LL: Next question: Second books -- sophomore efforts, to use that dreadful term -- have a reputation for being extremely tough. Was that your experience with KISSCUT?
KS: I think that worrying about the sophomore slump can be debilitating for a lot of authors, and they can lose sight of why they started writing in the first place. Writing is such a solitary craft, and most of the time it's just you and your computer. When you are a published author, it's not just you anymore. It can be distracting thinking about reviews and tours and sales and all those things that have nothing to do with writing stories. After a while, it's like being nibbled to death by ducks.
When I started KISSCUT, there was so much going on with BLINDSIGHTED that I took a week in Florida to be alone with the characters again and work on the story. As important as the first novel is, the second one proves you've got more than one book in you. I tried not to think about that part of it when I was writing, just like I'm trying not to think about the pressure on KISSCUT as I'm working on FAINT COLD FEAR. Basically, I guess my life is one of healthy denial right now.
LL: Where are you, right now, in your writing? Is your third book finished? In progress?
KS: FAINT COLD FEAR, the third novel, is finished and in progress. I've written the first draft and got the basic movement of the story, but I needed to take some time off to think about some plot points. This week, I'll go back in and edit the book and deliver it to my editor.
I am also thinking about the plot for INDELIBLE. FEAR ends with a bit of a cliffhanger, which won't pick up until the fifth book because INDELIBLE takes place in the past. I've got the fifth book, FAITHLESS, sort of rolling around in my mind, but right now the focus is on FAINT COLD FEAR and finishing it before my tour starts. When I write, I like to go from beginning to end without interruption, so I'm trying to plan my days carefully.
Right this moment, I'm waiting to hear back from David, a doctor in Texas who tells me what I can and cannot do medically. It's very important to me to get the medical details right for Sara, and David is wonderful because he understands that action moves the story.
LL: Do you think you have a finite number of books in you?
KS: You've picked a bad time to ask. Every time I finish a book, I think that's my last and I'll never be able to write again. I suppose it goes back to the love-affair analogy, where once you've gotten rid of someone, you think you'll never fall in love again. Of course, you always do, and I've found myself over the last few days thinking about a couple of things that Sara and Jeffrey might find interesting. Yesterday, I talked to my editor on the phone about INDELIBLE, the fourth Grant County book, and all of these ideas just came from nowhere, so somewhere in my head, I must be thinking about the next book.
So, thankfully, the feeling that I've written my last book never lasts long. One night I'll go to bed thinking I'll never get another contract and that I'm going to end up working at Home Depot next year (which was actually a dream job of mine at one point) but then I'll wake up the next morning and there will be all sorts of notes I've written in the middle of the night and left out on the kitchen counter. Then I'll start working an idea around in my head and won't be able to rest until it's on the page.
For now, though, I feel drained and useless, like I should be in the Keswick Home for Incurables.
LL: Keswick Home for the Incurables! You sly girl -- have you read The Last Place? Because KISSCUT is on my bedstand, on hold until I've finished #8. I cannot read crime fiction at certain points in the process, so I've been reading other things. Girlie things, well-mannered novels.
KS: I had to read THE LAST PLACE in pieces, because I started working on FEAR and had to stop reading. I'm like you -- I can't read crime fiction when I'm writing. Keswick [in THE LAST PLACE] is right where I had to break off reading your book. Fortunately, I had to go to New York last week and took it with me on the plane. Unfortunately, we taxied on the runway forever, so I finished it before we even got into the air. The woman next to me was reading E. Lynn Harris's latest, and I kept trying to look over her shoulder but she gave me a really nasty look. Some people are so rude.
LL: Is it just me or is there a sameness of voice in first-person women's fiction that Aspires to Seriousness? I won't name names, for I do admire these books, and the one I'm reading right now is quite good.
