The Colbert Report recently aired an enjoyably salty two-part interview with famous children's author Maurice Sendak. Mr. Sendak provides quite the soundbite; I bet Stephen Colbert is sorry he's unlikely to become a reoccurring commentator for the show.

Labels: Interviews, Maurice Sendak

Comics Alliance recently posted a great interview with Chris Onstad, creator of our beloved Achewood, which recently revived after a nine-month-long hiatus. One cannot help but notice there are some pointed remarks in the comments section about Onstad failing to deliver the second Achewood cookbook to readers who pre-ordered it, but as we have no way of verifying these complaints we're just going to enjoy the interview itself, which is less fannish and more thoughtful than most.

Labels: Chris Onstad, Interviews

Salon.com has a fascinating interview up with science journalist Jennifer Ackerman, author of Ah-Choo! The Uncommon Life of Your Common Cold. I had no idea I'd find the subject so interesting, but in addition to providing an easy-to-follow explanation of the science behind colds, Ackerman also points out some previously-unconsidered silver linings: you catch fewer colds as you get older, having a cold allows you time for uninterrupted reading (how Wordcandy-friendly!), and there is some very early, controversial science suggesting that having a cold might actually keep the 'flu at bay.

Labels: Interviews, Nonfiction, Silver linings

As longtime readers of the site know, I love reading about frugality. Sadly, Wordcandy hardly ever receives books on this subject, which means I have to either wait patiently for library copies or actually buy the books myself. This is particularly irritating when the cheapskate how-to guide in question is only, say, 190 pages and published as a $30 hardcover.

Anyway, this is why I was so pleased to read Salon.com's interview with Jeff Yeager, whose recent book The Cheapskate Next Door is a solid 256 pages and costs $12.99*. I like to see people practicing what they preach, you know?

*Note: Still too expensive for me to actually buy, but we're getting closer. Try <$5, guys.

Labels: Interviews, Money, Wordcandy on the cheap

NPR has a great interview up with Stephen Fried, author of the recently-published book Appetite for America, a nonfiction account of the life of entrepreneur Fred Harvey. Harvey created the Harvey House chain of lunch rooms, restaurants, souvenir shops, and hotels, all of which served rail passengers heading into the American West. The NPR story includes a link to an excerpt from Fried's book and copies of two Harvey House recipes: "How to Make Coffee" and (much to my delight) something called "BULL FROGS SAUTE PROVENCAL".

Labels: Interviews, Nonfiction

Publishers Weekly recently interviewed Rick Riordan about his upcoming book The Kane Chronicles: The Red Pyramid, the first story in a middle-grade fantasy series about two siblings—the descendants of Egyptian magicians—who battle a group of ancient gods suddenly released into the present.

I'm sorry, but this plot description sounds like Riordan simply fused elements of his Percy Jackson and the Olympians series with bits of The 39 Clues (a series that he both outlined and contributed the first book to) and called it a day. Normally, I'd take issue with the idea of a new series that has so many similarities to his previous ones... but I can't help myself: I like both of his earlier storylines so much that I'm looking forward to this book like Christmas morning.

Note: There's a link in the article that confirms Mr. Riordan is planning a sequel to the Percy Jackson books, for those of you who've been fretting over that.

Labels: Interviews, Rick Riordan

NPR's "All Things Considered" featured an interview and Q-and-A session with Diary of a Wimpy Kid author Jeff Kinney yesterday. Both were fun, but I was even more interested in the interview that followed, with Books4YourKids.com blogger Tanya Turek. Turek was invited on the show to discuss parents' concerns about their children over-identifying with Kinney's lazy, selfish, totally self-absorbed main character, Greg.

Turek is a good interview, and she gives some solid general advice to parents whose children are old enough to make their own choices about reading, but I seriously had no idea that people were worried about this. I mean, does any kid want to act like Greg? He's hideous! Kids laugh at him, not with him. It would be like wanting to emulate Adrian Mole. I'm sorry, but this seems like unnecessary pearl-clutching to me...

Labels: Interviews, Jeff Kinney, other websites

...at least, we expect the friend she mentions in her response to the Deenie question in this otherwise excellent interview thinks so. That's the kind of anecdote that probably should have remained between friends, Ms. Blume.

