Archive for the ‘Sundays With Writers’ Category

After I Do: Taylor Jenkins Reid Interview Exclusive

Tuesday, July 18th, 2023

Discover the inspiration for After I Do with this exclusive author interview. Explore the best Taylor Jenkins Reid books in order with this book list.

After I Do: Taylor Jenkins Reid Interview Exclusive

Taylor Jenkins Reid creates the most relatable love stories. I’ve read ALL of Taylor’s novels, and After I Do remains one of my favorites. 

Today we discuss this incredible novel with the author to learn more about her writing process. 

Be sure to stick around for the complete book list of ALL the books by the author.  

After I Do Book by Taylor Jenkins Reid

In this novel, Lauren and Ryan’s marriage reaches the breaking point, and they decide to take a year apart. 

They only have one rule: no contact is allowed. As Lauren embarks on a journey to discover a new identity, she also seeks to understand the concept of marriage. 

As she begins challenging the traditional notions of monogamy and marriage, she grapples with the true meaning of love. 

This surprisingly hopeful book is filled with memorable characters that feel like your own family.  

After I Do: Taylor Jenkins Reid Exclusive Interview

Taylor Jenkins Reid Interview Author Headshot

I’ve read and loved ALL of your books, but this novel might be my favorite. Why did you write about a married couple taking a year apart in After I Do?

First of all, thank you for reading all of my books! 

I came up with the idea for After I Do just as I was finishing Forever, Interrupted. 

I knew that I wanted to delve into a story of what happens after you’ve fallen out of love. I figured the most interesting way for me to do that was to create two people who used to be madly in love with each other and find themselves on the edge of divorce. 

Then the question becomes, “Can they fall back in love?” Answering that was the fun of writing the book.

Ryan’s unsent emails give us insight into his side of the story, while Lauren’s perspective is hers. Why did you tell the story this way instead of a “he said, she said” viewpoint?

Great question. I wrestled with this for a long time. There was even a draft – I think maybe it was draft three – where I worried that I needed to scrap half of the book and add in Ryan’s point of view. 

But I really wanted this to feel like a story of self-exploration and not a book where the reader was choosing sides. 

I wanted the audience to connect with Lauren and her family. So I decided to stick with her point of view and work hard at making Ryan’s voice come through.

There were moments when I laughed out loud at the minor irritations of their married life. Did you channel some of your silly inner rages with your spouse in the email banter between Lauren & Ryan?

Ha! I tried really hard not to air my own dirty laundry in the book but I did tap into the feeling of, “I love you but I hate you so damn much,” in order to capture how frustrating it can be to live with another human being. 

I’m sure some of my own marriage snuck in there unbeknownst to me… Case in point: I have a dog named Rabbit and Lauren and Ryan’s dog is named Thumper (who was a rabbit). 

I didn’t even notice it until a reader pointed it out.  

So there’s probably more of me in there than I realize.

After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid

There are many beautiful moments in this book, but one line really stood out for me in particular that I highlighted. It was, “We are two people who used to be in love. What a beautiful thing to have been. What a sad thing to be.” That was my favorite. 

Were there any scenes that were particularly emotional for you to write about?

I’m thrilled you said that because that line was a particular favorite of mine as well! I always have certain ideas or sentiments that I try to write towards as I’m crafting my first draft. 

And I was most definitely writing toward that line. 

There were a few scenes that were very gratifying and deeply emotional to write but they are all at the end, and I don’t want to spoil anything. 

Suffice it to say, the resolution of everyone’s storylines meant a lot to me.

This novel offers an incredible ensemble cast. Did you have a favorite family member? Do you ever envision writing a book about any of the other characters in this story?

I think every single character in this book has more stories ahead of them. 

This is why I’m super excited that I’ve signed a deal with ABC Family to adapt After I Do as a half-hour series. 

It’s very early stages and the development process is never a sure thing, but I’m very excited about the idea of seeing where Charlie, Rachel, Leslie, Mila, Lauren, and Ryan’s stories take them.

I know you did a lot of research on marriages as you were preparing for this book. Why did you want to research the history of marriage, and what was the most interesting thing you discovered about the act of marriage?

The book is about Lauren and Ryan’s marriage, but it’s also about marriage in general. 

It’s about opting out of marriage, childless marriage, marriage equality, non-monogamous marriage, raising children, etc. 

So I wanted to learn about the many different ways humans have interpreted the word and how the definition is changing with every generation. 

I think the most interesting thing I learned is just how rare monogamous love-based marriage truly is. This type of marriage that we refer to as “traditional marriage,” is fairly new and not particularly common in human history.

Did writing about Lauren’s flaws make you hyper-aware of your own? Did it bring out any of your own insecurities about marriage?

It definitely made me think about what I do in my own relationship that might one day lead to systemic problems. 

When you write a book about how a marriage has gone wrong, it makes you look at your own relationship and analyze whether you’re guilty of any of the things your characters are.

I think writing the book was one of the best things I did for my marriage because it required me to truly ask myself what I thought could ruin a relationship. 

And once you answer a question like that, you have to start heeding your own advice.

Resident Advisors

You are a triple threat! Not only do you write books, but you also have a tv series (Resident Advisors), and write for magazines. How do you keep inspired, and do you have a system for gathering and storing your ideas for these storylines?

I’m a big proponent of lists. I have To Do lists every day as well as project lists on the walls of my office. 

What projects am I currently working on? 

What still needs to be done for each one? 

What do I need to do today? 

And then I have a master list of every idea I’ve ever had, that I use as a well to draw from whenever an opportunity arises.

I’ve been blessed with a neurotic, type-A working style, which means that everything is compartmentalized and controlled. 

That being said, I have a decidedly un-neurotic and non-type-A living style. So I never miss a deadline but I am always losing my keys.

Forever Interrupted by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I am so excited to hear that, Forever, Interrupted,”  is being adapted into a screenplay. What can you tell us about this project? 

As announced, Dakota Johnson is attached to star as Elsie! Which is very exciting.

 And as I understand it, the script is being written right now. 

I am a big fan of the producers – and trust their vision —  so I know they are doing a great job bringing Elsie, Susan, and Ben to life.

Editor’s Note: This still shows as in development.

If you could tell anyone to read one book (other than your own) what would that book be? (see the full list of author’s book recommendations)

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. I stumbled upon it at the used bookstore attached my library and bought a copy of it for four dollars last December. I have since recommended it to everyone that will listen to me and have bought multiple copies. 

It is a retelling of the story of Achilles’s life leading up to and through the Trojan War. I can’t tell you what I love most about it because I love everything about it so much. 

It is stunningly romantic, a pleasure to read, incredibly thought-provoking, and epically tragic, with some of the most wonderful sentences I’ve read in some time. It manages to straddle both classic literature and soap opera in one story. 

It’s so good (and so juicy) that I would call it a guilty pleasure except that you have nothing to feel guilty about because it’s so very beautiful and keenly smart.

New to Taylor Jenkins Reid Books? Here are some answers to the most asked questions! 

What are the Taylor Jenkins Reid Books in order?

  • Forever, Interrupted
  • After I Do
  • Maybe in Another Life
  • One True Loves
  • The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
  • Daisy Jones & The Six
  • Malibu Rising
  • Carrie Soto is Back

Do you need to read the Taylor Jenkins Reid books in order?

You don’t have to read her books in a specific order. Each novel stands alone with its own distinct characters and storylines. I have noted where characters may overlap below. 

What are the Taylor Jenkins Reid books ranked?

Remember, I’ve never met a Taylor Jenkins Reid book that I didn’t love.

My top three picks are The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, After I Do, and Carrie Soto is Back.

Taylor Jenkins Reid Books

Taylor Jenkins Reid Books

This book list includes all of the author’s published books.

Taylor Jenkins Reid is a bestselling author whose works have earned her a place on the New York Times Bestseller list.

Her books have received recognition from prominent book clubs and platforms such as Reese's Book Club, Read with Jenna, and Book of the Month.

Taylor Jenkins Reid lives in Los Angeles with her husband (Alex Jenkins Reid), where she continues to write and captivate readers with her storytelling. 

Love this author interview? Stream the Book Gang Podcast wherever you get podcasts. We discuss debuts, backlist, and under-the-radar book gems with your favorite authors.

Book Gang Podcast

TELL ME: What is YOUR favorite Taylor Jenkins Reid book?

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Every Last Word: Tamera Ireland Stone Exclusive Interview

Friday, April 28th, 2023
Every Last Word Tamera Ireland Stone Exclusive Interview

Discover the inspiration for “Every Last Word” with Tamera Ireland Stone in this exclusive interview. Learn the true story behind the YA Booktok sensation!

Today I get to introduce you to my daughter’s favorite book and author! This book discovery was made long before it became a Booktok sensation or New York Times bestseller, and her beloved copy is so lovingly worn.

Every Last Word Book by Tamara Ireland Stone

Every Last Word Summary

Every Last Word is a must-read book, shedding light on teens’ struggles with OCD. As we know, mental illness is an important topic in YA literature, and Stone’s beautiful story was inspired by someone special to her. 

This novel illustrates our common misconceptions of OCD (the main character doesn’t even have a tidy room!). 

