Dan Waters: Live and In Person!

A couple weeks back I attended a great Teen Author event at Emory College with my best girlfriend Joyce, and Friend of Friends Steve. It was the first year of the event and had some fantastic authors and there was great access to them allowing the readers and fans of these authors to actually get to tell them how much they love their books plus some excellent panel discussions. The main reason I went was to meet one of my very favorite authors, Dan Waters, whose latest book Break My Heart 1000 Times I reviewed here and who graciously consented to be interviewed here, as well. Dan was as gracious in person as he was in the interview. Here we are:

 

I'll be looking forward to attending this event next year!

Home Front Girl: Diary of a Girl Historian

Home Front Girl is the diary of Joan Wehlen Morrison written before and during the build-up to WWll and was discovered by her daughter, Susan Signe Morrison, after she died and then edited and published. The book is such a surprising and unexpected pleasure as the Recommender hadn't heard of it before coming across it in a list of recently released titles.
Joan is a wonderfully observant, funny and smart girl. It begins when she is 14 and takes us up to when she turns 20. The diary records her thoughts on her life and daily activities living in Chicago. And she is one busy girl. From a young age she wrote columns in school newspapers including an advice column. It is no surprise that she grew up to be a journalist and a professor who co-authored Mosaic: The Immigrant Experience in the Words of Those Who Lived It and From Camelot to Kent State: the Sixties Experience in the Words of Those Who Lived It.  Right from the start Joan records events like the Hindenburg zeppelin fire and the coronation of King George and applies them to how they affect her life, for instance "Coronation or no coronation...there was school today."
It often seems a slower, sweeter time. Joan walking home from a trip to the Art Institute and the library where she borrows a work by Kipling and writes: "Walked home along the lovely lake with elongated purple shadows along the sands. Still bright haired children playing. Still flowers no less vivid or sky less blue, sun like blood in the West. Oh, I felt the glory and the spring of Kipling's poem, "But as the faithful years return and hearts undaunted sing again". Isn't that a lovely thought- "hearts undaunted sing again"-though ever the years are long and hard-the Spring will always come and our hearts can sing again- oh how beautiful"
Is that not more beautiful than a text? She wrote this in 1937, when she was 14.
In school she takes Latin and German. She recites poetry and writes her own. She writes a multitude of observances on the boys who come and go through her school years, many funny, some angry and others poignant. She spends summers working at children's camps to earn extra money. She is tested for TB and found to be susceptible to it and has to be tested periodically. She receives a scholarship to the University of Chicago Jr. College. And then, there's the war. She chronicles events that lead up  to the start of WW ll. On Feb. 13, 1938 she writes about the US, England and France requesting Japan cut down on her navies. She talks to a boy in her class about war and death. "He seemed sure that there'd be another war (another, oh!) and he said he'd probably be killed in it. All the boys I know will be old enough to die in a war in 1940."
Joan is afraid of what the impending war will do to her life and that of her friends. She is a pacifist, which seems unusual for those times, and has many thoughts on what war does to the people of the USA and the other countries affected. I could go on and on, because this book is just so quotable... but really, you want to get a copy of Home Front Girl for yourself so you can curl up with it and let Joan take you back in time, as you see the world through the eyes of this appealing narrator.

Libba Bray's "The Diviners": Hauntings in Manhattan!

It's Halloween and the New York subways are underwater. Must be time to review Libba Bray's great new beginning to her new series "The Diviners". It is 1926  and a group of sophisticated young Manhattanites is celebrating the 18th birthday of  one of their crowd. Things are getting dull, so she brings out the Ouija board. The one she got at an antique store where the proprietor told her not to forget to spell out "goodbye" on the board to put any spirits to rest. The party goers gather round and drink and laugh and place their hands on the planchette and  ...make contact with a spirit that says it is Naughty John. After a few questions the spirit gets nasty...  the birthday girl finally yells at it to stop, and the board goes quiet. She mentions the ritual of spelling out goodbye... her friends scoff and suggest one of the gang was playing a trick, so she stashes it back in the closet and goes off to dance the night away. What was unleashed that night no longer a concern for the party goers.
The story jumps ahead to introduce our leading lady, Evie O'Neil, an attractive, wise-cracking, young flapper living in Ohio. Evie loves a good drink and dancing and doing the occasional party-trick of reading someone's belongings to find out their secrets.
This trick has gotten Evie into hot water when she outs the secret of a boy who had a dalliance with a chamber-maid. Refusing to apologise her parents give her the option of leaving town for a while and living with her bachelor uncle in New York City. She can't believe her luck, not only will she be getting away from her home town, she'll be living it up in NYC, where all the action is, and her girlhood chum and pen pal, Mabel, to enjoy it all with!
And what of Naughty John, that nasty spirit? Will we be hearing more from him? Read "The Diviners" and immerse yourself in New York in the 20's filled with speakeasies, Ziegfeld girls ... and murder!
This is one terrific story and pos-i-tute-ly addictive, as Evie might say. Evie is one heck of an engaging girl and one you will love to spend 500+ pages with and still want more. Which we can look forward to.

