Episode 309: Experiments and Happy Accidents in Novel Writing — Interview with Susann Cokal

by Gabriela Pereira
published in Podcast

Hey there word nerds! 

Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Susann Cokal. Susann is a moody historical novelist, a pop-culture essayist, book critic, magazine editor, and sometime professor of creative writing and modern literature. She lives in a creepy old farmhouse in Richmond, Virginia, with seven cats, a big dog, a spouse, and some peacocks that supposedly belong to a neighbor.

Susann’s first young adult novel, The Kingdom of Little Wounds, received several national awards, including a silver medal from the American Library Association’s Michael L. Printz Award series. Her books for adults, Mirabilis and Breath and Bones, received some nice notice too. Her shorter work has been published in a variety of literary journals and anthologies, such as Electric Lit, Prairie Schooner, Writers Ask, and The New York Times Book Review.

Today we’ll be talking about her new novel, Mermaid Moon, which is out now and is about a mermaid who leaves the sea in search of her landish mother.

In this episode Susann and I discuss:

  • How to craft a “mood” in your story.
  • Using point of view to illustrate character and world-building. 
  • What makes a prologue “work.”
  • Why it’s so important to experiment as you write. 
  • How exploring different possibilities can be a powerful writing tool. 

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Susann Cokal

Susann Cokal is a moody historical novelist, a pop-culture essayist, book critic, magazine editor, and sometime professor of creative writing and modern literature. She lives in a creepy old farmhouse in Richmond, Virginia, with seven cats, a big dog, a spouse, and some peacocks that supposedly belong to a neighbor.

Susann’s first young adult novel, The Kingdom of Little Wounds, received several national awards, including a silver medal from the American Library Association’s Michael L. Printz Award series. Her books for adults, Mirabilis and Breath and Bones, received some nice notice too. Her shorter work has been published in a variety of literary journals and anthologies, such as Electric Lit, Prairie Schooner, Writers Ask, and The New York Times Book Review.

Her new novel, Mermaid Moon, is officially out as of March 3, 2020.

Susann Cokal

Mermaid Moon

An award-winning author tells of a mermaid who leaves the sea in search of her landish mother in a captivating tale spun with beautiful prose, lush descriptions, empathy, and keen wit.

Blood calls to blood; charm calls to charm.

It is the way of the world.

Come close and tell us your dreams.

Sanna is a mermaid – but she is only half seavish. The night of her birth, a sea-witch cast a spell that made Sanna’s people, including her landish mother, forget how and where she was born. Now Sanna is sixteen and an outsider in the seavish matriarchy, and she is determined to find her mother and learn who she is. She apprentices herself to the witch to learn the magic of making and unmaking, and with a new pair of legs and a quest to complete for her teacher, she follows a clue that leads her ashore on the Thirty-Seven Dark Islands. There, as her fellow mermaids wait in the sea, Sanna stumbles into a wall of white roses thirsty for blood, a hardscrabble people hungry for miracles, and a baroness who will do anything to live forever.

From the author of the Michael L. Printz Honor Book The Kingdom of Little Wounds comes a gorgeously told tale of belonging, sacrifice, fear, hope, and mortality.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 309

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