Take Five
We are beyond thrilled to bring you a Take Five interview with longtime contributor Barbara O’Neal. We’ve said it before, and it’s more true than ever that Barbara’s books are an auto-buy for so many of us here at Writer Unboxed. She means so much to those of us who’ve been reading her wise and encouraging posts here alongside her always nourishing novels. She shows us the way, in every facet. Her work demonstrates the skills and growth that are vital to our craft, as well as showing us the way to live the artist’s life as we strive on.
What’s Barbara have in store for us this time? “Heartfelt and layered, The Starfish Sisters is a moving story about the complicated nature of female friendship, the joys and heartbreaks of life, and the resiliency and power that women possess.” Believe us when we say, you’ll not only be turning pages, you will be moved.
Without further ado, here’s Barbara.
Q1: What’s the premise of your new book?
Barbara: It’s the story of a long and very complicated friendship. Two misfit girls meet at the age of 12 and find both refuge and conflict with each other.
Q2: What would you like people to know about the story itself?
Barbara: This was a book of the heart for me, on two levels. I started it because I kept thinking about my best friend from childhood, and how deep and rich that relationship was. So much of the bedrock of Suze and Phoebe’s friendship came from that bond. We were so very entwined, and it was by far one of the most important relationships I’ve had in my life. In general, I tend toward intense female relationships, both with my sisters and my friends, and this gave me a chance to dive into the dynamics of those complicated connections. How do we keep showing up? When is it time to let go?
The other angle is Oregon, of course. Readers here probably mostly know that story by now, but I traveled up the Oregon coast almost exactly two years ago this month, celebrating my marriage to my long-time partner, and fell head over heels in love with the place. We moved here six months ago, and I love that the book cover almost exactly echoes the view from my windows. I didn’t even know this house existed when I wrote the book. Crazy. Magic!
Q3: What do your characters have to overcome in this story? What challenge do you set before them?
Barbara: In a way it’s a coming of age for each of them. One stage of life is finishing, and a new one is opening up. They have to figure out where they fit with each other–or if they even do anymore–and also try to uncover what the next part of their lives will look like. That means making peace with whatever has been, and letting go of what doesn’t work to make space for the new.
But it’s mainly about the damage secrets can do. The only way to heal is to throw open the windows and reveal the truth. Sometimes, a relationship won’t survive, but it definitely won’t as long as secrets are in the way.
Q4: What unique challenges did this book pose for you, if any?
Barbara: […]
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We are so pleased to showcase an interview with WU contributor and award-winning MG, PB, and YA author and poet, Rachel Toalson, taking a closer look at her latest release, The First Magnificent Summer. There’s already plenty of buzz for the book, including this:
“Toalson’s healing love song to those who are growing up (or grew up) with imperfect parents, reminding us that their imperfection isn’t your imperfection; that you’re perfect just the way you are.”—Kathleen March, Anderson’s Bookshop (Downer’s Grove, IL)
And this:
“Toalson handles difficult, complex subjects with nuance and care, never losing sight of who her readers are, and striking the delicate balance between honesty and hope.”–Jordan Leigh Zwick, The Book Seller (Grass Valley, CA)
Interested in a closer look? Let’s hear what Rachel has to say.
Q1: What’s the premise of your new book?
RT: The First Magnificent Summer is about a twelve-year-old girl who is all set for her first magnificent summer visiting her dad after her parents’ divorce and two years of not seeing him. She’s ready to impress him with her wit, her maturity, and her smarts. But things begin to fall apart on the long road trip from Texas to Ohio, as she shares a car and a summer with his new family, The Replacements; she deals with her father’s constant criticism and sexist treatment; and she gets her first period one thousand miles away from her mom and safety and all the comforts of home.
Q2: What would you like people to know about the story itself?
RT: Anyone who has ever been a young person knows the weight of other people’s expectations–a parent expecting them to not be so emotional or a teacher expecting them to stop writing in their journal so much and listen to instructions more or a grandparent expecting them to act like a lady (whatever that means). These were some of the heavy expectations I carried as a kid. We can easily lose sight of who we are by trying to please other people. The First Magnificent Summer is a book about becoming your magnificent self, despite who and what others expect you to be. And I hope everyone who reads this book closes it with an unshakeable conviction that they are magnificent just the way they are.
Q3: What do your characters have to overcome in this story? What challenge do you set before them?
