Writer's Voices

In her debut novel *Queen Mab*, Canadian writer and editor Emily McBride tells the story of Madeline, a 23-year-old graduate student who has just become a new mother. She and her husband, Tom, are thrilled for their new arrival, but the excitement soon wears off when Madeline begins struggling with postpartum depression. Caring for her daughter feels unbearable as Maud cries incessantly and always seems to be hungry. As exhaustion and anxiety set in, Madeline begins to feel that something is not quite right and worries that her baby may have been stolen by a fairy and replaced with a changeling. For McBride, writing this novel was a deeply personal experience. At the time she was developing the manuscript, she also had a child of her own and shared many of the same challenges that her protagonist did. She reflected, "Although I didn't have anywhere near as extreme an experience as Madeline has in relation to the baby, there's no doubt that I had, in retrospect, postnatal depression... I think what I essentially had was failure to bond early on, and if you don't bond, the amount of work seems enormous for feelings that you are essentially not having... because I had been reading fairy tales, it occurred to me that changelings are some of the rare depictions of babies in literature, and they are a depiction which shows something wrong and some disconnect between what the baby appears to be and what the mother believes about it, and that was kind of the leaping off point for me of this whole story."

When discussing the underlying theme of adoption, McBride elaborated on why she felt the need to incorporate it in her story. "I wanted to explore Madeline's feeling about family. I wanted to explore, also, the experiences of women through the ages because I felt... that the changeling story was sort of an old way of talking about ambivalence... The adoption storyline allowed me to talk about family in the way that also allowed me to talk about all women because Madeline discovers things about her family, but they're not really her family and so it's larger than her, so because it was so focused on one person I wanted to expand the focus and make it a larger story that tells the story of many, many women."

English screenwriter and novelist Robert Thorogood chats with Writer's Voices to discuss the fifth book in his *Marlow Murder Club* series, *The Mysterious Affair of Judith Potts*. Set in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, England, the story follows Judith, Suzie, and Becks, the Marlow Murder Club trio, as they work to solve the mysterious deaths of two celebrities - a famous footballer and a bestselling writer. This time around, they don't have the assistance of their police connection DI Tanika Malik, so they must try to crack the case on their own. At the same time, Judith is trying to uncover another mystery, a case involving her own past. With regard to the TV adaptation of this book series, Thorogood, who also serves as an executive producer for the show, explains that there are limitations to what can be portrayed on the screen compared with what can be written in a novel. "You have a lot of control over a book... with a television episode, you are limited in the sense that it's sort of 45 minutes long, isn't it, if it's an hour. You're limited by the number of actors that you can hire. Because it's only 45 minutes, you generally don't have a second murder because they always take up time so there is constraints."

As for why he chose to center the *Marlow Murder Club* series around female protagonists, Thorogood noted that his own upbringing was shaped by the important women in his life, including his mother, aunts, and grandmothers, who had a significant influence on him. "I thought, none of them really were center stage in their own story... it still felt, politically, a choice to go, 'Why don't I take a group of women who are not normally allowed to be the leads in a murder mystery story, and I'm going to have them solve crime?' So that was the rule when I was setting up the book. I thought, I'll only have women involved in solving this, and the only suspects... are going to be male, and I was very keen that the women would get no help from any man to solve the murders. Those were the rules, that's what I knew."

Claire Carusillo, a writer from Illinois whose work has appeared in *Gawker, New York Magazine* and *Elle* visits Writer's Voices to discuss her debut novel, *The Responsible Party.* Set in the Chicago area, the story centers around Claire, an unemployed former skincare influencer who is approached by the police about a 1970s murder that her mother, Kath, may have a connection to. As she seeks answers from Kath, information begins to unravel regarding the family legend about her great-great-grandmother Fanny Mounsey and her daughter Sarah who both survived separate shipwrecks. Concerning her protagonist, Carusillo created a fictionalized version of herself partly because the legend of the Unsinkable Mounsey Women is based on her own family history. According to Carusillo, "The narrator was unnamed for a very long time... so I decided that because this character Claire shared a pretty similar backstory to me in terms of myth-making and in terms of what she did for a living, that we would just try it and have her be Claire and that did unlock a lot for me... I think that there is something funny in this book that is about myth-making and about discovering untruth, and discovering the way that people posture in order to secure a legacy that I, sort of, gave this more epic story to a character named Claire Carusillo that is not necessarily a story that I've lived."

