LibraryThing is pleased to sit down this month with screenwriter, playwright and novelist Blair Fell, two-time winner of the Doris Lippman Prize in Creative Writing from the City University of New York for his novels, The Sign for Home (2022) and the brand new Disco Witches of Fire Island (2025). The Sign for Home, his debut, was both an Indies Next and Indies Introduce book, as well as being selected for library community reads, and long-listed for the Center For Fiction’s First Book Prize. Fell has written for television and theater, winning the Shine Award for his work on the television program Queer As Folk, and a Golden Mic award for his segment on the public television series California Connected. He is the author of dozens of plays, and has won the HX Camp comedy award, seven Dramalogue awards, and The Robbie Award. His essays have appeared in magazines and on websites such as Huffington Post, Out Magazine, New York Daily News, and Fiction Southeast. In addition to his career as a writer, actor and director, he has been an ASL interpreter for the Deaf since 1993. His second novel, Disco Witches of Fire Island, an LGBTQ+ fantasy romance featuring a coven of witches on Fire Island, is due out from Alcove Press in early May. Fell sat down with Abigail to answer some questions about his new book.

Disco Witches of Fire Island opens in 1989, and features a young hero who has recently lost his boyfriend to the HIV/AIDs epidemic, and who goes to spend the summer on New York’s Fire Island. How did the story first come to you? Did the character of Joe appear first, was it the idea of a young man who had recently lost his boyfriend, or was it something else?

Oddly enough, the character of Joe came to me last, since he is the one that mirrors me, but isn’t really me. He was definitely the most difficult character to create. It’s hard to fully see oneself, so I created a character that experiences much of what I had experienced at that age but probably is a bit more likable than me and slightly taller. (Haha)

As far as the rest of the characters, so many of them are amalgams of people I met during the height of the AIDS Crisis. My first partner died from complications due to the HIV virus while we were both still in our twenties. To complicate matters he had broken up with me two years prior, and I was still very much in love with him. Needless to say this was an extremely difficult thing to get over. In its aftermath, there was a series of life-altering events, including getting fired from a job, and then a whirlwind last-minute trip to China where I decided to be a writer. It was just after that trip when I moved to Fire Island Pines and landed a job as a bartender, and moved into the attic of those quirky “old” gay men (just as Joe, the main character, does). They were a hoot, and there was lots of drama. They’d play old disco all day, cook illicit substances on the stove, and (one of them) would make huge ornate hats to go out dancing in the wee hours. These men became like witches in my mind. So really the witches, and some other characters came to me first, because I had people to model them after.

Your book unfolds during a period of historic significance for the LGBTQ+ community. How did this inform the way you told the story, and what do you think readers of today can learn from these events?

I moved to NYC around 1988, and was trying to figure out my life, and get over that broken heart. It felt like everyone was dying or sick at the time (and a huge percentage of them were), and I had a sense of absolute helplessness. At that point I attended my first gay pride parade and saw ACT UP (The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) marching. I couldn’t believe there were people trying to fight the disease and government inaction. I left the sidelines of the parade and joined. (It was also at that parade I coincidentally saw my first lover for the last time – he is the person who would become “Elliot” in the novel.) Getting involved in activism completely changed my life.

I wanted to capture that shift from victim to actor in the fight. I also wanted younger people to know what it was like at that moment of history, when looking for love could be so fraught. Sadly, we are at another terrible moment in our history, and the book, despite being an historical romance of sorts, very much speaks to what we as a nation – and more specifically – what we as members of the queer community are facing now. It names the Great Darkness of hatred, and suggests that when a malevolent force like our current government is working against you, sitting in the despair of the oppression is not the solution… action is, whether that means protesting, donating, volunteering, making art and most importantly banding together. As several of the manifesto quotes in the book suggest, when confronted with the Great Darkness, the only solution is collective action… and to keep dancing.

Did you always know your story was going to feature witches? What does magic allow you to do, from a storytelling perspective, that couldn’t be accomplished otherwise?

One of the first inspirations for the book were those older roommates of mine on Fire Island, and how they suggested these lovable, quirky witches — cooking mysterious things on the stove, dressing in outlandish costumes, whimsical and sometimes mysterious references to things I didn’t understand. The other reason for the magic is to underline all those magical beings we lost due to the AIDS crisis and government inaction.

