In *Kiss, Marry, Kill*, previous Writer's Voices guest and author Lori Gold presents her newest novel about three best friends who co-founded a successful health and wellness app and are preparing to take their company public. During their company's summer outing, the women decide to play the popular game, "Kiss, Marry, Kill." What begins as a lighthearted, fun activity turns into reality when they wake up in an alternate universe that mirrors their own, where they must live with the consequences of their choices. Regarding the novel's speculative element, Gold explained why it was important to her story. "So it's very much in our contemporary world, it's not set on another planet, it's not that wild in terms of the speculative element. It still very much feels contemporary to me, yet there's this twist that they're in an alternate universe and what I love about adding that to a novel is it just adds such an extreme environment. So when you put these women who are already at odds over their thoughts of what's going to happen with their company, let's add just one more huge stressor that they're in an alternate reality and how do they get home and yes, there's also a dead body. So I think it allows for really pushing the elements of storytelling."

Centered around the theme of how people make choices, Gold created characters who all approach decision-making differently. Of the three best friends - Aubrey, Ilena, and Mallory - Gold found that she related most to Aubrey, who has made many mistakes in her past and, because of this, is terrified of making new choices. "I'm not a natural risk taker, and so I was getting into this point where I was like, I just don't know if I can make these decisions anymore... and so I felt like I was stuck in this cycle very much like Aubrey and that's a lot of what I brought to the book... but, it's also an exploration of myself going through how I felt about that... and this was written during the pandemic... and I think so many people went through so many life changes because of it... it was just a natural time of... just exploring what kind of person you want to be and how do you want to live life now in this altered universe that is still our real world, but changed very much because of the pandemic."

Lindy West, author and former contributing opinion writer for the *New York Times*, joins Writer's Voices to discuss her latest memoir, *Adult Braces: Driving Myself Sane*. As her second memoir, *Adult Braces *follows her first memoir, *Shrill*, which was later adapted into a television series on Hulu. Throughout this book, West takes readers on a road trip while reflecting on her struggles with depression after the success of *Shrill*, and also navigating the ups and downs of a nontraditional marriage. She also explores what it means to be a heavier woman in a society that is often critical of those with larger body types. When it comes to memoir writing, she explains why she prefers it over fiction. "...it felt like a lower barrier to entry. Fiction feels, to this day, intimidating to me... you have to generate the whole world and the whole story yourself... I have a hard time developing deep, vulnerable connections with new people and I discovered that when I started writing memoir, I could present a version of myself to people that felt, maybe, more complete and accurate than the version of myself that I was imperfectly conveying in person..."

Regarding why she included so much personal information in this memoir, West remarked, "It feels good to me. The thing that feels bad to me is presenting a false self and then having to live up to some version of myself that isn't real. There's something about pushing myself to be more and more vulnerable than I have been before and just experimenting with how far can I push this without feeling like I'm selling myself out or being gratuitous..." While such honesty can bring on immense criticism, West believes it strengthens her relationship with longtime readers. "...that's always been a very intimate relationship where people see themselves in my work and get a lot of peace and healing and validation and strength from that, and that is such a gift for me... I mean, what an honor! I guess it feels like if I can do that for them, I'm also doing it for myself... it feels like we're taking care of each other."

In *Beyond Blue and White: The Hidden History of Delftware and the Women Behind the Iconic Ceramic*, decorative art adviser and writer Genevieve Wheeler Brown examines the cultural history of the private collection of 17th and 18th century Delftware that she was introduced to in the summer of 2019. What she thought would just be a few vases and plates turned out to be an incredible treasure trove of seventy-five rare and beautiful Delftware pieces. As she was admiring the collection, at the base of one of the jugs she noticed the initials GVS printed on it and "those three little letters stopped me in my tracks and it sort of cracked open the centuries of forgotten history. So, I was sent out on my own journey which was to really find out who was she and who were these other women that were hidden in Delftware story." In the book, readers will follow the history of this decorative art over the periods and how its roles and meanings have changed throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Brown remarked on what has impressed her most about this art form: "...what's always fascinated me about the decorative arts is that one object can mean so many things over a period and this one collection gave me the ability to tell those stories."

For those unfamiliar with Delftware, Brown explains that it is more than just the typical pieces that come to mind, such as tulip vases, plates with artwork on them, or small square Dutch tiles. "In the ceramic world there are three main types: there's porcelain, stoneware, and earthenware, and earthenware is probably the oldest family in ceramics... so Delftware is tin-glazed earthenware, which is to say it was made by a technique that began in the Middle East in the 9th century as a way to imitate Chinese porcelain... if you dip earthenware in white tin glaze, suddenly it became water tight and it looked very refined and onto that bright surface, the painters could add decoration most often in cobalt, which when fired turned from gray to that brilliant blue that we all recognize, so I sort of think of Delftware as, it's everyday clay that's been transformed into something truly extraordinary..."

Professor, scientist, researcher, engineer, and author Pablo Ribeiro Dias, PhD, joins Writer’s Voices to present his important new book, Climate Changed: The Science of Sustainability and How Each of Us Can Do Our Part. In this practical guide, he provides insightful information about climate change, pollution, and other challenges facing our planet, helping readers understand Read More

In his new book, "Climate Changed: The Science of Sustainability and How Each of Us Can Do Our Part, scientist, engineer, educator, and author Pablo Ribeiro Dias presents an insightful and essential guide about climate change, pollution, and other challenges facing our planet. For him, he became deeply concerned about the environment while he was in school where he grew increasingly aware that our world was headed in the wrong direction. He soon realized, "...being unsustainable was the feeling that I had. So, in school I was very interested in the topic of sustainability - are we heading in the wrong direction, what are the things that we can do? And then when I finished high school, I really liked math, chemistry, physics... I decided to do engineering because of that affinity with these subjects and within the engineering degree I then gravitated towards the environmental side of things, which is the recycling, the idea around energy, inputs, how can we maximize resources, what are the things that can be done around that specific area?"

