Constance Sayers Interview - The Star and the Strange Moon

Photo Content from Constance Sayers

Constance Sayers is the author of A Witch in Time. A finalist for Alternating Current's 2016 Luminaire Award for Best Prose, her short stories have appeared in Souvenir and Amazing Graces: Yet Another Collection of Fiction by Washington Area Women as well as The Sky is a Free Country. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

She received an MA in English from George Mason University. She lives outside of Washington D.C. Like her character in The Ladies of the Secret Circus, for many years, she was the host of a radio show from midnight to six.

        

When/how did you realize you had a creative dream or calling to fulfill? 

 My writing goals were not lofty! As a kid, I was enamored with television. I’m dating myself, but at the height of General Hospital’s Luke and Laura phenomenon, I said to myself “I can do that,” and I cranked out a 100-page treatment for a new soap opera on my sister’s Smith Corona typewriter.

Beyond your own work (of course), what is your all-time favorite book and why? And what is your favorite book outside of your genre? 

 While not a book per se, Jean-Paul Sartre’s play, No Exit, changed my life. Like so many English majors, I read all the English writers and in my senior year of college, I began taking French literature classes and really opened my eyes to writers like Proust, Gide and my beloved Sartre. The play’s premise is brilliant: three people locked in Hell together and each unwilling to give the other what they need or want and one utters famous line “Hell is other people.”

Tell us your most rewarding experience since being published? 

For so many years, I went to my local Barnes and Noble and dreamed about what it would be like to see myself on the shelves. To have that experience of seeing your novel on the front table never gets old. Never!

What advice would you give to someone who wanted to have a life in writing? 

 You must be merciless on both accepting the feedback you get and changing your book (in your way) to address the changes. Writing a book is a solo effort only to a point. At a publishing house, you have a creative team with you and the make your book better, but you need to listen to them, and you need to turn drafts around in a timely manner. In my day job, I worked on the business side of Atlantic Media (former publisher or The Atlantic) and I saw the professionalism of the writers who would get the feedback and turn their work around quickly. I admired that skill and decided to develop it in my own writing. Now, I see that was an essential skill that I learned before my book was accepted by Hachette/Redhook.

What was the single worst distraction that kept you from writing this book? 

 I have a day job that got difficult in 2022, so there are days that I work sixteen hours. I would log-off of my work computer and just start writing in the late hours. This book’s theme was challenging, so I feel like I struggled with this one the most. I wasn’t always as mentally fresh as I always needed to be when I came to the page and this story was tricky to write.

What were your feelings when your first novel was accepted/when you first saw the cover of the finished product? 

The Advance Reader Copies (ARCs) are always my favorite part. It’s the first time the book goes from a redlined Word document to an actual shaped book!

Your Favorite Quotes/Scenes from THE STAR AND THE STRANGE MOON
The story starts out in 1986 with a young boy, Christopher Kent, who is traveling with his mother to Pittsburgh, where she is starting a new job as a lounge singer at an airport hotel. The boy is the primary caretaker for his mother who struggles with both mental health and substance abuse issues. As a result, he is wise beyond his years, and everyone refers to him as “the little man.” My hope was that the reader will feel the tension in this scene as the boy who has a series of rituals designed to keep his mother safe, must now adjust to a new life. Quickly, the new life falls apart when his mother spies a photo of an actress on the hotel’s wall and in a violent rage, rips the photo from the wall. In a dizzying set of events, the boy watches his mother spiral with no idea why this photo of actress Gemma Turner has set her off. This episode becomes a turning point for him and its connection to this mysterious actress.

The inspiration for this chapter came when I was in a hotel in Rome and they had these amazing black and white images of actors. I just loved the setting—this long, lonely hallway in a hotel—and filed it away for what would become the inciting incident of the book.

