Omnivoracious

Vince Flynn (1966-2013)

Bestselling author Vince Flynn, known for his page-turning tales of assassins and terrorists, CIA agents and crooked politicians, died early this morning. Flynn had been diagnosed in 2011 with late-stage prostate cancer. His death was announced by his publisher, Carolyn Reidy, president and CEO of Simon & Schuster.

“As good as Vince was on the page--and he gave millions of readers countless hours of pleasure--he was even more engaging in person,” Reidy said in a statement. “He had a truly unique ability to make everyone … feel as if we were on his team and sharing in his life and his success.

"Yes, we will miss the Mitch Rapp stories that are classic modern thrillers, but we will miss Vince even more.”

A constant presence on bestseller lists, Flynn was best known for his steely counter-terrorism operative, Mitch Rapp. Flynn’s devout fans rarely had to wait more than a year for a new Mitch Rapp political thriller. His most recent book, 2012's The Last Man, received more than two-thousand customer reviews on Amazon, with an average rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars.

Flynn took a unique path to bestseller status. After graduating from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul he worked for Kraft General Foods. He attempted to join the Marine Corps, with hopes of becoming an aviator, but was medically disqualified from the Marine Aviation Program. He then returned to a 9-to-5 job, but quit and began bartending at night so could write full time. He self published his first book, the 1997 techno-thriler Term Limits, which became a bestseller and led to a publishing deal with Simon & Schuster.

Though popular across a wide swath of readers, Flynn's books were especially embraced by well-known political conservatives. (Flynn was friends with Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.) Flynn attributed this to his books' patriotic and pro-military themes, and he once said that he felt his books were "entertainment, educational and serve as cautionary tales."

Flynn wrote many of his novels at his cabin on Deer Lake, in Wisconsin. He told USA Today in 2012 that he'd often grab a yelow legal pad and float on the lake in his pontoon boat, glass of red wine at hand, scribbling Mitch Rapp's latest adventure "like a maniac."

Flynn is survived by his wife Lysa and three children.

MORE:

> See all of Vince Flynn's books

> Visit his website

> Read a lengthy USA Today interview from 2012

How I Wrote It: Rebecca Lee on "Bobcat"

Rebecca Lee's remarkable story collection, Bobcat, was selected as one of our Best Books of the Month for June. Her characters all wrestle with the emotional messiness of their complicated lives and imperfect relationships. Jealousy, infidelity, sacrifice, trust, and hope--it's all in there. Reviewer Kevin Nguyen called Bobcat "one of the strongest collections I've read in recent years." At Seattle's Bravehorse Tavern we spoke with Rebecca about old-timey word processors, about reading poetry to prime the pump, and about what she's working on next. 

 

How I Wrote It: Carl Hiaasen, on "Bad Monkey"

How is this book different from your previous ones?

Bad Monkey is more of a true caper than most of the other novels. I don’t usually write “who-done-its” – in my books, you usually know who did it by page 52. But this time I was in the mood to do a funny mystery. It’s also the first time I’ve used a monkey as a major character. Not exactly a literary milestone, but I had a blast with that little guy.

What’s the first line and what does it say about the book?

The first line of the novel is: On the hottest day of July, trolling in dead-calm waters near Key West, a tourist named James Mayberry reeled up a human arm.

That sentence sets the scene pretty well – just another sunny, summer day in paradise. The severed arm is the centerpiece of the plot, and it does some traveling.

Space

There are a couple of different places where I write, but the desks are always arranged so that I’m facing a wall. I can’t write with a view or I’ll get distracted. If it’s too nice a day, I’ll just bag the book and go fishing, so I prefer a blank wall over a bay window.

Tools

I’ve been writing on computers for almost forty years. The first newspaper I worked for was one of the first to install computer writing stations in the newsroom. That was in 1974.  I learned to write on a typewriter when I was very young and I can still do it, but a computer makes it a thousand times easier to self-edit and polish your work. I have a PC with a basic Word program, nothing special.

Soundtrack

I can’t listen to music and write at the same time. I do wear headphones, but to block out all noise. One pair is made by Winchester and another is made by Ruger. They are shooter’s ear muffs, designed to muffle the sound of gunfire. It’s a handy piece of equipment if you live in Florida.

Fuel

Unfortunately, I never learned to drink coffee. Caffeine helps me get rolling in the morning so it’s usually a Snapple or a Coke when I sit down to write. The sugar jolt doesn’t hurt, either. Coffee would be much healthier but I can’t drink a hot steaming cup of anything when it’s 90 freaking degrees outside.

Words

Like many novelists, I don’t read much fiction while I’m working on a book of my own. It would just confuse the inner narrative voice inside my head. Reading another writer’s work, especially a good writer’s, can definitely affect your style if you’re not careful. I love scoping out novels, especially satirical ones, but I save them up and read them between my own projects. Martin Amis’ latest, Lionel Asbo: State of England, was terrific.

Inspiration

You know what successful writers do? They get up, park their butts in a chair and write. Some days you feel like it, some days you don’t. Novelists who spend too much time searching for inspiration generally end up broke, and broken. For a satirist, the writing energy flows from outrage or disgust, a grand sense of folly. Heck, all you’ve got do is read the newspaper every morning.

 

>See more books by Carl Hiaasen 

How I Wrote It: IMPAC Winner Kevin Barry, on 'City of Bohane'

In Kevin Barry's violent and bizarro city of the future, tribes have staked out their mucky turf, girding for the gangwar that seems imminent. Brutal and spooky, Bohane is about to spectacularly implode. But the real beauty of City of Bohane, besides its grimy, mouthy characters and their wholly original dialogue, is the language of their creator.

This is a book that, admittedly, slipped past us here at Amazon. I recently read it it, and was awed by Barry's dark, twisted, musical voice. (Said The Montreal Gazette: "If Roddy Doyle and Nick Cave could procreate, the result would be something like Kevin Barry.") Now, City of Bohane is receiving a well-deserved second life. The paperback was just released in the US, and yesterday Barry was awarded the prestigious International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (worth €100,000), becoming the third Irish writer to win the award.

We spoke with him (via email) about creating his fictional city, about his fancy new headphones and his "demented long-hand scrawl," about biking in the rain and 1970s gangster films.

