The Main Plot

The heart of the site features the author interviews, so we'll begin there. You can go directly to an interview featured on the home page by clicking any of the book covers, or you can see more of what the site has to offer by clicking the bright green Search Interviews button in the navigation bar on the left. This button really could have been titled Search And Browse Interviews because the site not only lets you search by keyword, but it also lets you browse by genre, author, or book title.

Let's start by choosing an author from the alphabetical list. We randomly select a letter and scan the list of names. The name Dick Armey looks interesting (when we think of authors, we tend to think of those who make a living out of writing rather than those who have made their names elsewhere and written books on those experiences), so we click it and select his latest book, "Armey's Axioms." We find out that he is indeed the same person who was once the House Majority Leader. The interview description says, "Now retired, Armey has written a book of advice and opinion that he says is useful not just for politicians, but for all of us."

It sounds intriguing, so we locate the audio player just below the author description and book cover. This green box tells us the interview is six minutes and 23 seconds long, and to hear the interview, all we need to do is click the "play" arrow. We do so, and soon Armey is describing his primary agenda in writing the book (to take serious subjects and treat them with good humor) and his two hidden agendas (to gently persuade others about his religious beliefs and to demonstrate one can write a good book without trashing former colleagues). If the audio player doesn't appear in your software, simply click the Don't See A Player Here/Click Here To Listen link, and the site will attempt to search your PC's hard drive for another audio program through which the interview will automatically play.

After you listen to an interview, look below the interview box to find other recommendations. Thompson places related interviews in a box titled Similar Interviews You'll Enjoy, so you can click, for example, "How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life" to find out how former speechwriter Peter Robinson was influenced by our nation's 40th chief executive. Or, if you want to browse other interviews in the same category, you can click the more general links that Eye on Books provides.

For our next adventure, let's try searching for another type of book: a mystery. Click the Search Interviews button on the left to return to the main search page and select Mystery & Thrillers from the By Genre drop-down menu. Eye on Books divides this category into several subcategories, so we decided to try out Police Procedurals. This area contains the type of books we expected—"Last Car To Elysian Fields" by James Lee Burke and "The Falls" by Ian Rankin, for example—and we select "Chosen Prey," the 12th novel in John Sandford's "Prey" series.

As with the Dick Armey interview, this page includes a short description, the book cover, an audio player, and related links. Plus, there are additional sections: One is the author's photo; the others are related links categories. John Sandford has his own home page online, and, as with many writers on this site, you can click the Author Website link to find out more. And, just beneath that link sits a link next to The Writer's Craft, which brings us to the next big benefit of Eye on Books: discovering what makes various writers so successful.


The Inside Scoop

The Writer's Craft is a special section of the Eye on Books site devoted specifically to interviews in which the author discusses a topic related to writing, in general, rather than a specific book. You may have wondered where writers get their ideas, or what their backgrounds are, or how much of friends, families, and acquaintances make their way into novels. Thompson has conducted several hundred interviews on these topics and more, and you can treat yourself to these gems in The Writer's Craft section.

Start by clicking The Writer's Craft link or button from the left navigation bar, located on the home page or throughout most pages of the site. Toward the middle of the page, you'll see a handful of featured interviews, typically those most recently added to the site. For instance, a description of an interview with Elizabeth Peters notes, "You may have heard it said that in a mystery, plot comes first, with characters a distant second. But for Elizabeth Peters, aka Barbara Mertz, aka Barbara Michaels, characters always come first." And, an interview with E.L. Doctorow shows that he adheres to Elmore Leonard's tactic of "leav[ing] out the parts that people skip." Each featured interview description lists the length of audio, usually ranging from two to seven minutes, and clicking a particular link takes you directly to that author's Writer's Craft interview.

Scroll down a bit below the featured interviews, and you'll find an alphabetical list of all the authors interviewed for this section. Some names are well-known, such as Dave Barry; some are less familiar, such as China Miéville (no offense meant to fans of this talented fantasy writer); and some are just plain unexpected, such as Stan and Jan Berenstain (yes, the authors of nearly 300 popular children's books about the Berenstain Bears).

If you're looking for interviews on specific topics, however, you'll be best served by scrolling down just a bit further. Eye on Books organizes these topics into categories, including Plotting, Characters, Research, The Evolving Writer, Challenges To Writing, Inspiration And Motivation, Getting Started, and more.

For example, take a look at the Characters section. You know that Charlie Brown will always be a child and that Blondie and Dagwood haven't aged a day, but fiction writers must answer the question: How will your main character age? Lawrence Block chose a couple of approaches. He made one of his main characters, ex-cop Matthew Scudder, his own age so Block would have an easier time keeping track of his age, whereas another character, Block's lovable burglar with a heart of gold, Bernie Rhodenbarr, stays the same unspecified age forever "and clearly fails to learn from experience."

(Don't) Spoil It

Block, like other mystery writers and most other novelists, has found that interviewers typically won't ask authors about the endings of their books. After all, the author doesn't want to give away the most satisfying part of the book. But sometimes the most intriguing questions for a reader can be answered only by discussing a book's ending. Why did the author kill off his main character? How did that plot twist occur? When did the writer realize she had no other choice than the ending she came up with?

Welcome to The Spoiler Room, a part of the site where authors discuss their books' conclusions. As the name implies, listening to these interviews can spoil a book for you if it's on your to-read list, but if you've already read a book, The Spoiler Room is a great place to go for insight and information.

Click The Spoiler Room link on the navigation bar and browse the titles. If you find one you want to know more about, click the interview link. But be warned: The short description of the book on this page may also contain a spoiler, so be careful when scanning the list of titles or risk learning more about a book than you wish to know.


In Color

If The Spoiler Room doesn't appeal to you, another section of the site you're sure to find interesting is the Photo Gallery. Most authors include their photos somewhere on their books, even if it's merely a thumbnail shot on the inside back flap, but that may not satisfy a reader's curiosity about what an author really looks like. Eye on Books' creator, Thompson, has his photo taken with many of the authors he interviews, and now you can view those snapshots online in the Photo Gallery.

Click the Photo Gallery button or link in the navigation bar, and you'll see the first of 10 or so pages, each filled with head shots of about 20 authors, sorted from the most recent to the oldest photo. Click any of the photos for a larger picture, often with the author standing next to Thompson. If you're searching for a particular author, click Sort By Author Name at the top of each page. In this section, you'll find photos of, just to name a few, Jay Leno, Maya Angelou, and Terry Bradshaw. (And yes, we also would like to know what the Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Steeler is doing wearing a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap.)


The Denouement

Spend some time with Eye on Books, and you'll find answers to such questions as why E.L. Doctorow never really thought of himself as a story writer. (It's because he sees himself as a novelist, which, he says, is something else altogether.) You may even find answers to questions you didn't know you had. Fortunately, Eye on Books' creator, Thompson, knew he had lots of questions, and we think you'll find the authors' answers to these questions as fascinating as he did.

by Heidi V. Anderson