Shelfari

Fuzzy Nation: The Latest Power Ballad from John Scalzi

By Jeff VanderMeer

I must admit that when I heard hugely popular SF author John Scalzi, a multiple Hugo Award finalist, was writing a novel entitled Fuzzy Nationthat riffed off of H. Beam Piper's iconic creation, I was a little, dare I say it...fuzzy...on the details. It'd been awhile since I'd read H. Beam Piper, but I did remember liking the stories.

So if you're thinking "Wait. What? Fuzzies?", you may not be alone. Although Piper is known to core science fiction fans, his last Fuzzies book came out in 1964, the year of his death, with a posthumous collection published in 1984. Two additional Fuzzy books have been written, by Ardath Mayhar and William Turning, but Scalzi's is significant for being a reboot of the original franchise"”taking as its source material the original book, Little Fuzzy.

The Fuzzy books were part of Piper's Terro-Human Future History series, which provides a detailed account of about six thousand years of human history, dating back to 1942, the year the first fissoon reactor was created (or, in Piper parlance, year 1 A.E., Atomic Era). In Piper's future, part of it now our past, a nuclear war lays waste to Earth in 1973. This catastrophic event leads to the creation of a Terran Federation and the invention of anti-gravity space technology. In exploring the stars, humankind eventually comes across the Fuzzies: first contact with an intelligent alien species.

What, exactly, are Fuzzies? Small furry bipeds on the planet Zarathustra that turn out to have their own civilization, and are hugely misunderstood by the humans who encounter them. As in the original novel, this reboot features prospector Jack Holloway. Holloway works as an independent contractor for the huge ZaraCorp mining corporation. The potential conflict between Holloway's maverick ways and ZaraCorp heats up because of the Fuzzies: the corporation's right to exploit the planet is based entirely on being able to prove to Earth authorities that no intelligent species live there.

I interviewed Scalzi via email at the beginning of his book tour for Fuzzy Nationabout the Fuzzies, about his reboot, and about the rather amazing power ballad created for the novel...

Amazon.com: Why Fuzzy, why now?

John Scalzi: Mostly because I thought it would be fun. I wrote Fuzzy Nationwhen I was between publishing projects, mostly for my own amusement, and not as something I actually intended for publication. It was only after it was finished that my agent said "Hey, I could work with this," and started the process of getting it published. That said, any time is a good time to help people make the acquaintance of the fuzzies, and of H. Beam Piper, the author who originally thought them up.

Amazon.com:  How are Fuzzies different from Ewoks, Plushies, and Softies?

John Scalzi: I think they're smarter and more complex than, say, the Ewoks, who are basically just furry cavemen. I think in both Piper's tale and my own, the motivations of the creatures aren't always obvious or straightforward -- they can be devious for their own ends when it suits them. They're more than just adorably marketable teddy-bear-like objects, which is one of the reasons for their longevity.

Amazon.com: H. Beam Piper probably isn't a household name to the new generation of SF/F fans coming up. Thinking back to your reading growing up, who else would you recommend that might not be hugely known these days?

John Scalzi: In science fiction, I was a fan of Keith Laumer starting in my high school years; a number of folks see similarities between what Laumer was doing and what I do, especially in "The Android's Dream." Laumer had a sense of humor, and of irony, and a really nice way of getting across the fact that even in the future, some things will be absurd.

Amazon.com: If this is Fuzzy retro-fitted for the 21^st century, what should we expect that's the same and what's different from the original Fuzzy fiction?

John Scalzi: What's the same: The very general plot line and the name of the main human character (and the name of the main Fuzzy). What's different: The actual character of the main human character. My Jack Holloway is substantially different from the one Piper had, and many if not most of the changes between the two books stem from the differences between those characters. It makes for a fun compare and contrast.

 Amazon.com: What did the book allow you to explore that you haven't in your other fiction?

John Scalzi: It allowed me to explore how another writer solved the same plot and character issues that I was encountering, because our tales were naturally so very similar. This was the writing equivalent of walking a mile in another writer's shoes. Piper and I are different writers and I made different choices than he did in many places. But every change was another opportunity to walk with Piper and to learn a little from him. It was a very interesting experience.

Amazon.com: In what ways was Fuzzy Nation fun to write and in what ways was it hard work?

John Scalzi: It was fun to write because it was no pressure--since I didn't initially intend to sell it I didn't worry about the commercial prospects of what I was doing; I just focused on the pleasures of writing for the sake of writing. It's an exercise I recommend every writer do from time to time. How it was hard: For many reasons, the contracts and business end of this novel were more complex (and sometimes more annoying) than it usually is with books. That was a lot of work to sort out.

Amazon.com: Do you have a favorite scene or situation in the book?

John Scalzi: I like when Jack Holloway first meets a fuzzy. I play the scene for laughs in many ways (there's even a little bit of slapstick), but at the end of the day it's very much a "first contact" scenario, even if Jack doesn't know if this creature he's discovered is actually smart or not. Either way, it's new beginnings for both Jack and the fuzzy, and that's always a fun thing to work out in words.

Amazon.com: What about the Fuzzy suggested a power ballad?

John Scalzi: Are you kidding? EVERYTHING is better with a power ballad! Actually, I'd been thinking about the idea of commissioning a song for one of my books for a while, just to try it, and the musicians Paul and Storm had expressed interest in doing something with me before. So I thought, heck, why not now? If you can make a power ballad about small, adorable fuzzy creatures, you can do just about anything.

Amazon.com: What's up next for the Scalzi Juggernaut?

John Scalzi: The Scalzi Juggernaut will continue to power through its tour, which ends in Phoenix in the end of May, and then it is going to spend a little bit of time doing nothing but relaxing with family and friends. Then polishing the novel slated for 2012 (already completed but not yet edited), and prepping the 2013 novel, not yet written. There are worse ways to live a life.

Fourth Man Booker International Prize Awarded to Philip Roth

By Kevin Nguyen

American author Philip Roth was announced as the winner of the fourth bi-annual Man Booker International Prize at the Sydney Opera House. The award comes with prestige, as well as a handsome £60,000 cash prize (which, according to Google, is nearly $97,000). He joins the ranks of previous winners Ismail Kadaré (2005), Chinua Achebe (2007), and Alice Munro (2009).

Roth is no stranger to awards. Two of his books have won National Book Critics Circle awards. He's also won the PEN/Faulkner Award for three of his novels: Operation Shylock, The Human Stain, and Everyman. And let's not forget the Pulitzer Prize awarded in 1997 for American Pastoral. And yet Roth remains so humble! In response to the award, Roth said:

"One of the particular pleasures I've had as a writer is to have my work read internationally despite all the heartaches of translation that that entails. I hope the prize will bring me to the attention of readers around the world who are not familiar with my work. This is a great honour and I'm delighted to receive it."

Where in the World is Tom Nissley?

By Kevin Nguyen

Regular Omni readers will remember our former editor Tom Nissley, books knowitall and the third-winningest Jeopardy! contestant of all time. What's Tom been up to since he bid us adieu in March? A lot! You can read about a day in the life of Tom Nissley over at The Paris Review, where he's detailed his media consumption in the form of a culture diary. Be sure to check back tomorrow for the second installment.

Additionally, you can keep up with Tom at his new blog, Ephemeral Firmament, which belongs at the top of your bookmarks folder, in case you haven't already set it as your browser's homepage.

Lucky for us, Tom still resides in the Seattle area, so we see him from time to time. He drops by the Amazon Books office on occassion (those occassions usually involving free drinks).

Judging a Book By Its Other Cover

By Kevin Nguyen

The New York Times ran a great feature last weekend called "Book Covers That Got Away," which rounded up a handful of beautiful book covers that were ultimately shelved for other designs. For comparison's sake, we've paired the alternate covers with the ones that actually made it to the printer. Are these alternates better than what publishers actually went with?

Alternates on left; actual cover on right

More book covers over at the New York Times

Stacey Levine on Writing, Spying, and "The Girl with Brown Fur"

By Jeff VanderMeer

I first encountered Stacey Levine's fiction at an "anti-Associated Writing Programs conference" being held across the river from the AWP Conference in Vancouver a few years back. We were both reading at the anti-conference, while also, I believe, hedging our bets by presenting at the real conference. The anti-conference was held in an old building outside of which they'd blown up a kind of red sausage-like, three-story-tall balloon. Okay, I thought, that's interesting. Inside, in the middle of the main space, they'd installed one of those blow-up castles for kids with all of the little balls inside. Only, there were a bunch of adults bouncing up and down instead of children. Well, that's not something you see every day, I thought.

The readings were held on either side of the huge bouncy thing whose official name I knew not (having at the time no seven-year-old), so as you intoned your fictions you were almost in fear of subsumed by it. They also piped in either audio and video of the reader on the opposite side of the bouncy thing, which was slightly disconcerting.

So when I say now that Stacey Levine's reading captivated me, I can say it with confidence, because there were a few"¦distractions. What I was most struck by was the uniqueness of Levine's vision, the hint of strangeness, and the quality of the writing. Sure, you could perhaps compare some of what Levine does to Kelly Link, Aimee Bender, or even George Saunders, but she's pretty much sui generis. You read a Stacey Levine story because you want to read a Stacey Levine story.

Now Levine has a new collection out, The Girl With Brown Fur: Tales and Stories. It's another mind-bending experience, with story titles like "Milk Boy," Parthenogenetic Grandmother," "The World of Barry," and the innocuous-sounding but wonderfully strange "Sausage." The authority of the writer's voice comes through with a welcome clarity from the first sentences of stories like "The Wedding": "Hallo. I'm a fool. I married Mike Sump. We had a green-colored wedding. I was sick, the whole room turned green. They took me home. Was I married, I wanted to know, looking up at them." Another story, "Ears," demonstrates the same aplomb for picking up in mid-stream: "Naturally this man was the most sensitive part of society, the tip, edge, the peninsula that wants so badly to thaw."

It's an important skill, being able to toss the reader, with practiced experience, into just the perfect part of the narrative--because most of the stories in Levine's collection are short and could not sustain their power with much folderol, like characters getting up in the morning and yawning before padding down to the kitchen to make some coffee. No, Levine's precise, off-kilter in a way that makes you re-assess the real world, and almost all of her fictions have an edge. Armed with their own brand of measured absurdity, Levine's stories easily cut through even the chaos of events held in the menacing shadow of huge bouncy kids' entertainment facilities.

I interviewed Levine via email to ask her about her inspirations, influences, process, and, um, as it turned out, spying.

Amazon.com:: When did you first realize your world view might be a little unique?

Stacey Levine: I don't think it came out until I started to write, in my late 20s. However, I am blown away daily by the uniqueness of other people's expressions, worldviews, and opinions. Sometimes when I shouldn't be. I am extremely impressionable.

Amazon.com:: What are common entry points or sparks for stories for you?

Stacey Levine: Evocative music with lyrics that merely suggest a hint of a plot. Or moments of human connection that are indescribable. A New York Times science article. A walk at night, when you can look (at least I do) into the lighted windows of people's homes, then catch a whiff of a potential domestic scenario. I think Duras said it best with something very close t "Go anywhere, lay your eyes on anything, in order to enter the mystery in life that authentic writing seeks to express."

Amazon.com:: You often write in a surreal but very precise way. Can you talk a little bit about the use specific detail and the role of surrealism?

Stacey Levine: Somewhere in current indie/artistic trends is the injunction: it's good writing if it's flat and random. I don't agree. I think there has to be a component of rigor and precision"¦ and a sense of tension between loose playfulness and the specifics of what the writer's trying to communicate. Why use language if not to capture something extremely pinpointed and precise? That, of course, is completely at odds with the original Surrealist line of thinking.

Amazon.com:: How autobiographical are your stories?

Stacey Levine: Sometimes they are partially autobiographical. I haven't been punched out and my grandmother obviously wasn't born in a cedar log in the forest, but still. I always want to blur away the boring details of my life--fiction is so much more interesting--in favor of tone, sound, the act of destroying clichés, or inventing a metaphor that describes an experience from the inside. So for me, the sausage factory [for example] isn't a metaphor--it's a real description of a workplace. In my mind, the comparison is cut away, and the metaphor becomes reality.

Amazon.com:: What influences do you think readers might be surprised by?

Stacey Levine: Lots. I love reading boring pamphlets and old children's books, just to see how they've put the language together. I've sought out influences that are non-literary and just fall under the heading "life experience." Weird, short-term jobs such as working for a PI. I'm a really good skulker/observer. I think Joan Didion once said about her journalistic work that, as a small white woman, no one ever noticed that she was standing around, observing important people and writing things down. In the same general vein, I notice that no one notices me. It's great for spying and finding overheard dialogue. I've read a lot of psychiatric case studies--that is probably clear. Sometimes a prompt for a short story comes from an editor. I got a message from the fiction writer Benjamin Weismann: "Can you submit a story for a psychosexual ski journal that I'm starting up?" So I was like, "Uh, ok."

Amazon.com:: How much revision do you typically do?

Stacey Levine: I don't write drafts, really. It's all just constant adds and revisions. I couldn't even show you a draft until a week before the piece is done (or "done"). A draft is for an organized person whose writing moves forward readily. I try to glue fragments together for a long time until they seem to fit. It's easy to remember spending a year and a half on a seven-page story. But I find that completely gratifying. What else is time for, if not something that you're in love with and truly happy with every detail?

Amazon.com:: Is there a problem child in this collection? A story that caused you all sorts of difficulties before you "solved" it?

Stacey Levine: YES. The story called "The Cat," which I just hate. The original editor of this book persuaded me to leave it in for the sake of tonal variety. It's not something I ever want to read again. I think it's sentimental.

Amazon.com:: In the short fiction you read, what types of things do you love and what tends to turn you off?

Stacey Levine: I do love reading classics and timeworn North American fiction, but I am turned off by stolid, lushly-described, mid-20th Century conventional novels by men.

Amazon.com:: What's the difference between a tale and a story?

Stacey Levine: I love how the poet Barbara Guest described it: "A tale comes to us with an antique finish." There's a sense of an entire culture's unconscious wishes in old fairy tales, and the sense of another country. Some contemporary fiction feels like the reporting of the facts through a narrator's prism and has throwaway topical details in its settings, like "the fridge," or "I jumped into my Acura," or "We drove to the Crate & Barrel," with an earnestness that's puzzling to me, but a tale has an ancient permanence and dimensionality to it. I like to make fiction that is a mixture of both the old and the new, and maybe I strive to create tales out of wholly contemporary material, but I'm excited when authors revive the tale even through literary works about vampires or fairy-tale retellings. Wolves, powerful girls and boys, strange futures, peculiar helpers, the erasure of topical references"¦those are some signs that you've entered a tale.

Amazon.com:: If you weren't a writer, what would you be?

Stacey Levine: A musician or dancer. It is 75 percent about rhythm.

David McCullough and The Greater Journey

By Darryl Campbell

Like a lot of people, I first got to know David McCullough through his voice, as the narrator of the PBS series The Civil War and The American Experience. Of course, there's much more to David McCullough than that -- two Pulitzers, a National Book Award, a Presidential Medal of Freedom award, and a bibliography that stretches all the way back to 1978 (!).

His newest book is The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris. Even though the subject seems a little unusual at first glance, the book itself is classic McCullough, which is to say quintessentially American: he traces the travels of future household names like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mark Twain, Samuel Morse, and Harriet Beecher Stowe to Paris, and uncovers the many ways that the City of Light helped shape their lives in particular, and the course of American history in general. It's a dazzling, kaleidoscopic look at a broad cross-section of writers, thinkiers, artists, and professionals, and it's amazing how much material he's sifted through to produce the book.

McCullough's histories have always managed to combine meticulous research with his sheer enthusiasm for his subjects, and it's hard not to come away with a sense that you've learned something new and important about whatever he's tackled. For instance, it's no small feat both to show that John Adams was both prickly, prideful, and downright unpleasant at times, and to argue that he significant contributions to the diplomatic, economic, and political foundations of the new republic in ways that aren't readily apparent in history textbooks. Or to show that a flood that most people outside of Pennsylvania have probably never heard of helped shape disaster relief in the United States, all the way down to the present day.

So here's to David McCullough's long and fruitful career, and to his newest foray into American history with The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris -- available one week from tomorrow, on May 24.

Graphic Novel Friday: Paying for It by Chester Brown

By Alex Carr

In case you are feeling at all apathetic towards comics, allow me to point you in the direction of Chester Brown's Paying for It: A Comic-Strip Memoir about Being a John. Yes, the widely respected cartoonist has published a first-hand, 280-page account of his life as a customer in the sex-trade. It's unflinching in its honesty (and adult content), and yet once the voyeuristic allure wanes, what remains is a frank, convincing look at a lifestyle that few readers will recognize.

After a break-up with his live-in girlfriend, Brown decides to continue cohabitating with her even when she openly brings home another man. It's a revelation for the artist, realizing he doesn't need that emotional tether, but he does miss the physical nature of their relationship. Naturally, Brown turns to sex-advice columnist Dan Savage, whose book details suggestions for exploring prostitution ("He makes it sound so simple and straightforward. Maybe I should pay for sex"¦Okay, I'm determined--tonight I'm going to go out and look for a hooker."). And then Brown hops aboard his bicycle and pedals into the night, where he encounters only cop cars ("This is weird.") and opts to return home to try the classifieds instead.

What follows is a year-by-year log of every prostitute Chester Brown employed over the course of 14 years. The encounters are not erotically presented--the panels are cramped and diminutive--and Brown is largely/typically expressionless throughout. Over at The Comics Journal, R. Fiore addresses the lack of eroticism in a review: "The frequenter of prostitutes, even among those who don't condemn the practice in principle, is seen as a creep, an image that Brown does little to discourage when he draws himself to look like the Crypt Keeper." The faces of the women are always obscured, as are any identifiable characteristics, says Brown in his foreword:

Quite a few of the sex-workers I spent time with opened up to me and told me about their families, their childhoods, their boyfriends, and other aspects of their lives. I wish I had the freedom to include that material in the following pages--it would have brought the women to life as full human beings and made this a better book. I'm assuming that all of them want to keep secret the sex-for-money part of their lives, so I refrained from putting in personal details that could potentially reveal their identities if a particular friend, family member, lover, or acquaintance were to read this memoir.

It's an admirable and unfortunately necessary caveat, but Brown is clear on the focus of the book from the subtitle.

In a nerve-wracking succession of pages and panels, we see Brown become a john, beginning with the phone call from a classified ad, to meeting the woman (who offers him a drink--which he declines, thinking, "What if they drug it."), and then to Brown wondering, "Should I take my glasses off?" The entire sequence is rife with anxiety, and it's understandable if readers want it to end as quickly as it does. There are plenty of lighter moments, though, like when the cartoonist informs the prostitutes of his profession and has to face the inevitable follow-up: "Stuff like Superman and Batman?"

