Author Interviews

Sol Stein penned his first story on telegram blanks, stolen from Western Union. “My father took them from Grand Central Station because we couldn’t afford paper in the depths of the Depression,” Stein said. His first poem was then published in a school paper when he was seven. “I wrote my first book when I was thirteen and it was published when I was fifteen,” he said. “When I went to see the publisher, he asked why my father didn’t come himself.” More than two million copies of Stein’s novels have now been sold. Selected by major book clubs, they’re

Aimee Thurlo got fired. Frequently. “In 1980, I was super restless at home,” she said, “but I couldn’t find any job that interested me. I got fired from every conceivable job on the planet, too, because I was constantly daydreaming.” “Finally,” she added, “unable to settle on any career that suited me, I decided to try my hand at writing and I cajoled my husband David into joining me.” 

For Tad Wojnicki to write well, he needs to know that he’s evoking a feeling, identifying with the reader at a gut level. “What are we talking about here?” Wojnicki asks. “We are talking passion! Without passion, which is the heart of writing, we merely have cold facts.” He has recently followed his own advice in his first novel, Lie Under the Fig Trees, which he calls a thinly disguised autobiography. He leads us through the romance of Teddy and Rosie, starting with a passionate one night stand in Poland the night before Teddy flees the oppressed country. Arriving in

Milt Kovak is in no mood for nonsense. The alcoholic wife of his best friend just committed suicide under mysterious circumstance and a beautiful, funny local celebrity has been brutally murdered in her car. Other suicides have been cropping up all over the county, too, in alarming numbers. And, Milt’s normally stable, reliable wife Jean is pregnant and her hormones are lost out in the ozone somewhere.  Yes, Milt is having a really, really bad day. To find out how the crusty sheriff tunnels his way through this awful mess, read Susan Rogers Cooper’s sixth Milt Kovak book, Doctors and

Joan Hess started writing as a lark. “In the early 1980s, a friend convinced me to try to write romance novels,” she said, “and I discovered I loved writing fiction.” Unfortunately, she also discovered that she was a dismal romance writer. “Too much plot,” she said, “not enough romance.” The experiment wasn’t a complete failure, but the going was rough. She made an early sale to Harlequin, but then she ran into trouble. “Ten manuscripts and three agents later,” Hess said, “I became a tad discouraged. I was planning to go back to graduate school when my agent suggested I