Early in my drafts, I need to “picture” my main characters so I can begin to move them around scenes in my mind. While doing some research for The Ladies of the Secret Circus, I happened upon another photo of a striking redhaired actress named Françoise Dorléac, the older sister of actress Catherine Deneuve. Tragically, Dorléac was killed in a car accident in 1967 as she rushed to get to the airport in Nice. As the pieces of this book formed, it was Françoise Dorléac’s face I saw as my character, Gemma Turner. We meet Gemma Turner in chapter two, she’s a down on her luck actress who gets one final shot to save her film career—the lead role in a New Wave horror film called L’Etrange Lune (The Strange Moon), directed by French cinema darling, Thierry Valdon. The reader gets Gemma’s desperation to win over Valdon and get the part.

I wanted to do a gothic novel as well, so the film, L’Etrange Lune is based on the Hammer horror films of the 1960s that introduced audiences to actors Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing as Dracula and Doctor Van Helsing. Gothic was the rage in the 1960s and this idea this type of setting began to have a great influence on the shaping of the novel as did reading a bunch of Victoria Holt novels. I felt like this was the perfect type of film a French New Wave filmmaker might want to re-shape into a more serious work of art, so I started there.

As the book progresses, I hope there is a sense that Gemma, while hopeful about this role, has sealed her doom with this film. The film’s set is a nightmare. Thierry Valdon turns out to be both cruel and temperamental and the script he’s written is laughable. During a night shoot, Gemma is filming a scene when she discovers she’s been transported inside the L’Etrange Lune, so the set is now her reality. Now, surrounded by the characters from the film, the plot is playing out, but Gemma knows the script—and its ending where she is doomed to be turned into a vampire. There are both the confines of being inside a gothic horror film, but also a film set in the 19th century where women don’t have freedoms they had in Gemma’s 1960s Paris. Working against both, Gemma needs to break conventions to try and get home safely.

When her typewriter is delivered and the staff thinks it’s the devil’s instrument, there are comical elements. I do try to have fun with these scenes. Like Groundhog Day, Gemma must relive scenes repeatedly until the director is pleased. Gemma begins receiving “director’s notes:”

“Mademoiselle Turner

As you can tell, I wasn’t pleased with the first version. Dracula won’t be written for another nineteen years, so using modern vampire vanquishing methods is just plain cheating.”

It’s a very meta thing. I loved that Gemma knows she’s inside a film and she’s aware of the tropes and how to push them. When I was working with Nivia Evans, my editor at Redhook, she encouraged me to push the story further and have Gemma be required to do “retakes.” Then it was like Run Lola Run (great film if you haven’t seen it), where with each retake, Gemma challenges herself and begins to learn the world she’s in. As a result, she begins to change the script to get different results and she blossoms as a character. As her relationship with these “stock” characters become deeper, she can get them to help her. Gemma’s arc develops in these scenes and for me, it was exciting.

The framing voice of the book is the little boy from the first chapter, Christopher Kent, who grows up, but remains traumatized and haunted by what happened to his mother (who never recovers from the hotel incident). When he learns that actress Gemma Turner disappeared on the set in 1968 and was never seen again, he becomes convinced the two incidents are connected and obsessed with solving her mystery. Personally, Christopher feels like his own family story is shrouded in mystery. No one will tell him what really happened to his mother, and he has no father on his birth certificate, so he feels adrift. The mystery of Gemma Turner anchors him in a way nothing else does and he also begins to spiral into this dangerous world of the cult film of L’Etrange Lune.

Christopher is a documentary film maker and this connection to film and the magic of filmmaking was a prominent theme. Throughout history, many people were superstitious that photos could “steal your soul” Film creates “magic” but is the actual act of filming magic? The idea kept swirling around in my head: Could a film steal your soul?

You must read The Star and the Strange Moon for answers to all those questions!

What is the first job you have had? 

Baton twirling instructor. I can twirl both fire and knives.

What was your favorite subject when you were in school and why? 

Algebra. I know that sounds weird, but I love, love Algebra. There is an order to it that appeals to me.

What decade during the last century would you have chosen to be a kid? 

