Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest S.W. Leicher, author of ACTS OF ATONEMENT.

S.W. grew up in the Bronx in a bi-cultural (Latina and Jewish) home. She moved to Manhattan after earning her Master’s degree in Public Policy and raised her family on the Upper West Side, where she still lives with her husband and two black cats. When not dreaming up fiction, she writes about social justice issues for nonprofit organizations

Norm: Good day S. W. and thanks for taking part in our interview.

S.W. It's a pleasure.

Norm: In your opinion, what is the most difficult part of the writing process?

S.W.: It varies. Sometimes it’s the overall architecture of the piece.  Sometimes it’s the research that’s needed. 

In the case of Acts of Atonement, the biggest challenge came from the fact that it’s a sequel.  I had to figure out how to bring readers who haven’t seen the first book quickly up to speed on certain back-story facts and relationships, without exasperating the readers who already know all that. 

I must have re-written the initial few chapters fifty times, testing out ways to be both thorough and subtle.                     

 Norm: What inspires you? 

 S.W.: For the past few years, the greatest inspiration for both my fiction and my non-fiction has been the girls and women that I’ve met through my policy and advocacy work. 

It doesn’t matter whether they are Latina or fervently Orthodox Jewish or Black American or Asian—they are invariably the unsung heroes of their communities.  They take care of everyone else: their younger siblings, their own children, other people’s children, their own parents, other people’s parents.

They work grueling hours in the low-paid service and retail jobs that keep our economy afloat. They face bias and barriers on all sides—from within and outside their cultures.  And yet they keep dreaming, keep giving, keep striving.  It was easy to write about Serach and Paloma because I’ve seen so many shining examples of young women coping with tough odds in remarkable ways.  

Norm: What are the preponderant influences on your writing? 

S.W.: Other authors have taught me everything I know. S.J. Rozan’s mystery novels have helped me learn ways to tell the intertwined stories of two equal protagonists. 

Oscar Hijuelos’ books have provided guidance on how to swing back and forth between different cultural points of view.  Nora Johnson and Judith Krantz have offered models for portraying female friendships. 

Recently, I’ve been diving into Sigrid Nunez’s works to try to figure out how she’s able to weave intimacy, wit, and vulnerability into a single short paragraph. Haven’t gotten to the bottom of any of those authors’ magic—and perhaps I never will—but I intend to keep plugging.               

Norm: What do you think makes a good story? 

S.W.:  Main characters who capture both the imagination and the heart—who make us care about them even when they behave like cads or fools. 

Places that make us laugh out loud.  Passages that make us say: "Yes! That's exactly how it is!" And incidents that make us say: "Good heavens—you’ve made me see things in a completely new way!”  

Norm: What helps you focus when you write? 

S.W.: Focus is one of the few things with which I don’t struggle.  I can write for five or six hours straight, day after day, for weeks on end. And when I finally look up from the computer screen, my concentration has sometimes been so deep that I feel totally disoriented. “Wait! Where am I? Wasn’t I just in Jerusalem?”

Given that tendency, when I do find my mind wandering, I generally just cut myself some slack, call it a day, and go off and do something else.

Norm: Do you write more by logic or intuition, or some combination of the two? Please summarize your writing process when creating ACTS OF ATONEMENT.

S.W.: The entire complicated plot of Acts of Atonement played out in my brain in a single day without my consciously doing a thing.  And individual scenes and passages of dialogue continued popping into my thoughts as I went along—often in the middle of the night. 

I wrote the first draft over the course of a year—editing certain parts as I went, but basically just ploughing ahead.  I then gave the manuscript to a circle of trusted readers to check it out for tone, accuracy, logicality, and clarity. And—once they responded—I spent a full second year on the painful, methodical, critical process of going deeper into the research, re-organizing, re-writing, and pruning out a full two hundred pages of gratuitous characters and subplot.             

Norm: Did you have a message or goal for the novel? 

S.W.  Not when I first began.  I was just madly scribbling down the story that was exploding in my head.  But over time, as readers of all backgrounds and identities began telling me how at home they felt with my characters, a clear goal emerged.

