Q&A with Tracy Daugherty

 

 

 

Tracy Daugherty is the author of the new novel Tales from the Bayou City. His other books include the biography Larry McMurtry: A Life. He is Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing, Emeritus at Oregon State University.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Tales from the Bayou City, and how would you describe your relationship with Houston?

 

A: I conceived Tales from the Bayou City decades ago, when I was a young man living in Houston. I had migrated to the city from the flatlands of West Texas—oil rigs and tumbleweeds—and I didn’t know what a city was, or what it could be, until I arrived in Houston. 

 

Houston opened my eyes to the meaning of the word “diversity,” and I immediately wanted to capture on the page the thrill, the energy, the scariness, and the possibilities of diverse populations rubbing against one another in an urban environment. 

 

I began writing what would become Tales, but I was too young, and too overwhelmed by life, to pull together the narrative back then. Over the years, I wound up publishing parts of the novel as short stories in various places, but I could never realize the full vision of the novel until just recently, after many years of contemplating it, and contemplating Houston from near and far. 

 

Houston is one of the great loves of my life. My relationship to the city is intimate and profound. I cherish its textures, its air, its smell, and its heat. I returned to it recently and fell under its spell again. To me, it is a living, breathing organism, and it still has much to teach me about life. 

 

Q: The novel is divided into four time periods, 1985, 1990, 1995, and 2000--how would you describe the relationship among those sections of the book?

 

A: Anyone who has a long acquaintance with a city—any city—knows how quickly things change. Almost the moment you write about something, it will have altered or disappeared, so, by definition, writing about a city means you are composing elegies: gravestone inscriptions for what used to be.

 

For that reason, I structured Tales from the Bayou City in five-year increments: to acknowledge, up front, the rapidity and depth of change, the gaps in life that, oftentimes, get covered up or smoothed over in narratives (which, after all, seek to make connections among events, and find meaning in them). 

 

Without denying connections or meaning, I wanted to convey life’s disorientations, its randomness as well. The four-part structure of Tales allowed me to leave some of the biggest changes in the main character’s life unseen—offstage, as it were. The story continues as each part unfolds, but not without interruptions and gaps. 

 

This sort of rhythm seems to me truer to life than a smooth, slick narrative would be.      

Q: The writer Rosellen Brown said of the book, “No one has written this well of Houston, ever, catching the run-down, random quality of it, and the nuances, the rough and the smooth, of different neighborhoods, of the diversity of populations.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: Bless Rosellen.  She has experienced many different cities, including Houston, and she has a keen eye and deep empathy for diverse populations.  She grasped what I was trying to capture in Tales. (And her work has always been an exemplary model for me.) 

 

Houston is a fine mess, and any book about it has to exhibit messiness to a fine degree. As a school student in Houston, I used to read and write, and dream of the future, while sitting in an old cemetery where many ex-slaves were buried. The cemetery was surrounded and being crowded out by modern, multi-story condos. 

 

The city is that kind of mess—and trying to express those contradictions is what it means to write about urban America.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: I hope that Tales makes readers laugh and cry—about their own lives.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I am fortunate to be in a productive period just now. I have a new book coming out called We Shook Up the World: The Spiritual Rebellion of Muhammad Ali and George Harrison. 

 

I am working on other fiction—a series of linked stories (or a novel in stories) about an architect in New York City, covering the city’s history from 9/11 to the pandemic; a novel about a Mexican filmmaker, spanning the 1920s through the 1960s; and a novel set in Oklahoma during the Depression, based on an actual murder in a small town that blew the lid off a town’s racial volatility. 

 

I have also just signed to write a biography of Cormac McCarthy.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: My website is tracydaugherty.com. I am always happy to hear from readers. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Tracy Daugherty.

Q&A with Harriet Crawley

 

 

 

Harriet Crawley is the author of the new novel The Translator. Her other books include the novel The Painted Lady. She also has worked as a journalist and as an art dealer.

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Translator, and how did you create your characters Clive Franklin and Maria Volina?