The very one I grew up in: the 70s. The Saturday cartoons were the best. I think Syd and Marty Kroft messed me up, badly.

Name one thing you miss about being a kid. 

Summers off. I love my down time!

What is the first thing you think of when you wake up in the morning? 

I look at my Fitbit to see how well I slept. I’m obsessed with my sleep score.

What’s your most missed memory? 

Anything involving my mother. She died last year and I miss her terribly.

Which incident in your life that totally changed the way you think today? 

I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020 in the middle of Covid. That was a life changer. My cancer was stage one and not aggressive, so I had minimal surgery and radiation, but I’ll never forget when the doctor called with the news. The world tilted.

Which would you choose, true love with a guarantee of a heart break or have never loved before? 

In hindsight, I think I would have taken better care of my heart. In my youth, I was someone who loved hard and, as a result, I had my heart broken a lot. It makes for good fiction, but some of those scars left an indelible mark on me.

What was your favorite subject when you were in school? 

Tie: Algebra with Mr. Stansak at Clarion-Limestone high school and French with Joanne Viano at Pitt. Both were teachers who liked order and my messy mind really seeks out structure.

What is your greatest adventure? 

I spent four years finding my uncle’s lost World War II files that had been destroyed in a fire in St. Louis. I went to Italy to track his journey as a solider with the 30th Infantry division. We got to the exact location where his death certificate said he was killed by shrapnel. Just as luck would have it, an old woman was walking on the path on our guide talked to her and she pointed to the exact spot where the battle that killed my uncle had taken place. It felt like one of the most important things I’d ever done.

What event in your life would make a good movie? 

My dad was a twin and both he and his brother were separated at birth. It’s a wild story. I did borrow a bit of it for Juliet’s story in A Witch in Time.

What is one unique thing are you afraid of? 

I have Megalophobia (it’s a real thing). My dad took me to see the Goodyear blimp when I was a kid and I now have issues with things like big ships and, of course, blimps!

When was the last time you told someone you loved them? 

Every day, so…this morning.

What were you doing the last time you really had a good laugh? 

When my sister and I saw Barbie.

What is your most memorable travel experience? 

When my sister was a flight attendant, we would travel around together on “space available” status, so we would have to be flexible on our plans. One time we’d gone to New Orleans for Jazzfest and we were young and flat broke. The flight we needed was overbooked and it didn’t look like we’d be able to get out, so we went to the airport early hoping that people were hung over and would miss their flights. The flight ended up having five seats available and we got back home to Pittsburgh with something like $5 in our pockets.

1968: Actress Gemma Turner once dreamed of stardom. Unfortunately, she’s on the cusp of slipping into obscurity. When she’s offered the lead in a radical new horror film, Gemma believes her luck has finally changed. But L’Etrange Lune’s set is not what she expected. The director is eccentric, and the script doesn’t make sense.

Gemma is determined to make this work. It’s her last chance to achieve her dream—but that dream is about to derail her life. One night, between the shadows of an alleyway, Gemma disappears on set and is never seen again. Yet, Gemma is still alive. She’s been transported into the film and the script—and the monsters within it—are coming to life. She must play her role perfectly if she hopes to survive.

2015: Gemma Turner’s disappearance is one of film history’s greatest mysteries—one that’s haunted film student Christopher Kent ever since he saw his first screening of L’Etrange Lune. The screenings only happen once a decade and each time there is new, impossible footage of Gemma long after she vanished. Desperate to discover the truth, Christopher risks losing himself. He’ll have to outrun the cursed legacy of the film—or become trapped by it forever.

You can purchase The Star and the Strange Moon at the following Retailers:

        

And now, The Giveaways.

Thank you CONSTANCE SAYERS for making this giveaway possible.

