A Gaggle of Book Reviews

Lauren Allison and Lisa Perry are the authors of the hysterical The Woman Who Is Always Tan And Has a Flat Stomach: And Other Annoying People, and they agreed to do an email interview, following up our review. Readers will also want to check out this video of the authors. PS – Today’s your last day to leave a comment and try to win a copy of the book!

1. This book is so unique, what prompted you to write it?

   Along with everyone else we know, we got sick and tired of those obnoxious holiday letters from those perfect people (The Couple Who Write The Holiday Letter Telling You How Their Little Timmy Just Discovered An Alternative to Fossil Fuels) and several years ago, Lisa sent out her response letter (see the same chapter). People were forced to read about her mundane life about deciding whether or not to buy mint-flavored floss, or how she figured out how many frequent flier miles she had and came to the conclusion she had enough for a coupon for a free drink (provided she paid full coach fare). The revenge was sweet. Realizing how enjoyable it was to send out inane letters at Christmas, the next year Lisa sent out “Why Polygamy Should Be Embraced During the Christmas Holidays” (see the chapter on The Woman Who Has Her Christmas Cards, Shopping and Decorating Done Before Thanksgiving). Lots of people including Lauren kept telling Lisa she should write a book, and Lisa said that would take too much energy, so she asked Lauren to help her, and although she didn’t want to expend much too energy either, she agreed.

2. I know you self-published the book at first – what led you down that road? And what brought you to Grand Central Publishing?
   

   At first we were really just doing the whole thing for fun. Someone suggested we attend the Colorado Independent Publishers Association, and before long, we had a self-published book, and to our surprise, had even won a couple of awards. Then a fabulous, dashing literary agent saw our book on Amazon, ordered it, watched his wife laugh over the book until she was sick, and then contacted us. Together we shopped around for the best possible editor and best possible publishing company for our book, and found Emily Griffin, who has been just wonderful, with Grand Central Publishing. We couldn’t be happier with how it worked out.

3. You take real insecurities and the quirks of real people and exaggerate them a bit, okay a lot. How did you decide how far to take it? Did you need to scrap some potential chapters for crossing the line into ridicule?
   

   We personally thought that perhaps the conversation between Jesus and his wife might be somewhat tasteless, but no one with any decorum (namely our editor) had any qualms about it. And to be frank, we don’t worry our pretty little head much with any of it. Although one aspect was important to us, in that we didn’t want to write a book with much profanity, and that our kids could pick up and read without us having to leap from the sofa and cover their eyes (because if the truth was told, we’d rather not have to get up off the sofa unless absolutely necessary).

4. In the acknowledgments you thank your perfect friends, how have they reacted to the book?
   

   Our friends brag about being the perfect people in the book, such as Lisa’s friend who is the perfect birthday mom or another friend who is the perfect scrapbooking mom. They tell everyone they are in the book.

5. Did you end up caricaturing many of your own quirks?
   

   Sadly, the book is tragically autobiographical. Lauren actually had her bumper fall off at the car wash, and her thigh high stocking fall down during a social event. Lisa tried the spray-on tan which didn’t even bring her skin tones up to the level of a cadaver.

6. In addition to laughing, I felt validated by your book – I’m an imperfect parent and that’s OK, there are others out there like me! Is there a theme to the responses to “The Woman Who is Always Tan”?
   

   Our motto is: Never be overly competent at anything. The reason is that then you get stuck having to bring the homemade treats that everyone loves to the classroom parties which seem to be held every other day. There is a theme from readers as far as the husband chapters are concerned, in that everyone seems to be married to the husband who has a cold but believes it’s malaria.

7. I noticed that the chapters only mentioned the names of Lauren’s husband and child. What was the thinking behind that choice?
   

   We used Lauren’s first name and Lisa’s last name, and a fictional name for our child. Since we are both Jackie Kennedy fans, we named our daughter after Caroline.

8. Has writing this book changed your outlook on other parents? Has it changed how other parents react to you?
   

   Nothing has really changed. Imperfect parents flock to us with stories of making fun of perfect parents, and perfect parents flock to us giving us ideas about how a new chapter can be written about them. They all seem satisfied with who they are, and we love that!

