GENERAL QUESTIONS:

What books have you written?

All Unquiet Things came out on  January 12, 2010 (which means it is currently in stores and you can buy it! It’s even in paperback now, so it’s pretty cheap). My second book, The Opposite of Hallelujah, will be out on October 9, 2012. Tandem, the first book in the Many-Worlds trilogy, will be released sometime in the fall of 2013.

Where do you get your ideas from?

Nowhere in particular, everywhere in general. The thing about “ideas” is that they start with a tiny kernel that possibly never makes it into the final product. Like, All Unquiet Things was inspired by a person I knew in college, but that person is nowhere to be seen in the final draft and hasn’t been for a long time. That book evolved more than any book I’ve written before or since.  Ideas are everywhere. The most important part of being a writer is to open up your eyes and ears and mind and actually find them.

The Opposite of Hallelujah was inspired by two things: something my sister (who is seven and a half years younger than me, eight years behind me in school) once said about the fact that she and I grew up in different houses, because we were so far apart in age that our childhoods only overlapped for a short period of time, and I wasn’t around a lot during her adolescence (college, etc.); and a memoir written by Karen Armstrong, an acclaimed religious historian who went into a convent when she was seventeen and left when she was in her mid-twenties. That memoir is called The Spiral Staircase, and it’s about her attempt to acclimate to “normal” life after living so long as a nun; a previous memoir, Through the Narrow Gate, about her time in the convent, was instrumental to the actual writing of The Opposite of Hallelujah, but I actually read it much later (I read The Spiral Staircase for the first time in college).

Tandem was inspired by my own interest in parallel universes and theoretical physics, and my desire to write a book that was both an adventure and a romance.

Are your books’ events based on real life?

When it comes to All Unquiet Things, no, although when I was putting the finishing editorial touches on that story I found an article about a somewhat similar event that happened in a town actually mentioned in All Unquiet Things. It was very spooky, and of course extremely tragic. But that’d happened about a year before, years after I started writing All Unquiet Things. There are some parts of The Opposite of Hallelujah that were either based on my life or events that happened tangential to me in my childhood, plus some characters were based on people I actually know, but no aspect of either book could be considered true to life. Everything is fictional in both novels, to a greater or lesser extent. Tandem is basically all made up (as books about traveling to parallel universes tend to be).

Who are some of your favorite authors to read?

I’m a big fan of Douglas Coupland; my favorite of his books are Hey Nostradamus!, Girlfriend in a Coma, and Microserfs. I also love the late Nancy Mitford and her novels The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate. Jane Austen, of course, and J.D. Salinger. I’ve loved Anne Fadiman ever since I read her little collection of essays on reading, Ex Libris, which I reread every year. I really love Bill Bryson, Agatha Christie, Donna Tartt, Kazuo Ishiguro, Alice Munro, Evelyn Waugh, Ian McEwan, J.K. Rowling, F. Scott Fitzgerald, David Sedaris, Anna Gavalda, Joan Didion, Carol Goodman, and Chris Adrian. I have to say, though, after listing all those people, I’m not generally an author-fan, I’m a book-fan. It’s easier for me to tell you what my favorite books are than my favorite authors.

Okay then, what are your favorite books?

Well! Let me tell you. Hey Nostradamus!, The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, Brideshead Revisited, Ex Libris, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Nine Stories, Franny and Zooey, East of Eden, In a Sunburned Country, Sleeping Murder, The Secret History, Never Let Me Go, Hateship Courtship Friendship Loveship Marriage, Atonement, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Great Gatsby, Hunting and Gathering, and The Children’s Hospital. Plus many many more. Check out what I’m reading on Goodreads.

What do you do if you’re having trouble writing? How do you jump start the creative juices / thoughtsicles as some would apparently say?

Haha. FIRST OF ALL, a thoughtsicle is an opinion, in my parlance. I have no idea how I get my thoughtsicles flowing, they just burst out of me like that alien in, well, Alien. When I have trouble writing I do a lot of things. I write character manifestos sometimes, but often I work on something else or I chuck the writing thing altogether and go for a walk or watch a movie or read a book or listen to music or take a nap or leave my house and go somewhere else. Writer’s block, like heat, always breaks eventually, usually when you’re least expecting it. If you distract your brain from the book, I find that the answers always work themselves out.

What kind of writing most captivates you? What kind of writing most disappoints you?

Hm, I don’t quite know how to answer this. I think what bothers me the most in writing has got to be self-satisfaction, and maybe this is opening myself up to that same criticism, but, well, okay. I’m bothered by writing that takes too much pride in its cleverness, because I think that alienates the reader. What is most important to me, what most captivates me, is a story that entertains me or connects with me emotionally or a character that fascinates me. Not all books have these things, but one of them is usually enough. The best books have all or most of them. I think you know which books those are, at least according to me (hint: look up).