1 Winner will receive a Copy of The Star and the Strange Moon by Constance Sayers.

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Lee Matthew Goldberg Interview - The Great Gimmelmans

Photo Credit: Muller

Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author of twelve novels including The Ancestor and The Mentor along with his five-book Desire Card series. He has been published in multiple languages and nominated for the Prix du Polar. After graduating with an MFA from the New School, his writing has also appeared in CrimeReads, Pipeline Artists, LitHub, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Millions, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, LitReactor, Mystery Tribune, The Big Idea, Monkeybicycle, Fiction Writers Review, Cagibi, Necessary Fiction, Hypertext, If My Book, Past Ten, the anthology Dirty Boulevard, (Screen)Play Press, The Montreal Review, The Adirondack Review, The New Plains Review, Maudlin House and others. He is the co-curator of The Guerrilla Lit Reading Series and lives in New York City.

        

  

Greatest thing you learned at school.
I took a novel writing class my senior year in high school and when the school year ended my teacher said to continue writing this book over the summer and to send him chapters. I realized he only asked me out of the whole class, and that was when I realized I had it in me to be a writer professionally.

When/how did you realize you had a creative dream or calling to fulfill?
That novel writing class did it, but when I was a kid, a different teacher allowed me to write a fictional story every day in my journal instead of having the assignment be like a diary. By the end of the year, I had over 100 pages and was addicted to telling stories.

Beyond your own work (of course), what is your all-time favorite book and why? And what is your favorite book outside of your genre?
Probably Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. When I first read it, all my writing became super gothic and tried to mimic its brilliance. I like the strange and unusual and that book oozes strange and unusual.

What advice would you give to someone who wanted to have a life in writing?
Get ready to deal with so much rejection. It will hurt you. It will make you want to give up. But it will also make you better. You have to be a hustler and believe in yourself, even when it seems like no one else does.

Can you tell us when you started THE GREAT GIMMELMANS, how that came about?
Originally, I wanted to write about a family in the 1930s that robs banks after losing all their money in the Depression. But then Covid happened, and I just didn’t want to write a depressing book, so I moved the era to the 1980s and it just opened up the story and became that much more fun. It became my escape in 2020 from the real world.

What were your feelings when your first novel was accepted/when you first saw the cover of the finished product?
I love the cover! I was shown three covers, but I knew immediately that this cover would be the one. My publisher listened to notes I had before and created what’s probably one of my favorite covers of all my books.

Your Journey to Publication
It’s been a long journey. While I’ve always wanted to be a writer, my first book came out in 2015. I’d had some short stories published and went to the New School for my MFA. I had an agent but we weren’t able to sell my first novel about a guy who can eat the hottest Chile peppers in existence because it was too “out there.” I pulled out another novel I had written because my agent liked the pitch and we tried with that, only to be rejected by dozens of editors. Finally, we tried this small crime publisher New Pulp Press (the book Slow Down has been reissued since), and the editor there liked it for every reason that bigger editors passed. A month after it came out, I got a deal for my second book The Mentor with St. Martin’s Press. Twelve books later I still haven’t sold the child pepper eating book, but maybe now is the time?

What is the first job you have had?
Camp Counselor.

What is the first thing you think of when you wake up in the morning?
Breakfast

What is your most memorable travel experience?
A trip to the Amazon where I lived with shaman on a tour for two weeks.

What do you usually think about right before falling asleep?
If I’m working on a book, it’s usually that.

What was your favorite subject when you were in school?
Writing, English.

What is one unique thing are you afraid of?
Sting-Rays. Hate ‘em.

What is the weirdest thing you have seen in someone else’s home?
I saw someone’s hair catch on fire once, that was pretty weird.

When the Gimmelmans lose all their money in the 1987 Stock Market Crash, Barry Gimmelman takes his family in their vacation RV for a wild ride through America that leads to them becoming the most notorious bank robbers of the era.

Middle child Aaron watches as his family goes from a mild-mannered reform Jewish clan to having over a million dollars of stolen money stuffed in their RV’s cabinets while being pursued by the FBI and loan sharks. But it wasn’t always like that. His father Barry made a killing as a stockbroker, his mother Judith loved her collection of expensive hats, his older sister Steph was obsessed with pop stars, and little sister Jenny loved her stuffed possum, Seymour.

