The idea for this book came from Baker’s fascination with the concept of God and his questions of faith. He explained, “For this book, literally, I wanted to tell a Bible story. I wanted to retell a Bible story, and the story I picked was Cain and Abel. That was the original thought, ‘I’m going to retell Cain and Abel in a modern setting.’ It’s been done before in other writers but, my version. I couldn’t have brothers but I wanted to create…a version of the Garden of Eden and that’s Florida in the 1800’s…instead of having brothers, well, let’s make them cousins…rich and poor but they both fall in love with the same woman, but she marries the poor cousin. Now, when you hear Cain and Abel, you know…there’s gonna be some murder involved, but it’s not the murder from the Bible, it’s a different murder that one of the cousin’s commits…out of that comes all the other characters.”

Something that fans may have noticed from reading Baker’s novels is his frequent use of Florida as the setting of his stories. He remarked, “Florida is a lot more interesting than most other states. One, it’s not like other states. It’s not really southern. It’s the environment that makes Florida different. Florida used to be totally unlike every other state in America. It was a jungle; it had wildlife like no other place. So old Florida is almost mythic, and it creates these mythical situations… but it has these really weird characters in it and that appeals to me and so I keep writing about it.”

Pay attention to how you end your essay because you’re likely to have ended different than how you started because writing is this process that reveals to you what you’re trying to say.

Don’t dig up in doubt what you planted in faith.

In her son’s early years, Swenson created a blog called Finding Cooper’s Voice , which became her place to find solace and to write about the raw emotions she felt while raising a child with special needs. As time went on, it transitioned into a refuge for parents going through a similar situation to seek guidance, comfort, and community. While Forever Boy includes many topics from her blog, it’s also filled with new content, such as her divorce, her subsequent remarriage to her husband, the sibling dynamics between her children, and advice for parents with newly diagnosed kids. What did she find difficult about writing this memoir? “What I did struggle with was reliving all the hard parts… the nights where I would just feel like I feel like I ran a marathon today. I talked about aggression or self injuring… I had shoved a lot of those parts way down deep to never be seen or heard again.” The process of remembering those tough days, months and years turned out to be a very healing process for her. She said, “A lot of the older moms that are reading my book are, like, ‘you’re helping me heal things I had PTSD over.'” For her, that acknowledgement and praise has been fulfilling, rewarding, and something she is extremely thankful for.

Regarding her memoir, Swenson said, “at a high level I think it is about autism in our family but really it’s for any person who is faced with something that causes them to pivot…know that this book is really about transformation and providing hope and figuring out how to get through something that isn’t what you originally planned.”

When you start writing or sharing, you really don’t think anyone’s going to care…It’ll be my mom and…my sister, and my words seemed to resonate with a lot of people.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, it just may not be the light that you imagined it or dreamed of, but it’s there.

Before writing her book, Ochu liked the idea of developing a story that was funny, uplifting and engaging for women and that became the motivation behind Campfire Confessions . “The world just kept getting more and more serious, you know COVID hitting and just…the things that we’ve had in our country and other countries around the world, and part of it was it was fun and entertaining that you could escape into a unique setting, but at the same time I really wanted these women to have these inner struggles that, I believe, women and men, struggle with such as learning how to embrace self love…learning how to forgive themselves and others and so I wanted to weave that within the story, and also put some action-adventure in there so it would be, you know, different.”

For many authors, incorporating comedy into novels can be quite challenging, but Ochu was able to include it seamlessly in her book. How was she able to accomplish this? “One, I think I have a good sense of humor… I can play off of someone else’s sentences and get some witty banter going…but I think because I had some really unique girlfriends in my life that were very funny and when we would get together we could… just play off each other and make fun of ourselves and tease each other. I also have three sisters so when we get together there’s a lot of teasing and nothing ever hurtful…I really think I took a lot of that.” Ochu also discussed the importance of female relationships and the benefits of fostering and nurturing those friendships. One of the ways she promotes this is by participating in and hosting virtual book clubs and other events where women can reach out to other women, find new friends, and learn how to build on those friendships. “I think every woman has a different experience at that and it’s kind of nice no matter where you might find it in your life, that maybe if you find it in your 50’s or 60’s or 70’s, it’s still so rewarding.”