Origins

So I was lying in the bath one day at home in County Sligo in Ireland, and I was in a sort of thoughtful and optimistic mood. I remember saying to myself, okay, so I could just go and write a novel now, which would be difficult and fun, or I could go and build a little city, which would be really difficult but possibly much more fun. So the plan-megalomaniacal as it sounds--was to build a little city. Out of words. And nerves. And sweat. I had a very serious problem, however--I didn’t know what the city was called. But then one night I sat bolt upright in bed, suddenly shot from sleep--I remember it as a thundery, humid night, in the dog days of summer, ’08--and I said aloud the single word “Bohane!” At which point my girlfriend turned and kicked me viciously and told me to go the hell back to sleep. But once I knew what the place was called, I could begin. I wrote the first draft very quickly in a kind of three-month fever dream. I don’t think I ever actually slept during that three months though I did sometimes faint.

Who did you write this book for?

For people who look around the bookstore sometimes and think--now how am I going to find a truly lurid good time in here? What I wanted to make was a really serious piece of literature, and an extravagant language experiment, but one that would also be a grand, high-octane, visceral entertainment. So I wrote it in technicolour, essentially.

What’s the first line and what does it say about the book?

"Whatever’s wrong with us is coming in off that river." - And I hope that we kind of get the entire book in that sentence. One of my more esoteric beliefs, you see, is that all human feeling is bled out of the landscape. I believe different places have different resonances and that all places give off their own weird and distinct energies. The city of Bohane is named for the Bohane river, which is malevolent, and contains violent energies, and all that occurs in this wild, deranged, very tormented, very sexy west of Ireland city--somewhere yonder in the non-techno future of 2053--all of it somehow begins with that roaring black river. Or so I believe. I also believe, by the way, that cities are sexed – every city is either male or female. And I would say that Bohane is a girl. A nasty girl in steep-toecapped boots with a vicious mouth--a very interesting young lady.

How I Wrote It: Colum McCann, on "TransAtlantic"

I am half Irish and a naturalized citizen of Ireland, and I’ve often read the work of Irish writers, hoping they'll help explain to me my grandmother (now deceased) and my ongoing curiosity about the wounded land of her childhood. Like the core character in National Book Award winner Colum McCann’s brilliant new novel, TransAtlantic, my grandmother fled to America to start anew. A true "Bridget," as Irish maids were called, she tended to Upper East Side households as a young woman in the 1920s. She never returned to Ireland. When I traveled there after college, hitchhiking around for a month and visiting her hometown, my Bud-in-a-can-drinking grandmother was baffled that I’d want to spend time in “that s**t-hole.”

What I love about TransAtlantic (one of our Best Books of the Month), is that it’s McCann’s most Irish novel to date, but also a story whose characters are primarily strong Irish and Irish-American women. Yet, like most of his stories, it’s more about his adopted home than his homeland. McCann is an Irish writer who writes more authentically about America than most American writers.

I spoke with McCann at last week’s Book Expo America in New York. Fittingly (for a book called TransAtlantic), he had just flown back from Ireland the previous night. Unable to find a proper drink at the Javits Center, we sat drinking fruit smoothies, discussing the trans-American bike trip he took at age 21, an epic adventure that formed his sense of storytelling. “That’s where I learned the true value, the true meaning of what it meant to share and exchange a story,” he said of his months on the road. “And even though I never wrote about it directly, I’m still writing about it…”

Below is a Q&A I conducted with McCann via email, prior to our interview. Scroll down to watch the full video interview. (And here’s the first interview I did with Colum, in 2009).

Space

I write in the closet. Literally. I redesigned my office so that it has a wraparound desk, so I pushed the desk backwards into a cupboard. And then I decided that I liked sitting on the desk, with my legs outstretched, in the … well …yes I admit it ... the closet. With a laptop on my knees. And there are loads of photographs about. Knick-knacks on the shelves. A portrait of James Joyce. A photo of myself with Peter Carey and Nathan Englander together. Old family portraits. When friends come to my office they write on my wall. Intelligent grafitti. I like the space because it’s so tight. It focuses my vision. No windows. When I edit, or if I am working on a journalistic project, I come out of the closet and work at the desk like a normal human being.

Tools

I wish I could say that I write with pens or pencils on old foolscap paper, with inkpots and blotting paper and all that fantastic paraphernalia, but I write directly on a computer. In fact I find it difficult to write by hand. I am very disappointed by this. Perhaps one day I will try to write by hand like I used to do when I was a child, but I’ve been a journalist since I was 17 years old and therefore have been writing directly on a keyboard for over thirty years. I have an old battered laptop full of crumbs and bits of fallen (truth told, lots of fallen hair). I don’t have any fancy computer programs or writing rituals except of course tucking myself away in the closet. 

Soundtrack

I recently worked with this fabulous musician from London, Moss Freed, who made an album called “What Do You See When You Close Your Eyes.” He wrote music and linked it to literature. He uses a series of short stories matched to his music which is a really finely-blended jazz with folk themes and rough-edged classical arrangements. His point is that both are inextricably linked, they are enhanced by one another. He says it’s like listening in 3D.    

And I listen to music as I write. Van Morrison and Lisa Hannigan and Joe Henry and Brian Kennedy were all fundamental to stretches of my most recent book, TransAtlantic. I put the music on my Ipod dock and let it move through the room. But I’m an old fogie, really. I wish I could still listen to 33 rpm records. And I have hundreds of old cassettes that lie around, unused. 

Music and rhythm, they’re fundamental to what I do. I walk around my apartment reading things aloud. My kids think I’m nuts.

Fuel

Early morning it’s just a cup of coffee and a slice of toast. The crumbs get in the keyboard. There’s my life in a nutshell really. I just discovered my epitaph. “The crumbs got in his keyboard.” 

I don’t like to drink and write. It tends to force me into the ditch. Late at night, if I have a jar or two under my belt, I will do a bit of editing, but it’s dangerous to be altered by alcohol. Of course young writers seem to think that’s it’s the necessary fuel, but it’s not. 

But writing is writing. It has nothing to do with food and drink for me, though of course they work as perfect metaphors for the written word. In the end you have to stay healthy. I'm becoming more and more interested in what fuels my body also by necessity fuels my imagination. I haven’t taken any direct steps towards really healthy eating. I'm not a vegetarian or anything, but my daughter Isabella is, and I think she's influencing me to think about what sort of fuel goes into the engine.