Brown's portrayal herein has been called "clinical," but there is still warmth in Paying for It. Cartoonists and friends, Joe Matt and Seth, appear frequently to chide the author about his new lifestyle and engage him in inquisitive, concerned, and incredulous debates. For all of Brown's claims to enjoy emotional detachment, there exists a nerdy sweetness in his exchanges with some of the women, in his forced attempts to appear relaxed, and in his meticulous planning of where to place the money so that it is both obvious and not.

Paying for It may offend as much as it entertains. Chester Brown is fearless in his self-portrayal, and he offers plenty of rebuttals to those who would shout him down. Not that it's without support: Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore lend extended blurbs to the back cover, and R. Crumb pens the introduction. It's a divisive take on a divisive subject, and Chester Brown has crafted what should be the most talked about graphic novel of the year.

--Alex

Also recommended: TCJ.com's eight-page interview with the author. 

Author One-on-One: Jen Lancaster and Laurie Notaro

By Miriam Landis

Jen Lancaster and Laurie Notaro
are some of the funniest female writers around these days, and when we received this new author one-on-one between them I couldn't wait to share it with Omni readers. Lancaster
has just veered off from memoirs to fiction with her new book about a couple renovating a house together, If You Were Here,
which brings to mind that old Steve Martin movie, The Money Pit. Notaro returns in July with new laugh-out-loud tales of marriage and family in
It Looked Different on the Model. Reading their chat made me love them even more--
they're like the self-deprecating best friends that never run out of hilarious things to say.

Lancaster: Before I get to questions, I have to take a step back and acknowledge how surreal it is to be doing a peer interview with you. When I was unemployed and looking desperately for a purpose in 2002, I ran across Idiot Girls. I loved your voice so much that it made me want to start writing, too, thinking, "Hey! I get drunk and fall down sometimes! I could tell those stories, too!" Flash forward nine years, and not only are we interviewing each other, but we've shared French fries with ranch dressing and you sent my dogs homemade chicken jerky. (Huge hit, by the way.) So I'd be remiss not to mention and thank you for your influence. That brings me to my first question "“ what or who motivated you to write your first book?

Notar Well, Miss Jen, I can't tell you how fun it is to do this with you, too! I am delighted that anything I wrote was an instigation for you to find your voice; you are way too funny and charming to keep it all to yourself, you know. I remember our night of grilled cheese and French fries; that sandwich was almost as good as the company (and that was one perfect grilled cheese), and I'm so glad the kids liked the chicken jerky. I was praying that you didn't think I was sending you a bag full of voodoo chicken bones or something kooky like that which might result in a restraining order.

Plain and simple, the thing that inspired me to write the first book was that I was still in college and was convinced that no one would hire me and I would forever be jobless. I was about to get my degree in journalism and had all of these columns that I had been writing for the State Press, Arizona State University's newspaper, for the past couple of years and I put them together and started to send them out to publishers in 1994. They were just goofy stories about me and my friends as we stumbled from bar to bar in Tempe, Arizona, and did embarrassing things that no self-respecting girl would ever admit to, like prying ashtrays out the back of cabs with a butter knife stolen earlier that night from IHOP, or digging through a filthy, smelly dumpster full of trash for my drunk friend's keys. Or finding my best friend essentially topless and blacked out on the Indian reservation. It was basically a handbook about very bad choices and the path that leads to rehab. As time went on, I became a columnist/reporter for several weeklies, city magazines, and finally, the daily newspaper in Phoenix, The Arizona Republic. By that time, I had enough material to fill out several books, and even though I had a job, I was still sending my book proposal out to agents and publishing houses but with no luck. Finally, I published Idiot Girls on my own and in 2001 found the right agent who persuaded a publisher to marry me. And then I lost my job anyway.

Lancaster: You've done memoir and fiction "“ any preference? Do you find fiction to be a little easier in that you don't have to actually live through embarrassing events in order to write about them? Or are you more inspired by real life?

Notar I'm a fan of both--I love knowing how a story is going to end and being able to turn humiliating experiences into something that will hopefully make someone laugh. The other day, I unintentionally racially profiled a small child on the busiest corner in Scottsdale by trying exert a humanitarian gesture. If I could punch myself in the face for it and leave a black eye, I would, but my health insurance is kind of sucky and I think the story is better served as a warning to others. That's something I could never make up. Ever. Or would want to. I think the best things in life are real; if I made up a story about how I was blacklisted from the neighborhood holiday party for lip synching "Jingle Bells," even I wouldn't believe myself. But it happened. I bear the hidden scars. And I have witnesses.

However, fiction is so much fun because you can build characters and let them weave their own story--and most of the time, it's not going to end up the way you planned. It's like watching a girl get progressively drunk at a party and trying to guess what her next move is going to be. Sometimes you can figure it out, but sometimes, you find her on the Indian reservation in just a bra three hours later. As they become fuller and rounder, the characters make their own decisions and they tell you where they want to go. That's the party of fiction; sometimes the writer is only the ugly girl along for the ride. And I really enjoy the impossibility of putting the puzzle pieces of a plot together, it's a challenge that makes me feel like I can watch a hard episode of Nova all the way through and claim I sort of understand it when honestly, I had a kicking fight with my Dyson because I couldn't get the long sticky thing to pull out and I was the one who got hurt in the end.

Lancaster: I've been to one of your book signings and it's obvious how much your fans love you, yet respect you enough to not want to make a suit out of your skin and wear it around a la Silence of the Lambs. You must have a million great stories, but what's been your favorite experience in meeting a reader? (Once someone made me a Jennsylvania Barbie, complete with a madras plaid dress, a tiny string of pearls, and miniature copies of my books and to this day it's one of my most treasured possessions.)

Notar You had better keep that FOREVER. That is so amazing! I hope you put it in a case with a light above it! I'd be too terrified of what I would look like realized in a Barbie doll, so I have to say I'm happy it's never happened. They don't make enough Silly Putty to build my ass in Mattel form. I love readings; it's like having a party that you don't have to clean up afterward (and sometimes, there's cake). I've met people that I've corresponded with for years; people who tell me great stories that make me cry I laugh so hard; my friend Beth brought a picture of her reading Fat Bride on her wedding day; a reader that I love named Katie was 14 and her mom and dad drove her across two states to get to a reading in Minneapolis; and last year, my friend Sasha rode the NYC subway for an hour in crazy, nasty heat when she was eight months pregnant to get to a reading. Every reading always has more than one special moment, but I think my all time favorite had to be when a girl slipped me a note in Seattle that said "You stole my life. Birds will eat you," and we had to get store security to "help" her leave. I was like, "Really? I stole your life? Have you seen me from behind? If this is yours, you can have it back." Poor thing. A very nice reader in Denver gave me an enormous pair of panties--the wingspan of a pterodactyl--with my face on the ass. They were remarkable. When I can fit into them, that's when I know the Ding Dongs have won.

