Patrick Flanery earned a B.F.A. in film at NYU and worked in the film industry before moving to the U.K, where he completed a doctorate in Twentieth-Century English Literature at Oxford. He has written for the Washington Post and the Times Literary Supplement, and is a professor of Creative Writing at the University of Reading. I Am No One is his third novel.

I Am No One features Jeremy O’Keefe, a divorced, middle-aged history and film lecturer at NYU, who has returned from the U.K. after spending a decade teaching at Oxford. He had left New York, his crumbling marriage, and young daughter after not receiving tenure at Columbia.  Now back in the city, he begins to receive a series of mysterious packages, each one containing seemingly incontrovertible evidence that every aspect of his digital life over the last ten years has been the subject of intense surveillance. At the same time, he repeatedly encounters a strange young man who appears to know exactly where Jeremy is going or has just been.

And who’s that darkly clothed figure Jeremy sees on so many nights peering at his apartment windows?

What is going on …. and why?

The reader is drawn into Jeremy’s world of possible paranoia and delusion; or is it one of a frightening level of all-encompassing surveillance?

On one level, I Am No One deals with the issue of surveillance, either by the state or by rogue players. Will you talk about that?

When I started writing the book, I didn’t set out to write a novel about surveillance. I was thinking about a moment I’d experienced in New York City. I was staying with a friend who was living in Silver Towers. I was on the street and looked up at her bedroom window. I waved to her, but she didn’t see me. I told her I’d seen her and it was the first time she’d been aware she was living a half-public life in her own apartment. That made me think of crafting a story about different kinds of intrusions into one’s private life. It made me want to explore the kind of characters who would be at the nexus of that experience. That led to a broader story about surveillance. It became a book about different kinds of watching and the experience of being watched—both on a personal level and in a larger, more abstract governmental way.

You can probably discuss this extensively: Is I Am No One a political thriller, a cautionary warning, an existential meditation of self and the world, or a combination of all three?

I think it can certainly be read with all three of those categories in mind. In some ways, the novel is trying to engage the possibility of each of those genres. The book is conscious of its status as something involving complexity. There are moments when Jeremy wonders what kind of novel he’s in. Is he in a thriller, a drama? It’s also a novel about how we live our lives these days and how we think about ourselves. People interested in a political thriller will find something identifiable for themselves. However, it’s not a novel that plays by the rules of commercial thrillers.

All your novels deal, at least partly, with contemporary political and social issues. Will you talk about that?

[Laughter] I grew up in a household where the political was a key component of everyday life. My father was a newspaper reporter and my mother was a school teacher and also worked for a non-profit organization. They were both involved in anti-war movements in the late 1960s in Chicago. I grew up with that legacy. With that background, I had great difficulty navigating my way through the world without thinking about the ways in which the political affects everyday interactions. When I sit down to write a book, the political is always influencing my creative impulses. I think my books tend to be very broad and complicate realism, while still telling stories about the world we live in.

At times I Am No One uses long, elegant sentences with digressions, but they never lose the reader, and always return to where they began. Who are your literary influences?

There are a great many. [Laughter] For this book, I was thinking about a few writers in particular. I’ve been trying to read Proust in French, having read the first two volumes in English. His circumambulatory style influenced my prose. The Spanish writer Javier Marias is also an influence. And then there’s someone like Nabokov. I was reading Lolita before I began working on this book.

I also wanted prose that would speak to the style of the character, Jeremy.

Yes, professorial and intellectual.

Even a bit pedantic.

Yes, somewhat self-important but still quite likable in his own way. [Laughter] Which leads to the next question. At times, Jeremy O’Keefe seemed the proverbial unreliable narrator, but was he merely unwilling to look at himself more deeply?

I think that’s a really interesting way of thinking about him. He’s not trying to mislead the reader as often occurs with unreliable narrators. What makes him unreliable is his inability to see his own self in the world and his not being able to see the ways in which he’s failed, both professionally and personally. I agree with you: his unreliability derives from his failure at introspection.

That leads me to another question. The novel seems to be partly metafiction in the sense that Jeremy is very aware of writing a chronicle about his experience.

The books I most enjoy reading are those that are conscious of their status as books. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy reading books where metafiction isn’t in play. But I find the playful self-consciousness of a book very satisfying. So, I write the kind of books I would like to read. I’m interested in the way metafiction can take political energy and do something concrete with it.

You’ve studied both film and literature, and you’re a novelist. Talk about storytelling in film as compared to the novel.

The storytelling tools I learned at NYU’s film school were important in ways I could never have foreseen. Film chiefly taught me to build a kind of visual sensibility. Even when I’m thinking about the world within the confines of prose fiction, I’m always thinking about the visual setting.

