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Q&A (and Giveaway!) with Randy Susan Meyers

What did you do when your life unraveled?
~ from The Comfort of Lies

Meyers-The-Comfort-1E147B0Great fiction will mirror our world and make us wonder if parts of a story are real. We will keep turning the page, or we may put the book down, unable to resist the connection.

Some reviewers of Randy Susan Meyer’s new novel, The Comfort of Lies, have given the book fewer than five stars, saying they didn’t like the characters. It’s true that the three women brought together in this book (about adoption, marriage, and motherhood) behave in ways that make them unlikeable. Also true is the fact that each of these women, Tia and Juliette and Caroline, are, in one way or another, quite relatable: their thoughts and decisions, fears and obsessions, have brushed the minds of most readers. And, no one likes the ugly truth.

Perhaps that’s what drew me to The Comfort of Lies, as it exposes reasons why a person would lie, times when the truth may be more painful, and repercussions of deception.

The book jacket says it best:

Riveting and arresting, The Comfort of Lies explores the collateral damage of infidelity and the dark, private struggles many of us experience but rarely reveal.

I’m honored to host Randy Susan Meyers; I’m offering a book giveaway as well. Just leave your name in the comments for a chance to win a copy of The Comfort of Lies. Random.org will choose the lucky reader on Tuesday, April 16th.

Now, welcome Randy!

CC: The effects of infidelity, motherhood, and adoption set the lives of three women on a path of painful awarenesses and acceptance, their feelings so understandably natural (and all-too-relatable at times). I wonder, as a reader and a writer, what was the seed for this novel? How did you decide to write on this particular topic?

RandySusanMeyers_headshotRSM: I didn’t give up a baby for adoption nor adopt a child, but with every pregnancy scare I had, I wondered about the choices I might make. Infidelity? I struggled with the issue in ways that allowed The Comfort of Lies to come frighteningly alive in my mind (and hopefully on paper.) I haven’t suffered through all of my characters’ crises but I’ve been close enough to imagine them all far too well.

Writing The Comfort of Lies drew me to dark places and gloomy themes (falling hard for a man who isn’t yours; learning your husband has cheated; an unplanned pregnancy; thinking that you’re not cut out for motherhood; giving up a child for adoption; wrestling with the pull towards work and the demands of motherhood; failing at work.) Blowing up emotional truths into a “what-if” novel forced me to visit past sins of my own, sins that were visited upon me, and sins that had always terrified me as my future possibilities. People disappearing, or not being what or whom one thought—these themes are at the core of my writing and my life. The Comfort of Lies is not an autobiographical novel—but I drew on bad times in my life and exploded those stretches into “could be far worse” and “what if.” I very much examined that thin line teetering between morality and forgiveness.

CC: The majority of this story is told from the perspective of the three women, Tia, Juliette, and Caroline. It isn’t until we near the end that we experience what’s happening from Nathan’s point of view (a pleasant surprise, by the way, I love those chapters). Did the decision to include his POV happen early in the writing process or come about in later drafts?

RSM: The decision to include Nathan’s POV, and to hold it back until the middle of the novel, was a decision made about halfway through my first draft. I very much wanted to know his belief system, to find out what story he told himself to allow his actions before and after his infidelity. Everyone is the star of their own show, and I wanted to know his ‘show.’ On the other hand, I didn’t want him to be a ‘star’ of the book, but a supporting player to the women—thus was made my decision to bring him in later in the book, and only for a limited appearance.

CC: In your blog post, “The Reader-Writer Covenant,” on your blog, you talk about giving the reader the kind of story you, yourself, want to read. Often, that means digging deep into a character’s psyche, writing stories “gritty enough to have emotional truth.” THE COMFORT OF LIES is full of difficult truths about relationships. And, it’s inevitable: stories we read (and write) affect us in visceral ways. As a writer, how do you walk away from difficult moments you’ve just transferred onto the page?

RSM: I have worked hard on formulating a ‘disconnect.’ Wanting to both write dense emotional novels, and also have a calm life, means I use the following ‘life rules:”

  1. Follow the advice of Gustave Flaubert: “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
  2. I write about things that contain intense emotional resonance, but only when those events and triggers are deep in the past. I will not write about topics which are freshly wounds, or from which I have not recovered enough to have a cold grasp on it. For instance, I was able to write about sisters who witnessed their father murder their mother, using my family history of my father attempting to kill my mother as a trigger for my fiction—but only because it was so far in my past that I could explore the ‘what it’ (what if he’d succeeded, which he didn’t) without either falling apart or spilling my own story onto the novel. The same goes for my explorations of infidelity. Any experience I had which informed The Comfort of Lies was from long, long ago.
  3. I shake it off. When I feel myself flooded by emotion, I force myself to stand up, and then I remind myself that was ‘one the page’ and will stay ‘on the page.’ I have an ability to be quite divisive—using emotional horror and then leaving it on the page. I get up and make supper. Plus, no drinking or any other behavior that would allow me to get sloppy on myself or on the page is ever allowed.

