Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What advice do you have for aspiring novelists?

A: Read, write, persist. Regarding reading, I can’t say it any better than Stephen King did in his excellent book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft: “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write.” Regarding writing, find a time of day that works for you and get busy. Good writing requires practice. Write every day. Regarding persistence, remember that this is a marathon, not a sprint. And it will be much easier to persist if you find (or create) a community of writers. You can do this, but you don’t have to do it alone. For more details, see this article I wrote for Novel Suspects: https://www.novelsuspects.com/author-essay/ka-merson-advice-for-aspiring-novelists/

Q: What was the inspiration behind The Language of the Birds?

A: I think novels are like the waters of major rivers—they don’t flow from a single source. But here are a few different sources of inspiration for my book. First, the place where I’ve made my home is steeped in the history of the California Gold Rush and I wanted to incorporate some of that rich history (mines, boomtowns, and ghost towns). Many of the locations in the book have a personal connection (i.e., places I’ve lived or traveled with my family, including dogs, of course). Second, I used to be an engineer and I'm married to an artist, and I love the intersection of art and science. That nexus is integrated into the story in a couple of ways, although I won’t elaborate here to avoid spoilers. :-) Third, I have a fascination for how people can create conspiracy theories out of a few unrelated facts (or in some cases, no facts at all). So, one of the goals in writing the book was to try to tie together a bunch of disparate facts, but in a way that created a new conspiracy from scratch. Ultimately, I wanted to leave the reader wondering where the truth ends and fictions begins. Whether I succeeded is up to you to decide.

Q: The novel is filled with interactive elements (puzzles, ciphers, and images). Did you always imagine the book as something that would encourage readers to participate in the mystery?

A: Personally, I think readers always want to participate as much as possible, especially in a mystery. So, yes, the interactive elements were very intentional in that regard. However, since some of the puzzles are very complex, I also wanted to show all the steps in Arizona’s process of deduction so that the reader wouldn’t be required to be a super-sleuth.

Q: What was your process for creating the puzzles and ciphers?

A: That would be backwards. :-) First determining where I needed to end up and then figuring out how to get there in an obtuse but believable manner. Creating the puzzles was fun, but it was also a lot of work. The first draft of The Language of the Birds took me almost a year and a half to write, probably at least twice as long as it would have taken without the puzzles. And whenever the puzzles needed to be changed during the editing process, that was equally laborious.

Q: You blend real-world history with legend and fiction throughout the book. Do you have any advice for budding writers looking to blend fact and fiction?

A: My primary advice here is directly related to my general advice above (read, write, persist) but in particular to the first of those—read. The more facts you want to incorporate into your fiction, the more reading of non-fiction you’ll have to do. I read at least two dozen non-fiction books on a wide variety of topics while writing and editing The Language of the Birds.

Q: What are some of your favorite adventure stories?

A: It probably won’t come as a surprise that I’m a fan of many of the authors and books that I referenced within my story, so classics like The Time Machine, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Treasure Island all come to mind, as well as Lord of the Flies, and Mark Twain’s classic adventure stories. More contemporary works include The Martian, The Hunger Games trilogy, and on the non-fiction side, Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage.