BooksAndAuthor.com: Why do you write?
Linda Collison: I write to discover. To explore. I write to understand and expand my life and to imagine other lives. But mostly I write because I can’t sing.
BooksAndAuthor.com: Who are your literary influences?
Linda Collison: When I was a young reader I was influenced by American writers such as Mark Twain, Ernest Hemmingway, Katherine Anne Porter, Annie Dillard, Flannery O’Connor, and so many more. Later, the prose of Annie Proulx, Dave Eggers, Ian McEwan impressed me, as did Jostein Gaardner’s Sophie’s World – an amazing book.
Water Ghosts in particular, was influenced by William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Ian Banks’s Wasp Factory, and Mark Haddon’s Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, which I recently experienced performed as a play, on Broadway. I am drawn to unreliable narrators.
BooksAndAuthor.com: Tell us about your new YA adventure book WATER GHOSTS ?
Linda Collison: Water Ghosts is about a summer adventure program for at-risk youth gone wrong. Terribly wrong. It an adventure story and a psychological drama with strong historical and paranormal elements.
Good Fortune, the fictional boat on which the story takes place, was inspired by an actual vessel, a Chinese junk Intrepid Dragon II, moored at the Ala Wai Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii. My husband and I spent a lot of time at the Ala Wai, aboard our sailboat. I was somehow drawn to Intrepid Dragon II; the junk beckoned me. What happened to Intrepid Dragon I, I wondered. Had it come to a bad end? One day I got to go aboard, the caretaker gave me a tour of the old wooden junk and that’s when the ghosts found me.
I became interested in Chinese maritime history and Chinese mythology and for the next several years I delved into those deep waters, focusing on Admiral Zheng He, the eunuch courtier of the early Ming Dynasty. Chinese history and Chinese philosophies and superstitions play a big part in Water Ghosts. In fact, they are crucial to the story.
BooksAndAuthor.com: Who is James McCafferty?
Linda Collison: James is a fifteen-year-old who sees things other people don’t see and hears the voices of people he’s never met, some of them dead. He is deeply troubled by the death of his father, by fire – a death he believes he is responsible for. He wants to fit in with others his age, he wants to be liked, but has a hard time because of his hallucinations. And he definitely does not want to go on this summer adventure cruise.
Then he meets Ming, an Asian-American girl his own age who is one of the other teens signed up for the program. His heart goes ba-BOOM, he’s immediately attracted to her. Maybe this summer won’t end in disaster, maybe his premonition of doom is wrong. Or if it’s right, maybe he’ll have a chance to save Ming. When the captain calls All Aboard, James picks up his duffel and follows here aboard.
BooksAndAuthor.com: What is it about the YA adventure genre you enjoy?
Linda Collison: There’s a kid inside me who never grew up and I like to look at life through his/her perspective. And I’m drawn to adventure, which brings out the best – and the worst – in us. I like adventure stories told in the first person and I like literary coming-of-age fiction.
BooksAndAuthor.com: Hollywood calls and asks YOU to cast WATER GHOSTS. Who do you cast and why?
Linda Collison: I would absolutely cast Aaron Landon (Disney’s Crash and Bernstein) as James, the protagonist. Aaron Landon narrated Looking for Redfeather, my previous coming-of-age novel and available on Audible.com. Aaron did an amazing job interpreting the three runaway teens.
I’d love to hear who readers would cast as James, Ming, Truman, and the other characters.
BooksAndAuthor.com: What have readers been saying about WATER GHOSTS?
Linda Collison: “Linda Collison blends nautical adventure, a story of the supernatural, and a trip into imperial China of long ago. When you’ve read Water Ghosts, expect to be haunted.” – Seymour Hamilton, author of the Astreya Trilogy
“Water Ghosts is a spine-chilling tale where fantasy and reality spin out of control.” – Margaret Muir, author of The Black Thread and Uncanny; Haunting Facts in Fiction.
“A tale of personal growth hammered out by the timeless ocean” –Joe Follansbee, author of Bet: Stowaway Daughter.
“A witty YA voyage with plenty of narrative power.” – Kirkus Reviews
BooksAndAuthor.com: What do you hope to achieve with your books ?
Linda Collison: I hope to connect with people, make them think and feel. And question.
BooksAndAuthor.com: What was the last book you read?
Linda Collison: The Let Go, a collection of short stories by Jerry Gabriel, was the last book I finished, and recommend. Gabriel leads the Chesapeake Writers Conference in St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
BooksAndAuthor.com: What's next?
Linda Collison: I’ve got a lot of projects coming into fruition this summer. Such as Blue Moon Luck, a coming-of-age novel I wrote back in the last century, which won the Maui Writer’s Grand Prize in 1996 under the title “With a Little Luck” – yet it originally had no luck at all finding a publisher; to be published in August under my Fiction House Ltd. imprint as Blue Moon Luck.
I’m also editing a memoir Night Shift, and am writing the second draft of a YA fantasy, and the first draft of an epistolary historical novel about Jane Austen’s fictional sister. Oh, and I’ve adapted my novel Looking for Redfeather into a play and plan to produce it next year.
So much in the works that it feels like I’m leading multiple lives!
