Interview with Marie Brennan

Official Marie Brennan Website
Official Midnight Never Come Website
Order “Midnight Never Come” HERE (US) + HERE (UK)
Read An Excerpt HERE
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Read The Book Swede’s INTERVIEW with Marie Brennan

Writing under the pseudonym Marie Brennan, Bryn Neuenschwander has released the “Warrior/Witch” duology, numerous short stories and her most recent novel, “Midnight Never Come”. This last is a seductive blend of historical fiction, court intrigue, gothic fantasy, mystery and romance that I thoroughly enjoyed, so I had to know more about the book and the author. Fortunately, Marie was more than obliging and has graced readers with a frank and insightful look into her world as she discusses “Midnight Never Come”, the sequel, her short fiction, the future of print publishing, cover art and much more…

Q: The bio and FAQ is a bit sparse on your website, so could you tell us a little more about who Marie Brennan is, why she became a writer, what some of her influences are, and why readers might want to pick up one of her books?

Marie: I know I played around with some story ideas when I was in second and third grade, but I decided to become a writer when I was about nine, and read Diana Wynne Jones' book Fire and Hemlock. That was the first time I remember thinking, “I want to tell a story.

I played around with things for about eight years after that, and then, in my senior year of high school, I got two ideas that I could just tell were fundamentally different. Better. More solid. So when I got to college and had a writers' group for the first time in my life, I got serious about writing, which led to me finishing my first novel—based on one of those two ideas—about a year later. The second idea, which I finished next, was Doppelganger, which I'll talk about more later.

It's a cliche answer, but true: I have too many influences to list. Most of the fiction ones are fantasy or SF, with a smaller smattering of mystery, horror, and historical fiction; I tend to crave stories about places and times that are different, instead of things set in the ordinary here and now. I love both TV and movies; I've dabbled a bit in reading comics but not a huge amount; I've never really gotten addicted to video games, except the Gabriel Knight series Sierra put out for a while. I also really love role-playing games of the non-computerized variety. But nonfiction is just as big a part of my upbringing, maybe more: anthropology, archaeology, history, folklore, mythology, etc. Sometimes I get story ideas that are arguments with someone else's story, but more often they come out of cultural ideas, and the question of how people would live and act if X was a part of their lives.

Q: Your new book, “Midnight Never Come”—Published May 1st in the UK and June 9th in North America—is a historical fantasy novel set in the Elizabethan Age. First off, how much of the book is history and how much is fantasy? Secondly, why do you think the Elizabethan Age—which is the backdrop for many books—is so popular with authors, and what do you particularly find appealing about the era? Thirdly, how does your take on faeries differ from other books with similar concepts (Elizabeth Bear, Mark Chadbourn, etc)?

Marie: I tried to strike an equal balance of history and fantasy, because those two elements more or less map to humans and fae, and I wanted them to be equally important to the story. Everything about the historical context is real, and so are almost all of the mortal characters; aside from Deven, his family and servants, and Invidiana's pets, I think there's only one named human character in the whole book that's invented. Having said that, though, the central plot conflict is fantastic; I'm writing a fantasy novel in a historical period, not a historical novel with touches of magic.

The popularity of the Elizabethan age, I'd credit to two people: Elizabeth and Shakespeare. Much of his work got written and performed during James' reign, of course, but I think the popular consciousness associates him with Elizabeth. And she's an incredibly vivid figure—which is no accident; in her own lifetime, they deliberately built her up as an iconic image, because it helped to strengthen her position on the throne, as a Protestant and a woman. So now you have two incredibly memorable people in a time period that saw intense religious conflict side-by-side with grand discoveries . . . the attraction isn't hard to understand.

When it comes to comparisons with other authors, I don't have a very good perspective, I'm afraid. I deliberately didn't read much faerie fiction while working on this, so I could stay focused on my own ideas. Since finishing Midnight Never Come I've read Elizabeth Bear's Ink & Steel—we've joked that we're doing the Volcano Movie Thing, with her book coming out a month after mine—and the key difference I see there is that she's writing more about Faerie, and I'm writing more about faeries. That is to say, the fantastic component of her story is centered in the Perilous Realm, a world separate from ours (though there are ways to cross over), while I'm writing about fae who choose to live in the cracks and shadows of the mortal world. You can see both concepts in the folklore; we're just choosing to focus on them in different ways.

