Nine years ago, Jan Karon, the author of the hugely popular Mitford series of novels, announced that Light from Heaven (2005) would be the last Mitford book. Now, she’s back with a new Mitford novel featuring Father Timothy Kavanagh and his wife Cynthia, along with the rest of their family, neighbors and friends set in this fictional North Carolina town. The series has sold many millions of books and there’s no doubt that untold numbers of Jan Karon fans are ecstatic about the publication of Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good.
Suspicion: A Talk with Joseph Finder
Joseph Finder has a background every thriller novelist would love to have. He spent his early childhood living around the world. He majored in Russian studies at Yale, where he was Phi Beta Kappa; completed a master’s degree at the Harvard Russian Research Center, and then taught at Harvard University. He was recruited to the CIA, but decided he preferred writing.
His first book was published when he was only 24, and he’s gone on to write critically acclaimed thrillers such as Extraordinary Powers, The Zero Hour, and High Crimes which went on to Hollywood filmdom. In 2004, his novel Paranoia, which focused on corporate ruthlessness, corruption and conspiracy, became a huge bestseller. His awards include The Barry and Gumshoe, and The International Thriller Writers Award for his novel, Killer Instinct. His latest, just-released novel isSuspicion.
Field of Prey: A Talk with John Sandford
We know him as John Sandford, but that’s his nom de plume. As journalist John Camp, he won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for his five-part series about an American farm family faced with an agricultural crisis. He eventually turned to writing thriller novels, and his twenty-fourth Prey novel, Field of Prey, featuring Lucas Davenport, will be available everywhere on May 5th, 2014. Lucas and his team must use all possible resources to try capturing an elusive killer or killers who claim at least twenty victims over a course of years.
Mark Rubinstein on “A Book and a Chat”
A Book and a Chat with Mark Rubinstein
Mark Rubinstein was a recent guest on “A Book and a Chat“ on New Visions Radio. Mark spoke with host Barry Eva about his novella, The Foot Soldier, and his other writing projects, including his upcoming Mad Dog Justice. You can listen to the full interview here.
“You’re Edgy and Irritable” My Wife Says
Writing is an emotionally draining and solitary business. You spend hour upon hour alone with your thoughts and fantasies, doing your best to order, re-order and transform them into coherent stories people will want to read. Like any other endeavor, you have good days and bad days. Sometimes you feel exhilarated; at other times you feel frustrated and exhausted. As they say, it goes with the territory.
My wife has noticed what she’s called “carryover” from a day’s writing. She can tell if I’ve been working on an intense scene or chapter—one with plenty of action or anger, or one brimming with life-altering (even murderous) conflicts between characters. She picks up on the energy writing has generated within me. It doesn’t simply dissipate when the day’s writing is finished. It carries over for a while.
Storytelling Makes Us Who We Are, Novelist Tells Rotarians: Article in the Westport Minuteman
Mark Rubinstein (Contributed photo)
“I always wanted to be a writer,” retired forensic psychiatrist Mark Rubinstein told Westport Sunrise Rotary last Friday. “People were telling me stories all the time … that’s partially why I went into psychiatry.”
Now he’s the storyteller, enjoying his second career, recalling 42 years of “listening to people’s tales of woe,” and working on his fifth novel.
Storytelling, he said, “makes us who we are … the novelist seeks to capture the reader, to take him from his prosaic world to one that gives him an experience he couldn’t hope to have in his daily life.”
Rubinstein spoke to his audience about his practice, about his genre, thrillers, and about writing.
Character Is Destiny
People often talk about a novel being plot-driven or character-driven. For me, that can be an artificial distinction. For my taste, the best novels — those that capture me and make me feel sorry the read is coming to an end — are those driven by both plot and by the protagonist’s character or personality.
I’ve always felt the most engaging novels are those whose narrative drives involve conflict and uncertainty. They’re novels whose plot — along with other attributes — makes me wonder what’s going to happen next. In essence, I’ve always believed a good story is quite disturbing or plumbs a deep truth — one that’s either obvious (think of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl) or draws me on some level of which I may be unaware (think of Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent or Jane Hamilton’s A Map of the World). In my view, a novel’s plot is vital for it to be compelling.
‘What If?’: The Big Question
In a previous Huffington Post article, I discussed the almost dreamlike process by which I write a novel. There is a coalescence of past and present; the melding of my own and others’ experiences. The article concluded by saying that drawing from life and imagination is at the heart of my novels, but each story begins in a unique way.
I’ve often been asked how the concept for Love Gone Mad originated, given its twists, turns and many machinations. Readers want to know how the initial idea came into being. I recall a specific incident that led to the thought of the novel.
The Nightmare of a New Novel
A sense of incipient dread spreads though me when I first sit down to begin a new novel. No matter how many times I’ve done it before, the initial reaction is the same: where will this go? Will the attempt lead me to a dead end from which I can’t be extricated?
Perhaps it’s a crisis in confidence, but it’s far more than just a case of writer’s block. In fact, I’m not sure “writer’s block” is a valid name for this state of mind.
A novel is an organic thing. In a very real sense, it lives, breathes and takes on a life of its own, independent of my initial outline or plot summary. The outline never ensures full-blooded characters, not does it guarantee a rich plot, with compelling narrative drive. Hopefully, the story will grow or even change direction from the first plot summary, and the end result will be something I’d never anticipated. I never truly know the outcome — even as I’m traveling the novel’s trajectory — which can be part of the pleasure and nightmare of writing. In fact, whenever I look at the final product — the published novel — I find myself wondering where it all came from.
Once I barge past that initial feeling of immobilization, the writing assumes its own energy. Many things emerge. They seem to come from some deep mental recess. The experience can seem like a mystifying, dreamlike process, or even a strange form of magic.
But it’s not magic. Rather, mine is the writer’s oneiric landscape over which the quest occurs to capture in words, the thoughts and feelings of my characters in their turbulent stories.
I wonder if every writer experiences this when beginning a new work. I don’t know. I can only speak for myself.
Some people claim to experience this peculiar form of paralysis they call “writer’s block.” It seems to me, they just can’t get past the nightmarish fear of not knowing where it will all go, and beginning the hard work a novel demands — the brutal and beautiful slog of writing fiction.
Mark Rubinstein
Author of Mad Dog House and Love Gone Mad
Writer to Writer: A Conversation with Raymond Khoury
Raymond Khoury is the bestselling author of several novels, including The Last Templar, The Templar Salvation and The Sign. Born in Lebanon, Raymond and his family were evacuated from Beirut’s civil war, and fled to New York when he was 14. He worked as an architect and investment banker before becoming a screenwriter and producer for networks such as NBC and BBC. Since the success of The Last Templar, his debut novel, he has focused solely on writing fiction. His works have been translated into over 40 languages. Rasputin’s Shadow is his sixth novel.