Loaded Questions

Loaded Question Interview Archive

2013-10-20T22:13:00.002-07:00

Pulitzer Prize winners, award beloved children's book scribes, Oprah Book Club picks, biographies, histories, best selling authors and first time novelists -- these are the thirty-three talented individuals whose interviews have played an integral part in the success of Loaded Questions. The good news? This is just the beginning. Dozen more important literary figures are just waiting to be interviewed, to tell their stories and share their thoughts. Stay tuned for more.

Chris Bohjalian Author of Skeletons at the Feast

Lauren Groff Author of The Monsters of Templeton

Sally Varlow Author of The Lady Penelope

Jennifer Cody Epstein Author of The Painter from Shanghai

Mary Roach Author of Bonk: The Science of Sex and the Laboratory

Ty Stoller Author of The Monkey Jungle

Geraldine Brooks Author of The People of the Book

Catherine Delors Author of The Mistress of the Revolution

Audrey Niffenegger Author of The Time Traveler's Wife

Mary Doria Russell Author of Dreamers of the Day

Robert Leleux Author of The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy

Sandra Worth Author of Lady of the Roses

Margaret George Author of Helen of Troy

Ed Emberley Author of The Wing of a Flee

Kate Maloy Author of Every Last Cuckoo

Frank Delaney Author of Tipperary

Ellen Baker Author of Keeping the House

Yannick Murphy Author of Signed Mata Hari

Ken Follett Author of World Without End

Michael Jecks Author of Dispensation of Death

Kevin Kling Author of The Dog Says How

Ann Packer Author of Songs Without Words

Peg Kingman Author of Not Yet Drown'd

Charles Holdefer Author of The Contractor

Erika Mailman Author of The Witch's Trinity

Susan Higginbotham Author of The Traitor's Wife

Thomas Maltman Author of The Night Birds

John Elder Robison Author of Look Me in the Eye

Kate Furnivall Author of The Russian Concubine

Charlotte Mendelson Author of When We Were Bad

Nicholas Christopher Author of The Bestiary

David Blixt Author of The Master of Verona

Michelle Moran Author of Nefertiti

Books Being Adapted to the Movie and Television Screen

2010-08-21T23:18:00.000-07:00

News is flying left and right of bestselling books beginning the transformation from the page to television or the movies. Here's a quick rundown of adaptations that have made the news in just the last week or so:

Olive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout

Actress Frances McDormand is working on a possible series adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Olive Kitteridge. The title character of the bestselling novel is a seventh grade math teacher of a small east coast town and would be played by McDormand who is also working as a producer on the project for HBO. The book consists of 13 interconnected short stories that all center around a fishing village along the coast of Crosby, Maine. Deadline.com reports that McDormand optioned Olive Kitteridge before it won the Pulitzer Prize last year. It has also been reported that author of the novel, Elizabeth Strout, will be serving as a consulting producer.

Every Secret Thing
by Laura Lippman

Frances McDormand will also serve as producer for second project at HBO that would adapt Laura Lippman's crime novel Every Secret Thing. Lippman's novel focuses on two pre-teen girls walking home after having been kicked out of a birthday party. The two find a baby in a carriage as they head home and inevitably the child ends up dead, the girls are put away for seven years and when they’re released, other children begin to disappear. Actress Diane Lane is in line to play the detective seeking to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Freedom
by Jonathan Frazen

Jonathan Frazen has been having a pretty hot week. He's been labeled "Great American Novelist" by Time magazine landing the cover the weekly magazine, is interviewed in a feature in the September Vogue magazine complete with a whistful photo spread and an interview from the library of his Upper East Side apartment. A fitting way to end the week for a literary genius whose new novel Freedom will be released by Farrar, Straus and Giroux September 31st? News that uber-producer Scott Rudin has closed a deal on the rights to the new unreleased novel, deadline.com reports. This may or may not come as good news to Frazen fans who will note that ten years later Frazen's last novel The Corrections has yet to progress towards the big screen despite having been optioned by the very same Scott Rudin.

Keys To the City
by Joel Kostman

HBO seems to be all about the literary adaptations. With Game of Thrones on the way and the above news about Olive Kitteridge and Every Secret Thing in development, deadline.com is reporting that Joel Kostman's Keys to the City is to get the HBO treatment. Keys to the City is a collection of 14 stories based on the author's experience as a professional locksmith in New York City. It centers on a New York locksmith and offers a view of people and sights glimpsed beyond the doors he unlocks. The project will be adapted by Oscar winning scribe William Monahan whose previous work includes The Departed.

The Three Weissmanns of Westport
By Cathleen Schine

Also from HBO comes news of an adaptation of Cathleen Schine's The Three Weissmans of Westport, a novel released in February of this year. Schine will serve as a producer on the project. The story centers around a woman's search for meaning after her husband of 48 years walks out on her. She reconnects with her grown daughters who are also struggling to define their personal and professional identities.

Safe Haven
by Nicholas Sparks

Relativity Media payed a reported $2 million dollars for rights to the newest Nicholas Sparks novel, Safe Haven due in stores September 14th. Sparks has a proven track record of successful novel to film adaptations and has name recognition that guarantees viewers. The deal was somewhat interesting, stipulating that whoever won the auction for the rights had nine months to develop a script or else the rights to the book would revert to Sparks with the two million remaining firmly in Sparks' pocket. It was a tough ask in an even tougher economy/market. It seems as though Sparks was determined that a film adaptation of Safe Haven not remain in limbo for years such as the case with the aforementioned Franzen and The Corrections.

I Just Want My Pants Back
By David Rosen

Continuing its foray into scripted programming MTV recently greenlight a drama pilot based upon the David Rosen novel, I Just Want My Pants Back. The book centers around Jason Strider, a recent Cornell graduate who finds himself much more interested in marijuana, booze and sexual exploits. Shockingly, as the title suggests, the better part of the book centers around Jason trying to get his favorite pair of pants back from the woman who adequately quenched his sexual desire but fled wearing said pants after a second encounter. (Phew ... that took me several minutes to put together in a way that wouldn't get Loaded Questions an R rating.) MTV is touting the possible series as a romantic dramedy. Where the romantic part plays into it beats me! This is MTV after all.

Even more upcoming books making their way to the screen:

Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson
On the Road by Jack Keroauc
and Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

Keywords: Nicholas Sparks, Safe Haven, I Just Want My Pants Back, David Rosen, The Three Weissmanns of Westport, Keys to the City, Joel Kostman, Freedom, Jonathan Franzen, Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout, Cathleen Schine, Every Secret Thing, Laura Lippman, Books Turned Into Movies, HBO, MTV,

2010-08-10T17:33:00.000-07:00

Publishing Revolution: Historical Fiction Evolves in the Digital Age
By Robin Maxwell, bestselling author of The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn, The Wild Irish and her new novel O, Juliet.

The following piece is reprinted the with the permission of the author, it was initially printed by the Huffington Post in Feb., 2010.

Bestselling author Robin Maxwell.

It recently occurred to me that, as an author who's been writing since 1997 (The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn), I'm living through the most mind-boggling upheaval in the publishing industry since Gutenberg's printing press. I've gone from the ponderous national "on the ground" book tour to a virtual book tour; from newspaper features to a Facebook fan page; from an author photo in a press kit to an author video on YouTube; from print advertising to an iPhone app. My titles are not just in print in 14 languages, but are audio books and e-books. Most gratifyingly, I've seen the end of isolation from and competition with other authors, to the new, delightful "one hand washes the other" school of cooperation.

Starting in 2003 (The Wild Irish) things began to change. I was plodding along doing things the old-fashioned way, quietly aggravated that I was not getting publicity, advertising or support of any kind from my publishing house. My lovingly researched and passionately written book was dying on the vine because the reading public was simply unaware that it had been published. Newspaper and magazine reviews were becoming more and more scarce. Beloved independent bookstores were starting to go the way of the dinosaur, and if readers didn't happen to be in a Borders or Barnes & Noble during the two weeks my novel was on a New Releases table, that was it! The poor creature was quietly moved to languish in the shelves, spine facing out, where no one could possibly find the thing unless they were specifically looking for it.

But sunk as I was into the writing process of my next book, I was only vaguely aware of the violent tremors rocking the publishing world. Of course I used the Internet more frequently for research, but I didn't know that any writer worth her salt had her own Web site. A musician friend began nagging me incessantly about having one built, insisting that anyone who was running a business or selling themselves in any way had to have a Web site. That if I didn't jump on this I'd become completely irrelevant.

One day I finally caved in to the idea. And in one of those wonderfully serendipitous moments, the very next day an artist friend recommended a Web designer who'd created a beautiful Web site for her. Linda LaZar was running a very affordable special, and by the end of the week, my webmistress (doesn't that sound a bit kinky?) had secured me a domain name and built me a fabulous interactive site, http://robinmaxwell.com, that had a page for each of my six books and looked like a Renaissance jewel box. And suddenly -- seemingly out of thin air -- the Robin Maxwell "brand" was born.

Immediately I started getting fan mail through my Web site's email, from all over the world. It seemed lots of readers knew who I was and wanted to communicate. I wrote back to every single person, and in that way began collecting an email address book of people interested in what I was doing and hearing news about future books.

Meanwhile I had made friends with two much younger historical fiction authors - the talented and vivacious Michelle Moran, whom I'd been mentoring since 2001 and whose debut novel, Nefertiti had hit two bestseller lists; and C.W. Gortner, whose superb first historical novel, The Last Queen, had taken the literary world by storm. These two were both firmly entrenched in cutting edge promotional campaigns with not only their own Web sites, but their own blogs, membership on historical fiction forums, and well-organized virtual book tours. They coordinated their tours with blog advertising on unlikely sounding sites called ICanHasCheeseburger.com and PerezHilton.com. Michelle and Christopher had recently become friends with each other. They could see their pal was floundering around in the murky waters of the old paradigm and decided to fish me out.

With publication of Signora da Vinci looming, they encouraged me to spice up my Web site (I added eight colorful, chock-a-block bonus pages I called "Passport to the 15th Century," one of them a mouthwatering grape and olive compote recipe. They got me to send out a newsletter to everybody on my recently expanded email list, begging them to take notice of my book and "daisy chain" it along to all their friends.

They also convinced me to forgo the exhausting, antiquated "on the ground" book tour (an expense my publishers were no longer willing to pick up) and organize my first virtual book tour. I was skeptical at first, but not for long! No more schlepping around from city to city worrying about whether the bookstores would have enough copies of my books to sell, or being humiliated in "The Bookstore of the Living Dead" when two people showed up for the reading.

The entire promotion for Signora da Vinci was accomplished -- glowing reviews, in-depth blog and magazine interviews, guest posts, giveaways of signed copies of the book, and remote reading group appearances -- sitting at home in my pajamas.

What a revelation!

Even in the midst of the 2008/2009 economic meltdown and the resulting bloodbath in the publishing industry, Signora da Vinci sold more than respectably, and the number of bloggers who had nice things to say about my books not only expanded exponentially, but suddenly went viral. Bloggers were starting to find me, rather than me hunting them down.

With a new title, O, Juliet, set to publish in February 2010, I was ready to go for broke. I girded my loins and prepared for a wild extravaganza of shameless self-promotion.

I made a decision that for my O, Juliet promotion I would do absolutely everything in my power to make the book a success. It was the first of my titles to cross so many genres. This was not simply an historical fiction novel (though it had plenty of historical fiction elements). It was a retelling of the greatest love story every told, so I reckoned romance readers would like it. And its protagonists were young people being thwarted in love by parents and society, so I guessed it would appeal to the YA crowd as well.

At the same time, I was facing up to an industry that had changed radically since 1997 when Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn came out. My publishers and agents had urged all their authors to use every online method possible for publicizing and promoting their titles, and I decided to take it 100% to heart. The publishers (Penguin/New American Library) got the ball rolling with a stupendous double-cover for O, Juliet. The front is gorgeous flowers clinging to a period marble balcony, and the "step-back" is Frank Dicksee's famous and achingly romantic pre-Raphaelite painting of Romeo and Juliet in an embrace.