It tackles the more complicated stuff, like the stream of dark thoughts. For example, being obsessive with something like the number 3 and unable to drive your friends because your odometer must always have that number on it.

What is Age-Rating for Every Last Word?

Common Sense Media shares that the YA novel is recommended for readers that are 14 years old or older. Check their site for content warnings for this selection and if it is right for you.

Every Last Word: Tamera Ireland Stone Exclusive Interview

Sam, the main character in your story, is a teen secretly struggling with OCD. Why did you decide to talk about this illness, and what do you hope your YA readers will gain from sharing this story?

I first became interested in telling a story about a teen with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) when a close family friend was diagnosed four years ago, at age twelve.

We’re keeping her identity under wraps, so I call her C.

It was heartbreaking to hear how the disorder affected her. She couldn’t sleep. She felt powerless to a stream of negative, often terrifying thoughts. 

And her group of friends unknowingly made things harder. I couldn’t imagine dealing with something so intense, especially at such a young age.

In the years that followed her initial diagnosis, I’ve been so inspired by the way C and her family tackled this disorder—together. 

They worked in lock step with her psychiatrist, who prescribed medication to help her sleep at night and quiet her mind during the day. 

They interviewed therapists until they landed on one their daughter felt she could trust and confide in. And they helped her channel her energy into activities that made her feel good about herself.

They’re the reason I wanted to write this story. They set such a positive example, and it was one I felt inspired to share.

C hoped this story would help teens who are struggling with mental illness know they’re not alone, and not “broken.”  And she hoped that this story would help people who don’t have to deal with mental health conditions see those who do through a kinder, more sympathetic lens.

This story is for her, and for all the special, powerful, brilliant, not-at-all-broken minds like hers.

There seems to be a growing trend to talk about mental illness right now in YA fiction. Why do you think it has become an important theme in this genre of literature?

It’s interesting to me that all of these stories are coming out this year. As authors, we obviously didn’t intend to start or be part of a “trend.” We all just happened to start writing books we thought needed to be written.

Many people in my life are dealing with various mental health conditions, personally or with their children. 

We talk about it. And as parents, we’ve opened the conversation with our kids in an effort to make it a safe, judgment-free topic. I think that’s a crucial real-life trend.

My son had some anxiety issues when I started writing Every Last Word. He was barely 11 years old at the time. 

I bought an illustrated book about anxiety, and we sat down and read it together. When we got to the symptoms—racing heart, shortness of breath, stomachaches—he broke into tears. He finally said, “It’s anxiety? I thought I had cancer!”

The fear he’d built up in his mind was much worse than the reality.

Anxiety. There. It had a name. Rather than feeling the emotion accelerate and letting fear turn it into something completely different, he had a word. He could say, “I’m feeling anxious,” and we’d know what to do.

Words have such power.

As parents, we actively talk about exercise and eating well with our kids. We take them in for checkups and closely monitor their physical health and development. Why do we tend to treat mental health so differently?

I’m thrilled to see so many novels tackling mental illness in teens. 

Together, I hope we’re helping to change the narrative, using fiction to spread the message that it’s okay to talk openly about what’s going on in your brain, it’s okay if your mind works differently, and it’s okay if you need help.

Teens are under more pressure to be “perfect” than ever before. Let’s tell them they’re perfect exactly the way they are.

Sam really struggles to fit in with her peers and particularly struggles with a group of fake friends that don’t honor the real rules of friendship. Did you relate to Sam’s struggle to fit in from when you were in high school?

I was lucky to have great friends in middle school and high school, but my family moved a lot, so I was constantly making new ones. 

I was the new kid. 

And I was awkward. 

My friends never made me feel like the odd girl out, but I always felt like I was.

And yes, I’ve had those “mean girl” friends at a few points in my life, too. I definitely channeled a lot of my own challenges with female friendships into this story.

I love books with a twist, and you created a solid one for readers. Did you always know you were going to twist the plot this way or did it come to you as you wrote it?

I did. That was always a huge part of the story, from the original outline. 

It was the trickiest aspect of the novel to write, but without question, my favorite.

In one line, you state, “Everyone’s got something. Some people are just better actors than others.”  What is one thing you have acted your way out of in your own life that people might be surprised to know?

In my mid-20s, I landed my dream job with a fast-growing public relations firm. I climbed the ladder quickly, and before long I was managing some of our largest accounts. I loved my job, even though it was often stressful and overwhelming.

But there was one job requirement I couldn’t stand: Presenting. I hated speaking in front of people, with all eyes on me, and I did everything I could to avoid it.

I finally confided in one of the partners.

He reminded me that I was the expert. That I knew the client and the material better than anyone else. And then he smiled and said, “You know what they say, ‘Fake it till you make it.’”

I needed that. I made that my mantra.

Over the years, I’ve had this conversation with many business professionals, and more recently, with my author friends. 

Some of the most polished presenters have admitted that they feel terrified before they step up on that stage. That it takes a big dose of courage and a lot of “faking it” to make it through.

The poem in Every Last Word called “As If” was inspired by this idea. Sometimes we need to act our way out of fear.

Oddly, now I’ve gone and put myself in a career where I present on bigger stages, to more people than I’ve ever addressed before, where the stakes are even higher. And yes, it’s still scary. 

I always feel like I’m faking confidence when I fist step on stage and begin talking. But at some point, I begin to relax. I connect with the crowd and start to have fun, and pretty soon, I’m no longer faking it.

I’m still wondering when I’ll actually feel like I’ve made it.

Tamera Ireland Stone Books

Tamara Ireland Stone is a New York Times bestselling author of YA and middle-grade books. Her novels explore themes of mental health, technology, and the power of human connection. Here are a few recommendations for books to check out!

Love this author interview? Stream the Book Gang Podcast wherever you get podcasts. We discuss debuts, backlist, and under-the-radar book gems with your favorite authors.

Book Gang Podcast

Love this? Check out these fun book lists!

13 COMING-OF-AGE STORIES TO READ NOW

13 Coming of Age Stories Any Adult Will Love from MomAdvice.com

13 FRIENDSHIP STORIES YOU’LL LOVE

13 Friendship Stories You'll Love

Have you read Every Last Word? We would love to hear what you thought of this YA Booktok Book?

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Laurie Frankel Interview (This is How it Always Is) Exclusive

Friday, April 28th, 2023
Laurie Frankel Interview (This is How it Always Is) Exclusive

Get insights into the captivating novel “This Is How It Always Is” by Laurie Frankel with my exclusive interview. Learn more from the author for your book club

 If I selected a book club book that would get everyone talking, this would be top on my list.

This eye-opening novel is about parenting a child who struggles with gender identity and how one fictional family navigates the world to help their child live in a place of compassion, joy, and acceptance.

This is How it Always Is gives the reader a glimpse into the completely typical modern family experience and what this path through one’s life might look like as a parent of a transgender child and as a child themselves. It’s a bold, honest heartbreaking story, offering gentle prose for the reader. 

Let’s get into it! 

Laurie Frankel Interview (This is How it Always Is) Exclusive

Laurie Frankel

Parenting is hard, and I often reflect on how I wish I would have handled challenging situations with our kids in better ways. 

Rosie & Penn, the parents in this beautiful story, seem to offer all the right types of love and support for their child as he struggles with gender identity. 

Since your child faced similar issues, were these responses how you also reacted, or was this more of a reflection on how you wished you could have responded in those moments?

Ha! What a good question. It’s true that made-up parents are often more patient than actual ones, but it’s also true that made-up kids are often better behaved. In fact, the struggles the parents and the children face in This Is How It Always Is are themselves mostly made up, never mind their reactions. 

We’ve been very lucky in that my child’s transition hasn’t necessitated much struggle or strife — for her, for her family and friends, at school, or in her community — so the challenges both the kids and the parents face and respond to in the book are all made up.

Poppy’s parents begin to explore other areas in the world to find places that can accept Poppy for who she is from Seattle to Thailand. I know your family resides in Seattle, but how did you discover that Thailand was so open and welcoming in this way?

There are in fact a lot of cultures — including Native cultures in the United States — that embrace and celebrate a third gender or a non-binary concept of gender. Thailand is one of many. 

I originally thought the characters might drive cross country rather than going halfway around the world, but in addition to its openness to its transgender citizens, Thailand is also Buddhist, and because (as you note in the next question) I wanted to talk about gender as something other than black and white, the Buddhist notion of the Middle Way became paramount.

Your exploration of gender identity showcases that gender identity does not need to be a black-or-white issue. For example, not every child needs to make life-altering decisions, like involving medical or surgical intervention, right away. What message do you hope your readers will walk away with from this family’s fictional journey?

For me, the message is in the title: this is how it always is. Most kids aren’t transgender, but most kids are gender nonconforming — sometimes, in some ways — and all kids are sometimes nonconforming, sometimes don’t fit in, and sometimes face challenges.

And all parents want to love and help their kids, and no parents always know the best way to go about doing so. 

We make the best decisions we can and amend as necessary. 

This is how it always is — and not any more so or any scarier for transgender kids and their families than for any others.

I do also believe that the more and more quickly we stop thinking about gender — and most things — as either-or, black-or-white, the better the world becomes for all of us.

Poppy did not disclose her gender to her closest friends, and her family chose to keep this a secret and live her life as a girl. Tell me more about this decision.

Transgender kids and their families face tough questions when they meet new people. Their bodies are no one else’s business, yet their histories and identities are important and to be celebrated.

For most people, those two notions aren’t in conflict. When they are, no choice is wrong, and all choices are difficult in different ways.

In this difficult political climate, how can we be genuine and kind advocates for transgender or gender-nonconforming children and their families?

Love them. Celebrate them. Let them be who they are. Don’t rush them. Don’t judge them. Don’t assume. 

Make sure they know whoever they are and however they are is normal and awesome and a great way to be.

 And I’d expand that from gender nonconforming to nonconforming period. 

It might also be useful to remember that the world urgently faces many complex, critical problems at the moment, and where people go to the bathroom just isn’t one them.

This is How it Always Is by Laurie Frankel

The cover of your book is beautiful. What does the orange peel on your cover symbolize?

Ooh, thank you. I love it, but I can’t take credit for it. That cover is entirely down to the geniuses at Flatiron Books. 

I think the orange peel makes you think about insides versus outsides, about layers, about what’s on top and what’s underneath and which is important and which can just be peeled away.

Laurie Frankel Books

Laurie Frankel is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of four novels. She is the recipient of the Washington State Book Award and the Endeavor Award.

Her novels have been translated into more than twenty-five languages and have been optioned for film and TV. A former college professor, she now writes full-time in Seattle, Washington, where she lives with her family.

Love this post? Check out these book lists for more book club book ideas!

THE BEST NEW HISTORICAL FICTION BOOKS OF 2023

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An Exclusive Jessica Knoll Interview (Luckiest Girl Alive)

Thursday, April 27th, 2023
An Exclusive Jessica Knoll Interview (Luckiest Girl Alive)

Read this exclusive interview from Jessica Knoll on the Luckiest Girl Alive book & its film adaptation with Mila Kunis. Don’t miss the scoop on her new book!

I am so excited to share with you today an exclusive interview with New York Times Bestseller,  Jessica Knoll, the author of Luckiest Girl Alive

Luckiest Girl Alive Book

Luckiest Girl Alive Book Synposis

This addictive thriller was described by Reese Witherspoon as “one of those reads you just can’t put down!” 

This gripping psychological thriller follows the seemingly perfect life of Ani FaNelli, a successful magazine editor engaged to a wealthy man.

As her wedding day approaches, Ani’s dark past resurfaces, forcing her to confront traumatic events from her high school days and revealing the disturbing truth behind her carefully constructed façade.

The novel delves into themes of identity, trauma, and the consequences of keeping secrets.

Now a Netflix film starring Mila Kunis, Luckiest Girl Alive follows Ani FaNelli as she strives to create the perfect life. But beneath the expensive wardrobe and blue blood fiancé lies a haunting secret from her past. 

An Exclusive Jessica Knoll Interview (Luckiest Girl Alive)

An Exclusive Jessica Knoll Interview (Luckiest Girl Alive)

Let’s start with the most exciting news! Luckiest Girl Alive had the movie rights acquired by Lionsgate and Reese Witherspoon. Did YOU feel like the luckiest girl alive when you found out about this film adaptation?  

I cracked this joke to Bruna, Reese’s producing partner, and she quickly corrected me by telling me that I’m not lucky—good things come to those who work hard to develop their craft and talent.
I really appreciated that!

There is certainly a degree of luck involved, but I was also very, very calculated in terms of setting myself up for success. I fought tooth and nail to land a job in the magazine world right after I graduated college, knowing that once you get your foot in that door, it’s a great place to develop your voice and improve your writing and storytelling abilities.

Most important, you make a lot of great connections working in magazines, and publishing people like magazine people because you have a whole network of friends who are willing to support the book.
I met my agent years before I ever wrote Luckiest Girl Alive, and I met other people in the industry who had lines into Hollywood.

One of those lines happened to be to Reese and Bruna.

Their involvement has undoubtedly granted the book a certain amount of visibility that any author, let alone a first time author, could only dream of, and I’m so grateful to them for their unwavering support.
The luck part comes into play as I got to know them both, and realized how incredibly collaborative and inclusive they are. I really lucked out in terms of being paired up with two smart, powerful women who are also willing to help a first time writer develop and grow. I have so much to learn from them, and lucky for me, they want to teach me.

The unlikable narrator seems to be a growing trend in fiction. I won’t drop the Gone Girl comparison, but why do you think authors are gravitating towards a different dynamic with the narrators of their story? Do you think Ani is unlikable or just misunderstood thanks to her past?

In my eyes, Ani isn’t unlikable at all. 

She’s flawed, yes, but isn’t everyone? That’s what makes her real and honest. And real and honest are two very likable qualities. 

That being said, I think we are living in a very exciting time for strong, female driven narratives. I will make the Gone Girl reference here, mostly because it was such an absolute phenomenon that it goes to show you that audiences are interested in the anti-heroine’s story too. There’s a demand for Tony Soprano and Amy Dunne, Don Draper and Ani FaNelli. Let’s give the people what they want!

Ani’s desire to be liked drives the story, even in the face of devastating mistreatment by the popular kids at school. Do you think this struggle to fit in is more common than we realize, even if not to the same extent as in the book? Did you face any similar challenges during your own school years, and were there any personal experiences that inspired the story?

Speaking from personal experience, I think it’s incredibly common. 

Kids can be cruel, and up until recently, sexual assault and slut shaming culture was not something we discussed openly. 

When I was in high school and college, I didn’t truly understand what rape looked like, and I know a lot of my friends—guys and girls—didn’t either. 

How can we expect kids to make the right decisions, and treat each other with dignity and respect, when we don’t give them examples of what that does—and doesn’t—look like? 

What happens to Ani in the book isn’t new. It’s a story old as time. But this sudden willingness to talk about bullying, slut shaming, and sexual assault is new, and that’s a good thing.

As an editor for magazines, how did your background prepare you for writing your first novel? What was the process of transitioning from writing/editing article pieces to a book, and how difficult was it for you? Additionally, can you tell us how long it took from the initial idea to complete the book?

It absolutely did. I could not have written this book in my early and mid twenties. That was an important, developmental time for me in terms of discovering my voice, and learning how to find a story’s unique angle. 

Once I had that skillset to draw on, I spent a good year or two really thinking hard about what I wanted my book to be about, and high on that list was for it to make some sort of commentary about the world and times we are living in. 

Magazines taught me to have that strong perspective. Once I actually sat down to write Luckiest Girl Alive, it was extremely liberating to be able to write in my own voice. 

When you write for a magazine, you have to appropriate a ‘house’ voice. But Ani was all me. It was so freeing to tell her story that I churned it out in nine months.

Editor’s Note: Jessica has since disclosed personally traumatic details in an essay she penned for Cosmopolitan.

Luckiest Girl Alive Movie Poster

Luckiest Girl Alive Movie Now Streaming

Luckiest Girl Alive is now available to stream on Netflix. It was directed by Mike Barker and thescreenplay by Jessica Knoll, based on her 2015 novel of the same name. 

The cast and roles for the 2021 Netflix adaptation of “Luckiest Girl Alive” are: Mila Kunis as Ani FaNelli, Finn Wittrock as Luke Harrison, Chiara Aurelia as young Ani FaNelli, Connie Britton as Ani’s mother, and Scoot McNairy as Ani’s writing teacher, Mr. Larson.

Readers, please note that Luckiest Girl Alive ending and many plot points are different in the film adaptation. As we discussed in our Celebrity Book Club Deep Dive podcast (on Book Gang), Reese Witherspoon loves a hopeful ending for her films.

Knoll also recognized the cultural shift that has occurred in the last seven years, both in her own life and in society. Her personal story and the #MeToo movement motivated her to create a new film ending where Ani also finds healing by speaking up and sharing her story.  (watch the movie trailer)

Jessica Knoll Books (FULL LIST)

 

Jessica Knoll Books

Jessica Knoll is the New York Times bestselling author of The Favorite Sister and Luckiest Girl Alive—now a major motion picture from Netflix starring Mila Kunis.

She has been a senior editor at Cosmopolitan and the articles editor at Self.

She grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and graduated from the Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York.

She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their bulldog, Beatrice.

This post contains affiliate links.

Looking for more great books? Try these fun book lists!

THE BEST BOOK CLUB BOOKS TO SPARK CONVERSATION

The Best Book Club Books to Spark Conversation

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13 Coming of Age Stories Any Adult Will Love from MomAdvice.com

The Grace Year Book Club: Interview With Kim Liggett

Friday, January 31st, 2020

The Grace Year Book Club Interview With Kim Liggett

Check out this exclusive interview with Kim Liggett as we discuss, The Grace Year. This YA dystopian thriller is the incredible fast page-turner that every book club needs. Join us for our MomAdvice Book Club as we dig into this thriller that is the perfect blend of The Hunger Games, Lord of the Flies, and The Handmaid’s Tale. Read the book before you catch The Grace Year movie!