Words

I like to read poetry to prime the pump. Anyone at all really, but a lot of Jim Harrison, Wendell Berry, Seamus Heaney, Dylan Thomas, Hopkins, that sort of deeply layered language poetry. I find them very useful especially when I am lost. I try not to worry about influence, but the thing is that we get our voice from the voices of others. So inevitably there will be echoes there. 

As for escape, I only escape into the best. Ondaatje. Doctorow. Carey. DeLillo. Morrison. Erdrich. Rushdie. O’Connor, Hemon, Doyle, Bloom. But I hate this, talking about favourite books and authors because I always leave somebody out. I read promiscuously but only because there is so much beauty out there. 

Inspiration

I run every day or every second day around Central Park. It clears my mind. I go with a good friend of mine, Jim Marion. He’s a doctor. We run and chat about theology or the latest hangover, it doesn’t really matter. And I bounce ideas off him. He’s a great listener. I also cycle with my son around the park. No naps! No! A nap would kill me. I like to be tired at the end of the day. Then a proper sleep comes. 

Temptation

I am the world’s worst when it comes to the e-mail and the Internet. Especially when the writing is going badly, which (in the middle of a novel in particular) is most of the time. I tend to check Soccernet.com for my favourite team, Stoke City. What a waste of time that is. I watch the most obscure football matches. It’s a disease. The other vices are the ordinary ones ... but I live out most of my demons in fiction. I like to become "other" in fiction. Then I can be fairly normal in "real" life.

(Author photo: Brendan Bourke)

Cheryl Strayed interviews Ru Freeman, "On Sal Mal Lane"

[Cheryl Strayed, author of the bestseller Wild, speaks with Ru Freeman about her new novel, On Sal Mal Lane, which explores the build-up to the Sri Lankan civil war through the stories of the families living side-by-side on a quiet street.]

Could you explain the name of the street, which is also the name of the book?

The street is named for the Sal Mal grove that cuts off the lane at its dead end and are found in all the gardens of the homes down that road. There is another significance to the Sal Mal tree - it is the tree under which the Gautama Buddha’s mother gave birth to him, and the four Sal Mal trees surrounding his bed turned white when he passed away, and it is also a flower said to be favored by the Hindu god Vishnu, and so it is rarely cut down. Further, the Sal Mal flower and its stamen and petals are shaped in a way that depicts people at prayer around the dome of a dagoba. It seemed fitting, somehow, to have this neighborhood nestled in the heart of a grove of such trees, such flowers.

Your novel is teeming with great characters, young, old, Sinhalese, Tamil. Do you have favorites among them?

My favorites are Sonna and Nihil. Sonna was, in fact, a very minor character in the first draft. He came and went very quickly, nothing very important happened to or because of him. Somehow, though, when I read aloud from this draft it became apparent that Sonna had a great deal of potential - within himself and as a character. He resisted being diminished in every revision; he just grew. Nihil was always the driving force behind this story, the inspiration for it, really. Together they embody what I am most drawn to contemplating: this drive we have to keep what we love safe, and the way in which we yearn for things we are rarely capacitated to deserve, earn, or keep.

At the heart of the novel is an unlikely friendship, between the young girl Devi and a neighbor, Raju, a misfit. What was the inspiration for their relationship?

Children. When I was first living in a very upscale suburb in NJ, I found that adults always assumed I was my light-skinned daughter’s nanny. They never even spoke to me, constantly looking past me to each other. Their children, on the other hand, never made this mistake. They were paying attention to the relationship, to the way I interacted with her. Children anywhere are usually able to see beneath the exterior, to the human being. In Devi’s case, she could see that Raju despite his mishapen body and social inarticulateness held only good intention in his heart.

The street, Sal Mal Lane, houses a really wide variety of people. Was your street like that in Sri Lanka? Is that typical of the country?

Yes, my street, also a dead-end though with guavas, not Sal Mal trees, was very much like this one. Most of the country except in the North where the Tigers (the LTTE), held sway, was - and is - thoroughly cross-pollinated. In those areas, through systematic slaughter of entire villages, the Tigers ensured that only Tamils, and only the poorest of Tamils (those unable to leave), continued to live in the North. Elsewhere we lived together, attended the same schools, so on. In some ways that was the true shame of what happened with the riots in July, 1983, this way in which all of that had to go on but the insides of people - their hearts, their minds - were transformed. We went on to live together and yet be suspicious of each other. To interact and play and attend each others religious festivities, births, deaths, marriages, and yet there came into being this reservation, something held back. That earlier time, before what happened, that is the true measure of peace and that is what the country is harkening toward again.

The children in the novel seem to have fairly free range. What advantages does that give you as a writer?

Well, it enabled me to follow them to places where they were not supposed to be! Devi, for instance, crossing the big roads that she is prohibited from crossing, the children rehearsing their band in a neighbor’s house, these were really interesting for me, as a writer, to accompany these children that way. As a child I did grow up in that way. We went wherever we wanted except at night. Somehow at night all the rules changed - I suppose it is the same here, too, with curfews and such. But in general there was a real fluidity to the conduct of our days, where we entertained ourselves as siblings and with friends, often doing precisely what we were not supposed to do. I climbed the roof with my brothers, stole fruits from our neighbors (because it was always better tasting when stolen than when freely given), and walked down the terrible big roads to buy hard red sweets with which to color my lips and pretend I was wearing lip gloss.

You write so well about childhood, and about friendships between adults and children. Was that easy material for you to write?

Daniel Vaughn, Author of "The Prophets of Smoked Meat"

I think it's official: Daniel Vaughn has the coolest job in the U.S.

As the recently-named barbecue editor at Texas Monthly magazine, he explores the Lone Star state, in search of the best brisket, ribs, and BBQ joints. What started as a hobby (Vaughn was an architect who blogged at Full Custom Gospel BBQ, before landing the Texas Monthly gig) has become a career.

Vaughn visited Seattle to sign copies of his book, The Prophets of Smoked Meat: A Journey Through Texas Barbecue, the first book in Anthony Bourdain's publishing imprint at Ecco (a division of Harpers). At a sold-out Seattle Brisket Experience event, we talked with Daniel about his book and his passion for smoked meat.

[Our thanks to Jack Timmons and Seattle Brisket Experience, the folks at 1927 Events, and MoonGirl, for the tunes] 

 

Glennon Melton on "The Sacred Order of Motherhood"

[Our thanks to Glennon Melton--author of Carry On, Warrior and founder of Momastery.com--for this essay celebrating the mundane work of motherhood. For some, the daily tasks of child rearing can feel lonely. Melton argues that, when it's an expression of love, such tasks can feel like a spiritual practice, that the monotony of motherhood can be sacred.]