   (We, of course, more identify closely with the imperfect parents. We saw a bumper sticker the other day that we believe sums up parenting: “Raising Children is Like Being Pecked to Death by Ducks.” The truth had been finally spoken).

Thank you, Lisa and Lauren, for such a great interview and book!

Melanie Wells was gracious enough to allow me to interview her about her writing and her newly released book, My Soul to Keep. You can read the (spoiler-free!) review here.

1. You and Dylan share some biographical information, including the study of psychology, theology, and teaching. How much of Dylan’s personality mirrors your own?
   

   Dylan has my voice and some of my background, but that’s about it. She’s my soapbox and shares my point of view on people – that they’re flawed and mostly doing the best they can. But I do not share her obsession with Pine Sol. I have many close friends and am a good girlfriend (I hope), whereas she’s a relational disaster zone. I hope I’m not as self-absorbed as she is. If I am, someone should send me to time out.

2. Dylan has some very spiritual/religious experiences, as do the very special children in My Soul to Keep, but the experiences are not tied to one particular religion. What was your rationale behind that choice?
   

   I don’t really know much about religion, to tell you the truth. I wasn’t raised in a church-going environment and have never been part of a denomination. My entire experience with God has been from a non-denominational perspective and from studying the Bible directly. I think there’s a lot out there that we can’t explain. I get emails from all over the world about baffling spiritual events. And they don’t tend to fit into tidy categories. Not much of life does, I’ve noticed.

3. Have you had any personal experiences with spiritual guides? If not, how did you decide to integrate them into the story?
   

   I have the radar, certainly. Some people have it and some don’t. I just discussed this in a blog I share with my best friend, Trish Murphy (www.ifeelawakelouise.blogspot.com). There are times when I feel something evil is lurking about and there are times when I feel a level of protection that can only be supernatural. Many times, I’ve almost done something…. Stepped off a curb, for example… and had a strange sense of doubt that caused me to stop. And then a truck would speed around the corner which would have flattened me if I’d been walking across the street. Things like that. But that’s about as specific as it gets. Interesting story, though. In My Soul to Keep, the character Joe Riley was actually a friend of a friend. The original Joe Riley died of AIDS years ago, and since then, my friend has continued to feel a strong spiritual connection to him and has had experiences similar to the one I just described with the curb and the truck. So I named the angel after him.

4. “My Soul to Keep” focuses on a child’s kidnapping. You clearly did a lot of research about the facts of kidnapping. How did you decide how to write the emotional effects?
   

   That was tough. I have friends on the homicide squad at the Dallas Police Department. Kidnappings, strangely enough, are handled in Robbery. One of my homicide buddies once worked Robbery, so had worked some kidnappings. But they were all drug-related, where the kids were returned within a day or two for drug money. I thought about trying to talk to the parent of a kidnapped child – there have been several high profile stories in the DFW area in recent years. But I just couldn’t bring myself to disrupt their lives. So I opted to keep it soft. I didn’t want the emotional aspect of the story to be too wrenching since the topic is such a sensitive one. That’s why Maria reacts the way she does. She’s a tough girl – especially when you know how Nicholas was conceived. I figured it fit her character to square her shoulders and get down to the business of surviving this terrible thing and finding her son. I’ve gotten some criticism about that, but I’m standing by that decision. I think it was the right way to go.

5. As a parent, I had a very hard time beginning “My Soul to Keep”, though I had an equally difficult time putting it down. Are there different risks in writing a book about a kidnapping than a mystery involving another crime?
   

   Sure – but I think that would apply to any terrible crime, honestly. I have two friends whose mothers were murdered – violently. (There’s an entry about this on the Thelma & Louise blog I mentioned earlier). Neither of them, quite understandably, finds murder entertaining. Especially when the violence is shown. I try to keep my books free of gratuitous violence and suffering. You never see it happening – you only hear about it in hindsight. If you’ll notice, you don’t find out what happened to Nicholas until the end. And even then, I just couldn’t bring myself to write about any of the horrible things that do happen to children out there. It’s a terrible world, really, when you think about these things. I don’t know how God stands it.

