5 QUESTIONS

WITH ELAN MASTAI

Our booksellers Jenn & Rebecca got the chance to ask one of their favorite authors five questions. Of course they couldn't stop at just five...
Elan Mastai is the author the book All Our Wrong Todays and has been a screenwriter for the past fifteen years.
   

1. The concept for All Our Wrong Todays  is such an original twist on time travel. How did you come up with it?

 
I built a time machine and made some really bad personal decisions. The novel is basically autobiographical. No, look, I love time travel stories but it always bothered me that they rarely take into consideration that the Earth moves. Like, really fast and really far every single minute of the day. Traveling back in time even a short duration also means traveling in space an immensely far distance. I thought it would be fun to imagine a method of time travel that took actual orbital mechanics into consideration. From that super nerdy technical point the novel’s plot—which thankfully has very little to do with orbital mechanics—grew. I’d also been thinking a lot about how our ideas of utopia and dystopia had evolved since I was a kid and when it occurred to me I could combine both ideas, the novel slid into focus.
   

10 QUESTIONS

WITH DAN BROWN

 
Origin cover image
Inferno cover image
The Lost Symbol cover image
 

1. Art history has been crucial to many of your novels, with famous paintings playing key roles. Which Modern Art paintings or artists should readers study to prepare for your new novel?


I’d prefer to preserve the mystery by withholding the names of any specific paintings, but I will tell you that Langdon is a great admirer of Modernists Gaugin and Picasso. In this novel, as he moved into the world of Contemporary Art, Langdon must come down from his ivory tower, set aside his classical predilections, and navigate a landscape of avant-garde works that challenge his very definition of art.

5 QUESTIONS

WITH JOE HILL

Our bookseller Mike got the chance to ask one of his favorite authors five questions. Of course he couldn't stop at just five...
Joe Hill is the author of over a dozen books, including his latest, Strange Weather, and the Locke & Key comic series.
 
Strange Weather cover image
The Fireman cover image
NOS4A2 cover image

1. You have been successful in many forms of entertainment including Graphic Novels, Short Stories, Novellas, Films and Novels. Do you have a preference among them, and if so what was your favorite project to work on?


    Probably the new book, Strange Weather, has been my favorite. It's a collection of four short novels, stories about guns and the grotesque, the impossible and the unstoppable. I wrote them longhand over the course of the last five years, jotting them down in between more demanding projects. You could argue that the novella is the best of all literary forms. You get all the depth of characterization to be found in a full length novel, and all the pedal-to-the-floor energy of a short story. Most of all... they're fun to write.

5 QUESTIONS

WITH GARY SHTEYNGART

Our bookseller Jacky got the chance to ask one of her favorite authors five questions. Of course she couldn't stop at just five...
Gary Shteyngart is the author of Little Failure, one of our Best Books of 2014.
 
Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart
Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
The Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart
 

1. All of your insecurity-ridden characters speaks volumes to me, in so many ways. Will we ever meet a Shteyngart protagonist that is confident, suave and just generally not as self-loathing?


Oh, yeah, the character in the book I'm working on is not a COMPLETE loser! He actually thinks he's suave and confident. And he loves himself like any good American. Of course, train wreck ensues.

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