Blog Tour: Liberation Now!

 

We're happy to help Meerkat Press support the release of their latest title Liberation Now! by Seb Doubinsky by participating in their blog tour. 

For our portion of the tour, Seb has decided to participate in our 40 But 10 series - where I've pulled together 40ish questions - some bookish, some silly - and have asked authors to limit themselves to answering only 10 of them. That way, it keeps the interviews fresh and connectable for all of us!

Seb Doubinsky is a bilingual French dystopian writer and poet. He is the author of the “City-States Cycle”, comprising, among others, The Babylonian Trilogy, The Song Of Synth, Missing Signal,The Invisible and Paperclip. Missing Signal, published by Meerkat Press, won the Bronze Foreword Reviews Award in the Best Science-Fiction Novel category in 2018. He lives in Denmark with his family and teaches literature, history and culture in the French department of Aarhus University. His new novel, Liberation Now! is coming out August 4th, through Meerkat Press.

Describe your book poorly.

It’s like the Power Puff Girls, but they have no magic powers, do drugs and are Communists.

 

What’s your kryptonite as a writer?  

Cafés and crowded spaces. And writer’s retreats. Could never write there. I need my own space.

 

Would you and your main character(s) get along?

In “Liberation Now!”, yes, absolutely. I would be part of their gang,  live in their community and do all sorts of illegal and fun stuff with them.

 

If you could spend the day with another author, who would you choose and why?

Thomas Pynchon, for sure. Because Thomas Pynchon, you know, and… Thomas Pynchon!!!

 

What is your favorite book from childhood?

I would say Dr. Seuss’s “Green Eggs and Ham”. Absolutely loved it as a kid. It made no sense and yet, it did. It could even be the book that made me a writer, because, in many ways, it respected nothing, except the child who was reading it. It was pure subversion.

 

What genres won’t you read?

I am not prejudiced, but romance is definitely not my cup of tea.

 

You have to choose an animal or cartoon character that best represents you. Which is it and why?

Wile E. Coyote, because he’s excellent at failing. Soul brother. And I’ve used him in my first City-States novel, “The Babylonian Trilogy” as a minor character.

 

Are you a toilet paper over or under kind of person? 

Definitely under. It’s the only way that makes sense. And I think people who defend the other way are weird. Like really weird.

 

Do you DNF books?

Yes. Absolutely.

 

What scares you the most?

You mean, apart from a slow and painful death and my fear of heights? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

 

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Releases August 6th

Science Fiction | Fantasy

Meerkat Press | Bookshop.org | Amazon

 

A radical and trippy scifi political fable about an improbable gang of women fighting for the freedom of planet Earth. Things are looking grim for Earth as the alien force known as the Subliminal Empire seems to enjoy a complete yet unnoticed control of the planet. However, a motley crew composed of a city-state president on the run, a financial advisor who quit her job, a disgruntled academic studying the dangers of A.I. and an undercover alien agent who previously worked as a manager for a rock band might very well jeopardize the cosmic imperialists' plan and prove once and for all that one should never underestimate the power of women when it comes to liberation. Doubinsky masterfully crescendos his genre-defying saga in this breathless, action-packed standalone finale.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

EXCERPT from LIBERATION NOW!

VITA

Vita parked her bike next to the other machine in front of the bleached bungalow, a superb chopper with a shiny blue tank. The ocean roared some fifty feet away, gnawing helplessly at the sandy beach. Ash’s house was one of a long stretch of small houses and businesses obviously built to enjoy and exploit the seashore. On the opposite side of Ash’s abode stood a bar and a lawyer’s office specialized in real estate. Everything looked a little run-down, probably because of the highly polluted waters, which made bathing impossible. A few miles up, a concentration of chemical and oil industries had gradually destroyed the environment, with the blessing of New Petersburg’s politicians. Global warming had helped the process, by developing algae which fed on the chemicals, turning them into toxic plants. They shone under the surface at night, a beautiful and eerie yellow-green glow that could be seen for miles. Your skin would develop a myriad of itchy pustules should it come in contact with them and leave you with impressive scar tissue once the eruptions dried and finally fell off like tiny skin petals. The town was called Blue City, but Ash thought that they should change it to Poison-Green City.