At first, the family steals from convenience and liquor stores, but when they hit a bank, they realize the talent they possess. The money starts rolling in and brings the family closer together where back at home no one had any time for bonding due to their busy schedules. But Barry’s desire for more, more, more will take its toll on the Gimmelmans, and Aaron is forced into an impossible choice: turn against his father, or let his family fall apart.

You can purchase The Great Gimmelmans at the following Retailers:

        

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Thank you LEE MATTHEW GOLDBERG for making this giveaway possible.

1 Winner will receive a Copy of The Great Gimmelmans by Lee Matthew Goldberg.

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Susan Azim Boyer Interview - The Search for Us

Photo Content from Susan Azim Boyer

Susan Azim Boyer (she/her), author of Jasmine Zumideh Needs a Win, writes young adult fiction featuring Iranian American heroines she *never* encountered growing up, who make messy, complicated choices that rapidly snowball into avalanches. She hails from Nebraska but grew up in Los Angeles before spending several years in San Francisco and the next twenty in Sonoma County. She now lives in the Coachella Valley with her husband, Wayne, and her Pug mix, Teddy. Their son, Alec, lives in New York.

        

   

Tell us your most rewarding experience since being published.
It’s been incredibly humbling for people who are not my actual friends and family to read and connect to my books. I love hearing from readers who have been moved by Henry and Samira’s story and am especially touched by those who have also yearned for missing and absent parents or dealt with a family member struggling with alcohol addiction.

What advice would you give to someone who wanted to have a life in writing?
Start writing and don’t stop! Trust that your time will come for getting an agent, being published, etc. It’s a marathon – I didn’t break through the ticker tape till Mile 46. Open yourself to criticism. Have faith that it will make the work better. Become part of an engaged community of readers and writers.

What chapter was the most memorable to write and why?
The chapter in which Henry’s two moms (his bio-mom and her sister, who is raising him) get into a knock-down drag-out fight at a restaurant on his birthday! The scene is incredibly tense, and I felt such anxiety for Henry, who is always trying to negotiate peace between them.

Can you tell us when you started THE SEARCH FOR US, how that came about?
My husband, Wayne, was raised as an only child by his aunt and uncle. His bio-mom remained in the picture, but he never knew his biological father, who seemed to have disappeared. Several years ago for Christmas, I got him a DNA test to see if he had inherited any health risks from him.

To our utter shock, he was connected with a younger half-sister he had never known! Together, they began to search for their biological father (unfortunately, he passed away before they could find him). Immediately, I started thinking about what their lives would have been like if they had met as teenagers in the present day.

I drew inspiration from Wayne’s real-life story but grounded the book in my own experience including a yearning for absent parents (“who are still very much present in our lives,” as Samira says); struggling with co-dependence (TW for that and alcohol addiction); and internalized shame around my identity (Henry and Samira are being raised by their white families with no connection to their Iranian heritage).

What was the most surprising thing you learned in creating your characters?
Samira assumes responsibility for Kamron’s recovery from alcohol addiction as I did for my mother. I presumed to know everything about alcohol addiction and co-dependency. When my editor suggested an authenticity read from someone in recovery, I was offended. This was my lived experience. I knew what I was talking about.

Boy, was I humbled when the reader’s notes on the early draft came in. First and foremost, the extremely judgmental attitude Samira had toward her brother. I re-read the first several chapters and was stunned – and, frankly, embarrassed – by Samira’s lack of compassion for Kamron, which mirrored my own lack of compassion for my mother.

Secondly, Samira views her brother's alcohol addiction entirely through the prism of how it makes her feel with little regard for his suffering. She also mistakenly views Kamron’s recovery as a fixed, finite state rather than a fluid process that may ebb and flow over his life. The feedback not only greatly influenced the final draft of the book but also made me reconsider my relationship with my mother.