Lancaster: There's a quote that goes something like, "Being related to a writer is like having an assassin in the family." Where do you draw the line on what you'll include in a memoir?

Notar Anything I do is fair game; it may take me a while to come to terms with it, but eventually, the horror fades and it makes it into a book. As far as my family is concerned, there are rules. I never write about my in-laws, and they all know there is a gold mine there just waiting to be hacked at. It's worse than Dynasty over there. But I can't do a Christmas with 14 pairs of eyes that don't have to forgive me because we share DNA like my family. My family gets the brunt of it, as does my husband, and they are all really good sports. Every once in a while, my mother will beg me not to write about something, so I don't, and there are other times when I decide not to cross a line because it would be too hurtful to someone I care about. If it's questionable, I'll ask if it's okay and let them read the piece before I submit it. I've been much more reckless when I was younger, adhering to the "Well, you did it, so I can write about it" school of thought, but certainly, now, there are things that I wouldn't have written about with such...gusto.

Lancaster: I adore your phraseology. For example, in It Looked Different on the Model you detail an unfortunate encounter with a topless hippy at a barbecue, describing her errant breast as looking like a "rooty yam." How do you come up with this stuff?

Notar Man, I live in a place where people will show you a picture of their afterbirth like it was a photo of a puppy. Not cool. I gasp on an average of about 30 times a day, and I once caught a hooker soliciting a sixth grader wearing a Harry Potter backpack in Phoenix. I just called it like I saw it on that one. That boob didn't belong at a barbecue, it belonged in a produce bin or a cold, dark cellar. It was HORRIBLE. There were prettier things in Clash of the Titans.

Lancaster: Finish this sentence: "If I weren't writing, I'd be"¦"

Notar "...on unemployment."

Lancaster: In chatting with you about due dates last year, you mentioned the desire to "fling monkeyshit at me" if I were one of those writers who didn't procrastinate. (Considering I turned in a completely different book than the one I was supposed to write, almost two months late to boot, this is not an issue.) What's your favorite deadline-avoiding activity?

Notar Watching people go batshit crazy on Facebook. You can post anything and people are happy to fight about it. You can post the most innocuous things and people are ready and willing to throw down like two ladies on food stamps fighting over the last brick of $1.99 cheese at Wal-mart. I don't get it. I don't even want to fight with people I hate, let alone people I don't even know and couldn't give a description of to the police. I once posted something about it being sucky that people pirated movies, music and e-books. One girl had such a hissy fit that in the span of three messages, she posted that she "hated me, I was just like my mother and could I defriend her because she couldn't figure out how to do it on her iPhone." It. Was. Awesome. It was like watching someone throw water on a green lady holding a broom. Phenomenal meltdown.

Lancaster: Who'd play you in your movie/sitcom?

Notar If I had better self esteem, I'd say Lauren Graham, but since I just saw myself in the mirror coming out of the shower, I've got to be realistic. Roseanne Barr. My apologies to her.

Lancaster: I have to thank you again for being such an inspiration. So for the big finale, and maybe to get an idea of the footsteps I should follow next, I'd like to ask one of those awful questions that are so uncomfortable at job interviews. Where do you see yourself in ten years? (Note: never say "at your desk." That's the kind of answer that keeps you unemployed.)

Notar Probably dead. Like I said, my health insurance isn't so hot and I convince myself that every malady I have is because I ate a fiber bar and that Gas X will heal me. So if I were you, I'd get decent coverage and it's a good idea never to eat anything with more than .5 grams of fiber on an empty stomach. And never eat more than one fiber bar a day; you could very well find that you had launched yourself into orbit. So yeah. Either I'll be cremated and my husband's second wife will have stuck me in the basement, or if I'm lucky and my insurance holds, I'll be the chicken jerky treat lady and dogs everywhere will love me. Nothing's better than that!

Thank you Jen, I think you rock and I loved your new book! Everyone is going to love it! I hope this was as much fun for you as it was for me. Can I ask five questions now? :)

Do you really live in Jake Ryan's house?

Lancaster: I did not buy a house that was featured in a John Hughes movie, although Cameron's steel-and-glass-on-stilts home from Ferris Bueller was on the market in the area where we wanted to buy. We didn't even take a peek at it because I'm such a rabid Hughes fan that if we saw it, I would want it despite everything about it being wrong for us. For example, I tend to park by feel so I really don't need a glass garage. Also, all I could picture was our dogs tumbling down the ravine every time we let them out. Plus, we'd have gone broke remodeling it because if the MLS photos are any indication, the place is a love letter to the décor of 1986. But the idea of buying the wrong place because of an emotional connection is what inspired me to write If You Were Here, so it worked out.

Notar I have a feeling you had a blast writing If You Were Here--did you map out the plot, or did you go along for the ride to see what happened? Did the characters do anything you weren't expecting them to do?

Lancaster: This was the most fun I've ever had as a writer! Like you, my background is memoir so until now, I was pretty constrained by the truth. Often I'd find myself allowing a stupid/awkward situation continue so that I could later write about it. With fiction, nothing bad happened to me! I didn't lose my job! I didn't find out the hard way never to carry a Prada bag to the unemployment office! I got to make shit up! The whole writing process was glorious! And now I need to apologize for every time I ever rolled my eyes when I heard a writer say, "The characters told me what was going to happen next." Turns out they did. Like with the benevolently homicidal grandmother Babcia? I never envisioned her. She just came to life on the page and she scared me too much not to write her into the story.

Notar Most writers have quirks and habits (and may get a little pissy when on a deadline)--is there anything that you need to do while you're working that would surprise your readers? Special snack? Velvet pillow for your feet? Pool boy misting you and feeding you bon bons?

As for the cabana boy, we actually bought a place with a pool. I was so busy with my manuscript when we moved in that I never saw who came to clean it once a week. I finally had to ask my husband, "Hey, are the pool boys cute?" envisioning adorable swim team members from the local high school. My husband replied, "It depends. Do you find a short, overweight, middle-aged guy with a gunshot wound cute?" So pretty much I feed myself bon bons. And by bon bons I mean Skittles, sorted by color and eaten one flavor at a time.

