Writer's Voices

So, why is the art world used so frequently as the backdrop for thrillers and espionage? According to Moore, “I think it has a couple of different elements to other valuable things that one might steal, or trade, or forge.. and that is that we tend to keep a lot secret and quiet, like collectors like to be anonymous. They don’t necessarily want the world to know. You probably experienced the idea that some artwork has sold at auction for an incredible millions and millions of dollars and no one knows who bought it, and that’s fairly typical, and that, of course, is very inviting to thieves and other criminals because they can take things. There’re also all kinds of unusual contrivances that make it possible to hide what you’ve owned…” Additionally, art can be forged, quite easily for contemporary works, which can also lead to criminality. While there is more technology nowadays that can rule out a forgery, Moore said, “It’s tough, but people are good at it, and they have fooled a lot of experts.”

You can have something very small and unassuming that no customs agent or no even police person who isn’t specially trained will recognize to be as valuable as you think.”

“It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.”

Eventually, Seeman did see many of the animals he wrote on his list, and he continues to do so today. “…interestingly, my family, my kids, actually enjoy this… so we were in Panama and there was this very rare bird, the quetzal bird.. and so we were searching with the guide and finally found it, and I just remember everybody being thrilled even when they were pretty little then, looking through binoculars, ‘Daddy, I see it! I see it!’ …we always try to get to the point where we can see them in their own wild habitat.”

As a final thought, “If I was to sum it up, consider this act of kindness everyday or at least look back and recognize all the acts of kindness that were probably done for you, to a reader… and the last thing would be this sense of wonder that we all lose as we age, and to try to see, because we have so many things weighing on us and a lot of people think their life is very negative or it’s a dead end life or something, and I think you got to let some of that go and see some of the wonder. See the good things that you do have.”

I think writing this book made me a kinder person because I recognized as I started writing it all these things that were done for me that I kind of knew were there, but when you actually put them on the page they start to really add up in front of your eyes.”

Every act of kindness, no matter how small makes a difference.”

When Akhbari first began writing, she had a different vision of how her story would turn out. “I, at the beginning, did not expect that this would be a romance… but, I thought of it as more of a heartbreak story and I think over time, that shifted and it’s not a traditional romance in the sense that I think a lot of romance novels follow a certain trajectory, and this is a little different. There is quite a bit more coming-of-age and family relationships that are a part of the story… but it is much closer to a romance than I thought it would be at the beginning, and I think what changed was a conversation with myself, and my editor, and agent about what would be hopeful and optimistic for young people right now, and what might really convey the message I wanted to get across, which is that vulnerability can feel like a risky thing, but it’s also a thing that brings you closer to your connections with other people. So, I’m happy with where we ended up.”

…if people find that they’re running up against obstacles or rejections, that is absolutely part of the [publishing] process and maybe your rejections are happening at the agenting stage, or maybe at the publishing stage, or maybe both…I think the strongest skill you can have to survive in publishing is that persistence.”

In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.”

So, how did Fixsen and Sirois come together to write under their alter ego, Audrey Blake? According to Sirois, it was a marketing decision by Sourcebooks to make it easier for readers to remember their name. “Neither of us have easy names to pronounce or spell or remember, so… my oldest daughter, her name is Audrey, and Jaima’s oldest son is named Blake, and so we combined our children and came up with our pen name.” Initially, the two were placed together when they were both finalists of a writing contest, and while The Woman With No Name is their third published book, there are still compromises they both need to make in order to create a successful book. Sirois explained, “So, we have a joint document, and what happens is we’ll discuss what needs to be written next in the story and just divvy it up according to interest… and we both just dive in and write, and then if I write a scene, she’ll come in the next day and look it over and she’ll just go through and make all of the changes that she would make, and then I’ll go through it again and just polish it up.” As far as disagreements, they first discuss the ideas that support each of their sides. “If we still disagree after that… then it comes down to who cares the most, so if I don’t like that idea, but it’s not life changing to me and Jaima feels very strongly about it, we’ll do it Jaima’s way, and vice versa.”

Our hands are in each other’s work. If you imagine, like, cooks in a kitchen. It’s one pot and we’re both throwing the ingredients in and stirring and testing it, and we just work in unison on everything that we do.”

Never give in, never give in. Never, never, never…”

During the time she spent with her father, Ellis always felt as if there was something bigger than him that could explain why he acted the way he did. She wanted to understand him in order to grasp why her childhood was so different than other kids she knew. “You get three pages into his story and all of a sudden, you’re flooded with empathy… that was something that I really wanted to convey is that if we understand another person’s experience, we might change our position and we might have empathy because my father did reach a point in his story when I was flooded with empathy. It was a point that was so unimaginable to me and at that moment, that was a real transition in my life because I finally saw my father as someone separate from myself, and as a man totally apart from me with his own life experience… when I finally saw him for who he was, all those expectations and desires fell away… and I could feel him for the man that he was, how wounded he had been, and that changed my life and it allowed me to see other people that way. That’s the moment when I finally, really, felt my humanity.”

It’s a metaphor for all the little traumas that happen in life.”