My trusty Web dominatrix, Linda LaZar, redesigned my home page at http://robinmaxwell.com and built me links to a "chapter sneak peek" of Romeo and Juliet's famous balcony scene. I bought the rights for one year to the Dicksee painting so I could legally use it however I needed it. Then I planned an enormous blog tour (interviews, guest posts and reviews), to commence in January, the month before the book's publication. O, Juliet will also be hosted on the cool new blog, Historical Fiction Round Table for a week-long blast of publicity by lovers of that genre.

I hired young, Web-savvy friend and neighbor, Tasya, as my West Coast publicist. She opened a Facebook personal page for me, as well as a Facebook fan page, and started inviting people to them. Within 24 hours she'd found me 200 fans. With help from one of my new blogging buddies, Allie Greenwald, I created a blog of my own (http://robinmaxwell.blogspot.com).

The blog's purpose was (what else?) promotion of my book, and to that end I birthed my wild brainchild, the "O, JULIET Love Games." With it, I hoped to open a forum for my fans and new readers to discuss and play with every angle of everyone's favorite emotion -- love. With the Dicksee image of Romeo and Juliet as my blog header (and guardian angels) I conceived of chats, challenges and giveaways, culminating in a love poetry competition, the winners to be announced on Valentine's Day. Then I asked Tasya to create a beautiful newsletter, and appropriated every address on my email lists. She did our first mailing Dec. 2, announcing the sneak peek and the upcoming "Love Games."

By this time my publishers were quite impressed with my efforts and decided to support them in several ways. On my urging (and with suggestions by the author and gifted advertising maven, M.J. Rose) they designed a cool blog ad, (a two-frame animated .gif), that the bloggers participating in my virtual blog tour could run on their blogs. Then the publishers agreed to my requests for a two-week blog ad campaign the weeks before and after publication.

Finally, they surprised me with the announcement that O, Juliet had been chosen for their exclusive "Penguin iPhone App Program." My book was going to be only one of four Penguin titles to have its very own app in February! I'm red-faced to admit that when I got the good news, I had no idea what an app was. The very next week, every other TV commercial I saw was for (what else?) iPhone apps. I was beginning to feel very hip. The other day I actually found myself giving a friend tech support on how to create her own blog. Will wonders never cease?

As of today, two of my O, JULIET Love Games giveaways are up and running, and lots of people are playing (and appearing to enjoy themselves). It doesn't hurt that the prizes are some pretty cool bling (three heart necklaces) and signed copies of the book.

My backside is permanently glued to my computer chair, my husband only ever sees the back of my head, and there's no chance that I can do any other work until the promotion is over. But I'm happy. I may write about the 15th and 16th centuries, but when it comes to promoting my book, I am most definitely an author of the 21st.

Robin Maxwell

Related Link: Our interview with Robin Maxwell for the release of Signora Da Vinci - Oct., 2008

Keywords: historical fiction, The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn, To the Tower Born, Virgin: Prelude to the Throne, The Queen's Bastard, O, Juliet, Tudor England, book tour, iPhone App, reading group, C.W. Gortner, Michelle Moran,

Pillars of the Earth: Frequently Asked Questions Answered!

2010-08-03T17:36:00.000-07:00

We have been getting a good number of questions about the adaptation of bestselling author Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth and so I thought I would try and tackle a few of them here...

Where was Pillars of the Earth filmed?

The series began filming in January of 2009 both in Hungary and Austria. The series is produced, in part, by Scott Free Productions -- a company owned and operated by famous director Ridley Scott and his brother, producer extraordinaire, Tony Scott. The filming of the miniseries took 112 days.

How was the fictional Cathedral at Kingsbridge built? What kind of research went into making sure that the building was real-like and true to history?

The Pillars of the Earth sets have shown a rich and dedicated commitment to detail, are believable and serve well to help construct the world so artfully built by Follett, from the quarry, to the capital city of Winthrope to the dilapidated Kingsbridge Priory. Asked about the sets Follett has writen that: "Much of it was plaster, wood and polystyrene, of course, but a considerable part was real stone, and that was enormously impressive. While modern power tools were used in rough shaping for the sake of speed, a good deal of what you'll see onscreen was hand-finished, real stone."

How did Ken Follett feel about the actors who were selected to play the television version of his characters?

Richard Bartha

Follet was quoted as saying: "The people I created in my mind and my imagination are going to be represented by some of the most talented actors around, actors who can make you scared, angry or tearful. From the marvelous Ian McShane as the dark soul Waleran Bigod, who believes he is God's will; the intense and multifaceted Rufus Sewell as Tom Builder—probably the most popular character I ever wrote Matthew Macfadyen, who portrays the complex Prior Philip with unrelenting strength; the highly regarded Sarah Parish as the manipulative and dangerous Regan Hamleigh. Then there's the wonderful young talent: the lovely and truly gifted Hayley Atwell playing our heroine, Aliena and Eddie Redmayne as our hero, Jack, who gives a performance of amazing depth and passion."

What have reviews of Pillars of the Earth been saying?

We wrote about some of the downright depressing interviews that arrived via Entertainment Weekly, Mo Ryan's "The Watcher" and a number of others. Fans of the book nervous about the dreaded curse that surrounds well-liked novels and their adaptation to movie/miniseries might be able breathe a sigh of relief (just not a really big one, let's not get ahead of ourselves...). Daniel Fienberg over at Hitfix.com wrote that, while he had wanted to stop watching the miniseries after the first few scenes, her persisted and writes that mostly pleased that he had. Fienberg writes: " 'Pillars of the Earth" may start off shoddy and silly, but it picks up steam and after three or four hours, I was well and truly immersed in the world created by producers Tony and Ridley Scott, writer John Pielmeier and director Sergio Mimica-Gezzan."

Many of the reviews have tended to agree with Fienberg's where the first two hours of the miniseries are concerned. The general consensus has been that the first two hour installment of Pillars was heavy on the narrative, the events rushed and the character development sacrificed to the sometimes panicked need to fit Follett's thousand-page novel into the allotted eight hours.

A number of critics have written that getting through the sometimes rough first two hours of the series is worth it as the series begins to establish an even pace allowing the actors to shine through. In a relatively glowing review written by David Hochman for TVGuide.com ("Pillars of the Earth: A Towering Achievement") credit is given to Rufus Sewell the actor who portrays Tom Builder. Sewell has so far handed in a performance that has caught the eye of critics, even those critics who could find very few positive things to say about the series.

With the third installment of Pillars of the Earth series to air later this week we here at Loaded Questions have a feeling that the sins of the first two hours will fade into the past as the story and talented cast

In the end, Follett has nothing but good things to say about the Pillars of the Earth series, writing that "authors who see their work adapted for the screen always experience trepidation...will it be true to the book? Will the characters come to life and hook audiences—audiences that include people who have read the book and those who haven't? I have no doubt that you'll be as happy as I am with the result of this adaptation."

How has the Pillars of the Earth adaptation done so far for Starz?

Well, Deadline.com reported the day after the premiere of the first episode, that Pillars of the Earth debuted last week to a respectable audience. The first two hours of the series pulled in 423K viewers. How does these numbers stack up? Starz doesn't have a lot of data to compare Pillar's debut too as the network has just begun to try its hand at original series programming. The debut of the medieval miniseries was comparable, however, to numbers posted by Starz's crown jewel and break out original series, Spartacus: Blood and Sand which broke the channel's previous debut record with a total of 553K. So Pillars is doing alright with viewers. Once the Starz debut numbers for Pillars of the Earth were added to the series' Encore debut (tricky, tricky!) the network estimates that the debut reached a total of 1 million viewers for debut. What Deadline.com and Starz itself failed to account for, however, was the number of people who have Netflix Instant Watch and were able to watch the debut via their computers or by routing the Netflix service through equipped DVD players, allowing for home television watching. It will be interesting to see how tonight's episode fares -- whether those who watched the first episode will return and even more importantly whether or not they'll drag along fellow couch potatoes.

The NEXT episode (spoiler alert) . . .

If you aren't interested in getting a preview of next episode of Pillars of the Earth, airing this coming Friday do not let your eye's wander further down. Of course you can always look and then just blame it on me...

Battlefield, Episode #4
Original Air Date: August 5th, 2010

William applies to have his father’s title of Earl transferred to him, and discovers a mysterious knight is also a rival for the Earldom. King Stephen, frightened by Jack’s appearance, orders an assassin to kill him. The battle between King Stephen and Maud sees each side’s leader being taken hostage. Philip is tortured into a confession when Waleran tells Maud that he is the man who betrayed Earl Bartholomew.

What do you think about seeing the places and characters of Pillars of the Earth on television? Does a particular actor/actress have their role down pat? Share your views by clicking comment!

Keywords: Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett, historical fiction, Pillars of the Earth filmed, Donald Sutherland, Rufus Sewell, miniseries, World Without End, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Ian McShane, Prior Philip, Hayley Atwell, Kingsbridge Cathedral,

Packing For Mars Book Trailer

2010-08-02T13:31:00.000-07:00

Space Hygiene and the People Who Stopped Bathing for Science -- Funny but True

Today is the official release of Mary Roach's fourth book, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void. In order to celebrate we here at Loaded Questions wanted to share this great video produced by WW Norton and available at author Mary Roach's website. Roach's new book, as the title indicates, looks at some of the absurdity and downright hilariousness that went into preparation to send humans in to space. The video, being billed as a trailer of the new book is titled: "Space Hygiene and the People Who Stopped Bathing for Science" and is a comedic reenactment of an actual study Roach describes in the book, a study in which individuals were paid to forgo hygiene and clothing. Yes, the video is funny and well put together but the best part of all is that the study that is being "spoofed" actually took place and that the words spoken by the astronauts and overhead voice that narrate the video are actual quotes from a real study. Gotta love it.

Here's the video:

On a related note we're very excited to announce that we'll be conducting our interview with Mary Roach next week in Portland, OR as she continues her book tour for Packing for Mars. Have a question that you'd like us to ask her? Something you would like us to discuss? Click comment and let us know!

LQ Book Review: Karen Essex's "Dracula in Love"

2010-08-01T13:24:00.000-07:00

We are very pleased to share the following book review with you, written by bestselling author C.W. Gortner, a friend of the site. Along with this interview comes the announcement that I will be doing an interview with the author of the below reviewed book, Dracula in Love, Karen Essex. Karen has had a rich career, adapting screen plays by authors such as Anne Rice, has written bestselling historical fiction novels (Stealing Athena, Leonardo's Swans) as well as influential biographies of important historical figures (Kleopatra, Pharaoh) If you have questions or suggestions for topics that you'd like me to touch on when interviewing Karen please feel free to click comment and share them or email me directly if you'd rather do it privately.

I am also happy to announce today that in addition to the upcoming interview with Karen Essex I will also be conducting my second interview with C.W. Gortner, the friend and skilled historical fiction author who has held nothing back about how much he enjoys Dracula in Love. Gortner and I last spoke around the release of his novel of the mad Spanish Queen, Juana la Loca. This time we'll discuss his latest novel, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

Dracula Gets Sexy
by C.W. Gortner

He’s the enigmatic stranger in the black cape, a shape-shifting outcast who has given rise to some of literature’s - and Hollywood’s - most iconic imagery. When it was published in 1897, Bram Stoker’s Dracula was a critically acclaimed horror story; it did not send the shockwaves it should have through Victorian morality, excavating the repressed sexuality and decay of a fading empire while exalting the era's misogynistic flair. However, in subsequent years, as it garnered international bestselling status, Dracula began to reveal itself as a cautionary tale of unbridled desire.

Now, 113 years later, bestselling author Karen Essex, known for her lush prose and portraits of powerful women in Leonardo’s Swans, Stealing Athena, and a double-volume look at the quintessential femme fatale, Kleopatra and Pharaoh, takes on the Count in Dracula in Love. It’s a bold move. While Dracula has been revisited several times and in various incarnations, not all have been successful; and many of us have firm ideas of who he is, and, more importantly, who he is not. Nevertheless, Ms Essex serves up a sensual, unabashedly romantic approach to the fanged one, telling the tale through the voice of Mina herself, whose love affair with Dracula has become a byword for eternal obsession.