What were your inspirations for the character development?
My husband, Wayne, definitely inspired Henry: both play hockey; both have two mothers (a bio-mom and her sister) who battle for his affection; both are kind, patient, and understanding. Henry’s two mothers are inspired by Wayne’s real-life mothers. His bio-mom was something of a free spirit while her much older sister, who raised Wayne, was stricter and more controlling. But they both loved him in their own ways, and I hope that comes through in the book!

TEN RANDOM FACTS ABOUT THE SEARCH FOR US

• Henry plays hockey like my husband Wayne, who was invited to try out for the U.S. Olympic team and has been a hockey stunt double in movies.
• Like me, Samira has an auto-immune disorder. We both break out in hives when we’re super stressed!
• I’ve lived in the book’s two locations: in Westlake Village (Southern California) for almost ten years and nearly twenty in Santa Rosa (Northern California).
• The “funky, little café” mentioned in Chapter Seven is Dierk’s Café in Santa Rosa, which has, hands down, the best breakfast ever!
• The Persian restaurant in Westlake Village that Henry mentions in Chapter Twenty-Four is Maral Cuisine – it is excellent! Order the Tahdigh starter with both kinds of stew!
• The fancy restaurant at which Henry attempts to celebrate his birthday is the Saddle Peak Lodge in Calabasas – home of the Kardashians.
• A childhood friend of my son’s who was very open about her adoption experience inspired the character of Henry’s girlfriend, Linh.
• I learned a lot about searching for a missing family member by helping my husband and his sister search for their father; there are some sad parallels between their bio-dad and Henry and Samira’s.
• Tara was the most fun character to write! She is so wonderfully ridiculous! I adore her.
• I drew on the experience of my brother-in-law, who is a retired Ventura County Sheriff, to research the book’s scenes that involve the police and law enforcement.

What is the first job you have had?
Working at a men’s clothing store in the mall (to meet cute boys, of course!)

What is your happiest childhood memory?
Night swimming in our pool! To this day, I love to swim at night when the moon is out, and the pool lights come on.

What was your favorite subject when you were in school and why?
The humanities: English and history. I love words and stories! I was good at both subjects.
Worse subject: Math. Ugh.

Name one thing you miss about being a kid.
Eating Hostess products with reckless abandon – especially Suzy Qs!

What is the first thing you think of when you wake up in the morning?
This Mary Oliver quote: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?” My answer: Make the most of it!

Which incident in your life totally changed the way you think today?
Joining my mother for the last week of her recovery counseling, where I learned that I had to surrender all the responsibility – and, therefore, control – I had tried to take on for her sobriety.

What do you usually think about right before falling asleep?
Always, always, always my WIP – I often get a lightning bolt of inspiration when I’m drifting off and have to grab my phone to make a note of it.

If you had to go back in time and change one thing, if you HAD to, even if you had “no regrets” what would it be?
I would reassure my mother how much I loved her even as I drew a firm boundary around her drinking.

First Love?
My first true love is my husband, Wayne! We got married right out of college.

When was the last time you told someone you loved them?
All day, every day, I tell my husband, my dog Jasper, and my son Alec that I love them!!

What were you doing the last time you really had a good laugh?
Watching Ryan Gosling sing “Push” in the Barbie movie! I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe.

Samira Murphy’s family is falling apart, and she’s willing to do anything to hold it together, including caring for her grandmother and getting her brother into treatment for alcohol addiction. As if these weren’t enough, she’s desperate to get into her dream school. So, she takes a DNA test on the off chance that she will be able to get support from the father she hasn’t seen since infancy.

Henry Owen is caught between his unreliable biological mother and the overly strict aunt and uncle who stepped in to raise him. Longing to be seen for who he is, he takes a DNA test to try to find his biological father and the emotional care he needs.