CC: What are you reading these days?

RSM: I just finished Three Graves Full by Jamie Mason (a debut literary thriller, which I loved,) You Are The Love of My Life by Susan Richards Shreve (I was on a panel with her and bought the book and found it entrancing,) and am now immersed in May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes (I love everything she’s ever written.)

CC: The process of writing, publication, and release of a novel all present several challenges (one of which you embraced so well with the release of The Comfort of Lies). Is there one word or phrase that keeps you moving forward on days when frustrations threaten to squelch a writer’s inspiration and determination?

RSM: My mantra: This too shall pass.

The drama of Randy Susan Meyers’ novels is informed by her years spent bartending, her work with violent offenders, and too many years being enamored by bad boys. Raised in Brooklyn New York, Randy now lives in Boston with her husband and is the mother of two grown daughters. She teaches writing seminars at Boston’s Grub Street Writers’ Center.

Read more about Randy Susan Meyers’ acclaimed debut novel, The Murderer’s Daughters, and her newly released novel, The Comfort of Lies on her website. Then, follow her on Twitter or like her author page on Facebook.

And, don’t forget to leave a quick comment for a chance to win a copy of The Comfort of Lies.

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Q&A with Sarah McCoy, author of The Baker’s Daughter

“She’d learned that the past was a blurry mosaic of right and wrong. You had to recognize your part in each…and remember. If you tried to forget, to run from the fears, the regrets and transgressions, they’d eventually hunt you down and consume your life….” ~ from THE BAKERS DAUGHTER


They say history repeats itself. More often, though, history seems mirrored in present events. Details and scenery have changed, but we, as humans, still grapple with the same convictions, the same truths.

In Sarah McCoy’s novel, THE BAKER’S DAUGHTER, the past and the present come together in El Paso, Texas in the lives of Reba Adams, a journalist, and Elsie Schmidt, a woman who came of age in Germany during World War II. When Reba sets out to write a simple story about Elsie and her German bakery, she realizes that this story will not come easy. She returns to the bakery again and again. The histories of both women unfold and reveal that, no matter the time or place, nothing in life is black and white. In every decision we make, we risk consequences, and sometimes we face tragedies. Reba and Elsie find courage, compassion, and love.

THE BAKER’S DAUGHTER is an international bestseller and is currently in the semifinals for the Goodreads Choice Awards Best Historical Fiction. If you’ve read the book and love it like I did, you can help vote THE BAKER’S DAUGHTER into the finals by clicking here.

I’m honored to host Sarah McCoy today, where she talks her novel, how she discovered the story, and the effect that writers have on readers (and vice versa). Leave your name in the comments for a chance to win a copy of THE BAKER’S DAUGHTER. The winner will be chosen on Tuesday, November 20th.

And now, welcome Sarah McCoy!

CC: In your story, memories of the holocaust and current issues facing US Border Protection come together at the counter of a small German bakery in El Paso, Texas. The two stories – of Reba and Riki, of Elsie and Josef – blend so well. What inspired your idea for the novel?

SM: I spent a portion of my childhood in Germany where my dad, a career military officer, was stationed. My husband also grew up in Germany, speaks fluent German, and worked at a restaurant that shows up in the novel–the Von Stueben– during his college holiday. So we both have ties to the German culture. Fast forward a decade, we moved to El Paso. The local magazine asked me to write a feature article on the German community. The Luftwaffe has trained fliers in the United States since 1958. In 1992, they consolidated their troops at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, just up the road from El Paso. For the feature, I shadowed a local baker and his team at Marina’s German Bakery. Michael, the owner, graciously allowed me to interview him, his staff and customers, poke around the kitchen and come home smelling of gingerbread and cardamon. It fed my creativity, one could argue.