Vita was getting off her bike when Ash came out of the bungalow to greet her, holding a coffee mug in each hand. She wore a simple white t-shirt that enhanced the dark ink of the tattoos covering her arms and neck, and a pair of jean shorts which had the same effect with her long legs. Her feet were bare, tip-tapping on the warm concrete. Ash put down the mugs on the parking’s concrete and they hugged for a long time, clinging on each other’s body like the proof of their own existence.

“I’ve made some coffee,” Ash said. “Let’s sit on the porch and admire the devastation.”

Vita nodded, and they sat side by side on the brittle beach chairs, the steaming mug in their hand. Even if it was a beautiful late August morning, there were only a few people on the beach, sitting in the sand or walking at a safe distance from the shore. 

“Every day reminds me how stupid humans are,” Ash said, blowing on her coffee to cool it down.

Vita nodded. Ash’s words made her think of one of her favorite jokes: “As Confucius said, only human stupidity can give an idea of the infinite.” 

“What brings you here? Not that it isn’t great to see you, but five years is a long time.”

“I need a place to lay low for a while. Last mission was a disaster. You might even have heard about it.”

Ash shook her beautiful head, her blonde hair rolling like a matte fire around her perfect features.

“You’re the only contact I’ve left. We’re all in hibernation right now. Total communication ice-age.”

“And you think you’re safe here?”

“The Subliminal Empire definitely doesn’t know you exist. You’re completely under their radar, and I’ve managed to escape their surveillance, I think.”

“You think?” Ash asked, half-ironic, half-worried.

“No, I know. I hid in the same motel for two weeks, my Synth tuned on the 1880s. No grays appeared during the whole time.”

Ash nodded, playing with her mug.

“OK, just to make sure: Let’s tune into the Planet X Super Blue Beach Resort and check, just to be safe. You could be a double agent now, for all I know. Five years, girl. It’s a long time. Things happen.”

“Sure. I understand.”

 Synth was a drug that allowed its users to access parallel dimensions that could be shared, if you synchronized your experience. Ordinary non-users would just appear in the setting with their normal clothes on, while Synthers would be part of the setting: cowboys in a saloon, knights in armor around the Round Table, astronauts in a space station and so on. But Synth also revealed agents of the Subliminal Empire, who couldn’t manipulate space-time, and became gray shapes in the hallucination. Any weapon, police apparel or hostile aura would turn a person gray. Gray was the color of power. Gray was dangerous.

Both women let the Synth take over their neural systems, shifting the time-frame to the date and place of their choosing. Ash turned her head towards Vita, as the two suns stood high in the impeccable red sky. Their coffees had morphed into complicated cocktails, and they were both reclining in comfortable deckchairs. The beach was crowded with bathers and families, and children screamed and laughed as the purple waves hit their chests. Not a spot of gray in sight.

“Cheers,” Ash said. “Good to see you again.”

The 40 But 10: Anna Nordberg

 

I've pulled together 40ish questions - some bookish, some silly - and have asked authors to limit themselves to answering only 10 of them. That way, it keeps the interviews fresh and connectable for all of us!

Today we are joined by Anna Nordberg. Anna is a journalist and culture writer whose essays have appeared in Slate magazine, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. She grew up in New York City and now lives in San Francisco with her husband and two children. When She Was Ours is her first novel.

What made you start writing?

When I was around four years old, I started dictating stories to my mother from the bathtub. She would write them down, and then I would illustrate them. She had a lot of patience, and I loved the time with her, so maybe that was a part of it—getting to have this wonderful ritual with my mom, who was very no-nonsense and time efficient when it came to other activities. She wasn’t someone who got on the floor and played dolls or blocks, but she would tell me stories and write down mine.