A: The inspiration behind this book is, quite simply, Russia. After living and working in Russia, a country I loved, for over 20 years, I felt I knew it from the inside; I felt I had something to say.

When I moved to Russia in 1994 I was a single parent with a son, and a few months earlier I had married a Russian. We lived just outside Moscow, in a wooden dacha surrounded by birch and pine trees, in a village called Peredelkino where Boris Pasternak had lived and written Doctor Zhivago. I sent my son to a Russian state school while I worked as an art dealer.

 

Later, after divorcing my Russian husband, I moved into the heart of Moscow, where I changed careers and worked in the energy sector, starting a technical publishing company.

Through all these years I travelled, as much as I possibly could. Twice, I boarded the Trans-Siberian train from Moscow to Vladivostok, stopping at dozens of cities along the way, including Tyumen, Tomsk, Irkutz, Ulan Ude and Khbarovsk.

 

I sailed overnight by boat into the White Sea, to a monastery which Lenin had turned into a gulag; I flew south to the Black Sea where I tasted red wine from Crimea; I saw an ice marathon on Lake Baikal and rode horses in the Altai mountains among 4th century BC Scythian tombstones.

 

In a moment of folly I decided, in mid-winter, to visit the coldest inhabited city on earth, Yakutz in the Russian Far East. I landed there in January 2014; it was minus 52.

I knew I had enough material for a novel, (this would be my fourth novel, fifth book) and I thought I would try my hand at what the great Patricia Highsmith called “suspense fiction.” My setting would, of course, be Russia, but Russia a few years back, in 2017, before this dreadful war in Ukraine.

“Suspense fiction,” at the highest level: the British prime minister eyeball to eyeball with the Russian president. But my main characters would not be politicians, nor would they be spies. I wanted something closer to home. I speak five languages, so it was natural for me to choose linguists.

Why not interpreters? I thought. Those people in shadows, who no one notices, and yet, they hear and see everything.

Interpreters at the top of their game: Marina, the favourite interpreter of the Russian president, and Clive, interpreter for the British prime minister, but also a translator of Chekhov.

 

Once upon a time Marina and Clive had shared a great love. At a meeting in Moscow between the Russian president and the British prime minister, they meet again, and rekindle their passion. A love story. Deep down, I always knew The Translator had to be a love story.

As for characterization, I wanted Marina to be cleverer than most men (in her opinion), quick-witted and resourceful. I made her single, unmarried, and childless, with two foster sons (one dead, one alive). Her “family” life needed to be simple, unencumbered.

 

Also, she had to be international and sophisticated, so she speaks several languages, is immensely knowledgeable about literature and art. She is also tough, mentally and physically: a marathon runner.

In Clive I wanted an anti-hero who did not seek the limelight; a man who liked the shadows. But he also had to be a romantic, with a touch of eccentricity.

 

Clive is quiet, unassuming, but resolute, loyal and brave. His idol is Anton Chekhov, whom he translates. He also works as an interpreter in the British Foreign Office (but hates the word “interpreter” and thinks of himself as a translator, hence the title.)

It was clear to me from the start that Marina and Clive would share not only a great love, but also a passion for language. One of the eccentric features of their relationship is that they play linguistic games, comparing English and Russian proverbs. I had great fun with this and drew on my own studies.

I kept the plot simple: Marina wants to get out of Russia. To do so she decides to betray her country and pass on to Clive state secrets about a Russian plot which, if successful, would bring the Western economy to its knees: Russian drone submarines were about to cut the internet cables under the Atlantic.

Q: How did you research the novel, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

A: I was surprised about the undersea cables. I thought that internet traffic was carried by satellites. I did not realise that 97 percent of the world’s communications is transmitted by fibre optic cables on the seabeds of the world.

I spend hours fact-checking on the internet, reading research papers and books, picking up many surprising facts, for example the astonishing speed at which information is transmitted through undersea cables: data travels at 300,000 kilometres a second.

I was also surprised to learn how worried governments are all over the world about the security of these undersea cables and their vulnerability to both Chinese and Russian attack.

