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"  Where did this story begin for you? The action centers on a wedding of two women. Was gay marriage an inspiration? Actually, the story began in a radio station in my hometown of Norwich, CT, where I was promoting my just-finished comic novella Wishin&amp;#039; &amp;amp;amp; Hopin&amp;#039;. &amp;quot;So what&amp;#039;s next for Wally Lamb?&amp;quot; the announcer asked, and not wanting to appear dopey by revealing my lack of plan, I improvised. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m thinking of writing about the flood,&amp;quot; I said. If you&amp;#039;re from Norwich, you know that the flood refers to the devastation caused when, in 1963, the collapse of a dam unleashed millions of gallons of water on the city, destroyed the shopping district, and took five lives. I was a 12-year-old eyewitness to the horrors that night. How did you come up with the title? In 2007, my wife, Chris, and I attended a performance of the musical &amp;quot;Ten Million Miles,&amp;quot; which featured a Patty Griffin song titled &amp;quot;We Are Water.&amp;quot; I liked the alliterative sound of the phrase and scrawled it on the front of my playbill. What does that mean?, I kept wondering: We are water? I started writing the novel to find out. Usually I title my stories after they&amp;#039;re finished. This time, the title came first. Why tell this story through the voices of various characters? And why not tell any of it through Viveca&amp;#039;s voice? The multi-voiced approach wasn&amp;#039;t planned; it emerged organically as part of the process. I began by speaking in tandem chapters as Orion and Annie to learn their differing viewpoints about their marriage and divorce, their careers, and their children. Wanting to link Annie&amp;#039;s impulse to create art to that of an earlier artist, Josephus Jones, I began to listen to the voice of old Gualtiero Agnello, whose validation of both Annie&amp;#039;s and Joe&amp;#039;s artistic talents provides a bridge between them and introduces the theme of the link between creativity and madness, whether temporary or permanent. The Ohs&amp;#039; grown children, Ari, Andrew, and Marissa, each have different takes on their parents and their own early lives. I made the decision not to write a point of view chapter for Viveca, because I wanted her to remain a bit of a mystery to the reader. Which version of Viveca were readers to believe? Annie&amp;#039;s? Orion&amp;#039;s? Neither? Hopefully the mystery of who Viveca is reveals itself by the story&amp;#039;s end. She&amp;#039;s a contradiction of sorts\u2014both as flawed and humane as the rest of us. You&amp;#039;ve written the story of Josephus Jones, an untrained but talented African-American artist killed decades earlier, into the story of the Oh family\u2014or perhaps their story is a continuation of his. The Ohs are complex and riveting on their own, so why did you decide to open the novel beyond their experiences? As I see it, Annie Oh&amp;#039;s story is very much a continuation of Joe Jones&amp;#039;s. Both are artists and outsiders, both are powerless victims of immoral abusers of power. I began the novel during the first few months of Barack Obama&amp;#039;s presidency. I kept hearing people&amp;#039;s assumption that having elected a half-black president, we were now a post-racial society. But the institution of slavery and the repercussions that continue today cannot be so easily dismissed. Slavery is our country&amp;#039;s original sin, and it plays itself out daily in American life. So by linking Annie&amp;#039;s story to Joe Jones&amp;#039;s, I was attempting to tell a broader story than one about a single family. Whether or not I succeeded in doing so is up to my readers to decide, but I was very much conscious of that aim. Annie believes she has seen Joe (though he is long dead). Do you think she really did? How do you hope readers will interpret that? I hope that readers will filter the possibility of Joe&amp;#039;s posthumous appearances through their own belief system. Some people believe in God; some don&amp;#039;t. Some people believe in ghosts; others don&amp;#039;t. But do keep in mind that two other characters in the novel experience possible sightings of the dead painter: old Gualtiero Agnello and Annie&amp;#039;s son Andrew. Hm\u2026  You describe the process of creating art as a feeling that takes over, like a cyclone approaching. Do you ever feel that way when you write? All too infrequently! For me, writing is 95 percent work\u2014strategizing, crafting, and revising as much of the imperfection as I can out of earlier drafts. But then there&amp;#039;s that other 5 percent of the time, when you enter so fully into the story appearing before you on the monitor and in your head that it is more real than your real life around you. When I am fully &amp;quot;in the zone,&amp;quot; so to speak, it can be both scary and exhilarating. I&amp;#039;ve heard artists of all kinds, all genres, speak of similar times of peak creative performance. Is it the muse? Brain chemistry? Who knows? I only know I&amp;#039;m grateful and humbled by it when, every great once in a while, it happens. Do you consider Annie the main character? So much of the story revolves around her, but Orion Oh, her ex-husband, has much of the narrative, including the ending.  For the first couple of the almost four years it took me to write this story, I wasn&amp;#039;t sure which of the two characters would emerge as the protagonist. I felt sympathetic to both in different ways and for different reasons. I told myself to be patient\u2014that I would know by the time I finished the story whose story it was: the character that had changed the most as a result of his or her conflicts. But when the Ohs&amp;#039; three children began to open their mouths and tell their stories, I began to see the family as a whole as the main character. Each member changes directly or indirectly, positively or negatively, because of Annie and Viveca&amp;#039;s wedding. As I wrote the last chapters, the person I was most sympathetic toward was neither Annie nor Orion, but their son Andrew. You have three sons. Were the scenes where the children are in pain hard to write? Sure. But also necessary for a story that seeks to explore deeper truths, however uncomfortable. Of our three sons, the older two were conceived by my wife Chris and me. Our youngest started life as our nephew and was adopted by us when he was 5. His birth parents both have serious substance abuse issues, and were not capable of raising their child in a safe, stable, and pain-free environment. Our youngest is 22 now and still struggling. I know all about children in pain and the crucial necessity of positive imprinting at the earliest stages of life. What&amp;#039;s the last great book you read? Amanda Coplin&amp;#039;s 2012 novel The Orchardist comes immediately to mind. Compelling characters and a memorable and sympathetic protagonist, beautifully-crafted language, a page-turning narrative: I loved and admired this story. Coplin is a first-time novelist who reads like a seasoned pro. Do you have an all-time favorite author or book? My short list of authors who taught me how to write fiction includes Flannery O&amp;#039;Connor, John Updike, and Raymond Carver, and I have a special place in my heart for Harper Lee&amp;#039;s To Kill a Mockingbird. Can you share what you&amp;#039;re working on now? Next up for me will be a short comic e-novella with multimedia extras. After that I&amp;#039;ll tackle a more serious novel, which may be about the movie industry. I&amp;#039;d also like to tackle a stage play consisting of dramatic monologues based on the autobiographical essays of my prison students. Do you have any advice for aspiring novelists? Humble yourself to the process, and should best-sellerdom come your way, stay humble. Read our review of Wally Lamb&amp;#039;s We Are Water here.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/interviews/a16165/wally-lamb-interview/>