A Faint Cold Fear

E-Book Extra

Criminal Minds: Laura Lippman Interviews Karin Slaughter

Laura Lippman is the award-winning author of the Tess Monaghan mystery series (available from HarperCollins e-books), including In a Strange City and The Last Place. Just prior to the publication of Karin Slaughter’s third Grant County novel, A Faint Cold Fear, Laura and Karin got together to discuss crime, fiction, sex, chick lit, and the state of women’s fiction in general.

Laura Lippman: Blindsighted, Kisscut, and now A Faint Cold Fear. How is it that you seem to title your books so easily? They practically had to put me under hypnosis to get The Last Place out of me, and I haven’t a clue what my next book will be called.

Karin Slaughter: I cannot write anything until I get a title for the project. The title is what makes the book or the story real to me. With Blindsighted, I knew that Lena would have a blind sister, and I knew that the rapist would hide in plain sight. “Kisscut” is a printing term for scoring something without cutting all the way through, and I heard the word almost every day when I was in the sign business. I really like that word — there’s something sexy and dangerous about it, especially the way it fleshes out in the book. So, again, the story worked its way back from the title.

A Faint Cold Fear comes from a scene in Romeo and Juliet. Juliet is about to take the potion that will make her seem dead, and she says, “I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins, / That almost freezes up the heat of life. . .” This works well on several levels as far as A Faint Cold Fear is concerned. Lena is a person who survives rather than lives her life — you could say she is dead and she doesn’t know it. Jeffrey and Sara are the star-crossed lovers. In Kisscut, they start to find out that their relationship the second time around is harder to navigate. In A Faint Cold Fear, they see that their moral compasses are not always pointing in the same direction.

Laura Lippman: How are your characters changing as the series moves forward? Do your characters ever surprise you?

Karin Slaughter: When I first started thinking about Jeffrey and Sara and Lena, I had specific plans about where they would be at the end of the third book. During the writing of A Faint Cold Fear they were all at different points from what I had originally imagined. I think when you’re working on a character it’s very much like meeting someone new. Early on, you make assumptions about them and their personalities, but then you get to know them better and realize there’s more there than meets the eye.

The one character who has constantly surprised me is Lena. All along, I wanted her to be a certain way, and she’s defied that vision at every point. I suppose that feeds into her personality, because she’s a very contrary person. There is a very important scene she has with Hank toward the end of Kisscut that took place without any planning on my part. I remember sitting at the keyboard when it was finished and just thinking, “Whoa, where did that come from?”

As I’ve been outlining the plot for Indelible, the fourth Grant County novel, I’ve realized a lot of things about Sara that I never knew before — and this is kind of funny, because Indelible takes place in the past, around the time Jeffrey and Sara first get together. Sara has always been the moral center of the series. Jeffrey and Lena work outside the lines a bit, but Sara sees right and wrong very clearly. There’s something in Indelible that lets you know she’s bound by rules for a reason.

We also get a lot of history on Jeffrey, and why he moved to Grant County in the first place. As for Lena, we get to see her with Sibyl and I think seeing Lena so unguarded with Sibyl will tell us a lot about her character. I say “us” because it will be a learning process for me, too.

Laura Lippman: It sounds like you were plotting your fourth book while writing your third.

Karin Slaughter: It’s a curse — I’m always more interested in the next book.

Laura Lippman: This begs some question about process — writing and thinking. How big a canvas are you working on?

Karin Slaughter: The earlier books are sketching out the lines of the characters. The later books will add more detail and color.

I have always loved mysteries and thrillers. I remember reading my first Encyclopedia Brown when I was a kid. I drove my parents nuts wanting to go to the library and check out the rest of the series. When I first wrote about Grant County, I wanted to write the type of books that I would enjoy as a reader. First and foremost, I wanted the characters to grow and change like people do in real life.

Throughout the series, we see the evolution of Sara and Jeffrey’s relationship as well as Lena dealing with the loss that she experienced in the first novel. I feel a responsibility toward my characters, and I did not want them to go from book to book without learning something from their experiences. They’re also going to age, which rarely happens in series books.

I think of Blindsighted as an introduction to all the characters and to the town. Kisscut is more about Lena, while A Faint Cold Fear focuses on Sara and her family. Indelible, the fourth book, is about Jeffrey. I’ve also got a solid idea for a fifth book, but I’m waiting to get fully through three and four before I let myself pick the meat off those bones.

Laura Lippman: Second books — sophomore efforts, to use a dreadful term — have a reputation for being extremely tough. Was that your experience with Kisscut?

Karin Slaughter: 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 as I tried not to think about the pressure on Kisscut while writing A Faint Cold Fear. Basically, I guess my life is one of healthy denial right now.

Laura Lippman: Do you think you have a finite number of books in you?