One of the passions of writing the book…is to try to create a community in different ways for women to connect through this book.

I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.

During the interview, Caroline remarked on the great detail that was included in the memoir. Weintraub explained, “…I had kept some journals and you know when you’re on bed rest for five months, there’s not much going on, right? You have a lot of time to think and process and write things down and so when I started writing that first draft, it wasn’t fifteen years ago, it was, you know, it had been five years before, and so I was able to remember a lot of that.” One of the challenges for authors when writing memoirs is having to take private, sometimes painful, moments and presenting them out to the world in a way that is respectful to those involved. For her, she said, “This is so difficult and I really had to think about what my story was going to do to other people and how they were going to feel about it…you know, I gave it a lot of thought and what I decided is when I wrote a scene I said, ‘Is this necessary for the arc of the story? Did this give this story forward momentum? Can I leave it out?’…If I could leave out a painful scene, then I left it out because my intention is not to hurt anybody, it’s to tell a story.” In the end, she was able to leave out many parts she felt were not completely necessary while still being able to get her point across and tell her story authentically.

Since the release of her book, Weintraub has received positive feedback and made personal connections with many of her readers. She added that one of the reasons she wrote this book was to help release her trauma and connect with women so they could feel comfortable also releasing their trauma. She recalled a time recently in which she had come across an old acquaintance who confided in her and shared their own harrowing life experience and from that conversation, Weintraub felt, “This is what it’s about…right here…that was such a beautiful moment and so I felt like I had accomplished something with this book in that moment.”

The first draft I wrote for me. I got it all out. Subsequent drafts I wrote for my audience. That’s when you have to cut and cut and say, ‘Is this contributing to the arc of the story and the forward momentum?’

There is probably no family that can truthfully put a sign out that says ‘There is no trouble here.’

Berkovits also delved into the backstory of her distinctive book cover, which was designed by her brother, world-renowned architect, Daniel Libeskind. “He did the cover and he did it in his, I would say, typical enigmatic style. He’s very avant garde in his buildings and he’s avant garde in his cover, so readers might not immediately understand the symbolism of the cover, but once they read it, they certainly will.” She also elaborated on the reasoning behind the swastika on the cover, which, she clarified, is not the same swastika that Hitler decreed. Hers differs in that it is a white swastika, set on a black circle with a gray background, as opposed to Hitler’s black swastika, on a white circle with a red background. Its placement on the cover reflects the themes of antisemitism and fascism that run throughout her book. In addition, “…Many people don’t know that the swastika is a centuries old symbol and that it used to symbolize good and it has been perverted by the Nazis. So that’s the reason the swastika on this cover has to be understood within the entire context of the book, not just judging it by the cover. ”

The Corset Maker also includes an epilogue and prologue, which not only bookends the story but also contains rich content and important, modern issues. “I ask your listeners if they read the Corset Maker, don’t skip the prologue because it really will change your understanding of what I’m trying to say.”

We do need to learn from history, and my sense is that learning about history from novels is much more interesting and palatable than learning facts in school…reading a novel you could relate to individuals. You can’t relate to 6 million or 84 million killed, but you can relate to one person and that’s why I think novels are a good way of getting across the history.

Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.

Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero to me.

For Merrill, the road to completing this novel was not without its challenges. He explains how he went from setting a goal of finishing Fast Food Detective in three months to finally completing it after 32 years. Throughout that time, he faced many stumbling blocks and criticisms that took him back to years of rewrites and revisions, at one point even putting it aside before returning to it five years later. One of his motivations for finally finishing the book came from a famous DaVinci quote that said, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.”

For his next project, Merrill, who resides in Mexico and is studying to be a pilates and yoga instructor, is working on a yoga book teaching readers about basic and self-created yoga techniques that he uses in his morning and evening routines. He also has two more novels in the works, a romantic comedy and a drama. What will he do differently this time around? “I’ll write it in six months! I won’t put adjectives and adverbs…well actually I will…So I’ll write it and there will be tons of adjectives and adverbs in it but I know now about how to clean it up and I also know about character strength and that kind of stuff.”

It’s not what you say, it’s what you whisper. You want to create this feeling from this sentence that makes that person kind of use their imagination, suck them into that whole feeling of what you’re doing.

If you want to write, you’ve got to experience life first.