 

But for Western Europe (and to a certain extent the United States), Russia poses the greater danger. Over the past 20 years there has been a massive increase in Russian submarine activity, a fact that has been noted by the Pentagon.

In the UK in 2017 a paper called Undersea Cables: Indispensable, Insecure was published by the Policy Exchange think tank with a forward written by Admiral James Stavridis, USN (Ret), former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe.

 

This research paper warns of the vulnerability of these undersea cables to Russian attack, and if such an attack were to happen it would deal “a crippling blow to Britain’s security and prosperity. The threat is nothing short of existential.” The author is this alarming report was, at the time, an unknown member of Parliament by the name of Rishi Sunak.

I spent a whole year researching the book. Luckily for me I had a friend who had been in the Royal Navy, and he was able to put me in touch with experts. I had to learn everything from scratch: the various parts of a battleship, Navy protocol when a VIP comes on board, and a great deal about submarine warfare.

Also, I needed to understand the inner workings of the Kremlin, and of 10 Downing Street and of the British embassy in Moscow. I had hours of interviews with journalists, former politicians and diplomats who had worked in these places and gave me first-hand accounts of how things are organized, and also who would be in attendance, for example, at crisis COBRA meetings.

I also had to study cyber warfare, learn a new terminology used by hackers, and get my head round the astonishing capabilities of that ubiquitous computer: the mobile phone.

Q: Xan Smiley of The Economist called the book a “fast-paced thriller with a chilling ring of authenticity and an eerie closeness to present events in Ukraine.” What do you think of that description?

A: I was flattered by this comment. If the novel has “authenticity” it is because I lived and worked in Russia for 20 years, and I have tried to bring places to life with accurate and detailed descriptions, and to give the reader an insight into how ordinary Russians react and think, and to show the bravery of so many Russian (and remember, my story is set in 2017, when some opposition was possible).

As for “an eerie closeness to present events in Ukraine,” I take that as a compliment. The war in Ukraine is being conducted by drones in the air. In my story, the Russian high command uses underwater drones. But the tactics are the same: to destroy and destabilize the “enemies” of Russia.

Disinformation plays a key role in this present war between Russia and Ukraine, and so it does in my novel. I write about the “research centres” set up by Russia’s FSB (security service) which have only one purpose, to meddle with elections in the US and in the UK, and generally spread disinformation.

 

We know for a fact that the main disinformation centre in Russia operates out of St. Petersburg, but I invented a new centre in Moscow, a five-story building where an army of young Russian hackers are employed with only one purpose: to spread fake news throughout social media, launch bot attacks on various websites, etc., in order to create confusion, sow doubt, and weaken our Western democracies.

Q: Without giving anything away, did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

A: I knew that Russia could not succeed in its attempt to destroy the Western economy, but it might do us great damage; exactly how much was an open question, even in my mind, until the very end.

 

Also, the fate of my main characters was in their hands and not mine. I had no fixed plan, and I let Marina and Clive and General Varlamov (deputy head of the FSB, Russia’s secret service) take the lead, and I followed.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: A sequel but set in the present day.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: It is a mistake to believe that every Russian supports Putin. They don’t. But nor can they protest or speak out; if they do, they will go to prison.

It is another mistake to think that Russia is not being seriously damaged by this war; sanctions are biting, prices are rising, and young Russian men are dying in great numbers.

 

I feel strongly that we must stay by Ukraine’s side and support their war effort, until they can bring Russia to the table more or less on their terms. You may think this is wishful thinking, but I believe it is the only honourable way forward, both for Ukraine and for Western democracies. If we fail here, then so many other small countries (Finland, the Baltic states, Moldova) are at risk.

Finally, it saddens me greatly that I shall never go back to Russia while Putin is in power, and while the country is a police state. But that could, and, I believe, will, change.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Deborah Lee Rose

 

 

 

Deborah Lee Rose is the author of the new children's picture book Penguins Ready to Go, Go, Go!. Her other books include Beauty and the Beak. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Penguins Ready to Go, Go, Go!?