When it comes to her unusual writing style, Carusillo credits author Virginia Woolf for inspiring her storytelling. Although Woolf passed away long ago, Carusillo still draws from her modernist influence. She noted, "There are a lot of illusions in this book to Virginia Woolf. I'm not at all comparing myself or my writing style to her... I guess her modernist style was so groundbreaking to me when I was in college, even though I was in college in 2009 to 2013... the way that Virginia Woolf just absolutely broke down what it was to be a novel and, in some ways, I try to emulate her stream of consciousness style...*To The Lighthouse* is a big inspiration for this book and not just because we have a character going to the lighthouse, but because of her total breakdown of what a novel is supposed to be, so I would say she's majorly someone who's been an incredible influence on me. She did it like no other and there will never be another Virginia Woolf for sure."

In *The Instigators: How Black Women Have Been Essential to American Democracy (And What We Can Learn from Them),* political strategist, leader, and author Atima Omara presents her first book about the significant role Black women have played in creating change and shaping American democracy. Part political analysis, part history, and part memoir, her book uses the term "instigators" to describe Black women, ages 18 to 45, who have historically faced racism and sexism. These experiences helped them challenge injustice and develop strong leadership and organizational skills that were, and continue to be, instrumental in building a more inclusive and representative democracy. With her political background as a former Democratic Party leader, she felt compelled to write a book in response to those in the same realm who haven't had to face the same difficulties she has endured as a Black woman. "There really isn't anything, kind of, in explicitly the political space from someone who's worked in politics and advocacy and all of these different spaces that is in public office like myself who can really pull all of these threads together and comes from the background that I do... I wanted to put something out there that really was counter to some of the narratives from people who haven't really had to consider surviving or live in a country where people just weren't responsive to them, where government wasn't responsive to them... and so I wanted to write a book for those people and present a perspective that I think is missing in the narrative."

Regarding the women she features in her book, she explains that it was not an easy decision choosing whom to include. "There were so many amazing women... I really was trying to think of people whose story really made the point that I was trying to make with each chapter and the overall thesis, and even now I'm doing just more research, putting together some short videos that I put on YouTube for information... a lot of it is women, but too, it's black women, so the stories and understanding their lives and who they are and their motivations and the work that they did even if it was tremendous and amazing are not acknowledged in the same way as if they were men, or certainly white men."

In *Running with Lions*, thoracic surgeon and author Dr. Pius Kamau shares a powerful memoir detailing his early childhood growing up in colonial Kenya and continuing through his late 20s, when he became a physician. As a child, life was difficult for Africans in Kenya because the country was under British colonial rule. While their treatment by the government wasn't as extreme as the Nazis' persecution of Jews, they did face similar struggles, especially during the Mau Mau conflict. Additionally, it was challenging for Africans to attain an education during this time because the colonialists didn't think they needed any schooling. According to Dr. Kamau, "We didn't really count. We didn't need to be educated. That's how the European, colonialists, regarded us. They don't need to know anything." Although he was able to attend a school in Mombasa where his father lived, the education there was still quite minimal. Despite these significant hardships, Dr. Kamau grew to love reading and writing, which led him to pursue his career in medicine. He also credits his father for teaching him the importance of education. "My father taught me... education is the motivator of all that we do in life. You are not going to get anywhere if you don't have an education. My father made sure that was hammered into my brain."

Throughout his journey to success, Dr. Kamau learned many things, but he found one lesson to be the most valuable - the importance of humanity. He remarked, "The most important thing in life is to be a good human being, to be a good, charitable human being, and to do what is right. It's imperative that we do what is right and to be truthful and be honest and to be kind. Do unto others what they will do to you. That's a Christian lesson that I think we should never, ever, ever forget, whatever religion we are, whether we are Buddhists, whether we are Hindus... Also, be nice and be kind to strangers. Be a good samaritan." Luckily for Dr. Kamau, he came across several people early in his life who showed him this same kindness. "I have survived because of so many people who lent me a hand and if there's one thing I'm saying in this book is that the good surpass the bad. Kindness surpass the unkindness. Charity has been what has helped me across the ocean of struggle and pain, so I'm very grateful for the life I have lived despite all the pains."

