Writer's Voices

Unlike other stories within this genre, Arnott’s heroes are not always virtuous. In fact, he believes that it is human imperfections that draw readers to the characters and it’s actually the villains, not the heroes, who make the story compelling. He noted, “…It’s also that reversal where somebody bad can redeem themselves or somebody good can fall from grace and I think it’s those sorts of stories that interest me… I think in a sense that’s one of the purposes of storytelling is that we follow things in stories that we wouldn’t necessarily want to happen to us, but we are curious to know how that affects the human condition… reading allows us to exercise our imagination and our empathy… when you read something you are actually entering into the mindset of somebody else and trying to imagine how you would feel in that situation.”

Plot is what happens to the characters, but story is what happens to the reader. We think, “Oh yeah, I’m going along with this… I’m inside of this story.”

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”

Throughout the collection, Eyre included several poignant haikus that pay tribute to the many people he met in college, some of whom have passed, and whom he had formed lifelong friendships with. It was important to him that their memories were reflected across the anthology. “…one of the poems is about a rocking chair, that an old rocking chair moves to all the memories stirring upon it, and many of those memories are of my classmates and friends from college… and I wanted to give them honor in a way that a short verse possibly could… give me a chance to do.” Another poem was about a friend who became the dean of an esteemed divinity school and held many degrees, but who still loved his Oklahoma roots and playing guitar, “and so I wrote ‘Deep Down, He’s Still an Oklahoma Boy Who Loves Three Chords and the Truth,’ and that was a way to honor him. He just passed on this year.”

It’s as if I moved the apostrophe to the left one space to be Writer’s Voices – I’ve adopted multiple voices in this book to try to give expression to different points of view.”

We can’t reach old age by another man’s road.”

In the novel, Rossi deliberately keeps the rock star’s name hidden. She explained her reasons for doing so and whether his character was based on a real-life musician. “There was no shortage of inspiration for him, but I also was very aware that there were some stories people know better than others and so there is the practical choice of like, it’s probably easiest not to name him, but… it took on a larger meaning to me because it doesn’t matter who he is, right? Men like him have had so much air time and he’s going to be fine. There’s not ever really been any accountability for men in power who abuse women or young girls really… he’s had his chance to tell his story and his story is the predominant narrative… so by taking his name out of it, I could really put the focus on her story… it’s about her and what she experienced.”

I feel like it’s looking back for something that never really existed and something you could never hold, and therefore, it’s kind of safe in that way because it can’t disappoint you, because it was never real.”

In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.”

In Ink Ribbon Red, crime novel writer, Alex Pavesi, presents his latest mystery thriller about a group of friends who trek to a remote location in the English countryside for a murder mystery birthday weekend. The host, Anatol, has invited his friends to join him for his 30th birthday and wants them to partake in Read More

While many parts of the novel are fictional, Starting From Here is also semi-autobiographical. Saunders herself left home at a young age to become a dancer and encountered many of the same challenges as René. She playfully remarked that she’s drawn to these kinds of stories because she has no imagination. However, she noted, “I must have some imagination because obviously this is all made up… this is all constructed so I do have that kind of imagination, but also I have a really reflective mind. I reflect a lot and I try to take from what I’ve experienced and integrate it into my life, and these books are part of that work. I heard a woman… she’s a priest in the Cheyenne tradition and she said that an elder once told her that if you can’t take your experiences and make them part of your life, you are a dilettante. I heard this recently and I just thought it was so fascinating because I was like, I get that.”

I want to use the experiences I’ve had to understand life in a bigger way and that’s why, I think that’s why, I’m drawn to this kind of work.”

To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on Earth and it is yours for the taking.”