Labels: Interviews, Judy Blume

NPR is full of Suzanne Collins goodness right now: their site is offering both a sneak peek at chapter two of her just-released novel Catching Fire and a lengthy interview with the author.

Labels: Interviews, Suzanne Collins

Speaking of Salon.com, they just posted another bookgeek-friendly interview, this one with Everything Sucks: Losing My Mind and Finding Myself in a High School Quest for Cool author Hannah Friedman.

Now, Ms. Friedman is a good interview (although I disagree with her about Blair from the TV show Gossip Girl having no depth, but that's an argument I have chosen to spare you), but my world was rocked when she got to the section about writing about eating disorders, and says that she didn't want to mention specific eating-disorder techniques, like "[swallowing] cotton balls to fill up [her] stomach".

Oh. My.

People do that?! That is, like, mind-blowingly gross! Just the idea of it makes my brain shudder.

So, yeah. Solid interview, but now that she's told me about the cotton ball thing I'll never be able to read her book. If she can toss something like that out in idle conversation, who knows what horrors lurk in the pages of her memoir?

Labels: Interviews

DC Comics writer G. Willow Wilson chatted with Seattle-area NPR affiliate KUOW last March, but (luckily for me) they re-aired the interview yesterday, and I have now added Wilson's comic book series Air to my mental "To Be Investigated" list. I'm not sure anything is going to sell me on the idea of a "magical" in-flight experience*, but she's certainly a fun interview.

*As I am six feet tall and have mild OCD, I find airplanes cramped, physically uncomfortable, and disturbingly unhygienic. Even if something magical did happen, I'd probably be too busy wiping down my armrest (singular) with sanitizing wipes to notice.

Labels: Comic news, Interviews

Powell's Books (in Portland, OR) has just posted a great interview with Border Songs/The Highest Tide author Jim Lynch, who lives in my hometown of Olympia, WA.

Pacific Northwest power! *raises fist*

Labels: Interviews, Jim Lynch

China Miéville recently spoke with Doug Brown, one of the staff members from Powell's Books, about his new book The City and the City. Over the course of the interview he used the word "paradigm" eight times, referenced Jan Švankmajer as an inspiration, and said the phrase "academic milieu" in a non-ironic way. Reading it was like a horrific tour of the most pretentious experiences of my entire educational career, and, sadly, he didn't even mention the possibility of a sequel to Un Lun Dun.

He's probably too busy watching Czech art-house films about murdering tree root-babies to write one.

Labels: China Miéville, Interviews

As longtime readers of the site know, we care (maybe more than we should) about cover art. It's all very well to say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover... but, hello, there are a lot of books out there, and how else are you supposed to judge 'em, at least initially? So we were very excited to have a chance to interview Dawn Pope, the Sourcebooks graphic designer responsible for their lovely new Georgette Heyer covers!


Can you tell us a little about your work process—do you start with a pencil and paper, or do you go straight to the mouse?

As far as my process, I am a straight to mouse kind of gal. I get a lot of my inspiration from image research. I start with an idea, usually based on the premise of the novel, the characters a scene, what the time period is. If a manuscript is available, I will try and read a chapter or two if there is time. But it is the image research for me that inspires where I want my design to go.

What is a typical time frame to get a cover from assignment to final approval?

Our typical time frame for cover design is generally about 3 months. This seems like a lot of time, but when you are working on a list of over 140 titles, this is a bit daunting. I usually design about 30 covers off of our seasonal list.

How often do you bring (or the editor brings) an author into the process?

Most all of our authors are involved in the cover design at some level. Some more than others, it really depends on their contract. Our authors always have approval over the final cover. I really like to involve the authors, and meet their expectations, because after all this is their work, their reputation, their career. It is my job to do the best I can, design the best I can to make their hard work fly off the shelves.

How do you arrive at a balance between producing covers that meet the needs of the editors, marketing, store buyers and consumers, while maintaining a creativity level that’s personally gratifying?

Oh, the delicate balance… this is a tough balance. There are so many elements that not only go on our covers, but that affect the cover design. To achieve the perfect balance, it really comes down to knowing the category, what works what doesn’t. The only way to really do this is to spend a lot of time in the bookstores and online to see what is working in the market place, what works on shelf. Things you wouldn’t even think to consider like, the lighting in the store, the type of shelves your leading retailers have. For example, are their ledges on the shelves, will the authors name or title be blocked if placed too low on the cover. Lighting is important because you don’t want your cover to be too dark and not legible.