RT: Victoria, the main character of the book, is one thousand miles away from her mother when she starts her first period. She doesn’t have enough period supplies and tries to handle it all on her own, because she doesn’t want to talk to her dad’s new wife (who’s part of the group she calls “The Replacements”) about something so personal. She tries to ration her period supplies, but of course that doesn’t work, and it creates a visceral panic in her (she also struggles with anxiety). She not only has to overcome this very real physical challenge, but she’s also faced with the realization (it actually sort of slaps her in the face) that Womanhood comes with a giant challenge: inequality. She notices that her father treats her brother differently than he treats her, and she suspects it’s because she’s a girl.
I think there’s a moment in every young girl’s life when she realizes […]
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We’re thrilled to bring you a Take Five interview with our esteemed contributor, David Corbett. For those who aren’t aware, David is the author of seven novels, which have been nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar. His short fiction has twice been selected for Best American Mystery Stories, and a collaborative novel for which he contributed a chapter-Culprits-was adapted for TV by the producers of Killing Eve for Disney+ in the U.K. His new thriller, The Truth Against the World, sounds incredibly enticing:
In the near future, as America breaks apart into factional violence, a young artist named Georgina O’Halloran creates an illustrated book of old Celtic tales in the style of the famous Book of Durrow. Titled The Truth Against the World, it’s intended as a gift for her professor-who is also her lover.
Curious to hear more? Let’s talk to David.
Q1: What’s the premise of your new book?
DC: Who knows? I don’t write from a premise. I start with a couple (usually incompatible) ideas that are bugging me and then ask: How can I build a story out of this mess?
In this case, the ideas were: (1) the possibility of armed civil strife in this country not unlike the Troubles that afflicted Ireland from 1970-1998; (2) the “wondrous and strange” atmospherics of Irish myth, specifically the Fenian Cycle featuring Finn mac Cumhal (Finn McCool) and his hunter-warrior band, the fianna, especially his son, the warrior-poet Oísin; (3) what I’ve written about before here at Writer Unboxed, “the love that dare not say its name,” i.e. genuine Platonic love between a man and a woman. (I was particularly pleased when an early reviewer specifically picked up on that last element of the story and praised my refusal to force a cheap romantic subplot on the characters.)
Q2: What would you like people to know about the story itself?
DC: Given the mythic undertones, no one should be surprised this is a journey tale—specifically a cross-country trek with the country descending into violent civil war, with our intrepid couple, Shane and Georgie, in search of their personal Grail: a book Georgie wrote as a gift to her professor and lover, who then viciously broke off the affair, sending Georgie into a deep, depressive tailspin. The professor then published the work as his own and it became an international sensation—as well as the inspiration for a video game that has become a watering hole and recruiting venue for militia members and other malcontents performing some of the worst atrocities in the national conflict.
Q3: What do your characters have to overcome in this story? What challenge do you set before them?
DC: Beyond the external challenge of making it all the way to California from Philadelphia to confront the plagiarist, Georgie struggles with her susceptibility to depression and the lack of self-confidence that goes along with it. She also needs to believe that everything they endure to expose the truth is worth it.
For Shane, there’s an element of his past he must fiercely keep secret, and as aspects of that past surface in the course of their journey, Shane has to face squarely what his real motives are for remaining so devoted to Georgie.
Q4: What unique challenges did this book pose for you, if any?
DC: This […]
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Lie With Me, the new title from Writer Unboxed contributor Gwen Hernadez, releases this coming Tuesday, and we’re delighted to help her celebrate the occasion.
The latest in a series Gwen started in 2010, this edition is centered on a group of found family, but formed by—and mostly around—women. In spite of the women-centered cast, Gwen tells us, “At the same time, I wanted to write a story for one of the characters who’s been in all of my previous books, Jason Chin.” Gwen was raised in the Army and Navy, and married an Air Force engineer, so it’s natural that her Men of Steele series features military heroes and heroines who must overcome danger to find true love. Lie With Me is a crossover that brings Jason from the Men of Steele, and pairs him with an old flame from college, Emma Gallagher, who’s part of a secret group called the Night Herons. Bonded by a painful shared past, the Night Herons take down wealthy and powerful men whose evil deeds often go unpunished. Sounds like a delicious recipe to us, but don’t take our word for it. USA Today bestselling author Rachel Grant says Lie With Me is “another emotional, gripping page-turner from Gwen Hernandez. You can always count on her to deliver the perfect balance of steam, action, and suspense!”
Want to hear more? Read on. Congratulations, Gwen!
Q: What’s the premise of your new book?
GH: While on a mission to expose a billionaire businessman who preys on vulnerable women and girls, Emma Gallagher’s informant is killed before he can hand over the proof she needs. When the man who once broke her heart gets the files instead, she’ll use their fierce attraction, his guilty conscience…whatever it takes to recover the evidence to bring a murderer to justice.