Instead of finding their father, however, Samira and Henry find each other. As they work together to search for their father, they slowly begin to untangle their shared past and to bond as siblings. THE SEARCH FOR US is an emotional and heartfelt examination of family and belonging.

You can purchase  Search for Us at the following Retailers:

        

And now, The Giveaways.

Thank you SUSAN AZIM BOYER for making this giveaway possible.

1 Winner will receive a Copy of The Search for Us by Susan Azim Boyer.

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Zelly Ruskin Interview - Not Yours to Keep

Photo Content from Zelly Ruskin

Zelly Ruskin is a social worker who worked in adoption and foster care. She loves traveling, hiking with her (now adult) children, and, as a survivor, is passionate about and volunteers for Brain Aneurysm Awareness. Zelly and her ridiculous doodle, Strudel, currently live in New York City.

        

  

When/how did you realize you had a creative dream or calling to fulfill?
I think I was always creative. As a child, we depended on the imagination for entertainment. Books served as a window into other worlds and inspired the willingness to embrace the make-believe and fantasy. And drawing was a wonderful outlet for expression. But, for the realization that I had artistic talent and a desire to pursue it, I credit my high school art teacher, who gave me rein to create outside the bounds of an assignment. Through the encouragement and freedom in that classroom, I found confidence and a sense of purpose. I aspired to be an art therapist and studied psychology and studio art in college. Though, ultimately, my career took a different direction, the artistic side of me has always played an important role in my life. Decades later, I’ve set aside the pencils, paintbrushes, and canvases, and now find joy painting with words.

What advice would you give to someone who wanted to have a life in writing?
Writing is a solitary experience. The path to publishing is difficult and your book’s success depends on the subjective opinions of others. Build a community of other writers. Whether it be through workshops or Facebook groups, the support, feedback and shoulders to lean on are invaluable.

What was the single worst distraction that kept you from writing this book?
My recovery from surgery for an unruptured brain aneurysm.

Can you tell us when you started NOT YOURS TO KEEP, how that came about?
After years of working on and trashing my first manuscript, I began writing Not Yours to Keep in 2018. It was a story that I’d wanted to write for a long time. I had the plot idea from a photograph I found in someone’s pocket, and they lied about it. The concept tied together with my experience of working in adoption. The challenge was how to make it interesting? What if the photo was of a baby? Why would that baby be significant to the person who lied about it? Then, I added one more element from my real-life experiences. After I left my job in adoption, I experienced fertility issues and I drew on that as the biggest what if for this story: What if I had known I had fertility issues when I was working in adoption? How would that impact my morals and ethics? Would I have crossed the line?

What were your feelings when your first novel was accepted/when you first saw the cover of the finished product?
Take my breath away-is this really happening? Since the moment my publisher accepted my manuscript, it’s felt like a perpetual state of joyful surreal.

What were your inspirations for the character development?
In my first career, I was an adoption consultant. I never forgot my clients—not the couples, not the adoptees, and especially not the birth parents. I’ve carried their stories with me ever since. They served as the inspiration for the characters in Not Yours Keep. I created the cast by blending composites of adoption and foster care clients with tidbits of personal experiences. Then they grew and changed based on their relationships with other characters and the situations they faced. I also molded them based on many unexpected encounters I had. One of my favorite anecdotes is the day a chatty cab driver, unaware of my background, talked about being adopted. He expressed raw, visceral emotions about the pain of rejection he’d experienced. I harnessed both his feelings and the way he made me feel and used that to make certain characters in my story more dimensional, with a perspective I otherwise couldn’t have.