Not long after that article ran, I went to an El Paso farmer’s market and met an 80-year-old German woman selling her own homemade bread. I was completely smitten by her, and all that I imagined she might have experienced in her life. While picking out my brötchen, I asked how she came to be in El Paso. “I married an American soldier after the war,” she told me. Voila! Elsie, my 1945 protagonist, was born. My memories of living and traveling in Germany served as my imaginative landscape and fueled my hunger to research the country and its people during those last awful months of the World War. Teaching at the University of Texas at El Paso during that time, many of my students wrote about their fear and anxiety regarding the deportation of family and friends. I imagined many in Germany (Aryan, Jewish, etc.) felt similarly. Thus the stories wove themselves together. I didn’t start off thinking, “Oh, yes, of course, I’ll pair Germany and El Paso.”

In my books, I lean toward taking two seemingly unrelated settings, time periods and people, and weaving a grand tapestry that connects them. The only separation is time and space, like the ends of a table runner. In my reading, I find those kinds of stories the most fascinating. I try to write what I would be beating down the bookstore door to read.

CC: Several characters in The Baker’s Daughter face moral decisions, to follow the rules or follow the heart, and we read of the consequences in doing both. I was especially struck by the harsh reality of the women in the Lebensborn Program (I had never heard of such a program!), as told through the letters from Elsie’s sister, Hazel: following the rules did not guarantee anyone immunity from the pains of the war. How did you go about researching subjects like this for the novel?

SM: Again, I hate to play the “inspiration” card, but I didn’t set out to write about the Lebensborn Program. I didn’t go “researching” it. It came to me as I was gathering my landscape: the German community in 1945 Garmisch. My storytelling always begins with characters–usually having a discussion in a scene– and I can’t get their voices out of my head. This was how Elsie, Jane, Reba and Riki developed. From there, I fill in the setting of their world. One of the things I love about writing historical-contemporary hybrid fiction is that because I live in modernity, I can see and speak of things ancient people couldn’t. I have the benefit of hindsight. I’m able to pluck certain bizarre facts from the history books and ask, “What is that? Tell me more.” And then Google around for weeks until I’ve found as much information as technology has to offer on that subject. It’s a remarkable age we live in! Archives and historical data across the globe can be found if you are willing to put in the Internet surfing hours.

So when I saw a snippet about the Lebensborn Program, I stopped. I knew it had to be a part of the book. That, too, is one of my ardent goals as a writer: not just to tell a whimsical story that entertains my readers, but to educate, inform, and take them on an archeological journey that exposes some aspect of our shared human past. It goes back to that table runner analogy. Yes, we might be at the end where the tapestry is bright and new, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t a product of the thread at the sun-worn other. One day, vivid patterns will be looking down the table at us.

CC: A few months ago, you traveled to Holland for an international book tour, and, recently, you returned from the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville. How is touring and meeting readers overseas different from a book tour in the US?

SM: It isn’t that different at all. People are people no matter where you go. Yes, their names might be different but their smiles, embraces, and enthusiasm for my work is the same. I adore my Holland readers just as much as those in Nashville, New York, and San Francisco.

I feel incredibly blessed that the book has remained on the Dutch Bestsellers List since it launched in spring 2012. That blows my mind! Equally so, I was humbled to tears at an El Paso book event when a 91-year-old woman told me that THE BAKER’S DAUGHTER taught her more about the German people in WWII than she’d ever known–and she lived through the war years. Similarly, I met a Jewish woman of the same age in Holland who cried and kissed my cheeks. While I couldn’t understand the words she spoke, the emotion was so significant that I was left physically trembling. Again, I believe in the connection of our human spirits, past to present. I’ll cherish those moments for the rest of my life. It’s what fuels my writing: giving voice to the voiceless and forgotten or unknown stories.

CC: What are you reading these days?

SM: I’ve actually just returned from California, final leg of book tour for THE BAKER’S DAUGHTER. I have a contract deadline for my 3rd novel due to my publisher (Crown/RH) this summer. So I’m currently reading nonfiction books related to my 3rd book’s historical and contemporary settings. While on tour this summer and fall, I scheduled some vital research stops on both the East and West Coasts. Now home, I’m digging into those notes and the documents I obtained from the historians at each of those stops. It’s quite a bit of research reading, as you can imagine.

This being the case, I’m not reading any fiction. However, I have a stack of books from my fellow featured authors at the Booktopia Santa Cruz event: Tayari Jones’ SILVER SPARROW, Matthew Dick’s MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND, Ann Packer’s SWIM BACK TO ME, Tupelo Hassman’s GIRLCHILD, and so many more! I’ll no doubt pick up one of those when I have a break in my creative flow. Or an audiobook! I wasn’t much of an audiobook listener but being at Booktopia with narrators Simon Vance and Grover Gardner has turned me on to the idea. Their voices were just so… lovely. Simon’s narration of Hilary Mantel’s BRING UP THE BODIES is on my list. Oh dear, so many choices. I’m sure readers feel this same way!