KS: I wonder, does anyone ever ask if there is a sameness of voice in first-person men's fiction? Are they all held up in the minutiae of language, the stretch to seem like the ultimate insider while maintaining the appearance of being the cool, misunderstood outsider? (sensitive enough to know poetry yet manly enough not to quote it to anyone but a woman)
I don't really read what's called "Chick-Lit." I guess the sameness of voice is a primary reason, but another bigger one is that I think the issues being tackled in women's fiction are so much better handled in crime fiction. Denise Mina, Mo Hayder, you (and I would hope I), are all doing much more interesting things with voice and narrative in our books than those unnamed women's fiction writers. Some of the best books I've read lately make powerful statements about sex, violence, violence against women and social issues affecting women, and all of them fall into the crime fiction category. The best part is that crime novels actually have a plot. I think that a lot of "literary" novels don't have plots anymore. I don't think someone should have to die for this to happen in literary fiction.
LL: The "women's fiction" I mentioned wouldn't be called Chick Lit, the best of which is riotous and funny. I was talking about the serious stuff, or wannabe serious stuff. And most reviewers wouldn't be as sexist as I was, but there is a voice out there, this well-mannered, polite, so much the-girl-in-the-front-row voice that I can't help noticing it. Somewhere, young women are being rewarded for writing this way -- and I'm not sure they should be. There's probably an analogous young man's voice as well, but I haven't identified the strain yet. On the plus side, there is no shortage of mainstream female writers with unique voices -- Alice Adams, Laurie Colwin, Cathleen Schine.
Within our genre, I think one of the outstanding voices is/was Liza Cody's Eva Wylie. Have you read those books?
KS: I haven't read Cody's work, but I've certainly heard about her. When I think of outstanding voices in our field, I think of writers like you and Lindsay Davis and Denise Mina. All of y'all are writing such different stuff (especially Davis, who writes in Roman times) but the thing that puts you in the same category is a uniqueness of voice. I know when I pick up a Falco or a Tess Monaghan, I'm going to get a different perspective.
I tend to shy away from Serious Women's Literature, except for Kathryn Harrison, Lee Smith and a handful of others. I know what you mean about voice in women's literature -- that sort of knowing, jaded tone where the readers knows that no matter what horrible thing befalls our heroine she will come out at the end no worse for the wear. This is not to say she won't have learned an Important Lesson, but that she will be somewhat anesthetized to it. Does that make any sense? It's as if she goes through the motions of a horrible life without truly grasping the horrible side of it. I think this is indicative of a greater social problem, where we are used to being told how to feel instead of being left to our own devices. It's sort of like viewing your own life through an aquarium.
Maybe I'm the worst kind of hypocrite, because the last five books I read and enjoyed would probably fall into this category!
LL: Why can't you read other crime books late in the process?
KS: I really can't read crime novels while I'm writing the Grant County series. I want to keep my own voice, and it's very hard when I'm reading someone like Denise Mina, who has such a powerful control of narrative, to stand where I'm from. I do have to read something, though, because I would go nuts without a book. I tend to read two or three a week when I'm writing, more when I'm not. The most valuable thing a writer can do to hone their craft is to read other writers.
While I was working on FEAR, two books I enjoyed were Michael Chabon's KAVALIER AND CLAY and Kathryn Harrison's THE SEAL WIFE. These are excellent examples of character-propelled stories that don't skimp on plot. I have long been a fan of Harrison's, and I was thrilled to find she had written a new novel. She brings such an incredible focus to her work that whenever I finish one of her novels, I feel a little lonely, like I've lost something wonderful.
I started THE LOVELY BONES (Sebold) a few days before I finished FEAR, and I was sort of annoyed because I did not realize it's crime fiction. I've read a lot of reviews of the book since then, and no one else seems to think it falls into that genre, but I think the story definitely has shades of a conventional mystery/thriller. It's a great book, though. I got over my irritation by the fifth page.
And...okay, okay, I got addicted to the Lindsay Davis Falco series and read about six books before my editor in the UK cut me off. She's holding TIME TO DEPART until she gets the finished manuscript of FEAR. I tell you, these publishing people are tough.
Speaking of publishing, which would you rather be: one of People's 50 most beautiful people or on Entertainment Weekly's "It" list?
LL: If I have to choose, then I'll go with "It" because too many people I know already think I'm a vain so-and-so. But I know, in my heart of hearts, that I am the anti-It, chronically unhip. I am so unhip that it almost becomes a form of hipness, sort of like that Catholic schoolgirl Molly Shannon played on SNL.
KS: You're much more coordinated.