We work very closely with our editors, marketing, sales and publicity departments to make sure that the look, the language and design of the cover work for that category. Our publisher, Dominique Raccah, also has final say in the approval of the covers and she has a very wide breadth of knowledge in all aspects of this book; she knows what is going to work and what won’t.

Once you understand the market place and the audience you are designing for, it allows you to design to a self gratifying level, while having a successfully functional cover and a successful book.

If you were to talk to a classroom of aspiring designers, how would you describe to them what book design is? How is it different from other forms of graphic design (say, CD packaging)?

This is one of my favorite things, I actually do go back to my high school twice a year to participate in portfolio reviews and talk to the design classes there. Book design is a very complex process, there is so much that goes into consideration when designing book covers. Like the biggest issue is that a cover is never done, it is never perfect. You may go out with one cover, then the book doesn’t work well on shelf, if that book comes back up for reprint, then sometimes we redesign the cover to make it function better. A book cover is a marketing piece and you have 30 seconds to sell the reader. It is funny that they say you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, because that is exactly what you do… it is that cover that gets you to pick up the book and read on. If you don’t convey the information in an eye catching easy to read way, you just lost a sale. I would say the biggest thing with book design is that it is always around. I got my start in magazine design for a non-profit agency, that was one month and the work was done and gone. With a book, a good book, it is around for a long time. Same way when you look at web design, it is an always changing platform. I have to say, that is why I love book design, I like my designs to be tangible, and something you can have around always.

What influences have contributed to your design style?

I don’t know if there are specific influences to mention, but I like very clean design. I like white space, and I am a typography nut... I love type and fonts. I love to see how you can arrange a title. I put a lot of emphasis on my type and my font choice. I had never considered myself an artistic person until I started taking a production graphics class in high school, I discovered a love for design and creating printed pieces that took me into college where I had to learn all about art, how to draw, how to sculpt, and how to design.

I took a book design class and it was setting mass amounts of type, for the internals of the page that fascinated me. It has been a learning experience every step of the way, and I just keep learning.

Who are the book designers you look up to?

I would say Chip Kidd tops the list... he is the definition of a book designer. Other than that, I admire all designs, some of the most classic designs I look up to come out of Chronicle, Penguin and Random House. They have amazing designs, and I can only hope to compete on their level with every one of my designs.

How many of the books you design covers for do you read?

Unfortunately, I don’t get to read a lot of the books before I design the covers. Our editors provide us with cover information, the character descriptions, setting, time period and mood. A lot of times when we are designing covers, the manuscript isn’t ready yet. I do like to go back and I try to read every book, which is why currently I am reading three books... gets a bit crazy.

Is there any book for which you have a burning desire to rework the cover?

Oh geeze, any book from my first year in book design. I am still generally okay with my covers, there are a few that when I look at them, I think, “Oh, I could have done so much better...” but that is the beast that is book design. Like I said before, they are around for always, I see them over and over again, but when I compare them to what I do now, I see how far I have come. All I can think is that with each title and each cover it is a new challenge and a learning experience, and I can only get better.

Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us, Dawn!

Labels: Book Cover, Interviews

Thanks to the fine people at Pantheon Books, Wordcandy was recently given the opportunity to ask Charles Burns (author of Black Hole, one of our recent Featured Book titles) a few questions.

1. Your eye-catching, idiosyncratic artwork remains remarkably consistent throughout Black Hole. (I recently walked past a book cover you’d illustrated—an image of a startled pair of eyes—and recognized it as your work at a glance.) You’ve achieved some impressive commercial success with your signature style, including a memorable series of Altoids advertisements. Are you ever tempted to produce something completely different?

CB: I’ve been tempted to work in a radically different style from time to time but my occasional attempts to “loosen up” have been miserable failures. My “style” is something I’ve arrived at naturally over the course of my lifetime; there’s a line quality found in illustrations and comics from the 40’s and 50’s that I’ve always been attracted to and have tried to emulate... it’s something that has slowly evolved into the “look” you recognized in the Chipp Kidd book cover I did recently.