In *Money Is Weird: A Workbook To Help You Build Awareness, Get Curious, & Feel Better About Money*, financial life strategist Lev Mandel presents a practical personal finance workbook that addresses the emotional and behavioral factors that influence our financial decisions. Rather than focusing on conventional areas of personal finance, such as budgeting, savings, and investing, Mandel's book encourages readers to dig deeper into their relationship with money and examine why they respond to it in certain ways. He emphasizes that for those working through the book, it's okay to skip questions and come back to them when the answers come to mind. Ultimately, the goal of the workbook is to provide readers with the tools they need to make positive changes as they move forward on their financial journey. In terms of why he chose to explore this side of personal finance, he explained, "...one of the things I was doing a lot being a financial advisor, was kind of looking and talking through financial anxiety... I think what was missing was these underlying feelings under the numbers, and I think, as the client work really became more and more focused on understanding how it impacts our financial behavior and just life, I really started to go deeper into how we deal with these feelings and looking at how we might be able to respond better to them so that we can make really important financial decisions. I think it's important to know that when we're feeling fogged up, when we're feeling threatened... it's really hard to make decisions about the future... and so I think starting and working at that ground work of under covering this anxiety or these feelings around money really was something that one, I think I kept seeing more and more, and two, I really enjoyed exploring."

In his book, Mandel coins a new word: "wealthness." For him, wealth is about more than just money — it's a combination of two things that aren't typically associated with money at all. "What I thought was really interesting is that the word wealth... really, at the core of it is... it is well-being and health... and it's been associated with money and now we think of it as wealth management, as money management... but I think really that the core idea is how do you use money so that it gives you the best chance of being well, both physically and mentally, and being healthy and getting to live the life you want to live... We've changed its meaning before and we can change it again, and so I think a lot of what's going on, particularly in the financial advisor world, and I think is really interesting is what does the world wealth mean? What is wealth, right? It's a really interesting question, and I like 'wealthness.' I like focusing on being well and being healthy and certainly being intentional and aware."

Best-selling author of historical fiction Pam Webber joins Writer's Voices to discuss her latest novel, *Massawa: A Tale of Illusion, Espionage, and Love*. Set in Massawa, Eritrea, on Africa's Red Sea coast during World War II, the story centers around Kit Thomas, a novice OSS (Office of Strategic Services) agent, who teams up with British MI6 agent, Mark Williams, to investigate the disappearance of millions of dollars of military payroll funds. What they discover is a secret plan by Nazi sympathizers to destroy the only Allied naval base located along the Red Sea. Regarding how women like Kit were able to serve as OSS agents during the war, Webber notes that the OSS specifically recruited women during WII to work in intelligence roles. "Women have always been spies for their homelands for centuries, but it's never been in an organized fashion... Well, in 1942 is when the OSS got started and... the first director of the OSS was a guy named Bill Donovan...a.k.a Wild Bill, and he got that reputation for two reasons. Number one, he was fearless... but he was a notorious womanizer and he knew that women were a natural emetic for men's secrets. So he actively recruited women... and the MI6 from Britain was helping the U.S. get the OSS started... they had OSS camps hidden in the national parks and they were sending these people to these camps for training, including women. Donovan sent women everywhere... He had, obviously, a large contingency in Europe, but he had them in North Africa, he had them in the Middle East, he had them in the Far East... He wanted eyes and ears everywhere, so that was my impetus for Kit."

In terms of her writing process, Webber explains that she always has the ending in mind before she begins drafting, using it to guide her story and character arcs. She also writes short descriptions of each chapter to determine how many chapters her book will have. As she gathers more information, she's able to expand those descriptions into two or three pages of detailed chapter outlines. She remarked, "I believe Dave Robbins when he tells me if the infrastructure of your novel is solid, the story's going to be solid, so I try to make sure that that infrastructure is set and ready to go." As far as future books in the series, Webber says she has plans to write several more novels following *Massawa*. "I am working on the sequel to this... sometimes the more you uncover the more there is to talk about, and that happened with this... until my brother told me about the Miracle of Massawa, I'd never even heard of it and had to look up Eritrea... So, I think there's lots of potential here. I have, kind of, mapped out three in this series, possibly more depending on what I uncover as I do the research for the next book."

In *The Reel Life of Zara Kegg*, novelist Brad Barkley tells the story of 16-year-old Zara Kegg who is still grieving the loss of her mother three years after her death. Her dad decides to move them back to his hometown of Carolina Beach, North Carolina, where she gets a job as a projectionist at an old, rundown moviehouse called Palace Theatre. For Zara, the projection booth becomes a refuge where she can hide out and view the world quietly through 1950s and '60s sci-fi and horror films. She soon meets an oddly dressed boy named Zachary whom she nicknames Mr. Inconsistent, and the more time they spend together, the closer they become. Barkley continues, "...but things with Zachary don't quite add up. His behavior is a little erratic, his stories don't quite make sense, and she has to figure out what's going on with him as she's also figuring out whether this is someone to trust, sort of, her reentry point into real life again." With regard to his protagonist, Barkley admits he doesn't know how he came up with her distinctive name. "Character names always either just pop into your head or you struggle and you have to find a name, and you try out twenty of them and none of them sound right. So this is one of those that just popped into my head and I knew right away it was right."

