Humor Matters When You Collaborate: Tilia Klebenov Jacobs Talks about Co-Authoring STEALING TIME with Norman Birnbach
I’ve always wondered how writers manage to successfully co-author novels. Tilia Klebenov Jacobs’ account of her collaboration with Norman Birnbach in writing STEALING TIME is fascinating, as is the rich diversity of her life experience as a “Third Culture Kid,” prison educator, and outdoor adventurer. It was such a treat to interview her!
First off, congratulations on the release of your novel, STEALING TIME, co-written with Norman Birnbach. Can you share with our readers a bit about the novel and what inspired it?
Thank you! The genesis for the book came one day when Norman was out with his then-teenaged daughter, Rebecca. They spotted a rotary phone, and she thought it would be fun to use it to call her brothers, who were at home. Well, she had never actually used a rotary phone, so Norman had to walk her through it—which is when he realized that his bright, adventurous daughter would have had real trouble navigating the New York City of his youth. So he and she started batting around ideas about a modern teen with a modern-life skill-set who travels back in time and meets her father when he was her age. Thus was a novel born. In Stealing Time, our main character, Tori, a girl from 2020, suddenly finds herself in 1980 where she has to join forces with her now-teenaged dad to stop a jewelry heist that will otherwise destroy their family for generations.
This is not the first novel you’ve written, but it is the first one you’ve written with a co-author. How did that come about, and what was your collaborative process like? 
You can thank Covid for this partnership! I had started working on a novel in February 2020, but the pandemic derailed that. Meanwhile, Norman was looking for a critique group for his own writing, and a mutual friend suggested he reach out to me for advice. (I should explain that Norman and I knew each other slightly during college in the 1980s, but had had no contact since then.) This was at the beginning of lockdown, when those of us who were lucky enough to have a home were hunkered down with our families, watching the death tolls rise. This was not conducive to getting writing done, at least for me; so when I heard from Norman and we had chatted a bit, I asked if he might be interested in working together. He said yes, so we wrote a short story for a friend of mine who teaches elementary school. Having found that we worked well as a team, we went on to write Stealing Time.
It’s safe to say neither of us would have birthed this book without the other, because we brought complementary skill sets to the endeavor. Norman contributed the plot, characters, and setting, none of which I would ever have come up with. On the other hand, I had written three books before Stealing Time; all Norman’s prior publications were short pieces, published in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, among many others. My experience meant that I could bring a book-writing skill set to our endeavor: I knew how to outline a three-hundred-page novel, write bios for all our characters, and line up beta readers when the time was right.
In some ways, our success is counterintuitive. We have heard that to write a book together, you need to know each other very well; we did not. We’ve also heard that you have to have identical approaches to the process, but I am a plotter and he is a pantser. So much for conventional wisdom.
But in fact, we have enough in common to make such a partnership work. First, we have the same work ethic. This is indispensable: if one of you schedules a meeting that the other skips, or writes 90% of a book that the other takes 50% credit for, you are doomed. Second, we have compatible senses of humor, and many people have told us that they laughed aloud while reading the book. The absence of a shared funny bone would, I think, be the death knell of a project like this and countless others.
Furthermore, we have kids about the same ages, and several of them were in high school while we were working on the book. This was super useful, given that Stealing Time has teen protagonists, because it meant we had easy access to focus groups that could validate what current teens might or might not know about life in 1980. I don’t know how many times I texted my daughter at school to ask if she knew about some ordinary facet of life back then. If I timed it just right, she was at lunch and could ask half a dozen other kids before reporting back to me.
Finally, throughout the process we were willing to listen to each other and take each other’s edits, because we shared the goal of making our story the best it could be.
With your dad serving in the State Department, you had an unusual childhood in which you resided in Colombia, Norway, and the United States. How do you think the experience of international living affected your writing? And you personally?
This is called being a “Third Culture Kid,” or TCK: someone who grew up in a culture different from their parents’ and their own for a big part of childhood. Specific to my career as a writer is the fact that studies show that TCKs tend to be “highly linguistically adept.” I think I would have had a love of the English language anyway, but constant exposure to new ways of speaking and thinking probably honed it.
TCKs also tend to experience a (sometimes distressing) ignorance of their home culture, and I think I drew on that, perhaps unconsciously, when we were working on Stealing Time. For the bulk of the book Tori is simultaneously home and not home: she’s in her own apartment, because her dad also grew up there, but now it’s decorated in a late-1970s style. Also, in 1980 her grandmother smokes, so said apartment reeks of tobacco. Tori has lived in New York her whole life, so she knows where the streets are; but the early eighties were a really rough time for the city, which was a grittier, dirtier, and more dangerous place than it is now. All of this is analogous to my experience of growing up as the only American in my classes, then going home for the summers and not knowing the TV shows or how to play baseball.