2. Condoms and other forms of sexual protection are conspicuously absent from Black Hole, but they were definitely available in Seattle in the seventies. Why doesn’t anybody in the book make an effort to protect themselves? Why don’t any of the characters consider methods to avoid the bug, or at least prevent an unwanted pregnancy? (I don’t know about the rest of the world, but if sex had the potential to turn people into shambling zombies, protection would have been the number-one hot topic at my high school.)

CB: If Black Hole featured safe sex I guess there wouldn’t be a story would there? I realize condoms were available in the seventies but my characters don’t use them… “It… it just doesn’t feel right… it’s not ‘natural’… now pass that fucking joint over here.”

3. Black Hole is the second Seattle-based horror story I’ve reviewed recently. (Life here in Washington is pretty creepy, apparently.) Did you choose to set the book there simply because it was part of your teenage experience, or was there something unique about North Seattle in the seventies that inspired you?

CB: I chose to set the book in Seattle because that’s where I grew up and it was a place and time I could write about accurately. The story isn’t really about Seattle or the seventies or sexually transmitted diseases; it’s about a series of characters suffering though adolescence.

4. I didn’t read Black Hole as it was being released serially, but I’ve spoken with a few passionate fans of the book who invested a decade’s worth of interest in it. When the story was released as a graphic novel in 2005, did the critical reaction to it change? Did seeing your story in the new format make you wish you’d done anything differently?

CB: The collected version of Black Hole was the way I had always envisioned the story being published. Because I work so slowly, having it come out periodically as a comic book was a good solution. I’m not sure I understand your question about the critical reaction to the book but I think you’re referring to the fact that the book found a larger audience than the comic book, right? It’s just a simple fact: more people go to bookstores that comic book stores. Maybe it’s the format…and maybe it’s just a shift in reading habits… As far as wishing I could do it all differently, I’d have to say no, I’m happy with the final version of the book.

5. I hear there’s a movie adaptation of Black Hole in the works. Unlike most comic book movie adaptations, this idea doesn’t fill my heart with dread—after all, nobody can expect material like Black Hole to turn into a PG-13 special effects extravaganza, so it seems like there’s no chance anybody will try to turn your work into X-Men: The Last Stand. What’s the status of this project, and how involved are you?

CB: A while back I signed an option with Paramount Pictures for Black Hole. It was just announced a couple of days ago that David Fincher has been “attached” to the project as the director. I have no idea of how things work in Hollywood, so I can’t predict what the final outcome will be. At this point I’m not involved with the project in any way other than keeping track of the latest developments.

We sincerely appreciate Mr. Burns getting back to us so promptly, and wish him the best of luck with his future projects!

Labels: Charles Burns, Graphic Novels, Interviews

(Here's the link to Part I of this interview. Again, the High School TV reporter is referred to in this interview as "HSR", the interviewer from George Mason University is referred to as "GMU", and Mr. Anderson is referred to as "M.T.A.")

HSR: How long do you usually take to write a book?

M.T.A: Well, it depends on the book. The Octavian Nothing books will have taken me a total of seven years to write, while Whales on Stilts and The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen took me about two weeks each. So it really varies, depending on the kind of project.

GMU: Do your interests change really often? What happens when you find a different interest in the middle of a seven-year project?

M.T.A.: It’s a pain when you really feel like you don’t want to be working on your current project, but you’re in the middle of it and you have a deadline and everything, so you don’t have much choice. But I find that other interests actually enliven prose: say, if I suddenly become interested in ghost stories or something when I’m working on Octavian—what the hell, I’ll just put a little ghost story in there. It changes the texture a bit, but it reinvigorates the story for me, and the reader will think: okay, here’s an interesting new thing.

Wordcandy: Did you have any favorite books as a child?

M.T.A.:When I was a little kid I loved Dr. Seuss. I also loved these books—I know this sounds obscure but they were incredibly cool—by the author Tove Jansson. She wrote this series called the Moominland books, about these amazing creatures who lived in the forest in the Midlands and had very wonderful and depressing little adventures. I also loved Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising and Robert Cormier’s I am the Cheese. I thought that was amazing when I was a kid. It just blew my mind.