I began to want my books to show that wisdom and foolishness, bias and open-mindedness, nurturing and neglect, kindness and cruelty are not limited to any one gender or sexuality or background or upbringing. That love and faith and atonement cross all sorts of boundaries—and possess the unparalleled power to heal.

And that, given both how diverse and how interconnected we all are, it is vitally important to keep learning from—and learning to care about—one another.    

 Norm: Where did you get your information or ideas for your novel?

 S.W.: Some ideas came out of my social justice work. Some came from my half-American-Jewish-half-Costa Rican-Catholic family. Some came from experts that I consulted.  Some from chance encounters.  I turned to a rabbi friend for information on Orthodox Jewish observance.

And to a colleague with expertise on the Bronx court system to learn about the workings of that world.  And to a native Spanish speaker to make sure my (sometimes) inventive Spanish was correct.  One pivotal scene sprang out of the observations of a Protestant friend who visited Israel a couple of years ago and saw it in a very different light than my Jewish friends do.         

Norm: How did you go about creating the characters of Paloma Rodriguez and Serach Gottesman? Are they based on people you know?

S.W.  Originally, Serach was simply going to be the narrator of what I thought would be a short story about a pious little Orthodox Jewish boy named Shmuely. 

But she quickly made herself the star and turned it all into a novel.  Characters do that—they take control.  She’s not directly based on anyone I know, though she does have bits of my husband’s kindness and logic in her.  Paloma appeared when I decided that Serach needed a partner and that it would be cool to make that partner Latina—since I know a thing or two about bringing those two cultures together under one roof. 

And then she took off as well.  She isn’t based on anyone either, though her compulsive flirtatiousness reminds me of one of my childhood friends, and her impulsiveness contains traces of my own.          

Norm: What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating the novel? 

S.W.: I was completely taken by surprise by what I ended up saying about the healing power of love, faith, kindness, and atonement.  I always thought of myself as being somewhat cynical on that front, but it turns out that I’m not.  I couldn’t have written all that with such conviction if I didn’t believe it.   

Norm: Any unique ways you'll be marketing your book that is different from how other authors market their books? 

 S.W.: I don’t know how many other authors have a marketing plan that simultaneously and strategically focuses on reaching women, LGBTQI individuals, Latins, and Jews. But—since so many people with other demographic profiles have told me that they’ve gotten caught up in my characters and settings—I’m hoping that I can also reach considerably beyond those groups.     

Norm: Where can our readers find out more about you and ACTS OF ATONEMENT?

 S.W.:  MY WEBSITE and my  PUBLISHER'S WEBSITE  offer more information about me and about ACTS OF ATONEMENT—plus a quick way to order the book. They also have information about (and an order button for) ACTS OF ASSUMPTION—the first book in the Serach-Paloma saga. 

And if anyone would like to hear me narrate my novels, they can order the audiobooks through Amazon.     

 Norm:  What is next for S.W. Leicher?

S.W.: I am working on a book of Torah and Haftarah commentaries in partnership with my husband. I’m mulling over some ideas for a murder mystery, and a short story about a largely ignored but marvelous Biblical figure.

I’m also toying with the idea of trying to break into the world of voiceovers so I can narrate other people’s audiobooks. I’ve rarely had as much fun as I did while narrating mine.  

Norm: As this interview comes to an end, if you could invite three novelists to your dinner table (dead or alive), who would they be and what would you ask them?

 S.W.: I would invite James Baldwin, Amos Oz, and Elena Ferrante over for a good Costa Rican meal of rice and beans and platanos and ask them to talk about how they think they’ve shaped people’s views about the cultures (Black American, Israeli Jewish and Neapolitan Italian) that they portray so beautifully.

They’ve certainly influenced my thinking, and I’d love to hear whether that was their original intent—and whether they think they’ve succeeded. And—oh—wouldn’t I just love to see who Elena Ferrante really is!

Norm: Thanks once again and good luck with all your future endeavors.

S.W.: You are very kind.  Thank you!

FOLLOW HERE TO READ NORM'S REVIEW OF ACTS OF ATONEMENT