My parents were also huge readers, and my father read the entire Lord of the Rings series to my brother and me when I was around five or six. LOTR was the Harry Potter of its day, and my brother and I were obsessed. When I was 8, I attempted to write my own version of a Middle Earth fantasy novel on a yellow legal pad. I still have it.

But I think the biggest influence on my writing was watching my mother work on her own novel. She wrote it in her 40s, when she was recovering from a serious surgery, typing away in the tiny guest room off our kitchen in our Manhattan apartment. It was never published, and I think in the end she viewed it as a failure—I remember her telling me, “The first three times I read it I cried, and then the fourth time, I thought it was sort of boring.” My mother died when I was 17, and I know if she’d had more time, she would have written another book. But what inspired me wasn’t whether her novel got published or not. It was that she sat down and did it. I wish I could tell her that now. 

What’s your kryptonite as a writer? 

Fear of upsetting people—whether it’s a reader, a source for my journalism, the author of a book I’m reviewing, or a friend or family member who might, accurately or not, perceive themselves in my writing. Not that I think worrying about your sources and readers is by definition a bad thing. You should care. You just don’t want to think about it so much that it paralyzes you, and sometimes, this can happen to me.

 

Describe your book in three words. 

Families under pressure.

If you could cast your characters in a movie, which actors would play them and why?

This is such a wonderful question. For Thea, the mother, who’s a renowned surgeon facing a terminal cancer diagnosis, my dream casting would be Laura Dern. Not just because she’s made an art of playing mothers—in Wild, in Big Little Lies, in Little Women, just recently in Is This Thing On?—but because she has this fierceness and warmth that never tips over into cliché. Her performance as Marmee in Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women is a touchstone, and I thought a lot about it when I was writing my novel. Marmee is deft at unconditional love—which is harder than people think—but she’s not perfect; she feels anger. I found that very real.

Another absolute legend I would cast to play Thea is Sigourney Weaver. Thea is incredibly strong but also understands and acknowledges her fear. I think, as much a working mother in 1990s Manhattan can, Thea has Ripley from Aliens energy. 

This is obviously leaning hard into nepotism but since this is my own fantasy casting, I think that’s okay. For Thea’s older daughter, Phoebe, I’d pick my absurdly talented niece, the actress Madison Thompson, who played Janet McTeer’s daughter on Ozark and is in the current season of Euphoria. Phoebe has to walk this very narrow path of being the cool girl who’s not mean, someone who is confident in her beauty and competence but hasn’t let that curdle into arrogance or cruelty. Madison has known her own mind since she was six years old, but she’s also relentlessly kind, and I see her as Phoebe.

For Astra, Thea’s college-age daughter, I love the idea of Angourie Rice, who plays intelligent, vulnerable young women so well, or Saoirse Ronan, who was so alive and luminous as Jo, also in Gerwig’s Little Women. If I was really going to cheat, I’d go back in time and cast 2009 Romola Garai, who did such a beautiful job as Emma in the BBC miniseries that year. Astra is emotionally astute, and she desperately wants to be good, but she’s also naïve in many ways, because she’s young, and she has a rigidity, a certain inflexible idea of what’s right and wrong, that reminds me of Garai’s Emma before she has her full circle moment.

 

If you could spend the day with another author, who would you choose and why?

This is a totally paralyzing question, but if I am going just with living authors, I’d say Ann Patchett. She has such incredible range—The Dutch House and Commonwealth are two of my favorite novels, but her essay collections, These Precious Days and This is the Story of a Happy Marriage—are also tremendous. I think her essay “The Getaway Car” is my favorite piece of writers on writing.

I reviewed These Precious Days for the San Francisco Chronicle years ago, and it influenced me deeply as a writer. In her essay “Three Fathers,” she writes about her father’s concern that she could not support herself as a writer made her fierce. “Without ever meaning to, my father taught me at a very early age to give up on the idea of approval. I wish I could bottle that freedom now and give it to every young writer I meet, with an extra bottle for the women.” I think about that line all the time.