Q: So when and how did the idea for “Midnight Never Come” first come about, how long have you been working on it, and how much has it evolved from its original conception?

Marie: Actually, it started as a role-playing game.

I'm entirely serious. In 2006 I ran a game I called “Memento,” because it was structured much like the Guy Pearce movie of that name; we went through six hundred and fifty years of English history backward. The game system we were using, Changeling: The Dreaming, focuses on faerie souls who reincarnate in mortal bodies, and “Memento” was structured around a group of changelings who were remembering a series of previous lives.

The Elizabethan segment of the game (which was also called “Midnight Never Come”) ended up having this really complex backstory and consequences, so that, although it wasn't the central plot, it stretched from 1350 to 2006. And after the game was done, it wouldn't leave my mind. So I filed off the Changeling-specific serial numbers, cut the Invidiana part of the story loose from the metaplot of “Memento,” and set about turning the skeleton that remained into a novel.

The core of the story is still the same, and in fact some of the key plot points are modified versions of what happened in the game. But the novel is much more complex; all of the political crossover with the mortal world was something I hinted at in “Memento,” but never had the time to develop. And the consequences, of course, got pulled in; I didn't exactly want to flash forward to the modern day, so all the bits that in the game got dealt with later, I've instead handled differently in the book.

Q: Wow, that’s really interesting, particularly since I’m a big fan of Memento :) So in 2009, Orbit Books is publishing “And Ashes Lie”, a loose sequel to “Midnight Never Come” which is set during the Great Fire of London in 1666. How far along are you with the new book, why the Great Fire, and what kind of research are you undertaking for the novel?

Marie: I've only just started the writing, actually; I have about a fifth of the book done. The pattern of research is more or less the same as for Midnight Never Come, except that now I'm being more organized about it. I traveled to London in May to visit some sites, but mostly it's book-research, until my head falls off from the overload. Seriously, the other day I came home with a stack of eight books—three on the Short Parliament, four on the Long Parliament, and one on the relationship between the City of London and the national government. I won't read them all in their entirety, but the ones I skim get mined for details.

The Great Fire is the centerpiece of the novel because, first of all, LONDON ON FIRE—that's some ready-made spectacle and conflict right there! And from a period standpoint, thinking of elemental spirits, it's easy to play that event as being both a mundane and magical threat, which makes it very appropriate for a story about both mortals and fae. But it comes at the tail end of a whole series of conflicts that I'll be working through in the book, starting from the run-up to the English Civil War in the '40s, the execution of Charles I, then the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, and the Great Plague the year before the Fire. London really got hammered for a while there. Which obviously wasn't much fun to live through, but most authors are born sadists, at least in our imaginations. It's the perfect breeding ground for a novel.

Q: I agree! Now even though you’re only contracted for the two Onyx Court novels, there is much potential for further installments. Do you have any ideas you’d like to explore if the publisher becomes interested in more Onyx Court titles? If so, could you discuss them?

Marie: I have tentative ideas for more, yes. In the grandest scheme, I'd take the series up to the modern day, with one book every century or so, but the further I get from my current position the more tenuous the ideas get. (The last two consist of nothing more than “it would be really neat to do something set during the Blitz, when people were hiding underground from the bombs” and “then I suppose maybe a modern book, too.”) The eighteenth-century book I have in mind would spin out some consequences from the Great Fire—though not in a way that would require people to have read And Ashes Lie—while playing with the Enlightenment, the rise of scientific, rationalist thinking. As for the Victorian period, I was originally going to write that before And Ashes Lie; it would move from science to technology itself, the Industrial Age, and the way that threatens the very ability of the fae to exist in the human realm. (The Victorians used a lot of cast iron.)

Q: Besides the Onyx Court novels, essays, and nonfiction, you’ve also written the “Warrior/Witch” duology—among your first efforts—and a variety of short fiction. Of the former, what’s the duology about, how do you feel about the two books which were originally released in 2006—and reissued in 2008—and in what ways have you improved as a writer since writing the duology?

Marie: I have a hard time describing those two books in a nutshell. The best I can do is to say the first book (which was called Doppelganger in its original release) is about two women who are matching halves of the same person, one of whom is trying to kill the other. They're set in a secondary world that's ever so faintly Asian in inspiration—Mirage, one of the protagonists, is a Hunter, which could most quickly be glossed as a ninja/mercenary/spy—and although they have their political element, they're more adventure-y than Midnight Never Come.