I’m currently trying to write a screenplay. It’s a completely different kind of creative work. You have to resist those impulses to describe setting or describe a character’s interior thoughts and feelings. In film, you have to find ways to focus only on action and dialogue, yet convey the depth you can portray in a novel. It’s challenging.

Film forces the writer to conform to the proverbial axiom of ‘show, don’t tell,’ doesn’t it?

Absolutely. You have to show everything, right up front.  It has to be done by showing action, setting and dialogue.

What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned about writing?

First, the process of reading is never finished. You must read whatever is published in your genre and must read and re-read your own work in progress. I learned to appreciate how the process of reading and re-reading one’s own work helps clarify issues of both plot and style.

You’re hosting a dinner party and can invite any five guests, living or dead, real or fictional, from any walk of life. Who would they be?

[Laughter] I’d like to invite Stanley Kubrick. Then, I’d have Ruth Bader Ginsburg there. A fascinating guest would be William Faulkner. I’d also invite the late Bill Cunningham, along with Elena Ferrante because I really enjoy her work.

Congratulations on writing I Am No One, a superbly-written and elegant novel exploring multiple themes involving political surveillance, human nature, consciousness, relations between people, and the role of culture in forming a person’s identity.

Larry Watson received his BA and MA from the University of North Dakota and his PhD in creative writing at the University of Utah. His fiction, published in many foreign editions, has received multiple prizes and awards. His short stories and poems have appeared in various journals. He taught at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point for twenty-five years before joining the faculty at Marquette University in 2003 as a visiting professor.

As Good as Gone, his 10th novel, is set in the 1960s. It features an entire family, but especially focuses on Calvin Sidey, an aging cowboy living in a trailer outside Gladstone, Montana. Calvin has had no real communication with his family or with anyone else, for many years. He’s asked by his son Bill to look after Bill’s own two kids, 17-year-old Ann and 11-year-old Will, while Bill takes his wife to Missoula for surgery. Calvin agrees to babysit, but must confront the reality that his Old West ways of settling scores, issuing ultimatums, and teetering on the edge of violence are no longer acceptable.

Calvin Sidey in As Good as Gone is something of a mythic American cowboy—perhaps a Clint Eastwood type— transported to 1963.  Tell us your thoughts about this kind of iconic figure.

Maybe you’re casting the movie, already. [Laughter]

I had a mythic western hero in mind as I was working on the novel, but I also wanted to undercut that myth even as I was writing it. In a conversation with his grandson Will, Calvin tries to destroy that myth by disabusing the boy of some of his notions about who and what a cowboy is.

I also had my own grandfather in mind; he was a cowboy in Montana, but was completely unlike Calvin Sidey. He was a gentle, kind man and would have chuckled at the notion of his being an iconic American figure. He thought the best part of his life was when he gave up the cowboy life and became a homesteader.

As Good as Gone is as much a family saga as anything else, isn’t it?

Yes, I very much think of it as a generational family novel. I tried building parallels into the characters. Besides exploring Calvin’s experiences, we have episodes of Bill Sidey as a boy; some of Will’s; others of Bill’s wife Margery as a teen-ager; and Calvin’s granddaughter Ann’s. I wanted to describe the struggles of a family showing how the different generations are reflected in those challenges.

As Good As Gone is populated by a diverse cast of characters, each with a distinct voice. What thoughts do you have about character and voice?

I don’t much analyze it. I just hope if I have a sure enough sense of the character, his or her personality will emerge in the writing. One of the problems I had in the early drafts was with the internal perceptions of Calvin Sidey. I didn’t yet have his voice. I’m not quite sure what happened, but I finally felt I knew him well enough to offer his take on the world. Maybe I just got older. [Laughter].

Speaking of character in As Good as Gone, you beautifully capture the thoughts and feelings of an eleven-year-old boy. Tell us about that.

I may be older and mature, but I can still feel an eleven-year-old boy inside me. Maybe it takes remembering an event from my own life, but I can certainly go back to the experiences and mindset of an eleven-year-old.

I was impressed by how well As Good as Gone describes the small elements of everyday life—the feel of sun on one’s neck, the taste of river water, the smell of mildewed sheets. Tell us about that.

You’ve mentioned different sensory experiences. I do remind myself as I’m writing to include not just visual perceptions, but auditory, olfactory and skin sensations. I think of those things as the kinds of details that help shore up the reader’s belief in what’s happening, and it helps readers experience for themselves whatever is going on. I want them to identify with the experience.

