An Interview with Sara Foster

DEEP CONNECTIONS

An Interview with Sara Foster the Author of Shallow Breath

Whilst most non-Australians struggle mimicking the Aussie drawl most readers of Sara Foster’s latest mystery Shallow Breath, set predominantly in Western Australia, would be surprised to learn that the author of this quintessential Aussie story has only lived there for eight years. 

English-born Foster has always felt the land down-under was her second home. Thanks to her Australian stepfather there were many childhood family visits to the sun-burnt country.

The best-selling psychological suspense author credits her “Aussie” friends and her travel around the country for her insight in creating authentic Australian characters in her latest mystery. “I’ve enjoyed talking to many different Australians with interesting stories from similar backgrounds to many of my characters before I began writing.”

Shallow Breath, set in the present day, with flashbacks to the early nineties, tells the tale of Desi, a woman who has done something terrible in her past and now returns from prison to her seaside home hoping to reconnect with her teenage daughter Maya. Maya is finding it difficult to forgive her Mother for her inexplicable actions.  

Told in five parts via multiple view-points, Desi recounts her life in the nineties whilst working at the West Australian iconic Atlantis Marine Park just as it was shutting its doors. It was there she met American Connor, a passionate marine biologist, with whom she develops a friendship which changes her life forever.

Foster spent months researching Atlantis and the true-life drama and public fascination surrounding the releasing of its tamed dolphins back into the wild upon the 1990 park closure. 

Foster continues, ‘I chatted to a lady who lived locally and had worked in the restaurants there who filled me in on extra details.  I also talked to a lot of people who had been visitors and remembered the dolphin shows well and provided their own photos.”

Ironically, one of Foster’s friends with whom she had lost touch approached her on her launch night telling her she used to work with the dolphins there. “I had no idea,” said the surprised author.

Strange connections like this were actually the inspiration for the book. The most relevant to the book reminisces Foster was not of the human-kind.  “In 1999 when I was diving on the Great Barrier Reef, I returned to the boat and was hanging on to a rope waiting to be helped out. I put my face underwater and found myself staring at a ten to thirteen foot minke whale less than an arm’s length away just watching me curiously.”

Instead of being frozen with fear, as Foster had expected to be on encountering an enormous creature, she was instead filled with wonder. “I certainly felt that there was an assessing, intelligent eye watching me.”

Foster counts this underwater encounter, as well as her ”travel to some amazing places”, as the fuel that has steadily grown her passion for conservation over the past twelve years. “Without that experience I don’t know if I would be quite so passionate about saving all the minke whales harpooned every year in the Southern Oceans,” she adds.

She also reminisces of “fabulous encounters” with wild dolphins and an hour-long play session with a baby sea lion in the Galapagos – “this little animal just bolted around me and mimicked whatever movement I made.”

          Readers of Shallow Breath will find themselves bang in the middle of an eco-warrior drama and Foster’s fervor for animal conservation shines. Foster often highlights conservation issues through her Twitter and Facebook accounts and a visit to her website www.shallowbreath.com provides information not only on her book but issues as wide-ranging as the dwindling orangutan population, horrific treatment of dolphins in Japan, and the plight of orphaned Kangaroo joeys after their mothers are killed in culls.
          “I’ve realised just how fragile so much of life is,” says Foster “and how an enormous swathe of the natural world is under threat today from industrial development without respect for nature or regard for long-term sustainability. Shallow Breath developed out of this interest, and I plan to continue talking about it and supporting different causes as much as I can.”

This book is Foster’s third and she admits that it can become “quite intense” juggling her family life in a northern Perth suburb with her young daughter. “Basically, whenever my husband isn’t working he is looking after our daughter while I am locked away with the laptop and piles of draft chapters. I try not to take on too many deadlines so our family life isn’t pushed aside for too long but it’s definitely a challenge.”

With the rise and rise of e-books, and the changes in the industry, Foster believes that “the terror of physical books ‘dying’ is probably a bit of an overreaction.”  Instead she hopes the flexibility offered by e-books may create earning opportunities for writers. “I really admire people like Hugh Howey, whom I think has been particularly savvy in the way he has published his books in different territories.”

Despite her mastery of the Australian vernacular, and without ruling out a future sequel to Shallow Breath, Foster won’t be returning immediately to the island continent in her next book. “I think I’m going to go for some more dark and unusual family secrets in a psychological suspense set over the course of one night in the Lake District in England. Watch this space!”

Read our review of Shallow Breath. CLICK HERE

Review Copy supplied by RANDOM HOUSE Australia. For more information please visit http://www.randomhouse.com.au

For a FREE First Chapter of Shallow Breath CLICK HERE

Visit The Shallow Breath Website to learn how Sara blended fact with fiction to create SHALLOW BREATH.

Release Dates: Australia and New Zealand: December 2012

PURCHASING DETAILS 
You can purchase Shallow Breath from all good books stores in Australia.

E-Book for Australians and International: Amazon   Amazon UK
if you are overseas or in Australia, you can ALSO purchase direct from the author's website.
CLICK HERE.

An Interview with Michael Robotham

Delving into Dark Minds

An interview with best-selling thriller author

Michael Robotham

His readers want him to write faster and he wants them to read more slowly. In order to churn out a book a year, the international best-selling thriller author Michael Robotham is working sweat-shop hours.

Back in 2004 whilst writing his first novel, The Suspect, his day would start at nine in the morning with an hour for lunch, before working through till five and back in the evening and working again until eleven. Eight years later with seven more books gracing the best-seller lists and a resume that includes twice winning the Australian Ned Kelly Award, short-listings in UK Crime Writers Association Steel Dagger, ITV3 Thriller Awards, the South Africa's Boeke Prize and listings on “International Book of the Month”, making it the top recommendation to 28 million book club members in fifteen countries, you would think by now he could relax and enjoy the success.

“I’m still working long hours, which is a legacy of doing a book a year,” he admits. With his books selling in the millions and translated into twenty-two languages and published in more than 50 countries, Robotham finds that the success has brought even greater demands on his time, “answering correspondence, doing interviews, maintaining websites and touring.” 

During this interview he was between his North American and Canadian tours to promote his latest thriller, Say You’re Sorry, a dark, psychological crime story featuring psychologist Joseph O’Loughlin.

In the fourth O’Loughlin novel (The Suspect, Shatter, Bleed for Me) he returns to consult on the brutal murder of a husband and wife in a farmhouse in the small UK town of Bingham. Co-incidentally it had been the home of teenager Tash McBain, who along with her friend Piper had gone missing three years prior—neither girl was ever found.

“The seed of the idea for the story was sown ten years ago,” explains Robotham, “when two girls disappeared from the small village of Soham in Cambridgeshire. There is a very poignant photograph of them wearing matching Manchester United shirts, which was taken only hours before they went missing.”

 

           

“Holly and Jessica were best friends and they died at the hands of a school caretaker called Ian Huntley. In the weeks before their bodies were found, the entire nation clung to hope and hung on every scrap of information. There were prayer vigils and messages of support and makeshift monuments of flowers. It was as though these girls didn’t just belong to their families, they belonged to everyone.”

            Robotham wanted to explore the idea of public and private grief behind tragic stories that capture the public imagination and trigger what psychologists have termed ‘mourning sickness’ but wrap it inside a mystery of the ultimate fate of the girls. “O’Loughlin has such a wonderful sense of humanity and humour,” he says. “He can lead readers into dark places and confidently bring them back again.”   

 

Despite Joe O’Loughlin’s popularity with readers he won’t always feature in upcoming novels. When he first appeared in The Suspect it was never Robotham’s intention to write a series. “I wanted to do stand-alones. At my publisher’s insistence, I compromised and created a cast of characters who appear in the books. I only went back to Joe as the narrator when I came up with the idea for Shatter. It is such a pure psychological thriller that it needed someone like Joe to tell the story. Joe came back in Bleed for Me because my wife insisted I sort out his personal life. I didn’t manage that—so maybe Joe will keep appearing occasionally. He won’t be the star of twenty novels but may appear as a minor character now and then. When readers see him happy, they may never see him again.”

Robotham was initially excited to tour his new book in mid-August when it first launched in Australia. “Finally I could leave my ‘pit of despair’ basement office and talk to some real people. I could meet passionate readers and catch up with other authors.”

But after two months of touring in Australia, the UK and North America, he admits he is “pretty exhausted”. He laments, “It’s a perversity of the process that I’m deep into a new novel which is the focus of my energy and excitement. So my mind is in two places. I’m also a long way from my family and missing them desperately.”

Home is Sydney's northern beaches with his wife, Vivien, and three daughters. Since Say You’re Sorry’s dual narrative is also that of one of the teenage kidnap victims it begs the question of the emotional toll of writing every parent’s nightmare.

 “Every parent has those moments when they lose sight of their child in a supermarket or on a busy street and for thirty seconds they feel sheer terror. Or they sit at home on a stormy night, looking at the clock. Someone they love is late home and not answering their cell phone. That’s when the darkness creeps into our thoughts. As Goya said, ‘The sleep of reason produces monsters’.”

This is the fear Robotham admits that he taps into when he writes. “All my nightmares revolve around my daughters. Perhaps I’m subconsciously trying to allay my worst fears, by writing about them. Do I scare myself?  Sometimes.”

In Shatter, one of the characters did get under the author’s skin. “One of the dual narrators is a man who terrorises women by breaking their spirit and their minds. Entering his skin and looking at the world through his eyes was particularly horrible. I remember coming upstairs and having scalding hot showers and curling up in bed trying to get his voice out of my head.”

So why despite this does he continue to enter these dark minds with the added pressure of producing a book a year to keep fans and Publishers happy? Robotham’s answer: “Stephen King was once asked, ‘Why do you write such dark and twisted stories?’ and he replied, ‘What makes you think I have a choice?’

To read the review of SAY YOU'RE SORRY CLICK HERE.

 

Visit Michael Robotham's official Website for more information about this author.

 

Interview with Julianna Baggott

Read my review of Julianna Baggott's "Pure". Click here

PURE TALENT

When it comes to writing, there doesn’t seem to be anything Julianna Baggott hasn’t done.  There are over fifty foreign published editions of her books and over one hundred publications have carried her work.  Along with works under her real name, J.C. Baggott, she has penned multiple best sellers under Bridgette Asher and N.E. Bode.

So when she turns her eye to the post-apocalyptic Young Adult genre, with her first book of a trilogy, PURE, you know she is not going to just hit the mark, she is going to demolish the entire scoreboard.  Fox2000 thought so too and have purchased the rights to her trilogy even before the release of PURE.

In her own words on writing Baggott says: “I’m here because I’ve learned that writing – this twitch of my fingers – is really rooted deep inside of me. It’s a way of running your hands through the reeds, the silt – the kind of silt still clouding the day, the kind settled (like memory) waiting to be stirred.

It is with tremendous pleasure that An Adventure in Reading delves into the silt of J.C. Baggott’s mind. We recover answers on why the research for PURE was so difficult, with whom she would co-author a book if given the chance, and many more answers from a writer whose reviewers have worn out their superlatives in describing her talent.

Susan May (SM):     What were you doing when the idea for ‘Pure’ came to you?

Julianna Baggott (JB):        Maybe it came from desire, first. I was feeling restless. I wanted to do something really ambitious, cinematic, and large-scale. And, from that point on, there wasn’t any one glimmering resolute idea. There were 17 million tiny ideas. The notion of the doll-head fused to someone’s fist was something I played with in a failed short story. I suppose the realization that the girl with the doll-head fist belonged in THIS other world I desired to create was critical. Did it come in a flash? I don’t know. I wrote a riff from her perspective – hiding in an ash-choked cabinet – and read it to my daughter (now sixteen) and she told me it was the best thing I’d ever written. That was the start. I remember that moment – where I was sitting, where she was sitting. Yes. I won’t forget it.

(SM):   PURE contains dark scenes involving children, including their physical fusion with objects and people, during the blasts.  As a parent, how did you feel writing these scenes and characters?

(JB):    I have a hard time processing the real brutal world all around us. I had a hard time doing the research for this book that took me to the history of atomic bombs – Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Those bombs didn’t spare children. War and famine don’t spare children. And so children were part of the novel. They survived, and there they were, whether I’m a mother or not. But the characters in PURE called The Mothers – a band of violent warrior types — would not exist if I didn’t have children. I am the writer I am in large part because my kids mined my soul.

(SM):   At what point in the story did you realise it would become a trilogy?

(JB):    I always knew that it was a possibility. But the first draft was very hard and in later drafts the novel changed drastically. (There was another narrative point of view – a character who no longer exists at all in the book.) So, as much as I knew that there would be more, the bullying through of book one didn’t allow me to look too far beyond it. Once finished, the rest rushed in.

(SM):   PURE has been heralded as the next ‘Hunger Games’ and with film rights purchased it must be very exciting.  As you were writing the book, did you realise its potential to become the next big trilogy?

(JB):No. Not at all. My daughter loved the book. I mentioned the premise to my next door neighbours and they told me it was really compelling. My father was reading as I went, as was my husband. Everyone told me to keep at it. But it all felt very personal – as all of my books do before they become public, which is always a great shock.

(SM):   Your writing versatility is obvious in that your seventeen books range across many genres.  If you could co-author a book with any other author—alive or dead, who would they be?

Ha. Well, I do have one co-authored novel – WHICH BRINGS ME TO YOU – with Steve Almond. But, yes, in choosing to work with him, I had to stick to the “living” category. It’s hard, right? Because I’m drawn to some drinkers and depressives. Collaboration is much about the relationship, the sum not its parts. I’m going to choose someone living, though, and someone who’s done collaborative work before – a good bet. Neil Gaiman. I love his mind. I’ve heard him speak and he seems pretty down to earth. My husband met him and told him that my son wanted to punch him in the face, and he was lovely about that. (The link to that story is here: http://bridgetasher.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-my-husband-told-neil-gaiman-that-my.html ) I’d choose Gaiman. I’m sure of it.

(SM):   As an author, how have you adapted to the Digital age and what are your thoughts on it?

(JB):    I love the access to research. Things that would have taken days, weeks, years to track down, can pop up in .39 seconds.

(SM):   Is there an interview question you have not been asked?

(JB):    I assume the answer is infinite.

Thank you to J.C. Baggott for visiting us during her tour to promote "PURE".  We will be hearing much more from Julianna in the future and reviewing "FUSE", the second book of the trilogy which is due out in 2012.  We cannot wait to get our hands on an advance copy.

MORE INFORMATION ON JULIANNA BAGGOTT

Visit the "Pure" website for the first chapter of "Pure", loads of cool stuff and to learn more. Information on purchasing “Pure” is also there. I highly recommend you buy yourself a copy. You will want to read it more than once.

Visit author Julianna Baggott’s website and blog, with fabulously informative information for writers there. http://juliannabaggott.com/

Click here to purchase Pure

 

Mariam Kobras Interview - The Distant Shore

Read my review of the Distant Shore HERE

 

The Distant Shore is the first book for Mariam Kobras. Mariam describes the story as a contemporary romance with a light twist of suspense.

Born in Frankfurt Germany, she currently lives in Hamburg with her husband and two sons and to say she is excited about the launch of The Distant Shore is an understatement.

Mariam’s road to publication is an interesting one, having been discovered on Twitter by her publisher Buddhapuss. Read on to discover the inspiration for The Distant Shore, what genre she loves but wouldn’t dare attempt and her thoughts on the digital age of books.

INTERVIEW

Susan May (SM): What were you doing when the idea for ‘The Distant Shore’ came to you?

Mariam Kobras (MK): If I remember correctly, it was inspired by a song. I’m not going to tell you which one, though, because you might think the book is about that songwriter. Which it isn’t. To be honest, the scene in the hotel lobby where Jon and Naomi meet again after all that time was inspired by that song. The rest fell into place. Something like that.

(SM): What do you enjoy most about writing?

(MK): I love the writing, the shaping of scenes and situations, of scenery and people’s thoughts. Actually, writing is nothing more than describing things very, very well.

(SM): In what genre would you love to write but wouldn’t dare?

(MK): One word: SciFi. I love reading SciFi, I’d actually go so far and say it’s my favorite reading genre. But I don’t know enough about physics, astrophysics, the Universe, and all that to write it myself. But I’d love to.