The world was very dark – and it feels that way again. The book is about getting one’s magic back in the face of that darkness. The magic in the book isn’t the wave-a-wand-and-go-poof sort of magic. It’s a type of magic rooted in the connection between lovers and friends – it’s a collective magic, that only comes from group effort. The use of magic allowed me to emphasize the other worldly quality of connection and put a button on the “otherness” of being queer.

Another inspiration for the book was from a late friend, Stephen Gendin, whom I met in ACT UP. He had once told me that he had a hope to create a “religion” based on the transcendence he experienced on the dance floors of gay dance clubs. This always stuck with me. So, yes, the witches in the book do have some limited magical abilities – especially when they are in unity with their fellows – but their practice is more of a spiritual nature and comes with its own “bible” of sorts, The Disco Witch Manifesto, which is quoted at the beginning of every chapter.

What made you choose Fire Island as the setting for your story? Have you spent time there yourself?

Like I mentioned, I had spent that one summer working in Fire Island Pines as a bartender in the early 1990s. I also did visit for several summers after that. Though I tend to be much more of a Ptown sort of guy these days – I like biking and the ability to leave without the benefit of a boat. Though P-Town has become more and more unaffordable. We need NEW gay meccas where the queer artists, writers and witches can afford to go.

You write in a number of different genres, from essays to plays. What distinguishes the process of writing novels? Are there particular challenges or rewards?

I never even dreamed of writing a novel when I first started writing. That was way too big for me. But now looking back, I probably should have started much earlier. My first go at a full-length play was a serialized story where the audience would have to come back to the theater twelve times to see the whole thing. You read that right – twelve times. I think I always wanted to take my time with a story. I also thought I needed actors to make my writing good. With novels I arrived very, very late to the game and sort of accidentally found my way to my first novel. What happened was, I had an idea for a play and sat down to write it, but it just didn’t want to be a play. It wanted to be a novel. I was at a point in my life where I had nothing to lose, and I just faked it, one chapter after the next. I’d bring it into my writing group, and then after a few years, finished it, sent it to an agent, and then after a few revisions, he took it and sold it. It appeared I was able to write novels, and now I don’t want to do much else. I love the long journey of them, the surprises, the creation of worlds, and multiple characters.

A play or a TV show is inherently a collaborative process, and you also need to wait around for others to bring the project to fruition. With a novel, I get to say when and where the important work happens, and that’s a more comfortable place for me – especially since I’m not at all patient.

What is next for you? Are you working on more novels, or more plays? Do you think Disco Witches of Fire Island will ever be adapted in film?

Well, I certainly would love to see Disco Witches of Fire Island get adapted. I think it would be a great limited series as well. I do love writing essays and memoir, but I still have the novel-writing bug, so I’m probably sticking with that for the time being. We shall see. I don’t think there will be more plays or TV anytime soon, but I’ll never say never.

As far as books go, I’m currently working on two new novels, one of which, a pansexual Elizabethan romance, is out there being read by editors as we speak, while the fourth is just starting to make an appearance in my Scrivner software, but I’m torn about which of two ideas I want to live with for the next few years. Starting something new is never easy, especially with the distractions of this messed up world in which we’re living, but I’m willing to knuckle down and do the grind. It’s all about throwing down words and separating the shit from the sparkles.

Tell us about your library. What’s on your own shelves?

Nearby on my shelves are books by some newer writers I love, like James Hannaham, Tim Murphy, David Ciminello, Sidney Karger, Daniel Meltz as well as some of the gay classics like Mary Renault’s The Persian Boy, James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, everything Isherwood wrote, and Holleran’s Dancer From the Dance. I also have non-gay classics like Salinger, Toni Morrison, John Irving.

What have you been reading lately, and what would you recommend to other readers?

I’m currently reading Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends, which I am really enjoying. I just finished reading Klara and The Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro and liked the heck out of it. I loved Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. Some other books that changed my life are The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck, George Saunders’ short stories, Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life, and Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman (I know he can be controversial since he isn’t gay, but I truly loved it. The sequel… ugh. Not so much. That seemed to be a book he was forced to write.) One last one is almost a cliché, but Letters To A Young Poet by Rilke holds an extra special place. I know I’m forgetting other authors that have changed my life, but they’ll all have to forgive me. I’ve been known to forget really important things.