 

A: This book began with a katydid landing on my car windshield. What does a hitchhiking insect have to do with penguins in Antarctica? Watching that katydid get help moving from place to place got me thinking about animals that don’t move very much—and I thought that included Emperor penguins.

 

But the more I researched, the more I discovered they are extraordinarily adapted not just to stand around or waddle a bit, but to sled, leap, swim, huddle, shuffle, march, dive deep, and more.

 

When I also learned that they are now a threatened species, because climate change is speeding up melting of the sea ice where they live and raise their young, I knew I had to write a book about them.

 

Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that particularly fascinated you?

 

A: I love photo research. As I looked at many, many, many penguin photos, I found myself saying, “WOW, I didn’t know they did that!”

 

One of the most surprising Emperor penguin secrets of survival is that they use teamwork in their huge huddles to get through even the worst blizzards. All the penguins are constantly rotating through the mass of birds, so each gets a turn in the warm middle of the huddle. 

Q: What are some of the most common perceptions and misconceptions about penguins?

 

A: We mostly see photos and videos of Emperor penguins on the sea ice, but a major part of their life cycle is spent in the ocean.

 

Tracking them and collecting data about them when they’re at sea—like where they migrate and how they survive far from the ice—is much harder for scientists. But researchers have made new discoveries about what these penguins do right under the Antarctic ice.

 

One adaption, which is captured in amazing photos from scientists who dived into the polar water, is that the penguins create underwater bubble streams to reduce drag on their bodies as they swim. This lets the birds build up enough speed to “fly” through the water and leap out back onto the ice. 

Q: What do you hope kids take away from the book?

 

A: I want kids to have fun reading and listening—that’s why I wrote the narrative portion in rhyme, with words like “whoosh” and “plop.” But I also want kids to discover the amazing WOW science facts behind these birds’ survival, and begin to understand how factors like climate change and pollution impact these much-loved birds.

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I'm working on widely sharing the science I’ve learned in doing this book, with kids and adults across the US and beyond. People around the world love Emperor penguins and scientists from many countries are studying and working to conserve this unique species.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: The book includes QR codes for scanning, linked to live action videos of Emperors waddling, tobogganing on their bellies, diving into the ocean and leaping out, feeding their chicks and more. There is also a free educational guide on my website, www.deborahleerose.com.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Deborah Lee Rose.

Q&A with Thea Lu

 

 

 

Thea Lu is the author and illustrator of the new children's picture book Here & There. She lives in Shanghai.

 

Q: What inspired you to create Here & There?

 

A: Here & There is a fictional story based on two people I met in the real world.

 

One is my dive guide who I met in Maldives. He works on boats, from place to place. He told me that on some occasions, especially when guests are off board and return to their own homes, a sense of distancing feeling may crawl around him. But he still loves his life choice, one that allows him to travel through works, to meet people in different corners of the world.

 

Another one is a sweet guy who runs a no-name cafe in a little street in Cambridge. He grew up along this street, and he said: “Most likely, I will retire in the same hospital where I was born (the hospital has been renovated into a nursery house).” He seldom traveled. People who once came for coffee sent him food and cards from their places. He chooses a settled life but is well-connected to the outside world.

 

I met these two people in different places, at different times. Their life options are much different, but I feel they are also similar in essence. I’ve kept their stories in mind for a long time until I made up my mind that I wanted to turn them into a picture book.

 

Q: Did you work on the illustrations first or the text first--or both simultaneously?

 

A: The text and images of Here & There were developed at the same time. I started with very rough imagery and wrote down some phrases alongside.

 

At the very beginning stage, I doodled two thumbnails on my sketchbook: one is a cafe man leaning against the edge of a long table, and one is a boatman standing on the tip of a boat. Almost at the same time, I got the starting text: This is Aki…. This is Dan….

 

These initial doodles set the tone for the whole book—the symmetry composition that unfolds the lives of each person, one on the left and one on the right. 

 

Q: How did you develop your artistic style?