CC: What advice can you offer writers on the rise?

SM: One of the best nuggets of wisdom I ever received came from my mom when I was seven-years-old and had been admitted to my school’s GT (Gifted & Talented) program. She told me, “You’re not ‘gifted’, honey, you’re just a high-achiever.”

As an adult I questioned why she said that. It sounds so harsh! She explained that she never wanted me to assume that opportunity and success was owed to me by virtue of talent. It’s like Albert Einstein said, “Genius is 1% talent and 99% hard work.” Such solid truth. I’m grateful my mom championed humility, drive, and perseverance rather than simply stroking my ego. I pass on that advice because it’s proactive. It puts the ball back in your court and encourages you to get ready to swing hard.

SARAH McCOY is also the author of the novel, THE TIME IT SNOWED IN PUERTO RICO. She has taught English writing at Old Dominion University and at the University of Texas at El Paso. The daughter of an Army officer, her family was stationed in Germany during her childhood. She calls Virginia home but presently lives with her husband and dog, Gilbert, in El Paso, Texas. For more about Sarah and her books, visit her website, follow her on Twitter, or subscribe to her Facebook page.

Remember: leave your name in the comments for a chance to win a copy of THE BAKER’S DAUGHTER. Random.org will choose the winner on Tuesday, November 20th.

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Q&A with Lydia Netzer, author of Shine Shine Shine

“This is the story of an astronaut who was lost in space, and the wife he left behind. . . . This is the story of the human race, who pushed one crazy little splinter of metal and a few pulsing cells up into the vast dark reaches of the universe, in the hope that the splinter would hit something and stick, and that the little pulsing cells could somehow survive.” ~ from Shine Shine Shine

Sometimes, it is in moments of distress that everything becomes clear. We see the truth in ourselves and in those around us. We risk showing that truth to others, and we find strange peace.

In Lydia Netzer’s debut novel, Shine Shine Shine, Maxon Mann is a scientist with Asberger’s, sitting on a rocket en route to the moon. His wife, Sunny, is a woman with alopecia, who hides herself behind several different wigs. When a meteor strikes Maxon’s rocket and threatens to send him and his fellow astronauts careening through space, Maxon and Sunny both search their pasts for bits and pieces that will save them. Maxon uncovers the core of his humanity; Sunny discovers that leaving her wigs behind relieves her of more than the physical weight of her long, blonde, fake hair. Throughout the novel, it is the simplicity of love between complicated individuals that yields the most power in the story. Here’s what Liesl Schillinger says about Shine Shine Shine:

[Netzer] slowly assembles a multitude of pinpoint insights that converge to form a glimmering constellation: the singularity of the miraculous machinery of the human organism.

I’m honored to host Lydia Netzer today, and thrilled to be giving away a copy of her novel. Leave your name in the comments (it’s that easy) to enter the giveaway. Random.org will choose the winner on Tuesday, October 16th, at noon.

And now, welcome Lydia!

CC: One scene in your novel that I particularly love is when Maxon realizes, moments before he proposes to Sunny, how deeply he has grown to know her and love her: “her movements, yes, and her physical shape. He recognized the tone of her voice and he noted persistent mannerisms and favorite vocabulary. . . . But what he realized, looking at her there splashing in the water, making a star with her body and then contracting down to do a somersault, was that he really recognized her, down inside. He knew that, if the planet was spun like a top, and stopped suddenly, and he was asked to point her out, that he could do it.” To drop in a quote here may not give the scene justice, but I couldn’t resist. I read that part several times over. Are you partial to a specific scene or chapter, one that stuck with you long after you finished the book?

LN: The scene that I feel the most happy about and also sad about is probably the scene where Sunny and Maxon are showing their signs to each other, when Maxon is in space and Sunny is watching him on a monitor at NASA. I wanted to give them a way to communicate that made sense to both of them, and would bring them closure, and resolve their discord. Probably if I tried to describe the scene to someone who hadn’t read the book, and said “They were looking at each other in web cams, and then they wrote notes to each other, and stuck them on their bodies,” it would sound a little bizarre… and like something that couldn’t be that emotional. It’s my hope that in opening them up throughout the book in different ways, I have brought you to a point, by the time that scene comes in, that you can understand what they’re saying to each other from the inside of their relationship.