LibraryThing is pleased to sit down this month with internationally bestselling novelist Tess Gerritsen, author of the popular Rizzoli & Isles crime series, subsequently adapted as a television show on TNT. Earning her medical degree at UC San Francisco, Gerritsen was a physician for a number of years, before making her book debut in 1987 with the romantic thriller, Call After Midnight. It was the first of thirty-one suspense novels—more romantic thrillers, as well as medical thrillers, police procedurals and historical thrillers—many of them bestsellers. Gerritsen’s work has been translated into forty languages, with more than forty million copies of her books sold worldwide. She won a Rita Award in the suspense category in 2002 for The Surgeon, and a Nero Wolfe Award in 2006 for Vanish. In 2023 she published The Spy Coast, the story of former spy Maggie Bird, whose attempts at a quiet life are disrupted by her past, and who successfully outwits the enemies who want her dead, with the help of her friends in the Martini Club. The Summer Guests, the second book in The Martini Club series, is due out from Thomas & Mercer in a few days. Gerritsen sat down with Abigail to answer some questions about her new book.

Although you have written many different kinds of suspense novel, your The Martini Club books are your first foray into espionage fiction. What prompted you to write The Spy Coast in the first place, and how did the character of Maggie Bird first come to you?

The Spy Coast was inspired by a peculiar feature of my small Maine town. I discovered that a large number of retired CIA employees live in this community. In fact, on the street where I once lived, there was an OSS retiree to the right of us, and a CIA retiree living a few doors down to the left of us. What drew former intelligence professionals to this part of Maine? I’ve heard a number of different explanations: That it’s far from any nuclear targets. Or it was a place for CIA safe houses. Or it’s a state where people mind their own business. I also wondered what life is like for an ex-spy. Do they get together with their former colleagues? Do they have book clubs? I’d see gray-haired people in the grocery store and post office, and I wondered about their past exploits. Surely they had stories to tell! Then one day, a character’s voice popped into my head. She said: “I’m not the woman I used to be.” And that’s how Maggie Bird was born, a woman whose voice was full of regret. A woman who’s now invisible to the world because she’s no longer young.

The Summer Guests is your second book about the Martini Club. Are there challenges in writing a sequel? How have your characters grown or changed?

The challenge is in keeping your characters moving forward emotionally. They can’t be static, or the series loses steam. What makes it easier, though, is the fact I know these people. I know how they’d react, what they’d say, how they’d rise to a new challenge. There are several new developments in The Summer Guests. Maggie is finally open to falling in love again, now that she realizes her oldest friend and fellow spy Declan has always pined for her. Another big change is in Jo Thibodeau, the local police chief, who is slowly starting to accept help from this circle of spies. In the first book, she had no idea who these people were; now she knows, and she acknowledges that they’re always going to be a few steps ahead of her. That budding partnership has been fun to write.

The books in your series are set in small-town Maine, a state where you yourself have lived for many years. How much of the town of Purity and the surrounding area is inspired by real locales?

Geographically, Purity is very much like my real town, with a stunning seacoast and lakes and ponds and the hordes of tourists that show up every summer. It’s also a town with a certain amount of conflict between native Mainers and those who’ve come “from away.” But fictional Purity is smaller, with a smaller police force, and I’ve made it just a bit more remote than my own town.

Your series has been compared to The Thursday Murder Club books, which also feature a cast of older sleuths (one a retired spy!) and their interaction with local law enforcement. What makes older sleuths and spies so interesting? Is it their experience? Their longer back stories, or potential wisdom? Are they more fun to write?

I hadn’t read The Thursday Murder Club books when I wrote The Spy Coast. The reason I was drawn to write about older people has more to do with growing older myself. I couldn’t have written these books thirty years ago; I needed to experience the phenomenon of becoming invisible and feeling as if society viewed me as less and less relevant because I’m older. I wanted to write about people my age, and how we still have valuable contributions to make, and yes— we’re still ready for adventure! The fun of writing about these characters is watching how my retired spies can outsmart Jo, who’s much younger, and how they’ve acquired not just wisdom with age, but also some well-earned cynicism.

Tell us a little bit about your writing process. Do you know the outcome of your story from the start? Is everything mapped out ahead of time, or are there surprises in the course of getting the story written?