It has been such a joy to discuss my new favorite dystopian thriller, The Grace Year, with you all.  This year, the MomAdvice Book Club started out with a bang with a record number of you reading and participating in this month’s chat. This fast page-turner was a welcome reprieve from the busy holiday season and I loved hearing how many lost sleep because they had to read, JUST ONE MORE PAGE.

I want to supply book clubs all over with all the materials they need for a fun and interactive book chat together.

This post explains why I think this is a great book for any book club, you can find printable bookmarks to print out for your book club attendees, this interview will be a great supplement to your reading guide, and you will also find great book club questions for discussing this month’s book. 

Kim Liggett Picture

For those of you not familiar with Kim, you are in for a treat. Kim Liggett, originally from the rural midwest, moved to New York City to pursue a career in the arts.

She’s the author of Blood and Salt, Heart of Ash, The Last Harvest (Bram Stoker Award Winner), The Unfortunates, and The Grace Year.

Kim spends her free time studying tarot and scouring Manhattan for rare vials of perfume and the perfect egg white cocktail. 

If you are wondering if Kim is planning to write a sequel, I am thrilled to point you to her GoodReads answer that said The Grace Year sequel (book 2) is on the table

PHEW! 

I don’t want to be done with this one! 

Today it is an honor to share my interview with Kim Liggett. 

The Grace Year Book Club: Interview With Kim Liggett

Thank you so much for joining me in an interview about your phenomenal book. I had the pleasure of listening to your novel on audio book and loved the bonus interview at the end.

In it, you shared that the idea for your book came from an encounter on the train.

Can you share with us why this encounter moved you so much that it brought you tears…and then brought you to the plot of your book?

I still can’t tell that story without bursting into tears!

I think what really gets to me is how much I wanted to spare her of the ugly truth.

Whether she was ready for it or not, her world was about to change.

So much of The Grace Year is about intergenerational silence—the things we never say in the name of protection.

I think there’s an element of denial at play—why plant that rotten seed if there’s a chance it might not happen to them or there might even be a hidden sliver of resentment—they’ll have to learn the hard way, just like I did.

For whatever reason, we’re not talking enough about the issues that girls and women have to deal with. Essentially, we’re sending them into the wilderness unprepared.

I feel like any piece of feminist literature is now compared to, The Handmaid’s Tale.

I’m a big fan of that book, but I don’t always think these comparisons are worthy.

With your book, I really feel like you captured some of that Atwood magic though by building out Garner County and the customs of the Grace Year.

What inspired this dystopian environment and how hard was this element in the creation of your story?

The most difficult task by far was deciding what should be left unsaid.

Because it’s such an immense and fascinating world, the temptation is to fill in all the gaps, leave no stone unturned, but I didn’t want the origin story of the county to overshadow Tierney’s.

I always saw THE GRACE YEAR as the middle of the tale—and there’s rarely any glory in the middle of anything—but Tierney deserved her own book.

For me, the question of ‘how did we get here?’ was a lot less interesting than, ‘we’re here now, so what are we going to do about it?’

This is the county’s 47th grace year.

Tierney has never known a time before it.

All she knows is now.

In order to capture that immediacy I decided to plop the reader right into the center of it all. Sink or swim, so to speak. I

t’s a lot to ask of the reader, it requires a fair amount of trust, and I’m honored every single time someone decides to go along for the ride.

While this story focuses a lot on how women are treated by men in this society, I thought one of the bigger themes was how the girls competed against each other and didn’t band together.

Why was this theme important to your story and how do we encourage our girls to not do the same thing?

We’ve been conditioned to compete with one another—it’s everywhere we look—and the only beneficiary is the patriarchy.

I think the key to lowering our armor, embracing one another, is through compassion and empathy.

Like Tierney, I was always so quick to judge other women, but this book really changed me.

Nowadays, I try to meet women where they are, not where I want them to be. It’s amazing how much my world opened up when I made that tiny shift.

All I had to do was simply soften my gaze.

You started writing at 40 which is just amazing.

At 42, I feel like it is too late to make a career switch so I felt really encouraged reading that.

What do you think you brought to your stories at 40 that you might not have been able to in your 20’s?

Honestly, I was a train wreck at 20.

There’s no way I would’ve had the focus—the stillness—to write a book like this, but the real difference is sheer life experience.

I’ve been the maiden; I’ve been the mother, and now that I’m settling into my crone phase, I feel like I’m finally coming into my full power.

It took me a long time to find my voice, but it’s never too late.

Elizabeth Banks Directing The Grace Year

I understand that your novel will be coming to the big screen, thanks to Universal and Elizabeth Banks (directing & producing).

Just as amazing as that, I read that the film will be made entirely by women. How involved will you be in adapting this book and what was it like to know that so many wanted to purchase the movie rights to your novel?

It’s wild!

When I agreed to sell the rights, I really didn’t expect that much involvement, but they’ve included me every step of the way.

Readers will be happy to hear that they are being extremely faithful to the book.

There will be a bit of condensing, because we can’t make a four hour movie, but the integrity of Tierney’s story will remain intact.

And it’s true—everyone from the executives to the screenwriters are women. I’m extremely proud of that.

They say that writing can be therapeutic and much of this story was born from your own fear and frustrations with where we are at in the world.

Did you feel better after you wrote this and do you see this story as activism for young adults?

This book was so deeply personal for me. I didn’t know if anyone would care or get what I was trying to say, but I had to write it.

It almost felt like a purging.

Having the attention of foreign publishers and the film industry was exciting, but it wasn’t until I started hearing from early readers that it really started to sink in.

I wasn’t alone, and I felt so much hope.

If people take anything from this book, I hope it’s this—we are stronger together.

This might seem like a radical idea, but instead of focusing all of our energy on taking down the patriarchy, what if we threw some of that strength into building each other up?

We would be absolutely unstoppable.

I always like to ask authors, what are the best ways we can support writers and their books?

With so many social media avenues and review spaces, I love to hear what helps your book sales the most?

Pass it on.

The greatest marketing tool of all is word of mouth.

Publishers can’t manufacture it; no one can predict it.

If you love a book, if it makes you think, talk about it. You have more power than you think.

If we loved your book, what else would you recommend we read, that explores similar themes?

The Power by Naomi Alderman, Women Talking by Miriam Toews, Three Women by Lisa Taddeo & My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell.

 

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MomAdvice 2020 Book Club Selections find out how to join our FREE MomAdvice Book Club (and see what we are reading next!)

January Book Club Pick: The Grace Year by Kim Liggett

get the scoop on the grace year and the upcoming movie

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Looking for book ideas? Check out our entire Book section of the site! Don’t forget to friend me on GoodReads

The Grace Year Book Club Interview With Kim Liggett

 

Sundays With Writers: Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E.K. Johnston

Sunday, March 19th, 2017

Sundays With Writers

I’m so excited to be sharing my Sunday with E.K. Johnston today to discuss her incredible book, Exit, Pursued by a Bear.  The MomAdvice Book Club will be tackling this in our April discussion so I am hoping today’s interview will encourage you to pick it up and join us for a great discussion about this beautiful book in April.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E.K. Johnston

Exit, Pursued By a Bear, packs a coming-of-age punch as it examines the story of a rape and the aftermath for its victim.

Hermione is a flyer on her cheer squad and proud to be their captain. While away at cheer camp, she attends a party where someone  puts something in her drink and she is brutally raped and assaulted. When she awakes, she has no recollection of what has happened to her, but must deal with the devastating consequences of this assault.

I love that this book focuses less on being a victim and more about continuing to fight through the pain, not allowing this horrible situation to continue to define your life. Hermione is a true hero as she picks up the pieces of her life and is determined to carry on.

Heavier than a typical YA read and filled with a supportive cast of characters, Johnston deserves all the accolades she has received for this one including being listed as a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize.

Brave and unflinching, it’s a beautiful, beautiful read!

Grab your coffee and let’s chat about this brave book from E.K. Johnston.

E.K. Johnston

Readers might not know that this book was inspired by Shakespeare’s, The Winter’s Tale. What was it about this work that made you want to retell it? What elements were the most important to you in Shakespeare’s work that you wanted to keep as elements in your own story?

Most scholars will tell you that The Winter’s Tale is the story of two boys-grown-to-men who find that friendship is a fragile construct and disillusionment is the price of adulthood. I respectfully disagree. For me, from my very early days of reading Shakespeare (the Charles and Mary Lamb prose edition), the play was about the friendship between two women: Hermione and Paulina, who loved one another more than they loved their husbands (with good reason). I loved Paulina’s steadfastness and her cleverness, faking Hermione’s death and concealing her in the king’s own castle for more than a decade and half, and I loved Hermione’s resilience and ability to survive utter betrayal from someone she trusted.

Furthermore, Hermione is persecuted by her husband for (falsely) perceived infidelity. He manipulates her actions and his own mind until he can blame her for something she is absolutely innocent of. I chose to update this as garden-variety slut-shaming in Exit, because we tend to back girls into corners and then treat them terribly for existing in the first place.

Also, I just really wanted to use the title: Exit, Pursued By A Bear.

Your fury over a Canadian Member of Parliament who was trying to recriminalize abortion also moved you to write this book. What do you hope the reader will walk away with after reading Hermione’s story?