The worst scene to write was when she takes her mother off life support.

The easiest to write was the scene at the neighborhood craft party, when Les Weathers makes an appearance.

CC: I do love that scene with the signs, and I think it’s perfect the way it unfolds.

Throughout the story, Maxon writes algorithms or explanations in computer speak that help him translate how he should interact with others and what he should say in certain circumstances. All those IF THEN statements and ending tags and brackets, I love it! We could all use such scripted lessons at times, and so much of Maxon’s character is revealed in this way. What inspired this idea, to give the reader that kind of visual insight in the workings of Maxon’s mind?

LN: Since I became a parent myself, I’ve become so aware of how many of our interactions are rituals — learned responses to a very small set of situations that occur in daily life. How are you? I am fine. How was your weekend? It was great. We might as *well* be robots, wheeling around, bumping into each other and powering up the appropriate green light so it can flash an answering sequence to the other robots’ green lights.

Teaching a child manners, learning the ins and outs of a new job, surviving a first date, going to church, working out, we respond to input with well-defined outputs, and in training a human to cope with these situations, you find it’s not that much different from programming a robot. The amount of time we spend actually generating some heartfelt interaction with new ways of saying things that we’re inventing on the spot? Probably close to zero percent, given the span of our lives.

It’s very hard for an autistic person to interpret intentions, to understand inflections. And it’s hard for autistic people to mimic nuanced language, and facial expressions. However, it’s possible for a high functioning autistic person, or someone with Asperger’s Syndrome or Hyperlexia, to learn enough “cheat codes” that they can pass in most situations. It’s not always necessary to understand someone, if you appear to understand them. It’s not always necessary to love someone, if you can appear to love them. Thinking about these questions really led me to evaluate how children are socialized, how adults behave, and what is the real difference between a human brain and sophisticated AI?

CC: In this Q&A on Kristin Bair O’Keeffe’s blog, Writerhead, you say, “When I pack for a writing retreat, I need certain smells: Crabtree & Evelyn ‘West Indian Lime,’ Viktor & Rolf ‘Flowerbomb,’ Thierry Mugler ‘Angel.’ Also Vick’s Vapor Rub, grapefruit shampoo, and rosemary. When I was writing Shine, Shine, Shine, the smell of…bergamot helped me think about Sunny and Maxon’s burgeoning love affair.” Do scents still play a part in your writing ritual?

LN: Absolutely. I’m currently writing a story in which one of the mother characters uses lavender scent to mask the smell of alcohol, so that her whole house and everything connected to her is constantly reeking of lavender. Her daughter, in contrast, is lemons.

CC: What are you reading these days?

LN: Right now I’m reading Gods without Men by Hari Kunzru, Zombie by J.R. Angelella, Gilgamesh the King by Robert Silverberg. I’m reading Flatscreen by Adam Wilson and Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman to prepare for our panel at Nashville’s Southern Festival of the Book. And I’m reading a couple more things: Patriots by David Frum and Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen by Susan Gregg Gilmore. I like to have as many books going at once as I can. I’m too hungry a reader to only have one thing on my plate.

CC: What advice can you offer writers on the rise?

LN: Never give up and never quit. Find the story that’s most important in the world for you to tell, and then grab onto it and don’t give up on it ever. When it seems like telling it has gotten too hard, know that you’re doing it right. It’s worth it.

Don’t push your difficult material away by putting your best scenes in summary, in flashbacks, in distant characters’ lives, or locked inside the brains of dead people or children. Don’t smooth over ugliness, don’t skirt around violence or close the curtains on sex. Your difficult material is your best material. Stuff that’s easy to read and write doesn’t matter much. Tear off as many layers as you can between your reader and what really matters, give them all the information you can give them as honestly as you can give it to them, and as soon.

Push every button on the control panel. Don’t hold back. If there’s a way to do it harder, do it. If there’s a choice that’s going to push it farther, make it. This means uncomfortable, personal, honest introspection and a willingness to reach into your own brain, or heart, or soul if you have one, and pull out your secrets.

~

I’m Lydia Netzer, and my first novel, Shine Shine Shine, is a People Magazine “People Pick,” an IndieBound Next Pick, the Amazon Spotlight Book for July, and is available now! I’m a nerd, a mom, an electric guitar player, and I want to make you lunch.

~

For more on Lydia Netzer or her book, watch the book trailer, check out her website here, follow her on Twitter, or subscribe to her page on Facebook.

Don’t forget to leave your name in the comments for a chance to win a copy of Shine Shine Shine.