A new monk in a monastery had just finished his breakfast. Finding the master alone, he approached him and said, “What is the meaning of life?”

The master replied, “Have you had your breakfast yet?”

“Yes,” the monk said.

“Then go wash your bowl.”

Part of my work is writing. I write to tell my truth and it’s a calling and a privilege.  I’ve been told that the most revolutionary thing one can do is introduce people to each other. This is how walls are broken down, prejudices are shattered, and peace is slowly built. That is why I feel honored and grateful to be a writer. By sharing my truth through my writing, others have felt inspired to share their stories with me, and that exchange has helped us to see that we belong to each other.

But the other part of my work is the work I do as a mother and that work sometimes makes me feel isolated and lonely. A mother’s work is the application of a thousand unnecessary Band-Aids and the sweeping and re-sweeping of the same kitchen floor. The folding and creating of little laundry piles. The refereeing, and car-pooling, and dinner burning, and constant cheering on the sidelines at soccer games. Being a mother is a little like Groundhog Day. It’s getting out of bed and doing the exact same things again, and again, and yet again—and it’s watching it all get undone again, and again, and yet again. It’s humbling, monotonous, mind-numbing, and solitary.

It’s a monk’s work. Mothers are like monks. We do manual labor. We serve others. We nurse the sick. We feed the hungry and comfort the sad. We sing. We teach. We pray and practice, practice, practice patience. The work of a mother is repetitive. We fold the clothes, we wash the bowls, and we sing the same song and read the same bedtime story night after night.

But that work is our prayer. We express our love through service, so that service becomes a spiritual discipline. As mothers, we devote our lives to love and ask for nothing in return but peace and joy for our children.

So, mothers, the next time someone asks, “What did you do today?” Please take the time to answer accurately. You did not “clean the bathroom.” This response would be like Annie Leibovitz saying, “Oh, I stood around and pushed some buttons.” No. Today you did the holy work of raising human beings. With each word spoken or unspoken, with each offering of forgiveness, you show your children what it means to be brave and kind. The mundane becomes holy, the ordinary extraordinary.

Whenever I feel all alone in the work of being a mom, I think of monks in a monastery—living in community, doing their holy work together—and I picture all my fellow mother monks in their own little monasteries around the world. I imagine us folding together, wiping bottoms together, drying tears together, scrubbing toilets together, sweeping together, spraying together, scrubbing together, and blowing kisses together. And I imagine us all together, after a long day of holy mother monk work, relaxing on the couch and watching some quality television—like “Wife Swap” or “Real Housewives.” Because really, we don’t actually live in monasteries and TV-watching might also be a spiritual practice.

So moms, the next time you feel lonely in the work of motherhood, remember, we are all in this together. Together, we are doing something beautiful: the sacred work of shaping humans and creating the future.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Love,

Glennon

Exclusive Amazon Interview with Amanda Knox

For four years, Amanda Knox felt silenced.

Italian prosecutors, who had accused her (and two accomplices) of murdering her roommate, called her the devil. The Italian press called her "angel faced killer." Knox’s only rebuttals came during those brief moments of addressing the court. Even after Knox was acquitted in 2011 and allowed to return home to Seattle—after nearly four years in prison—she stayed voluntarily silent. Now, in Waiting to Be Heard, she is finally telling her side of the story. In this exclusive interview with Amazon senior editor Neal Thompson, Knox explains that the book is more than her attempt to set the record straight. She also wants to share with others what it's like to be wrongly imprisoned. "Many people go through what I went through, and a lot of people don't come out of it," Knox said.

Knox said that writing the book (which reportedly earned a $4 million advance from her publisher) was both cathartic and painful. "There's only so much anger you can allow yourself to feel, or sadness,” she said. “And I was incredibly surprised at how hard it was at times to write."

During the difficult years in prison, Knox tried to stay connected to her “real life” by writing letters home and writing in her journals (many of which were confiscated). She read books that helped her temporarily escape, including Douglas Adams' Ultimate Hitchhikers's Guide to the Galaxy--"this big book full of hilarious wittiness"--and Marilyn Robinson's Housekeeping.

These days, she’s studying creative writing, and trying to slowly return to the life she left behind in 2007.

Exclusive Amazon Interview with Amanda Knox from Amazon Books on Vimeo.

How I Wrote It: Mitchell Zuckoff, on "Frozen In Time"

Coming two years after his bestselling Lost in Shangri-La, Mitchell Zuckoff's Frozen in Time again tells the dramatic story of a World War II plane crash. In fact, this time there are three of them.

In 1942, a U.S. cargo plane slams into an ice cap in Greenland, then a B-17 crashes during its search and rescue mission, then a Grumman Duck amphibious plane disappears after rescuing one of the B-17 survivors. "Talk about bad luck," Amazon senior editor Jon Foro points out in his review, describing the story as "part Alive, part Shackleton." 

Zuckoff told us that the similarities between Frozen In Time and Lost in Shangri-La (both Amazon Best of the Month picks) were consistent with his passion for stories about human endurance. "I'm drawn to people pulled to extremes, pulled beyond expected limit," he said.

Yet, he didn't want to straight-up replicate Shangri-La with another WWII rescue story. What appealed to him was the modern-day piece of Frozen In Time. In 2011, Zuckoff met with a photographer and explorer named Lou Sapienza, a "tireless dreamer" who had been searching for the Grumman Duck and the men who disappeared. Zuckoff loved the idea of telling alternating stories, present and past. "I was excited about the challenge of writing a modern day story and a historic story," he said.

The key was getting Sapienza to cooperate. When they first met, Zuckoff felt like he was being auditioned. In fact, at one point Sapienza asked, Why shouldn't I be working with Jon Krakauer? Zuckoff told him, "You should. But he's not here. I am." Sapienza seemed to like that, and the two men hit it off, which led to Zuckoff's participation in the risky 2012 expedition to find the Duck.

"The participatory part was fantastic," Zuckoff said. "It was one of the most exciting experiences I've ever had."

When it came time to sit and write, however, the journalist found it difficult to make himself part of the story. "That was the harder part: I've never written in the first person," Zuckoff said. "That writing is some of the hardest writing I've ever done."

