The russian word for snow

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!

Janis Cooke Newman first saw the baby who would become her son on a videotape. He was 10 months old and naked, lying on a metal changing table while a woman in a white lab coat and a babushka tried to make him smile for the camera.

Four months later, the Newmans traveled to Moscow to get their son. Russia was facing its first democratic election, and the front-runner was an anti-American Communist who they feared would block adoptions.

For nearly a month, the Newmans spent every day at the orphanage with the child they’d named Alex, waiting for his adoption to be approved. As Russia struggled with internal conflict, the metro line they used was bombed, and another night, the man who was to sign their papers was injured in a car-bombing.

Finally, when the Newmans had begun to consider kidnapping, their adoption coordinator, through the fog of a hangover, made the call: Alex was theirs.

Written with a keen sense of humor, The Russian Word for Snow is a clear-eyed look at the experience of making a family through adoption.