 

A: For Here & There, I was quite sure at the beginning that the story should be revealed in a cinematic and sentimental style. So I chose oil ink as the main media to render the atmosphere, then added details with color pencils as well as a light touch of collage.

 

Having a consistent style is good for recognition among a wider public, but I just can’t keep myself loyal to one artistic way. For different book projects, I have to feel and catch the most appropriate visual expression. So when kicking off the artwork, I usually start with a mood board and visual keywords to direct myself. 

 

Q: What do you hope kids take away from the book?

 

A: I prefer to view this title as a cross-age one, rather than a book merely for children.

 

For young readers, I hope this book can create an opportunity for children and their parents to talk about ‘what kind of life you want to live in the future.’

 

We tend to ask children ‘what kind of job do you want to have when you grow up,’ but what should be cared about more is ‘what kind of lifestyle you want to have’?

 

In a sense, Dan’s and Aki’s choices are on opposite poles of a broad life-option spectrum: one that always moves, and another one that is deeply rooted. We can linger and think about our life in between.

 

I believe grown-up readers may resonate more with this story. The two protagonists’ life options differ greatly from each other but they both feel their lives are incomplete. It is the people they meet that complete their world. Readers can take it as a life-option book, a book about our relationship with the world. 

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m working on an editorial illustration project for a poem album. Meanwhile, I’m brewing two new book ideas.

 

One will be a hilarious, fun, and quirky book, dealing with the dialectical relationship between individualism and collectivism. Another idea is more fantasy. I hope it will end up as an imaginative story about an island and the world. I’d like to keep it a bit mysterious for now ;-).

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: In my newsletter, I've written an article talking about the whole idea and the "back-of-house" process of this book, with some context images. Here's the link: https://titantable.substack.com/p/0cf

 

Though it was written in Chinese, hopefully with help of the Google Translate (thanks to technology), it can be well understood.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

April 25

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
April 25, 1908: Edward R. Murrow born.

Q&A with Susan Page

 

Photo by Hannah Gaber

 

Susan Page is the author of the new biography The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters. Page's other books include Madam Speaker. She is the Washington bureau chief of USA Today, and she lives in Washington, D.C.

 

Q: What inspired you to write a biography of Barbara Walters, and how was the book’s title chosen?

 

A: My first book was a biography of Barbara Bush (The Matriarch) and my second a biography of Nancy Pelosi (Madam Speaker). I didn’t start out with a master plan to write about women; I think that notion found me.

 

For my third book, I liked the idea of exploring the life of a remarkable woman in my line of work – and in journalism, the O.G. is definitely Barbara Walters.

 

It took a while to settle on the right title. It was my editor at Simon & Schuster, Priscilla Painton, who finally said, “I think she sounds like a rulebreaker.” And we had it!

 

Q: How did you research her life, and what did you learn that surprised you most?

 

A: Barbara Walters was in failing health when I started the book, so unfortunately I couldn’t interview her – although she knew I was working on it, and she didn’t put up any obstacles in my way.

 

Fortunately, she had lived her life out loud, so I had the benefit of hundreds of interviews she had done throughout her career, and of her memoir.

 

The biggest surprise: How her father’s attempted suicide, when she was 28 years old, was a pivot in her life, and a source of her ferocious drive.

 

Q: How would you compare Walters with Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Bush, the subjects of your other biographies?

 

A: All of them were bad-ass women of the Silent Generation. As they were growing up, none of them harbored any expectations of breaking new ground, of becoming iconic figures – and yet they all did, against the odds.

 

Q: How would you describe Walters’ legacy today? What impact do you think she had on the field of journalism?

 

A: Every woman in journalism, and especially in broadcast journalism, owes her a debt. She cut a path that made it easier for those who followed, and she had the scars to prove it.

 

She also pioneered the intersection of news and celebrity – for better or worse – and created a new form of talk TV. A quarter-century after she founded it, ABC’s The View is still creating controversy, making news and even affecting politics.  

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Let me ask your question with a question: Who would you like to read a biography of now? Any ideas?