The conception of this book came during a time when Crook became aware of the way technology impacted not only herself, but also the world around her. “…I had a curiosity of about what would happen if I gave up the Internet for a stretch of time, which I did for 31 days. We’re actually in the season of Lent right now, so the season of kind of giving something up, and I did that sort of at the beginning of a year, January first, and that experiment lead into the writing of my first book, The Joy of Missing Out , and the rest, as they say, is history.”

In Good Burdens , Crook encourages her readers to find 100 joys in their life, regardless of how big or small. She also elaborates on the Harvard Grant Study, which she includes in her book and is the longest longitudinal study of human development in history. What they found from this extensive, 100-year study was simply that “happiness is love, full stop.'”

It’s very easy to disconnect or to disregard the importance of joy…So I think the practice of connecting to even one joy can spark something in you…They impact my creativity, they impact my energy levels, and ultimately, they impact my work and my relationships as a result and so that’s why, I think, centering a conversation around joy is incredibly important.

…Find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing. For to miss the joy is to miss all.

Tahir went on to speak about her inspiration for writing All My Rage, which she has described as the book of her heart. The concept for the story began in the early 2000’s, during which she experienced some of the same events that her characters went through. She explained that the motel from the story was inspired by the motel where she grew up, and that years later when she had gone off to college, her father became ill and her mother had to sell the motel. Tahir wasn’t able to say goodbye and get closure on her childhood home so she decided to start writing about the many emotions she went through during that time, which became the genesis of this book.

For Tahir, one of her goals when creating her stories is for her readers to relate to and see themselves in the characters she writes about, especially those on the outer edges or trying to sort through their own emotional struggles. She said, “My hope is I will always write about characters who look like me, always. That is sort of why I write. It’s so whatever kid or adult feels like they that haven’t been represented yet, that they don’t necessarily have a place in this world, they’ll pick up a book and they’ll say, ‘oh that’s me.’ … because I didn’t get that as a young person. I didn’t feel like I was in any books that I read and I don’t want that to happen to young people. Now I don’t think it should.”

I really try to go where my creativity takes me. I don’t like to stay in a box. I don’t like to just be a fantasy writer or just be a contemporary writer. I have ideas that run the gamut…I have so many that I think that I could honestly live a hundred years and I probably wouldn’t get to write all of them.

Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history.

Christopher also elaborates on her inspiration for writing this story, the near extinction of the American bison at the end of the 19th century, and her thoughts on working with Steve Semken from Ice Cube Press. Her advice for those who want to turn their interesting family stories into a book is, “…try to get all the rest of the family on board because there’s nothing like that big family to support you… and the other thing that I would say is… try to find and use local contacts before you go crazy on Google. There’s a lot of stuff out there…that was how I found my publisher and my editors and everybody who helped me with this book was just reaching out locally.”

Sitting Bull was one of the best known of the Indian chiefs, very little is known about him personally, his true character, his experiences. This book was bringing out, not a lot of that, but a little.

Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children.

Sepetys goes on to describe the bleak conditions the people of Romania were facing during that time of oppression. While watching movies from the west, Romanians saw people living lives of freedom that appeared to be fictional and pure fantasy. Little did they know, that was the reality of the outside world; it was later discovered that Ceausescu and his wife were living in opulance while the Romanian citizens starved and remained isolated. How did Ceausescu get away with this? Sepetys explained that he was able to appear as a benevolent leader, having allied with the U.S., France, and England, and speaking out against the Soviet Union. Those countries felt that Ceausescu was a friend they could trust. Additionally, very few tourists visited the country at the time due to the country’s shortage of food and therefore, few outsiders saw what life was really like there.

In addition to being a full-time author, Sepetys is also a presenter, speaking to audiences such as NATO, the European Parliament, and embassies from all around the world. Her topic of discussion is the power of historical fiction, which she believes helps to create opportunities for global dialogue. “Sharing these pieces of hidden history and encouraging dialogue and also pointing out that historical fiction is such a powerful genre, in reading groups and study circles, we actually have readers from families who stood on opposite sides of history and here we come together in a book club or in a reading circle and we’re discussing that history. History divided us, but I point out at these events that through reading, we can be united in story and study and remembrance and that’s the power of books.”

When justice cannot shape memory, remembering the past can be a form of justice.