the 40 But 10: Natalia Loya

 

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 Natalia Loya. Natalia is lawyer/writer/amateur guitarist. When not wrangling legal briefs or weaving works of fiction, she’s usually out on a run or working on her Not Terrible Flamenco guitar skills. Her work blends her love of feminist history, emotional depth, and magical realism. She lives in Texas with her husband and three dogs.

What do you do when you’re not writing? 

I am an amateur musician and consider myself a so-so Flamenco guitarist. After my French historical died on submission, I took a writing hiatus for a couple of years. I took that time to throw myself into guitar and after a few years, I was able to play somewhat competently. I used to play piano as a teenager, and I recently bought a lightly-used Roland I got excited about. I have been busy getting ready for publication, but I am looking forward to jumping in again.

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

My answer to this has actually changed in the last five years! I used to joke that given my awful eyesight and poor hearing, I would never last—and I decided I would sacrifice myself early on in some altruistic moment, so that others could be saved. But then I picked up running and got laser eye correction—I can shoot a gun, and so realistically, given that I can run, shoot, and see fairly well now, I think my odds have drastically improved. The calculus for self-sacrifice has changed a bit!

What’s the best money you’ve ever spent as a writer? 

Hands down, it was hiring a specific designer to create my book cover. There were probably a hundred or more covers that would have suited the book, but I loved her style and artistic vision. She crafted a gorgeous design that really served the book.

What are your bookish pet peeves? 

I get annoyed when books are driven mostly by the unreliable narrator trope. I feel like it’s a structural trick to get people to turn pages, especially when the works lack interesting characters or an intriguing plot. I end up feeling manipulated and unsatisfied.

Are you a book hoarder or a book unhauler? 

Unhauler. Shoe collection aside, I have some minimalist tendencies. I tend to keep physical copies of books that have sentimental value to me, or that I use for research. Everything else gets sold back to used bookstores or purchased as an e-Book.

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

It would be St. Augustine of The Confessions. Brilliant philosopher and theologian who had incredible things to say not only of spirituality, but of the nature of time, and of the transformative capacity of the human spirit. His own life journey was remarkable and has served as inspiration for me during hard times. I have only read translations, but his writing is some of the most passionate I’ve ever encountered.

What’s the single best line you’ve ever read? 

It’s a line from All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. “So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?” Doerr’s prose itself is gorgeous, but he interweaves science and philosophy within a beautiful story in a way that demands stillness, introspection, and depth of thought. This line paralyzed me when I read it and evoked a richness of emotions and considerations. There are many lines in this book that are similar, but this was my favorite.

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

Favorite books are A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, East of Eden by Steinbeck, and All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. I love many of Stephen King’s books, and my favorites of his are Salem’s Lot and Revival. Kristin Hannah and Isabel Cañas are contemporary authors of historical fiction that I really admire.

What is your favorite way to waste time? 

I am an avid Redditor. Which is not always great when you have some compulsive reading behaviors! I am somewhat active, though I don’t comment much these days.

Do you DNF books? 

Yes, though not often, and I usually get at least a third of the way through before I call it quits. Life is too short and there are too many books that do vibe with me to spend time on ones that don’t.

What is your favorite book from childhood? 

The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Pinkwater, easy. It features Mr. Plumbean, who lives in a neighborhood that prides itself on maintaining identical, uniform houses. One day, his home gets splattered by a seagull carrying a can of orange paint. He goes along with it and mayhem erupts as the neighbors demand he fix this aberration. The book is ferociously anti-conformist, though as an adult, I wonder if it was inspired by someone battling their Home Owners’ Association.

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Pre-order

In a city teeming with revolution, science and passion offer their own strains of violence.

Petrograd, 1916 When her aristocratic family is left destitute, Mariya grows desperate to survive — and to support her widowed mother and sisters. She finds financial relief in a job with Dr. Nikolas Rodin, a reclusive scientist. While the work makes ends meet, Mariya is soon pulled into the eerie rhythm of the laboratory: a realm of orange gaslights, unsettling experiments, and a man whose genius is as seductive as it is unstable. 

Tuberculosis and revolution both ravage Russia. The chants of protest ring in the streets and when consumption strikes her household, Mariya must choose between her family’s security and a love that shatters all moral paradigms. Meanwhile, in the surreal shadows of the laboratory, both reality and sanity begin to bend. And when survival demands scientific progress at any cost, devotion itself becomes deadly.

Author links: 

Website   |   Facebook   |   Twitter   |   Bluesky   |   Instagram

Book Tour: Birds of Prey

 

Questions surrounding faith, deception, and control sit at the center of Birds of Prey Don’t Sing by Joe Cary. The story follows two men moving toward the same collision point from opposite directions, each convinced he understands how the game works.

Amazon | Goodreads

An elite assassin accepts a contract that seems impossible on paper: kill a priest and make the death appear to be an act of God. For Michael Harrier, impossible jobs are part of the appeal. His reputation has been built on precision and on a system designed to keep suspicion far from him.

Each assignment involves two targets. One victim dies while another person is left carrying the blame. The arrangement has protected Harrier for years, allowing him to stay untouchable while others pay the price.