I’m a seat-of-the-pants writer, which means my first drafts meander all over the place until I figure out where the story is going. The Summer Guests was inspired by a detail shared with me by the adult daughter of a former spy—that her family settled in this community because her father was working here on the CIA project called MKULTRA. That made me dive into MKULTRA, its history and ultimate scandals. I knew that would be one of the threads of the story. But the real heart of the story is about wealthy
summer people who come to Maine every year, bringing their secrets and their conflicts to our state. I knew it would start with a missing teenager. I knew the police would drag the local pond (thinking the girl had drowned) and instead find the skeleton of a long-dead woman. That’s all I knew about the plot, so I had to hang on tight as the twists and turns revealed themselves while I wrote.

What is next for you? Will there be more stories about The Martini Club? Are there other books in the works that you can share with us?

I’m writing the third in the Martini Club series. It’s called The Shadow Friends, and it focuses on Ingrid Slocum, one of the members of the Martini Club. She’s now living in Purity, happily married to her husband Lloyd (a former analyst). Then two people are murdered, with echoes of a long-ago operation in Ingrid’s past, and Ingrid’s ex-lover shows up in town. Suddenly Ingrid finds her marriage and her peaceful life under threat.

Tell us about your library. What’s on your own shelves?

In my reference area, I have shelves and shelves of textbooks on medicine and forensics, CIA memoirs and books about spycraft. I also have a pretty eclectic collection of other nonfiction, with a focus on anthropology, archaeology, and comparative religion. Finally, I have loads of novels by fellow writers—books that I admired and want to keep around as inspiration.

What have you been reading lately, and what would you recommend to other readers?

Since the current political situation is very much on my mind, I’m reading a truly eye-opening book by historian Colin Woodard called American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. It explains the history behind why the United States continues to be so difficult to unite.

LibraryThing is pleased to sit down this month with filmmaker and author Rosanne Limoncelli, the Senior Director for Film Technologies at the Kanbar Institute and at the Martin Scorsese Virtual Production Center, both part of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She has written, directed, and produced documentaries, educational films and short narrative films, and has taught writing and filmmaking for more than three decades. Limoncelli’s first book, Teaching Filmmaking: Empowering Students Through Visual Storytelling, was published in 2009. She has published short stories in the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Suspense Magazine and Noir Nation. Her debut mystery novel, The Four Queens of Crime—offered in our January Early Reviewers batch—is due out next month from Crooked Lane Books. Limoncelli sat down with Abigail to answer some questions about her new book.

The Four Queens of Crime follows a woman detective chief inspector in 1930s London who enlists the aid of four famous mystery writers—Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham—in solving her case. How did the idea for the story first come to you?

I love reading biographies of my favorite authors because I always wonder what experiences from their lives might’ve made it into their books. I love the psychology. Reading about Agatha Christie led me to the other three and it fascinated me that these four women were the bestselling authors of the 30’s. How amazing was that! The lives of Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham were just as fascinating, and of course I started wondering if they had ever met and that led me to, what if they did meet and got involved in a murder case? Would there have been a woman DCI they could’ve collaborated with? And then I found Lilian Wyles, the first woman DCI at Scotland Yard. And miraculously, she had a memoir!

Were you an admirer of these four authors’ work, before beginning your book? Which one is your favorite, and why?

That’s too hard a question! I think that sometimes I’m in the mood for one author over another, and they constantly switch places for number one. I love Christie’s puzzles, Ngaio’s characters, Allingham’s language, and the patter between Sayers’ protagonists. In the book they talk to each other about writing and how different they are from each other. That was one of the fun things about writing them as characters. I will say that for each author I have my favorite titles in all formats, hard cover, kindle and
Audiobook, and I go back to them often, not just for research reasons, I need to keep in touch with the main characters like they are real people in my life.

What sort of research did you have to do on your four queens, in order to incorporate them as characters in your story, and what were some of the most interesting things you learned?