A first edition copy of Stoker's Dracula, initially published in 1897.

Building on framework established by Stoker, Essex vividly presents the true Victorian world inhabited by these characters—a world where a fledgling emancipation movement collides with the barbaric treatment of those deemed sexually neurotic; where marriage is still the ultimate goal for a woman; and virtue is prized more than fulfillment. While most of Stoker’s cast is present, they’ve been reshaped, with Lucy paying a terrifying price for her extra-betrothal liaison and Van Helsing as a righteous physician engaged in lethal experimentation. The Count takes his time before he appears, seen only in tantalizing glimpses; by then, Mina’s engaging, increasingly paranoid voice has captured our imagination, as she struggles to survive both her own recurring nightmares and a budding awareness that just beyond her tightly corseted existence lurks a tangled labyrinth of feral secrets.

Dracula in Love is not a standard vampire tale and purists may take issue with Ms Essex’s mythology-inspired take on the legend; however, for those who yearn for something more than adolescents pining over immortal boyfriends, this is the antidote—a luscious paean to forbidden longing.

- C.W. Gortner is the author of The Confessions of Catherine de Medici and The Last Queen. Visit him at www.cwgortner.com

Keywords: Karen Essex, Stealing Athena, Leonardo's Swans, Kleopatra, Pharoah, historical fiction, Victorian England, C.W. Gortner, The Last Queen, Juana la Loca, Tudor history, English historical fiction, Confessions of Catherine de Medici, The Secret Lion, Van Helsing

Important Info Conerning our Giveaway of "The Red Queen" by Philippa Gregory

2010-08-01T11:56:00.000-07:00

Important update our LQ Giveaway of Philippa Gregory's The Red Queen!

We would like as many of our loyal readers as possible to enter into this Giveaway. After some recent site updates it came to my attention that only readers with a Google account were being allowed to make a comment at Loaded Questions thus limiting the number of people who can make comments and participate on the site on a daily business AND those who wished leave a comment in order to enter our Philippa Gregory Giveaway. This was a mistake in the site's formatting and something we have now changed back, allowing anyone give us their name and a form of contact in order to have a chance at winning your very own hardback copy of The Red Queen, the second book in the Cousin's War series.

We apologize for any inconvenience!

Enter Away!

Loaded Questions Staff

Phillipa Gregory "The Red Queen" Free Giveaway!

2010-07-30T16:51:00.000-07:00

We are very happy to announce that the good people at Simon & Schuster have not only sent Loaded Questions a copy of Phillipa Gregory's new book The Red Queen but have also passed along another copy for us to give away to one lucky reader of Loaded Questions!

Here are the details:

The giveaway is FREE to our devoted readers and new converts.

Entering is easy, simply leave a comment on this post with a short note ... maybe what you like about LQ or the book that you're currently reading.

Our readers will have one week to post their reply, ensuring their entry in the giveaway. All entries must be received by August 6th at midnight. Please take care to include contact information in your comment/entry so that we may successfully contact the winner of the prize in a timely manner. (Sounds like common sense, right? You'd be surprised.)

The winner will be announced Monday, August 9th at Loaded Questions and via a private email to the winner no later that 5pm PST. In order to select the winner of our Phillipa Gregory The Red Queen Giveaway in the most equitable manner we will use the Random Integer Generator at Random.org.

Good Luck and Happy Reading!

- Loaded Questions Staff

Want More Info on Philippa Gregory

and her new novel, The Red Queen?

We've got a rundown on the new book, a recommendation from Publisher's Weekly, the book's cover description and a video of Gregory herself reading from the new novel!

Bestselling author Philippa Gregory’s new book, The Red Queen, will be available in hardcover next week, August 3rd. The new book, coming in at a total of 400 pages, is the second in the author's The Cousin's War series. The first in the series, The White Queen was a #1 New York Times Bestseller and will be available in paperback on August 6th of this year.

Publisher's Weekly Writes: Nobody does the Tudors better than Gregory (The Other Boleyn Girl), so it should come as no surprise that her latest—the War of the Roses as seen through the eyes of Henry VII's mother —is confident, colorful, convincing, and full of conflict, betrayal, and political maneuvering. Gregory gives readers Margaret Beaufort in her own words, from innocent nine-year-old to conspiring courtier who stops at nothing to see her son on England's throne. Gregory devotees will note the difference between the supernaturally gifted Yorkist White Queen and Lancastrian Margaret, who, despite saintly aspirations, grows worldly through three marriages; a powerless widow at 13, remarried and separated from her only son by 15, it is not until she's 29 that Margaret is ready to realize her most audacious ambitions. Gregory clones have made historical novels from a woman's perspective far too familiar to make this seem as fresh as her earlier works. Yet, like Margaret Beaufort, Gregory puts her many imitators to shame by dint of unequalled energy, focus, and unwavering execution.

Want more info? Watch the video below to see bestselling author Philippa Gregory read from The Red Queen, her second epic novel set during the Wars of the Roses.

From the book cover of The Red Queen by Philippa Gregory:

Heiress to the red rose of Lancaster, Margaret Beaufort never surrenders her belief that her house is the true ruler of England and that she has a great destiny before her. Her ambitions are disappointed when her sainted cousin Henry VI fails to recognize her as a kindred spirit, and she is even more dismayed when he sinks into madness. Her mother mocks her plans, revealing that Margaret will always be burdened with the reputation of her father, one of the most famously incompetent English commanders in France. But worst of all for Margaret is when she discovers that her mother is sending her to a loveless marriage in remote Wales.

Married to a man twice her age, quickly widowed, and a mother at only fourteen, Margaret is determined to turn her lonely life into a triumph. She sets her heart on putting her son on the throne of England regardless of the cost to herself, to England, and even to the little boy. Disregarding rival heirs and the overwhelming power of the York dynasty, she names him Henry, like the king; sends him into exile; and pledges him in marriage to her enemy Elizabeth of York's daughter. As the political tides constantly move and shift, Margaret charts her own way through another loveless marriage, treacherous alliances, and secret plots. She feigns loyalty to the usurper Richard III and even carries his wife's train at her coronation.

Widowed a second time, Margaret marries the ruthless, deceitful Thomas, Lord Stanley, and her fate stands on the knife edge of his will. Gambling her life that he will support her, she then masterminds one of the greatest rebellions of the time—all the while knowing that her son has grown to manhood, recruited an army, and now waits for his opportunity to win the greatest prize.

In a novel of conspiracy, passion, and coldhearted ambition, number one bestselling author Philippa Gregory has brought to life the story of a proud and determined woman who believes that she alone is destined, by her piety and lineage, to shape the course of history.

Keywords: Philippa Gregory Free Giveaway, free copy of The Red Queen, free book giveaway, The Red Queen, Cousin's War, The White Queen, The Other Boleyn Girl, free, Tudor history, historical fiction, English historical fiction, War of the Roses, Elizabeth Woodville, Henry VIII, Margaret Beaufort

Literary News: The Digital Battle, Publishing Houses in Peril?, Damnit Janet (Evanovich) and Animal Farm the Musical

2010-07-24T19:50:00.000-07:00

The Digital Battle That loud cackle followed by uncontrollable laughter that you heard a few days ago was coming from Amazon.com on the day that it announced that for the first time since its Kindle had been released digital books had outsold hardcover books at the site. According to Amazon, one of most prolific booksellers in the country, in the last four weeks they have been selling as many as 180 digital books per every 100 hardback books sold. The announcement may not come as a surprise as the battle between the digital book and the traditional book has been going on for awhile now. It is interesting, however, to note that Amazon offers 630,000 kindle books as opposed to the millions of hardback books sold at the site. The Kindle has is still a relative newcomer to the Amazon site as it has only been sold for 33 months while the site itself has been in the book business for over 15 years.

Publishing Houses in Peril? The battle between digital and traditional books is taking places on multiple fronts. Things have been heating up this week in the publishing world. It has been reported in the article "Random House Bullying Agents on EBooks - But Is It Legal?" by Mike Fleming over at Deadline.com that the power of the digital book has been creating quite a bit of angst over the place of traditional publishing houses in the future of the book biz. This controversy lands on the heels of Amazon's announcement as well as the announcement that book agent Andrew Wylie, the man behind a newly established electronic publishing imprint Odyssey Editions, has signed an exclusive deal with Amazon.com. The deal would essentially cut out the middle man, the publishing houses, by selling Amazon sole e-book rights to titles like Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Vladimir Nabakov’s Lolita, Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, John Updike’s Rabbit Run series, Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. The books will only be available on Kindle for the traditional $9.99 price of digital editions. According to the piece's author Fleming, Random House responded with what he calls "sheer thuggery" by blacklisting Wylie in a"clear attempt to scare other authors and their reps from trying the same thing." Other publishers such as Macmillian, he writes, have taken similar measures. Fleming asks the question that is, undoubtedly, at the heart of the conflict: in the case of authors who signed contracts before the digital book was even a gleam in the eye of Amazon or Sony? The answer is one that is sure to cause debate. Hit reply and leave us a comment, what do you think? Read the rest of Mike Fleming's piece over at Deadline.com by clicking here.

Damnit Janet! Janet Evanovich has been atop the New York Times bestsellers list a total of 14 times, has sold northward of 90 million books in her career and has been making quite a bit of news this week when news of her split with St. Martin's Press was announced. Evanovich, who has been with St. Martin's Press for the last fifteen years, recently asked for $50 million dollars for her next four books -- something St. Martin's just wasn't willing to do. News followed that her agent/son Peter Evanovich was shopping around at other publishers, the $50 million dollar ask still intact. According to a Forbes.com article Evanovich is one of the top grossing authors racking in an estimated $16 million dollars in book-related income last year. Her backlisted novels sell some 20 million copies a year. Evanovich's seperation with St. Martin's Press has perhaps come at a bad time for a number of reasons: the author's last novel, Sizzlin' Sixteen the latest novel in her very successful Stephanie Plum series, has had less than stellar reviews, receiving just two and a half starts out of a possible five over at Amazon.com, matters are only made more dire with the current state of publishing houses and their battle to stay profitable. According to Deadline.com there is a great deal of risk involved in signing deals like that requested by Evanovich: "such a front-loaded deal puts all the risk on the new books, and the publisher doesn't have the benefit of writing off losers against backlist books that remain at St.Martin's Press." While Dirk Smilie over at Forbes.com asks the obvious question, whether Evanovich is worth the steep price tag, he does point out that Pillars of the Earth author Ken Follett recently signed a $50 million dollar three book deal and that James Patterson also recently signed a whopping $100 million dollar deal over at Hatchette, although that deal was for an equally staggering seventeen novels. Evanovich, many argue, is on the same level as Follett and Patterson. All three prolific authors who have a reputation for churning out novels that consistently sell. Will Evanovich find a deal outside of the St. Martin's "family"? Is she the sum she's asking for fair? Share your thoughts by clicking comment and telling us how it is!

Belt It Out: Animal Farm the Musical? This one could leave you scratching your head. According to the UK's The Daily Mail Sir Elton John and producing partner Lee Hall, the creative team behind the stage version of Billy Elliot: The Musical are planning to start work on a musical version of George Orwell's 65 year-old allegorical barn yard tale, Animal Farm. Lee reportedly told The Daily Mail that it had taken them about two years to secure the rights for the project, and that it would probably take another two years before the musical is finished. Consider yourself warned.

What We're Reading

2010-07-23T15:21:00.000-07:00

What We're Reading

And You Should Too...

Pearl of China by Anchee Min

Current Amazon Price: $16.32

Hardcover

Pub. Date: March 2010

Bloomsbury USA

Like it? Get it!

During the Cultural Revolution of the 1960's and 70's Pearl S. Buck went from being a great story telling of Chinese history and cultural to a Western enemies whose writings and ideas were to be thought of poison from a foreign enemy. Before the novel starts Min dedicates the novel to Buck and expresses lament because of the fervor with which she had denounced Buck and her works during the revolution. The novel is a way in which Min feels she make up for those years of denunciation to an author who is now widely hailed as a great writer and heroine of the Chinese people.