 

What are some of your favorite websites or social media platforms?

I think Books + Bits by Pandora Sykes is the best newsletter on books in Substack. Sykes is the kind of person who eats her books—she reads all the time, almost compulsively—and she’s really attuned to the culture. She used to do the podcast The High Low and is really good about understanding media, including film and TV, and how it all feeds into the zeitgeist.

 For news and advice on the publishing industry, Publishing Confidential by Kathleen Schmidt is essential. I only just started listening, but I love the Debutiful podcast with Adam Vitcavage, who interviews first-time authors. A debut is just such a lovely moment for a writer, and Vitcavage captures that sort of “all the wrong turns that got me here” energy I find really inspiring.

 Finally, I’ve been surprised and delighted with Bookstagram—it’s a really generous, informed, uplifting corner of the internet, and it feels like there’s fewer trolls lurking there. There are many accounts I love, especially @MrsDalloways, an independent bookstore in Berkeley. As a staff pick they featured O Caledonia, this beautiful, eccentric, elegant weirdo of a novel that is simply brilliant, and more people should read. Once I saw that I was all in.

What is your favorite way to waste time? 

Watching videos of Tom Hiddleston dance. And if we’re truly going down a rabbit hole, I could also watch Ben Fensome’s Instagram re-enactments of Jane Austen adaptations on a loop until the end of time. Stuffing socks down his shirt in place of a cravat to play Mr. Darcy? Utter brilliance. 

What are you currently reading? 

Brawler by Lauren Groff. I have one story left to go. It’s completely exceeding my very high expectations. Groff’s short stories feel like Flannery O’Connor meets Alice Munro, and Munro was one of my favorite authors, perhaps my favorite, until the revelations from her daughter that were publicized after Munro’s death. It came out not just that she failed to protect her daughter from abuse from her stepfather, but that she used that failure, that dark secret, as the engine of her writing. That absolutely broke my heart, and I can’t read her stories the same way. But I’d never encountered a writer as gifted as Munro, until Groff. Her stories are sharp enough to cut yourself on; a universe built in a few pages.

What genres won’t you read?  

I don’t read romance, which is silly, because there’s so much amazing romance writing out there! It’s so different than the bodice rippers of my youth, and I know that Romantasy is basically saving book publishing right now. But it’s never a genre I was drawn to so maybe it just feels too late to start now. That said, if readers have any recommendations, I will take them!

 

What’s the one thing you wish you knew when you were younger? 

It actually gets better.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lake Union Publishing   |   August 2026

Thea Erickson, a renowned surgeon, is filled with both joy and grief as her family gathers at their home on a summer night in 1995. Her elder daughter Phoebe is getting married, but even the happiness of the day feels bittersweet, as Thea grapples with a terminal cancer diagnosis. She worries she won’t be around to support her younger daughter Astra, who’s still in college, but even Thea cannot foresee what is to come―a terrible accident the night of the wedding that changes Astra’s life forever.

In a last-ditch effort to protect her family, Thea arranges a secret meeting with an old family friend and extracts a promise that will reverberate long after she’s gone.

Years after her mother’s death, Astra has moved forward with a career and relationship, but she still struggles with her grief. When a man reaches out to her and Phoebe, offering a window into their mother’s past, Astra must make a choice, and her decision forces her to face what it means to love someone after they’re gone, who we decide to forgive, and how families reckon with the past.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR WHEN SHE WAS OURS:

 

“When She Was Ours is an affecting debut about the fault lines that run through families and the resilience that emerges when they’re exposed. Nordberg writes with clarity and compassion about the secrets that shape a family as she traces a mother’s final choices and the long shadow they cast on her daughters. The result is an insightful and gripping story about grief, forgiveness, and the stubborn love that binds us, even when it hurts.”―Jacqueline Friedland, USA Today bestselling author of He Gets That from Me and Counting Backwards