You’ve held a variety of teaching and other jobs. Were you always writing, and what led you to focus on writing for publication?
I think most writers who aren’t Emily Dickinson hope to be published. It’s a real thrill when the story that’s been living in your head finally leaps into the world so you can see if other people love it as much as you do.
As for my becoming a writer, let’s just say that no one who knew me as a child is surprised. Mind you, I love teaching and would like to do it more often; but I know from experience that I can’t teach full-time and do any writing to speak of. These days I teach part-time, look for more time, and write the rest of the time.
I was so impressed that one of your teaching jobs has been to work with prison inmates. How did you get into this work and what has this experience been like for you?
Many years ago I was invited to be part of PEN New England’s prison education program. The idea both fascinated and terrified me—literally, my palms were sweating. And I thought, “That right there is the reason to do it.”
However, my first reaction wasn’t wrong. Prisons are designed to frighten. It took years before I became even remotely comfortable walking into one, even when I could recite the security procedures by heart.
All that being said, working in prisons is by far the most rewarding teaching I’ve ever done. For the most part, the inmates really want to learn, and are using what I give them to make themselves better people. In that sense, it’s Teacher Happy Place. My prison teaching experience is one of the only times I have felt I was doing enough to make the world a better place.
I noted on your website that you are quite an outdoor enthusiast and adventurer, including “swimming with dolphins.” How did that come about, and will it be appearing in any of your fiction?
The dolphins happened on a vacation with friends, and it was a bucket-list item for me since I have always had a thing for dolphins and other marine mammals. In fact, I spent one college summer as a naturalist on a whale-watch cruise out of Boston. After college, I worked for a park system in Virginia. This came in very handy when I wrote my first book, Wrong Place, Wrong Time, where my outdoor enthusiasm is on full display! It’s a hostage drama that takes place in the mountains of northern New Hampshire, and I drew heavily on my experience as an outdoor educator to keep my protagonist alive.
You’ve taken a major leadership role in your chapter of Mystery Writers of America, and my guess is that you’ve mentored other writers less far along in their writing journeys, as well as having been mentored. What advice would you give folks who aspire to write fiction?
Yes, I am now vice president of Mystery Writers of America-New England! I’m not sure when they’re giving me the nuclear codes, but it can’t be too much longer.
As for my best advice to writers, I would say find a teacher and find a community. Often they’re in the same place! Both will help you take your craft and your career further than you would ever be able to on your own.
In addition to novels, you’ve written short stories, memoir, and essays. What are the similarities and/or differences in your writing approach, depending upon what you’re working on?
The similarities are greater than most people suspect, because in every instance you’re figuring out what to say and how to say it.
Being a plotter, I always outline. That simple step lets me focus on crafting prose without worrying that I’ll forget the crucial plot point/memory/insight that comes next.
What’s next for you writing-wise?
I’ve finally gotten back to the book I was working on in February 2020!
Anything else you’d like to add, or wish I’d asked that I didn’t?
Stealing Time is available wherever books are sold! Don’t be afraid of embarrassing us by buying multiple copies.
BIO:
Tilia Klebenov Jacobs is a bestselling novelist and short story writer. She is vice president of Mystery Writers of America-New England, and is proud to say that HarperCollins calls her one of “crime fiction’s top authors.” In addition to Stealing Time, she is the author of Wrong Place, Wrong Time; Second Helpings at the Serve You Right Café; and Casper and Jasper and the Terrible Tyrant. Tilia has taught middle school, high school, and college, as well as classes for inmates in Massachusetts state prisons. She lives near Boston with her husband, two children, and pleasantly neurotic standard poodle.
CONTACT LINKS:
For Tilia: http://www.tiliaklebenovjacobs.com
For Norman: https://normanbirnbach.weebly.com/about.html
For the book itself: https://stealingtime.net
BUY LINKS:
Bookshop. org: https://bookshop.org/p/books/stealing-time-tilia-klebenov-jacobs/21866719?ean=9798991024914&next=t
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/stealing-time-tilia-klebenov-jacobs/1147240874?ean=9798991024914
What a great story about the inspiration for this book, Tillia. I love it. Best of luck with yours and Norman’s STEALING TIME.
Thank you, Pamela! I hope you love reading it.