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Lately I've been reading stacks and stacks of genre fiction: Ruth Rendell, John MacDonald, Stephen King, Wilkie Collins, Elmore Leonard, Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson. My reading desires tend to function something like a pregnant person's appetite -- they send me advance notice of what sorts of nutrients might be necessary for my gestating book. So when I found my bedside table covered in thrillers and mysteries -- including a bunch of voices from the 19th century -- it occurred to me that the book I was working on might just need to include some ghosts and history and a mysterious death or two.Visit Ben Dolnick's website.
--Marshal Zeringue