Throughout Vianne and the earlier Chocolat novels, chocolate plays a central role. What was it about this particular food that inspired Harris to feature it in her storytelling? She explains, “…chocolate is so different to any other kind of food. It has so many potential sources of story. It has this very long history, this very interesting folklore. It’s an ancient product which has come from the South American tradition, but has managed to find its way somehow into every country in the world since then and has gone through a number of changes… it has religious significance, has a tremendous amount of cultural and historic significance, is now incredibly vital to the economy of the world… particularly in Catholic countries, this idea of chocolate of being a sin has entered social consciousness, and so I wanted to write a book that was effectively about the dynamics of church and chocolate, fasting and feasting, against a background of Catholicism and paganism…”

Stories are an entry point into other people’s experience, other people’s culture, other people’s shared humanit,y and I think the more we read of other people’s stories the more able we are to empathize with people in the real world.”

All you need is love, but a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.”

For Dickey, going on dangerous assignments was something she loved and craved because of her reckless and daring spirit. It was this spirit that led her to cover seven major war conflicts. However, her life came to a tragic end when she was killed in action during the Vietnam War. Robuck explained, “She was a little bit about act first, think later… she really didn’t take no for an answer, and so when she would go places that she wasn’t wanted, she would go somewhere else until she found her people. She had a lot of resilience that way… she got hurt quite a bit. Some of the male press correspondents were not kind to her, but she also had the wisdom to understand that they were embarrassed because they weren’t as willing to go to literally jump out of a helicopter into conflict with fighting men… and because of that, she really earned their trust… their love, their protection, and became a den mother to them, so it was interesting to find where she could fit in. She definitely experienced a lot of pushback…”

I do usually about six months of research before I write a word, and then at that time, I pick the timeline and the area of focus and start writing, but then the research is ongoing.”

You can do anything you want to do. If you want to do it so badly, you’ll give up everything else to do it.”

Regarding the structure of her book, Sokol decided not to make it a straightforward, chronological memoir because of the erratic nature of being a paramedic. “That’s not really how the job feels when you’re doing it. My memories of the job are really choppy. I don’t remember my whole day… the order of what things happen in is really confusing… I wanted medics to be able to read the book and so I really liked the idea of just different stories popping up and you read a bunch of different little stories and then over time it gives you a more complete narrative arc… it is roughly chronological… we do, sort of, follow my career from the beginning to the end, and my growth as a person and a medic.”

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, that is to have succeeded.”

For Wiggs, writing has always been a part of her life for as long as she can remember. At the age of three, she was drawing pictures and having her mother dictate them to create her first stories. She reflected, “There was never a time when I didn’t think in stories, and I didn’t think like a writer, and I didn’t think in paragraphs, and in chapters… I got addicted to writing, I just fell in love with it! I loved the attention from readers, I loved feeling like I had a mission, you know, to entertain and to take somebody somewhere…” After her family moved from America to Europe when she was a child, she continued to immerse herself in reading and writing. “One thing that [living abroad] did teach me was… to pay attention to the world around me and to be such a reader… I always would seek out libraries and books even then, and so stories have always been a part of my life no matter where I go.”

We underestimate what a creative act reading is. I believe that the reader brings herself, her intellect, her emotions to the story and so I don’t have to overexplain things.”

When it feels disheartening to learn that trauma changes the brain, remember that healing changes the brain too.”

When it comes to her writing process, Sheck allows only one person to read her novels as she’s working on them and that is her husband, a former senior editor at Pantheon Books. “…he’s an excellent reader and what would happen is when I started writing the novels, I would write a few pages each day, I would email them to him, and then at dinner we would talk and so my characters became part of our little family… we both loved it and then when I would finish the book we’d both be sad… I was very lucky to have [him] and he’s very devoted, so when I was first learning to write novels… he would do things like, he was a very good researcher and I remember coming home one day and he had ordered like 12 volumes of all the plots in western literature and he’s reading them. He was just sitting there reading them, and so that was like a wonderful resource for me. He was great that way.”

In order to succeed as a writer, you have to be willing to fail a lot because you have to be willing to experiment, right?”

“We are stardust brought to life, then empowered by the universe to figure itself out – and we have only just begun.”