the culture, but also the language of the period?

I think there’s a misconception about how writers research and how the research is used. Or at least, on my part, I don't think I do the work of going to a library for a long period of time, digesting the information, writing the book so that it is faithful to reality.

The small facts that open up the world of a novel are important and can be like manna to a writer, but the real value in research, in sitting with materials, is that the path of your research reinforces the writer's path through their novel. By which I mean, the way you direct your research tells you what it is you want your novel to be about. You're discovering the world of your novel, not the real world as it can be represented in a novel. 

But to answer your question, I read aggressively everything I could about blues and blues music. I listened to blues music for close to a decade before I started the book.

Southern—or Southern Gothic—is a literary genre in itself. Did you have any trepidation in stepping into such a rich tradition?

I didn't really think about it going in—which I think was lucky; it would’ve been paralyzing otherwise. Now that the book is done, I’m a bit cautious of comparisons that are being made now. They’re very complimentary and gratifying to hear, but they also saddle a young writer with a terrible responsibility.  Excruciatingly beautiful books have come out of this part of America, but I can't say sincerely that my name has any place next to giants like William Faulkner or Flannery O'Connor. 

Does one book set in the American South now make me a southern writer? Is it enough to admit me into one of the richest American literary traditions? It's one book. When it’s put to me that I "wrote a book about the South" I think on some level that's wrong. I didn't write a book about the South. How could I have? To me, the book is about something different. Something more.

That said, are there southern writers (or writers of the South) whose work you admire most?

It almost seems besides the point to go on about William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor or Cormac McCarthy. Their contribution to the world of letters will be felt from now until the last eye has fallen across the last word of the last book. But I would like to single out the late Larry Brown and the New York-born Peter Mathiessen, whose books are visceral and exciting and make me proud about wanting to write books.

What is the meaning of the phrase Southern Cross the Dog, and what is its importance to the novel?

Where the Southern Crosses the (Yellow) Dog is a place where two railroad lines—the U.S. Southern and the Yazoo Delta—cross in Moorhead, Mississippi. The place is referenced in blues music, and in my mind, it seems to reference a place of final rest and peace. A kind of coming home. Which is, in a sense, what I believe Robert Chatham wants.

Music—especially the blues—pervades the book. Was that a starting point or something that grew naturally? Do you have favorite blues musicians?

It was a starting point. It was more than a starting point. It was there before I even conceived of the book. It was there for years, settling inside of me, carving me up in quiet unknowable ways. 

As for favorite blues musicians, I have too many. Far too many. I think Lightnin' Hopkins might make it on top of the pile. Big Bill Broonzy, certainly. The problem with naming names is that I’ll always come up with another likely candidate for first place. I list a slew of them in my acknowledgments.

This is your first book—how long did it take to write? Was it a larger (or more difficult) project than you imagined?

About three years to get a first draft. During the editing phase, I think I cut about a hundred pages out of the book, and then fed some more pages back in. The book wasn't an easy book to write, certainly, but that’s part of the joy of being a writer. Solving problems. Working on sentences. Building worlds and populating them. Difficult is good. It keeps things interesting.

Are there more novels coming from you, and will they all be this dark? Are you interested in nonfiction projects, as well?

Hopefully there will be more novels coming from me. Knock on wood. And I hope they won't all be dark, but my writing does tend in that direction. I think I'm pretty light-hearted in person though. As for nonfiction, I like doing essays, op-eds, journalism pieces—that sort of thing. It's a different discipline, requires a different kind of thinking, but I like seeing what comes out. 

What are you reading right now?

The Tilted World by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly. It's also set during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, and it looks like it has a more central role in the book than it does in mine. I've only just started it, but it promises to be an amazing book.

See more Amazon Editors' Picks for May.

--Jon Foro

YA Wednesday: Marie Lu Talks to Rick Yancy About "The 5th Wave"

Rick Yancey's new book, The 5th Wave, sucked me in and pulled me under from the first page to the last with it's terrifying and thrilling story of an alien invasion like you've never seen.  We made it our Best Teen Books of May Spotlight pick, and past Teen Best of the Month author, Marie Lu (Legend trilogy)  is also a big fan.  In this Omni exclusive, Lu chats with Yancey about The 5th Wave, movies, and, of course, aliens.

Marie Lu: Everybody loves aliens--myself included! But in your opinion, how has Hollywood gotten the “alien invasion” idea wrong?

Rick Yancey: I understand that movies are made by humans to be watched by humans, and depicting anything less than total victory over the bug-eyed swarm would be a bit much to ask for. The simple and, to my mind, undeniable truth is that life forms thousands, if not millions, of years more advanced than us probably wouldn’t view humans as anything special, or at least nowhere near as special as we view ourselves. I think we would be more like pesky insects to them, which raises the question (from their angle): Can we coexist, like humans do with cockroaches, or should we simply drive the disgusting infestation from existence? So I don’t believe that, if they find us, it’ll play out anything like the stereotypical alien drama.