 

“Beautifully told, this deeply moving story about mothers and daughters, grief and memory will resonate with anyone who has ever looked at their mother and thought, but how will I go on without you?”―Nicola Kraus, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Best We Could Hope For 

“When She Was Ours is a spellbinding portrait of love in its fiercest and most fragile forms: between partners, between sisters, and above all, between mothers and daughters. I read with my heart in my throat, swept away by Nordberg’s deeply human characters and their quest for wholeness in the wake of loss and rupture. An unforgettable tale by a brilliant magician of a storyteller.” ―Nicole Graev Lipson, USA Today bestselling author of Mothers and Other Fictional Characters

Indie Spotlight: Kaitlyn Bankson

 

Welcome to our Indie Spotlight series, in which TNBBC gives small press authors the floor to shed some light on their writing process, publishing experiences, or whatever else they'd like to share with you, the readers!

Today's spotlight shines on Kaitlyn Bankson who just released her novel Nest on July 6th. 

Why I Wrote Nest: The Quiet Psychology of Motherhood

When most people imagine pregnancy, they picture joy: baby showers, tiny clothes, decorating a nursery, a growing family.

What interested me was everything happening beneath those moments.

I wanted to write about the invisible work of becoming a mother—the endless calculations, the quiet fears, and the desire to make the world safe for someone who has not even arrived yet.

That desire has a name. We call it nesting.

On the surface, nesting looks simple enough: painting walls, folding tiny clothes, organizing drawers. But I began wondering whether those rituals are really about furniture and blankets at all. What if they're an attempt to create order when life suddenly feels unpredictable? What if preparing a nursery is, in some small way, preparing yourself?

Those questions became the heart of Nest.

My protagonist, Winnie Amato, desperately wants to become a mother. Alongside that hope comes what she simply calls "the Fear"—an anxiety that follows her through every decision, every doctor's appointment, every ordinary day. Her husband, Thomas, wants the same future, but each of them experiences uncertainty differently.

I wasn't interested in writing a thriller where danger comes from outside the home. I was interested in the quieter tension that many people recognize: the way our own minds can magnify uncertainty until it becomes difficult to distinguish genuine caution from imagined catastrophe.

Literary fiction gives us room to linger in those interior landscapes. It allows ordinary moments to carry extraordinary emotional weight. A nursery can become a symbol of hope. A routine conversation can reveal the distance between two people who love each other deeply. A single choice can echo for months.

Anxiety is rarely defeated by one inspirational speech or one dramatic breakthrough. More often, it is navigated through thousands of ordinary moments—moments of noticing, choosing, trusting, and continuing forward despite uncertainty.

Perhaps that is what nesting really is.

Not simply preparing a room but preparing yourself to love someone enough that every ordinary object suddenly feels important.

If Nest encourages readers to look more closely at the emotional landscape of pregnancy, motherhood, and the quiet courage required to embrace an uncertain future, then it has accomplished exactly what I hoped it would.

 

“I, Winnie Amato, have had sex today with my husband, Thomas Amato.”

 

Winnie and Thomas Amato have decided to have their first baby together. Although the excitement levels are high, Winnie, especially, is also full of dread. Already prone to being an anxious person, the fluctuating hormones and nauseous waves aggravate her fears. In fact, she calls it “the Fear” because sometimes it becomes so loud that there is nothing else.

 

After Winnie becomes fed up with her suffering and feelings of madness, she finds that her new desire to nest runs deep into the very marrow of her bones. She cleans and preps and spends countless hours preparing a nursery for their baby. And somewhere within the frantic nesting, Winnie finds moments to breathe and discover peace.

 

But can these minor moments of noticing and slowing down really stop “the Fear” from reappearing? Can Winnie make it through her pregnancy without losing the baby? Will Thomas and Winnie remain together as man and wife? Nine months turn into eons for a woman who is holding a growing baby inside her body for that long. Every day brings unfamiliar sensations and new ways of exploring the world, as if both soon-to-be parents were only babies themselves.