Best-selling author Anchee Min's latest novel delves into the life of Pearl Buck and her childhood friend and narrator Willow. As the book begins Buck is the daughter of a zealous Christian missionary who is struggling to move the people in the small southern Chinese city of Chin-kiang away from their numerous gods and towards the story of and belief in Jesus Christ. Buck's father faces a number of challenges as much of Jesus' teachings and life are lost in translation. The people feel uncomfortable about worship such a skinny god who looks as though he cannot feed himself as well as the image of a bearded Jesus who looks destitute and not respectable. It is Willow's crafty and cunning father who leaves his life as a common thief to aid Pearl's father in making his Jesus more popular by giving him less Western eyes and a rounder belly in order for him to compete with the plump Buddha the people cling to.

The young Pearl we meet through the eyes of her Chinese playmate Willow will eventually grow up to be the iconic Pearl S. Buck author of The Good Earth, Imperial Women, and Dragon Seed along with a great many more historical fiction novels based in the China of her youth. The character of Pearl is interesting, a girl who struggles to fit into a Chinese society that she think of as her own but clearly sticks out in. She is conflicted as she watches her father try and convert the locals whom she comes to think of as her own.

I started reading the novel last night and am already a third of the way through it. Something about Min's writing instantly draws me in. I've read every one of her books and although some of them are more compelling than others I have enjoyed them all and was relishing the idea of another Min novel. The read is quick but compelling and one I suggest. Yes, there are a number of religious elements in the novel, Christianity chiefly among them but the greater story of Pearl and Willow's friendship and themes of belonging and identity should out weight any misgivings one might have about religious elements.

I have long been a fan of Chinese-born author Anchee Min, first reading her memoir Red Azalea in which the author details her childhood in Communist China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. The story is one of severe deprivation, betrayal and zeal for the words of the powerful Chairman Mao. Min struggles to fit in and prove her loyalty to the Red Revolution grabbing hold all around her. Red Azalea is the story of an exceptional woman living in exceptionally difficult times. From her childhood in the Red Guard to the tireless and inhumane conditions of the work farm she was forced to toil in, the reader cannot help but feel a connection to Min who has a definite talent for capturing the spirit of those who were made to suffer in the midst of a revolution that was supposed to set them free. The title of her book comes from the propaganda film she was selected to star in and while she may have been free of the work farm this new role came with a new kind of heart ache and embarrassment as political machinations continued to wreak havoc.

Min's other works have included Empress Orchid and The Last Empress, two historical fiction novels about the fabled Chinese Empress Tzu Hsi, also known as Empress Orchid whose life, like Min's is pretty extraordinary. Orchid goes from impoverished candidate in a field of hundreds who are auditioning to be selected for a spot as one of many of the Emperor's concubine to the fourth wife of the Emperor and mother of the "last emperor". Min's detail and description are as strong when writing about the Cultural Revolution as it is writing about the Opium Wars that plague China's royal power in its final waning days.Min tackles the life of Chairman Mao's wife in Becoming Madame Mao, a fictional book about Mao's wife's life that also covers her role as a creator of large scale propaganda infused musicals.

Are you a fan of Anchee Min?

Here are some related books that you might like. . .

Books Turned Into Movies: Pillars of the Earth on Starz

2010-07-21T15:28:00.000-07:00

You may have remembered my unbridled enthusiasm when I heard that that Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth was being turned into an eight hour miniseries for Starz starting, among others, Donald Sutherland and Ian McShane. The series is set to debut in the next couple of days but early reports of the series' quality have been less than glowing.

Mo Ryan of the Chicago Tribune's "The Watcher" certainly didn't mince her words when she wrote that the series had "made Ian McShane (temporarily) uninteresting." Before reading too much into her critique of the series it is important to note that Ryan doesn't sound like much of a fan of the novel, a novel that has been a critical and popular success for more than twenty years. She writes that the characters are sometimes wooden, that readers may find that the book contains more than enough information about the building of a cathedral in the 13th century but concedes that the book "gets the job done". This last bit is the nicest thing she says about both the book and the movie.

Ryan writes: "If you read "The Pillars of the Earth," don't expect a masterpiece, but you will get a reasonably decent yarn and you'll learn how and why these towering monuments to faith came to be built. If you watch the miniseries, you'll see precious raw materials wasted and shoddy construction everywhere you look. The fact that good scenes and character moments from the book are poorly executed or changed beyond recognition in the miniseries just adds insult to injury."

Golden Globe winner Ian McShane as Waleran Bigod.

Of the cast Ryan writres: "The cast looks positively stranded, almost off-balance, as if they were never allowed a chance to get their bearings and dig into their characterizations." The biggest crime, according the Ryan is the fact that Ian McShane as the devious Waleran Bigod. It is this critique that leaves me the most fearful of the quality of the series. McShane is magic in a bottle and if he's been rendered ineffective the series' hopes for success may be short-lived.

To be completely fair, Ryan's is hardly alone in her feelings about the Pillars of the Earth series. Entertainment Weekly, among others, has commented that the series is perhaps too dense and fails to tie plots together.

My hope is that if you've read the book and are a fan that there will be some redeeming qualities to be found. I enjoyed the book (although I found the sequel-esque World Without End to have followed the formula of the first novel far too closely) I have seen the sets and interviews with the actors who have touted the authenticity of the research and work that went into creating medieval England. As a fan of the novel I'll be tuning in this week looking for authenticity and any entertainment I can get - it has to be better than a night of America's Got Talent, right?

Related Links:

Loaded Questions: Pillars of the Earth Starts Filming!
Loaded Questions: Our Interview with Author Ken Follett for the release of World Without End.

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Loaded Questions is back!

2010-07-21T12:39:00.000-07:00

Loaded Questions has been away for far too long! However, we would like to announce that we are back and better than ever with a new staff, exciting upcoming interviews and more literary news! Please feel free to post our return on your sites/blogs. Your support is greatly appreciated!

What's on the horizon?

Our third interview with the talented and hilarious Mary Roach author of previous best-sellers Stiff: The Curious Case of Human Cadavers, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife and Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex.

The interview comes on the heels of the release of Roach's fourth novel, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void. The book's product description reads: Space is a world devoid of the things we need to live and thrive: air, gravity, hot showers, fresh produce, privacy, beer. Space exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be human. How much can a person give up? How much weirdness can they take? What happens to you when you can’t walk for a year? have sex? smell flowers? What happens if you vomit in your helmet during a space walk? Is it possible for the human body to survive a bailout at 17,000 miles per hour? To answer these questions, space agencies set up all manner of quizzical and startlingly bizarre space simulations. As Mary Roach discovers, it’s possible to preview space without ever leaving Earth. From the space shuttle training toilet to a crash test of NASA’s new space capsule (cadaver filling in for astronaut), Roach takes us on a surreally entertaining trip into the science of life in space and space on Earth.

I received my copy yesterday and am giddy at the prospect of tearing into it this evening. From the few glimpses I have taken so far I can say without hesitation that Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void represents Roach at her very best. Stay tuned for the interview. In the meantime you can read our first interview with Roach and the second for the release of Bonk.

We've also lined up an interview with David Nicholls author of the acclaimed novel One Day. The UK's The Guardian wrote that with his latest work Nicholls "has drawn on all his comic and literary gifts to produce a novel that is not only roaringly funny but also memorable, moving and, in its own unassuming, unpretentious way, rather profound." The book garnered author, whose previous books include Starter for Ten: A Novel, A Question of Attraction : A Novel and The Understudy: A Novel, rave reviews from The New York Times to Entertainment Weekly. I spoke to Nicholls recently, he's currently on the set of the movie adaptation of One Day staring Anne Hathaway. We are very much looking forward to sharing this interview with you.

Are you enamored by books? Have an interest in conducting author interviews or writing book reviews? Loaded Questions has already added four new members to its staff but we are still looking for individuals who have an interest in the above activities. Joining our staff is a great way to have contact with your favorite authors and to get your hands on early book releases for you to write about and read. Contact us with you information and interests if you think you'd fit the bill.

Charles McCain author of "An Honorable German" - Loaded Questions Author Interview

2009-08-02T01:34:00.000-07:00

An Honorable German centers on Max Brekendorf, a young German naval officer during WWII who is serving on a battleship in the Atlantic and volunteers for the U-boat force. The German Navy and the submarine on which Max is serving during the war is heavily populated by Nazi loyalists causing a troubling situation for the book's central character in which he must choose between his morals and the increasingly powerful Nazi party. Charles McCain, in his debut novel, has written a book full of fascinating action sequences and great detail gained by years of research as you'll read below.

Stay tuned tomorrow for a Loaded Questions exclusive - an unprinted excerpt from An Honorable German!

Loaded Questions: This is your first novel; how are you enjoying being a published author? Are you heading off on a book tour?

Charles McCain: I'm still getting used to it. My biggest surprise is the interest people take in my life as a novelist. Given that I spend large amounts of time alone; reading or writing or thinking, my life as a novelist ain’t too glamorous. Everyone wants to learn the process of how I write a novel. They assume there is a “way” to do it; a step by step process of some sort which I follow. When I tell people it is a mystery to me how the novelist part of me actually works , they seem disappointed. I liken it to someone who cooks by feel and someone who cooks with a recipe. I write by “feel.” That’s all I know about it.

Writing has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. By age ten I was writing about things going on around me. When I was fourteen I tried to write my first novel—didn’t get very far—and later on in my late teens I wrote two novels, which I threw away. The corollary to novel writing is novel reading and there were many years when I read two hundred or more novels. Curiously, I don’t read a lot of novels these days.

I wrote the initial drafts of An Honorable German in the early 1980s shortly after I graduated from college. I was 21, and determined to be a published novelist. My life took a different course for many years but I always felt that somehow I would seize the brass ring. So becoming a published novelist is the fulfillment of a life long dream. To have my talent recognized and to walk past a bookstore and see my book in the window gives me a warm feeling of satisfaction and achievement. Sometimes I read through my novel and think, “I wrote this!”

I’m not off on a book tour. As an unknown first time novelist, there is no way I can sell enough books to cover the costs to the publisher of a book tour. I’ll just have to wait until I’m famous! I do have friends in various parts of the country who are going to hold book signing parties for me after Labor Day and I anticipate those will sell a lot of books, partially because my friends will make it clear to everyone they invite that they have to but a lot of books.

A friend of mine in my home state of South Carolina went to visit with her priest several weeks ago to discuss several spiritual issues. Before starting their discussion, she made him buy go online and buy a book. Another friend was in a B&N in Manhattan and a man was standing next to her at the fiction table looking through a book and he couldn’t decide whether to buy it. She actually took it out of his hands and gave him my book and said a friend wrote it and he must read it. And he bought it!

LQ: You have written that the idea for this story first struck you in the late 70s when you came across a Time Magazine article from 1944 about German POWs escaping from a camp in Arizona. How detailed was your initial idea? Were you simply interested in exploring how the Germans came to be POWs in Arizona and where they were trying to go, or did were you struck by a more complete picture of the story you wanted to tell?

CM: I initially wanted to write the German version of The Great Escape. But first I had to get the men to the POW camp. Several Germans named in the Time Magazine article had been aboard the Graf Spee, including the leader of the escape, who had been the Senior Navigation Officer. I later corresponded with him. These men from the Graf Spee had escaped from Argentina in 1940 and had made their way back to Germany and served on U-Boats which is how they got captured. I discovered all of this through my research. The journey of these men from the Graf Spee to U-Boats to captivity in a POW camp in Arizona fascinated me.

When I plotted all that out over time, and wrote and rewrote different pieces of the novel, it finally became clear that the journey of the protagonist to the POW camp was the most interesting and longest part of the story line. But this was more of an unconscious process at the time. Only by looking backwards do I understand it.

LQ: The depth of historical detail in this book is amazing. What sort of sources did you look to in exploring German history? Did you focus primarily on history from the German point of view or did you just read anything you could get your hands on?