Though I do like those books, I definitely feel I've improved as a writer. I mean, if I'm not improving, then I'm doing something wrong. The first draft of Doppelganger (or Warrior, as it will be in August) was finished when I was nineteen, and though it took me about five years to sell the book, with some revisions along the way, it's still essentially the story I told then. The sequel is more recent, of course, but it's operating within the framework of character and setting that I built for the first one. I tried to tackle a more complex political situation with that plot, though, and it's borne fruit with Midnight Never Come, which took the lessons I learned before and applied them with a vengeance.

Honestly, as I said when I finished writing it, Midnight Never Come felt like “leveling up” as a writer. It took everything and the kitchen sink—characterization, description, plot, prose, you name it—and kicked it forward. Which was mentally draining like whoa, but I'm happy with the result.

Q: Of the latter, several of your short stories take place in the ‘Nine Lands’. Can you tell us about this milieu and if you will ever write a novel for this setting?

Marie: The Nine Lands was created in direct reaction to all the fantasy worlds where everybody speaks the language and has essentially the same culture, with cosmetic differences. Real history isn't like that; pre-modern Europe had way more diversity than your average fantasy world, and it's a tenth the size of most. I drew a shape on a piece of paper, declared it a large continent, and set out to create a continent's worth of different nations and cultures.

The short stories have been a way of exploring and furthering my world-building. The first story I ever sold, “White Shadow,” takes place in the Kagesedo Isles, and is a coming-of-age/vision quest story that taught me a lot about how the Kagi, a race of shapeshifters, conceptualize their relationship to their animal forms. Approaching the world on a micro scale like that helps me really lay the foundations, and get the variations in behavior and worldview that make the Kagi radically different from the Nahele or the Quilibrians.

I'd love to write a novel there someday; in fact, the eventual goal is a whole lot of novels. Unfortunately, the leader of the pack, the most well-developed idea, has been “that book I'm going to write any day now” for about six years. It keeps needing more composting time. But I have every confidence that one of these days it will click at last, and then I'll be delighted to write it.

Q: You’ve also written several ‘retellings’ of various myths, legends and fairy tales. What’s the point of these ‘retellings’ and which one is your favorite so far?

Marie: What's the point? To tell a fun story and hopefully sell it. Seriously, I don't approach them with a mission statement, some higher purpose. I think up a hook that catches my attention, and if it's strong enough, it gets a story. Most of them are pretty short; I play with the originals more on a level of imagery and mood than theme, though I admire writers who do more radical work with them.

My favorite, though not quite a retelling, has to be “Silence, Before the Horn,” which hypothesizes a connection between two different sources. Consider it a folklore crossover fanfic.

Q: You actually have a few new short stories coming out later this year including “A Mask of Flesh” (Clockwork Phoenix anthology) and “A Heretic by Degrees” (Intergalactic Medicine Show). Could you tell us more about these and any other short stories that are being released in 2008, as well as any short fiction that you’re currently working on? For that matter, what other writing projects might you be involved in?

Marie: “A Mask of Flesh” is my first real foray into putting my money where my mouth is. (Or rather, putting editor Mike Allen's money where my mouth is.) I really want to see more fantasy that draws on cultures other than medieval and Renaissance Europe, and so I'm trying to do just that, at least in my short fiction, and novels when I get the chance. The setting of “A Mask of Flesh” is built from Mesoamerican mythology and folklore, mostly Aztec and Mayan, but with a few other things tossed in. I've got another story started in that setting, and I hope to do more; I'm a big fan of writing sets of linked stories.

Similarly, “A Heretic by Degrees” takes place in a setting called Driftwood, in which I hope to write and publish many more stories. The short explanation for Driftwood is that it's where worlds go to die: it's an accretion of fragments left over from the cataclysms and apocalypses of the multiverse. Whatever survives the end goes to Driftwood, and there it finishes dying. So it's a nihilistic setting, but it lets me play around with all kinds of radically weird ideas, and the question of how people deal with the end of the world—or don't.

As for other short stories, I'm working on a lot; I'm the kind of person with little seeds and half-finished drafts lying around on my hard drive, and then every so often one of them jumps up and waves its arms madly enough to get my attention. But with a novel eating my head right now, I don't have a lot of time and energy to spare for those. I am, however, working on polishing up a novelette connected to my first two novels, which will go up on my website as a freebie when they get re-issued.

