Author Interview

Necessary Fiction Interview

| Ted Wheeler
(Photo by Nicole Wheeler)

I was recently lucky to be interviewed by one of my favorite writers, and favorite people, in the world: Amina Gautier. Today, on Necessary Fiction, the interview went live!

We go deep on all three of my novels, the craft of writing about real things, and the challenges of being a journalist/novelist/professor. I really like these kinds of conversations that get more into the craft and experience of writing rather than focusing solely on the story of a specific book. I like them all, to be clear, but this kind comes my way less often. There’s still plenty about The War Begins in Paris too.

Thanks so much to Amina for her great questions and finding a platform. Amina has a new book out this month too, btw, The Best That You Can Do. You should go get it!

In the meantime, read the interview here.

“Wheeler’s latest novel The War Begins in Paris follows Mielle aka Marthe Hess, a quiet, unobtrusive journalist living abroad in Paris. Having left her Iowa home and her Mennonite community she finds herself struggling to fit in with the gaggle of journalists, reporters, and correspondents in Paris. While others are there to cover the disturbing rise of Nazism and Fascism, she writes uncredited fashion and style columns for midwestern housewives. Raised to be meek, to dress plainly, to never raise her voice, Mielle goes unnoticed, invisible among her cadre of reporters, never quite fitting in until she strikes an unlikely friendship with the notorious Jane, whose influence drags Mielle into the war’s dark center.”

Interview with E. Shaver Booksellers

| Ted Wheeler

Check out this fun interview with E. Shaver Booksellers of Savannah about writing The War Begins in Paris. A little sample is below.

I’ll be headed down to Georgia in February for the Savannah Book Festival. SBF is one of the best book fests in the country, and it’s known for taking great care of it’s authors. I can’t wait!

What’s the strangest thing you had to do to create this story?

In order to better understand what it was like to be Mielle, I ended up buying a pair of brogan shoes and a long canvas jacket like one that she wears in the novel. Wearing her shoes and clothes helped a lot to feel what she would have felt, even though I was walking around Omaha and she was walking around Paris. Thinking about writing this novel during the Covid pandemic feels strange too, when put in comparison with what foreign correspondents experienced in 1938, on the edge of the war starting. That sense of looming catastrophe; the uncertainty and chaos; even having been personally rushed out of Paris. The details don’t match up, of course, but there was a lot of experiential overlap that helped get me in character.

Kings Under the LJS Microscope

| Ted Wheeler

wheeler ljsThe Lincoln Journal-Star has quite a lot of coverage on my new novel Kings of Broken Things on the front of its (402) lifestyle section this Sunday, with a book review and an interview. Be sure to pick up a copy of the paper if you’re in the Lincoln area and check out for yourself the two photos of my giant head. (May not be to scale.)

Thanks so much to features editor Jeff Korbelik for interviewing me, and Andrew Willis for his well-considered review. I especially like how the review mentions that Kings of Broken Things briefly features a Nebraska-Notre Dame football game from 1918, when Knute Rockne brought his Irishmen to Lincoln for a Thanksgiving Day game and my character Jake Strauss was in the crowd.

Be sure to check out the interview and I’ll post a link to the review if it goes online. In the meantime, here’s a little taste:

Theodore Wheeler’s nearly 10-year journey ends Tuesday when publisher Little A releases the Omaha author’s first novel, “Kings of Broken Things.” Wheeler, 35, admitted he’s anxious, having spent seven to eight years writing the book and another year and half to two years working through the publishing process. “I have a 9-year-old daughter, so when I started working on it she was still a baby and now she’s going to fourth grade,” Wheeler said in a phone interview to discuss the novel’s release. “It kind of puts it in a little more perspective.”

Tethered by Letters Author Q&A

| Ted Wheeler

c77vnhlwkaqyaiiCheck out this new interview that features my thoughts on writing, publishing, and MFA programs over at the Tethered by Letters Author Q&A Series!

I’m ecstatic to be featured on the page, as the TbL Q&A Series is a great resource for writers, both beginning and established. It’s well-worth your time to check out the archives, including interviews with Maggie Smith, Dana Gioia,  Sandra Marchetti, Karen Craigo, and Saleh Saterstrom. The Q&As are heavy on the process of becoming an established writer and are great for writing students.

Thanks so much to Tethered by Letters for including my responses, and for Amanda DeNatale for conducting the interview.

Here’s an excerpt:

Probably like most writers, I’ve always had an inescapable urge to tell stories. Some of my earliest memories are of using a George Washington paper-doll my mom made to recreate scenes from a Time-Life series of American history books we had in the house, and I was writing some of these stories down by the time I started elementary school. That’s not a career event, of course, but where things started. For most of my childhood I planned on being either a sports writer for a newspaper or a comic book writer for Marvel when I grew up. What I do now isn’t too far off from that—my day job is as a reporter (but on civil law and politics, not sports) and I write literary fiction instead of super hero comics. Most of my life has been following an impulse to write, which led to different jobs and styles that allow me to keep going in ways that are fulfilling. I don’t think there was ever an epiphany, more just doing what has kept me engaged and happy.