Kaitlyn Bankson is an American literary novelist who writes psychological literary fiction for the individualist. Influenced by Objectivism and the tradition of Romantic Realism, her novels explore the individual mind under pressure. She is the author of five novels—The Paper Pusher, The Dormant Age, A Man of Silence, A Man of Action, and Nest. She lives in Dubuque, Iowa, with her husband and daughter.

You can find her on:

 X   |   Instagram   |   Goodreads   |   Facebook   |    LinkedIn   |   Substack   |  Patreon   |   YouTube   |   Spotify

 

The 40 But 10: Kelly Lydick

 

I've pulled together 40ish questions - some bookish, some silly - and have asked authors to limit themselves to answering only 10 of them. That way, it keeps the interviews fresh and connectable for all of us!

Today we are joined by Kelly Lydick, received a Bachelors degree in Writing & Literature from Burlington College, with emphases in Psychology and Music, and a Masters degree in Writing & Consciousness from New College of California. Her work has been published in literary magazines such as Guernica, Rain Taxi Review of Books, The Rumpus, Tarpaulin Sky, Drunken Boat, Mission at Tenth, Thema, Switched-On Gutenberg, and many others. Her articles have appeared in other magazines including Natural Awakenings, Co Yoga + Life, True Blue Spirit, American Art Collector, Western Art Collector, and many others. She has also been featured on NPR’s The Writers’ Block and the Word podcast, and on iHeart radio. Kelly is the author of the experimental Mastering the Dream, and a contributing author to the anthologies Dreams That Change Our Lives, the IPPY Award winning Are You the Missing Piece?, and My Journey, My Journal. She's also the author of Dream Incubation for Greater Self-Awareness: A Handbook. She’s a recipient of a Professional Development grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, a National Endowment for the Arts program, and a past Writer in Residence at the Idaho Commission on the Arts’ Idapost Pen Pal project. Kelly holds professional memberships with the International Association for the Study of Dreams, where she has presented her work on dream studies and served on the board of directors, and the Academy of American Poets. You can find her at www.kellylydick.com.

What do you do when you’re not writing?

It’s so important for writers to have other things besides writing given it’s such a solitary thing. Thank you for asking! I’m not a person who sits down and forces a written quota per day or week. I wrote for a monthly magazine in the past and that deadline driven work was some of the best training in writing I have ever gotten during the course of my career. But I much prefer to court the muse—not race against the clock. When I’m not writing, I’m doing yoga, hiking, editing other authors’ books, taking my son to soccer games, coaching people on empowerment, leading ceremonies of cacao, helping my son learn music and how to speak Italian, journaling about my dreams, cooking, playing games or reading with my son, and spending time with my parents, friends, and family.

 

 

Describe your book poorly.

She’s a nosy girl. A really nosy girl. And she asks a lot of questions, too. If I were trying to keep a secret, I would find her annoyingly nosy. I mean, she’s likable for a main character. And we all have our flaws, her especially, but I still ponder whether or not I would actually be friends with her in real life. I could tell you what she does for a living, but that would be a spoiler alert. I could tell you what her father’s secret project is, but that would be a spoiler alert. I could tell you if her story ends on a high note, but that would be a spoiler alert, too. The main thing is, she’s a strong character. And she’s been heartbroken in her own strange way. Everyone can relate to that, right? And sometimes it takes a minute to morally sort yourself out, especially when your parents have passed away at a young-ish age, and you’re left without good role models. That’s where this one starts. But that’s not where it ends. I cried at the end when I wrote it. And cried again at the end when I proofread it before publication. And, honestly, I hope you cry at the end, too. If you don’t, then I didn’t do my job well enough.

 

If you could cast your characters in a movie, which actors would play them and why?

