Miriam the Medium

When writer Rochelle Jewel Shapiro and I first started discussing the possibility of doing this email interview, she was still in the midst of writing her sequel to her 2004 novel, Miriam the Medium. I am happy to note, as she acknowledges in the opening of our discussion-that she has put the new novel, Kaylee’s Ghost, in her agent’s hands. I greatly appreciated the range of questions she endured from me-and I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did. My thanks to Rochelle, for her time and thoughts-and hopefully before we know it, her new novel will soon be on the market.

Tim O’Shea: You are currently at work on a sequel to your first autobiographical novel. Will the sequel stay in the autobio vein?

Rochelle Jewel Shapiro: As in my first novel, Miriam the Medium (Simon & Schuster), Kaylee’s Ghost, which is now in my agent’s hands, also features Miriam Kaminsky who is a phone psychic from Great Neck like I am, Funny how people know call me Miriam and I have grown so tired of correcting them that I answer to the name of my character now. People always ask me, with sympathy, “What did you really do when Cara ran away?” My own daughter never ran away (phew) and her name isn’t Cara. But, just as I now answer to Miriam, I accept when people to refer to my non-fictional daughter as Cara. In Kaylee’s Ghost, Miriam has a granddaughter just as I do. I will be honored if readers begin to refer to my own granddaughter as Violet. It will mean that the story I’ve written is real to them, and that’s my goal.

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