Q: What are the differences between writing short fiction and long-form novels, and what do you feel are the strengths/weaknesses of each format?

Marie: Whoosh! This is the stuff of long panel arguments and internet debates. But I'll try to be concise. I wasn't always able to write short fiction. “Novel” started out as my natural length (actually, “unfinished novel”), and I've worked my way down from a 126K-word first effort to a 98-word piece of flash fiction. These days, I like writing them both. I feel like a novel offers a greater feeling of satisfaction, because I can do so much more with one, but the near-instant gratification of a short story is a nice change of pace from months of the daily grind. I don't buy the advice people sometimes give, that beginning writers should “practice” with short stories before they try a novel; you should write what you're inclined toward, and learn from that.

As for strengths and weaknesses . . . a complex world is harder to introduce in a short story, because you have to be so economical. On the other hand, I think it's easier to get the reader to go along with something unfamiliar—say, a Mesoamerican setting—because it's bite-sized. Somebody who wouldn't drop eight bucks on a mass-market paperback might find that short story in a magazine or anthology and enjoy it, and that makes it more likely that a Mesoamerican fantasy novel would sell.

Of course, you may have noticed a particular focus in my answer there. Most discussions of the strengths and weaknesses of short fiction will talk about plot or characterization. Anthropology has made me a very setting-driven writer, though, and so I tend to think more about what I can do with the world (and therefore the characters and plot), rather than the characters or plot (and therefore the world). Which isn't to say I don't have people and events in my stories, long or short—of course I do—it's just the angle from which I build it all.

Q: One problem with a lot of fantasy fiction these days, as you’ve mentioned, is that authors tend to mine the same history & mythology over and over. Now because of your academic background—undergraduate in Archaeology & Folklore from Harvard; pursuing a PhD in Anthropology & Folklore at Indiana University—you’re familiar with a lot of different folklore, history and cultures. Are there any obscure legends or cultures you know of that would make for some great storytelling?

Marie: All of them?

I'm not actually joking. I have a list on my website HERE of novels that draw from less-familiar cultures and time periods, in part because I hope to prod writers into producing more of them and readers into checking them out. We're starting to get Asian fantasy; why not get past China and Japan into India, Vietnam, Polynesia? Ancient Sumerians? Russia? How about, oh, that entire continent our genre mostly ignores, namely Africa? (Or Australia, for that matter. Or South America—not Central America, but south of Panama.)

There are hurdles to leap, of course. It's harder to research the less well-trammeled parts, and you run into issues of cultural appropriation. Then, once you've jumped those, now you have to write a story that will convey unfamiliar concepts and hard-to-pronounce names in an effective way. And once you've done that, you need to convince an editor to buy your Incan fantasy instead of that fat medieval quest trilogy. Then you and the editor and the marketing department and everybody have to somehow get readers to shell out their money! So if you want to see more of that kind of thing on the shelves, go out there and buy it. Convince them there's a market for diversity, and you shall receive.

Q: Excellent answer! On a related note, what made you choose archaeology, folklore and anthropology for your fields? Or where did your interest/love for these subjects originate from?

Marie: I can't remember when I developed a love for foreign cultures, but it was at a pretty young age. I read the big yellow D'Aulaires book of Greek mythology, and I got hooked on Celtic stuff, and then got interested in Japan . . . I don't know why, but I love reading about different ways of viewing and interacting with the world. Which can mean both foreign and historical, and is part and parcel of why I love fantasy, too. Archaeology got added in because I had a chance to work as a volunteer on two digs before I went to college; it made me start thinking about the physical dimension of culture, the way that it's not just the stories and the language but the clothing and the food and the way people build houses. All of which I try very hard to carry over into my fiction.

Q: Anymore it’s pretty common to see novels adapted into different formats such as movies, comics, videogames, animation and TV. How would you like to see one of your books or short stories adapted?

Marie: Some of my friends said the setting of Doppelganger would work well for a role-playing game, which makes my brain hurt a bit. Obviously I don't have anything against games, but it's hard for me, the author, to conceive of it that way.

Adaptation is interesting to me, because I love seeing how things get translated for different media. Sometimes they're dumbing it down, of course, but there are lots of legitimate changes you have to make; things that work well in prose fall entirely flat on the screen. If it ever happens to me, I hope I manage to keep that perspective, and not get furious over what they're doing to my work of art!

