The Divining Wand

The dream goal of most authors is being able to describe their book in one sentence — a sentence that piques interest — and Leah Stewart (The Myth of You and Me, Body of a Girl) has been able to do that with her third novel, Husband and Wife,:

A young mother discovers that her husband’s novel about infidelity might be drawn from real life.

And from this, along with a bit more, come glowing reviews:

“Stewart (The Myth of You and Me) creates a crisis of faith where adult reality collides with youthful dreams, “the people we were and the people…we always thought we should be.” The writing is tactile, elemental, even comical, providing readers with a situation that could so easily be their own. Highly recommended.” —Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal *Starred Review*

“An unflinching look at what happens when one’s identity is shattered, and “what-ifs” and past choices come back to haunt the present. . . . . Stewart’s graceful prose and easy storytelling pull the reader into caring about what happens to the struggling heroine while exploring the many gray areas of life and marriage.” —Publisher’s Weekly

The Divining Wand has scheduled a presentation/review of Husband and Wife for Monday, September 13, 2010. In the meantime, though, let’s meet the author through her “official” bio:

The recipient of a 2010 NEA Literature Fellowship, Leah teaches in the University of Cincinnati’s creative writing program, and lives in Cincinnati with her husband and two children.

And now here’s Leah upclose and personal:

Q: How would you describe your life in 8 words?
A: Kids, teaching, music, reading, writing, TV, eating, sleep.

Q: What is your motto or maxim?
A: Everything I think of is stupid, so I don’t want to say it. Maybe that’s my motto: Don’t say stupid things.

Q: How would you describe perfect happiness?
A: Enjoying whatever you’re doing at the moment, with no thoughts of your to-do list.

Q: What’s your greatest fear?
A: Losing one of my kids.

Q: If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you choose to be?
A: Without my kids: the cottage on Kauai where my husband and I honeymooned. With my kids: Disneyworld.

Q: With whom in history do you most identify?
A: I’ve always been partial to women who defied whatever the gender norms of the time were. Women who went to war, suffragettes, Jane Austen and George Eliot, Hilary Clinton. I remember really admiring Abigail Adams, way back in elementary school when I read her biography.

Q: Which living person do you most admire?
A: There are so many writers who fit the bill I don’t think I can pick just one. In music: Neko Case. In TV: Joss Whedon.

Q: What are your most overused words or phrases?
A: In speech: “Does that make sense?” In writing: it.

Q: If you could acquire any talent, what would it be?
A: Singing well. The tragedy of my life is my inability to sing.

Q: What is your greatest achievement?
A: Managing to finish a novel three times.

Q: What’s your greatest flaw?
A: Bossiness.

Q: What’s your best quality?
A: Well, I think I’m a pretty good writer.

Q: What do you regret most?
A: All the time I wasted before I had kids.

Q: If you could be any person or thing, who or what would it be?
A: If I can’t think of an answer, does that mean I’m way too pleased with myself?

Q: What trait is most noticeable about you?
A: I talk a lot.

Q: Who is your favorite fictional hero?
A: Maybe my most noticeable trait is that I don’t like to give just one answer: Elizabeth Bennett, Dorothea Brooke, Meg Murry, Buffy, Starbuck (the second one), Veronica Mars. I could probably go on.

Q: Who is your favorite fictional villain?
A: So many of the books I read don’t have straight-up villains, I’m thinking of TV again. I’ll go with Angel from BTVS, when he turned evil.

Q: If you could meet any athlete, who would it be and what would you say to him or her?
A: Neither my husband nor my mother can understand this, but I have an almost complete lack of interest in sports. I did watch the Olympics. I could meet Evan Lysacek and say, “Hey, good skating.”

Q: What is your biggest pet peeve?
A: Can I list three? Late or sloppy student work, everyone in my family yelling at me at once, use of the word “I” where it should be “me.”

Q: What is your favorite occupation, when you’re not writing?
A: When I’m not making up my own world, I’d just as soon be lost in someone else’s, so reading, watching TV, and going to movies. I’ve also become addicted to a dance class called Rhythm & Motion at the Cincinnati Ballet.

Q: What’s your fantasy profession?
A: Singer!

Q: What 3 personal qualities are most important to you?
A: Humor, intelligence both intellectual and emotional, reliability.

Q: If you could eat only one thing for the rest of your days, what would it be?
A: Chocolate (so predictable!)

Q: What are your 5 favorite songs?
A: At this moment:
“Skinny Love” by Bon Iver
“Swim Until You Can’t See Land” by Frightened Rabbit
“Don’t Forget Me” by Neko Case
“Marry Song” by Band of Horses
“L.E.S. Artistes” by Santogold

Q: What are your 5 favorite books of all time?
A: Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
Middlemarch, by George Eliot
Jesus’ Son, by Denis Johnson
Eva Moves the Furniture, by Margot Livesey
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

To keep up with talented Leah Stewart, please follow her on Twitter and become a friend on Facebook.

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away two copies of Katharine Davis’s A Slender Thread in a random drawing of comments left only on this specific post, Katharine Davis and A Slender Thread. Comments left on other posts during the week will not be eligible. The deadline is tonight at 7:00 p.m. EDT with the winners to be announced here in tomorrow’s post. If you enter, please return tomorrow to see if you’re a winner.