Your prose is spare yet powerful, and reminiscent of Hemingway’s.  Who are your literary heroes?

You just named one: Hemingway. I’m re-reading Hemingway over the summer because I’m teaching a course in fiction. Hemingway was one of the first good writers I discovered on my own; that is to say, I wasn’t assigned a Hemingway novel. I recognized how good he was. His short stories inspired me and made me want to try writing.

What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned about writing?

It’s not a complicated one: it’s just to do it. For me, that means writing every day. I’m a slow writer. A two-hundred-word day is a good one for me. I’ve always taught so I have to allot my time between teaching and writing. The habit of writing every day is essential.

You’re hosting a dinner party and can invite any five guests, living or dead, real or fictional, from any walk of life. Who would they be?

First, I’d have my wife there. I enjoy talking with her, and if you depended on me to keep the conversation going, you’d all be in trouble. I’d really like to invite Philip Roth and Alice Munro. I think so highly of them. Both of them have stopped writing, and I’d want to hear what they would have to say about not writing. I’d also invite John Updike whose work I admire. In contrast to Roth and Munro, he was in the hospital at the end of his life writing poems about getting chemotherapy. He never stopped. And lastly, I’d want my father there. All my novels were published after he died. I never had the chance to ask him, ‘Hey, Dad, did I get this right?’ I wish I’d have asked him more questions and had him talk more about his own experiences.

What’s coming next from Larry Watson?

I’m not sure. I’ve finished a couple of drafts, but I’m not certain about what to do with them.

Congratulations on penning As Good as Gone, a suspenseful and evocative novel with stunning prose, painting strongly drawn characters facing daunting emotional, social and family conflicts.

John Hart, a bestselling author, is the only writer ever to win the Edgar Award for consecutive novels. He’s also won the Barry Award, the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award, and the North Carolina Award for Literature, among others.

Redemption Road features Elizabeth Black, a North Carolina detective accused of murdering two kidnappers and rapists after their bodies are discovered riddled by 18 bullet holes.

The novel also focuses on Adrian Wall, a former police officer who was convicted of murder and imprisoned for 13 years, during which time he was tortured relentlessly.

The reason for the torture is one of the backbones of this dual narrative novel.

In the past, Elizabeth’s and Adrian’s paths had crossed, and they meet once again to deal with a web of corruption, abuse and evil conspiring against their coming to terms with their own demons.

Your last novel, Iron House, was published five years ago. What caused so long an interval between that novel and Redemption Road?

Having written four novels, with each one having done better than the preceding ones, I came to believe I knew what I was doing. That turned out to be a rookie’s mistake. As soon as I started taking the writing process for granted, or putting faith in some kind of ‘divine inspiration,’ I was in trouble. Of course, now I’m speaking with the clear view of hindsight.

With the first four books, I knew exactly who my main characters were. I knew their weaknesses and their strengths. And those books worked because in addition to the plot, I had created real, fully-fleshed-out characters. When I began writing book five, I lacked that awareness.

So, when I started to write my fifth book, I just had the idea for a story…I envisioned it to be a modern retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo. There would be a good man wrongfully imprisoned, and an exploration of what he does after his release.

Three hundred pages later, I had the meat of a novel, but the protagonist was like those of a hundred thrillers I’d read before. He was predictable and the story didn’t resonate.

My publisher was very patient and decided to wait for me to produce the right book. It turned out Liz, who had been a bit player in the first attempt, now became a main player in Redemption Road. Once I had her character, it took another two years to complete the novel.

I’ve read all your novels. Redemption Road is the first written largely from the perspective of a woman. Was it a difficult challenge for you to write from this point of view?

I was worried when writing from a woman’s perspective that the character would ring false. I don’t think that happened with Liz. The reason seems clear to me: what makes us human is universal—the core emotions of fear, love, hate, and rage; the need for security and understanding. They’re the same whether one is a man or a woman. I focused on those elements, not on personal things like fashion or makeup. I kept it to the core of meaningful things.

Redemption Road describes police corruption and prison abuse. Does your earlier work as a criminal defense attorney inform your writing about these issues?

I can’t say I’ve seen a lot of corruption and abuse, but I have seen the jaded callousness that comes from institutional indifference. In a real sense, the people who cycle through the justice system become something less that human in the eyes of the people running the system—including administrative people, as well as guards. Even as a visitor to a prison, you feel yourself being dehumanized and turned into part of an indifferent machine. Once you go to prison, everything is beyond your control.

My background gave me that baseline of understanding from which to extrapolate some of Adrian’s experiences as a prisoner.

Your writing is very lyrical. Is it accurate to characterize your prose as Southern literary?