I don't so much have dream actors or actresses as people I pick out to help me solidify what a character looks like. You see, I'm very bad at describing people, so having a concrete model helps. Even then, though, it's usually not spot-on. Cillian Murphy is close to what I imagine Tiresias looking like, but not quite; he has too square of a jaw, and something about the mouth and eyes isn't right. James Purefoy is probably my best guess at Deven, though of course a little younger.

What kind of adaptation I would be interested in seeing depends on the work. I think Doppelganger has enough visually cool stuff that it would be fun as a movie; a YA urban fantasy I'm working on might be better as a manga. Maybe someday I'll write something that would work as a video game.

Q: What do you think about branching out into a different genre (romance, sf, horror) or format such as graphic novels, television, film, etc?

Marie: I have a very few SF ideas knocking around in the depths of my head, but I honestly don't know if I'm ever likely to pursue them; it would take a real lightning strike of inspiration, plus a career opportunity, to make them vault the line of all the other things I want to write. I'm also tinkering with some YA experiments—still fantasy, but writing for a different audience. As for things like romance and horror, I'm much more likely to incorporate those as elements within a fantasy framework, rather than as the dominant structure of a whole book. Having said that, if I came up with a compelling enough idea that just needs to be done as a mystery novel or whatever, sure—I might try to write it in my spare time. (If I have any.)

When it comes to other formats, the real hurdle for me is that you're no longer talking about single-artist projects. I need a publisher to get my novel on the shelves, but I can write it on my own; if I want to do one of those other things, I need artists and actors and directors and a whole slew of other folk. Not only does that require the trust of collaboration, it means I have to get all those people on board with the idea before it can even be created, let alone distributed to audiences. Which isn't to say I'd rule the idea out; one thing I deeply admire about Neil Gaiman is his ability to work in pretty much every prose format known to man, from poetry to film. And I think it fosters a great creative flexibility. The logistics intimidate me, though.

Q: I’ve heard that authors of speculative fiction, particularly female writers, get little respect from writers of ‘literary’ fiction. Have you experienced any such prejudice and what are your thoughts on the subject?

Marie: I haven't experienced it much personally, but then, I don't interact much with writers of literary or mainstream fiction. What I see more often is when I tell people I'm a writer, and they ask what I write, and I say fantasy . . . nobody's really denigrated it, but most of them get this slightly awkward look. Generally they ask what my stories are about, but when I tell them, they're really not sure how to respond, because it isn't their cup of tea. I'm sure there are people out there who would be rude, but my personal experience has all been of simple awkwardness.

I find it interesting that you say female writers in particular get a lack of respect. That's true in general, regardless of genre; what I'd love to see is a sociological study mapping the opinions of various gender matchups. Fantasy gets feminized with regard to science fiction—the latter is hard and manly; the former is soft and girly—but I wouldn't be surprised if it's feminized in relation to mainstream fiction, too. Sad as it is to say, there's a distinct pattern linking women with disrespected things; as the proportion of women in a given field rises, its prestige tends to drop. The gender dynamics of publishing are at least as interesting as the ones in the stories themselves, but I see a lot more academic papers on the latter.

NOTE: For more on this topic, SF Signal’s Mind Meld recently asked the following question: Is there Gender Imbalance in Genre Fiction Publishing? The answer to that question can be found HERE, while Marie Brennan responds to the issue on her blog HERE.

Q: Nowadays the internet is a very important tool for authors and publishers in promoting their books and you seem to have embraced that philosophy whole-heartedly. Yet, with technology becoming more advanced every day, is the future of print in jeopardy and what are your thoughts on ePublishing?

Marie: The horror stories about how books are in trouble often seem to come from a point of view very alien to me, one driven by a certain business mentality. Case in point: I recently saw someone cite an example of an author whose books regularly sold 80% of their print runs (which is usually considered successful), but who was dropped by their publisher . . . because the total number of sales wasn't rising. So maybe this person's selling a fifty or a hundred thousand books a year, but somehow they're not a success. To which I can only say, WTF? I wonder how much of the furor about publishing comes about because publishers were acquired by big media conglomerates whose idea of profit is based on movies and other things that rake in cash on a scale books will rarely if ever achieve. It's entirely possible that's my ignorance talking; I freely admit that I understand very little about business on a corporate level. But I do wonder if the sky is falling as badly as news articles would have you believe—especially since news articles about how the sky is falling will always attract more interest than those saying the sky's doing okay, thanks.

