Janis Cooke Newman

I love to write--and read!--historical fiction because it gives me the opportunity to experience what it must have been like to have lived in another time, and often another place. One of the inspirations for my new novel, 'A Master Plan for Rescue,' was the story of the St. Louis, the ship of Jewish refugees that sailed from Hitler's Germany in 1939. Though these 900 refugees held visas for Cuba, they were refused permission to land, and spent days sailing up and down the coast of Florida, hoping to find a home in America. They were refused there as well, and eventually had to set sail back to Germany. I wanted to know what it was like to have been on that boat, so I placed a character on it. I was also inspired to write 'A Master Plan for Rescue' by my son, who was 12 when I began the book. Boys at that age stand equally in childhood and adulthood. One minute, they're fixing something on your computer, and the next, they're asking you to buy them Buzz Lightyear towels for summer camp. I wanted to write from that imaginative world, so I created Jack, my main character, and had him lose the person he loved most. I'm not only an author, I am also the founder of Lit Camp, a juried writers conference that takes place every May in the Northern California Wine Country. We open for submissions every October 1, and stay open until the end of January. Lit Camp also provides community for writers in the San Francisco Bay Area. We have writing meet-ups, and our own reading series, The Basement Series, where emerging writers get the opportunity to read on stage with published authors. You can find out more about Lit Camp at litcampwriters.org. I'm now working on a new historical novel that will take place in 1920s Ireland and New York. Can't wait to share it with you!