(SM): If you could co-author a book with any other author—alive or dead, who would they be?

(MK): I’m thinking I’d really like to collaborate with my editor at Buddhapuss Ink some day. That would be amazing fun. And there’s still the idea of writing a book with Sam Hilliard, the author of The Last Track.

(SM): As an author, how have you adapted to the Digital age and what are your thoughts on it?

(MK): I take it you mean digital publishing, and not twitter and facebook and how they can help one get established as an author

To be honest, I’m totally in two minds about e-books. Margaret Atwood said at the Tools Of Change conference in NY that there are always three sides to each tool, an upside, a downside and a dumb side, which is the one you hurt yourself with. She made a rather passionate plea for paper books, and I tend to agree with her. From the author’s perspective, it’s a great thing to hold your book in your hands, feel the cover, read the words on paper. It’s also rather cool to sign it at book readings. I know they are working on making “digital signing” possible, but really. How would I sign on a kindle with my Montblanc Meisterstück, with my rose-scented, dark pink ink?

Margaret Atwood said, “When all technology fails, you can still read a paper book with the light of a candle.”

She also mentioned that a lot of people make their living by publishing books. Publishers, editors, cover designers, AUTHORS, book store owners, and so on. I don’t think every kind of progress is necessarily good progress. Do you remember the old version of the “Stepford Wives”, where the woman asks the men at that “club”, “Why do you do this?” and the reply was, “Because we can.”

It’s a bit like this. Destroying the paper book market is a bit like destroying a piece of culture. On the other hand, when I’m on a plane, I really do appreciate the handiness of an eReader. I just think there should be room for both.

(SM): Is there any character that has inspired you in life?

(MK): In my books? Or in someone else’s? In my books, I don’t know. I don’t think so. Not in other books either, no. Cetainly not inspired in the sense of, “They made me want to write.” I know the people in Peter F. Hamilton’s Reality Dysfunction made me want to be a space explorer, and see the things they saw. Well, not all of them, but some, for sure.

(SM): What has been the best part of having your first book published?

(MK): EVERYTHING! There is no specific best part. It’s just a long, lovely thrill ride, and I hope to be on it for a long time to come!

Thank you Mariam for taking the time to share your thoughts. We all look forward to your next book in the “Stone Trilogy.”

MARIAM’S BLOG HOP & THE PRIZES

This was the sixteenth and LAST stop on Mariam’s The Distant Shore “Love is in the Air” Blog Hop & Giveaway. We hope you enjoyed this and all the stops along the way.

Buddhapuss Ink is giving away copies of Mariam’s book, along with some pretty terrific (and very romantic) gifts, as we count down to that most romantic day of the year—Valentine’s Day!

Want to enter the giveaway? There’s still time! Entries will be accepted until 11:59 PM ET tonight – 2/13! Leave a comment for this post for one entry. We also encourage you to “Like” this blog and follow it! Tweet a link to this blog including the hashtag #TDSBlogHop for another chance to win.

Want more chances to win? CLICK HERE for all the info!

The Many Lives of Sarah Kernochan

CLICK HERE for my Review of JANE WAS HERE

An interview with Sarah Kernochan

When the almighty afterlife powers were handing out talents for this lifetime, Sarah Kernochan must have stood front row in many lines. She has enjoyed remarkable success over many decades in fiction, film and music. In her latest endeavor, JANE WAS HERE, a fascinating and gripping tale of reincarnation, she explores the dark side of karma and its impact on her character’s present lives.

Sarah scripted such films as the notorious "9 and ½ Weeks," "Sommersby," "Impromptu" (her personal favorite), "What Lies Beneath" (storyline), and "All I Wanna Do," which she also directed. Her two documentaries "Marjoe" and "Thoth" won Academy Awards 30 years apart. However, Sarah’s first ambition was always to write novels.

I am grateful and excited Sarah has taken the time to share insights into her life, writing and why she believes in karmic comeuppance.

Susan May (SM): Your biography reads like the heroine of a book. You were a musician in the seventies; friends with some of the biggest names in the music industry, like John Lennon and Harry Nilsson; you write a successful book, and then turn to writing Hollywood screenplays for thirty years, along with directing. Along the way, you win two Academy Awards for both your documentaries. Now, you have returned to novel writing. Was the transitioning planned?