They won’t come to teach us anything (Contact) or save us from ourselves (Close Encounters, The Day the Earth Stood Still) or pluck leaves and go home (E.T.). And they’ll be smart enough and careful enough not to damage too much of their new home (Independence Day) and they will remember to take their flu shot (War of the Worlds).

ML: The 5^th Wave has been optioned for film, which is hugely exciting! Anything you can tell us about it?

RY: Under the terms of my contract, not much! I can tell you producers Graham King (Argo) and Tobey Maguire are on board, which is totally cool.

ML: Alright, the alien invasion is nigh and you're in survival mode. What would be in your survival kit?

RY: Toiletry kit (seriously, you’d want to keep yourself groomed. It grounds you. Also you better have a way to keep your teeth clean. You don’t want a bad tooth – check out Castaway if you doubt me). Basic first aid stuff, including penicillin and antibiotic ointment. A means of making fire. Solar-powered flashlight. A good hunting knife. A handheld mirror (to check yourself out and also to check around corners). A compass. Water bottle. And (speaking only for myself) enough medication to ensure an overdose in case the absolute worst comes upon me. If my end was inevitable, I’d make sure it was on my terms, not the alien bastards’.

ML: The five waves you outline in the book scare the bejeezus out of me. Which one frightens you the most?

RY: By far the 3^rd Wave: the super-virus developed by the Others from Ebola Zaire. I won’t go into all the details here – there’s plenty in the book – but if you’ve ever read The Hot Zone, you know what I’m talking about. A slow, agonizing, horrifying way to die. Your organs liquefy. Your brain turns to mashed potatoes. The other waves are terrible, but they’re quick.

ML: Can you give us a sneak peek at what we’re going to see happen in Book 2?

RY: Did things seem a little desperate in Book 1? They get worse. We still haven’t seen the depths to which the Others will sink in order to rid the Earth of the human infestation. And we haven’t yet seen the heights to which the human spirit can reach. Certain characters introduced in Book 1 will come to the fore--and others will face the ultimate test. The Others will give their answer to Cassie’s defiance. 

Sunny Days and Summer Books

With warm weather finally setting in and the end of school just over the horizon it's finally time to start thinking about all the books we want to read this summer.  Will this be the year I finally read Dante's Inferno?  Maybe it will be Dan Brown's new book, Inferno, or maybe both...  My summer reading plan (because, yes, I have one..) is to mix it up with books that I meant to read, but didn't, and the best of the new releases, so I'm going to hit our Summer Reading store for ideas. If you need some ideas, too, below is a sampling of our Editors' Picks for readers of all ages during (at least in Seattle) the best months of the year.  What books do you want to read this summer?

Best new books (for adults) to read this summer: 

Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen: Hiaasen is back at his wickedly funny best in a new tale about greed, corruption, and comeuppance in Florida--and the Bahamas--thanks to a cast of characters that includes a Bahamian voodoo witch, a kinky coroner, and a very bad monkey.

And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini: The bestselling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, has written a new novel about how we love, how we take care of one another, and how the choices we make resonate through generations.  Can lightning strike a third time? For Hosseini, it does.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman: His first novel for adults since Anansi Boys, an imaginative and poignant fairy tale about childhood, memories, mystery and magic.

Editors' Picks for Kids and Teens to read this summer: new books you won't want to miss and some favorites from years gone by.

Books for Kids: 

Paperboy by Vince Vawter (ages 9-12): In this coming-of-age novel, an 11-year-old boy living in the segregated South throws the meanest fastball in town, but talking is a whole different ball game. One summer can change a life, and for this young man a paper route brings a run-in with the neighborhood junkman, a bully and thief, that puts his life in danger.

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate (ages 8 and up): Winner of the 2013 Newbery Medal, Ivan is a gorilla who lives a predictable life making art for the visitors to the Exit 8 Big Top Mall from behind glass walls, but everything changes when a new baby elephant arrives and he sees his world through her eyes. 

Pete the Cat: The Wheels on the Bus by James Dean (ages 4-8): Pete the Cat has quickly become a beloved new picture book character and this time he brings his groovy, laid-back style to a classic. As always, singing is required.

Books for Teens:

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey (teen): The Passage meets Ender's Game in an epic new series where aliens arrive on Earth and it's nothing like you've ever seen before.  Don't let the young adult category fool you--this one is nearly impossible to put down whether you're 14 or 45.

The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen (teen): Luke is the perfect boyfriend: handsome, kind, fun. He and Emaline have been together all through high school in Colby, the beach town where they both grew up. But now, in the summer before college, Emaline wonders if perfect is good enough.

Divergent by Veronica Roth (teen): Summer is the perfect time to start a new series and if you haven't read Divergent yet, put this one to the top of the list.  The first book of a dystopian trilogy filled with electrifying decisions, heartbreaking betrayals, stunning consequences, and unexpected romance, it all comes to an end this fall with the third book, Allegiant.