The result, as Amazon reviewer Foro put it, is "a thrilling story of courage, perseverance, and loyalty that spans decades." We asked Zuckoff to describe a few details of his writing life.

Space

I write exclusively in a book-filled, 12-foot-square office in my house, at a three-level desk crammed into a corner. On the first level is my keyboard and, to my left, a stack of documents for a book I'm either working on or should be working on. On the second level is the computer monitor, flanked on either side by more stacks of papers and high-tech tools such as scissors and a box of index cards. On the top level, to the left, is a printer, and on the right is an old-fashioned lamp with a green glass shade. From it hangs a boar's tooth necklace I was given in New Guinea. Next to the lamp is a model of the World War II plane I wrote about in Lost in Shangri-La, given to me by a friend, and metal box with an orca tooth and a dollar bill signed by everyone on the Greenland expedition I wrote about in Frozen in Time. The walls are covered with award plaques won by my wife, a photographer with The Boston Globe, along with a few I've won, which reassure me on difficult writing days. The window is on the other side of the room, which is far enough away that I can't throw myself through it on those same tough writing days.

Soundtrack

At the risk of sounding like a pretentious git, I never listen to music when I write because I'm trying to hear the rhythm of the words. I once tried listening to jazz and found myself eyeing the window on the other side of the room.

Fuel

Pretentious git, Part II: When I've reached the point in my research where I"m ready to write at length--weeks on end, usually without missing a day--I make sure I'm downing a lot of protein. Years ago, I read a great piece by Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post about writing and playing high-level sports, and one of the takeaway messages was that my natural tendency to seek a sugar high when sitting at the keyboard was about as useful as eating a bag of M&Ms to run a marathon. Having said that, when I've finished writing for the day (usually very late at night) I reward myself with something sweet, occasionally followed by a glass of port.

Words

When I'm working intensely on a book, I read books that are almost always directly related to what I'm writing--histories, biographies, sometimes technical manuals. To escape my own writing, I read The New Yorker because it cleanses some of the bad writing I'm forced to read and replaces it with beautiful voices in 5,000- to 15,000-word sonatas.

Inspiration

I'm a huge believer in the exercise-nap combo platter. I'm serious. If I exercise early in the day and take a nap, I've got the energy I need to write deep into the night.

Temptation

I mostly try to avoid questions about my writing process. No, really, I try to avoid everything. I tend to write at night, when the house is quiet, everyone including my dog is asleep, and emails aren't popping into my inbox every minute.

~

> See all of Mitchell Zuckoff's books.

Damn – sorry I couldn’t stop by, Liz. My day got swallowed up. That’ll teach me to take off for a week.

How I Wrote It: Urban Waite, on "The Carrion Birds"

Urban Waite's third novel, The Carrion Birds, was an Amazon Best of the Month mystery/thriller pick for April.

Tell us about the origins of the new book.

I scared myself with my first book, The Terror of Living. I wrote a character named Grady Fisher. He was… well… he was a psychopath kind of guy. And the next thing I thought about was that he was a part of me. He had come out of me in some strange way. Every thought or action he took was a thought or action I’d put together first in my head and that scared the shit out of me.

So I thought maybe I’d do it again for my second novel. But in a nicer way. I’m laughing a bit to myself here because of how crazy this sounds. But what I want to get at is I thought I was successful with Grady Fisher. Everything he did and said was rational to a point. I almost rooted for him. I didn’t agree with the violence he inflicted on others but I could see why he had to. It was a strange thought and one that kept me up at night and kept me rolling as I was starting in on The Carrion Birds.

What ended up happening in The Carrion Birds was that I couldn’t hold a book together with a main character like that. I needed the main character to be more human. I needed him to have at his base the simple human drives we all have. Home. Family. Love. The character I wrote turned into a man named Ray Lamar. A killer in all sense of the word, but also a man who had lost a wife he loved and in turn left the only son he had. Unlike Grady Fisher, Ray is a character who understands wrong, he feels regret, he is in his own way a true human being just trying to make right with his family.

Who did you write this book for?

“For my mother, who showed me at a young age how to pick morels from the ashes.”

My first novel was for my wife, The Carrion Birds is for my mother, and the next novel will be for my father. I open with the line about the morels because it’s true in all ways I can read it. She did bring me out to the forest after the big fires came through in the Cascades the previous summer and showed me how to gather morels from the ash. The spring mushrooms having a sort of smoky flavor to them that tasted of both earth and wood. Sautéed with wild onion and olive oil they were probably the best food I’ve had in my life. But also there is meaning in the destruction of something in order to create something else and this is what I was going for. It was a good lesson for a parent to show a child and years and years later it is a lesson I think about often.

Soundtrack

I don’t listen to anything. After my first book I picked up some sound cancelling headphones so I could work on the road. I started using them in cafés and on planes and then I started using them at home when the rain started to come down and I could hear the cars on the street. Now I’m like one of Pavlov’s dogs. I put on the headphones and my head goes to work.  

Fuel

Last night I braised down two pig heads and two hocks in a rub of brown sugar, paprika, fish sauce, and cider vinegar. One hock was still attached to the hind thigh and I felt pretty happy about that. And I was happy about it, too, when I was pulling the meat five hours later and reducing the braising liquid. I tend to cook whatever leftovers are at hand and last night it happened to be the left over parts of a couple pigs from a wedding I’d been to over the weekend. I also don’t like breakfast much. I’ll put an egg on anything but potatoes and some bacon have never seemed that interesting to me. So this morning around eight I toasted off a hotdog bun in a little butter and then set some pulled pork up in the pan and ate it all with some homemade slaw. I’d much rather have lunch for breakfast than ever have breakfast.

After “breakfast” if the writing is good I generally don’t eat till dinner. I’ll go into the kitchen and stare at the pantry or open the fridge but usually it’s just for something to do. It’s like staring out the window (which I also do quite a bit of.) The general idea being to not leave the room for too long. Don’t let the seat cool. Keep writing.

Words

I’m reading Pete Dexter’s Train at the moment. Damn he’s good. It’s the first time on this one but I’ve read Deadwood and Paris Trout a number of times and love what he’s doing. I’m also switching it up at times from Dexter and reading through Tara Conklin’s debut novel The House Girl. Conklin can flat out write in a way that I’ll never be able to. Good sentence structure, quick and solid style. I tend to be a little more messy. Maybe it’s all that wandering around looking at the pantry, but regardless of my wayward ways with grammar I can sure appreciate a good book when I come to it.