MEET THE CHARACTERS

BILLIE is a 32-year-old adoption specialist. A consummate professional in both attire and ethics. She has long, shiny chestnut hair and a zip in her gait. Her mantra is “Strength, courage, heart.” Think Emma Watson or Blake Lively playing the girl next door with secrets; a sympathetic woman faced with questionable moral decisions who could choose either the dark or high road.
Tyler is a good-looking 34-year-old successful lawyer vying to make partner at his firm. Though driven by his career, he is a compassionate man. But there are things about his past he’s never shared, not even with his wife, Billie, and now a stranger is sending him upsetting texts. Think Glen Powell or Ryan Reynolds effortlessly portraying a guy who can be romantic, serious, playful, or tense.
Anne, a woman haunted by childhood abuse, looks more than her 34 years. She relies on alcohol to cope. All she wants is to be with the two people she most regrets losing: the baby she gave up for adoption, and the man of her dreams. Picture Mandy Moore, or the imaginary sister of Laura Linney & Sarah Paulsen, playing the role of a messy, ordinary, relatable woman on the edge.

What is the first job you have had?
Aside from babysitting, my first “corporate” paycheck was for letting someone sniff my shoes. You can’t make that up- well, I am an author, so I can, but it’s true. Odor Eaters paid my high school cheer squad to test their new products. We wore their inserts in our saddle shoes (yes, I said it-saddle shoes) during games. We’d go to the offices where the testers sniffed and rated the effectiveness. Their job was worse than mine—I got a good story out of it.

What is your happiest childhood memory?
The one that stands out to me right now is being in the back seat of a car with my two best friends, singing on our way to preschool.

What was your favorite subject when you were in school and why?
In elementary school, reading was my favorite subject. I couldn’t get enough of it. I was a fast reader and absorbed everything, so the reading comprehension tests were fun for me too.

Name one thing you miss about being a kid.
The innocence.

Which would you choose, true love with a guarantee of a heart break or have never loved before?
It’s better to have known love.

When you looked in the mirror first thing this morning, what was the first thing you thought?
Who is that?

If you had to go back in time and change one thing, if you HAD to, even if you had “no regrets” what would it be?
I would have stayed on the runaway horse instead of jumping off.

At a movie theater which arm rest is yours?
Both, I’m ambidextrous.

What is the weirdest thing you have seen in someone else’s home?
A cabinet permanently caulked on top of a bathtub.

When was the last time you told someone you loved them?
Today.

Which incident in your life that totally changed the way you think today?
From the moment I learned about my brain aneurysm, my perspective on life completely shifted. Here’s how I summed it up after successful surgery:
“Appreciate the sunrise. Embrace the day’s twists and turns. Be grateful for the sunset. Never take for granted the ability to take life for granted.”

What were you doing the last time you really had a good laugh?
Writing this. It’s a had-to-be-there thing, but I’m remembering a time, many years ago, when I was leaving a Target with one of my kids. We were back a bit but could see someone passing by our car in the lot. I hit the key FOB to pop the trunk as a prank. It sounds terrible now, but the person’s reaction still has me laughing. In today’s world, it would have made an exceptional viral TikTok.

Called a “sensational debut” by Rea Frey, this psychological thriller delves into themes of reproductive rights and healthcare, confronting the complexities that define family—or the risks that lose it all.

Billie Campbell, a Massachusetts adoption specialist grappling with fertility issues, dreams of adopting a baby, but not just any baby—her pregnant client’s baby. While her longing threatens to send her down a dark path, her husband, Tyler, is keeping he’s full of doubts about becoming a father, and he’s also trying to figure out who is sending him upsetting anonymous texts and photos. On the other side of town, Anne, a woman scarred by childhood abuse, obsesses with a second chance at becoming a family with the two people she regrets ever having let go the baby she gave up for adoption twenty years ago and the man of her dreams.

Their lives become entangled when the client’s newborn is abducted, and Billie becomes a prime suspect.

Amid the chaos unleashed by the abduction, Tyler uncovers a link between the person tormenting him and the abduction—but now Billie has disappeared too. The race to find both her and the baby is on; but will they find them before it’s too late?

You can purchase Not Yours to Keep at the following Retailers:

        

And now, The Giveaways.

Thank you ZELLY RUSKIN for making this giveaway possible.

1 Winner will receive a Copy of Not Yours to Keep by Zelly Ruskin.class). 

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