Have you ever written any other books?

Yes. You can read about them here.

How did you find an agent?

The University of Chicago does this great thing where it funds six internships in the humanities for graduating students, so I applied to all three of the remotely publishing-related ones. I interviewed with Browne & Miller Literary Associates and they offered me the internship, which I was at from June to September of 2007. Danielle Egan-Miller and Joanna MacKenzie were great mentors, and they knew I’d written a YA novel as my thesis (Joanna is also a U of C grad), and asked to see it, but I never sent it because I was afraid that if they didn’t like it they would think less of me. What a weirdo I was! Anyway, I started querying the old fashioned way, and I got some interest but I eventually accepted the fact that I knew of one person who might get the novel and even though I might make a fool out of myself, it was worth the risk, so I emailed Joanna and asked if she’d take a look at the query and see if she wanted to read the MS. She did, and she loved it, and she offered to represent me. It was very serendipitous, and I am extremely lucky, because Joanna is the best agent ever, and a good friend.

What are you working on now?

As of May 2011, I’m under contract with Delacorte for two more books: Tandem and a direct sequel. I always have a couple of side novels that I play with when I’m feeling stumped by or tired of my current work in progress, but nothing I’m working on with anywhere near the intensity I’m devoting to the Many-Worlds series.

 

ABOUT ALL UNQUIET THINGS:

How did you decide that you wanted to write a mystery?

The mystery chose me. Honestly, I never thought of myself as a mystery writer, but that’s what happened. I’m not really one for meandering books. I want the books that I read to have plots, because I think that it’s in the doing of things that the meat of existence (human emotion, intention, personality, character, thoughts, etc.) comes to life. A plot is like the backbone of a book, with all the flesh and blood and raw nerve endings wrapped around it. A mystery, due to the very nature of the genre, has to have a plot. Maybe that’s one of the things that drew me to it. Otherwise, I can’t say, but there’s a big part of me that relates to the job of an investigator. I love knowing things and finding things out. It could be that, too. Also, I read a lot of Agatha Christie growing up.

Was it difficult to plot out all the twists and remember who was where when, etc?

Extremely difficult. We went through several rounds of revisions of the novel before we even submitted it to editors, and then two rounds afterwards, and every time I looked at the manuscript I found an inconsistency. Every. Single. Time. Mysteries are hard to write and I’m not quite sure mystery writers get their due for pulling off the truly great ones. I think everything’s fine now, but it involved a lot of planning, and even then it involved a lot of vigilance and tweaking.

Why did you set the story in California?

I really tried to set it in Illinois, but the landscape of the town in my mind was absolutely Californian. Maybe that’s because I was living there when I wrote the book the first time, but mostly I feel like this book belonged there. The San Ramon Valley is the book’s spiritual home, which sounds nuts, but there you are. I’m sort of mildly obsessed with California now that I no longer live there, which is ironic, since I moved there with plans to absolutely despise it, and did for many years, but now I have these romantic feelings about it that are mostly the result of nostalgia. I think, though, that All Unquiet Things can be quite critical of it at times, and that reflects a lot of how I felt when I was living there. It’s not all blue skies and ocean breezes. I half wish I’d pulled off setting the novel in Illinois, because then the town name abbreviation would be EV, IL. (!!!)

What sort of research did you conduct for the book? Did you visit local prep schools? How did you achieve the color and ambiance of NorCal?

I didn’t have to do so much research, because I was writing about teenagers in Northern California and I had been one only a few years before. I still had to look up a few things, like whether or not you can directly inherit money if you’re a minor in the state of California (you can’t). I had to choose a gun for the murder weapon, I had to research illegal drugs and their medical effects. But writing about California came really easily to me. Even though I technically lived there a lot longer, I think it’d be hard for me to write about Chicago in the same way. Something about transitioning from child to adult in California made a really big impression on me. I spent A LOT of my college years driving up and down the 5 to Los Angeles, Fresno, San Diego, Santa Cruz, Carmel, San Luis Obispo. You learn a lot about California by driving. There’s a Christian prep school down the street from my parents’ house, and in my head Brighton Day School is a combination of it and the high school I graduated from (which no longer looks the way it did when I went there, in fact it looks considerably more like Brighton). I pulled a lot of Empire Valley from right where I was living.

Was there ever a time when you thought, “How do I make the murder mystery genre fresh?”