Former special operator Jason Chin was hired to protect his wealthy client’s interests, but when an assassin attacks Emma, he’s forced to rethink everything he knows about the job, the choices of his past, and the woman he never stopped loving. On the run with her, he risks it all to outwit a deadly enemy and convince Emma to be his future.
Q: What would you like people to know about the story itself?
GH: It’s an action-packed adventure full of danger and romance that’s also a blatant love letter to the city of Lucerne, Switzerland, where most of it takes place. I had a blast virtually revisiting one of my favorite places while writing the book.
I tackle some tough subjects, but it is ultimately—as all of my stories are—about hope.
Q: What do your characters have to overcome in this story? What challenge do you set before them?
GH: From the beginning, they’re at odds. Emma’s out to destroy a man whose interests Jason was hired to protect. And it’s personal for Jason because his brother is the rich guy’s right-hand man, so he’s torn between believing Emma and believing his brother.
For her part, Emma has good reasons to be angry with Jason, but she has to set aside their history if she’s going to get the evidence from him. She thinks she can use a pretext on him, send him on his way, and never see […]
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We’re so pleased to bring you a Take Five interview with WU contributor and author Diana Giovinazzo! Diana’s latest novel, Antoinette’s Sister, publishes this month. She’s here to tell us about it, what the book taught her as a writer, and more!
Q: What’s the premise of your new book?
A: Antoinette’s Sister is the story of Maria Carolina Charlotte, a Habsburg archduchess, Queen of the kingdom of The Two Sicilies, and the beloved sister of Marie Antoinette. Maria Carolina was thrust into a marriage in a Kingdom that was beyond anything her controlling mother could have prepared her for. But with the onset of the French Revolution, she risks it all when her sister is murdered, and the threat of invasion by Napoleon looms.
Q: What would you like people to know about the story itself?
A: There are many things that I would love for people to take with them from the story, from the fact that there was a whole country called The Kingdom of The Two Sicilies that existed prior to 1860 that played a major role in Italian history and culture.
Likewise, Maria Carolina is a woman who has not only been overlooked by history, but there were so many things that she did for her country from legal reforms, to restoring buildings, and even planting southern Italy’s beloved olive trees. She was responsible for bringing coffee to Naples!
Q: What do your characters have to overcome in this story? What challenge do you set before them?
A: Often, we think of Queens as being these all-powerful women, when really, they had just as much if not less autonomy than everyone else. Maria Carolina is faced with a constantly changing world, her beliefs of divine right are challenged by the new enlightenment philosophy and the concept of democracy. Likewise, what does it look like when one’s patriotic duty is to cater to the whims of a King, especially one as immature as her husband Ferdinand? Maria Carolina had to fight for her power within a patriarchal society. She was always torn between her ambition, motherhood, and putting the good of the country over her own family.
Q: What unique challenges did this book pose for you, if any?
A: Sometimes our challenges aren’t always from the writing itself. I started this book literally two weeks before lockdown so there were times when I had to lock myself in my office and not pay attention to the news or anything else so that I could focus on the story. In some ways that was a saving grace because I didn’t get as stir crazy as others. In other ways, it was a lesson in discipline in order to finish the book. When I was in the midst of editing my best friend had been informed that her cancer was terminal which presented a whole new set of challenges in writing through grief and learning if I could write regardless of the challenges I faced.
Q: What has been the most rewarding aspect of having written this book?
A: There was a meme that went around the internet at the start of the pandemic saying something to the effect of “William Shakespeare wrote King Lear during a pandemic, what can you do with this time?”
For some reason, I took it as a personal […]
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Barbara O’Neal is an auto-buy author for many of us here at Writer Unboxed, and for good reason. Not only is she a long-time WU contributor who gifts us with wise words and optimism (and who doesn’t need that?), her books are word candy for word lovers and a craft study for authors-in-progress. We’re thrilled that she’s with us today to talk with us about her latest novel, releasing this coming Tuesday, called WRITE MY NAME ACROSS THE SKY. Enjoy!
Q: What’s the premise of your new book?
Barbara: When former glamor girl and flight attendant turned Gloria hears the news that her long lost love has been arrested in Europe, she knows she’s in trouble and calls in her nieces Willow and Sam to hold down the fort. All three women are facing life changing struggles that threaten their dreams. Gloria is a fabulous influencer for women over 70 and faces arrest for her part in old crimes; Willow is a failed musician in the shadow of her famous rockstar mom, and Sam has to deal with her own fears and angers before she can save her video game company. The path is not smooth.
Q: What would you like people to know about the story itself?