Boston Teen Author Festival!

This sounds amazing, especially because One of my favorite authors, Daniel Waters (see interview here!) will be there. Here's a link and a posting about it:

Boston Teen Author Festival

About

Hello, everyone! Welcome to the about page of the Boston Teen Author Festival. You may be thinking to yourself, hey, I didn't know there was a teen author festival in Boston, and that would be because we just created it! For the very first time, in conjunction with Emerson College's Undergraduate Students for Publishing, I am so happy to bring you fifteen amazingly talented middle grade and young adult authors for a celebration of children's books unlike anything Boston has seen recently, if at all.

I have always loved book signings. How cool is it to actually meet the people behind the pages, those who endlessly entertain you with these epic stories of adventure, romance, and humor? It wasn't until high school that I realized these people who seemed so untouchable were actually willing to talk to their readers, meet them in bookstores, and answer emails online. I consider myself very lucky to now consider a few of them my friends. But I've always wanted to bring that experience to my community. I'd been to the Rochester Teen Book Festival at Nazareth College and the epic Books of Wonder Signing in New York City. As a senior in high school, I wanted to bring a group of authors to my small New York town, to give other kids my age the chance to meet their favorite authors, but I never had the resources.

Now, four years later as a senior at Emerson College, I finally have the opportunity. Through a collection of sponsors who are making it possible to make this festival the best it can be, Boston will finally have the chance to come together to hear a large group of fantastic authors talk about their craft, their journey, and any other information you wish to ask them (really, get creative). These four panel sessions will be followed by a large group signing, where you can go up and tell your favorite authors how much you love them, and new authors how much you're looking forward to digging into their books. There will be refreshments and a table where you can buy the authors' most recent books from our school's Barnes and Noble. I sincerely hope to see each and every one of you there! Thank you for loving books, and happy reading.

Forever your nerdy friend,

Renee Combs

Authors Attending:

• A.C. Gaughen
• Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
• Caitlin Kittredge
• Daniel Waters
• Diana Renn
• Erin Dionne
• Huntley Fitzpatrick
• Jack Ferraiolo
• Karsten Knight
• Kate Burak
• Laurie Stolarz
• Leigh Fallon
• Marissa Doyle
• Steven Goldman
• Susan Carlton
• Wendy Wunder

"Auraria" by Tim Westover: Pure Gold!

All the Recommender can say after reading Tim Westover's new novel, Auraria, is Wow! What a journey! It's hard to believe Auraria doesn't really exist and kind of sad to think you won't be able to pack an overnight bag and take a train through Georgia to this mountain retreat filled with an unusual assortment of  characters both living and, well, not so alive.

James Holtzclaw is a dedicated company man. He is content working for Mr. H.E. Shadburn who got him out of a tight spot in the silkworm business and offered him employment as his accountant. Shadburn is a very wealthy man and his latest scheme is sending Holtzclaw off to the town of Auraria to buy as much land as possible from the locals so he can "improve"  this run-down former gold mining town by flooding it and turning it into a lake and resort. He has given Holtzclaw a traveling bag filled with cash and gold coins with unusual markings. Gold that had been minted in Auraria.
Holtzclaw's coach arrives in town and he sets off through the hills to bargain with the farmers and land-owners.
As he makes the acquaintance of these and the other townsfolk and a variety of other puzzling characters like Mr. Bad Thing, the invisible pianist at the Old Rock Falls and Princess Trahlyta, a girl who seems to shadow his every step and speak to him in cryptic riddles... he finds himself getting more and more involved in their unusual way of life and the local passion of panning for gold.
This book is such a uniquely original delight that the Recommender has been recommending it all over the place. If you want to join Holtzclaw in his discovery of singing trees and tortoises and moon maidens and gold, gold, gold... then be sure to grab a copy and visit the dreamy, otherworldly pleasures of Auraria!