While Dias initially set out to write the book for his students, he ultimately decided that it would be better received if written for a wider audience. While the number of environmental issues we face today can feel quite overwhelming, he emphasized that people do not need to take drastic measures in order to move our planet towards a greener future. "Every time you put things towards a recycling bin, you're helping already because the separation process is one of the things that takes energy, effort, and money at the end of the process. So if you can do it ahead of the process, it helps... no matter what, don't stop there... the next step is where you want to focus your attention and that's where you're helping the communities that are already doing things... you can donate your time to causes or to groups that are already doing the movements that you want to support, but you can also donate money if you don't have the time because sometimes life gets busy... these people need support, these people need the money to do the things they need to do..."

In The Subtle Art of Folding Space, metaphysical science fiction writer and microprocessor architect John Chu presents his debut novel about Ellie, a young Chinese girl, whose mother is in a coma while her sister, Chris, who is caring for their mother, is also trying to assassinate Ellie on a regular basis. According to Chu, Read More

In "The Subtle Art of Folding Space," metaphysical science fiction writer and microprocessor architect John Chu presents his debut novel about Ellie, a young Chinese girl whose mother lies in a coma while her sister Chris tries to assassinate her on a regular basis. As he explained, "Every universe has something called the skunkworks that generates the physics of that universe... at the start of my novel, my main character, Ellie, she's not in a great place... it turns out that weird things are happening in the universe... She has to go into the skunkworks to figure out what is happening and she finds a device that is intended to keep her mother alive... while it might be keeping her mother alive, it's also causing other weird things to happen in the universe... she removes this device and in doing so she sets off a chain of events that is going to have to force her to confront her past... and at the end of the day, she has to decide between honoring her mother's final wishes or saving the universe."

In terms of his writing process, Chu took an unconventional approach to crafting this novel. Rather than outlining before he began writing, he created the outline only after completing the manuscript. He elaborated, "A bunch of writers whom I love and admire have talked about this, but I wrote the novel and then I outlined it to see, well, did I get everything? Is there anything missing? And then I rework the novel to some extent based on the outline, but the novel came first." As for his success in short fiction, he is uncertain whether it helped him find his publisher. He remarked, "A certain amount of short fiction success doesn't guarantee a sale. I mean, I don't think it hurt, but I don't know how much it helped and I will point out that plenty of people sell novels without having a short fiction track record."

In Two Truths and a Lie, former reporter and award-winning author Mark Stevens delivers a gripping crime thriller that follows journalist Flynn Martin as she pursues a killer copying the crimes of PDQ, a serial killer she helped put in prison in her previous book, No Lie Lasts Forever. Set in Denver, this novel is Read More

In "Two Truths and a Lie," former reporter, television news producer, and crime fiction novelist Mark Stevens delivers a gripping thriller that follows journalist Flynn Martin as she pursues a killer copying the crimes of PDQ, a serial killer she helped put in prison in her previous book, "No Lie Lasts Forever." This time around, Flynn is investigating a new mystery involving the disappearance of a family of four and their connection to New Hope Church. With regards to creating his characters, Stevens has been known to feature strong female protagonists in his books. In addition to this series, he also writes about a female hunting guide in his Allison Coil Mystery series. "I think it's my job to get any human being right on the page. Sure, it's daunting to write across gender, there's no question, and if you're featuring the opposite gender, you've got to do your homework... trying to understand your specific character and her background and her point of view and what she's trying to accomplish in the world and all that stuff that creates a character... and we all write about everybody, it's a matter of who you're featuring."

Concerning his transition from reporter to crime novelist, Stevens recalled that his interest in the genre sparked when someone handed him his first mystery novel. From that point on, he focused mainly on writing crime fiction, with the exception of one baseball novel. He remarked, "I'd been reading fiction for years, but somebody finally handed me a mystery and it just opened up this whole world to me and I started consuming mysteries at a very rapid pace... and I thought, this is an interesting format because there's a beginning, a middle, and an end... so I started writing. It took me a long time to get published, but I just kind of just kept at it for twenty plus years until I got published and knowing, as I continued to write, that crime fiction was my... I loved crime fiction. I just loved all the varieties of it."

After reading her novel, Meeropol hopes readers will become more mindful of the changes affecting our environment. “…I want people to think about what’s happening with the environment, I want people to think about migration and immigration and what it means that people all around the world are fleeing their homes not only because of climate change, but also because of famine and drought and hunger and war and violence, and these are big things in our world today… so I hope people will consider them, but I think that what fiction does best is to help us feel empathy for lives very different from our own, to help us see things from a different perspective, and that’s what I try to accomplish in my books.”

‘The way to write a novel was to jump off a cliff and develop wings on the way down,’ so I write the first draft essentially to discover the story.” -referencing Kurt Vonnegut’s strategy for writing fiction

Twenty-five years ago people could be excused for not knowing much, or doing much, about climate change. Today we have no excuse.”