Looking back over that, it sounds like I'm saying the problems don't exist. Which isn't true. But I wonder if some of them aren't overblown, or borne out of a mindset I don't agree with.

I have no doubt that e-publishing will survive and continue to grow, because obviously we're living in an increasingly digital world. Will physical books go away? Perhaps, but I doubt they'll do so any time soon. For one thing, a bound hunk of paper is a remarkably robust thing. My perspective is that of an archaeologist married to a computer guy; I know that obsolescence is a big problem in digital formats—think of the constant changes in programs and operating systems—and we've yet to develop a digital storage medium that's half so stable as a book. Not to mention that a book won't short out if you drop it in the tub. I find nonfiction easier to handle in books, too, because I can more easily flip back and forth between different sections. On the other hand, I'd love to have a search function in my physical texts! E-books are a heck of a lot more portable, and I'd have twice as much room in my house if there weren't 2,250 books in it. Each format has its advantages. The day somebody figures out how to truly get the best of both worlds—then print publishing will go away, because we won't need it anymore.

Q: You make some interesting points. Moving on, in speculative fiction, cover art is a constant issue, especially how important it is in selling a book, how the covers are sometimes considered generic, the difference between international & stateside covers, et cetera. Personally, I love the cover to “Midnight Never Come”, but how do you feel about your covers so far and what are your thoughts on the subject?

Marie: The cover for Warrior and Witch (soon to be reissued as just Witch) scared the crap me out the first time I saw it, because the Gmail opened the file and I had this HUGE EYE STARING AT ME. Once I shrank the enormous hi-res image down so I could see the whole thing, I loved it. There's such a big trend right now, especially in urban fantasy, for faceless women; they're turned away from you, or their heads get cut off by the edge of the cover, whatever. It bothers me because my academic brain trips on and says, wow, lookit the de-personalization! Some of them are very striking covers, but the women on them don't get represented as people; they're objects, and usually highly sexualized. (See: tight clothing, cleavage, tattoos.) I know it's supposed to communicate “strong woman!,” and for some people it does, but for me, it says “interchangeable part.” That cover, on the other hand, is intensely personalized: you see her face, and she's looking right at you. When that book gets placed face-out on a shelf, I can imagine it attracting attention very well.

Having just said that, the obscurity of the face on Midnight Never Come doesn't bother me, because again, she's looking at you—she has a face, even if it's in shadow—and it's appropriate to the story that you can't see her clearly. I love that cover, too, especially the texture it has as a physical object. (Which is another argument for print publishing. Spot gloss, foil, etc. just don't come across in digital images.)

It's taken a while, but I've started to wrap my mind around the notion that a cover's purpose is not to illustrate the book, in a direct or even an abstract way. A cover's purpose is to sell the book to readers: to attract their eyes and get them to pick it up. If it does that, it's done its job. I'd prefer for covers not to do their job while being wholly inaccurate; don't stick a dragon on a book just because it'll sell, if there are no dragons in the book. And please, please don't depict a character as white when they aren't! That bothers me a lot, no matter how much it helps sales. But beyond that: if the cover sells the book, then it's a good cover.

Q: You provided a blurb for C.E. Murphy’s “The Queen’s Bastard” (Reviewed HERE) which I absolutely loved! Have you read any other books this year that you would recommend? (I know you have a ‘Recommendations’ page, but since it only has two books for 2008 I thought I would ask :)

Marie: I haven't had much time for leisure reading lately, alas. This spring I taught a creative writing course, and reading my students' fiction, plus writing my own, plus researching my current novel, pretty much consumed my time. But I loved John Scalzi's Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades—even though I'm much less of a science fiction reader than a fantasy one—and happily devoured Elizabeth Bear's Ink & Steel while on vacation. Elizabethan faerie spy novels for the win!

Q: Who do you feel is an underrated writer that deserves more attention and why?

Marie: Oh, lord. Can I just cheese out on this question and refer people to my recommendations page? Otherwise I'd have to ramble on for paragraphs and paragraphs, with digressions onto what constitutes “underrated-ness” versus “writes really well for a smaller audience.” But I've hit a pretty broad array of authors over the years of recommending books, from big names to the not-so-big.

Q: That should work :) Lastly, do you have any words of wisdom for your readers or anything else you’d like to say about your new book “Midnight Never Come”?

Marie: Er, none that I can think of. Your questions are very in-depth and thorough!