Lancaster: I need absolute quiet to write. When we moved into our new house, I was amazed at how much more productive I could be. In the city, we lived on a busy corner in a questionable neighborhood with an illegal daycare across the street. Once every couple of hours, the staff would herd the kids into what was a glorified dog run and they'd shriek until it was time to go back inside. Between that and the screech of bus brakes and the gang members who liked to fight in the bus shelter in front of the house, I was always distracted. Turns out I can concentrate a lot harder when I don't have to get up and glower out the window every five minutes.

As for the cabana boy, we actually bought a place with a pool. I was so busy with my manuscript when we moved in that I never saw who came to clean it once a week. I finally had to ask my husband, "Hey, are the pool boys cute?" envisioning adorable swim team members from the local high school. My husband replied, "It depends. Do you find a short, overweight, middle-aged guy with a gunshot wound cute?" So pretty much I feed myself bon bons. And by bon bons I mean Skittles, sorted by color and eaten one flavor at a time.

Notar My office looks like the DEA just raided it. I picture your office to be the polar opposite--everything perfectly in its place, photo-shoot ready, right out of a Pottery Barn catalog. Am I right?

Lancaster: My office is a lot like me - pretty on the outside. I mean, I work hard to come across as pulled together with styled hair and fresh lipstick, but I guarantee I'm wearing a torn girdle and my bra's stained orange by spray tanning. Also? If it doesn't show, it isn't shaved. Interpret that as you will.

As for my office, the furniture matches and there's a lovely Persian rug on the floor. But it's all anarchy, all the time inside the drawers. That's where you'll find a cache of power cords to electronic devices I no longer own, rolls of film dating back to the Clinton administration, and free-range Spree candies from my Christmas stocking circa 2007. When we moved, instead of taking this opportunity to sort out all this crap, I simply dumped it all into a box and then refilled the drawers with the same contents. And the closet? Don't even ask me about the closet. Bad things happen in that closet. Finally, the rug's often the most convenient place for my puppy Libby to take a leak. If you visit, I suggest you keep your shoes on.

Notar What made you take the leap from non-fiction to fiction? And how much of it was real-life? I think I saw a lot of Jen in there (some of my favorite parts)!

Lancaster: Originally this book was supposed to be a memoir about moving from the gritty city to the bucolic suburbs, so the first few chapters are almost completely autobiographical. Our plan was to buy a fixer-upper, do all the work ourselves, and document the process. But as we punch-listed everything we'd need to do at a couple of places, we realized that we are, in fact, very lazy and our conflict resolution skills are nil. We thought that if we tried to renovate a house, we'd probably get divorced. But I loved the idea of two idiots trying to rehab a place and If You Were Here was born.

Recently, I thought we should try to update the bathroom off my office as clearly I learned no lessons while writing this novel. We went so far as to take out the toilet in preparation of tearing out tile. That damn commode sat next to my desk for a week while we battled over travertine versus marble versus glass tile. Turns out I'd rather have a mauve tub and a husband who likes me. We've since put the toilet back and decided to never speak of DIY renovation again.

Notar Real Housewives of New Jersey or New York?

Lancaster: Team New Jersey! Bergen County represent!

Notar I know how much you love fashion--what's your favorite outfit right now?

Lancaster: I'm perpetually clad in some kind of ice-cream colored alligator shirt, loose khaki capris, pearls, and a really fantastic handbag. My style is overwhelmingly traditional. Funny story, though "“ I'm about to ruin any fashion cred I may have had. You see, I have a pair of backless black penny loafers that I've been kicking around in for so long the soles are cracked in two. I love them and they go perfectly with everything I own. But I recently wore them on a trip to Dallas and all the TSA guys felt sorry for me and my sad broken shoes as they went through the X-ray machine so I knew I had to replace them.

I've never been able to find a similar pair until I ran across a listing on line. The replacement pair I found was absolutely perfect in cut and color and style. The thing is"¦ they were used. As in worn. By a different pair of feet. But such was my desire to keep my old look going, I had to have them. They arrived, I disinfected the hell out of them, and they're a perfect replacement for the old ones. You know how people are always saying how hard it is to walk a mile in another person's shoes? Turns out as soon as you re-establish the toe grooves, it's totally fine.

Notar What's the best and the worst thing that's ever happened to you on book tour (aside from coming home and leaving)?

Lancaster: The best thing that ever happened was on my Pretty in Plaid tour. I did a reading about sorority rush and I kept referencing my old college roommate Joanna who I loved, but our lives went in different directions and we lost touch. When it came time for Q&A, a familiar face raised her hand and said, "I'm Joanna and I want to tell you how proud I am of you!" That was a great moment and we've been in close contact ever since.

The worst moment didn't seem like it at the time. I was at a reading in New York wearing a pretty yellow sundress and I thought I looked adorable. It wasn't until I saw two hundred photos of the event on my Facebook fan page that I realized a vast amount of my ratty bra was visible in every single picture.

Notar How many times a day do readers tell you that you should have a baby because "it would be great material"?

Lancaster: Dude"¦ every? All? Each minute? Argh. I always reply I have enough creatures vomiting on my nice rugs right now.

Notar When are we going to get together for an encore grilled cheese and French fries?

Lancaster: I'm free this afternoon! And the dogs wouldn't mind if you brought more chicken jerky...

Finnish SF and Fantasy: An Established Community, a Surge of Talent

By Jeff VanderMeer

This is the conclusion of a two-part feature on Finnish SF/Fantasy. In
April, my wife Ann and I flew to Finland for seven days of lectures, workshops,
and other presentations at various universities and writer organizations across
the country. The trip was made possible by a travel grant from the Finnish
Literature Exchange (FILI), in conjunction with the largesse of the Finnish science
fiction/fantasy community. You can read Part 1 here.

SF/Fantasy by Finnish writers is hot this year, with two major titles
now out in the U.S. that capture the range and complexity of the current scene:
Birdbrain by Johanna Sinisalo and The Quantum Thief by Hannu
Rajaniemi. But visiting Finland meant having a chance to delve a little deeper,
an opportunity to catch tantalizing glimpses of a rich and vibrant SF/fantasy
tradition in which the distinctions between genre and literary fiction seem
less and less important.

A Golden Age for Cross-Genre Finnish SF/F?

Indeed, novelist and short story writer Anne Leinonen believes "Finnish
science fiction and fantasy is living its golden age. In this millennia, the
number of writers has significantly risen, as well as general respect toward
the genre"¦Copying Anglo-American ideas or styles [isn't as common], with the
use of local and national elements becoming a natural part of storytelling. The
borders have blurred, bringing new methods, ways, forms of expression to our
literature."  

