Laura created the lighthearted and witty series Desperately Ever After. Her novels drop in on a group of well known fairy tale princesses—after their honeymoons are over—and shows the reader that it’s not all sunshine and roses after the first kiss. I’m delighted and honored that Laura thought of me for this interview.
What am I working on?
I’m working on a third novel,
tentatively titled DO NO HARM.
DO NO HARM follows three women
whose lives intersect, due to their connection to a massive pharmaceutical
trial in Malawi. Stella is married to George, the celebrated humanitarian and
infectious disease specialist who runs the trial. She puts her impressive
career on hold to support her husband’s. In writing Stella, I was interested in
exploring the question of whether a family can survive two hyper-ambitious
personalities, or will one always need to yield? The second woman, Melody, is
young doctor from a poor family in Boston. The more she accomplishes, the more
she disconnects from her roots. Melody works for George, and her plot explores
the line between aid and exploitation. The third voice is a teenager named
Princess, a village girl George and Melody hire to work in their clinic.
Princess dreams of education and escape, but her father, a powerful and conservative
clergyman, has other plans for her. Princess’s story line looks at stereotypes
and expectations, and the steep personal costs of unorthodox ambitions.
How does my work differ from
others of its genre?
Hard question!
I struggle with the idea of genre,
though I suppose all my work could be classified as contemporary women’s
fiction. I write mostly about young to middle aged professional women who find
themselves in wacky situations.
My first novel, THE HAZARDS OF
HUNTING WHILE HEARTBROKEN, fits the chick lit category, albeit with an unusual
twist at the end.
I call my second book, THE K STREET
AFFAIR, as a political suspense novel, but it’s also an adventure caper, in
that my heroine—like James Bond, for example, or some of the earlier John Grisham
heroes— stays alive much longer under her circumstances than a similarly
situated lawyer in real life would expect to survive. THE K STREET AFFAIR
delves into political corruption and the idea that multinational corporations
are eclipsing governments as the power brokers of the world.
But unlike most thriller
protagonists, Lena has to contend with friendships and family relationships,
which tilts the novel back into women’s fiction territory. I knew when I wrote
THE K STREET AFFAIR that I was writing a really quirky novel. While I think
that makes it a more interesting read than THE HAZARDS, I never shopped the
manuscript to traditional publishers, because the novel didn’t fit any genre
pigeon hole. Looking back, I admit that was a big mistake—especially every time
a reader tells me she or he would love to see the movie.
Maybe the third time will be the
charm, because DO NO HARM fits the contemporary women’s fiction, or book club,
genre. It’s also a much more “literary” project than my first two books, which
could both be classified as “commercial fiction.”
See? Hard question.
Why Do I Write What I Write?
I write about characters, places,
situations, and questions that interest me. My books differ wildly from each
other, because I think I suffer from some bizarre form of attention deficit
disorder. I love to lose myself completely in the world of a group of
characters for a year or two, and then move on to another world.
That said, both THE HAZARDS and K
STREET ended on notes that left the door open for sequels, without demanding
them. It might be fun to revisit those characters and story lines in the
future.
How does my writing process
work?
In my perfect rhythm, I’d work for
three or four hours in the morning, then take a break for a few hours to eat,
exercise, rest, go outdoors, etc., and then work another three or four hours
from afternoon into early evening.
But that’s not how my life works,
because I have a little kid whose routine conflicts directly with my natural
working rhythm. For now, I write while he’s at school. I’m much more of a
morning person than a night owl, so if I need to find extra hours, I am more
likely to get up early than to try to create anything after his bedtime.
I like to work in large (at least
an hour, preferably more) chunks of time. I work at my desk at a window in a
small office in our apartment, an alcove gated off and accessible only to me
and the more agile of our two cats. I don’t write with music playing, and I
envy the legions of mom writers who can pen brilliant scenes in their minivans,
or at Starbucks, or at Chuck E. Cheese.
I don’t write from an outline, but
I create a chapter by chapter summary in a separate document as I work. I write
a messy, over sized draft from start to finish, then go back and revise, then
solicit opinions from beta readers, then revise again, before showing my editor
the more polished draft.
Now it’s my turn to point you
towards two other writers. I chose them because I know their processes differ
wildly from mine.
You may not know the name Richard Fifield yet, but look for his debut novel, The Flood Girls, soon. If I had to bet, I'd say that one day in the not too distant future, he'll be every bit as much a household name as that Franzen fellow.
Wendy Walker is one of those supermom writers who writes novels in her minivan. Her books, Four Wives and Social Lives, examine the fallout of the sexual divisions of society we create when one partner earns and the other stays home. Wendy encouraged me to keep writing years ago, when all I had was a messy first draft of a first novel and no knowledge of the publishing industry whatsoever.
No comments:
Post a Comment