But this time the details stop lining up. A violent past resurfaces through an unexpected connection, small mistakes begin to grow into larger problems, and Harrier finds himself improvising in ways he never planned for.

Meanwhile, homicide sergeant Jordan Becker is working a case that refuses to fit into any logical pattern. Every answer leads to another contradiction, and the closer Becker gets to the truth, the more dangerous the investigation becomes.

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1. Self-righteousness 

(n) a form of justification with a universal adapter 

1988 

The chaos quelled the urge to squeeze the trigger. A churning wall of fire and smoke consumed the horizon along the open savanna of Manovo-Gounda Saint Floris stretched before him. Thirty minutes earlier, it had looked serene, majestic even, the Africa of travel agency posters. But now Michael watched it burn. Belly down on a low ridge, he centered his eye on the scope and trained the crosshairs on the elephant charging east. Six hundred meters out. Smoke from a second fire streamed westward over her sloped forehead, hinting at the adjustment needed for wind drift. If the cross-wind swept the expanse, his targets might not hear the reports of his armor-piercing rounds. Michael breathed slowly and consciously and set his heartbeat as his metronome, as his father had taught. The distance implied six inches of error on each shot, but he expected less. Much less. 

He pivoted his M21 on its bipod, keeping the elephant in the crosshairs. She was graceful in full stride and really trucking—until one of her hind legs gave out. She staggered, and a tusk struck the ground, wrenching her neck as she collapsed beside a lone doka tree. Michael winced, and his breathing went to hell. Under splinters of shade, she raised her head and curled her trunk to trumpet at the sky, then heaved and surged to her feet. Divots of rusty dirt exploded around her as she lumbered forward, trampling a new path through the tall grass. 

Michael swung his rifle to the left, moving his sight picture one hundred meters west to the battered personnel carrier giving chase. The open-topped truck was World War II salvage, and it looked like it had served in every regional conflict since. Eleven men bounced and jostled on the benches behind the driver. A steadier man rode shotgun, standing in the footwell, one elbow over the windshield for support, firing AK47 bursts at the massive creature. The brush fire crept behind the truck as the men inside chased the elephant, two leopards, a rhino, and wild dogs into the trap ahead—the second fire. Michael’s gut clenched. He drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly until the rifle felt like a third arm again. The crosshairs drifted across his target, so he dialed in a parallax adjustment on the AO ring. Then he fired his first shot, cold bore. He missed the shooter, but the driver’s head snapped sideways in a red flash. The truck careened and slammed side‐ long into a dry runoff, hurling the rear passengers through the air in a barrage of arms, legs, and rifles. The shooter with the AK-47 had keeled over the windshield frame and smashed into the hood, his broken neck now so torqued that his chin was over his shoulder blade. 

His second shot ruptured the front right tire of the idling truck. Six of the survivors scrambled behind the vehicle—the only cover in sight—while the other five ransacked the tall grass for their weapons. He shot calmly at the exposed ones, each time letting the blast and recoil surprise him and each time dropping his target. Michael’s goals were clear: to protect those that couldn’t protect themselves, to turn poaching into a transi‐ tion game—and, although he would never admit it, to prove something to his old man. Never in his practice had rage surfaced like this—an ally at last—directing each round into a skull or ribcage. In ninety seconds, thirteen poachers with bountiful quarries became seven dead and six sheltered human animals. Spades, his father would have called them, but Michael secretly scoffed at such tired labels. Skin color was bark at best, and ignorant justification at worst. 

The six survivors behind the truck didn’t offer themselves as targets, and Michael knew better than to guess at their speculations. Clearly they couldn’t place his shots to locate him, because when those with weapons did return fire, they didn’t expose themselves. All Michael saw was the blind fear of barrels peering around the truck, each firing in a different direction. Not that their AKs could reach him at his range. And even if they were ten feet away, he was sure they wouldn’t have seen through his camouflage. 

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Joe Cary’s short stories have appeared in One Story, XRAY Literary Magazine, BULL, and MonkeyBicycle, and have also earned a Special Mention in the 2020 Pushcart Prize Anthology and a Best of the Net nomination. BIRDS OF PREY DON'T SING is his first novel. 

A former Angeleno, Joe currently lives with his family in Philadelphia where he fights money laundering, fraud, and other financial crimes. When he isn’t writing, he enjoys coaching his daughter’s flag football team and throwing frisbees to his dog, Pepper.  He has also been a volunteer adult literacy tutor in four cities. 

Visit Joe at his website.

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You can follow the tour on the 22nd

over at Read Love Blog and StoreyBook Reviews

The 40 But 10: Dave Housley

 

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 Dave Housley. Dave is the author of five novels and five story collections, most recently the novel-in-stories Aliens Attack! and the collection Looney. His work has appeared in Booth, Identity Theory, McSweeneys, Wigleaf, and some other places. He is one of the founding editors at Barrelhouse, and the primary organizer of the Conversations and Connections: Practical Advice on Writing, which is held in DC in the Spring. He is the Director of Web Strategy for Penn State Online Education.

