Dad singing his heart out in the 1930s.

Dad was still performing when he met my mother in the Catskills. Only the responsibility of marriage and family could make him take a hiatus from acting in exchange for more predictable employment. Still, my childhood memories are filled with him accompanying himself (and me) on the piano while singing standards from both the 20th-century-popular-music songbook and Broadway.

This explains why I’m a bit of a Broadway geek. It also explains why I loved Kristina Riggle’s newest book, Vivian in Red (Polis Books).

Vivian tells the story of octogenarian Milo Short, a Broadway producer and famous lyricist who, on his way to the office one day, encounters a woman he hasn’t seen in over sixty years. As if that weren’t impossible enough, Vivian is as young and beautiful as she was when he last saw her in the 1930s. The sight shocks Milo into a stroke, leaving him unable to communicate the flurry of thoughts that now race through his still-active mind. Vivian, you see, has arrived on a mission, and Milo suspects he knows what it is. It will take his granddaughter, Eleanor, to dig through his theatrical past to uncover the truth that can potentially set him free.

Of course, the theater part of this novel is a lot of fun. Ms. Riggle brings not only the research skills of the journalist she is, but a love of the stage fueled by her own past experiences in community theater productions. The reader follows Milo’s career from song-plugger on Tin Pan Alley through Broadway lyricist to successful producer. We are flies on the wall for the mounting of a 1930s musical (Ms. Riggle’s lyrics for Milo’s songs fit perfectly into the era), and once we sweat through the production/rehearsal process, we’re invited to opening night. We even get to mingle with celebrities like Cole Porter, Jimmy McHugh, and Dorothy Fields. But you don’t need an interest in theater or history to enjoy Vivian in Red. This is Ms. Riggle’s sixth novel, and she brings to it the same understanding of human frailty and strength that infuses all her work.  If you’ve ever had a dream or a relationship, you’ll recognize Vivian‘s  heart. You might even find yourself in the mix as well.

Milo’s rise from a poor Jewish family to Broadway success echoes the trajectory of a long list of great early-20th-century lyricists and composers (Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, and Yip Harburg to name but a few). My father’s story resonates against this; with so many Jews succeeding in show business, why wouldn’t theatrical success seem within the reach of both a young Jewish boy from Brooklyn and his immigrant mother? It was their version of the American Dream, and my father never quite left it behind.

Dad was back onstage before I left my teens, performing in Annapolis, Washington, and Baltimore. He did print ads and commercials, appeared in movies and on TV. He performed his last role between rounds of chemo; as far as he was concerned, missing a show was not an option.

Even now, over a decade past my father’s last performance, people still tell me how much they enjoyed watching him onstage. I remember the stories he told with the comic timing of a master. Sure, maybe we’d heard some of those stories before, but who cared? With Dad, there was always the chance for something more entertaining than mere conversation.

Milo Short reminds me of him, and I am grateful for the visit.

A blurb is a short, positive description of a book, written by other authors (because let’s face it, your mom is a little biased). Blurbs are featured prominently on a book’s cover and sometimes on separate pages inside the book as well. NEWPORT has four, and I am extremely grateful to the generous authors who provided them: Deanna Raybourn, Simone St. James, Ashley Weaver, and Beatriz Williams. No matter how much someone enjoys a story, providing a blurb takes time – time to read, time to think, and time to compose a few-sentence sketch that might encourage readers to pick up the book. I so appreciate that these four authors made room for NEWPORT in their busy lives.

So, how do those blurbs get there? For fiction, blurb requests usually are sent by editors to authors whose own work attracts an audience that might enjoy the book in question. But just because an author has been approached does not mean she is obligated to provide praise. Requests to read can be turned down. Even if an author is kind enough to read, she may decline the opportunity to blurb. There are all sorts of reasons for passing: the book may not be the author’s cup of tea, or there may be time constraints (like most parts of publishing, blurbs come with deadlines). But those blurbs on the cover were not command performances, churned out by authors through sheer obligation.

Of course, you won’t pick up a book that screams, “Worst book ever! Read at your own risk!” Even though blurbs are not coerced, they are meant to be marketing tools, not warning labels.

Since NEWPORT’s release, I’ve had the opportunity to blurb a few books myself. To me, it’s an honor to be asked at all, and I take my blurbing seriously. I know the feeling of being the one waiting to hear whether or not a reader (me, in this case) likes the book enough to endorse it. No matter how gentle or logical the refusal to blurb is, the author of the book will always see it as a rejection. We can’t help it; we’re wired that way. It helps (a little) to remember that these are professional decisions, not personal slights.

Good book blurbs allow you a glimpse of the story that awaits once you start reading. Now, thanks to the wonders of the internet, the books those blurbs adorn are not the only written words subject to review: the blurbs themselves are, too.

This brings me back to my original question: are you influenced by the blurbs you read on book covers? I’d love to know.

Here’s what you need to know:

1. The author had attended a book club to discuss her first novel and was then invited to join that club.

2. The author feels that her reading experience is totally ruined by discussions with a “huddle of women blathering over mimosas and cheese cubes.”