Actually, I’m woefully under-read. I’m always flattered to be called into the canon of Southern writers, and anything I could say about that would probably be grounded on air. I do think Southern literature is about love of place, a sense of history, and embracing the difficult parts of the human experience.

For a long time, the South was a vanquished nation. We have darkness and pride in our history. The South’s history is largely agrarian and there’s a strong tie to the land. Many people have had family farms for generations. As for the language itself, I love the late Pat Conroy’s writing. I don’t pretend to rise to his level, but I think language matters very much to storytelling. If in a reader I can create an emotional response that goes beyond enjoying pure story, then I’ve accomplished adding richness to the reading experience.

What do you love about the writing life?

I believe being a novelist is the ultimate expression of personal freedom. I have no boss; no calendar; I can live wherever I want; write what I want; and with sufficient readership, the relationship with the publisher becomes a partnership. I love living a writer’s life—being able to make a living through pure imagination and not have someone telling me what to do.

What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned about writing?

The most important lesson about the writing life is you must hold onto the world.

I spend my time in virtual isolation. I no longer have colleagues or people with whom I talk at the water cooler. It’s just me and silence. For a writer, it’s very important to hold onto friendships and activities, to stay grounded in the real world.

As for the most important lesson I’ve learned about writing, it’s this: you must be brutally hard on yourself. You have to keep at the writing until it’s right. It’s very seductive to say to one’s self, ‘This is good enough.’ But, you can almost always make a manuscript better. There’s a balance between wanting a novel to be completed and a willingness to go back again and again. As Dennis Lehane said, ‘The first draft is spaghetti on the wall.’ The real work is in the rewriting.

You’re hosting a dinner party and can invite any five people, living or dead, real or fictional, from any walk of life. Who would they be?

I’d invite Leonardo DaVinci, arguably the most amazing man who ever lived. I’d also invite Admiral Horatio Nelson because I love that period in naval history. I’d ask Hans Solo to join us along with J.R.R. Tolkien, the writer I admire for his gift of pure storytelling; and I’d invite my wife, because if I didn’t, she’d never forgive me [Laughter].

Congratulations on writing Redemption Road, an explosive and riveting novel written so lyrically, it must be described as literature.

Mary Kubica is the bestselling author of The Good Girl and Pretty Baby. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and American Literature from Miami University in Ohio.

Her third novel, Don’t You Cry, features a dual narrative focusing on a young woman, Quinn Collins, and an 18 year old man, Alex Gallo. Quinn’s roommate, Esther, disappears from their Chicago apartment, leaving Quinn wondering what happened to her. She finds a strange letter addressed to Esther, which makes her question if she knew anything at all about her roommate.

Meanwhile, in a small Michigan harbor town, a mysterious young woman shows up in a coffee shop and catches the eye of 18 year old dishwasher, Alex. The story takes unexpected twists down a sinister narrative trail in which the past and present collide in a shattering conclusion.

The first lines of Don’t You Cry are, ‘In hindsight, I should have known right away that something wasn’t quite right. The jarring noise in the middle of the night, the open window, the empty bed.’ Tell us your thoughts about the opening lines of a thriller.

The opening lines need to grab and suck the reader in. I want to lay the groundwork of a problem at the beginning of the book. We know right away that something is wrong, that a sinister event happened or will occur. Quinn has discovered something and hopefully, that will grab the reader. The reader wants to know ‘What is this jarring noise and why is the bed empty?

Don’t You Cry is written in the first person, present tense, as are The Good Girl and Pretty Baby. What makes you prefer this style?

I love getting into my characters’ heads. I want to be ‘at one’ with my character. I feel a character is presented more effectively when I’m in his or her head, when I feel those things intrinsically, rather than as an outsider. I feel the first person perspective does it best.

The present tense creates a sense of urgency. Whatever is happening is going on now, not in the past. The narrative is propelled forward rapidly.

I found Quinn Collins to be an intriguing character. Tell us a bit about her.

Quin, in some ways, reminds me a little of myself when I was twenty-three. She’s out of college, not quite sure what she wants to do with her life, and she’s living on her own for the first time. She has insecurities, having come from a loving and sheltered environment. I think readers will relate to her. It’s the time of life when a young person must come to terms with reality for the first time.

 

Quinn makes mistakes, and learns there’s a bigger problem facing her than just finding Esther. In the process, she discovers a great deal about herself, and becomes a stronger person.

Speaking of mistakes, don’t most readers love flawed and very fallible characters?

Yes, we all do. They’re real. We all make mistakes. We can relate to that, and though a reader may wonder why Quinn is making such obvious errors in judgment, it’s clear she’s very human, and more like we are, not just a character in a novel.