Sarah Kernochan (SK): I didn’t set out to be professionally mercurial. I take my cues from my inspiration. Stories come to me in different forms – sometimes as films, sometimes songs, sometimes (most recently) as a novel. But forging a career out of any one of those forms is another matter. In that sense, my transitions weren’t planned—anything but. After my first Academy Award, the natural follow-up should have been directing another film. But it became plain I was not going to get that opportunity, Oscar or no Oscar. Except for Lina Wertmuller there were no women directors in 1973. Thus, I had to quickly switch paths: I became a singer-songwriter. Then when my second album didn’t sell well, RCA let me go and I had to switch yet again—to novels. I would have been happy to settle into a career as an author following the publication of my first book, which was a success. However I found myself stranded when my second book was cancelled by the new editor, and suddenly no one wanted me. I turned to screenwriting, where I had better luck and a much better income. So I stuck with that until I turned sixty. At that point, it became hard for me to find work. Older writers (particularly female) are weirdly dismissed as has-beens by the film business. Even though I’m still lucky enough to find script jobs, they are fewer and far between. So I have gone back to the novel. Now that JANE WAS HERE is published, it still remains to be seen whether I can succeed with books. I would love to settle into the life of an author, since my earliest ambition was to be a novelist, and obviously I got sidetracked along the way!

SM: Was the plot for “Jane Was Here” a light globe moment or did it haunt you for years?

SK: For years, I played with the idea of an ordinary woman who discovers she murdered someone— in a former lifetime. I never managed to figure out how to construct a plot around that premise, though I’m sure it can be done. The light bulb moment came when I realized the central character should be, not the murderer, but the murder victim, who is reborn into the present with the task of finding out who killed her in the past. The moment I received that notion, I started to write immediately – though at that point I had no idea where I was going.

SM: Most people have a fear of change, yet here you are embarking on a new adventure, and embracing the digital age with eBooks, twitter and blogs. Thirty years after your first book, have you approached the writing and promotion of this novel differently?

SK:Obviously the mechanics of writing have changed—when my first book was published we didn’t even have computers, and word processing had to be done in the brain! “Cut and paste” used to be an actual physical chore, and liquid white-out was the only way to change words. Or you had to retype everything. It was laborious enough to put you off revisions. You would do anything to avoid it, so you were more accepting of flawed writing. I think I became a better re-writer with the advent of writing software. Now it’s so easy to try words and phrases out for size before you commit to anything. You can be a perfectionist with little effort. As for eBooks and online marketing techniques, one constant in my life has been my craving to be in control of my own work, and not to be under the thumb of editors or movie producers or recording executives, as the case may be. There’s a tremendous democratization that’s taking place: power to the people is a very recent phenomenon both artistically and politically. The downside is that there’s chaos. Suddenly no one’s in charge and everyone wants to be heard. So how do you raise your literary voice above the crowd? Also, the social networking process is so time-consuming (though it’s fun) that you don’t have any time to write your books! All in all, I’m pretty ambivalent about the new lay of the land. It will be fascinating to see how it all shakes out. Then I’ll have to figure out how I fit in.

SM: After three years working on “Jane” part-time you mentioned you rewrote the whole thing—quite a task.

SK: In my first draft, my reincarnated heroine Jane remembered everything about her past life and her murder. She arrived in town to make people remember what happened there, and what part they played in her demise. It was horrible to get to the end of the writing only to discover that the book didn’t work. Thankfully, my agent suggested that maybe Jane shouldn’t have any memory at all of who she was, and suddenly it all became clear to me: that the audience could find out the truth at the same time Jane does, piece by piece. Suddenly I had a much tauter, tenser story. It was actually a pleasure to rewrite everything because I could tell I was on the right path this time.

SM: Did you have to adjust your writing technique for screen to novel writing to create“Jane” or was it quite natural for you to return to it?