I’m a research nerd, and I went way overboard researching all four authors, consuming all their books, plus articles, biographies, documentaries, movies and tv shows of their work, and the time period, 1938. I’m lucky that my husband has always been into the history of World War Two so we watched a lot of feature films and documentaries from and about that era. The four queens all came alive for me quickly, mainly through their biographies. I found it interesting to notice the differences between the four writers, as well as their similarities. For example, they were all big lovers of Shakespeare, they each had very different writing styles, they all grew up so differently. Agatha was home schooled, Dorothy was one of the first women to get a degree from Oxford, Ngaio was a painter and travel writer before she wrote mysteries, and Margery grew up surrounded by writers. I got very interested in the accuracy of their real lives pertaining to my story, figuring out the possible real time they could’ve spent together. The spring of 1938 would’ve been the last chance for them to meet before the war, since Ngaio Marsh returned to New Zealand shortly after that spring. I also noticed that they all had a change in their writing careers right about that time, so I imagined that the experiences on that weekend of my imagined murder changed them personally to bring about that literary change.

What influence has your career as a filmmaker had on your mystery writing? Would you say you were a visual storyteller? Do you see the scenes and characters before writing them?

I do think I see scenes and characters before I write them, which actually can make it more challenging for me because I forget I have to translate my visual imagination into text so I often leave things out without noticing. An early reader will mention they’d like more description of a certain place or person, and since I see it so clearly in my mind, I have to remind myself that no one else can see it, that I actually have to put it into words! But what is the same for me, in writing films and writing fiction, is the story structure. The logic and sequence of what happens and what should happen next is my favorite part and I make charts and spreadsheets and notes and lists obsessively before writing a project and throughout the whole process. It’s the puzzle of the story that I love the most. Building it up, breaking it down, deciding on the clues and all the information that leads to the climax and makes for a convincing ending, sorting and resorting every detail until it makes sense to me and I’m satisfied with it.

You have written short stories, films, and an academic text, but this is your first novel. Was the writing process any different, when working on this kind of text?

Technically this is the fifth novel I’ve written, just the first one to be published. (Keep writing out there, writers!) Each project is a bit different for me, but one thing that was quite similar in this project and the academic text (which stemmed from the dissertation for my PhD) was the research. In both cases I didn’t know exactly what I was going to write, at first, but I kept reading what interested me and taking lots of notes and underlining sentences, and marking sections with Post-It notes and noting links of websites and movie clips, then when it had gathered a certain satisfying accumulation, I stopped. I looked at everything I had gathered, all the notes, and sections, and visual images, etc. and it all seemed to magically come together thematically and emotionally. Like I was making a collage that found its shape from my subconscious. I think that the story starts to form itself in the back of my mind, while I’m gathering the research, and the story writing is easier after that once I get down to it.

What’s next? Will there be more stories featuring DCI Lilian Wyles? Might there be a film adaptation?

I am working on a sequel that takes place two years later. The war is raging and there are different problems to solve. This story is still a murder mystery puzzle, and Lilian Wyles leads the case, with help from the four queens, but it has a bit of a spy thriller spice added to it. I’m constantly inspired by the parallels from that time and our current day issues, there are so many similarities. As far as a film adaptation, I’d love to adapt The Four Queens of Crime into a feature or a tv series, we’ll see what happens!

Tell us about your library. What’s on your own shelves?

Besides the Four Queens of course, because they fill a lot of my shelves! (And by my “shelves” I mean paper books, E-readers and audio books.) A sampling of other books on my shelves include: P.D. James, John Irving, John Le Carré, Edith Wharton, Raymond Chandler, Graham Greene, and I’m a science fiction fan also, Octavia E. Butler, William Gibson, N.K. Jemisin, and Ray Bradbury.

What have you been reading lately, and what would you recommend to other readers?

I just finished reading every Mick Herron book in the Slow Horses series. The TV show is great and the audio books are also very well done. I just read Still Life by Louise Penny who is amazing! I can’t wait to read all of her work. I just started All Systems Red by Martha Wells. I will definitely be reading the whole Murderbot series. When I am trying to make a lot of progress with my writing projects, I have to ban myself from reading because I won’t get enough writing done or get enough sleep!

LibraryThing is pleased to sit down this month with poet and book publicist Kim Dower, who has worked with authors from Kristin Hannah to Paolo Coelho through her freelance literary publicity company, Kim-from-L.A. The City Poet Laureate of West Hollywood from October 2016 – October 2018, she is the author of five previous collections of poetry, including the bestselling I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom (2022), which was praised by The Washington Post as a “fantastic collection.” Her first collection, Air Kissing on Mars (2010), was praised by the Los Angeles Times as “sensual and evocative… seamlessly combining humor and heartache.” Her work has appeared in literary publications such as Plume, Ploughshares, Rattle, The James Dickey Review, and Garrison Keillor’s “The Writer’s Almanac.” Her newest book, What She Wants: Poems on Obsession, Desire, Despair, Euphoria, will be published later this month by Red Hen Press. Dower sat down with Abigail to answer some questions about her work, and this new book.