Throughout this past year The Divining Wand has presented and, perhaps, introduced you to new favorite authors. Yet, after reading and enjoying their novels, how many wonder what’s the next book and when?

Here’s a sneak peek into the future from several TDW authors:

~Therese Fowler (Souvenir, Reunion):

“EXPOSURE, set for a late-April release, preceded by REUNION in trade paperback, probably mid-March. There is an EXPOSURE excerpt posted on my website. Cover art for both titles is in the works but not finalized yet…”

~ Beth Hoffman (Saving CeeCee Honeycutt releasing in Trade Paperback October 26, 2010):

“I’m working on a new novel titled Looking For Me.”

~ CJ Lyons (Lifelines, Warning Signs, Urgent Care):

“I have two books coming up in the near future:
CRITICAL CONDITION is the finale of my Angels of Mercy series from Berkley/Jove and will be out 11/30/10. Here’s the skinny:”

This New Year’s resolution? Stay alive….
“Harrowing…irresistible.”—New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs on Lifelines

Critics praised the national bestseller Lifelines as “breathtakingly fast-paced” (Publishers Weekly), Warning Signs as “exhilarating” (Genre Go Round), and Urgent Care as “riveting” (Pittsburgh Magazine). Now CJ Lyons returns to an ER under attack as the lives of four very special women hang in the balance…
With Pittsburgh snarled by a New Year’s Eve blizzard and Angels of Mercy Hospital cut off from the outside world, staff and patients are at the mercy of armed gunmen. Their target is Dr. Gina Freeman, who is holding vigil over her wounded fiancé, Detective Jerry Boyle.

With patients, staff, and loved ones held as hostages, the power out, and cold-blooded killers in control, no one may live to see the New Year…

“And coming March 1, 2011 from Vanguard/Perseus is ROCK BOTTOM co-authored with Erin Brockovich (yes, THE Erin Brockovich, how cool is that!!!)”

Ten years ago, Angela Joy Palladino left home as a pregnant seventeen year old in trouble. Now, after winning and losing a career as an environmental activist, dubbed by the media as “The People’s Champion,” she hopes to start over by taking a new job with a lawyer who is fighting to stop a mining company’s mountain top removal in an effort to save the only place she’s ever called home.

Hitting rock bottom, Angela must face the betrayal of those once closest to her and confront the harrowing past she thought she had left behind. The question remains, will she be able to outwit the killer and save the town she once cherished, all the while keeping her family, her sanity, and her new life in one piece?

~Randy Susan Meyers (The Murderer’s Daughters):

“The paperback edition for THE MURDERER’S DAUGHTERS will be coming out in February 2011. In the meantime, I just finished my next book, a story of infidelity and how it spills far wider in it’s damage then we ever imagine.”

~Sarah Pekkanen (The Opposite of Me, and Skipping a Beat coming February 22, 2010):

“SKIPPING A BEAT will be published by Atria Books/Washington Square Press on Feb. 22, 2011. Skipping a Beat is similar in tone and genre to my debut novel, The Opposite of Me, but the story is totally new. It’s about a woman named Julia Dunhill who discovers that her husband has turned into a completely different man after a sudden, shocking medical trauma – and now he wants to rewrite all of the rules of their marriage. Julia, who sees pieces of her life in scenes from the world’s great operas, has three weeks to decide if she should stay with Michael or leave him.”

~Leah Stewart (Husband and Wife, The Myth of You and Me, Body of a Girl):

“I’m working on a book about adult siblings. It started out being about location and identity (I was going to call it ELSEWHERE) but it’s gotten further and further away from that theme to become about all the complex emotions of siblinghood. Which, alas, probably means I have to think of a new title.”

~Therese Walsh (The Last Will of Moira Leahy chosen as a TARGET Breakout Book):

“What’s coming up, what’s happening: I’m currently writing my second book
in a two-book deal with Random House. I don’t want to say much about it yet,
but I can tell you that it’s about a legally blind woman trekking across 
West Virginia to find the end of her dead mother’s story. It’s been a
challenging book, in part because of the legendary scary factor associated
with writing the Second Book, but also because one of the leads is a
sense-deprived character. But I’m happy to report it’s coming along nicely.
I may have an entirely different report tomorrow!”

Announcement: The winners of Kristina Riggle’s The Life You’ve Imagined are Amy Goodrow and Janel. Congratulations!

Please email diviningwand (at) gmail (dot) com with your mailing address and your book will be sent out promptly.

Thank you ALL for entering the contest and your overwhelming support!

Knowing that memorable characters linger in readers’ minds well beyond the last page of a novel, The Divining Wand wondered about the authors’ experience in letting them go. After creating and living through them for months, years….the question was asked: How do you say “goodbye?”

Here are several responses:

~Katie Alender (Bad Girls Don’t Die YA):

“I don’t think I do say good-bye to characters. Because they’re mine, I get to carry them around in my head and watch them live out their lives. It’s very different from being a reader and finishing a book and feeling that sense of loss–I feel that a lot when I finish my favorite books. Thankfully, as a writer, I am the Supreme Authority over my characters, where they go, what they do, and all that. I’m pleased to report that they all lived happily ever after!”