SK: I was relieved to return to narrative prose. Screenwriting is very limiting in style, and I really wanted to stretch my limbs for a change and enjoy the language. My one worry was that I wouldn’t have a narrative “voice.” There’s no room for voice in scripts. It’s all nuts and bolts: Jane exits, Jane enters, close-up shot of Jane screaming. Fortunately, I found I did have a voice, one that was heaps more mature than my first book. It’s one of the miracles of aging that you actually do get wiser; and that wisdom works its way into your observations about life and people. I would say JANE WAS HERE benefited from the plot skills I developed from writing films. Also, because a script has to be read quickly, you are always trying to distill prose and dialogue to the minimum—and I think that lesson served me well, too, when I returned to narrative writing. I don’t indulge myself; even when there’s a passage or bit of dialogue I’m in love with. I don’t hesitate to cut it if it’s extraneous or slows the rhythm. In movies, you learn not to cling to anything you’ve written. You can’t: you’re an employee; you don’t own your own work. If you don’t change it, they’ll find someone else who will.

SM: You have said that you waited to get the one book idea that would seize you so hard that you had to write it, but that over the years, the ideas that sprang into your head were for films. Since so many books become films, what makes a story idea more suitable for film than a book?

SK: That’s a really interesting question. In many cases, writers want to work out the story in book form first, to explore the characters and work out the plot without the limitations of a screenplay. Then, if fortune is kind, the book will come to the attention of movie people who will purchase the rights. However, if you have an idea that’s good for either medium, and you can’t choose, then practical considerations come into play. Which project involves the least risk? For example: is it more likely that your story would be published as a book than it would sell as a script? Is the story more literary, different, cerebral, edgy, or slow? Chances are that movie types will not be interested until they’re persuaded by a book’s critical reception or readers’ embrace. You couldn’t sell a script of LIFE OF PI without it first having been a sensation as a book. Another factor in deciding between book or film could be your time and patience: do you want to spend three months writing a 100-page script, or a year or more of your life writing a 300-page book?

SM: You suggest there is justice in reincarnation: “that people, who profit from evil and receive no comeuppance, flourishing until their death, are then reborn into a life of suffering.” What makes you believe so strongly in reincarnation?

SK: Maybe it’s foolish but I have always believed that there is an overarching design to existence—that everything has meaning—just as every aspect of a novel originates from the writer’s intention. I suppose I want to believe that God is a writer, and not one word is without significance—that heaven imitates art (or vice versa). If I subscribe to the idea of reincarnation, then I can make sense of things that otherwise defy explanation, such as, “How could a loving Deity make innocent people suffer? Is God cruel, or just uninterested?” And I play with the idea that maybe certain people are not so innocent, that they are atoning for bad choices in previous lives.

SM: With ‘Jane Was Here’ receiving great reviews, are you now firmly reincarnated as a novelist or will you still write and direct films? And what is your next project?

SK: Film writing remains my day job because one needs money to survive. I enjoy writing scripts; it’s the business I’m tired of, after 30 years of peaks and valleys. It’s getting harder and harder to compete for jobs that I don’t really want to write. The projects are all someone else’s idea; they’re assignments. I have so many ideas for books that I would be ecstatic to bid goodbye to the movie business if I could have a remunerative career as a novelist. But that hasn’t happened just yet. My current project is, of necessity, a side project since I have an ongoing script job. I have been writing a true and highly personal ghost story in installments on my blog. People have suggested that this is, in fact, my next book. I guess that would make it a supernatural memoir.

SM: What interview question do you wish someone would ask you?

SK: I wish someone would ask why I am drawn to write characters with a lot of darkness on display. It’s a matter of personal perception of human beings that I see the dark in human beings more than the light—and, in the case of my characters, I can gradually move them toward the light in the course of the story. Perhaps it’s true too that I’m more forgiving of their flaws than the reader is prepared to be. In fact, I love them all, heroes and villains alike. Probably my first literary exposure to an unsympathetic central character was GONE WITH THE WIND—who doesn’t love Scarlett O’Hara? I adore Faulkner, too; his invented family, the Snopses, are the most sublime scum ever. Balzac is another favorite: his books are full of rapacious connivers, vain weaklings and pawns. It’s the divine comedy, what can I say.

Thank you to Sarah Kernochan for this fabulous interview. Learn more about Sarah at her website http://www.sarahkernochan.com/

JANE WAS HERE is available in Hard Cover and Digital Download at Amazon.