6. It took me quite a bit of the book to get a handle on Peter Terry, whom other readers would remember from your earlier books. How would you describe him to a new reader?
   

   Peter Terry is a metaphor, really. As a character in the books, he’s a demonic, other-worldly figure. But he’s not like the Frank Peretti demons or any of the stereotypical things you read about. He’s more insidious than that. He’s more of a mental and spiritual stalker. Not unlike the people and events and obstacles we all have in our lives. There’s a great book called “The Gift of Fear” which every woman should read. The idea is that fear is good. It’s a signal you should listen to. When you feel it, something is wrong. Listen to yourself and do what you need to do. Run, scream, fight – whatever. This is one of the messages of my books. Listen to your fear and never go down without a fight.

   [ed. note - I completely agree - if you haven't read The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker, go buy it. Now.]

7. Dylan, Liz, and Maria are very strong women who pull together support each other while their male companions are unavailable in different ways. Is the theme of women’s support for each other also in your other books? Have you found a similar support group?
   

   Dylan is pretty isolated in the earlier books. She really has no social life. In fact, at the end of The Soul Hunter, which is the second book in the series, she sort of “targets” Maria to be the first recruit in her campaign to have a social life. But the theme is important to me. I have a group of close girlfriends who are indispensable to me. We meet Wednesday nights – we’ve been doing this for almost 20 years, in one form or another – and share our lives. We named ourselves the Waah Waah Sisterhood, because we’ve had so much to cry about in that span of time. Also, I could not live without my closest friend, Trish Murphy. She’s a writer also, so she gets that whole thing, but we are just necessary for one another in life. We buddy-breathe through the entire thing.

8. Dylan has some OCD-type behaviors, about which she is very honest and amusing. How did you create such a realistic portrayal without going too far?
   

   That’s so fun to write about. There’s a scene in The Soul Hunter where Dylan cleans her water heater. Think about that. What a nut-job she can be! I think the key to the OCD thing is to make it funny and quirky. If she were agoraphobic, for example, or washed her hands or checked locks obsessively, that wouldn’t be funny. But she’s obsessed with order and germs in a messy, disorderly world. That’s what we call a fat pitch – fun to swing at and you can hit it out of the park.

9. Authors with books in a series have to walk a line between giving enough information to new readers and alienating their existing fan base with too much back story. How do you decide what to include and exclude?
   

   That was tough. I wanted each book to be a stand-alone read, but when you get to the end, you realize it’s one long story. So as a writer, you have to be careful, obviously, about what you do and don’t give away. You need to set up the characters without over-explaining in the later books. And you have to be careful about giving away the big fat answers – the identity of the murderer in The Soul Hunter, for example, was very hard to keep out of My Soul to Keep. I lost a little sleep over that. And took a lot of Excedrin. I should invest in whatever company makes that stuff. I keep them in business.

Thank you Melanie! Mystery lovers, go pick up a copy of My Soul to Keep, you won’t regret it.

Kim Harrison is the bestselling author of the Rachel Morgan series. Her newest book, The Outlaw Demon Wails will be released soon, and our review recommends picking up a copy! In addition to being a great writer, Kim was very friendly and agreed to this interview.

1. While I think everyone should read all of your books, they are also wonderful as stand-alone novels. It appears to be a difficult balance between giving the reader enough information and cluttering the book with too much information. How do you balance the amount of back story you give?
   

   I prefer writing with as little back story as I can get away with, and in fact, I think sparse back story has become one of my stylistic trademarks. I often find myself hearing in my head, Diana, my editor, telling me, “Just a line or two,” and I will stop the story flow to add what’s needed. I’m a lot more interested in what’s coming next compared to what’s happened in the past, but I’ve found an unexpected challenge in trying to find new ways to drop a line here, a line there, into Rachel’s thoughts that give old information in new ways, or even better, give out old information tied to a character’s emotion or new resolve. The quick drops of information give the new reader what he or she needs to know to follow the story, but the old reader, hopefully, finds something new to think about. And sometimes, I just chuck the back story and hope for the best. The tomato issue, for example, is a big slice of back story, but there have been entire books where I mostly ignore it because it just doesn’t matter to the story itself. It’s all about giving what the reader needs, only when they need it. And when I forget, Diana is always there to bring me back in line.