Both The Good Girl and Don’t You Cry have dual narratives. What makes this form so effective?

I love writing a story from two perspectives because, I can tell two stories and then at some point, merge them. At times, one character will see a situation one way, while the other narrator portrays it differently. It keeps readers on their toes. They wonder whom they can trust. Is there an unreliable narrator mixed in?

With The Good Girl, I told the story from three perspectives. If I’d told the story from only one point of view, it would have been a very different one. And, much of the plot and certain relationships between characters would have been excluded from the novel. The same thing is true with Don’t You Cry. I don’t think I’d have been able to tell the same story with only one narrator.

Also, the mystery element of the novel is enhanced by there being two stories because the reader may wonder, ‘When are these two stories going to come together?’ That’s one of the unanswered questions.

What draws you to writing suspense novels?

I didn’t start out writing suspense. Before, I wrote quite a bit of women’s fiction, though nothing was published. I felt something was missing in my writing—I’d create characters, but wasn’t grabbed by the storyline.

When I started writing The Good Girl, I was captivated as an author by having a mystery to solve. I found I loved putting together intricate puzzle pieces, and figuring out how they would come together. It was also a challenge to think of ways to surprise the reader. Once I’d written The Good Girl, I knew the suspense element was what had been missing from my previous writing. Now, I can’t see myself writing anything other than suspense.

What has surprised you about the writing life?

I have to say the authors I’ve been connected with have been wonderful, generous and warm. Writing is such a solitary career, but when I’ve had to go out there and show my work, I’ve been so pleasantly surprised by the support and generosity shown by so many authors.

What do you love about the writing life?

I love creating. It’s a job, but it rarely feels like one to me. I generally write early in the morning before the rest of the house is awake. Before going to bed each night, I feel a sense of excitement that in eight hours, I get to wake up and rejoin my characters. It’s great to forge these people on the page, to give them personalities. It’s a thrill to craft these characters and make them do and say what I want in the story.

If you weren’t a writer, what would you be doing?

I was a high school history teacher before my daughter was born. If I wasn’t writing, now that my kids are a little bit older, I’d go back to teaching.

I also volunteer at an animal shelter. My bucket list includes owning my own shelter.

What’s coming next from Mary Kubica?

My next novel will come out in 2017. It involves the death of a young father in an automobile accident. His very young daughter was sitting in the back seat, and was unharmed. Soon, after the accident, she begins having nightmares of a car following them, and things take off from there.

Congratulations on writing Don’t You Cry a suspense-packed novel plumbing the psychology of both narrators, and a book ending with a twist every bit as mind-boggling as the one in The Good Girl.

 

 

L.S. Hilton grew up in England and has lived in Key West, New York City, Paris and Milan. After graduating from Oxford, she studied art history in Paris and Florence. She has worked as a journalist, art critic, and broadcaster.

Her debut novel and the first in a trilogy, Maestra, is a psychological thriller about Judith Rashleigh, an assistant at a London art gallery. By night, she’s a hostess at a champagne bar and is familiar with the ways of the wealthy. When she’s fired from her art gallery job, she accompanies one of the champagne bar’s biggest clients on a trip to the French Riviera. While there, a fatal accident befalls that client. For various reasons, Judith must assume a different identity, and she turns herself into an extraordinary femme fatale.

Judith Rashleigh is a fascinating character. Tell us a little about her.

She’s ambitious and extremely independent, as well as quite funny and just slightly sociopathic [Laughter]. To me, she’s a very modern young woman and totally unapologetic about her desires and ambitions. She’s also unapologetic about her body. She tends to make some people very angry, which I suppose, is a good thing. I’ve been living with her for quite some time, and have become very fond of her. She’s become a slightly strange friend of mine.

Maestra’s descriptions of the glossy, sleek life of the super-rich are fabulous. Are they based on your own experiences?

I wish they were. [Laughter]. When I wrote the book, I had in mind the sort of books I liked reading when on holidays. I would call them sunburn books—the kind where you tell yourself, ‘I’ll read one more page before I leave the beach’ and before you know it, you’ve been sunburned.

As an adolescent, I really loved the 70s and 80s blockbusters which were often about pleasure and fun. They took me to different worlds. So, I wanted to write something that would transport the reader to a very different and glamorous world. The exotic locations in the novel enhance that experience.

Judith seems to be a morally complex ‘anti-heroine.’ Do you agree with that?