CM: Most readers tell me that they are fascinated by the small facts woven into the narrative. It helps them connect with the characters. I wish I could say I had this in mind when I wrote the novel but I didn’t. I just find small details about history to be fascinating and when I would talk to people over the years, they were always intrigued by the small details such as the Graf Spee having Chinese laundrymen aboard.

Slipping in those facts took a whole lot of thinking and rewriting. I liken it to painting with watercolors on an egg shell. I had to paint the history in very delicately, so delicately that people would not actually notice the history but simply come across a historical fact as a natural part of the story.

In terms of researching, I just read anything I could get my hands on for many years. I started reading about World War Two when I twelve so my interest in the subject arose early in my life. In college I majored in history and spent most of my spare time—when not being a delinquent—reading history and novels. One of the reasons I read so many books when researching is that “I don’t know what I don’t know.”

Hundreds of times I came across small facts that I never would have imagined—such as people in Berlin playing ping-pong during the war. Often I would plough through a five hundred page book like The German National Railway in World War II and find maybe one or two facts that were useful. But those facts were important to know. One of the facts that came from that book—actually its in two volumes (I will lend them to you if you want to read them!!)—was how trains in Germany during WW II were often made up of rail cars they had stolen from countries they had conquered. That is the kind of detail which gives that sense of verisimilitude and “you were there” feeling to the novel.

Additionally, I met a guy on the Deutsche Kriegsmarine forum who had recently retired from the German navy and had an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of the German navy and of Germany. We got to know each other via email and both came to realize the other person was above board. Jürgen, his name, first asked me if I had seen the movie U-571 (with Matthew McConathy) and what had I thought of it? I told him I almost stood up in the middle of the movie and yelled, “this is all completely wrong!” That was his feeling and he said he would do anything to prevent another U-571 from happening so he would do anything he could to help me. He didn’t realize what he was getting into. BTW, U-571 was so historically inaccurate that for the first time ever, the Chief of Naval History for the U.S. Navy issued a statement saying the movie was highly inaccurate.

Jürgen was a huge help in many ways. He not only read the entire manuscript, he corrected mistakes in how I described a ship being maneuvered and informed me that in the German Navy, unlike the US Navy, officers did not swear in front of the men and that no one ever used the popular four letter word, with the letters ing often added. In fact there wasn’t a German expression for that. He also had me change such things as officers running to battle stations (German navy officers are instructed to never, ever run), and he corrected something I never would have thought of: German Navy officers never clicked their heels when receiving orders as did German army men. The reason: you would never bring your feet together on a ship since you could easily fall over.

He supplied several dozen small details, such as what type of cigarettes the officer’s smoked. His father had served in the German Navy in WW II and he had talked with his father extensively over the years about his service in WW II. Jürgen even gave me a copy of his father’s unpublished memoirs which also had fascinating details, many about cadet life in the 1930s. Jürgen read the entire manuscript and was an invaluable help.

In the last years I read or re-read German history books by the dozens and continue to do so to this day. I also bought a lot of stuff on EBay from the era such as books published by the German Navy as P.R. during the war and I looked at hundreds and hundreds of photographs. To write a World War Two epic from the German POV required that I know German history so well that I would automatically know how the different characters would have reacted to events around them. When writing, I almost had to temporarily became German. It sounds weird but if you are writing authentic historical fiction you have to be able to project yourself into the time you are writing about. This caused some confusion in the editing process.

Example: In 1943 a major British air raid on Hamburg killed 50,000 people. In the novel, the protagonist discusses this with several others and uses the figure of 200,000 people killed. The copy editor flagged that, which was his job, and pointed out that Wikipedia said only 50,000 people were killed.

I told him that he was absolutely correct. That it had been established after the war, that only 50,000 people were killed in the RAF raid on Hamburg in 1943. But at the time German newspapers, all of which were under government censorship, reported 200,000 people had been killed. Therefore, that would be the only figure the character would have know. The New York Times also used that figure in its coverage, claiming to have verified the figure with neutral sources in Berlin.

So when writing An Honorable German I had to know not only the actual facts of a situation but I had to know what the people of the era had been told since you can never, ever, write anything that gives the slightest hint that the characters have some foreknowledge of events since they don’t and couldn’t. That would break the “suspension of disbelief.”

We know who won the war and the history of the various events that make up the war, but the characters don’t. When rewriting the novel I watched like a hawk to ensure there was nothing in the narrative which was out of synch with the era. I originally had a florescent light in one scene and I tracked down when florescent lights started to be manufactured. They were not being made in the year the scene occurs so I had to change it.

And finally, I had to understand and be familiar with the entire war from several sides to write the novel. That involved reading a whole lot of books.

LQ: Would you ever consider writing about another aspect of German history?

CM: Right now I wouldn’t write anything outside of the Third Reich during the war years. There are so many untold stories about Germany in World War Two that I plan to stick with that for awhile. It took me years and years to acquire the knowledge I have.

LQ: Without giving away too many of the books details I thought that one of the most poignant parts of the story was when the character Max was in the American south. It is always interesting to see America through the eyes of an outsider but the contrast between the German and American societies and war experiences was really insightful. Was that exploration one of your goals when you sat down to write the book?

I really want to answer this question in a deeply profound and intellectual way so anyone who reads this will be impressed by my forethought and literary touch. Yet, truth be told,

I never thought of that until you mentioned it in your question. When I’m writing, I’m focused on three things: creating characters who are realistic, moving the story as fast as I can in what I call my “waterfall style”, and maintaining complete historical authenticity.

I never think about symbolism when I’m writing. I’m not sending a message. I’m just trying to tell the story in the quickest, most dramatic and factual way. Because I’m from the Deep South, and was living in Louisiana when I first wrote the drafts, and there were POW camps in MS which was right next door, it was easy to write those scenes since I knew exactly how people would have behaved and would have said. As sickening as it was, strict segregation was maintained all through the South during the war which often found white German soldiers eating in restaurants African- American G.I.s could not eat it. The Germans were the enemy but they were white. One of very key scenes in those chapters was a story told to me by an old timer in New Orleans in the early 80s.

LQ: You've said that one of the hardest things about finalizing this book was cutting sections that didn't move the story forward. Can you describe one of your favorite scenes that didn't end up making the final version?

CM: There is a scene featuring Max’s father, Johann which I really, really liked but cut down to a few sentences from a page and a half. He calls on Countess von Woller at her request to tell her details of how her oldest son, Ernst, perished at Verdun. She asks Johann such questions as “did he have a quick death, Sergeant Major?” “Did he suffer?” etc. And Johann assures her that he had a quick death.

But Ernst didn’t have a quick death. He took a piece of shrapnel through the side of his head which blinded him and drove him to madness with pain. It was horrible, Ernst tried to claw out his own eyes, he suffered terribly. As Countess von Woller asks these questions, the description of the actual events is told through interior monologue from Johann’s point of view. He keeps promising her on his oath as a Prussian soldier, or in the sight of God that Ernst didn’t suffer. Only we know he is lying about the entire incident to save her from the brutal truth. And its very moving and says a lot about Johann. But we already know that Johann is a sensitive man in his own way, that he had the deepest respect and admiration for “Herr Ernst” and that Johann took care of his men. So it wasn’t necessary to repeat it but it was a wonderful scene. I’ve attached it so you can read it. I guess it would be an “outtake.”

LQ: And to sort of piggyback on that question, because I am suddenly struck by the fact that books should come in collector's editions with "extras" much like DVDs do, I read that you created extensive histories and family trees for each character. How detailed did you get? What are some of the silly, random facts that you used to shape a characters world view that were never explicitly stated in the book?

CM: Hmmmm. I’m not sure about that. I worry it might destroy the “suspension of disbelief” which is so critical to maintain. I think it was Bismarck who said the two things you shouldn’t watch being made were sausage and legislation. I would add novels to that list.

Besides the family trees, I wrote down in detail how Johann met his wife, what her parents were like and what his parents were like. His wife’s parents had a large farm in Silesia and employed lots of farm workers which would have put his wife on a higher social level. I sketched out Johann’s military career.

I wrote how it was that Max met Mareth. I wrote scenes which weren’t intended to go into the book such as how Max lost his virginity, how the village priest keep wanting him to go into the priesthood and how strongly he resisted especially when he started to sleep with women. I wrote about Max stealing pipe tobacco from his father and coughing so badly he started crying and his father picked him up and walked him up and down in the garden till he got over the coughing fit. His father taught him to sword fight. Lots and lots of things like that along with a very specific timeline of Max’s life and what was going in Germany during each year of his early life.

I wrote down what Mareth’s life in Berlin would have been like during Weimar, the art she would have liked, shows that she would have seen, who her friends were, what kind of car she drove.

LQ: What's next on the horizon for you?

CM: I very much plan to continue with writing novels and hope I can make a living at it. I have always followed my interests in life and that has worked out for me. I’m even more determined to do that now because I was diagnosed with lymphoma three weeks after I signed the final proof of my novel. That was a trick of fate. With the help of the Almighty and the brilliance of the physicians at the National Cancer Institute, I was cured of that monster. But it was yet another reminder to me of how brief and fragile life is. No one knows the future so you need to enjoy the present and take risks in the present and not wait until everything is lined up since that never happens.

Pillars of the Earth Television Series Starts Filming

2009-07-26T16:10:00.000-07:00

I will have to apologize for the informality of this post but I have some very exciting news to share! According to the web page of acclaimed author Ken Follett his best-selling novel Pillars of the Earth is currently being filmed in Hungary and Austria as part of an eight-hour limited series! This may not be new news to some of you but it is to me so you'll have to bear with me. The news was even sweeter when I read that Ian McShane (Deadwood and the somewhat enjoyable but quickly cancelled Kings on NBC) will play the dastardly Waleran Bygod.

Sergio Mimica-Gezzan, who has helmed episodes of “Heroes” and “Saving Grace,” and served as Steven Spielberg’s first assistant director on “Saving Private Ryan” and “Schindler’s List,” is directing the series from a script by John Pielmeier (”Hitler: The Rise of Evil”), who also stars in the production.

As some of you may remember, I conducted an interview with author Ken Follett a few years ago before the release of World Without End, the sequel of sorts to Pillars of the Earth. We talked about Pillars of the Earth, fact that it had just been selected as an Oprah Book Club pick and the success that the novel continued to have over twenty years after its release. Click here to read my entire interview with best-selling author Ken Follett.

The cast, according to IMDB.com, is as follows:

Ian McShane as Waleran Bygod

Rufus Sewell as Tom Builder

Matthew Macfadyen as Prior Philip

Donald Sutherland as Earl Bartholomew

Eddie Redmayne as Jack Jackson

Hayley Atwell as Aliena

Natalia Wörner as Ellen

Robert Bathurst as Percy Hamleigh

Liam Garrigan as Alfred

David Oakes as William Hamleigh

Tony Curran as King Stephen of England

Sarah Parish as Regan Hamleigh

Skye Bennett as Martha

Götz Otto as Walter

Anatole Taubman as Remigius

Jody Halse as Johnny Eightpence

Kate Dickie as Agnes

Sidney Johnston as Little Brother Jonathan

David Bark-Jones as Francis

Sam Claflin as Richard

The series has yet to be picked up in the UK or the US but I have a feeling that we'll have news soon enough about how and where it will air.

So -- what do you think? Are you as excited as I am at the prospect of an eight-hour Pillars of the Earth series? Do you think the casting has been done well? (If not please do offer your own suggestions...) Do comment!

If you'd like a refresher on some of the characters here is a link to a handy family tree of the key characters in Pillars of the Earth from Follett's site.

Index of Author Interviews

2009-06-26T10:34:00.000-07:00

An index of over 50 Loaded Questions interviews with authors from a number of genres and literary backgrounds. Stay tuned for more updates.