Love Unmasked: Ironskin

Ironskin  is a magical steampunk fantasy Jane Eyre-like story and from the first page I was drawn into this original world that the author, Tina Connolly, brings to vivid life.

Jane Eliot was a survivor. There was a war. A war between the populace and the fey. The fey are a bodiless being highly skilled in a technology that supplied the locals with power called bluepacks that was so advanced that civilian power advancements are abandoned to such an extent that when the fey tire of  providing their energy source after creating a dependence... it's back to the dark ages for many. Not only that, after they begin a war on the same people they'd once helped, the fey having no bodies of their own, remember, would kill humans and take over their bodies so that the dead would turn and attack their friends and families until killed again with iron. Iron is all that can keep the fey at bay or kill them. Scary stuff. Many were lost in the war and many who survived bore fey scars. Scars which made their bearer feel amplified moods and affected those around them with an increased amplification of their own moods. Jane's scar being "rage", she keeps it contained behind the "ironskin" mask that covers one side of her face. Scarred as she is, she possess a quick and sardonic wit and a plucky sense of adventure so when she sees an ad for a governess position for a child "born during the war", she decides to give it a go and accepts the position.
"An ye be human...enter" an odd butler says to her when she knocks at the door of her new home.  She steps across the iron threshold and into a new life.
This life will introduce her to the master of the house, Mr. Rochart. He is a brilliant sculptor although the masks Jane takes in on the walls of his studio are hideous. He is also the father of five year old Dorie, a child both enchanting and frightening. Her "scars" are not visible. Dorie has the ability to command objects to come to her or float in the air without touching them. She can make blue lights sparkle around her. Fey light, perhaps.
 How and why Dorie came to possess these abilities is one of the secrets you will have to uncover yourself as you read this entrancing book. You will also find out what Jane discovers about Edward Rochart's other skills. Skills so remarkable they attract a bevy of beautiful women to pay calls on him (not THAT kind of skills! Get your mind out of the gutter! It's not that kind of book!), and begin to make Jane jealous. Jealous because she realizes she is coming to care for this mysterious man and his unusual child.  And what of Jane's sister who has married well and seems superficially happy in her letters but desperate to have Jane return to her. Intrigued? Then go buy a copy or request your local library to order "Ironskin" so you, too, can cross that iron threshold ...An ye be human... and enter this new and extraordinary world!
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Interview With Author Daniel Waters!

 

The Recommender is thrilled to bring you this short interview with one of my favorite authors, Daniel Waters. Dan is the author of the groundbreaking zombie series “Generation Dead” and his new book “Break My Heart 1000 Times” has become one of my all time favorites, and has my favorite title of the year, as well. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us here on the Militant Recommender! 

 These were wonderful, insightful questions, so thank you. 

What I love about Break My Heart 1000 Times is the absolutely believable reality you’ve created. The ghosts seem so natural in their day to day haunting. How did you ever come up with this concept??

I think the original concept is one of those "Hadron Collider of the mind"-type things, where I can't pinpoint any single flash of inspiration that triggered the idea, but I can see a number of the particle trails that combined to form it. I love horror stories to begin with, and ghosts stories are my favorite among them--I reread The Haunting of Hill House every couple years, so that has to be in the mix. The Sixth Sense is a favorite movie, and the novel takes the "I see dead people" concept and changes it to "everyone sees dead people". Thoughts about recent tragedies, both historical and personal, figure in to the book heavily as well.

I loved the character of Veronica. She’s a very complex and sympathetic character. You are very good at creating believable girls which is one of the things I admire about the Generation Dead series. Were there any real girls or women who helped inspire your great characters?

 Thank you. No one consciously--but my daughter is close to Veronica's age, and she is a very complex and sympathetic character. Her friends are all great kids too so I'm sure that knowing them helps the writing of my female teen protagonists. Of course, she was in grade school when I wrote Generation Dead, so that might be a fairly recent development.

 The image of Ronnie’s father appearing in the kitchen each morning is almost unbearably moving. The details of his apparition doing something mundane, reading the paper, drinking coffee and his wife and daughter positioning themselves each morning so that it appears he’s still there and about to speak to them is just beautifully conceived. What gave you the idea for this particular haunting?