HSR: Do you have any advice for your readers who are looking to become writers?

M.T.A.:I think my biggest piece of advice is to actually write. Because I think that what happens with a lot of us is that we want to be writers but we think of it as being more of a persona than something that actually involves writing. So we just get a funny hat and walk around and be all writer-y. But I would suggest that it is actually a good idea, even if you are not aiming at publication, to sit there and do things like keeping a journal—even if what is in your journal is all lies and crazy stories that you make up about yourself. Write as often as you can because that early experience with writing creates a facility that allows you to bypass a lot of the technical issues without even knowing it. I also say you should read a lot of different stuff—really stretch your reading into areas that you find bizarre or uninteresting at first. Maybe you could follow those obscure interests to try and see the world in as many different ways as possible.

Wordcandy: Can you give us a glimpse of what we might see coming out next?

M.T.A.: The second of the Octavian Nothing books is coming out. It will be called The Kingdom on the Waves. And I hope the third of my Whales on Stilts books will be coming out this spring. It’ll be called Jasper Dash and the Flame Pits of Delaware. Delaware, yes... I always feel that Delaware in the title always grabs the eye.

GMU : Do you approach the writing of your books differently, or do you have a standard way of actually physically writing one?

M.T.A.:You mean like chiseling as apposed to other forms? No, there is a difference to writing the Octavian books. I have to create a really historical mood for myself. For that I have to get into, like, a meditative state. I go up to a place in Maine where I can’t be easily contacted, and I read a lot of 18th century stuff and I pace around in circles and I go walking in the woods a lot, until finally I’ve arrived at a point where I really feel that 18th century is imprinted on me. Then I sit down and write, but I really can’t have much contact. When I write the lighter books I can be anywhere and it is a much more straightforward writing process, without all that “Don’t change your shirt!” weird superstition attached to it.

Wordcandy: Have you ever been approached by Hollywood? Is there any chance we’ll ever see a film version of your novels?

M.T.A.: There’s a chance. They’ve all at one time or another been optioned for movies, but none of the options have been exercised. Scripts exist for several of them and I am waiting to see if anything happens.

Wordcandy: Do you get much say in how your book is translated into a movie script?

No, you don’t really get much of a say about that. Basically, the most say you get is if you make or break the contract. But in spite of that… the only time I have ever really intervened was when they were writing the script for Burger Wuss and there was a joke that was just sort of homophobic in it. It didn’t make sense for the character to be making that kind of joke and I thought it was irritatingly offensive and juvenile. Then I did say to them: look, you really have to take that out. But in general, authors really don’t get much say in their movies and in many cases authors are very angry about the movies that get made as a result.

Labels: Events, Interviews

Behold again: here's the first part of my interview with the fantastically awesome M.T. Anderson! The second part will be posted soon. Please note that this interview includes questions from a student from George Mason University (known here as GMU) and a high school television reporter (known here as HSR):

HSR: Why are you here at the National Book Festival?

MTA: Because I was invited and there was free food.

GMU: We were just talking about how many different books you had written. The collection of books is so diverse—how do you decide your subject matter? You clearly jump from subject to subject, and you don’t seem to be limited by age group or anything.

MTA: Well, I wrote about whatever caught my interest. For example, I wrote Feed, which allowed me to make up absolutely anything I wanted to, stick it on the page, and call it reality. But then I had always really liked 18th century music, so I thought: heck, I’ll do some research on that. The cool thing about having a varied approach to these books was that one allowed me to say anything I wanted to, while another presented me with all of these very complicated things to look into and research. Which was actually tremendously fun—but I couldn’t even mention an article of clothing without making sure that it still existed, or existed in the same form. But in the middle of doing that work I was like, “Oh, I can’t stand this anymore, I just want to say they ate a burger! I don’t want to have to go look up what they would have eaten!” At that point it was a relief to turn to, say, some of the middle-grade comic fantasy novels I’ve written, like Whales on Stilts, and just put anything I wanted to on the page and be funny. Each approach is kind of an antidote to the previous one, and helped me refocus. If I worked in the same vein for each book, I think I’d be very tired.

Wordcandy: You’ve written a few very funny, surreal children’s books, while your stories for older readers are much darker. Are we going to see more of a crossover between your two styles?