Baker, Ellen - Keeping the House
Blixt, David - The Master of Verona
Brooks, Geraldine - People of the Books, Year of Wonders, March
Christopher, Nicholas - The Bestiary, A Trip to the Stars, Veronica
Delaney, Frank - Tipperary, Ireland, Shannon
Delors, Catherine - Mistress of the Revolution
Ebershoff, David - The 19th Wife, Pasadena, The Danish Girl
Emberley, Ed - Drawing Book of Animals, Make a World, Drawing Books of Faces
Epstein, Jennifer Cody - The Painter From Shanghai
Furnivall, Kate (Part One) - The Russian Concubine, The Red Scarf, The Girl From Junchow
Furnivall, Kate (Part Two)
Follett, Ken - World Without End, The Pillars of the Earth, Eye of the Needle
Galchen, Rivka - Atmospheric Disturbances
George, Margaret - Helen of Troy, The Memoirs of Cleopatra, Mary Queen of Scotland
Gortner, C.W. - The Last Queen, The Secret Lion
Groff, Lauren - The Monsters of Templeton, Delicate Edible Birds
Higginbotham, Susan - The Traitor's Wife, Hugh and Bess
Holdefer, Charles - The Contractor, Nice
Jecks, Michael - Dispensation of Death, A Moorland Hanging, No Law in the Land
Jordan, Hillary - Mudbound
Kent, Kathleen - The Heretic's Daughter
Kingman, Peg - Not Yet Drown'd
Kling, Kevin - The Dog Says How, Kevin Kling's Holiday Inn
Krasikov, Sana - One More Year: Stories
Lamb, Wally - The Hour I First Believed, She's Come Undone, I Know This Much Is True
Lasser, Scott - The Year that Follows, Battle Creek, All I Could Get
Leleux, Robert - The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy
Lewycka, Marina - The Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, Strawberry Fields
Lipman, Elinor - Then She Found Me, The Family Man, The Pursuit of Alice Thrift
Mailman, Erika - The Witch's Trinity, Women of Ill Fame
Maloy, Kate - Every Last Cuckoo
Maxwell, Robin - Signora Da Vinci, The Queen's Bastard, The Wild Irish
Maltman, Thomas - The Night Birds
Mendelsen, Charlotte - When We Were Bad, Daughters of Jerusalem
Moore, Christopher - A Dirty Job, Lamb, Fool: A Novel
Moran, Michelle - Nefertiti, The Heretic Queen, Cleopatra's Daughter
Murphy, Yannick - Signed, Mata Hari, Here They Come
Niffenegger, Audrey - The Time Traveler's Wife, Her Fearful Symphony
Penman, Sharon Kay (Part One) - Here Be Dragons, Sunne in Splendour
Penman, Sharon Kay (Part Two) - Devil's Brood
Picoult, Jodi - Handle With Care, My Sister's Keeper, The Pact
Robison, John Elder - Look Me in the Eye
Roach, Mary (Part One) Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Spook
Roach, Mary (Party Two) Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
Russell, Mary Doria - Dreamers of the Day, The Sparrow, Children of God
See, Lisa - Peony in Love, Shanghai Girls
Stoller, Ty - The Monkey Jungle
Tinti, Hannah - The Good Thief
Varlow, Sally - The Lady Penelope
Vantrease, Brenda Rickman - The Illuminator, The Mercy Seller
Willig, Lauren - The Temptation of the Night Jasmine, The Pink Carnation Series
Winfield, Jess - My Name is Will, What Would Shakespeare Do?
Worth, Sandra - The King's Daughter, The Rose of York, Lady of the Roses

Elinor Lipman author of The Family Man: Loaded Questions Interview

2009-06-23T15:00:00.000-07:00

The Family Man marks Elinor Lipman's tenth novel. Lipman has made a career out of writing lightly comedic novels full of characters that are engaging, heartfelt and yet entirely human. Lipman's latest novel focuses on Henry Archer, a single openly gay attorney who's a stand up guy. The fun of The Family Man begins when Henry's life is entered, once again, by his shallow and hard to handle ex-wife, Denise. Henry's former wife finds herself on hard times and does precisely what she frequently did during their marriage -- attempt to get Henry to solve her problems. The heart of the novel, however, has to do with the relationship between Henry and Thalia, Denise's grown daughter whom Henry had contact with when she was a child. Henry attempts to make up for lost time as he and Thalia forge an amusing relationship that allows our protagonist to fully cope with the past and look towards the future.

Kelly Hewitt: Your novel Then She Found Me was turned into a feature film in 2007 starring and directed by Helen Hunt. I have also read that both The Ladies' Man and The Pursuit of Alice Thrift are also in pre-production. I always wonder how authors feel after seeing their literary works translated onto the big screen. How did you feel about the adaptation of Then She Found Me? To what extent, if any, are you involved in the production aspect of your two latest novels turned motion pictures?

Elinor Lipman: Actually, the latter two are not in pre-production; by now barely in development. Screenplay rewrites are in the works and directors are attached, but I am never sanguine about movie prospects because everything is nothing until it's something (a Jack Nicholson quote.) Then She Found Me took 19 years from option to screen, which explains my Hollywood pessimism. I did love my movie, though, and did not mind the changes from the book. I hear from loyalists all the time who think that the novel should have been, essentially, the screenplay. I direct the crybabies to something I wrote for Huffington Post when the movie came out. (Click here to read the article.)

KH: A fan of your novels wrote in a review that the best part of your writing is that you develop your supporting characters just as fully as your primary characters. This is something that I noticed too, it certainly makes The Family Man and your other novels more compelling and complete. Is that something you focus on or that comes naturally, the dedication to providing the reader with fully fleshed out supporting and primary characters?

EL: It's not something I focus on. My goal is always good storytelling and verbal economy. I'd like to think that if a supporting character feels fully developed it's not because I described his childhood or the wind in the trees outside his bedroom window, but because I found the right combination of telling details.

KH: In a review of your novel The Inn at Lake Devine the Chicago Tribune wrote of your work “Think Jane Austin in the Catskills!” In reviewing your latest novel, The Family Man, the Washington post dubbed the novel a “screwball comedy from 'an Austen-like stylist'”. You have been dubbed a modern Jane Austin on more than one occasion. How does that sit with you?

EL: Hmmm. How would one feel about being compared to a beloved and timeless author? Maybe: It is a truth universally acknowledged that any novelist in possession of her right mind would be thrilled.

KH: After writing nine novels you've probably been compared to all sorts of literary figures. Can you think of one that was crazy or totally off base?

EL: Actually, not all sorts of literary figures. Well, once a British critic wrote, "Imagine, if you can, a cross between Philip Roth and Melissa Bank." The L.A. Times said I was Larry David without the whining. I don't see that, but I loved it anyway.

KH: I am struck, after having read several interviews and features on you over the last couple of years, by the fact that everyone says the same thing. You're nice, cheerful, positive, upbeat and comfortably so despite the occasional ribbing of your son and husband. Why do you think that, in interviews and features on you and your career, there is such a focus, maybe even a hint of disbelief, on your good nature?

EL: I noticed early on that the bar is set pretty low in publishing. I called my agent's office once and said politely to a temp, "This is Elinor Lipman calling for X. Is she there?" The temp reported back to my agent, "Who is Elinor Lipman? She's the nicest person I talked to all day." See? Low expectations.

KH: Have you ever had the urge to play against type by writing that is unlike the traditional Lipman novel?

EL: Every time I think I've done that, woven death or anti-semitism or racism or villainy into the work, people still think it's funny. I'm told it's the voice. I do want to be seen as a good observer with a wry eye, but I'm always surprised at lines people laugh at when I'm doing readings in public. And believe me, I've been a judge for the National Book Awards, for the National Endowment for the Arts, for PEN this and that, so that I come away from the piles of submissions with no desire to go earnest.

KH: The Family Man marks your tenth published work since Into Love and Out Again in 1988. Looking back at twenty plus years of writing, has the process gotten any easier?

EL: No, not easier. On many days I think harder. One thing that experience has taught me is to know that having doubts about the material all the way through, and feeling lost and out of ideas is part of the process. It happens with every book. It helps to think--and to have my friends remind me--"Ha! That's exactly what you said about (fill in any past work)." Their mocking of the same old familiar doubts helps me put my hands back on the keyboard.

KH: I have not come across it used to describe any of your recent work but I wonder, how do you feel about the term “chick lit”?

EL: Hate it. I don't like it when reviewers use it and I especially don't like it when publishers market books that way.

KH: Your readers have expressed a great deal of admiration for the protagonist of The Family Man, the openly gay, stand up guy Henry Archer. As an author what draws you to a character like Henry?

EL: I can't really say I'm drawn to a character when I'm doing the actual drawing. I did know I wanted Henry to be sweetly paternal, a gentleman, old-fashioned and well-adjusted in a somewhat nervous fashion. I don't try to make political statements, but I did want readers to come away thinking, "What a decent man. Why can't all fathers be gay?"

KH: The Family Man has only been in bookstores a month or so but I am sure that some of your faithful readers are already wondering what's next for Elinor Lipman. Have you already begun work on your next project?

EL: Yes. I'm about 100 pages into the next one. That sounds like I'm a fast writer, but I finished The Family Man more than a year ago. This new one is also set in New York, and all I'll say is that the recession is nibbling at the edges of the story.

Upcoming Author Interviews: Colum McCann, Emily Listfield, Tess Callahan and more

2009-06-21T17:00:00.001-07:00

The Best Intentions by Emily Listfield
Published by Atria - May 5, 2009
352 pages

After tossing and turning all night, thirty-nine-year-old Lisa Barkley wakes up well before her alarm sounds. With two daughters about to start another year at their elite Upper East Side private school and her own career hitting a wall, the effort of trying to stay afloat in that privileged world of six-story town houses and European jaunts has become increasingly difficult, especially as Manhattan descends into an economic freefall.

As Lisa looks over at her sleeping husband, Sam, she can't help but feel that their fifteen-year marriage is in a funk that she isn't able to place. She tries to shake it off and tells herself that the strain must be due to their mounting financial pressures. But later that morning, as her family eats breakfast in the next room, Lisa finds herself checking Sam's voicemail and hears a whispered phone call from a woman he is to meet that night. Is he having an affair?

When Lisa shares her suspicions with her best friend, Deirdre, at their weekly breakfast, Deirdre claims it can't be true. But how can Lisa fully trust her opinion when Deirdre is still single and mired in an obsessive affair with a glamorous photographer even as it hovers on the edge of danger?

When Deirdre's former college flame, Jack, comes to town and the two couples meet to celebrate his fortieth birthday, the stage is set for an explosive series of discoveries with devastating consequences.Filled with suspense and provocative questions about the relationships we value most, Best Intentions is a tightly woven drama of love, friendship and betrayal.

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
Published by Random House - June 23, 2009
368 pages

In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCann’s stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people.

Let the Great World Spin is the critically acclaimed author’s most ambitious novel yet: a dazzlingly rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s.

Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, struggles with his own demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the middle of the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gather in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn their sons who died in Vietnam, only to discover just how much divides them even in grief. A young artist finds herself at the scene of a hit-and-run that sends her own life careening sideways. Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenage daughter, determined not only to take care of her family but to prove her own worth.

Elegantly weaving together these and other seemingly disparate lives, McCann’s powerful allegory comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the city’s people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the “artistic crime of the century.” A sweeping and radical social novel, Let the Great World Spin captures the spirit of America in a time of transition, extraordinary promise, and, in hindsight, heartbreaking innocence. Hailed as a “fiercely original talent” (San Francisco Chronicle), award-winning novelist McCann has delivered a triumphantly American masterpiece that awakens in us a sense of what the novel can achieve, confront, and even heal.

April & Oliver by Tess Callahan
Grand Central Publishing - June 3, 2009
336 pages

Best friends since childhood, the sexual tension between April and Oliver has always been palpable. Years after being completely inseparable, they become strangers, but the wildly different paths of their lives cross once again with the sudden death of April's brother. Oliver, the responsible, newly engaged law student finds himself drawn more than ever to the reckless, mystifying April - and cracks begin to appear in his carefully constructed life. Even as Oliver attempts to "save" his childhood friend from her grief, her menacing boyfriend and herself, it soon becomes apparent that Oliver has some secrets of his own--secrets he hasn't shared with anyone, even his fiancé. But April knows, and her reappearance in his life derails him. Is it really April's life that is unraveling, or is it his own? The answer awaits at the end of a downward spiral...towards salvation.