As editor-critic Jukka Halme notes in the video above, even one of
Finland's most lauded mainstream writers, Leena Krohn, writes fantasy, despite
not being categorized as a fantasy writer. Krohn, a thoughtful woman with a
sharp sense of humor, will be familiar to English-language readers primarily
through the Kafka-esque Tainaron: Mail From Another City. Tainaron
is, in our opinion, one of the finest works of weird fiction published in the
last twenty years"”and yet frustratingly enough most of Krohn's books have yet
to be translated into English.

A Trio of Tantalizing Glimpses

Tantalizing glimpses during our trip also meant getting to read English-language
snippets from novels not yet translated"”for example, Sari Peltoniemi's The
Elk (read an excerpt online), which opens with the wonderfully mysterious
lines "I am the Bat and I have the Raven's quill," and features Ursula, a king's
daughter. Ursula's contradictory personality and complex relationship with her
father are portrayed with great clarity and empathy.

A successful children's author in Finland, Peltoniemi
is a former rock star whose award-winning novels often deal with the weakest,
most vulnerable members of society, people upon whose lives myth and fantasy
begin to encroach. Peltoniemi says she "writes about universal matters. A
reviewer wrote, for example, that if books went to a bar together, my novel The
Scale would go there with Neil Gaiman's Coraline." Her latest is Kissataksi
(Cat Taxi)"”the title an homage to Miyazaki"”which tells the story of
eight-year-old Juho "who meets seven strange cats and their sad mistress." Considering
that Peltoniemi hails from the same country identified with iconic children's
author Tove Jansson, it seems odd that Peltoniemi's books haven't been
translated into English.

We also had a chance to sample Vivii Hyvönen's The Monkey and the
New Moon, which is set in "the permanently quarantined city of Dystopolis
between an unnavigable, poisonous ocean and an impassable dump inhabited by
frenzied monkeys." Categorized as New Weird, the novel's two biggest influences
are, according to the author "Dracula by Bram Stoker and Smilla's
Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg," combining the epistolary impulse in the former with the thriller aspects of the
latter while throwing in the "influence of several movies with artificial
realities that their inhabitants are unaware of." Based on our readings, we
wouldn't bet against Hyvönen being the next Finnish writer to break out and
find a substantial US/UK audience, a la Hannu Rajaniemi and his The Quantum
Thief.

Equally interesting, but in a totally different way, the just-published Moby Doll
by first-time novelist Saara Henriksson sports an evocative cover that smartly
conveys the premise. Moby Doll is about a whale and a young woman, and the
man that is looking for her. Jenny, seeking to re-discover a childhood song,
travels north of Norway to find it in whale-song. As the author says, "Moby
Doll is about obsession and reaching for the impossible, but also about music
and the power of communication. One of the characters is a talking white whale,
an all-seeing, all-hearing ancient being." Henriksson eschews easy labels,
placing her work in the continuum of "Scandinavian speculative fiction, ranging
from Risto Isomäki to Peter Hoeg"¦I tend to think of it as belonging
somewhere alongside 'mainstream' fiction'"”almost mainstream but not quite."
Conceptually, Moby Doll should be an easy pitch to UK/US publishers.

A Groundswell of Energy

In encountering so many fascinating authors, we wondered if it was just our outsider's
impression that a wealth of quality material was being published in Finland.
However, experts from the community seem to agree. Literary critic Irma
Hirsjärvi cites the near-heroic level of activity by Finnish SF/Fantasy fandom
in a paper on Finnish SF as a contributing factor, while Partial Recall blogger
Tero Ykspetäjä points out the diversity: "At the moment, I think there's quite
a spectrum of different stories published"”from hard SF to the traditional yarns
of the new pulp people to the almost-mimetic fiction of the realfantastik
movement, and everything in between."

The legendary Toni Jerrman, editor of the iconic Finnish SF/Fantasy magazine Tähtivaeltaja
("Star Wanderer"), calls the scene "Very much alive and flourishing. New
writers seem to pop up from everywhere. And quite a few of them are really good
and original." In particular, Jerrman says, "the big publishing houses are
nowadays getting interested in Finnish speculative fiction, a happy improvement.
More and more books are coming out every year, and some of them even win
awards, like Tiina Raevaara's fabulous short story collection 'En tunne sinua
vierellani,' which just won the prestigious Runeberg Award." Having sampled her intelligent,
often breathtaking stories, we're certain that Raevaara is a safe bet for
eventual book-length translation.

In
addition to publishing the work of Finnish authors, Tähtivaeltaja,
omnivorous in its tastes and definitely punk in its approach, has been
instrumental in introducing Finnish readers to English-language writers. For
example, the magazine introduced Philip K. Dick to Finns in 1987, after which
he became the most translated science fiction author in Finland. Its blanket
approach to coverage"”reviewing anime, manga, fiction, movies, and more"”has made
it a nexus for cross-genre influence and a kind of cultural clearinghouse for
the SF/Fantasy community.

Issues of Translation

While
influence is a two-way exchange, issues of translation are definitely unequal.
Many Finns read in English, but most Americans can't read Finnish. Saara
Henriksson's Moby Doll might have the kind of concept that lends itself
to immediate rapport with an English-language reader in a synopsis, but many
novels can't be reduced down to a concept in a meaningful way: they must be
experienced in their totality, from page one to the end.

Intriguing
titles we couldn't sample include Anne Leinonen's latest novel Routasisarukset
(The Frost Children)"”a collaboration with Eija Lappalainen"”which was
just published in Finland. It is a dystopic exploration of "individual
liberties, constricting power structures, and the possibilities of
biotechnology" as seen through the eyes of Utu, a young woman who has "a
strange ability to understand ancient abandoned machines." Over tar ice cream
before an event at the Writer's House in the city of Jyväskylä, Leinonen also
told us about another, Kafkaesque novel of hers that sounded even more
delicious than what we were eating.

But
there are countless other examples of enticement. For example, we love the work
of Jyrki Vainonen that we've read, including "The Pearl." His work has a streak
of the surreal and the dark that we find irresistible, but the majority of his
work remains elusive to English-language readers. Other writers recommended to
us include Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen,
M.G. Soikkeli, J. Pekka Makela, Essi Kummu, Siri Kolu, Miina Supinen, Jukka
Laajarinne, Katja Salminen, Maarit Verronen, and Marko Hautala, so clearly we
have more literary investigations to undertake.