2. You have changed the way I look at tomatoes! I know that tomatoes are some of the most bio-engineered foods now, was that a reason why you chose the tomato as the catalyst for the Turn? Or was it alluding to Adam and Eve? Or something else entirely?
   

   I love tomatoes, and I usually have a couple varieties growing in with my landscaping bushes. Forget the formal vegetable garden, they grow everywhere! I chose tomatoes as the means for humanities destruction for a couple of reasons. As you guessed, it was indeed a nod to one of the first engineered tomatoes that flopped on the grocery store shelves. But mostly it was a reference to the B-rated movie, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Killer tomatoes. You’ve got to love it.

3. You have created characters with a lot of depth, ones with plenty of shades of grey. How do you manage that depth, and not make Rachel pure and Trent evil?
   

   I thoroughly enjoy writing villains, I like them almost as much as my protagonists, and allowing the bad guys to evolve redeeming features or better yet, setting their “evil” deeds in the middle of a moral dilemma is one of my favorite ideas to explore. I write with the motto “one man’s good is another man’s evil,” and that makes for interesting characters, both good and bad. For a lot of people, evil equals power, and power is attractive. As the books progress, Rachel herself is finding in her the very things that she once considered evil, and watching her come to grips with that has been interesting to say the least. Is there pure evil? Only as much as there is pure good, and I enjoy seeing that come to light in the Hollows.

4. Every author’s paranormal world has different characteristics. Did The Hollows come to you suddenly, or did you build it piece by piece?
   

   The Hollows slowly evolved from that very first bar scene, piece by piece, species by species, and making it all mesh has been a challenge. If you pick the series apart, you can see how I took the first few books to develop the vampires, then turned to the Weres, and now, Rachel seems to be exploring demons. Building the magic of her own species of witch has probably been the slowest process as I bring new elements in as Rachel needs them, and I’m looking forward to finding out what happens now that she is consciously finding out what it means to be a witch.

5. Rachel has had a hard time with her public image in the past few books because she has demon “smut” on her aura. How did you come up with the concept of demons darkening a person’s aura?
   

   Unfortunately I don’t remember where the idea for demon smut came from. If I had to guess, it probably came from my need to explain the magic with as much logic as I can, and since nothing is created or destroyed, the imbalance for changing the laws of nature has to show up as something! A hazy smut on one’s aura just seemed to fit a lot of the mythology out there already, yet be something unique to the Hollows. It sort of took on a life of its own until now it is becoming a major part of the story line.

6. You have written a series that has clues from the first book being uncovered in the sixth, and many mysteries that take a few books to uncover. Did you outline the first 6 books as a series originally? Can you explain a bit of how you conceptualized it?
   

   That is a great question. Though I never did sit down and write a series outline, I did finish that first book with some definite ideas of how I’d like to see the series end. Characters like Ceri popped up unexpectedly, but they melted seamlessly into the overall story arc in my head. The relationship with Ivy was a complete surprise, as was Kisten himself, but the ending to The Outlaw Demon Wails is remarkably close to what I had envisioned. I have a new story arc I’m working on now, pulling on a few new characters and building on a couple of ideas that sparked in both For a Few Demons More and The Outlaw Demon Wails. Hopefully it will be a smooth transition as Rachel shifts her focus.

   Working on a story arc that spanned six books was a challenge, but it came together much like how I write a book. I have an idea of what I’d like to see, and an idea of how I’m going to get there, but no matter how much I plot, scribble, plan, and outline, I always follow a new idea and occasionally scrap everything and rewrite my outline to get to the original end. It’s this mix of plot and free-flow thinking that keeps me interested in the story and my fingers on the keyboard.