The story is essentially about the idea of loss, the loss of loved ones, and how it affects people. Each character in the book is shaped by loss; loss has toughened Ronnie, it has caused her mother to put her life on hold, it has reduced Janine to a bundle of nerves, it has, and it has broken Bittner. Even Kirk, who hasn't felt any direct loss himself but has been witness to it in others feels its effects.

The scenes with many of the ghosts, especially Ronnie's father, come directly from personal experiences with loss. If someone dies or drops out of our lives it leaves us feeling haunted; even remembering the happy times brings a painful sting.

 Ronnie and her friend, Janine, walk to school and pass a house where every morning the ghost of a girl appears at the front door and knocks. They note it is the home of their history teacher. Early on we find out he’s a pretty creepy character. You have a real ability to bring the reader’s empathy to even the most despicable character, not giving anything away, as we hate giving away too many details, that is a real art. When you created this character how did you decide to bring that aspect to him, which makes him more 3 dimensional, as opposed to just a black and white bad guy?

Thank you for the drawing you did of the scene you just described; by the way. I love it. Villains to me are almost always more interesting when the are reasons behind that villainy; I also love when I'm reading about a villain and you can sense the moment he or she chose evil over good--or maybe that decision was made for them. There are plenty of fictional villains around that are pure evil from birth or early childhood, especially in horror and supernatural fiction, and I think that is a bit unrealistic. Most of the truly evil people throughout history didn't think they were evil; in their warped way they thought they were the good guys. I think it is fascinating to try and figure out how they could possibly have though something so opposite of what the majority of us believe.

Then again, I'd like to explore true and pure unsympathetic evil someday.

Some people live with the idea of the ghosts as a fact of life in your book while others lived in a constant state of fear and anxiety like Ronnie’s friend Janine. This also seems very realistic and equates, in a way, with how people in our society got on with their lives after Sept. 11, and others seemed to see terrorists everywhere. Was that what gave you the idea for the ghost world and life after the event?

 

September 11 was definitely on my mind when I wrote the book. I was away from home and in D.C. At the time of the attacks, and I spent the greater part of the following week or so apart from my family assisting with the cleanup of the Pentagon. I'd never honestly contemplated the idea of never seeing my wife and kids again prior to those days; but that's where my thoughts were running. Two high school classmates of mine died in the fall of the towers, and like everyone else in America, if not the world, I think about what those first days and months afterwards felt like.

And then later--surprisingly not a very long time later--it would strike me that people go on with life. Holocausts happen, genocides, plagues, terrorist attacks--and we go on, somehow manager to avoid dwelling on the horror 24/7. We cope. We find ways to love and laugh again. Civilization wobbles but doesn't crumble. People manage to go on with life even after the most horrific circumstances. I thought about an event, a cataclysm, where there was a loss of life hundred of thousands times more than that of 9/11, and in some ways the prospect of returning to "life as normal" after something like that was more terrifying to me than a descent into a post-apocalyptic mire. I think that is what would happen, no matter the scale of the tragedy.

But of course we never really move on completely from tragedy, do we? The ghosts are always with us. And we don't want them to go away.

And finally, I was very excited to read that Break My Heart has been optioned for a movie and the screenplay has already been written. It is such a strikingly visual book you can picture each scene. As a reader I feel a loyalty to the integrity of the characters and story and worry that a screenwriter might mess around with it. Did you have script approval? Were you happy with the results?

I was ecstatic with the result. I didn't really have approval, but the producer, Paul Brooks, was kind enough to send me the script when it was finished and I made a couple suggestions. Really minor suggestions, because Jason Fuchs did an amazing job on the script that I was thoroughly pleased. The script is very faithful to the characters and the tone of the book, which is very difficult as what makes a book thrilling and exciting is not always the same thing that makes a film thrilling and exciting--especially with a ghost story. There's a few new scenes in the script and they are among my favorites!

Although I love the Hemingway quote about dealing with Hollywood, which goes something like, "stand on the Nevada border, throw the book over the fence to California, have them throw the money back, and run like hell", I don't feel that way at all. I think I would be just as pleased with someone doing a takeoff or riff on one of my works as I would an adaptation that was note perfect.

 

Links to Dan's online media:

www.gendead.com

www.danielwaters.com

www.mysocalledundeath.com

WatersDan on Twitter