How do you celebrate when you finish writing a new book?

I might pour myself a drink and pat myself on the back a little. It’s a big achievement, just to finish something, and I definitely believe in celebrating those milestones.

Then…I suck it up and do the next part, which is going through the process of trying to find somebody to publish the book, getting rejected, and hopefully eventually finding a publisher. I was joking to a friend the other day that I feel kind of like the Kevin Costner character from Bull Durham, who sets the dubious record for most home runs in the minor leagues. Aliens Attack! is my tenth published book, which I’m really proud of, of course. But every single one of those books was written and then either pitched to agents first, failed at attracting an agent, and then submitted to places that were open to unagented submissions. I have a science fiction book out right now at something like twelve places, and I’m probably about a month away from having a shitty but finished first draft of a book that, if it works out how I think it will work out, will be one I where I start with trying to find an agent. It’s a weird situation to be in, having published a fair amount of work that I’m really proud of, but also every single time I’m writing a book, I’m truly not sure if it will ever be published, or if this is the one that’s just going to be a word file on my computer.

Summarize your book using only gifs or emojis.

 

 

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

Well, there are more than a few “shitty dude” stories in this book. They’re mostly fuckups who can’t quite see themselves clearly and are self-inflicting most of the damage they’re incurring, so on one hand, these shitty dudes are not a great hang. On the other, I think most of them are created in my own image and based on my own worst instincts and traits, so…maybe? Those are the humans in this book, which is a book about an alien invasion, and where a group of interconnected people are at the moment of the invasion, and how they react when they are really faced with the end. The book also has a number of chapters/stories written from the perspective of the aliens, and I think would get along with most of them, because those stories are mostly about getting what you think you want, and still being sad.

What are you currently reading?

I’m currently very consciously and proactively trying to write a book that works like an Elmore Leonard book but has the shaggy dog spirit of the Big Lebowski, so I am literally reading nothing but Elmore Leonard books. I just finished 52 Pickup and started a re-read of Get Shorty.

What’s the one book someone else wrote that you wish you had written?

I think Strangers on a Train is not only one of the best thrillers ever written, just a completely canonical story, but also the funniest book I’ve ever read.

What’s the single best line you’ve ever read?

I’m going to cheat and use a line from a movie if that’s okay, because I watched the movie A Simple Plan (also a great book) and there’s a line that I can’t get out of my head. Billy Bob Thornton plays this kind of simple fail-brother to Bill Paxton’s lead character. I won’t give away the ending, but the context is they’re arguing over a big decision that Billy Bob thinks will set his life in a new direction. So far, that life has been extremely limited – he’s never been outside their small town or had a real relationship. “I just want to know what people do,” he says.

Do you read the reviews of your books or do you stay far far away from them, and why?

I read them. I feel like if you’re going to be a writer you really need to develop a thick skin, and at this point I’ve been doing this for a long time, so I generally don’t mind if something doesn’t land with a reader, even if that person then goes on to write a middling or bad review somewhere. It’s all so subjective. Of course I like it a lot better when somebody has good things to say about a book!  

If you could time travel, would you go back to the past or forward into the future?

I was born in 1967, so I was around for a few years of the Sixties, but, well, I was a baby. I feel like I very much grew up in the shadow of the Sixties, and free love and hippies and all of the cultural change that happened in that decade. I soaked up a lot of it, but I definitely missed it, and if I could go back to any time, I think I’d go back there and experience it as a slightly older young person.

What songs would be on the soundtrack of your life?

For this book it’s been David Bowie space songs all the way. A number of the chapters are named after Bowie songs or lyrics: I’m Happy, Hope You’re Happy Too, Very Different Today, and Waiting in the Sky are all chapters in Aliens Attack! Writing the book and planning the launch party, I must have listened to Life on Mars, Starman, Lady Stardust, the Ziggy Stardust a million times.

What are your bookish pet peeves?

It is really hard to write funny. This is something I learned reading for Barrelhouse very early on in my writing career. Trying and failing at being funny is a terminal condition for a story or a novel. You really can’t get past it. So many books that are thought of as comic are really just broad, and the humor is a kind of flailing, look-at-these-assholes humor. I think when something is really funny, like the George Saunders story “Sea Oak,” for instance, there’s a real sadness at the heart of things that I don’t think is present in a lot of the books that are marketed as funny, comical, farcical, whatever. But as I already said, I think Strangers on a Train is the funniest book I’ve ever read, so maybe my funny is a little different.

 

 

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Released April 2026

Goodreads link

Told through the men and women—and aliens—who experienced it firsthand, Dave Housley's sci-fi novel ALIENS ATTACK! presses us with the big question: what would you do at the end of the world? Intertwining the depth of sonder with the honesty of reality, Housley brings us the truth of what an alien invasion would look like in each of our lives. From a woman who realizes the man she’s about to marry has a dark secret to a priest addicted to oxycontin holed up with a choir he despises, ALIENS ATTACK! is pockmarked with wry humor, pop culture references, and authenticity. Housley holds the mirror up for us and tells us to behold what we cannot run away from—ourselves.