I have two hopes for all readers of Exit, Pursued By A Bear.

  1. That they will believe women. Women. and,
  2. That they will trust women to make their own choices, particularly when it comes to bodily autonomy.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear has garnered so many awards and accolades including an NPR Best Book of 2016, Booklist Best Book of 2016, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2016, and so many more. Were you surprised by the response to this book especially since you were tackling such brave topics, particularly for the YA genre? What has been your favorite accolade so far?

YA has an extensive legacy of tackling amazing and brave topics, so I am both thrilled and honoured to see Exit join those ranks. If I may be indulgent, I was most pleased by Exit’s nomination to the Ontario White Pine list, which is a reading award program in Ontario high schools. I get to meet so many amazing students, many of them from places mentioned in the book itself, and that’s incredible.

You have shared that in your book, you imagined a world where a girl is believed and supported; a world where adults do their jobs and children are gracious; a world where a bear of a girl can heal, and then save herself. And it’s the most unbelievable thing you had ever done, even as a writer of fantasy. Why did you decide to tell your story in this way?

When I was at university for my MSc, I went to a conference and at the end of two days of people talking about bombings and logistics and mass excavations, a woman from the London Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory got up to talk to us about digital evidence collection. She was describing transmitting a fingerprint via a cell phone, and said the words “like on CSI”. There was general sighs and groans in the audience, and then she straightened and said “No, it’s a good example. Those shows tell us what we’re capable of. Where we should be trying to go.”

I was used to thinking like that about Star Trek, but it had never occurred to me that CSI might be similar. It’s an approach I tried to take when I was still studying forensics myself: this is how it should be, and that’s the approach I wanted to take with Exit.

This is how it should be.

In the author’s note, you encourage teens to find a champion in their life, as Hermione has found Polly. Who was a champion to you, in your life, and how do you think having that impacted you?

I am lucky enough to have two: Colleen, who I met in high school thanks to the seating arrangement and a pair lightsaber pens, and Emma, who I met in 2008 thanks to livejournal, Avatar: the Last Airbender, and the Naboo Handmaidens.

 Since you typically write fantasy, has writing this book given you encouragement to write more YA contemporary?

I write YA all the time. The great thing about YA is that you can write almost anything, and as long as it’s about a teenager, you’re set. So I’ve done contemporary fantasy, fairy-tale re-imaginings, sci-fi, and epic fantasy, as well as several combinations thereof. I don’t know if I’ll go back to YA contemporary, but I never say never in publishing.

Can you tell us a little about That Inevitable Victorian Thing that you have coming out in October and what else you are working on?

That Inevitable Victorian Thing is a YA near-future sci-fi. It’s a stubbornly utopi-ish vision of an alternate universe where the sun never set on the British Empire, and where a princess in disguise, a lumberjack with money problems, and a reluctant debutante are about to step onto the world stage.

I’m always thankful for these moments with writers and I hope you will pick up this amazing book! You can always connect with me on GoodReads, through our books section of our site, and you can read our entire Sundays With Writers series for more author profiles. Happy reading, friends!

*This post contains affiliate links!

 

Sundays With Writers: Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough

Sunday, March 5th, 2017

Sundays With Writers

Is there anything more satisfying than a good thriller? I know many of you are thinking about the stack of books you plan to take on your Spring Break vacations and thrillers are usually one of those genres that make for the perfect beach read. Today’s author, Sarah Pinborough, might be a new one on your radar, but she actually has twenty published books out already. Today I’m interviewing her about her latest book, Behind Her Eyes, which I am sure is going to be one of the biggest buzz books this year. It’s the one that you finish and just have to talk to someone about it.

If you need someone to talk it through, I’m over here!

Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough

Behind Her Eyes is a fun and highly imaginative psychological thriller. Her marketing team started the hashtag #wtfthatending that you can tweet when you finish. As a seasoned thriller reader, I thought I had it solved and then I didn’t… And then I REALLY didn’t.

It’s impossible to talk about this book without a big reveal so let’s focus on the generic plot points and say that this is a love triangle between a gorgeous wife, her dashing husband, and the slightly frumpy secretary. When the wife decides to pursue a secretive friendship with her husband’s secretary, a game of cat and mouse begins.

Here’s the thing, the reader will never guess the cat or the mouse and I told my husband, bewildered, that I was almost finished with the novel and still clueless where it is going. And then…well, #wtfthatending.

Based on the reviews of my favorite follows on GoodReads, you’ll love it or you’ll hate it. I sat in the middle for a bit, not sure what to think about it. I will say, in the end, I appreciate that this wasn’t the same old, same old, BUT a reader must set aside a bit of reality for this genre-bender.

I included Behind Her Eyes in this month’s must-reads list and couldn’t wait to share this interview with you today after that wild ride of the book.

Grab your coffee and let’s chat with Sarah today!

Sarah Pinborough

Let’s go there without going there! The hashtag that was created for your book promotion is #wtfthatending. As someone who generally can see twists a mile away, I will say that I may have, indeed, said this aloud when I finished those last few pages. Did it worry you at all that your readers would be diving into your book with an expectation for a wild twist at the end?

Yes! I love the hashtag but it did worry me that it might be setting me up to fail. But it did create a massive buzz for the book and it seems that the vast majority of people are still blinded by the ending. So, I can live with that!

Behind Her Eyes is a bit of a genre-bender, isn’t it? In a past interview I read, you answered this a bit by saying, “I’ve created my own genre of female-centric thrillers, which is writing books where you can’t say what they’re about or you’ll give it away,” Do you think saying this book is in the genre of psychological thriller is misleading for a reader? If you are a bookseller, what section of your store would you put this book in?

I would definitely call it a psychological thriller. It hits all the beats of that genre and plays out like one. Even the ‘other’ elements that are included play by the rules of a thriller – there are clues all the way through the book so it doesn’t cheat the reader. It shouldn’t anyway. To anyone who says that it was impossible to guess the ending, I say read the book again – there are clues throughout. I’m a great believer in not cheating the reader so I wanted to be sure that the book played out as a thriller.

This book had a very Hitchcock feel to it which I absolutely loved. What artists or writers have brought the biggest influence to your work?

I’m glad you said that, because with this book I really wanted to have the kind of characters and situation you get in a Hitchcock movie – an ‘ordinary’ person becomes drawn into a claustrophobic unsettled secretive situation involving beautiful glamorous people – but I wanted to add some of the paranoia and passion and madness of a Polanski film. In general though, I guess the people who have influenced me are writers like Daphne Du Maurier, John Connolly, Stephen King, John Wyndham and so many others. In fact, every book I enjoy influences me in some way or another.

I understand that movie talks are already in the works on this one. Can we expect to see this love triangle come to life on the big screen?

Big screen or little screen – lots of talks on going with several parties but as yet no decisions made. But we shall see;-)

This is my first book that I have read of yours, but you are the author of 20 novels! I know many readers are just being introduced to your work, like me, so I’d love to hear what book of yours we should read next, especially if we enjoyed this one?

If you liked this one, then I’d say the one to read next is 13 Minutes which is a YA thriller (but as twisty as any adult one and does contain a lot of adult themes) about a 16 year old girl who’s pulled out of a frozen river and when she’s revived she can’t remember the two days leading up to her ‘accident’, if it is indeed that. It’s about the dark side of teenage friendships.

Behind Her Eyes was published through HarperCollins UK and sold for six figures. As a writer, that is HUGE and such an amazing feat! Did you treat yourself to anything special after securing this advance? How has your experience with HarperCollins helped in the success of this novel?

I can’t remember if I bought anything! I’m not much of a ‘things’ person so I probably just went out for a nice dinner with friends. I’ve been very lucky but HarperCollins on had UK/Commonwealth rights and so my agent also did a very good deal for the book with Flatiron in the US (we had an 8 way auction) and we’ve also sold it to about 20 countries worldwide thus far. But all that came because of HarperCollins’ support of the book, and they’ve really gone all out with marketing and putting everything behind it. I have a great publisher. But I have to say Flatiron in the US have been equally amazing. We’re all #TeamBHE;-)

stephen-king

STEPHEN KING (!!!) tweeted about your book and said it was, “What Brits call a thumping good read.” What a surreal moment for you as a writer. What was it like to see someone so prolific speak so highly of your work?

This is going to sound so cocky, but this is the second time he’s talked about one of my books. He recommended The Death House in the New York Times a couple of years ago which was amazing. I actually cried.He then sent a blurb through for the paperback cover. So yes, it was of course brilliant when he tweeted about Behind Her Eyes and it definitely had an effect on sales. He’s one of my heroes – I think for anyone of my generation, he’s our superstar.  I grew up reading and loving all his books so it was such a touchstone moment to have him read one of mine. To have him read a second was just amazing.

I understand you are already working on your next thriller. Can you give us a little of the scoop on what you have in store for us next?

It’s another twisty thriller with female central characters and again it’s hard to talk about. It’s a straight thriller this time though – no weird elements – and I guess on some levels it’s about abusive relationships, but I can’t really say more without giving the central twist away. It’s called Cross Her Heart and should be out in the UK in May of next year.

Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough

I’m always thankful for these moments with writers and I hope you will pick up this amazing book! You can always connect with me on GoodReads, through our books section of our site, and you can read our entire Sundays With Writers series for more author profiles. Happy reading, friends!

*This post contains affiliate links!

Sundays With Writers: I Liked My Life by Abby Fabiaschi

Sunday, February 12th, 2017

Sundays With Writers

When I picked up I Liked My LifeI thought it would be a light escape between my heavy historical fiction picks last month. What I never expected though was how much this book would move me and make me consider my own interactions in my life. I saw so much of myself and my life reflected in these well-woven characters. Then I learned more of Abby Fabiaschi and her activism as a human rights advocate and commitment to use proceeds from her incredible book to support the causes she cares about and it became important to me to share her journey with you.

I knew Abby had so much she could teach me (and maybe you!) about writing her first book and more about her passion for human rights. In this difficult political climate, I’m so moved by stories of good people. Living our family motto this year of finding the good, I am thrilled to share more about the good that Abby is doing in the world and how we have the power to be the good too.

I Liked My Life by Abby Fabiaschi

Honestly, if I was going to pick a book that surprised me the most last month (check out last month’s stack of must-reads!!),  I Liked My Life would be it! The idea for this story sounded horribly depressing. A mother commits suicide and her family is left to pick up the pieces… but it is so much more than that!

Fabiaschi writes this story in a way where the mother, Maddy, is still there and able to manipulate her family members into doing what she needs them to do by speaking to them through their thought streams. From helping them find better solutions to deal with her death, to guiding friendships, and even finding her replacement. Her presence and voice is one of the alternating chapters in this novel, along with the voices of her husband and teenage daughter.

Each character reflects back on the good and the bad that has happened in their lives in real moments that mimic your own. The petty fights, the difficulty as a mom to make every day special for your family (while no one makes the effort for you), and the struggles of mother and daughter relationships. I could see so many of of my own struggles in this character, making Maddy real and relatable.

Heartbreaking at times, laugh out loud funny at others, I doubt you would pick this one up and not get something out of it. I am committed to no spoilers, but want you to know the ending is quite satisfying as a reader!

Grab your coffee and let’s learn more about Abby and her fantastic debut!

Abby Fabiaschi

Congratulations on publishing your first book! What an incredible accomplishment for you and your family. Why did you decide to leave the corporate world and pursue writing and how long was the process of getting published?

When I started writing I Liked My Life I was working 60/70 hour weeks in high tech and pounding away at my keyboard nights and weekends. At the time, I could balance my hobby, my work, and my marriage. Then I got a third and fourth job named Page and Parker, 11 months apart, and something had to give. Writing time was replaced with diapers and cuddles and ear infections.

When my kids turned three and four in what felt like one season, I resigned from the corporate scene. It was time. Most of the alpha males I worked with found it insane to ditch a lucrative post for something with a .2% success rate, but it wasn’t about getting published for me. I needed a lifestyle change, and I was fortunate: with spending changes, my husband’s career could support our family.

The book sold about two years after becoming a fulltime writer.

Her Future Coalition

Before we dive into the plot, I’d love to share about your mission to donate a portion of the proceeds to survivors of human trafficking and your volunteerism as a human rights advocate. Can you tell us more about this important cause and why this is of importance to you?

After resigning from the corporate world, my family right-sized our lifestyle to accommodate the loss of income. When we were off and running on our new salary, I realized that nothing of substance had changed. As “they” say: The most important things in life aren’t things. My husband and I agreed that if anything were to come of my writing we would donate a fifth of it systematically. Now, twenty percent of my after-tax proceeds, including foreign and film rights, are donated to charities benefiting women and children.

I’m passionate about economic solutions to severe social and cultural problems such as human trafficking, domestic abuse, and child marriage. As board chair for Her Future Coalition, I get to see the success of this approach firsthand. Fiscal independence is a powerful tool—providing training, education, and employment is an effective way to help victims remain forever free. If you’re interested in donating or learning more, visit www.herfuturecoalition.org.

In the same vein, I think you are also such a great example of someone who has found a way to prioritize charity by adjusting your lifestyle to put money towards those in need. Do you have any tips for putting money or time towards the causes we truly care about while doing the mom juggle?

I recommend adopting a cause. After reading Half the Sky, I felt a tremendous call to action to fight human trafficking. There were practically trumpets playing in the background as I started researching the different ways to get involved.

When you find an organization that supports your passion, think of how your skill set and connections can be leveraged to their benefit. If you offer up what you’re already proficient at, it’s easier to efficiently add value.

From a donation perspective, there’s a tradition I love: every year for holidays and birthdays give your children a check to donate to the charity of their choice. This turns giving time into family time, and plants the seed of altruism.

I understand it was your own experience with death, at the age of 15, which gave you the idea to explore the mourning process through this coming-of-age story. Do you then see yourself in both Eve, from your teenage years, and in her mother, Maddy, now as an adult? Has it been therapeutic to reflect on this?

I Liked My Life was written as a way to unburden my loss onto unsuspecting characters, so yes, therapeutic is the right word.

The first draft was completed when I was twenty-four. I had no children; I’d been married all of five months at its inception. I wrote from three intertwining perspectives—mother, daughter, and father—but given the extent of my life experience, only the daughter’s section was relatable.

Years after that first draft, my father died of a heart attack at fifty-three. When I revisited the manuscript, I was a mother two times over who’d grieved as an adult, side by side my husband of eight years. It was then that the mother and father’s section came to life.

Age, gender roles, personality types, financial obligations, these all change the way tragedy is digested.  I Liked My Life isn’t about mourning generally, it’s about the reality that we must grieve around others who are also grieving, and the loss can at times feel competitive.

You write about marriage in such a relatable way. Those silly petty fights and frustrations make for a real and true portrait of marriage. Do you think illustrating this helped shape Brady’s story more and his own emotional hurdles of forgiving himself?

I’m now thirteen years into my marriage and I see the layers of it with more clarity. There’s the daily grind—the back and forth where I know I’m loved but sometimes don’t feel appreciated. There’s tests—darker times where I question if I’m understood at all. And there’s nuggets—moments where the value of my role in the family is revealed and validated.

The more interesting thing to realize is that the same ebb and flow holds true for my husband. I don’t think either of us fully fathoms what the other accomplishes and carries in a day, and I no longer think we have to in order to be happy.

In I Liked My Life Brady arrives at this same conclusion in stages. Each revelation is accompanied by a different emotion: anger, guilt, sadness, and, ultimately, acceptance.

Why was it important to have Maddy’s voice be such a big part of your story and how much fun was it, as the writer, to have her manipulating plot points in the book?

With Maddy, I looked to put words to the connection I still feel with loved ones I’ve lost after their physical time with me is over. As I wrote, at times I felt the people I miss so much cheering me on, so the joy in creating Maddy’s voice was personally meaningful to me.

As a reader, I found myself walking away with a heightened sense of consciousness about my interactions with my loved ones and how important they are, even when you sometimes feel unnoticed as a mom. What feelings do you hope your readers come away with from reading this story?

I’ve been in book clubs for over a decade and have learned that a reader’s takeaway is unique to their experience, past and present. For me, I take comfort in the knowledge that if you can rise above the fog and haze of grief, there are slivers of beauty in life’s most agonizing moments. The challenge is that anything gleaned is at the expense of your loss—and it will never be worth it—so you have to accept the injustice of that.

Did you or do you have anything special planned in celebration of your first book being out on bookshelves? Will you be taking some time off or are you on to the next book?

I have more of a what’s next? personality. Right now I am all in on promoting I LIKED MY LIFE. I worked hard to get this opportunity and I want to do everything I can to help get it in the hands of readers.

My second novel, tentatively titled WHATEVER HAPPENED TO LUCY BISCARO?, should be out with St. Martin’s Press in the winter of 2018. It explores the polarizing hold that memories can have on us, and how every decision we make is layered with our past experiences.

I Liked My Life by Abby Fabiaschi

I’m always thankful for these moments with writers and I hope you will pick up this amazing book! You can always connect with me on GoodReads, through our books section of our site, and you can read our entire Sundays With Writers series for more author profiles. Happy reading, friends!

*This post contains affiliate links!

Sundays With Writers: Mischling by Affinity Konar

Sunday, February 5th, 2017

sundays-with-writers-1

It is such an incredible honor to share an interview with Affinity Konar, the gifted and talented author of, Mischling.” I doubt that you could read her haunting book and not be completely moved, both by the story of these incredible children and the poetic words that Konar writes in this finely crafted novel. I could not wait to reach out to her and share more about her own story behind the story on the site.

It is a book that I can’t stop thinking about and the story of Mengle and his experiments, truly, shook me to my very core.

Don’t worry, if you haven’t gotten to this one yet, there are no spoilers in this interview. I would love for you to learn more about this and Affinity’s own journey to Poland to connect with her Jewish heritage and think this interview offers so many important lessons, especially so shortly after Holocaust Remembrance Day.