Lake Overturn by Vestal McIntyre
Published by Harper - April 21, 2009
448 pages

Lina and Connie are single mothers, neighbors in Eula's trailer park. Lina, the daughter of migrant Mexican farm workers, is trying to cope with her angry teenage son Jesús, newly returned after living with wealthy white foster parents. Connie, long abandoned, struggles with her literal reading of Old Testament laws against remarriage, especially when a handsome missionary visits her congregation. The women's younger sons, Enrique and Gene, are misfits whose mutual love of science offers stability and respite from schoolyard cruelties.

Determined to win the statewide science fair, Enrique and Gene devise an experiment involving "lake overturn," a real scientific phenomenon in which deadly gases collect and eventually erupt from a lake's depths. In their quest to discover if Eula could suffer from such an event, the boys come into contact with an odd assortment of locals, including the frail-hearted school principal with grand ambitions, a rich but lonely lawyer who finds love outside his marriage just as his wife is succumbing to cancer, and a woman tortured by a past of abuse and addiction who decides to turn things around by offering herself as a surrogate mother.

Sunnyside by Glen David Gold
Published by Knopf - May 5, 2009
576 pages

Glen David Gold, author of the best seller Carter Beats the Devil, now gives us a grand entertainment with the brilliantly realized figure of Charlie Chaplin at its center: a novel at once cinematic and intimate, heartrending and darkly comic, that captures the moment when American capitalism, a world at war, and the emerging mecca of Hollywood intersect to spawn an enduring culture of celebrity.

Sunnyside opens on a winter day in 1916 during which Charlie Chaplin is spotted in more than eight hundred places simultaneously, an extraordinary delusion that forever binds the overlapping fortunes of three men: Leland Wheeler, son of the world’s last (and worst) Wild West star, as he finds unexpected love on the battlefields of France; Hugo Black, drafted to fight under the towering General Edmund Ironside in America’s doomed expedition against the Bolsheviks; and Chaplin himself, as he faces a tightening vise of complications—studio moguls, questions about his patriotism, his unchecked heart, and, most menacing of all, his mother.

The narrative is as rich and expansive as the ground it covers, and it is cast with a dazzling roster of both real and fictional characters: Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Adolph Zukor, Chaplin’s (first) child bride, a thieving Girl Scout, the secretary of the treasury, a lovesick film theorist, three Russian princesses (gracious, nervous, and nihilist), a crew of fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants movie makers, legions of starstruck fans, and Rin Tin Tin.

An Honnorable German by Charles McCain
Grand Central Publishing - May 18, 2009
384 pages

When World War II begins, Max Brekendorf, a proud young German naval officer, fights for his country with honor and courage. With the unstoppable German war machine overrunning Europe, Max looks ahead to a bright future with his fiancée, Mareth.
But as the war progresses, their future together becomes less and less certain. German victories begin to fade. In the North Atlantic, Max must face the increasing strength of the Allies on ever more harrowing missions. Berlin itself is savaged by bombing, making life for Mareth increasingly dangerous and desperate. And as the Third Reich steadily crumbles, Nazi loyalists begin to infiltrate Max's crew and turn their terror on Germany's own armed forces.

Recognizing what his nation has become, Max is forced to make a choice between his own sense of morality, and his duty to the Reich. With its stirring, rarely seen glimpse of the German home front during WWII, vivid characters, and evocation of the drama and terror of war at sea, An Honorable German is a suspense-filled story of adventure, of love and loss, and of honor and redemption.

Scott Laser author of "The Year that Follows": Loaded Questions Interview

2009-06-20T23:50:00.000-07:00

The Year That Follows by Scott Lasser is a novel that delves into the lives of two related and yet entirely different individuals. On one hand there's the struggling yet intelligent, fiercely independent Cat who is a single mother living in Detroit. Then there's Sam, a man who knows his life is coming to a close as well as the fact that he's not done all that good of a job at many things especially where is daughter Cat is concerned. The lives of both Cat and Sam are changed forever when Wall Street broker Kyle -- Cat's brother and Sam's son, is killed in the attack on the World Trade Center buildings on September 11th, 2001.

In this third novel author Scott Lasser deals delicatly and yet honestly with both the tragedy of 9/11 and the equally unsettling tragedy occurs when families grow apart. The Year that Follows focuses on the paths of Cat and her father Sam, both flawed individuals, with a frank honesty as their lives draw them back together. Front and center is the theme of lost children, Kyle's death, Cat's withdrawn relationship with her father and in what is perhaps the most compelling of the novel's storylines Cat's search for the infant child her brother had just learned was his days before his death. Lasser does a very admirable job of telling the story of real people with real flaws attempting a real reconciliation.

Kelly Hewitt: I read on your blog (Scott Lasser's Blog) that you have been working to publicize the release of The Year That Follows and are doing a book tour. In a different post you wrote: “writing is not performance, not really, but writers are sometimes called upon to perform, live, in person. I’m glad of it. Sure, it’s what’s on the page that matters, but a writer’s physical presence can bring added attention to the words.” I am curious, how have your book tour visits been
going? Do you still feel the same about the necessity of an author to perform from time to time?

Scott Lasser: How’s the tour going? My view is this: anytime you can find a bookstore that wants to have you visit it’s going well. I’ve enjoyed the events so far, about half of those scheduled. I don’t know that there is a necessity for writers to perform, but I do think that every little bit of promotion helps, and readings and talks are part of that.

Television still seems the most effective marketing machine ever invented, but writers hardly show up there anymore. (We’re talking lack of invitations more than lack of willingness. Even Cormac McCarthy went on Oprah, one of the last venues.) In fact, it seems likely that the publishing houses will start producing webcast interviews and the like, a relatively cheap way to reach readers. In fact, Kelly, you might consider this. One thing seems fairly clear to me: people buy stuff off screens.

KH: The events that make The Year That Follows such a great novel are centered around the death of Kyle during the 9/11 attacks. I have to admit that while reading the beginning chapters, I was very nervous about how you would deal with such a sensitive subject. My fears were unnecessary as you dealt with the events of 9/11 very respectfully and subtly by providing the reader with scenes before and after but not during. Did you ever consider writing the scenes in which Kyle died in the 9/11 attacks?

SL: No. Journalists did a great job of that, and had I added such a scene, with the inevitable cell phone call and the like, it would have felt gratuitous, which is to say not essential to this particular story.

KH: I thought it was great that Bryan Cranston (television's Breaking Bad and Malcolm in the Middle) recently plugged your book in Time magazine. Have there been other surprising endorsements of your novels?

SL: Well, it does seem that I owe Bryan Cranston a favor. And yes, I’ve had some surprising endorsements, mostly from other writers whom I respect greatly and who also blurbed my books: Christopher Tilghman, Richard Russo, Anita Shreve, and Wally Lamb, none of whom I’ve met, with the exception of Russo, five years after the fact. I’m grateful to each.

KH: Your website (click here to visit) notes that you have worked a wide variety of jobs: including ski instructor, English instructor, waiter, steel worker, government bond trader, and financial advisor and now author. Do any of your crazy work stories from so many professions find their way into your writing?

SL: Of course. I published a whole novel about Wall Street. A couple years ago I published a ski-instructor story. I’m currently working on a novel that will make some use of my time in the steel plant. I’m troubled by novels whose characters have no visible means of support. I don’t know about you, but I seem to spend a large amount of my time trying to make a living.

KH: Your first novel Battle Creek centers around a minor-league baseball team and America's relationship with its favorite sport. All I Could Get, your second novel, focuses on business and the world of bond trading. Each of these novels has a theme but also deal with issues of family and relationships. The Year that Follows seems less like your first two novels because it focuses much more on family not the world of baseball or the world of bond trading. Do you think that's a fair assessment? What would you tell your readers is the theme of The Year that Follows.

SL: Battle Creek and All I Could Get grew out of my experiences in very male milieus, whereas The Year That Follows did not; in fact, it has a heroine. I suppose that might explain the difference you feel. As for the theme, well, that’s always a tough one for the writer. I prefer that the reader makes that call. I guess I could say it’s a book about bloodlines and the meaning of family. Man, that sounds trite.

KH: In an interview I did with Wally Lamb not all that long ago he expressed a worry about how many stories he has left in him and noted that each novel seems to take him longerand longer. Now that you've written your third novel, have you ever had a similar feeling?

SL: Oh boy, there’s as question. Yes and no. I’m usually cutting things from novels. I suppose I figure if I can’t make it go away it will come back in the next book. As for length of time to write, well, I’d like to be faster. I’m actually working on that.

KH:There's one question I always have to ask. I realize that The Year That Follows has just been released but what can fans of you and your novels expect to see next from you? Have you already begun work on another project?

SL: I’m working on a new novel set in my hometown of Detroit. My goal is to have a first draft done by the end of this year, with something I could show my agent by the end of the following year, if not before that. I am certainly feeling more urgency now. Still, The Year That Follows came out about a year after it was accepted at Knopf, just to give you an idea of the lead time on these things.

Willig Contest Winners

2009-06-20T17:35:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed that we initially were giving away just two copies of Lauren Willig's new book The Temptation of the Night Jasmine. However, the response from readers was so great that I decided to toss in my personal copy (brand new) to the giveaway. Thanks to everyone who entered and to Lauren Willig and publisher Dutton for donating the books for the giveaway.

Notice that things have been quiet here lately? That's because we have a ton of new interviews, reviews and giveaways coming up very soon. Stay tuned.

Hillary Jordan - Author Update

2009-05-27T12:43:00.000-07:00

I often chat with authors as their books are about to be released or have just hit stores. It is not often that I am able to check in with an author to see what life after the arrival of a best-selling book hits the charts is like. Book tours, interviews and the of course there's always the writing of the next book.

In a new series Loaded Questions will be featuring Author Update in which past Loaded Questions authors are asked to write about what's been going on since the last time we chatted.

We begin with Hillary Jordan author of Mudbound her first novel and winner of the 2006 Bellwether Prize. Mudbound takes place in Mississippi Delta, 1946 and focuses on Laura McCallan, a college-educated Memphis schoolteacher who struggles to adapt to her new life on a farm she rightly names Mudbound. Living without modern comforts is a challenge for Laura added to caring for her daughters and striving to live up to her loving husbands expectations. Mudbound, told from the point of view of a number of characters, is a great novel and has been doing very well on Amazon, landing on several bestselling lists and continuing to do so in paperback.

Jordan and I last chatted in July of 2008. We discussed the fact that her mother and her life on a farm in Arkansas was an inspiration for the novel, the research and texts that Jorden read in order to research the period and a quote in which Jordan said she knew "more than should be legally allowable about mules, boll weevils, fertilizer, and the like!"

Click here to read my entire interview with Hillary Jordan for the release of Mudbound.

I wrote to Hillary and simply asked her to write about what life has been like since Mudbound's release and what she's currently working on ...

Hillary wrote:

The fifteen months since Mudbound was published have been a whirlwind. Thanks to Algonquin, which has championed the book in a way that most first novelists never get to experience, I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time on book tour, doing readings, signings and festivals all over the country. It has been exhilarating, exhausting, fascinating, gratifying and occasionally humiliating (like the Memphis talk show I was on where I was clearly second fiddle to a guy eating a 7-lb. hamburger). I’ve gotten to meet so many wonderful book-loving people: fans, booksellers, and other authors. In between, I’ve been going to artists colonies — in Switzerland, Saratoga Springs, the Santa Cruz mountains, and this autumn, Scotland — to work on my second novel. It’s called Red, and it’s set thirty years in the future in a right-wing dystopia (not to be confused with the last eight years). I hope to finish it by the end of the year.