Other
factors can come into play, too. Some writers are harder to translate than
others. Boris Hurtta is considered by many the preeminent horror writer in Finland,
but we were told by Halme and others that the idiosyncratic qualities of his at
times baroque style can make story translation an arduous and demanding process.
Yet he's clearly a favorite of Halme, and of Finnish writer, reviewer, and
radio personality Hannu Blommila: "What I find
compelling about Hurtta is his sheer versatility. He has written dark fantasy,
Lovecraftian horror, delightfully pulpy adventure tales, and even some
Splatterpunk. A very prolific writer and avid bibliophile with a deep knowledge
of older and rather obscure Finnish titles of fantasy and adventure. To my
mind, his own work juxtaposes beautifully both Finnish literary and old pulp
traditions."

We
met Hurtta on our trip to Finland, and he noted that his fiction often features
book collectors, strange books, and all the other arcana of a certain brand of
weird fiction, with one story entitled "The Revenge of the Bibliomaniac." The
opening of another story, "A Diseased Man," gives a sense of Hurtta at the
sentence level: "As a man, Kaarlo Huovinen was like a slab of concrete
discarded on a building site: strong and unyielding, but by now crumbling
around the edges and riddled with hairline cracks." "A Diseased Man" can be
found in The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy, edited by Johanna Sinisalo
and translated by David Hackston, along with many others mentioned in this
feature.

Right
now, many of these writers remain just tantalizing possibilities for
English-language readers, but it may not remain that way for long. We can't be
certain which of these Finnish writers you'll be reading in the future, but we
are certain you'll come to know many of their names much better very soon.

YA Wednesday: A Q&A with Alyssa B. Sheinmel

By Jessica Schein

Back in January we expanded our href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_356154502_10?ie=UTF8&plgroup=1&docId=1000676611">Best of the Month program
to include three more titles in addition to the spotlight recommended read.
With so much great YA fiction out on the market it became harder and harder to
choose only one book every month, and since YA readers span so many
sub-genres--from science-fiction & fantasy and literature to paranormal
romance and graphic novels--we thought, the more the merrier!

This month, one of our picks is The Lucky Kind by Alyssa
B. Sheinmel. When high school junior Nick Brandt's dad comes clean to him about
a long-kept secret, Nick starts to question his so-called perfect family and
must face that fact that things aren't necessarily what they seem. Soon nothing
much is of interest to him"”not even longtime crush/new girlfriend, Eden, with
whom he'd bonded only weeks before the big reveal. In this heartfelt story
about the emotional leap from childhood to adulthood, Sheinmel imprints the
exchanges and dialog between characters on the reader's mind long after the
last page. Writing from the point of view of opposite gender to boot, Sheinmel
truly shines (heh!) in her second novel (The Beautiful Between, her
first, was well-received by the New York Post, Kirkus, and School
Library Journal).

For more on Sheinmel's research and inspiration read our
Q&A with her below:

The characters are so well drawn and the emotions ring true. Does this book have a
personal connection for you?

Well, first of all, thank you! To be honest, I think every book I write has a
personal connection for me; even though I never went through much of what the
characters in The Lucky Kind go through, many of the characters' traits
are inspired by real people and real stories.

For
example, early in the book, Nick tells a story about his father, to explain
what a brave but gentle person his dad is. When Nick was nine years old, he was
with his dad in the town where his father grew up and he saw some older boys
trying to steal bicycles outside the video store where he and his father were
shopping. Now, Nick's father isn't based on my father, and Nick certainly isn't
based on me, but that story is true. When I was about nine years old, I was
with my dad at a video store in the town where he grew up. My dad saw what was
happening before I did; he asked me to stay inside the store while he went
outside for a second. Of course, I didn't stay where he told me--I went to the
window to see what he was doing. And just as Nick watched his dad, I watched my
dad talk two teen boys out of stealing two bikes. And just like Nick, I believe
that my dad, with his reasonable arguments, actually convinced them.

How
did you find writing from the boy perspective? Was this a stretch, especially
when he treats his girlfriend badly?

I loved, loved writing from the boy perspective! One of my favorite things
about being a writer is getting to play ventriloquist. I recommend it to any
aspiring writers out there--write from the perspective of someone of the
opposite sex, from someone much older than you are, from someone who is as
different from you as you can imagine. It can be a challenge, but it can also
be exciting. Personally, writing Nick, I felt like sometimes I got to behave
badly, which was kind a thrill.

And,
as it turned out, Nick's voice came very naturally to me; I loved writing Nick.
I never actually made a conscious decision to write this novel from a boy's
perspective, but as the idea for the story developed, it was just a boy's voice
that popped into my head, narrating the novel. I hesitated about it at
first--would people buy my interpretation of a teen boy's voice? Could I make
it ring true? But I couldn't have written the story any other way. Frankly, I
simply didn't have a choice!

What
kind of research, if any, did you do about adoption in order to get the details
right?

As far as I know, I'd gone most of my life without being personally touched by
adoption (aside from the running joke in my family that I must have been
secretly adopted, because I don't look like my mother and sister, and am about
five inches taller than the both of them). But all at once, a few years ago, I
became close with several people who'd been adopted, and a very dear friend
confided to having actually given up a child for adoption.

I
began to think a lot about adoption. Two of the adopted adults that I'd met had
no interest in finding their birth parents, and that was endlessly fascinating
to me. I wondered how I would feel, had I been adopted. Around that same time,
I read a remarkable book called The Girls Who Went Away, about women
who'd been essentially forced to give up their children for adoption in the
years before the Roe vs. Wade decision. The book spoke to the long-term effects
that giving up these babies had had on the women who bore them, and on their
families, years later. It was heartbreaking and deeply moving; I couldn't put
the book down. But I was also struck by the fact that mostly the birth mothers'
stories were told. The biological fathers were barely mentioned. I began to
wonder about the effects that giving up children for adoption had on fathers;
surely some of these fathers were every bit as deeply touched by the experience
as the mothers had been.

And
I thought, most of all, about my friend who'd given up a child for adoption. My
thoughts were often not about the baby who had been given up, but about the
family my friend was going to go on to have someday. I couldn't stop thinking
about that future family"”that spouse, those children"”and the impact that an
adoption that had taken place so many years earlier might have on that future
family. I couldn't get that idea out of my head, and that's where the story for
The Lucky Kind began.