3. The author prefers to “let the book simmer” in her head “before it becomes a part of my soul,” and she can’t do that while “trapped in a room with 12 biblio-bitches who can’t articulate …”

Ok. So there’s nothing wrong with the desire to internalize one’s reading experience. Reading is personal, different for each of us. But, even when I set aside the author’s need to belittle other reading approaches in order to aggrandize her own, there’s still something I just don’t get. The writer of this essay isn’t simply a reader. She’s an author, which means she’s dissing the very people who could help make her novel a success. But, beyond that, she’s missing out on a huge gift: the opportunity to engage in discussion about that book she worked so hard to bring into the world. (Because, really – who wants to invite her to their book club after knowing the disdain she holds for each member there?)

I’ve enjoyed my recent interviews. Both in written and oral form, interviewers have posed questions that made me view NEWPORT in a whole different way. Book clubs take that even one step further by inviting conversation. They not only provide reader insight, they offer an author the chance to understand the “why” behind those insights. That’s a veritable gold mine of information. I have a few book club invitations on the horizon, and I couldn’t be more interested in what readers have to say.

I wish I had that same conversational opportunity with reviews.

Reviews seem to fall into three categories: positive, “meh,” and “huh?” Not surprisingly, the positive reviews feel great. I write because I want to share a story that I hope people will enjoy. Knowing that I’ve given someone that pleasure is a lovely thing.

The “meh” reviews can be hard (see above reason for why I write), but they’re to be expected. Not every reader enjoys the same kind of book or writing style, and it would be foolish to believe that I could please all. I do appreciate when “meh” reviews include explanations that allow potential readers to decide for themselves whether or not the story might be their own cup of tea.

But the “huh?” reviews … they’re the ones where I want to know more. What does it mean when a positive review says NEWPORT was like a “plot from scooby doo (sic)”? Why the surprised irritation that the story line includes seances when the plot synopsis states that it does? Why are “flawed characters” a bad thing? Enquiring minds want to know!

I would love to sit in a forum that included those who loved NEWPORT’s aura of the 1920s and those for whom there was no evocation of the era at all. And let’s invite those who felt that the supernatural aspect of the book was a fascinating addition and those who thought that the supernatural torpedoed the story. Ultimately, writing is about communication. I’d consider myself lucky indeed if something I wrote stimulated a conversation.

So, please invite me to your book club! And, if that’s not feasible, there are a few other ways to clue me in on your thoughts (or to get an idea of mine). I’ll be hosting #LitChat on Twitter on Monday, August 24th from 4 p.m. until 5 p.m. Join the conversation! You can also drop me a line at jillmorrowbooks@gmail.com. (All of my contact info is here.) I’d love to hear from you.

And I actually like mimosas and cheese cubes.

I’ve been thinking about my love affair with historical fiction. It goes way back to my childhood, when burying myself in the pages of a book meant a trip to other times and places.

Books were better than movies for me. A book provided the set, characters, and plot but allowed my imagination to fill in some details. My very favorite books inspired me to write my own version of fan fiction before fan fiction was cool. Some authors might have been surprised to learn that a character they’d never created had hijacked their plot and now starred in a whole new version of the storyline.

My preferred historical “vacations” changed as I got older. My favorite era in middle school was colonial America, which made sense since I grew up in 18th century Annapolis. But then I started sliding backward. I slipped through the Jacobite risings in the Scottish Highlands, down past Charles II and the English Restoration, and straight into Tudor England.

By the time I hit college, I was a history major with an emphasis in medieval studies. But after I’d written a few novels, I changed course again and found myself drawn to the late 19th century, an era that had never enticed me before. From there it’s been a continued upward drift. Newport takes place in 1921; the novel I’m currently working on is set in the early 1930s.

It’s even more fun to write historical fiction than it was to read it. Once again, I get to immerse myself in a time period different from the one I inhabit on a daily basis. I get the opportunity to research random events and inconsequential details to my heart’s content. And this time my characters aren’t photo-bombing somebody else’s story. The setting and plot details are my own.

I worry that despite all of my best efforts to accurately re-create the texture of an era, some pesky anachronisms might creep in. But even with that pressure, I believe that authors of contemporary fiction have a much tougher time telling their stories than I do. Why? Because technical advances have made it difficult to build tension in any story set in modern day.

I offer the following examples:

Your protagonist, an amateur sleuth with a nose for solving crime, has a hunch the popular new guy in town isn’t on the up-and-up. But how to prove it? (Well, what do you think Google is for?)

The gorgeous woman who just introduced herself to the protagonist stirs faint memories; he knows he knows her, and he knows she knows he knows her. But, how? (Check Facebook first. If that fails, back to Google.)

The protagonist has information that could change the course of humanity. He must find a way to share this information immediately! (All right, then. Let’s just try a few cell phone numbers, because just about everybody is accessible all of the time these days.)

So, it’s pretty clear I lack the imagination to write a contemporary novel at the moment. We’re all better off if I stick with historical fiction.

And that’s just fine with me.