Inspiration

To be honest there’s not much of a strategy to it. I take a shower and sometimes something comes to me. I go for runs in the afternoon, or ride my bike for a beer with some old writing buddies. I walk around a lot with my wife or with friends and usually while I’m talking or listening to the conversation another thing is going on in my head. My wife has gotten to the point of asking me if I can repeat back to her what she just said. Which is either a really good thing because it means my mind is on the work, or it’s a really bad thing because my mind is on the work and not on my wife.

Temptation

If I could just afford a house on a lake out in the woods somewhere (I want to believe) my life would be perfect. There would be a generator for power and no Internet and hopefully no cell service. Probably though I’d need to set my office up in a big closet with no windows, otherwise I might start looking out on the lake, then texting some friends to come by for a drink and a swim, then flipping the lights on and off just to test the generator and freak out the neighbors.

>See all of Urban Waite's books.

Exclusive: Meg Wolitzer Reviews "The Mothers" by Jennifer Gilmore

Novels run on various kinds of fuel. Jennifer Gilmore’s remarkable novel The Mothers runs on a combination of rage and desire, two dominant emotions felt by her narrator, Jesse, who along with her husband Ramon is on a long, drawn-out quest to have a child. Unable to conceive, Jesse becomes comfortable with the decision to adopt a baby domestically, through what is known as “open adoption,” in which all parties involved are aware of one another’s identities. The phrase “open adoption” sounds on the surface like an idyllic solution to the problems of closed files and unknown or nebulous family histories; and surely it can work well. But this novel presents no idyll. Jesse and Ramon’s adoption path is thorny and infuriating, marred by bureaucracy, pathology, vagueness and scam after scam.

The novel charts the rise and fall of various possible babies, various possible futures. It’s maddening and nerve-wracking to closely experience what this couple goes through, knowing that while they feel such desperate and chaotic emotions, they also need to remain outwardly calm and open and warm, and accept all comers who contact them.

The Mothers is harrowing and hypnotic, a page-turner that makes the reader long to know what ultimately happens to this couple at the end. But the book also has some very interesting things to say about the desire to be a mother, and the state of motherhood itself. What, after all, is a mother? A woman who gives birth? A woman who raises a child born to someone else? A woman whose child is grown? A woman who desires a child so much and feels consumed by maternal feelings? Reading The Mothers will work the reader up with rage and sympathy toward this couple as they make their way through an unpredictable world that offers no assurances of anything. Of course, as Jennifer Gilmore’s powerful novel lets us see, uncertainty is a big part of the quest toward motherhood by any means; and it’s also, of course, a big part of the state of motherhood itself.

--Meg Wolitzer’s new novel is The Interestings, which was named one of Amazon's Best Books of the Month for April.

Film Critic and Author Roger Ebert (1942-2013)

After a lengthy battle with cancer, Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic and author Roger Ebert has died at age 70.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, where he had been reviewing movies for 46 years, Ebert died in his hometown of Chicago after a decade-long battle with cancers of the thyroid and salivary gland, a struggle that included the loss of his lower jaw in 2006.

The first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize, Ebert continued to review films and write books during his illness, even after losing the ability to speak or eat. As the Chicago Sun-Times put it, Ebert "passionately celebrated and promoted excellence in film while deflating the awful, the derivative, or the merely mediocre with an observant eye, a sharp wit and a depth of knowledge that delighted his millions of readers and viewers."

In addition to reviewing movies and writing movie guides, Ebert appeared on television for more than thirty years, including twenty-three years as co-host (with Gene Siskel) of Siskel & Ebert at the Movies. He was also a prolific author, and in his most recent book, Life Itself: A Memoir, he detailed his rise to the top ranks of Hollywood journalism; his struggle with and recovery from alcoholism; his friendships with people such as Studs Terkel and Oprah Winfrey; and finally his surgeries and the loss of his voice.

Known for his wit, his candid opinions of films (and actors), and his love of good food and a good dinner party, Ebert was an irascible bon vivant. Other book titles include Your Movie Sucks and The Great Movies II.

But above all, he was devoted to his craft, and loved his job.

From Life Itself: "I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out."

Ebert's reviews were syndicated in more than 200 newspapers and the Online Film Critics Society named his website the best online movie review site.

Amazon Asks: Leigh Newman, on Guns, Grizzlies, and Alaska

Writing about her Alaskan childhood wasn't something Leigh Newman had intended. Not until the novel she'd been working on fell apart. "It was a flop novel," she said, and ultimately not fixable.

In something of a panic, she decided to try to craft a narrative about her adventurous, outdoorsy and difficult childhood, to recreate some of the stories she'd tell friends, the ones that would always elicit "you should write about that" responses. But it took that failed novel for her to finally feel ready to revisit those youthful days of soaring across Alaska in her dad's float plane, of remote camping, fly fishing, and hunting. And to write about her parents' divorce, which led to a back-and-forth, half-and-half life: private school in Baltimore with mom; summers and Christmas in Alaska with dad.

"Once I started writing, I couldn't stop," Newman said by phone. "So I knew I was on the right path." She also wrote a fantastic Modern Love column for the New York Times, about duck hunting with her father and husband, the response to which nearly crashed her Blackberry, "And I thought, 'Okay, now I have a book'."

The result, Still Points North--an Amazon biography & memoir Best Books of the Month pick for March--is a beautifully told tale of a gangly little girl who grows up with Jack London as a dad, confronting grizzles and gutting fish and, more than once, nearly drowning. "I grew up with the mistaken assumption that I'd grown up like everyone else," Newman said.

Still Points North is also a clear-eyed look at a broken family, at two people who should not have been together but who managed to provide their daughter with a lush, two-part life: wild and outdoorsy, bookish and refined. Newman ultimately makes peace with some of the previously unresolved details of her parents' split. And despite some rough times, she's grown to appreciate the many wonderful moments she experienced throughout her wildly unconventional childhood.

I asked Newman (who, as deputy editor for Oprah.com, knows a thing or two about books) a few questions about her book, what she's reading now, books that have influenced her life, and more.

What's the elevator pitch for your book?

A love letter to an Alaskan childhood. Also known as: how to surviving grizzlies, stalling planes, raging rapids and a courageous eccentric family that couldn’t quite keep it together.