What She Wants is your sixth poetry collection, and addresses the theme of obsessive love. What was the inspiration behind the book? Did it begin with a specific poem, a personal experience you wanted to explore, or something else?

I was reading an article (can’t remember where!) and came upon the word “Limerence.” I thought it was a beautiful sounding word, and it’s meaning, the state of being obsessively infatuated with someone, usually accompanied by delusions of or a desire for an intense romantic relationship with that person, fascinated me! I became obsessed with a word that meant to be obsessed!  I realized I had many finished poems and many in the works that fit into this category, so I built a collection based on this idea and the four stages of limerence: infatuation, crystallization, deterioration and ecstatic release.

What makes poetry unique, as a form of literary expression? Is it just the structure that makes it different from prose, or does it communicate in different ways?

Because poetry is the most concise form of language, good poems will stir our emotions with a clarity and intensity that immediately takes hold in the reader. There’s an emotional honesty in poems that connects poet to reader to create a shared experience. It has been said that prose is like walking and poetry is like dancing. A single, short poem has the power to simultaneously comfort and terrify. The poet W.H. Auden says, “poetry is the clear expression of mixed feelings,” and this is true for the poet as she writes and the reader as well.

Can you tell us a little bit about your writing process? How does a poet begin a poem?

I don’t know how all poets begin a poem, but I begin one after being stirred or moved by something, something personal or something I’ve read or overheard. Or something I think is funny. I often read a news headline or hear something on the radio as I’m driving that immediately says THIS IS A POEM! I was once driving, listening to the local news, and the headline, talking about a new public school decision was, “They’re Taking Chocolate Milk Off the Menu!” I pulled over and wrote a poem with that title. Later, after it was published, Garrison Keillor read it on “The Writer’s Almanac.” Poems are everywhere and I use everything I see and hear as a prompt – whether it’s something whimsical that strikes me, or something more profound like hearing a dead parent speak to me.

How has working with so many different authors, through your activities as a publicist, affected your writing?

The only way working hard at a “day” job has affected my writing is I’m very focused when I sit down to write. I’ve learned how to separate the two kinds of work and my brain and mind like knowing and appreciate the difference!

You were Poet Laureate of the city of West Hollywood for two years. What sort of things did you do as a poet laureate?

It was so much fun creating different activities, readings and events and introducing people to poetry who otherwise never thought about it. My favorite project was creating a collaborative poem with people in the city. The City of West Hollywood is committed to the arts and supported all of my ideas. We designed a large pad with three prompts and I spent a few months asking strangers at local bookstores, cafes, parks, to participate in reading a prompt and writing some lines. People really enjoyed it and I created a powerful poem consisting of all their lines called, “I Sing the Body West Hollywood.” We made posters. We celebrated!

Who are some of your favorite poets, and how has their work influenced your own?

I have so many favorites and so many whose work has influenced my own. More than influence – whose work has given me permission to build my own voice. I love Frank O’Hara – New York School of Poets – who’s influenced my “conversational” often breezy style while still packing a punch! William Carlos Williams, whose poetry has taught me to strive to make each poem a “fine machine.” Erica Jong, Sharon Olds and Kim Addonizio, for their passion, beauty, perceptions; Thomas Lux, Ron Padgett, Stephen Dunn, for humor mixed with deep emotion and insight. W.H. Auden for his style. This list could go on and on.

Tell us about your library. What’s on your own shelves?

I have hundreds and hundreds of books! I love all kinds of fiction, biographies, memoir, but upstairs, in my “Poetry Palace” I have only poetry – books I’ve kept and carried for 50 years – from college through today. I have a marvelous collection from Shakespeare to contemporary poets. Occasionally, just to calm myself, I will sit on the floor and take a random book off the shelf, read one or two poems, and place it back. This morning, for example, it was Diane di Prima’s book, The Poetry Deal. I read from it aloud. Now I can go on with my day.

What have you been reading lately, and what would you recommend to other readers?