 

Mischling by Affinity Konar

As you know, I have read so many books about the Holocaust over the years, but I never feel like I am informed enough about the horrors and struggles that were faced during this time in history. Once again, I find myself oblivious to those who suffered as Konar unfolds the story of twins, Sasha & Pearl, who became a part of the experimental population of twins that were known as Mengle’s Zoo, based in Auschwitz.

Many begged and falsely claimed that their children were twins to be part of Mengle’s Zoo because they believed they had been saved from certain death. Unfortunately, these children were far from safe and became a part of tests to separate the twins from one another, both physically and psychologically. Konar explores this through these sisters, told from alternating perspectives, as they are brutally experimented upon.

How something so horrible could be written so beautifully is a true tribute to Konar’s writing.  Her writing style reminded me a lot of Eowyn Ivey’s writing in her beautiful book, The Snow Child, an almost magical quality even to the harshest of moments. It’s impossible to read Konar’s words and not feel deeply moved and surprised by her well-crafted language.  Beautifully told and based upon the stories of real victims of these crimes, Konar’s debut is strong and promising!

Please grab your coffee and settle in for more about Affinity’s story!

Affinity Konar

Your book is absolutely incredible, heartbreaking, and important. I have read many books on the Holocaust, but I have never read these stories told with the storybook or fable-like quality when writing about these unspeakable horrors. Why did you choose this approach to your prose?

I’ve always loved Jewish legends and fables, stories that approach transformation, hardship, and dignity, often with a lilt of humor and a sense of the unknowable. I hoped that the book might carry an echo of that texture, that it could inform the voices of girls with these transformative perspectives, and carry them through a world of unimaginable pain and loss. Auschwitz-Birkenau was anti-meaning–I wanted the girls to defiantly find their own world of symbols and objects and living things within it, to cling to any meaning they could create for themselves while in the midst of such dehumanization.

When Stasha sees violence and reconfigures it into something pretty, she does so not in the interest of merely finding prettiness, but to self-protect. It’s a child’s rebellion, a reaction to a life lived in constant peril. I didn’t want to claim that life is beautiful even in the face of suffering, but to explore how trauma might compel one to dwell on what may remain beautiful, in order to endure. I thought that by enlarging the private worlds of the girls, the horror of what they were escaping might be underlined. I often thought of the approach as masking and unmasking. The mask might be fanciful, but the need for it indicts the terror it conceals.

Josef Mengele

How did you run across the story of Mengele’s “Zoo,” and which real-life accounts influenced your body of work the most?

I grew up reading a lot of Shoah literature, particularly Primo Levi. And I remember reading Paul Celan for the first time as a teenager and feeling utterly changed. So this history and literature was always a presence in my life, especially since my family had been among so few who escaped Poland before the war. But everything culminated when I was sixteen and dropped out of school for a period of time. At the encouragement of my education-obsessed parents, I undertook a kind of autodidactic study and that’s when I found Children of the Flames by Lucette Lagnado, which chronicles the experiences of the twins of Auschwitz. Through that unforgettable book, I found so many others.

For a long time, I focused on Jewish prisoners with medical expertise who were forced to answer to Mengele, like Dr. Gisella Perl and Sara Nomberg-Przytyk. I read a great deal about Jewish resistance within the camps, and the operations of the underground. I became interested in the role of music within Auschwitz, and read Playing for Time, by Fania Fenelon, who was a member of the orchestra.

Twins

(Eva & Miriam)

And later, I’d find the story of Eva Mozes Kor, who survived Mengele along with her sister, Miriam Mozes Zeiger.

The Diary of Anne Frank was, of course, never far from my thoughts. I studied many books about Mengele and chose to include very little of them in the end. And I was constantly returning to Levi.

Why did you chose the word, “Mischling,” as the title for your book?

It was always tied to the story in my head, as it held a lot of dualities that felt important to the novel. When I first heard it, as a very young person, I was drawn to its lilting, diminutive quality, and then I found its meaning and shuddered, because it’s a term the Nazis used to classify Jews of mixed heritage. If you were mischling, you were afforded certain privileges that assisted survival, but of course, being privileged in the midst of such torment is not without its own psychological burdens. Stasha pummels the word throughout; she uses it to disguise herself, and fantasizes about thwarting Mengele beneath its cover. I hoped to anchor the book with the gravity of this term.

I am sure it would have been easier to have kept the focus your story on Mengele, but you choose to keep the focus on the children instead. Why was it important to tell your story this way?

One of the greatest challenges of the book was measuring how much of a role to give Mengele within the story. I didn’t want to brush past the man and his crimes, but I also feared rendering him in a way that might risk humanizing him. I fell short in trying to comprehend Mengele’s brutality, which was so elaborate and calculated and monstrous that the accounts of it read with a certain surreality that is very dangerous to handle on the page. I worried about lending him a glimmer of charisma, and yet, I couldn’t avoid the fact that Mengele was known to be charming and handsome; he courted the children with attention and candy and gave them rides on his shoulders. This treatment of the children that preceded his vicious experiments–the sickness of it is unspeakable.

After so much time trying to understand something so bottomless, I limited his role severely. I occasionally wondered if I lacked ambition or wisdom for not exploring him more, but ultimately, I couldn’t let him be more than shadow. I wanted the strength of the twins to overwhelm Mengele, to diminish and lessen his presence. Their innocence and love and longing for survival were far more worthy of articulation. He was not to have a voice.

Stasha and Pearl, as twins, have similar but very different voices. What was the writing process like writing these two voices? Did you write these chapters in the order we are reading them or in sections? Did you find one twin’s voice easier to write than the other?

I always envisioned the book as a conversation between a pair of twins, but Pearl’s was the real challenge for me, and I nearly abandoned it after the first half, because I was so daunted by the responsibility of rendering a narrator who bore witness in a very reliable, calculated fashion. That’s unbelievable to me now, because the book would be nothing without her, but it was a real temptation for a bit, and it took me some time to find my footing within her perspective. Stasha’s voice was far easier for me, as it’s pure emotion and image. She’s longing and lament and intensity. That was incredibly satisfying to write, particularly after spending so much time within the research.

The chapters were written very much out of order, partly because I spent many years not knowing what the book needed to be, and partly because of my terribly disorganized nature. I wanted the voices to be similar, but to also bounce off each other in contrast. So I’d spend months writing in one voice, and then return to the other, hoping to make them meet. Properly setting up the links between Stasha and Pearl was one of the biggest technical challenges for me, and it took a great deal of traveling between chapters to smooth the transitions between them.

As a reader, it was often difficult to read of the tortures that were inflicted upon these children. How hard was it to immerse yourself in this work and what scene did you find the most difficult to write?

I understand how hard it must be to read, and at the same time, I feel that it can never be hard enough. I only felt the enormity of the immersion after it abated somewhat, and I have to say that I gained immense respect for individuals who investigate crimes against children, genocide, and trauma, because the repeated exposure does appear to change a person. It can hollow you out, or heighten your sensitivities. It can make the prospect of a normal conversation feel impossible. I found myself addressing this grief by reading poets like Paul Celan or Dan Pagis or Edmund Jabez, looking at the paintings of Charlotte Saloman, finding accounts of Jewish resistance, or listening to Yiddish songs from the ghettos and camps. And I tried to be aware of the extreme distance of my pain, of how I was constantly measuring my own sensitivity against horrors I haven’t experienced. I didn’t want to write with a sort of performative empathy, in which sinking yourself into someone else’s torment is the ultimate goal. I simply wanted to write two girls whose love for each other could be touched by horror, but not broken by it.

So many scenes were hard to undertake. The very beginning, where they are parted from their mother and grandfather, under the illusion that Mengele will care for them–even now, I have trouble reading that. The description of the children in the laboratory. The details of Pearl’s imprisonment. And the chapter where Stasha is given an injection by Mengele, and she reconfigures this assault in her mind, to provide herself with an illusion of control–I edited that repeatedly, because it was hard to calibrate what I could personally handle against what needed to happen.

I understand that you recently visited Poland to reconnect with your own Jewish heritage. What did you discover, about yourself,  through these travels?

 

I never imagined I’d go to Poland. I’ve dealt with agoraphobia for many years, often leaving my apartment only for work. So for one of my first real ventures outside of my routine to be in Poland, and then, in Auschwitz-Birkenau–it was a shock to me, and the experience of visiting the camp exposed me to my limitations as both a writer and a person. There was no sense of tidy confrontation and resolution–things opened for me instead, and felt more endless. I felt very small, partly because of overwhelming nature of the experience, and partly because I was with my parents. My father is a well-traveled man, but he’d always avoided Poland. To be there with him, and my mother, who I couldn’t possibly comfort–I’d thought myself emotionally prepared, but I wasn’t. From an early age, I’ve had an irrational fear of separation from my parents, brother, and sister. So to be on grounds where innumerable severances had taken place–it was very fearful, and I felt a bit disassociated from myself while walking through the camp. The very fact that my mind would need to impose this distance on a simple visit, when my life was entirely unthreatened, was illuminating and humbling and it made me question myself a lot. I’d just written a book that claimed that beauty is a reason to live, a form of revenge against the Nazis, a way towards meaning. I still believe this, but when I left Auschwitz, I felt that beauty in its highest form must surely a disruption of cruelty. I’d edged towards that notion before, but I knew then, that I could never go back to thinking of beauty in any other way.