I do. In many ways, she is an anti-heroine. At times, she can be quite nasty. The challenge for me was to make the reader stay with and root for her, even though she’s horrible in certain respects. She’s not a typical heroine in the way she makes her way through the world. But I hope readers will find her a sympathetic character. She’s capable of friendship; has a good sense of humor; has a strong sense of fair play; and most importantly, doesn’t take herself too seriously.

She’s also been described as reminiscent of Lisbeth Salander from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Do you feel that’s accurate?

Actually, I don’t, though I’m flattered by the comparison. Lisbeth Salander is motivated primarily by revenge. Lisbeth was also horribly traumatized as a young woman. And she’s considerably more imaginative and violent than Judith.

Judith is certainly murderous when she needs to be, but she’s practically minded. She doesn’t kill unnecessarily. Both protagonists are complex and powerful, so in that sense, I can see the connection between them.

 You’re obviously comfortable with writing graphic scenes of sexual activity. Will you talk about that?

Yes, they are graphic. I think Judith is part of a sexually graphic generation—she’s part of the ‘hook-up’ culture. I think the Internet has changed the way people interact socially and sexually.  Like it or not, we’ve undergone another sexual revolution in the last ten years. People talk and think about sex differently now than before.

For me, the words Judith uses and the things she does are honest and feel modern to me. I describe them so graphically for two reasons: the first is I felt it was realistic for the character and consistent with her voice. These are the words she would use to describe sex. Second, it’s a technically interesting challenge for a writer to describe sexuality in an effective way.

I don’t know if you’re aware of the British Bad Sex Award. It’s an award given every year by The Literary Review to a literary novel which is spoiled by a sex scene. The award has been given to John Updike and Jonathan Littel, among other luminaries.

The problem with writing about sex is one person’s erotic scene can very quickly become someone else’s comic scene. I wanted to write about sex in a way that was clear. To do that, you must get rid of metaphors; you have to minimize adjectives; and you have to use proper nouns. I wanted to write about things adults do, using the words adults use. There was no place for euphemisms or sentimentality in Maestra.

Judith assumes and sheds identities with ease, so I must ask if Maestra partly concerns questions about self-definition.

Yes, I think it very much concerns self-definition. It’s about a woman who tries to do things the right way, but that doesn’t quite work out for her. She realizes she’s been reduced to a sex object, so she turns certain prejudices against the person with those pre-judgements. Her journey is very much towards self-definition. She’s not actually interested in money or in living a luxurious lifestyle. She’s intent on being free and living her life on her own terms. Her self-definition isn’t found in material things. It’s found in those things to which she has the most passionate emotional response; and those things involve beauty. She wants to live a gracious life amongst beautiful things.

I understand Sony’s TriStar Pictures purchased the film rights. Who do you see playing Judith?

Of course, that won’t be my decision. I would be interested in seeing an unknown actress playing the part. I think readers want to see the character, but not see a star playing her.

Two more books about Judith are coming. Where will her travels take her?

There’s a clue in the first book about something quite unexpected happening in the second one. The second book has something to do with Caravaggio and features some Eastern European locations. The third goes back to Italy with certain characters reappearing. But Judith herself evolves over the course of the three books.

Congratulations on penning Maestra, the opening salvo of a trilogy about a ferocious heroine, a page-turning novel that’s also been described as dipping into the same psychological waters as Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Just received this letter from U.S. Senator Christopher Murphy regarding The Lovers’ Tango winning the Benjamin Franklin Award in Popular Fiction

Lynn Rosen has lived in the Midwest, on the East Coast, and in Japan. After earning three graduate degrees at the University of Rochester, she served on its faculty. She was the Dean of Liberal Arts at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland. Her literary work has appeared in The Texas Quarterly and Caprice. A Man of Genius is her literary debut novel, which she completed after 15 years of writing, and had published at age 84.

A Man of Genius centers on Samuel Grafton-Hall, an architect whose work is revered the world over. Arthur Dolinger—Grafton-Hall’s lawyer and the executor of his estate—tries to piece together a mystery prompted by a strange codicil to the architect’s will. Reading the novel, the reader is made privy to the mind and misdeeds of a genius who revels in his cynicism and disdain, a man who leaves colleagues, lovers, and friends deeply scarred for having known him. There is also the matter of a murder: who committed it, and the conundrum of who actually died; and what the answers to those questions mean for those left behind.

Samuel Grafton-Hall is an extraordinary character. Tell us a bit about him.

The novel is really driven by the backstory of Samuel Grafton-Hall. As a character, he raises many questions I think apply to today’s world. Samuel’s story and his character traits drove me to look at how we pick our idols, authority figures, and those we trust or follow.