Describe your book in one sentence? Or two?

Doing stuff on your own is very Alaskan. Doing life all on your own is exhausting… and not very fun.

What's on your nightstand/bedside table/Kindle?

Godforsaken Idaho by Shawn Vestal.

Favorite 3 books?

As I Lay Dying (Faulkner). Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight (Alexandra Fuller). Little House In The Big Woods (Laura Ingalls Wilder)

Important book you never read?

Don Quxiote.

Book that changed your life?

A Portrait of A Lady. A woman who choose the wrong life, despite all her freedom.

Book that made you want to become a writer?

Hamlet. I read it really young, on accident. I didn’t what the hell it was. But I liked the sound of it.

Favorite books as a child?

Red Tag Comes Back by Fred Phelger. It’s a story about a salmon. My dad read it to me just about every night.

What's your most memorable author moment?

Having everyone in the world think that the child on the cover of my book was not me at age six, but my six-year-old son.

What talent or superpower would you like to have?

The ability to read the instruction manuals with that come with Blu Ray players.

Best piece of fan mail you ever got?

A letter from a woman convinced we had gone to summer camp together in the Alaskan wilderness in 1969, before I was born. She described my camo pants, our work detail felling trees and building roads. I liked her so much I thought I was there.

Favorite line?

“Surviving isn’t living and once you’ve brushed up against the two conditions, you can’t pretend it’s not a choice either way.”

What's next for you?