I’m re-reading Vivian Gornick’s amazing, gorgeous memoir, Fierce Attachments, about her relationship with her mother. It’s a classic and each time I read it I discover something else – not only about her – but about myself.

I’m also re-reading Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St Vincent Millay, a great poet and a fascinating star of poetry.

My poet friend, Nina Clements – who was also a Librarian – sent me a book called Monsters by Claire Dederer, which I’m enjoying, about the link between genius and monstrosity. How do we balance our love of some artists knowing the awful things they’ve done. This is a subject that constantly fascinates me.

And I’m slowly reading and loving the poems in Kim Addonizio’s new collection, Exit Opera.

LibraryThing is pleased to sit down this month with author and attorney Lori B. Duff, who had a thirty-year career as a lawyer and municipal court judge before turning to writing. A blogger and columnist as well, she has served as president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Her humorous essays have appeared in newspapers, on blogs, and in published collections such as The Armadillo, the Pickaxe, and the Laundry Basket (2015), You Know I Love You Because You’re Still Alive: Confessions of a Middle Aged Working Mom (2016) and If You Did What I Asked in the First Place (2019). She has now turned to fiction writing, and her debut novel, the courtroom drama Devil’s Defense, was published last month by She Writes Press. Duff sat down with Abigail to answer some questions about this new book.

Devil’s Defense follows a small-town lawyer who finds herself drawn into a case representing a client she doesn’t particularly admire. How did the idea for the story first come to you? Were there specific social or legal themes you wanted to explore, or did they develop naturally?

I was watching the confirmation hearings of a politician who shall remain nameless. This guy was an arrogant, entitled guy with only a passing understanding of consent. Several thoughts struck me at once while I was watching this, including— 1) I was tired of arrogant, entitled guys like that getting positions of leadership and I wanted to understand why; 2) Probably this guy had handlers who had prepped him for this hearing and he was too egotistical to follow their advice. I pictured them watching this at home cussing him up and down and I thought of how many times I’d coached a client and they refused to listen to my advice to their own detriment; 3) What goes on in the head of these guys? What makes them tick? So the character of Coach stood in for this guy, and Jessica is the one trying to make heads or tails of him. In addition to exploring those issues, I wanted to portray what happens behind the scenes in these situations. How you can’t necessarily blame the lawyer for what they’re being paid to say, and how the system only works when everyone has adequate representation.

Your career in the law must have been an influence when writing the story. Were there any incidents or aspects of the story taken from real life? Was there anything that was new to you, or that you had to research for the book?

If the adage “write what you know” is true, then that’s exactly what I did. My career was obviously an influence. I know what happens when clients and lawyers interact and clash. I know what happens in a courtroom. I did not use any of my clients’ stories in the book—I want everyone I’ve ever represented to know that I will always maintain their
confidentiality. That said, when you’ve been practicing law for 30+ years like I have, there are going to be things you say and hear all the time. I did have to research the back child support issue. I’ve never had a legitimation case where the child was that old, so I didn’t know how the law would handle it. The cases Jessica cites are real cases. I also looked up some things like the weather on particular dates, and what songs were in the top 40 at a particular moment in time.

Your heroine lives in a small Georgia town, just as you do. What realities about small-town life in Georgia does your story reflect? Do you feel the story would be the same, if set in a different part of the country?

Absolutely not. The fictional Ashton, Georgia is just as much a character in the book as any of the people. There’s a particular way that southerners talk and view the world, there are southern foods and places. I had to argue a lot of it with my editors, who weren’t southern. For example, a number of scenes take place in a Waffle House, which has its own culture. Apparently, the dictionary and style manuals say that fried shredded potatoes are written “hash browns”. But the Waffle House menu has it at one word—hashbrowns. So I insisted that we spell it the southern, Waffle House way. But there’s more to it than spelling. The weather affects the way people act. The expectations that you will speak kindly to people you can’t stand. The way a majority of the population looks at everything through a religious lens.

Devil’s Defense was your first novel, but not your first book. Were there differences between writing a novel, when compared to writing essays or other shorter works? Were there specific challenges, or things you particularly enjoyed about it?