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I’m indebted to people who publish books (thank you, Simon & Schuster) and who sell books (thank you, independent bookstores) and who review books (thank you, Deborah). And especially to those who read books. Thank you, all.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Susan Page.

Q&A with Caroline Leavitt

 

 

 

Caroline Leavitt is the author of the new novel Days of Wonder. Her many other novels include With or Without You. She lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.

 

Q: In a piece for BookTrib, you wrote about using your family’s names for some of the characters in Days of Wonder. Can you say something about that, and about how those names made you feel about the characters?

 

A: My mother, Helen, died a few years ago, and I've been missing her and yearning to hear her tell her stories. Like the Helen in the book, she had grown up in an orthodox Jewish home with seven siblings (her father was a rabbi) and she had loved all the comfort.

 

But when her father died young suddenly, my mom lost her faith, but still always yearned for the comfort of a community that no longer existed for her. I wanted to give her a solution in the book--a way to find her way into community!

 

I also used my father's name, Henry, because I wanted to redeem that name! My father was an abusive brute, but my character Henry is kind!

 

And I used my sister's name because she has estranged herself from all the family, in hopes that I could give her the happy life that was denied her in real life.

 

Q: How did you create your character Ella, and how would you describe the relationship between her and her mother, Helen?

 

A: Ella and Helen were a lot like my mom and me. I always have photographs up on my filing cabinet near my desk so I can see the characters and after a while, they seem to talk to me. I do a lot of early structure work, figuring out what the characters want and why it's usually not what they need!

 

I didn't want Helen to be a bad mother, just a scared-to-be-alone one, which was a lot like my mom. She would have been happy if my sister and I lived down the street all our lives, or even in the same house that she lived in!

 

I wanted to explore the whole mother-daughter bond, and how as your child grows into an adult, they need you less even as you might need them more!

 

Q: How did you research the novel, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: I did a ton of research! First with the Poison Lady, who helps authors about poison. I talked to ER doctors who told me the signs of foxwood poisoning, and I talked to lawyers, too, and to my alarm I found that the law actually has nothing to do with justice a lot of the time. Lawyers want to win the cases!

 

The most fascinating research was with women who had been put on probation after getting out of jail. I went to attend prison activist and author Jean Trounstine's Changing Lives Through Literature classes in Massachusetts, where I was in a room with a judge, a probation officer, and 10 women on probation.

 

They very slowly started to warm to me, and in the end, I stayed in touch with them all. They told me all sorts of things about being in prison, the myths (Don't go by Orange is the New Black! It's all wrong) and how sometimes for fun, they could create their own slip 'n slide using dish liquid.

 

Q: The writer Jamie Ford said of the book, “As compassionate as it is complex, Days of Wonder is a completely absorbing story of loss, injustice, and the canyons of misconception left behind.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: Well, I love Jamie Ford for saying that! Media shapes a lot of misconceptions about people, especially people in prison for notorious crimes.

 

I wrote an essay about it for the Daily Beast about how Leslie Van Houton, who had been a Manson girl when she was 17, had been a model prisoner up into her early 70s.

 

People got angry with me for saying that she had served her time, and she deserved to be freed. She had changed. She was repentant. No, you don't have to forget what she did, but you can forgive since she made amends, and since she is a very different person now.

There was dire media influence about my character Ella, who was young (a 15-year-old attempted murderer makes good press) and from a poor family--so people had a field day with her. And her boyfriend Jude, the son of a prominent New York judge, seemed to get a free pass. The law is not fair all the time. 

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Two different novels at the same time (I'm torn between two lovers!) but I am much too superstitious to talk about them!

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: I signed a film shopping agreement for Days of Wonder already! Hollywood has broken my heart countless times, but hey, you never know!

 

Madonna was going to make my early novel Into Thin Air her debut but then didn't. My first novel was signed to Paramount who dropped it during a lengthy director and writers strike. Cruel Beautiful World also has a shopping agreement--and everything else never came through! 

 

I thought about writing the script myself (I won a finalist shot in the Sundance Screenwriter Lab contest) but I'm told my scripts read like novels.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Caroline Leavitt.