The media are so instrumental in anointing authority figures, and we often blindly trust and follow these people without question. Once something occurs which forces us to examine these leaders, do we allow ourselves to forgive them for being human and fallible?

Samuel Grafton-Hall is so flawed, and if we look at him in the context of comparing him to those in whom we, in our real lives, vest authority, what does it say about us and our own moral obligations? The flaws in Samuel’s character are so compelling, they drove me to keep writing this novel, which took a very long time. From my perspective, these questions transcend the book.

How long did it take to write the novel?

It took a span of fifteen years, nine of which were taken up by writing draft after draft. I lacked faith in myself since I had never before attempted to write a novel.

One famous writer I knew told me my attempts to write a Gothic novel while leaving loose ends were ill-advised, so I wrote and re-wrote. Finally, after so many years, a friend looked at a draft and said, ‘Finish it your way.’

So that’s exactly what I did.

A Man of Genius is told through the words of Grafton-Hall’s attorney, Arthur Dolinger, an unreliable narrator. What thoughts do you have about such narrators?

I think all narrative voices are unreliable. The truth is, we all struggle with narration. In fact, none of our memories are pure. They become distorted over time, and while we may think we’re reliable narrators, we really provide our own versions of what happened in the past.  My narrator, Arthur Dolinger, says at the outset that he can’t be sure of his facts and he struggles with some parts of his narration.

That’s part of what I liked about him. He says early on in the novel, ‘You may not be able to trust everything I say but I’ll do my best.’

That’s exactly it. He recognized the universal tendency for memory of long-ago events to be terribly unreliable.

In A Man of Genius, Grafton-Hall’s first wife, Catherine, makes significant—but not publically acknowledged—contributions to his work. Tell us about the barriers women experience in relation to achievement.

I lived them. As you said, I have three graduate degrees and personally experienced a great deal of resistance and many barriers. I’ll give you two examples.

After getting my Master’s degree in English, I applied for the Ph.D. program in the Gothic novel at the University of Rochester. I was already teaching concurrently with my course work, and had graduated with honors. During my interview for the Ph.D. program, the chairman of the department told me if I persisted on pursuing admission, they would seat me ‘under the seminar table.’ That’s an exact quote. This was well before Title IX was enacted and they weren’t accepting women. A dean who had come over from Columbia suggested I get a doctorate in higher education, which is what I did. But I suffered by that compromise because I really wanted that doctorate in the Gothic novel.

When I was in public relations, I had major clients—Rod Serling, Peter Lorre, and others. Yet, my credit card wasn’t accepted at restaurants when I took those clients to lunch or dinner. In some places, I couldn’t sit at a table waiting for a client because a woman seated alone was not acceptable. I must tell you, my sadness isn’t that it occurred; it’s that young woman today don’t have a sense of what we went through.

At age eighty-four, your debut novel has been published. What made you undertake writing a novel beginning at age seventy?

I don’t consider myself a writer. I’m a storyteller. Some stories just stay with me—not in pure form because our memories don’t retain events as they actually happened. They’ve been reconfigured. A certain story stayed with me—one concerning my 1949 visit to Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s home in Wisconsin.

I’d read a great deal about him and his architecture. I was privileged to have Mrs. Frank Lloyd Wright take me on a personal tour of Taliesin and invite me to have tea with her. During our conversation, the question I wanted to ask was, ‘Mrs. Wright, did your husband really kill his mistress?’ Of course, I didn’t pose that question to her.

There had been stories about the relationship between Mamah Borthwick Cheney and Frank Lloyd Wright, which ended when she was murdered. Stories circulated that he had arranged the murder because he was looking at a prison term on morals charges. The story of Wright, his mistress and wife stayed with me. And then, other notions materialized—about idolatry and authority—and became reconfigured in my mind. So, I finally began to write it as a novel.

The writing style of A Man of Genius is reminiscent of Daphne Du Maurier and Emily Bronte, with its evocative literary quality. Talk about your writing style and literary influences.

My writing style is simply the voice in my head. I write down what that voice tells me. I’m very interested in Gothic literature for its sublime elements and psychology. For me, the creative and performing arts involve transcendence beyond the moment. Gothic literature pushes you toward that state. I’m engrossed by the question of how we access art and process our feelings about it, and that informs my writing. I admire Du Maurier, but I don’t write the way I do in a purposeful way. It’s simply a result of how I think.

As for my literary influences, I’m an enormous admirer of Laurence Stern and Tristram Shandy. The plot manipulations in that novel are mind-blowing.

What’s coming next from Lynn Rosen?

I have several ideas bubbling in my mind. They all derive from experiences—little vignettes from my life that have stayed with me.