~Robin Antalek (The Summer We Fell Apart):

“I haven’t yet said goodbye to the characters in THE SUMMER WE FELL APART—book groups – (I just visited my 53rd) have kept these characters alive for me much longer than I ever dreamed. Even though in my writing world I have moved on to another set of characters – readers have allowed me to keep tabs on the Haas siblings – and I love that.”

~Julie Buxbaum (After You, The Opposite of Love):

“I don’t. When I finish a book, I always keep open the possibility that I’ll get to revisit with them at some point. Since I really and truly love all my characters–I feel like they are my friends–and at the same time, also spend somewhere around three hundred pages torturing them in the name of that annoying thing called “‘plot’”, I sometimes feel like it’s merciful when I leave them alone for a while.”

~ Beth Hoffman (Saving CeeCee Honeycutt releasing in Trade Paperback October 26, 2010):

“I can’t say goodbye, I still think of them and will most likely bring them back in future works in cameo appearances.”

~Kristy Kiernan (Between Friends, Matters of Faith, and Catching Genius):

“You mean if I don’t kill them? I let them go gently. I try to give them new emotional tools–empathy, or fortitude, or simply hope–and then place them gently into their new surroundings…without me.”

~Leah Stewart (Husband and Wife, The Myth of You and Me, Body of a Girl):

“I think of the last lines of my books as their goodbye, and my goodbye to them. If I can get the last line right I feel I’ve given them a fitting send-off.”

Announcement: The winners of Julie Buxbaum’s “signed” copies of After You are Jenny and Colleen Turner. Congratulations!

Please email diviningwand (at) gmail (dot) com with your mailing address and Julie will send out your book as soon as possible.

Welcome to The Divining Wand’s last post of July and, while not dismissing summertime in August, there is a feeling of fall around here! That’s correct, fresh and new ideas have either recently launched or will soon, beginning with the multi-talented Katie Alender (Bad Girls Don’t Die YA).

On Tuesday, July 27, 2010, Katie and fellow YA writers took “getting to know authors beyond their pages” to a vlog level. Here’s a portion of the Press Release for AuthorMix:

“AUTHORMIX” WEB VIDEO SERIES TAKES THE TEEN READER-AUTHOR CONNECTION TO A NEW LEVEL
A new web-based video series aims to give teen readers a “fly on the wall” look at their favorite authors.

Los Angeles, CA — July 27, 2010 — In an effort to reach out to their web-savvy readers, many authors now turn to video, releasing video blogs (“vlogs”), book trailers, and even virtual book tours (as recently mentioned in the New York Times: A new web video series takes this one step further by bringing together a group of authors in a roundtable format, letting readers eavesdrop on conversations about life, love, high school, writing, and publication. AUTHORMIX is like listening in on the green room at a book festival–personal, honest, and unrehearsed.

“The whole thing started because I would read blogs or tweets about authors who got together for one reason or another,” says creator/host, author Katie Alender. “And what I really wanted to know was–what do they talk about when they’re just hanging out?”

In an effort to find out, she came up with the idea for an off-the-cuff style video series that would give authors a chance to chat in a relaxed environment.

Participating authors are Melissa de la Cruz (New York Times best-selling author of The Au Pairs and Blue Bloods series of novels for young adults); Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl (New York Times best-selling authors of Beautiful Creatures, also one of Amazon.com’s Ten Best Books of 2009); Cecil Castellucci (author of Beige, Boyproof, Queen of Cool, and The Plain Janes series for DC Comics); and Katie Alender (author of the Bad Girls Don’t Die series).

[For more information, please visit the site and follow AuthorMix on Twitter. Congratulations, Katie!]

As for this site’s news, regular visitors may have noticed that TDW recently has featured three “new” authors:

~ Claire Cook (Seven Year Switch, Must Love Dogs, Life’s A Beach, and the rest in Bibliography)

~ Keetha DePriest Mosley [formerly Reed] (Culinary Kudzu: Recollections & Recipes from Growing Up Southern, More Culinary Kudzu: Recollections & Recipes from Growing Up Southern)

~ Julie Buxbaum (After You, The Opposite of Love)

And, now, I proudly announce the following authors have also joined our community and will be appearing on these pages soon:

~ Kate Ledger (Remedies)

~ TanyaEgan Gibson (How to Buy a Love of Reading)

~ Leah Stewart (Husband and Wife, The Myth of You and Me, Body of a Girl)

~ Beth Hoffman (Saving CeeCee Honeycutt releasing in Trade Paperback October 26, 2010)

~ Katharine Davis (A Slender Thread, East Hope, Capturing Paris)

Also expect more guest author posts and (hopefully) a weekly Q&A with readers asking questions of the featured author. Indeed fall is in the air….

Announcement: The winner of Claire Cook’s Seven Year Switch is Amy Chase. Congratulations.

Please email diviningwand (at) gmail (dot) com with your mailing address and your book will be sent out promptly.