Karin Slaughter: 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.

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.

Laura Lippman: 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.

Karin Slaughter: I had to read The Last Place in pieces, because I started working on A Faint Cold Fear and had to stop reading. I’m like you — I can’t read crime fiction when I’m writing. [In The Last Place] Keswick 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.

Laura Lippman: 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.

Karin Slaughter: 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 so-called chick lit. I guess the sameness of voice is a primary reason, but another, bigger reason 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-we-will-leave-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. 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.

Laura Lippman: 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 am, 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.

Laura Lippman: Within our genre, I think one of the outstanding voices is Liza Cody’s Eva Wylie. Have you read those books?

Karin Slaughter: 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 you are writing such different stuff (especially Davis, who writes about 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 things befall 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’ve read and enjoyed would probably fall into this category!

Laura Lippman: Let’s return to a point you made earlier. Why can’t you read other crime books late in the process of writing one of your own?

Karin Slaughter: 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 her craft is to read other writers.

While I was working on A Faint Cold 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 a few days before I finished A Faint Cold Fear, and I was sort of annoyed because I did not realize it was 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 A Faint Cold Fear.

Laura Lippman: How do you structure your days? And how does the structure of your days affect the structure of your work? Bear in mind, this question comes from someone who currently has almost thirty index cards on the floor of her office, with word counts and such notations as “The Dogs of Pompeii”; “Cynthia Makes a Phone Call”; and “Einstein’s Bagels/’Nobody cuts me except me.’”

Karin Slaughter: I try to structure my days very carefully when I’m writing. As I am self-employed, it’s very hard to make myself stick to a schedule. Compounding the problem, I have trouble with authority figures and I can spend several minutes bickering with myself before the computer is even turned on. Like almost every writer I know, the internet is my biggest obstacle to work, so the first thing I do is tell everyone I know that I’m not going to be online between certain hours, that I will be writing during this time, and to please not disturb me. Fortunately, I have very supportive and understanding friends, and they ridicule and denigrate me if I send them an email during my work hours.

I spend a lot of time thinking about stories (some might call this “staring aimlessly into space”), so by the time I make it to the computer, I have a very strong idea about how the story will start, and in which direction it will flow. My average writing day can last around ten hours in the heat of it, or as little as two or three when I’m still trying to work something out in my head. A lot of time I will write fifty or so pages, then have to go back and read what I’ve written to understand where I am going in the story.

Writing a book is like a short but passionate love affair. There’s the initial foreplay where you sort of tease around the idea and get to know it, then you’re hooked, and you fiendishly screw around with the plot and the characters until you’re so exhausted that you are no longer in your right mind. When it’s finally over, you spend the next few months worrying over every little detail, wondering what you could have done differently, until you hate it so much that you have to move on to the next story.

I’m not sure where your index cards enter into it, but I’m sure it only heightens the experience.

Laura Lippman: What authors did you love as a child?

Karin Slaughter: I loved Ellen Conford and Judy Blume. I also enjoyed Donald J. Sobol’s Encyclopedia Brown series, and anything that smacked of a mystery. As for who I wanted to write like, I really loved Erma Bombeck. I know this makes me sound strange, but I remember reading her when I was around eleven, and laughing until I cried because she was so funny. I was really struck by the fact that someone could write something that brought so much happiness.

The book that had the most impact on me is Gone with the Wind. I read that book at the beginning of every summer from the age of ten until the time I turned eighteen. I think it’s a remarkable story, and I love Margaret Mitchell.

Laura Lippman: We know you’re a very shy and private person. How are you handling all the attention? What’s been the greatest challenge of your success?

Karin Slaughter: I hope that I’m handling it well. It’s difficult to be a shy person in this business, not least of all because at a very basic level, the reason you’re writing is because you want to reach people. It’s an interesting dichotomy. What has helped me is watching friends of mine who are authors, and seeing how they handle group situations. I do much better one on one than I do with a large crowd. I also like to go to conventions and meet people who like to talk about books. I don’t think having a book published makes me any different from anyone else. At my core, I am still a person who loves to read and to share new authors with other readers. That part of me will never change.

Laura Lippman: So you’re at work on Grant County #4 and, knowing you, I’m sure that #5 is already taking form. How long do you think you can keep the series going?

Karin Slaughter: I will only continue to write the series as long as I have good ideas. I want to be true to my characters, and I don’t want to put myself into a position where I’m writing something that I do not want to write — because that’s not why I got into this business. I have three more ideas beyond the third book right now that I want to explore. Jeffrey hasn’t gotten nearly enough attention in my opinion, and I want to do something extraordinary with him. Beyond that, I just don’t know.

Eileen Moushey and Ellen Conford contributed to this interview; it appears in a slightly different form on Karin’s website, www.karinslaughter.com, where it originated.