Congratulations on penning A Man of Genius a lyrical contemporary novel with Gothic elements addressing themes of morality, memory, guilt, and hubris while providing unremitting suspense for the reader.

 

Over the years, I’ve had the incredibly good fortune of interviewing many of the most widely-read novelists on the planet. I often (but not always) ask certain questions of each author. One of my favorites is: What do you love about the writing life?

Here are excerpted answers from some highly acclaimed writers.

 Robert Crais: What I love about the writing life–despite the bad days when I have to force my way through–is when I’m there ‘in the moment,’ when what’s happening on the page is real and true and good; and I’m there with Elvis Cole or with Joe Pike or with Maggie and Scott, and I’m in complete touch with my emotions—there’s no better feeling. ~Talking about The Promise

Tess Gerritsen: I love being able to indulge my curiosity. Many of my stories come about because I want to know more about a particular subject. I get a chance, to be somebody else. When I wrote about the NASA space program, I spent two years pretending I was an astronaut. Writing Playing with Fire, I got to explore World War II Italy. ~ Talking about Playing with Fire

Simon Toyne: I love that I can work from home and take my kids to school every day. That’s the practical side of what I love about the writing life. And of course, it’s creatively very rewarding. I love researching all sorts of weird stuff. I always say, ‘God help me if the FBI came across my Internet search history.’ ~ Talking about The Searcher

Tami Hoag: Aside from the fact that I can go to work dressed like a vagrant, the thing I love most is hearing back from readers when a book has helped them in some way. I recently received a letter from a young man in prison. He said he’d never read a book. In prison, he had nothing else to do, and picked up one of my books. Now, he’s a reader. It’s such an incredible feeling to realize you’ve impacted someone’s life like that. ~ Talking about Cold, Cold Heart

Joseph Finder: One of the things I love about the writing life is that it’s a creative outlet. I don’t really have hobbies. Writing a book is so creative and takes so much out of you, it can consume you. I also love being my own boss. I don’t think I’d have worked well as a company man in a hierarchy. I really appreciate the autonomy that comes with writing. ~ Talking about The Fixer

Jayne Ann Krentz: I just love seeing a scene come together on the page. I live from scene to scene. If I actually sat down and thought about the fact that I’ve got five hundred pages to go, I’d be doomed before I started. When I get a scene just right, I feel so good. ~ Talking about Trust No One

Harlan Coben: I think the short answer would be ‘What don’t I love about it?’ There’s no downside for me. I guess I’d rather not have to do so much travelling; and writing never gets any easier. It always torments you. There’s that insecurity, the feeling I’ll never be able to do it again. But really, for me, there’s very little downside, and I love what I do. ~ Talking about The Stranger

Lisa Gardner: I love that magical moment when it all comes together in a way I couldn’t ever have imagined. There’s that ‘Ah ha’ moment when things just fall into place. Those days are amazing and precious. The art takes over, it all comes together, and I’ve actually completed a novel despite myself. ~ Talking about Crash and Burn

Dennis Lehane: I love that I get paid to make stuff up. I’d be doing it for free. I walk around thinking, ‘These lunatics actually pay me to do this.’ If a planeload of money was dumped on me, I’d continue doing what I do. ~ Talking about, World Gone By

Faye Kellerman: I love the ability to let my mind explore whatever it wants. If you have an imagination, you can go everywhere. I love that–the inception–having a germ of an idea and building upon it. You can do whatever you want with it. Many writers would say you can play God. ~Talking about Murder 101

James Rollins: Nothing gets me more excited than writing. Each morning, I cannot get to my chair fast enough. Overnight, I’ll have a new idea, maybe from reading another author, or something just popped into my head. Writing is so much fun, even though on some days, it’s like pulling teeth. ~ Talking about The Bone Labyrinth

 Catherine Coulter: I love the fact that there’s always a reason to put your feet on the floor in the morning. I also love that you don’t have a jerk-face of a boss, because if you’re a jerk-face, you’re your own boss, so who cares? ~ Talking about The Lost Key

 Phillip Margolin: It’s the puzzle aspect of writing. I love Ellery Queen books, Ross Macdonald’s books and Harlan Coben’s Myron Bolitar books for their mystery and clue elements. I love trying to construct a puzzle for the reader. That’s the most fun. ~ Talking about Woman with a Gun

 David Morrell: When I grew up, I discovered this need to tell stories. I get to do it, and even earn a living. It’s a wonderful opportunity to benefit from my daydreams in a culture that doesn’t value daydreaming. I think our best ideas come to us when we give ourselves permission to go into that kind of trance. ~ Talking about Inspector of the Dead