Barbara: I love, love, love this mad, escapist book. I wrote it during the pandemic and loved escaping to a New York City outside of time. Gloria lives on the upper west side, one of my favorite places on earth, in the fabulous pre-war apartment her sister bought in the seventies. It’s about art and fame and women and the power of their dreams, the forces that oppose them, and of course, families and dysfunction and hope. There is a killer love story that made me cry over and over, and a killer rooftop garden and greenhouse that provide the basis for Gloria’s instagram power.
Q: What do your characters have to overcome in this story? What challenge do you set before them?
Barbara: Gloria is a fabulous influencer with a life she’s grown to love very much, a life of simple loves and pleasures after the wildness of her youth. She loves her begonias and photography and encouraging other women of a certain age to throw off the fetters and live freely, but now the past threatens to take that all away. Willow is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl who wants to be more, and has the talent, but needs the grit. Sam is–oh, Sam is so many people I know. Difficult, prickly, and full of hungers to connect. She has to learn how to let down her guard and actually live in her life, instead of taking out her fury on her sister all the time.
Q: What unique challenges did this book pose for you, if any?
Barbara: Every book presents challenges. One for this book was that I’d had a trip planned to NYC in the very early stages. I wanted to double check my memories and touch base with some people in the neighborhood, but the trip was planned for the second week in March, 2020, and we all know what happened. Luckily, I have spent a lot of time there and I had my model apartment in mind and knew […]
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Big thanks to longtime WU contributor Sophie Masson for allowing us to reprint here the interview she conducted with Therese Walsh about the genesis of our first Writer Unboxed book, AUTHOR IN PROGRESS.
Sophie Masson: How did the idea for Author in Progress come about? What was your vision for the book, and how did that evolve as time went on?
Therese Walsh: The book came about after I met with the Phil Sexton at the Writer’s Digest conference last summer (2015). He mentioned the idea of doing a book with them, and that took root with me over a month or so. I had a follow-up phone call with Phil, and he mentioned the freedom we’d have to do the type of book we wanted to do. After that, the idea for Author in Progress fell into place rather quickly, as I considered what I knew to be true about writing a book – because there are some things I always say when someone who is not yet published asks, ‘How did you get published? What did you do?’
The book is broken into parts, following the stages a writer will likely go through on the road to publication: pre-writing considerations, the writing itself, critique-related topics, ways you can improve yourself as a writer, rewriting, perseverance, and releasing the project once you’ve served the work.
SM: Author in Progress is a very different kind of how-to writing book, as it doesn’t assume that the journey ends when your book is published. And it offers the advice and experience of many different contributors. How did you go about gathering and editing contributions from so many people?
TW: Assigning essays was much easier than it might have been, in part because Writer Unboxed contributors are exceptional to work with (I’m not at all biased!). I think the other reason it was relatively easy was because of the adaptability of the contributors, in that many could write to several stages of the book. That said, there was a certain magic to the match-ups and I’m particularly pleased with how that went; everyone delivered something about an issue that resonated with them personally.
In terms of gathering and editing, I created a deadline for essayists to turn in their work and that deadline was met almost without exception. I then read over each essay, and suggested revisions when I thought they might make the book stronger. I then did a final edit for clarity–adding headers and correcting for typos. This is what was then submitted to Writer’s Digest and our in-house editor there, Rachel Randall, who took everything to the next level in terms of polish and readiness for publication.
SM: Author in Progress is aimed not only at aspiring authors, but also authors who have already been published. What do you think authors at different stages of their careers could get from this book?
TW: One of the things authors will be able to see is that the stages of story creation are cyclical, repeating with every book. Sure, you learn things early on that you apply to each book thereafter, but that doesn’t mean you don’t hit each stage in some way. We’ve included some articles under a header called […]
Read MoreAs promised in our squee post earlier this week, contributor Sophie Masson found time to squeeze in a Take 5 Q&A on her new release THE MADMAN OF VENICE as she traveled back from Paris to Australia. Congratulations, Sophie!
TAKE 5 with Sophie Masson
Q: What is the premise of your new book?
It is 1602 and 17 year old apprentice and would-be writer Ned Fletcher travels to Venice from London with his employer, merchant Matthew Ashby, Ashby’s widowed sister Mistress Quickly and Ashby’s lovely daughter Celia(with whom Ned is–apparently hopelessly!–in love. They go to investigate two mysteries: what is happening to the cargoes belonging to Ashby and his fellow London merchants, which have been targetted by pirates; and the disappearance of a young Jewish girl, Sarah Tedeschi, who has incurred the wrath of a powerful Venetian aristocrat, the Countess Montemoro. They find much more than they bargained for..Lots of danger, excitement, adventure, romance and a touch of comedy in a very Shakespearean-influenced mix!
Q: What would you like people to know about in this story?
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