I enjoy a good challenge, so there’s a good bit of overlap between the challenges and what I enjoyed about the process. I can dash off an 800 word essay and be done with it. But a novel requires not only more time but keeping more balls in the air. You’ve got to remember everyone’s height and eye color. You’ve got to remember how many days pass between one event and another. And who knows what and when and how they figured it out. In writing dialogue, you have to keep everyone’s voice and vocal quirks straight. This one cusses a blue streak, this one never would—he always uses slang, her language is more formal. The best thing about it, though, is that you really get to explore a topic. I started out wanting to know what made this kind of arrogant, entitled guy tick, and by the end I understood him. I had to understand him in order to make him three-dimensional. One of Jessica’s big faults is that she sees the world the way she wants to see it instead of the way it is, and it was fun to watch her open her eyes a little.

Tell us a little bit about your writing process. Do you write in a particular place, or at certain times? Do you map out your story ahead of time, or let it develop organically?

The first productive half hour of every day is spent writing. Usually that’s at my desk in my home office (formerly known as my son’s room) or my law office. Sometimes that’s the only writing I get done, and sometimes I manage to sneak in a little more. I type 100 words a minute, so I can get a lot done in a half hour. I ‘write’ a lot while driving or in the shower or standing on line, so by the time I get to my laptop I’m simply transcribing what’s already in my head. I don’t outline. I generally have a broad idea of where I want to go, but the details get filled in as I go. I’ve been a trial attorney for thirty some-odd years, and I think there’s a huge link between the way you tell a story in a courtroom for a jury and the way you tell a story in a novel. I’ve learned in trial work that if I write out my questions, inevitably the witness will answer one in a way I didn’t/couldn’t predict and then the next question on my list makes no sense. So I have a general idea of what I want to get out of a particular witness, but if they make a left turn, I follow them and try to nudge them in the direction I want them to go a different way than I’d planned. A good trial attorney has to be able to think on her feet. Writing is similar. I start out thinking, I want this character in this scene to do X. But if I’ve done a good job in creating the character, they are a person unto themselves and I can hear their voice in my head. When it comes to actually writing the scene, something may happen or someone may say something that provokes them to answer or respond in a way I wouldn’t have planned. So I have to adjust accordingly. Sometimes writing feels like I’m simply transcribing what the voices in my head say.

What can we look forward to next from you? Devil’s Defense is described on the cover as a “Fischer at Law” novel—will there be sequels?

Yes, there will be sequels. The second, Devil’s Hand, is slated for release on October 7, 2025. In it, Jessica represents the abused wife of a county commissioner. She has to deal with the backlash from representing someone who is accusing a muckety-muck of wrongdoing, and also try to understand the values of the religious community around her, which are in great contrast to her own. In the meantime, her estranged father comes for a visit and she has to deal with her own domestic issues.

Tell us about your library. What’s on your own shelves?

What isn’t on my shelves? I think that’s a shorter list. Nothing is more attractive to me than a well- organized bookshelf, and I have them all over my house, organized by genre, then author, then chronologically. I know there’s a trend now to organize books by color, and while that looks nice, I don’t know how you’d ever find a book again. I am a voracious reader. I keep track of what I read, and I just finished my 111th book of the year (I’m writing this on November 19th). I refuse to be pigeonholed by genre. I’ll read anything that is interesting and well-written. Fiction, non-fiction, biography/memoir, science fiction, fantasy, romance, literary fiction, horror, young adult, you name it. I also try to make sure I read authors who fit into categories I don’t fit into, whether that’s race or religion or culture or sexual orientation or neurodiversity or anything else. One of the greatest things about reading is that it can help you understand the world around you. If I’m only reading things by people who have the same perspective I do, then I haven’t learned much. I also love a good series. There’s nothing better than falling in love with a character and/or a world and then being able to visit them again.

What have you been reading lately, and what would you recommend to other readers?

I just started reading Eleanore of Avignon by Elizabeth DeLozier. That’s my ‘bedtime book’ that I keep on my nightstand. I’ve got an advance reader’s copy of What is Wrong with You by Paul Rudnick open on my Kindle. And my audiobook du jour belongs to a series I’m re-reading—the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris, which is one of my favorite pieces of mind candy, and I’m going through it this time for craft purposes, because I’m learning how she picks up story lines from past books without being tedious. The book I’m up to is Dead Reckoning which I think is the 11th in the series. Anyway, all three of those books are great, which is nice. I don’t always get the trifecta. As for recommendations, lately I’ve been recommending The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton and the Emily Wilde series by Heather Fawcett to everyone. Love those books.