Lauren Willig is coming back for her third visit this Friday, April 12 at 1:00pm…She likes Us!
She took a few minutes to answer some questions that I posted to her. I hope you will enjoy her answers as much as I did.
1. In your latest, The Ashford Affair, you link two different time periods. Why did you choose this path rather than a straight historical story?
Little known “Ashford” fact (in fact, I’m not sure even my editor knows this): when I started playing around with writing “The Ashford Affair”, the initial version started in 1906, told in the first person by Addie, the historical heroine. I worked at it and worked at it—and it just didn’t work. I knew exactly the story I wanted to tell about Addie and her cousin Bea (and the two successive generations of the family), but when I tried to stake my story on a straightforward chronological narrative, it went all droopy.
About two weeks after I’d started work on the story, I took a birthday trip to visit my friend Liz, who was doing a year’s research in Florence. Walking along the Arno, I poured out my plot problems to her—and suddenly it all clicked. I’d been trying to write the story right-side up, when what it needed was to be written upside down. Rather than ending the book with Addie’s granddaughter Clemmie, I needed to start with her, and uncover Addie’s story along with her.
I went home, scrapped most of what I’d already written, started again—and this time it worked.
2. You are well known for the humor in your Pink Carnation series. (Well, I think they are quite funny) Was it difficult to use a more “traditional” process?
Thanks! I love writing the madcap comedy of the Pink books, and I will confess that it did feel very odd, at first, writing in a less tongue-in-cheek voice. I tend to use humor to deflect or deflate serious issues. And The Ashford Affair is all about serious issues. If I wrote with my usual flippancy, it would undermine the very nature of the story. So I took a deep breath and turned off that little sarcastic voice in my head, the one that mocks taking anything too seriously, and tried to do my characters and their problems proper justice. As an author, it was rather frightening, lowering that comic shield.
Although I suspect that at least a little humor did slip through….
3. Because of the various locales and time periods, what kind of research did you need to do for The Ashford Affair?
I spent a great deal of time immersed in books on Edwardian England, World War I, Jazz Age London (post-war, but a little too early for the real Bright Young People), and Kenya from the founding of the colony up through the 1930s.
As it always does, the scope of my research extended well beyond the bits you see in the book. Addie, my historical heroine, has parents who were both members of the Bloomsbury set, that bohemian group of writers. Even though the story picks up after their death, I spent a lot of time researching that group and their work to get a sense of what Addie’s early childhood would have been like. On the other end of things, originally the historical story went all the way up through World War II, so there was a great deal of Kenya in the 30s, New York in the 40s and British boarding schools in the 50s, none of which made it into the final version.
In the end, the sources that were most useful to me were the memoirs, diaries, and biographies of soldiers in World War I, debutantes of the early 1920s, and the colorful men and women who lived in Kenya in the 1920s, all of whom, mercifully, left plentiful paper trails.
4. How do you keep all of these historical facts clear? What is your writing process?
Way back when I was in Middle School, I read an interview with John Jakes, in which he said he always started researching at least a year before he started writing the book, letting the historical background percolate and imbue the story. Given the nature of deadlines these days, I don’t have a whole year to research, but I always spend at least a month reading everything I can get my hands on about the time period and the subject. I read memoirs, biographies, letters, monographs; I pore over maps and pictures. It’s only once I’m done with my immersion phase that I start writing.
As for my writing process…. It involves a lot of scribbling on little bits of paper and a lot of caffeine.
5. Are there more standalones in your future? Pink Carnation?
I’ve just finished writing another stand alone for St. Martin’s Press! This new one is set back and forth between the suburbs of London in 2009 and the same house in 1849, as a modern American woman inherits her great aunt’s house in the London suburbs, and, while clearing it out, finds a missing Preraphaelite painting. It was such fun getting to write about the early days of the Preraphaelite movement (who doesn’t love the Preraphaelites?), and, of course, about my modern heroine’s journey of discovery as she delved deep into her family’s past. I don’t have a title or release date yet, but I’m guessing this one should appear in stores in spring 2014.
In the meantime, I haven’t abandoned my beloved Pink Carnation characters. The tenth book in the Pink series, “The Passion of the Purple Plumeria”, comes out on August 6th of this year, and I’m currently starting work on the eleventh book in the series, which will be available in June of 2014.
For more information on the stand alones or the upcoming Pink books, just drop by the FAQ section of my website, www.laurenwillig.com!
6. Are you a good secret keeper?
I hate to admit it, but I’m actually a dreadful secret keeper. It’s my inability to resist telling a good story….
If it really matters, I can keep my mouth shut—but it’s an effort. Fortunately, I have my fictional people to gossip about! And they generally don’t mind.
Known for his book, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, John Boyne will discuss his latest, The House of Special Purpose, Saturday, April 20 at 2pm. This amazing novel illuminates an empire at the end of its reign. Eighty-year-old Georgy Jachmenev is haunted by his past–a past of death, suffering, and scandal that will stay with him until the end of his days. Living in England with his beloved wife, Zoya, Georgy prepares to make one final journey back to the Russia he once knew and loved, the Russia that both destroyed and defined him.