A dog. Leonard, my old friend, died last year. And it’s time to get another big, stinky, shedding, not-very-potty-trained animal in my life.

~~~~~

Finally, I asked Newman about the book's title, which is clearly a commentary on the continued pull of the 49th state on her life. "Still points north" comes from an unpublished poem by Elizabeth Bishop about her longing for the home she left in Nova Scotia.

Dear, my compass
still points north
to wooden houses
and blue eyes,
fairy-tales where
flaxen-headed
younger sons
bring home the goose

Chinua Achebe, Author of Landmark "Things Fall Apart" (1930-2013)

Nigerian-born author Chinua Achebe--a novelist, poet, essayist, lecturer, and one of the fathers of modern African literature--died early today following a brief illness. He was 82.

Achebe, who wrote in English and had been living in the United States in recent years, is best known for his fictional portrayals of the Nigerian village life in which he was raised. A longtime political activist, he also wrote frequently about the befores and afters of British colonialism in Africa, and its effect on the culture and traditions of the continent.

Among his many awards, Achebe was awarded the Man Booker International Prize in 2007. He had been teaching in recent years at Brown University and Bard College.

His most recent book, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra, was pubished in late 2012. It is a memoir of Achebe's coming of age as Nigeria emerged as an independent nation, only to watch his homeland wrenched apart by a brutal civil war.

Achebe is best know for his landmark debut, Things Fall Apart, one of the most widely read and highly acclaimed works of African literature, which inspired a generation of West African writers.

Published to immediate acclaim (and some controversy) in 1958--just two years before Nigeria's independence from Britain--Things Fall Apart has sold millions of copies in more than 40 different languages. The story of Okonkwo, a flawed but sympathetic villager who becomes a succesful farmer and champion wrestler--whose "whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness"--Things Fall Apart unsentimentally depicts pre-colonial Nigerian tribal life.

With no access to a typewriter, Achebe wrote the manuscript in longhand, and sent his only copy to a London company that offered typing services. The company almost lost the manuscript, before it was rescued by a friend and eventually sent to a publisher, which printed 2,000 copies in 1958. 

>See all of Chinua Achebe's books.

How I Wrote It: Denise Kiernan on "The Girls of Atomic City"

[Our thanks to guest contributor Denise Kiernan, author of The Girls of Atomic City, the untold story of the women who worked in a secret outpost in Oak Ridge, Tennesee to contribute to the creation of the Atomic Bomb. Girls of Atomic City was a Best Book of the Month in both nonfiction and history.]

Floor to ceiling panels covered in dials and knobs, a cavern of steel and concrete. The women, fresh-faced and rosy (they always strike me as rosy despite being in black-and-white), sit perched on their stools, flanked by a gauntlet of 1940s technology.

It's not unusual for authors to find a new story while working on another project, and that's what happened to me about seven years ago. I was working on a book which required that I investigate advancements in nuclear medicine. While researching, I tumbled down the click-through rabbit hole that is internet research and landed on this photo from a U.S. Department of Energy newsletter. It got me hooked on the story of the young women of the Manhattan Project. The Girls of Atomic City tells the story of women like the ones pictured here who worked in a secret government city in Tennessee during World War II. Before I knew it, I was sucked into the world of this photo, a world I knew little about and one I came to inhabit myself.

Seventy years ago, the young women in this picture—many of them high school grads from rural Tennessee—stepped through the looking glass themselves and into a world very few people at the time knew anything about. They entered through gates, passing barbed wire manned by guards and guns and dogs. They wore badges and kept secrets and worked round-the-clock shifts. The work they did behind the fences of Oak Ridge, Tennessee—making fuel for the world's first atomic bomb used in combat—ushered in a new world for all of us, too.

I soon began to track down surviving women (and some men) who had lived and worked in Oak Ridge during World War II. Almost every woman I met invited me to coffee or told me about a community meeting I should attend, where I’d meet more "old timers," as many call themselves. Interviewing folks in their later years poses its own unique challenges. If you ever have to do this, I recommend visiting in person. Phone calls were often trying, to say the least.

• Me: Helen?
• Helen: What?
• Me: Helen! 
• Helen: This IS Helen.
• Me: It's Denise.
• Helen: This IS Helen
• Me: IT'S DENISE!!!
• Helen: Who is this?
• Me: DUH-NEEECE!
• Helen: Well, hi!

These women—now in their late 80s and 90s—were convinced that they had nothing to offer me because they hadn't known what was going on during the war. They just did as they were told, they'd say. Yet their belief that they had nothing to say is what made them so fascinating to interview. All I had to do was scratch the surface and the memories came tumbling out.

We are never the experts, authors, not when we are conducting an interview. The person you're talking to is the one with all the answers. While the tape recorder is on, they've got the goods. We went on an adventure, they and I, spelunking through the past, stumbling across gems of memories that had always been there, tripping over Johnny Mercer tunes, code words, rations, summer romances, and the very real fear of losing people you loved to a terrible war.

Valuing their own experiences was not something that came naturally to these women. The idea that they were an integral part of such a monumental moment in history seemed crazy to them–and still does, in most cases. Their generation is not one to brag, so I have to do it for them.

(Photo credit: Ed Westcott)

Best Books of the Month: Brave Memoirs and Our Spotlight on "Wave"

Memoir seems to be the theme of this month's Best Books of the Month list, which boasts an amazing collection of brave and deeply personal explorations. In fact, brave is the buzz word of the month, appearing in a few of our editors' reviews for March. These compelling first-person stories--all written by women, and mostly about overcoming hardship--include Sheryl Sandberg's bold and inspiring Lean In; Christa Parravani's "brave, raw, and ultimately uplifting" Her; and Emily Rapp's "magnificently written" The Still Point of the Turning World.

But the book that tops our list is the one that left many of us shaking our heads in awe, Sonali Deraniyagala's incredible Wave.

Some books unfold with obvious menace, suggesting, “This won’t end well.” Wave declares on page one--“the ocean looked a little closer”--this won’t even start well. But I’m urging you, dear reader, not to look away.

In an unblinking act of storytelling, Deraniyagala ruthlessly chronicles the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami that horrifically snatched from her all that mattered. Throughout this fierce and furious book, I kept wondering how someone who lost so much could write about it with such power, economy and grace. At first, she shrieks and grieves openly, angrily; for years she remains stunned and staggered, shamed by “the outlandish truth of me.” Then, slowly, she allows herself to remember, sharing vivid glimpses of her past.

We see, hear, and smell two rowdy little boys, their brotherly scuffling, their muddy shoes and grass stains. By confronting and recreating moments that make us laugh and weep, we accept their absence and root for the author not to give up. As Deraniyagala's unthinkable loss becomes “distilled,” she finds herself “no longer cradled by shock.” She survives. And she does so by allowing herself to ache and to remember. By keeping the pain close, by embracing the unthinkable, she keeps alive her precious memories.

Difficult to describe, tricky to recommend, this is a bold and wondrous book. In a wounded voice that manages to convey the snide, sarcastic, funny, and fatalistic personality that survives beneath the suffering, Deraniyagala slowly pieces together the elements that represent the life--the lives--she lost. And she magically brings them back. For us, for her, for them. So brave, so beautiful, in these pages Deraniyagala’s family is brilliantly alive. And so is she. 

 

Amazon Asks: George Saunders, on Writing That Doesn't Suck

Picked as one of our Best Books of the Month, George Saunders' brilliant short story collection Tenth of December has become a national bestseller and something of a phenomenon, an example of the lasting power of the short story form. During his visit to Seattle, Saunders spent time with us at the Brave Horse Tavern, where he discussed how the short story format is "beautifully suited to the way we live."

>Read New York Times Magazine's profile, "George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You’ll Read This Year"

>Among the writers Saunders mentioned as influencing his work: Tobias Wolff, Alice Munro, Stuart Dybek, William Trevor, Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, Isaac Babel, and Lorrie Moore.

>Writers he's reading: Adam Levin and Horatio Moya.

>See all of George Saunders' books.

George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You’ll Read This Year

How I Wrote It: Amity Gaige, on Libraries, Tea, and Kerouac on Benzedrine

Amity Gaige's new novel, Schroder, is the story of a flawed but loving father, a man of secrets and lies who kidnaps his daughter to escape a custoody battle--and his own mysterious past. Selected as one of our Best Books of the Month for February, Schroder "limns the limits of self-made American identity, while paying tribute to the irrational exuberance of parental love," said our reviewer, Mari Malcolm.

OPENING LINE

“What follows is a record of where Meadow and I have been since our disappearance.”

This line came to me early on in the writing process. It was one of my first inklings of what would happen and why. The book is, literally, “written” by a man in prison--Eric Kennedy (aka Schroder). He is writing to his ex-wife to explain how and why he ran off with their daughter during a parental visit. Immediately after this line, he explains how the whole book/letter was written at the suggestion of his lawyer, to possibly help mitigate the charges against him. But Eric can’t really stick to the task of representing himself in a positive or flattering way. He confesses things he shouldn’t, and betrays his own lack of awareness and his messy emotions. But I hope the effect on the reader is one in which we wincingly sympathize with his need to confess and to reach out. He cares very much about his daughter and his ex-wife, and his separation from them fills him with real loss. This line comes back into the book much later, by the way, in one of the final scenes where his first lawyer suggests that any mother separated from her child would “want to know everything” about the days they were apart. Schroder is also Eric’s attempt to give his ex-wife back those stolen days.

SPACE

Lately I’ve written out of the house, mostly in libraries, because I like the sort of carry-in carry-out aspect of it, that there’s nothing to identify me or distract me, and I leave no trace. But I have a beautiful desk at home, which I bought at a craft show after selling my first novel. It’s made out of a barn door. The things that are on my desk or near it are very significant. They are too many to name, but here’s a sampler: my late Latvian grandmother’s pincushion, an image the Hindu God Ganesh (the Creator and Remover of Obstacles), an image of an early 20^th century boxer, photos of my husband and children, including the first ultrasound of my baby daughter. I have many things taped to the wall, mostly notes from loved ones, alive and gone. I have several quotes from writers, and I’ll just share this one, from Mario Vargas Llosa: “That is what authenticity or sincerity is for the novelist: the acceptance of his own demons and the decision to serve them as well as possible.”

Amazon Asks: Amy Fusselman, on Fur, Cardamom, and Candy

Amy Fusselman writes the "Family Practice" column for the McSweeney's online 'zine, Internet Tendency. Her first two books--The Phamaracist's Mate and 8--have just been published (by McSweeneys) in one unique volume. After reading The Pharmacist's Mate, you flip the book around and upside down to read 8 on the other side. We chatted with Amy via email about what she's reading, and more.

Describe The Pharmacist’s Mate in one sentence?

Dad going, baby coming, boat floating, doctor, doctor!

That's a phrase, though.

Describe 8 in one sentence? In 10 words?

Here's a haiku:

Getting a motor

cycle license at 40

is hard. I digress.

What's on your nightstand/bedside table/Kindle?

Ascending Peculiarity by Edward Gorey and Karen Wilkin

The Cursing Mommy's Book of Days by Ian Frazier

Preferred reading format: print? digital?

I'm an equal opportunity reader.