Thanks for the interview, it's been fun.
Linda Collison: I write to discover. To explore. I write to understand and expand my life and to imagine other lives. But mostly I write because I can’t sing.
BooksAndAuthor.com: Who are your literary influences?
Linda Collison: When I was a young reader I was influenced by American writers such as Mark Twain, Ernest Hemmingway, Katherine Anne Porter, Annie Dillard, Flannery O’Connor, and so many more. Later, the prose of Annie Proulx, Dave Eggers, Ian McEwan impressed me, as did Jostein Gaardner’s Sophie’s World – an amazing book.
Water Ghosts in particular, was influenced by William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Ian Banks’s Wasp Factory, and Mark Haddon’s Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, which I recently experienced performed as a play, on Broadway. I am drawn to unreliable narrators.
BooksAndAuthor.com: Tell us about your new YA adventure book WATER GHOSTS ?
Linda Collison: Water Ghosts is about a summer adventure program for at-risk youth gone wrong. Terribly wrong. It an adventure story and a psychological drama with strong historical and paranormal elements.
Good Fortune, the fictional boat on which the story takes place, was inspired by an actual vessel, a Chinese junk Intrepid Dragon II, moored at the Ala Wai Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii. My husband and I spent a lot of time at the Ala Wai, aboard our sailboat. I was somehow drawn to Intrepid Dragon II; the junk beckoned me. What happened to Intrepid Dragon I, I wondered. Had it come to a bad end? One day I got to go aboard, the caretaker gave me a tour of the old wooden junk and that’s when the ghosts found me.
I became interested in Chinese maritime history and Chinese mythology and for the next several years I delved into those deep waters, focusing on Admiral Zheng He, the eunuch courtier of the early Ming Dynasty. Chinese history and Chinese philosophies and superstitions play a big part in Water Ghosts. In fact, they are crucial to the story.
BooksAndAuthor.com: Who is James McCafferty?
Linda Collison: James is a fifteen-year-old who sees things other people don’t see and hears the voices of people he’s never met, some of them dead. He is deeply troubled by the death of his father, by fire – a death he believes he is responsible for. He wants to fit in with others his age, he wants to be liked, but has a hard time because of his hallucinations. And he definitely does not want to go on this summer adventure cruise.
Then he meets Ming, an Asian-American girl his own age who is one of the other teens signed up for the program. His heart goes ba-BOOM, he’s immediately attracted to her. Maybe this summer won’t end in disaster, maybe his premonition of doom is wrong. Or if it’s right, maybe he’ll have a chance to save Ming. When the captain calls All Aboard, James picks up his duffel and follows here aboard.
BooksAndAuthor.com: What is it about the YA adventure genre you enjoy?
Linda Collison: There’s a kid inside me who never grew up and I like to look at life through his/her perspective. And I’m drawn to adventure, which brings out the best – and the worst – in us. I like adventure stories told in the first person and I like literary coming-of-age fiction.
BooksAndAuthor.com: Hollywood calls and asks YOU to cast WATER GHOSTS. Who do you cast and why?
Linda Collison: I would absolutely cast Aaron Landon (Disney’s Crash and Bernstein) as James, the protagonist. Aaron Landon narrated Looking for Redfeather, my previous coming-of-age novel and available on Audible.com. Aaron did an amazing job interpreting the three runaway teens.
I’d love to hear who readers would cast as James, Ming, Truman, and the other characters.
BooksAndAuthor.com: What have readers been saying about WATER GHOSTS?
Linda Collison: “Linda Collison blends nautical adventure, a story of the supernatural, and a trip into imperial China of long ago. When you’ve read Water Ghosts, expect to be haunted.” – Seymour Hamilton, author of the Astreya Trilogy
“Water Ghosts is a spine-chilling tale where fantasy and reality spin out of control.” – Margaret Muir, author of The Black Thread and Uncanny; Haunting Facts in Fiction.
“A tale of personal growth hammered out by the timeless ocean” –Joe Follansbee, author of Bet: Stowaway Daughter.
“A witty YA voyage with plenty of narrative power.” – Kirkus Reviews
BooksAndAuthor.com: What do you hope to achieve with your books ?
Linda Collison: I hope to connect with people, make them think and feel. And question.
BooksAndAuthor.com: What was the last book you read?
Linda Collison: The Let Go, a collection of short stories by Jerry Gabriel, was the last book I finished, and recommend. Gabriel leads the Chesapeake Writers Conference in St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
BooksAndAuthor.com: What's next?
Linda Collison: I’ve got a lot of projects coming into fruition this summer. Such as Blue Moon Luck, a coming-of-age novel I wrote back in the last century, which won the Maui Writer’s Grand Prize in 1996 under the title “With a Little Luck” – yet it originally had no luck at all finding a publisher; to be published in August under my Fiction House Ltd. imprint as Blue Moon Luck.
I’m also editing a memoir Night Shift, and am writing the second draft of a YA fantasy, and the first draft of an epistolary historical novel about Jane Austen’s fictional sister. Oh, and I’ve adapted my novel Looking for Redfeather into a play and plan to produce it next year.
So much in the works that it feels like I’m leading multiple lives!
Thanks for the interview, it's been fun.