Being published is an amazing thing, and Mudbound has succeeded beyond my wildest fantasies. It was the NAIBA Fiction Book of the Year and won an Alex Award from the American Library Assoc. It was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick and one of IndieNext’s top ten reading group suggestions. Recently, the trade paperback spent a thrilling six weeks on the NY Times extended list (my highest rank was #29). Mudbound has done very well in the UK also, thanks to the “Richard & Judy Show” (their Oprah), which picked it as a book of the month. It has been translated into Serbian and will be published in French and Italian in 2010. There are over 200,000 copies in print worldwide, a number I can hardly believe. Life is good!

-- Hillary Jordan

Thanks Hillary for participating! Interested in learning more about this fantastic new author? Here is a link to her website. Support Loaded Questions by purchasing a copy of Mudbound from Amazon.com (currently under $11.00) by clicking here!

Random Notes: Author Leads and Catherine Delors

2009-05-25T22:04:00.000-07:00

I have gotten a lot of emails from folks with some really great suggestions for authors to interview. Some of these leads are currently being investigated.

Penny wrote "Have you interviewed the delightful, intelligent, first time author, historical novelist Catherine Delors? She does not write those irritating bodice rippers but real historical fiction? She is very knowledgeable in this field and so everything is in its place."

The answer is yes! Here is a link to my interview with the wonderful Catherine Delors when we chatted before the release of her debut novel Mistress of the Revolution.

Stay tuned for more info about upcoming interviews that will be announced soon!

Upcoming Author Interviews

2009-05-17T12:39:00.000-07:00

Elinor Lipman

Author of the new book The Family Man as well as Then She Found Me, The Inn at Lake Devine, My Last Grievance, The Dearly Departed and more.

Carolyn See of The Washington Post wrote of The Family Man: "Just because something is "light" doesn't mean it's not masterful. Lipman's use of dialogue, for instance, is exquisite…Though I read this book twice, I see that I stopped taking notes both times halfway through. Lipman mesmerized me. She hypnotized me. I admit it freely: I fell victim to the Elinor Lipman Effect."

Scott Lasser

Author of the upcoming The Year That Follows as well as Battle Creek and All I Could Get.

Lasser's upcoming novel, due out in June, follows Cat, a single mother living in Detroit when her brother is killed in New York. Cat sets off in search of her brother's child. Her search is still under way when she gets a call from her eighty year old father who is carrying the weight of a secret he has kept from her all her life. He asks Cat to visit him in California, intending to make his peace. . .

Christopher R. Beha

Author of The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else, his first book released in early May.

In The Whole Five Feet, Christopher Beha turns to the great books for answers after undergoing a series of personal and family crises and learning that his grandmother had used the Harvard Classics to educate herself during the Great Depression. Inspired by her example, Beha vows to read the entire Five-Foot Shelf, one volume a week, over the course of the next year.

Who Would You Like to See Us Interview?

2009-05-16T15:16:00.001-07:00

I have said before that when I first started doing Loaded Questions (for a different site) I simply went to my library of books and started sending emails to anyone I could get in touch with. A couple of years later I have had a chance to chat with some of the authors that really changed my view of what it means to be an author and a reader. There are, of course, a good many authors who I still look forward to chatting with. (Anchee Min, where are you?) We have a great line up of new authors and old favorites whose books will be launching this summer already scheduled for interviews. However, I wanted to ask you readers:

Who would you like to see us interview?

I know what dedicated readers you all are. What new authors do you think others would like to hear from? These suggestions can be current bestselling authors, authors with upcoming releases, favorite legends of fiction - you pick. I am hoping that with the help of some publicist and publisher friends that we can seek out your suggestions.

Book Giveaway: The Temptation of the Nigth Jasmine by Lauren Willig

2009-05-15T21:54:00.000-07:00

As I recently alluded to Lauren Willig was nice enough to send along two free copies of her latest novel, The Temptation of the Night Jasmine after our chat.

Contest Details: Let's do this nice and easy. To be entered into the contest simply hit comment. Leave a few words along with an email where you can be reached should you win and you'll be entered!

Good luck and thank you for reading Loaded Questions!

The deadline for this contest will be May 30th.

Lauren Willig Author Interview

2009-05-15T19:53:00.000-07:00

After a number of scheduling issues on both our parts Lauren Willig and I were finally able to sit down to talk about her latest Pink Carnation novel The Temptation of the Night Jasmine. As I think you'll see below Lauren is a serial workaholic. With a background in English history Willig has managed to write a series of historical novels that never get old.

Kelly Hewitt: The last time we chatted you were balancing Harvard Law School and the writing of your popular Pink Carnation books series - two perfectly successful careers at once. I read now that you've finished school and are working at a law firm. Do you think you'll always be a two career kind of person?

Lauren Willig: Life moves very quickly—either that, or we haven’t chatted in way too long! Since our last confab, I’ve left the practice of law. After a year and a half juggling briefs and book deadlines, I decided that enough was enough. The two career model did wonders for my writing, since I had no choice but to write like a maniac whenever the opportunity presented itself, but little for my temper or my social life. I am sad to say that since becoming a full time writer, I have lapsed back into all my old bad habits.

All that being said, I do think I am a two career person, in that I find it much easier to do anything while I’m dodging doing something else. One of the wonderful things about life as a professional writer is that it does often feel like two careers for the price of one. One of these two careers consists of my writing life, which boils down to me, my computer, the characters who inhabit my head, and the coffee with which I fuel them. The other is my author life, in which I get to dash around to conferences, give talks, and answer questions for websites such as yours.

Kelly: Aside from being jealous of your dual ability I have often wondered how it is that you found time to write a book a year with the rigorous law school. A lot of the authors I have chatted with who only write for a living have expressed the difficulty and pressure that comes along with writing a book a year. Is it fair to assume that you are a very scheduled and disciplined writer?

Lauren: Ha. Ha ha ha. Insert hollow laughter here. I’m about as disciplined as the Blob. (No offense to the Blob, who, for all I know, might have a rigorous scholarly work ethic when not spreading himself out over large quantities of terrain and engulfing screaming teenagers). I tend to write in fits and starts. I’ll have stretches of a week or two when I’ll write like the wind, followed by a week of scowling at a blank screen. This may be because I wrote my first four books while scheduling my writing time around other things, or simply a facet of my character. I suspect the latter. Fundamentally, I’m an adrenaline worker. When left to myself, I tend to procrastinate and overthink until panic takes hold, at which point everything suddenly gets done very, very quickly. In the context of a book length project, this divides itself up into lots of little cycles of procrastination and panic.

Kelly: How has the transition from law school to law firm affected your ability to write?

Lauren: The most jarring aspect of moving from an academic calendar to a bona fide job was my inability to schedule. School and novel writing go together like peanut butter and chocolate, largely because one knows exactly what all the major stress points are going to be before they happen. My editor had been very nice about letting me schedule book deadlines around exams, papers, and the other milestones of the academic year. In an office, on the other hand, one can never predict when a crisis will arise, consuming nights and weekends—or when a crisis will suddenly subside into calm. It made planning out writing time rather tricky and taught me valuable lessons about seizing any free moment to write, with no nonsense about muses or writer’s block.

Kelly: We have chatted a few times about our mutual interest in Renaissance European history and the fact that we both have pursued masters degrees in English history (I, sadly, was not so smart as to jump to law school instead of finishing). (Correction: Lauren finished her MA and went on for her doctorate.) When history grad students get into a room the first thing that happens is that everyone gives a rundown of what they think they'll write their looming thesis on. I know you inevitably chose a different path but what did you think you were going to write about?

Lauren: After getting my MA, I spent several years working on my PhD before I jumped ship, including a year in England on fellowship trudging back and forth between the British Library and the Public Records Office. My plan was to finish the dissertation while in law school, so that I could walk off with the PhD and JD at the same time. But by a strange fluke, I signed my first book contract my first month of law school. There went all my dissertation-writing time!

My partially written dissertation was grandiosely titled “Give Caesar his Due: Royalist Conspiracies in the English Civil War, 1646-1649”. It followed the movement of royalist groups in England and abroad between the King’s capture in 1646 and his execution in 1649. One of these days I really do want to dig out my three foot high pile of research notes and just finish the blasted thing, since it really was a great topic, replete with deeds of derring-do and lots of slapstick. My favorite episode was Charles I getting stuck in a window as he tried to escape his Parliamentarian captors. But for the width of the royal shoulders, the trajectory of English history might have been entirely different….

Kelly: I, of course, love that you use a history graduate student to frame your novels. You have also written about another bastion of graduate school life, teaching entry level classes. Do you have any graduate teaching horror stories? (I will have to share mine later.)

Lauren: Oh, heavens. How many of them do you want? Some of my personal favorites involved grading exams (advise to TA’s: open a bottle of wine before approaching those blue books) and finding gems like, “In the Middle Ages, there were no windows. That was why they called it the dark ages. Then in the Renaissance they discovered glass and everything became light.” The post-exam wrangling about grade is also always fun. I had one guy storm into my office and inform me that my giving him a “B” was unconscionable since he was an “A” student. He had brought his transcript to prove it to me. I pointed out that he might be an A student, but it still wasn’t an A paper. He didn’t agree with this. Fortunately, the professor did.

I have a whole bunch of other stories, but they’re not going into print.

Kelly: Your readers have commended the latest novel in your series, The Temptation of the Night Jasmine, for your ability to keep storylines new and exciting, avoiding any of the staleness or repetition that are sometimes synonymous with multiple installments of a series. Is that something that you consider when writing?

Lauren: Repetition is something that any multi-published author has to worry about, and the equation becomes even more delicate when one is dealing with a series. Part of the lure of a series is a certain promise of familiarity. The reader wants to re-enter a familiar world. At the same time, no one wants to feel like they’re reading—or writing!—the same book over and over again. Trying to maintain continuity while keeping the series fresh is a constant challenge for me. In my next book, The Betrayal of the Blood Lily, I moved the action to India to provide a fresh perspective on the series and the time period.

Kelly: Sometimes authors who write a series of novels will map things out in order to have a long term idea of where they are going. Is that something you've done for the Pink Carnation series?

Lauren: I do have long-term plans for the series, but they are always subject to change. For example, my image of the how the series is ultimately going to end hasn’t changed, but a lot of the stuff that goes on in the middle—the intermediate books in the series—has, as my characters grow and develop throughout a multi-book arc. I’ve learned to be more flexible in my plotting because clinging to one image or one idea often stymies the organic development of the series.

Kelly: How many books do you envision the series having?

Lauren: At this point? Um…. Let’s just say it’s entirely open-ended. At some point, I should probably sit down and make important decisions about how I plan to get to my eventual end goal, but at this point I’m still having way too much fun with the series to start plotting the wrap-up. I also love the freedom I have within the series to play with different tropes, character types, and historical events. The Napoleonic Wars cover a broad span of time, countries, and characters and I’m taking full advantage of that. For a more practical answer to your question, I can say that currently there are plans for three more Pink books underway (which would bring us to nine).

Kelly: So, the next book in the series will take place in India. Can you give Loaded Questions readers any exclusive info about the next book?

Lauren: Pink VI recently acquired a title! It is now officially The Betrayal of the Blood Lily.

Blood Lily follows Lady Frederick Staines (nee Miss Penelope Deveraux) to India after her indiscreet behavior found her hustled into a hasty marriage. Penelope and her new husband are sent off to India to give time for the scandal to die down. What Penelope doesn’t realize is that far more dangerous challenges await them in India, where her husband has been appointed Special Envoy to the Court of Hyderabad. Penelope plunges into the treacherous waters of the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad, where no one is quite what they seem—even her own husband.

In a strange country where elaborate court dress masks even more elaborate intrigues and a spy called the Marigold leaves cobras as his calling card, there is only one person Penelope can trust: Captain Alex Reid, the man detailed to escort them to Hyderabad. But Alex has secrets of his own….

The first chapter of Blood Lily is available on my website here and I’ll be posting other updates and excerpts throughout the summer.

Kelly: Thank you so much Lauren for doing the interview and thank you for being so kind as to send along books for our "The Temptation of the Night Jasmine Book Giveaway!"

Lauren: Thanks so much for having me here, Kelly! It’s always so much fun to hang out with you at Loaded Questions.