I never really thought about it. My only thought was, “How do I write this book and not burn out or embarrass myself?” I hope people think it’s fresh, but I really don’t know. I just wanted to make it true. In the sense of capital T True, anyway. Obviously, it’s fiction.

What was your inspiration for placing your characters in such a high social class setting?

The honest answer to this question is that people who have money get away with a lot more than people who don’t. This is just an obvious fact of human existence. I’m also sort of interested in the idea of the rotted log, which looks fine until you step on it and it crumbles to pieces because inside everything has decayed. All Unquiet Things takes its title from Canto III, stanza XLIII of an epic poem called Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage by George Gordon, Lord Byron. That stanza talks about powerful people and how even though the world envies them, inside they are rotted through, and if you could only see the truth of what they are you’d never, ever want to be them. So here you have this nice, well-off town that has an enclave of wealthy people who seem to have these great lives. These kids have everything they could ever want, they go to this nice prep school, they drive fancy cars and get away with far more than they should. But there’s something fundamentally wrong underneath all the glamor. I found that really interesting, and it was a very hospitable setting for the story I wanted to tell.

Did you try to attain crossover appeal between YA and adult fiction readers? If so, how?

I just wrote the book the way I wanted to write it and didn’t think about things like that. I hope that both teens and adults like All Unquiet Things, I really do, because I think each community of readers has something to bring to the experience of reading the book that is valuable. The book is certainly done up to appeal to both age groups, which is something I wholeheartedly support. I’d like as many people as possible to read it, but I didn’t write it to have crossover appeal, no.

Will there be more ALL UNQUIET THINGS?

I don’t think so. I have this weird idea for a sequel with Neily and Audrey in college, and I might even write it one day (I’ve started it, but haven’t gotten too far). If I do end up finishing it, I might self-publish it–I’m not sure the market will really support an actual printed version, but it would be fun for like four people to read if they wanted to.

How long did it take you to write ALL UNQUIET THINGS?

From spark to finished manuscript, it took six and a half years, but it only took me two years to write the second version.

What books influenced ALL UNQUIET THINGS?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and the book that I think heavily influenced AUT is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. There aren’t really any literal comparisons, and I didn’t realize this until after I was done writing it so it was in no way conscious, but the character of Jane Eyre (and some Bronte scholars might disagree with this assessment, I don’t know), according to my interpretation, is actually full of rage, and in some ways it’s totally obvious and in some ways it’s completely subtle and I see that buried anger in Audrey especially. I always say that Audrey is angrier than Neily, and people tend to disagree with me because Neily is very open about his feelings and Audrey isn’t, which is what makes her anger all the more, I don’t know, sinister in some ways. She’s not a cipher–I hate ciphers–but she’s buried her anger so deeply that even she can’t recognize it, but actually, to me, she’s enraged. Think about her life so far, what an abandoned child she is, and try to imagine not being angry about that. Her main motivation in the story, to find Carly’s killer, is anger, while Neily’s is love, and I think some people would say that the opposite is true, but I disagree, although both points are equally valid.

 

ABOUT ME:

Where did you grow up?

Buffalo Grove, IL and Dublin, CA. We moved to Dublin when I was sixteen, right before my senior year in high school.

Where did you go to high school?

Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, IL and Dublin High School in Dublin, CA.

Where did you go to college?

Santa Clara University for undergrad (BA in English and BS in Political Science) and University of Chicago for graduate school (MA in the Humanities, emphasis in English and Creative Writing).

What did you do after college?

I really wanted to work in publishing, so I went to the University of Denver’s Publishing Institute. I let myself be convinced I wasn’t ready to move to New York (to be fair, I probably wasn’t), so I went back to California and got a job as an editorial assistant at a textbook publishing company. Then I went to graduate school, and after that I moved to New York. I work in marketing.

Do you have any siblings?

I do! I have a brother who is two and a half years younger than I am, and a sister who is seven and a half years younger than I am. They are both extremely cool, cooler than me for sure. They live in California, which is too far away, but we manage to annoy each other despite the 3,000 miles that separate us.

Are the characters in your books similar to anyone you know?

I don’t think so. I don’t really have enough perspective on them (I mean, they all seem like completely original and wholly unique people to me), but I’m sure there are aspects of people I know. I would hazard a guess and say that all of my narrators are in their own ways expressions of who I am, but obviously with differences. Sometimes, though, I do purposefully give characters qualities of my own, or of someone I know, because I think they’re weird or interesting.

What is your writing process like?

I write mostly on the weekends, because I find it hard to write at night after I come home from work, but I write fast so that makes up for it. I usually outline, because I find that’s the way I work best, especially given the mystery aspect of what I write, which I need to plan out beforehand or the book is SO hard to edit.