I so love this question because I often ponder this about all of my writings. And this is a multinational group of characters in Everything That’s Left Behind. It would be:

Rupali Jenga played by Kareena Kapoor Khan.

Nichola Rodale played by Phoebe Tonkin.

John Downing played by Jack Whitehall.

Alice Masterson by Stana Katic.

Rebecca Snow by Nathalie Emmanuel.

Dang Jin by Michelle Yeoh.

Kang & Guerin (both) by Ben Wang.

Alexander Rodale by Henry Cavill.

Deborah Rodale by Catherine Keener.

Roy Dubois by Sean Bean.

Pamela DuBois by Holly Hunter.

Catherine Rodale by Elizabeth Olsen.

Chase Bennett by Josh Hartnett.

Frank Murray by Miles Teller.

Henry Moorehouse by Danny Glover.

David Anderson by Liam Hemsworth.

Commander Williams by Hugo Weaving.

Amina by Halle Berry.

 

 

What are some of your favorite books and/or authors?

Ooohhhh…. So many to name it’s not fair. I will inevitably leave someone out… (Apologies in advance.)

Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes is what made me want to become a writer. So, naturally, Alice Hoffman as well. Allegra Hyde for her prose. Jenny Lawson for her humor. Marianne Wiggins for the longest extended metaphor in literary history; in my opinion at the very least she should have won the National Book Award for Evidence of Things Unseen, not just been a finalist. Jodi Picoult for keeping it real always, and Leaving Time is one of my all-time favorite books. Kristin Hannah for the best first line ever written, in her book The Nightingale. David Mitchell, for re-writing the way everyone sees the soul, in Cloud Atlas. Paul Corman Roberts for leading an example that to live and breathe and embody poetry as life as art in a seamless and inseparable way is absolutely possible. Dobby Gibson for Little Glass Planet. Michael Talbot for The Holographic Universe. And, the late souls who have left this plane, colleagues and mentors David Henderson, Jerome Rothenberg, Neeli Cherkovski, and Akilah Oliver.

 

What is your favorite book from childhood?

A tie between Bunnicula and The Phantom Tollbooth for single titles. My son is in elementary school and we recently read both of these together, and it was so wonderful to revisit these stories in a new context. I gifted him the actual vintage copies of both that I had saved for that exact reason, which was really special. But also, the entire Nancy Drew series. It doesn’t matter to me that the individual books weren’t written by the same writer under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. I still have all my old original hardcover copies, nearly a complete original set. It’s my childhood treasure.

What are you currently reading?

I never read just one book at a time! Currently, I’m reading The Gospel of Mary Magdalene translated by Leloup, The Spiritual Combat by Lawrence Scupoli, and The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson, apropos to summer.

I often refer to nonfiction reference books daily or weekly on a rotation, depending on what I’m doing. Current references are David Hawkins’ The Map of Consciousness Explained, Jose Luis Stevens’ The Shaman’s Book of Extraordinary Practices, and Brianna Wiest’s The Pivot Year.

And, with my son for his summer reading project, Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling, which is a really sweet little book, also set in Arizona.

Do you think you’d live long in a zombie apocalypse?

If the zombie apocalypse took place and I were stuck inside a bookstore, I would become quickly infected and die, bleeding all over the pages of bell hooks’ All About Love.

If I were somewhere else with my friends and family, we’d definitely be the last ones standing. My closest friends are Gen Xers, like me. I grew up in Chicago, and my dad was in the military. That’s an impermeable character backstory and a plot set-up to be able to survive anything.

Are you a toilet paper over or under kind of person?

This is so funny! I couldn’t care less. I actually once dated a guy who got mad at me because I put the toilet paper on the “wrong way.” I dumped him during that conversation and never talked to him again. But I admit, that experience crosses my mind from time to time, and I’m so grateful he wasn’t “the one.” I’m waaayyy too much of a free spirit to be worrying about the way my toilet paper hangs.

I also have several more books to write.