7. There are a lot of surprises in The Outlaw Demon Wails and several secrets about Rachel uncovered. You’ve written that this book ends one section of Rachel’s life, and is a beginning to the next. Do you have a similar plan for clues that are uncovered in later books? Do you have a plan for how many more books will be in this series?
   

   I do plan on starting threads throughout the next set of books that will culminate in the final volume, but as to how many books it will take to get there, I don’t know. As before, I know where I want to end up, but the individual story, not the series goal, is where my main focus is when I start working on a rough draft. If I can’t wiggle the next step toward that series goal into the current book, it has to wait for the next book.

8. There are many paranormal novels that double as chick-lit or romance. Do you feel a need to balance the witchy part of Rachel with her dating side? Also have you caught any flack about Ivy’s bisexuality and interest in Rachel?
   

   Do I feel a need to balance the magic with Rachel’s personal life? Rachel’s personal life is so closely tied to her witchy and business life that the two seem to march side by side pretty evenly without author intervention. I have found that Rachel’s personal life tends to blossom in the middle portion of the book when the action seems to slow, serving as a natural balance.

   I hear from readers who are enjoying the relationship between Ivy and Rachel quite often, and the response has been, for the most part, positive. The potential for Ivy and Rachel to become physically close has been in the storyline from the very first book, but it hasn’t been until recently that I have known for sure how this particular thread is going to be tied off. No spoilers here, but I will say that their relationship is evolving into something more stable. Stable doesn’t mean everyone is getting what they want, but Rachel and Ivy are beginning to realize that what you want might destroy what you need. And choices are being made.

   9.Rachel grows up a lot in The Outlaw Demon Wails. She learns about different types of love, and about the effect that her life choices have on others. While that’s an important lesson, do you have a plan for balancing that with her impulsive nature?

   Rachel is growing up fast with certain characters leaving the series, and this goes a long way in curbing her impulsive nature. Readers will see her slowing down, assessing the possible outcomes, and then moving forward. Somehow she’s still getting into trouble, but now it’s not from not thinking. As a writer, I’m enjoying this new side of Rachel, and I hope the reader does, too.

9. So, will Rachel end up with Trent? Or is her future boyfriend going to be someone else? (I know, I know, you can’t answer that) So instead, after reading your “about the author”, my daughter and I ask What is your favorite type of sushi?
   

   Trent? No, not Trent, although a one-night-mistake might be really fun to write. I do have my eye on someone as Rachel’s happy end, but it’s not quite going as I planned, turning into something a little more complex and interesting. I guess we’ll see what happens. I learned early on not to try to script out Rachel’s love life, but just let it happen. Sometimes I feel like Rachel’s mother, presenting her with blind dates and scripting meetings . . . and then Rachel does something Rachel-ly, and it goes downhill.

   Mmmm, sushi. My favorite is something called a sweet potato roll, which sounds really southern when I write it out, but shrimp tempura or a tuna roll are right up there, too. I’m not as good with the chopsticks as Ivy purports to be, but I’m not bad . . .

   Many thanks Kim, for a great interview!

   Readers, be sure to check out our review, and pick up The Outlaw Demon Wails!

   Kim’s publisher, Eos Books is celebrating a decade of publishing sci fi/fantasy. Check out the Eos blog and Eos Books for information, free ebooks, and previews as part of their celebration. Don’t miss the podcast interview with Kim!

What follows is my email interview with author Jana Richman, the author of the wonderful The Last Cowgirl: A Novel, which I reviewed here.

1. The Last Cowgirl reads as if it were a memoir, the narrative combined with flashbacks to childhood is very powerful. Is the story somewhat autobiographical?
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• I recently finished reading The Ruby Kingdom – Passage to Mythrin to my daughters. Here is an update to that review:

Addendum: When we finished the series, the girls thought that Book 2 becoming available in May for BG’s birthday was perfect. They also said that it was the best book I had read to them – even better than Harry Potter! They now want to become shape-shifters when they grow up…

• I worked in conjunction with Felicia Sullivan of Writers Revealed to interview Carol Muske-Dukes. Carol is the author of Channeling Mark Twain: A Novel, which I reviewed here. My interview, conducted via email, is now available.