Where do you write?

My bedroom. It’s tiny and cramped and not conducive to stretching my creative legs, but I’m too lazy to go anywhere else, and I write pretty good books there regardless of how comfortable it is.

Who is your agent?

Joanna MacKenzie of Browne & Miller Literary Associates.

What television shows do you watch?

Parks & Rec, 30 Rock, Community, Happy Endings, New Girl, Bones, Castle, Revenge, Once Upon a Time (though secretly I hate it), Downton Abbey, Sherlock, Switched at Birth, Make It or Break It, Melissa & Joey (not ashamed!), and I DVR Jeopardy! and watch it every day. I’m also a huge fan of Veronica Mars, X-Files, Arrested Development, Joan of Arcadia, Sex and the City, Pushing Daisies, Wonderfalls, Battlestar Galactica and Dead Like Me.

What’s up with your name? How do you pronounce it?

My last name is Polish. I’m mostly Polish, with about 25% of Western European mutt thrown in for good measure. Even though the name is technically pronounced something like “Yar-zhoomb”, with the “b” so soft it’s almost silent (there are some Polish accents that are hard to render phonetically, but if you ever meet me in person I’d be happy to pronounce it correctly for your amusement), in my family we pronounce it just like it looks: “Jar” as in jar of pickles, “zab” as in…well, you’re smart, you can figure it out.

There are many ways in which my last name is NOT pronounced, including, but not limited to: Jazzab, Jarrab, Jarzad, Jazrad, Jazrab, Jazbar, Jarbaz, Jabraz, or Yarzab.

And just to clear this up now, my first name is pronounced Anna with a short “a,” not Ah-nah. In case anyone was confused.

If you could be a tree, what kind of tree would you be?

I am a tree! At least, my last name is. Jarzab is actually the Polish word for a kind of tree, a rowan tree.

 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MY FRIEND MARY:

Have you ever crafted an online-dating super-challenge? If so, why? If not, why not?

The first rule of Fight Club is nobody talks about Fight Club.

Team Jacob or team Edward?

Team Edward. Jacob is a punk.

Who you gonna call? If you said Ghostbusters, why? If not, why not?

Honestly, probably my mom. Any time I have a problem, she’s my first phone call. The Ghostbusters don’t have anything on her.

What time is it in Moscow?

Time to get a watch! In Russia! Or this time, whatever.

Will you name a future character Sargent Dubbs?

Yes. Just because you asked. But I won’t say when or what book. And you spelled Sergeant wrong, FYI.

What about Ambassador Dubbs?

Don’t push it.

What’s the weirdest question someone has asked you about your writing?

Don’t know yet. Ask away!

Can you get my manuscript published? It’s a historical paranormal-romance western thriller about a pecan killed in cold blood and the hazelnut that loved him (or did she??????????). So far, has a great response on iUniverse!

Sorry, I don’t have that kind of time or power. I’m sure it’s an awesome book, though it does sound a little nuts. (GEDDIT?! NUTS!!)

What color are God’s eyes?

God doesn’t have eyes, He’s a non-bodily spiritual being. Unless He wants to manifest as a bodily creature, and then His eye color is His choice.

What is your ideal room temperature for writing, and does this vary by genre?

I prefer it to be a little warmer than room temperature–cozy, if you will–but not by much. I’m very intolerant of extreme temperature. This doesn’t vary at all by genre.

When was the last time you wet the bed?

You’d have to ask my mom and dad about that.

Describe your favorite dress you ever wore to a high school dance.

I didn’t go to high school dances, and even if I had I’m sure my dress would’ve been hideous. I had terrible fashion sense back then.

What country, in your opinion, has the most attractive flag?

Well, I really like Antarctica’s flag (I know, right, who knew Antarctica had a flag?) because it’s white and blue and looks like it has the head of a rhino on it. And I think Bhutan’s is kind of cool. And Hong Kong’s (although, not technically a country, is it?). And Macao’s (another Chinese Special Administrative Area, not a country, but…). However, I’m going to go with a tie between Poland’s (the one with the eagle on it) and the United States’ flags, not just because I’m Polish-American, but also because I know what the symbols mean and they’re very affecting to me.

In how many bodies of water have you skinny-dipped?

Zero.

Can I be your best friend?

Maybe! I’m very nice. Oooookay (I can sense the dubious glares of all my friends radiating through the monitor), I’m very friendly. How’s that, dubious friends?!

Can I be you?

Not as it stands with current technology, but there’s always hope for the future. Thanks though! It implies that you think being me would be halfway interesting, which it’s not.

Have more questions? Please ask!