What songs would be on the soundtrack of your life?

I love this question, too! I’ve always lived and breathed music since I started piano when I was 5. I stuck with it in various forms over the years—played the flute in band, sang in choir, and had a music concentration in college. I LOVE to sing. This list is looooonnnggg and varied. How could it not be with more than four decades of history?

Van Morrison “Into the Mystic”

Tom Petty’s “Wildflowers”

Talking Heads “Once in a Lifetime”

Lionel Richie “Sail On” & “My Love” & “You Are”

Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks “Crystal”

Fleetwood Mac “Storms” and “Silver Springs”

Keith Garret “The Koln Concert”

Dave Matthews Band “Ants Marching” & “Lover Lay Down” & “I’ll Back You Up” & “Stay or Leave”

Patty Griffin “When it Don’t Come Easy”

Yazoo “Only You”

Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton “Islands in the Stream”

Christopher Cross “Sailing” & “Never Be the Same”

Alanis Morissette “You Learn” & “Thank You” & “Uninvited”

Radiohead “Everything in Its Right Place”

The Doors “Riders on the Storm” & “The End” & Indian Summer”

Led Zepplin “Fool in the Rain”

Omkara & Gotama “A Prayer”

Grateful Dead “Ripple”

Yaima “Rebirth” & “Pellucidity”

Rage Against the Machine “Mic Check”

Peter Gabriel “In Your Eyes”

The Cars “Drive”

Crowded House “Don’t Dream It’s Over”

Duran Duran “Ordinary World”

George Michael “Careless Whisper”

The Outfield “Your Love”

Heart “Alone”

RJD2 “Ghostwriter”

Wu-Tang Clan “CREAM”

GZA “Shadowboxin’”

The Roots “The Next Movement”

KRS-One “Step into a World”

Jedi Mind Tricks “The Three Immortals” & “The Deer Hunter”

Mazzy Star “Fade into You”

DJ Taz Rashid “Cloud Nine” & “Deep Sweet”

Justin Timberlake “Mirrors” & “What Goes Around Comes Around”

Ed Sheeran “I Don’t Care” & “Shivers”

Dua Lipa “We’re Good”

Justin Beiber “Holy” & “Ghost” and “Daisies”

Jay Sean and Lil Wayne “Down”

Sage 808, Ruby Chase & Equanimous “Kairos”

Khruangbin “People Everywhere”

Amistat “Seasons”

Enigma “Return to Innocence”

Everything Beethoven.

Okay, I’ll stop now.

Do you DNF books?

I never used to do this. Especially in college and grad school. If I started it, I was committing to finishing it. But as time has gone on, I feel like reading a book is an investment. It takes time that could be spent doing other things. I got really lean with my time and focus of energy after I became a mom. So now, if I don’t like something, it doesn’t resonate with me right away, or I struggle to engage, I disengage and move on to the next one. And I don’t feel weird or guilty about it either. It just wasn’t for me, or the wrong time for that particular story and resonance. And sometimes when it’s just that the timing and mood is off, I circle back to a book at another time and it’s the perfect book later.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Out now! 

Bookshop    |    Amazon

Nichola Rodale has followed in her father's footsteps, joining an elite team dedicated to creating a sustainable future for humanity. But when she stumbles upon information suggesting her father—a renowned scientist and brilliant puzzle maker—may not have died during The Great Drought as everyone believes, she begins to question everything, including the organization for which she works.

 

Determined to discover the truth, Nichola embarks on a perilous journey across the desolate American Southwest. Her search takes her from the remnants of Phoenix to an underground rebel café and, ultimately, to the legendary Valley of Fire—a place whispered about but believed by most to be nothing more than a myth.

 

As powerful forces close in and the lines between friend and foe blur, Nichola must stay true to her heart to navigate a world of loyalty, power, and betrayal. She will have to risk everything—including her own life—to protect her community, secure its future, and survive long enough to expose the truth about her father's work and uphold his legacy.