MTA: Feed was kind of like that—it was both comic and satirical. There are some funny parts in the sequel to Octavian Nothing, but it’s not exactly a ripsnorter; it’s about incredible human cruelty and oppression. I think I naturally see comic elements as having the ability to embody the kind of grotesqueness that’s part of human nature.

GMU: Your books seem to market to children and young adults, yet they appeal to a larger adult audience. Do you tend to write with a specific audience in mind?

MTA: Some of them I wrote with a specific audience in mind, like Whales on Stilts and The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen. I wrote those thinking of 10-year-olds. However, Octavian Nothing is a historical novel—that was a case where I had to force myself to not think of an audience. I wanted to imagine how the character would really speak, regardless of the readership. I tried to blank out the idea of a specific audience, because if I started worrying about “Will people understand this?” or whatever, then I was going to end up stunting him as a character. So, in order to make him fully bloom, I blocked out the idea of an audience and wrote what I honestly believed he’d write and say.

Wordcandy: When you get to a point when you're really low on inspiration and the muses have run away, what do you do? Is there a particular piece of music or a book that you turn to that relaxes you enough to find that inspiration?

MTA: That’s a great question and the answer is yes, for both of those. For each project, I tend to have pieces of music that embody the texture of the writing that I want in that project. Sometimes they’re a piece of music from the period of time featured in the book’s setting, and sometimes there’s just something about them that makes it feel like the kind of prose I want for a particular project. I also read authors who, one way or another, shove me in the right direction. For example, for the 18th century book I continually read 18th century novels, so my natural voice began to write in stilted, 18th century-style prose. But sometimes I would read something modern that gave me a little side wind….

I’m very careful about what I read when I’m writing, because you tend to take on a tinge of whatever it is you’re reading when you write. I don’t know if you've ever noticed when you're writing book reviews, but sometimes you write the review and realize that you’ve written it in the style of the book you’re reviewing. It’s very hard to separate yourself from what you read, which is why it is important to judge what you read carefully.

Labels: Events, Interviews

Behold, my interview with the fantastically awesome Holly Black, author of the Wordcandy Featured Book pick Ironside:

1. Can you give us any news on your upcoming story The White Cat? Does it have anything to do with the fairy tale of the same name?

It won’t be out for a few years since I just sold it now, and I only have three chapters. But I am really excited that it’s not about faeries. It’s my first non-faerie book! I’m excited to try something different. It’s based on a fairy tale that I loved when I was a kid, but it’s going to be contemporary dark fantasy—grifters, private schools, curse magic, and a cat in a dress.

2. I know you’re working on a graphic novel trilogy. How does this new format alter your writing style?

I love comics so I was excited to give writing one a try. My graphic novels are called The Good Neighbors. Are you familiar with Ted Naifeh? He’s the artist I’m working with—he’s done Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things and a book called How Loathesome. It was really hard figuring it out comic scripting as a format, but interesting. The best thing about writing comics is, I usually get very bogged down providing lots of description, but that’s Ted’s problem now! I just have to be like, “Here, make this pretty,” or “There’s some people, make them look weird,” and it’s up to him.

But it’s really hard to convey mood with dialogue. You have to streamline it. And the plotting feels a little bit different,. Another great thing is although you can do flashbacks in books, they’re really hard to justify, but in a graphic novel, they’re fine! So in this first book, there are a lot of flashbacks. I went a little crazy with my new abilities—you know, the joy of the flashback.

3. Your YA novels (Tithe, Valiant, Ironside) feature some pretty hardcore teen behavior. Did you take a lot of flack for that?

I get some. I’ve made it a rule that when I am writing about experiences, the non-faerie parts have to have happened to me or somebody I know. When I started writing these books, I was writing about a part of New Jersey and a community that I knew well—one that I felt like I hadn’t seen a lot of in books. Although I think this is probably less true today, in earlier fantasy, kids were often very wealthy or very poor. And even when they were middle class, they were still what I called upper class. I wanted to write about people I know, and the Jersey shore, and the way it was to be a teenager there. And that means, you know, dealing with a lot of issues. These are things I know kids are dealing with, so I try to portray those experiences as honestly as I can.

Labels: Events, Holly Black, Interviews