When it comes to his writing process, Barkley explains that he doesn't plan out his stories or begin with an outline. As a pantser, he enjoys writing the story as it comes to mind. "...writing is a process of discovery. You find out what the book is about, you find out who's important to Zara... and I think the best writing comes from your subconscious mind, so I feel like I don't need to plan what's going to happen any more than I plan what I'm going to dream at night. My dreams are always way more interesting than anything I can make up, so I just trust that part of my brain to tell the story and my job is get out of the way. I always like to say, I'm the designated typist. That's my job."

In *What They Stole: A Familicide Rooted in Intercountry Adoption,* creative and freelance writer Paige Towers tells the story of the Sueppel family and explores how their tragedy connects to the larger history of intercountry adoption in South Korea. Back in 2007, Steven Sueppel was the vice president of Hills Bank and Trust in Iowa City. In the fall of that year, it was revealed that he had allegedly embezzled more than half a million dollars from the bank, and was facing the possibility of a long prison sentence for his crimes. At the time, Steven was living with his wife, Sheryl, and their four adopted children from South Korea. Overwhelmed by the intense financial pressure, Steven murdered Sheryl and their children before taking his own life. Following the tragedy, Holt International, one of the largest international adoption agencies in the world, was mentioned as the agency through which the Sueppels adopted their children. With regard to why she chose such a heavy subject to write about, Towers recalled that the idea came to her after graduating from college, when she moved to South Korea to teach English. "...I found it odd that such a modern, economically booming country was still sending children overseas for adoption... because really, it was the first country where intercountry, overseas adoption, really exploded. Not only was it the largest sending country in the world, but it later became the model for which the Holt Agency and others applied this model to other countries, and so I found it to be an interesting case study and I wrote the book."

Rather than writing separate books on each topic, Towers explains why she chose to weave together the story of the Sueppels with the history of South Korea's adoption practices. "I felt really personally connected to the case... and I wanted to link those stories back to... the larger history of Korean adoption… it's such a complex, overwhelming socio-geopolitical thing that I felt that it was less intimidating for me as a writer to find this personal connection and to hold on to it and allow readers to hopefully feel a connection with this eastern Iowa family... it was important to me to tell these children's stories and not to condemn adoption or condemn adoptive families, but to try to unravel the complex mainstream narrative behind the act."

In *Death of the Soccer God*, novelist and former advisor to the United Nations Dimitry Elias Léger presents his second novel that centers around a talented Haitian soccer player named Gilbert "Gil" Chevalier who leaves his country to study at Columbia University in New York City. While playing soccer in Central Park, Gil catches the eye of a U.S. National Team's coach, who recruits him to play for the United States at the 1950 World Cup in Brazil. From there, his fame in the sport skyrockets, and as a result, his life changes dramatically. Regarding the novel's setting, Léger explains that he chose this particular time period because of a remarkable true event. "In 1950, the U.S. men's soccer team beat England in the opening game of the World Cup in Brazil and... the guy who scored the goal for America to beat England was a Haitian immigrant... He was a kid like me who grew up in Haiti and... came to New York to study and the next thing you know, he's playing in the World Cup and on top of the world, and then has to go back home and deal with the complications of being... a world famous celebrity... and when I read about him I thought... How do you square your roots when you become a global star?"

As readers may have noticed, Léger has a unique style of writing that switches from first person to third person perspectives throughout the novel, sometimes within the same page. He notes that he uses this technique to reflect the natural changes of human thought. "I'm trying to mimic our inner monologues. I like to think on any given moment we're thinking about our relationship with heaven and hell. We're thinking about our sins and our good qualities, and we're thinking about doing the laundry. We're thinking about grocery shopping and then we're scared about our kids, we're scared about our grandkids, we're worried about our parents... the fear, the love, that kind of drive us on a daily." In addition to the shifts in perspectives, Léger also incorporates different languages throughout his book. He explains that he does this to fully immerse readers in the story. "Reading my books, I think, are an opportunity to discover new languages and to discover new cultures. It's a way to travel basically around the world from the safety of your Kindle and on your book."