Post-Traumatic Stress Injury isn’t a disease. It’s a wound to the soul that never heals.”

As Malcolm expressed in her book, the American Revolution was much more crippling to our country than the Civil War. Many of the Loyalists who fled the country and thought they could come back after the war found that they were banished and were punished, even executed, if they tried to return. She said, “This one, in some ways, it’s harder because the American Civil War was mostly divided along geographical lines, but here, you have within families. You know, members of the Continental Congress who had families who were exiled and were still wanting to execute Loyalists at home. It was much more mixed and very hard to be neutral because you had to take an oath to support the opposition to Britain… it was difficult whatever you did, whether you left, whether you stayed, or whether you tried not to take any side whatsoever, but it really was a civil war and I think they saw it that way.”

One of the things that surprised me was the sheer number of families that had split some positions ideologically.”

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

Within the book, readers will find interwoven storylines among the four characters that connects their lives together. Although this structure can be quite complex, Rosner prefers to let the stories develop naturally through her writing rather than planning too far ahead. She said, “When I try to plan in advance, I find the writing becomes contrived because you’re writing with this very particular endpoint in mind… for me, the organic nature of it and the movement of whatever my unconscious mind is doing in all this feels really important, and it usually feels much more organic to just let it happen… you, sort of, have to have this faith that your mind, there’s a web aspect that it’s all going to connect eventually and that there’s a reason you’re writing this scene and that scene and this scene… getting out the scenes and then figuring out what story you’re telling is one way to go.”

I think I just write moments for a long time, just like moments, of these lives… Sometimes they get all moved around, sometimes they get deleted, sometimes you realize you have to add several moments in order for this to connect to that.”

God is all of ours, if God is any of ours.”

Although each of the lives of the people that Benedict interviewed are tragic, she was motivated to continue her work because of the connections she made and her admiration for the grit and resolve she witnessed in many of them. She remarked, “Well, I am overwhelmed sometimes. But the thing is, even as we talk, we’re also joking, we’re also laughing, we’re eating, we’re taking walks, we’re just being human beings in everyday life, and I’m always feeling so moved by the way people can survive these things and still be generous to each other, still make real friendships. Part of the theme of this novel is the deep friendships between these women… between mothers and children… also grandmothers and grandchildren, all of that is also in there. So, I suppose the comfort is… just the nobility of some human spirits and the determination to carry on no matter what.”

I think anyone who has compassion for people who are less fortunate… always feels that they can’t do enough. Even if you’re doing a whole lot, you still feel like you can’t do enough. You have to learn to live with that feeling, to accept that there’s only so much an individual can do… We just do our best. I think the one thing we shouldn’t do is nothing.”

No one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.”

In addition to the benefits of being active outdoors, Paul encourages all of us to experience those activities through a fresh pair of eyes. Having a feeling of awe and wonderment can provide us with a sense of awareness and joy that inspires us to continue taking those adventures. “…awe it turns out is really good for us, and nature is a sure-fire trigger for awe, you know, the vastness of the sky or the Grand Canyon… they have done studies that show, just go outside with fresh, child-like eyes. They call it an awe-walk. You cultivate awe, you access awe in yourself by looking at things with wonder, and you will get the benefits of awe which is basically, they call it a reset button for the brain, where you become more open, more curious. Biologically, your inflammatory markers go down. You become calmer, less anxious, less depressed, there’s all these metrics and they did this by studying people who went on awe-walks, and so that’s another great reason to go outside.”

The way we look at our own aging predicts how well we age. If you think your older age is going to be full of exploration and exhilaration, you will be happier, and you will be healthier, and you will live 7 years longer.”

At every phase of your life, look at your options. Please don’t pick the boring ones.”

Regarding the structure of the book, Lax explains, “It opens with a scene in which, there’s a preamble where I tell a little bit of how this book happened, and I beg the reader to try to hear each voice in its own accent, and picture each person in their own shape and color because this is the great quilt of America. Then, the book opens with me as a Hasidic woman sitting in the backyard with my kids and with our housekeeper who was from El Salvador, and I knew nothing about El Salvador… she says, ‘In my country, there are no birds…’ because of the guns and because people eat them for food… that’s how the book opens, and then it turns directly to the story of the El Salvadoran woman, and along the way, I do provide and expose the American involvement, the history, the context… and it goes from story to story like that… I do not group people by where they come from… I grouped them by what caused them to come… in every case, they tell their own stories, which I think is infinitely more impactful…” While Lax did interact with and talk to many people for her book, she wasn’t able to include everyone’s stories. Rather than excluding them, she featured them in the section titled “Intermezzo.” She said, “In the ‘Intermezzo’ section, it’s anywhere between 2 to 4 pages of quotes, just single quotes, sometimes a whole paragraph… and each one is someone from another part of the world, and sometimes they’re funny, and sometimes they’re quaint, and sometimes they’re shocking, and sometimes they’re just very, very moving… I wanted to give you a sense of what it’s like walking down the street in Houston if you could actually hear their stories.”

I was shocked to discover that about the first 20 people I met were here because of war. The whole first section is called, ‘We Came in the Aftermath of War.’ Each person is from a different part of the world.”