If we are interested in reading more about the real-life heroes that inspired your story, what books or documentaries should we check out?

All of Primo Levi’s books were heavy influences early on, but especially The Truce and  The Periodic Table. Children of the Flames by Lucette Lagnado was a vital introduction for me.  I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz by Dr. Gisella Perl, a harrowing account that partially informed the character of Dr. Miri. Auschwitz: True Tales of a Grotesque Land by Sara Nomberg-Przytyk, which I discovered late and can’t recommend enough for its unexpected tone and vibrancy.

Eva Mozes Kor’s work is indispensable. She and her twin sister, Miriam Mozes Zeiger, survived Mengele’s experiments at Auschwitz. They founded CANDLES, and a museum in Indiana dedicated to preserving the history of the twins. She has a searing book, Echoes from Auschwitz: Dr. Mengele’s Twins:  The Story of Eva and Miriam Mozes, and a documentary “Forgiving Mengele”.

Mischling by Affinity Konar

I’m always thankful for these moments with writers and I hope you will pick up this amazing book! You can always connect with me on GoodReads, through our books section of our site, and you can read our entire Sundays With Writers series for more author profiles. Happy reading, friends!

*This post contains affiliate links!

Sundays With Writers: Miss Jane by Brad Watson

Sunday, January 29th, 2017

Sundays With Writers

I am so excited to be sharing my first interview for 2017 with such an incredible and talented author. Miss Jane ended up making my top ten list, for my 2016 reading, right at the very tail end of the year. I just knew that it would be such a treat to share an interview with the author, Brad Watson,  in our series. The sincerity and assuredness in his writing give the reader the feeling of reading a timeless classic and I appreciate Brad’s vulnerability in sharing the challenges of writing this book.

I am always astounded and thankful that even when a work is so incredibly challenging that it takes over a decade to write, he kept at it because they know this story must be told.

As a reader, it makes me appreciate a book so much more.

I had been dying to talk about this book with someone so I had the MomAdvice Book Club read it and then I read it with my local book club too. It’s one of those kinds of books that you want to research more when you finish. In fact, I’d love to chat with you in the comments when you finish it too!

Miss Jane by Brad Watson

If I was going to pick a book that surprised me the most, it would be, Miss JaneWatson pens the story of his great-aunt, Miss Jane, and her struggles with a genital birth defect that alters Jane’s life path greatly. Set in the early twentieth century in rural Mississippi, Jane knows that she is not like other girls. Her struggles with this defect every moment of her day are told in ways that often feel unfathomable.

Her kind doctor takes her under his wing and has honest discussions with her about limitations and continuing research to try to help her. He becomes her confidant in a time of true loneliness. As she ages, she knows that her biggest hurdle will be having her own love story and Watson writes poetically of Jane’s love for a boy. Yet, in a time when a woman’s most useful task is to bear children, Jane knows that her love story must be a different one and she bravely accepts what this path looks like.

Her kind doctor takes her under his wing and has honest discussions with her about limitations and continuing research to try to help her. He becomes her confidant in a time of true loneliness. As she ages, she knows that her biggest hurdle will be having her own love story and Watson writes poetically of Jane’s love for a boy. Yet, in a time when a woman’s most useful task is to bear children, Jane knows that her love story must be a different one and she bravely accepts what this path looks like.

The peacock design on this cover is beautifully woven into this story and brings together all the beauty in this gorgeous book. It reads like a well-versed literary classic. I doubt you won’t fall in love with Miss Jane too.

Grab your coffee and let’s chat with the wildly talented, Brad Watson!

Brad-Watson

First of all, your book is absolutely beautiful from start to finish and one of my very favorite reads in 2016. I am so incredibly honored to share your story with our readers.

I understand that the story for Miss Jane was based upon your great-aunt, but you had very little information to go on to carve out her story. Did you find not having a lot of information created more freedom as a writer or did you find it more challenging that so much needed to be imagined for her life?

Thank you, Amy. I didn’t have much to go on, it turns out. My great aunt died in 1975, long before I decided to write a story inspired by hers – then I found out her story was mostly unknown. Most who’d really known her were gone, and those remaining hadn’t know her that well. My mother remembered generalities about her condition, but no one knew what it was, specifically. There were no surviving medical records or nursing home records. And the more I looked into probable conditions, the more of them didn’t make sense. It took me several years to settle on a plausible condition, and only then could I really make any progress on the novel. I couldn’t imagine her life, daily or long-term, without deciding on the condition that would have so defined her – initially, and after she decided how she was going to live with it.

After much research, you concluded that the diagnosis that would have fit best for Miss Jane would have been persistent cloaca. As readers, we get to experience the smallest fraction of her continued pain, discomfort, and difficulties that she would have struggled with. Did you also imagine these experiences or did you read about other people’s experiences, with this disorder during this time?

Whether my lack of talent at research or a real lack of information out there, I simply could not find accounts of people with that condition, living in that time. I read whatever I could find, but there wasn’t much literature about it because of the condition’s relative rarity. And perhaps there was too much shame. And perhaps a lot of babies died soon after birth. But I found nothing about it in Hugh Young’s seminal book on urogenital disorders, published around the time my character would have been a teenager.

Nature plays such a large role in Miss Jane understanding her own body and sexuality. From the stinkhorn, to how the animals mate on the farm, and even to the beautiful peacock that graces the cover of the book, these moments help bring understanding for Miss Jane. Why did you want to use nature to help guide her toward a better understanding of herself and how did you build this element of discovery for her? Was it through your own observations as a child or was it witnessing things later when visiting the land she grew up on that shaped this important element?

Visiting the land where she (and my mother, in the next generation) grew up was part of it. Being a loner child who loved roaming the woods was part of it. But necessity finally drove me to take her in that direction, finally. What is this girl, isolated physically and socially by her secret condition, to do with herself when she’s not working, doing chores for her mother? She tried school and couldn’t do that. So she took walks, and in the woods she found a world that was accepting, the natural world, because the natural world is a place where some of the strangest, oddest things are no more unnatural than anything else. A stinkhorn mushroom belongs in the forest as much as does a wildflower. A possum is as much as a deer or bobcat or bird or a bat or a toad. Nothing is alienated or reviled or ostracized in the forest. The possum is not ugly in the forest. In the woods, Jane is just another variation on the innumerable creations in the world.

Each of your characters are so beautifully developed that I found myself attached to each one. I know Miss Jane must hold the sweetest spot in your story, but who happened to be your other favorites to write? Were any of these special characters based on real people in your family?

Dr. Thompson, of course, was a favorite; in fact, at one point I worried he was going to take over the story, which forced me to find ways to allow Jane and the other characters to become more interesting than they were at the moment. He rose the bar. But then I began to find the deeper, more complex and interesting parts of Mrs. Chisolm, Mr. Chisolm, and Jane, herself. But he was the first one who really opened the door to the novel’s narrative voice.

For those that don’t know, you really poured your heart and soul into this book for over a decade. What do you think you have gained the most from the process of writing this particular book and how did you power through this difficult moments of creation when it ended up taking longer than you thought it did?

It was the hardest story and character to get a grip on I’ve faced so far. For a long time I really worried I would not be able to write it. But I’m pretty stubborn, and also whenever I would try to work on something else, Jane stayed lodged in the back of my mind, providing interference. It was finally something I had to finish, one way or another, in order to move on. It took too long, really. And I really emptied the well. There was nothing left in me when I finally turned Miss Jane in for good. I’m embarrassed I had such a hard time writing what turns out to be a pretty simple story. But it was not only understanding someone so foreign to me, personally, but also figuring out how to tell such a person’s story. I’d read very little fiction about characters so alienated from society, from other human beings, in a way that could not really be overcome, that must be instead accepted and bent to that person’s advantage in whatever small ways possible. It was very much a line-by-line, word-by-word effort. And in the end I had more drafts, trying to get it just right, than I’d ever put down on anything, short story or novel. Once I knew what the story should sound like, feel like, what its limitations were and where it could go that other stories might not, it was a backing up and very careful proceeding once again into the whole of it, language, people, world around them and in them. Some novels need as much care and attention as a short story or a poem. This seemed to be one of them.

In a time where women find value and worth from having children and marriage, Jane has to find her value in other ways. Do you think your aunt would have been proud of the way you told her story? What is the message you would love your readers to take away from sharing this story?

I never met my great aunt. I saw her once, when I was very young, and thereby caught the first inkling of her mystery. From what my mother and a cousin or two told me, I gathered that she was strong, private, and kept herself in good spirits, at least in public or among others. She kept her condition a secret, and people didn’t talk about it. I don’t think she would have wanted this book out while she was alive. I felt good about it because I was writing a story about someone with a very strong character, resilience, determination to live a life as full and as dignified – as as free – as was humanly possible for her. I was writing out of admiration – and, later, wonder.

miss-jane

You can connect with Brad Watson on his website! I’m always thankful for these moments with writers and I hope you will pick up this amazing book! You can always connect with me on GoodReads, through our books section of our site, and you can read our entire Sundays With Writers series for more author profiles. Happy reading, friends!

*This post contains affiliate links!

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