Q) BLACK OUT is a stand-alone thriller and a departure from your character Ridley Jones. How was writing this novel different from your previous two, Beautiful Lies and Sliver of Truth?
I have to say it was a good deal more painful to write Annie’s story than it was to write Ridley’s. Ridley’s story was a dark one in many ways but she was a whole and healthy person, someone thrown into ugly circumstances. She had good memories of her past, which turned out not to be what she thought it was. In many respects she was an innocent. Annie’s story and her history are more complicated, her inner life is more tormented, her past is harder to reconcile.
Annie is so different from Ridley, not older but certainly more mature. A life of psychic pain, emotional abuse, and trauma have colored her perspectives. Ridley comes from privilege and Annie from a troubled home. So they see the world and their respective places in totally opposing ways. It’s hard to compare them, except to say that they are both lost girls who must find a way to claim themselves or be crushed by the forces at work in their lives.
Q) How did the idea for this story come to you?
I can usually pinpoint the exact moment a story began for me, the first moment I heard a character’s voice, the first time I saw a particular scene in my head. But I can’t be as definite about BLACK OUT. I don’t know when or how I began seeing this woman fleeing on a boat from some unknown pursuer. I didn’t know who was chasing her or why, I just knew that it wasn’t who she thought it was. I knew she was deeply fractured. For BEAUTIFUL LIES it was a flier in the mail that sparked the story, the point at which I started hearing Ridley’s voice. The inspiration for BLACK OUT was something internal.
But just as BEAUTIFUL LIES and SLIVER OF TRUTH mirror in an extreme way my own internal struggles at the time of their writing, BLACK OUT is no different. I was a new mom while writing this book, struggling to be both of these big, wonderful things – a mother and writer. Battling all the anxiety and stress of new parenthood, while coming to terms with the hypnotic, passionate love I had for my baby that didn’t allow room for much else, my identity as writer seemed pretty distant. So all of that is mirrored in Annie’s struggle, though Annie’s fracture is a bit more harrowing.
Q) Much of the story takes place in Florida where you live. You highlight the shadowy side of the state. What’s the significance of this?
I’ve been living in Florida for nearly 8 years now, which is hard to believe. Most of that time, I’ve been writing about New York. But this place has been getting under my skin, into my blood. And one of the things I love about Florida is that it’s so different than people imagine it to be. People think of Florida and they think of Disney and pink flamingos, margaritas and Jimmy Buffet. And it is that, of course. But it’s also this wild, dark place with vast, untamed spaces. People who write about Florida seem to focus on the funny, weird aspects – the kooky politics and the criminal element and the black humor of it all. But I sense a feral heart here – I’ve trekked though the everglades and kayaked through the magroves, been diving in the Keys and I feel something truly spooky beneath all the kitsch and sunsets on the beach. It fascinates me and has been leaking into my work.
Q) Were any of the characters in your story–Annie, Ophelia, Gray, Marlowe–drawn from people in your real life, or where they strictly born from your imagination?
In a way, both. Of course every character a writer creates is some composite of self and other. Writers are observers, always watching and absorbing. So the characters that spring from our minds must come from everyone we have seen or heard or been or imagined. That said, none of the characters in BLACK OUT are modeled after any real person in my life or in my past. Probably Marlowe comes closest to be being based on a terrible person from my own past, but he’s totally fictionalized. And as for Annie and Ophelia, well I suppose the theme of the lost girl comes up again and again in my work. And maybe it wouldn’t if I hadn’t struggled in finding and claiming myself.
Q) You’re a recent new mom. Do you see any part of your own daughter in Victory? How do you think being a mom influenced the way you wrote this character?
Being a mother has definitely changed everything about me, down to the way I see the world. And this, in turn, has changed the way I write. It has to, since I live and write from a very immediate and authentic place. My daughter is much younger than Victory but already I see a strength and intelligence in her that I’m not sure she got from me. I think Victory is a very wise and strong little girl, with that kind of innocent horse sense that kids possess. I can already see those things in my little girl, though she’s not quite two.
Q) Does writing such a dark story affect your personal life? Do you find it hard to detach yourself from the characters at the end of the day?
It’s hard to shift back and forth between the real and created worlds at the best of times. I find myself often conflicted between those two places. When I’m working, there’s always part of me just wanting to get back to my daughter. When I’m in my life, there’s a part of my brain that’s always working, ideas germinating, plots weaving, characters evolving. But I think I’m better than most at keeping a foot in each world. I can be present for my daughter and be present for my work; it just takes more effort and concentration.
Q) After writing several literary thrillers, are you planning to tackle any other genres? What’s next for you?
I’d like to think that I might stray from the dark side one of these days. But for now, that’s what fascinates me. I’m at work on my next literary thriller. So for a while I guess I’ll be peering down the murky alleys, pushing open the door to the darkened room, fleeing the faceless predator and hoping my readers come along for the ride.
Q&A with Lisa
Q. What elements of the story come from your own experience living in New York City?
A. For me and for most fiction writers, I think, it is true to say that everything and nothing in my work is autobiographical. As much as the plot, the events, and the characters are purely from my imagination, of course all of these things are an amalgamation of my experiences, relationships, observations, literary influences, etc.
In the case of BEAUTIFUL LIES, however, much of the setting has been mined from my own history. The apartment where Ridley lives is an exact recall of my first New York City apartment in the East Village. She stands where I stood many a morning trying to hail a cab when she first spots Justin Wheeler. Places like Five Roses and Veniero’s are real places in that neighborhood and places that I have loved. The streets she walks, the subways and taxis are all from my direct experience. I have had a love affair with the city most of my life. But it wasn’t until after I’d left there, that all the beauty of it came back to me. I know that place better than I know any other. For me it lives and breathes; I can hear it and smell it and feel its rhythm when I write about it.
Q. Is Ridley like you (or unlike you) in any way?
A. I think Ridley is more like me that any other character who has visited me, without being exactly like me. In many ways she is more sheltered and naïve that I am, has had a more picture-perfect upbringing … or so she thought. She’s a bit of a commitment-phobe, which I have never been. I’m not sure I would have made some of the choices she makes along the way in BEAUTIFUL LIES. But a good deal of her observations are similar to my own … her reflections on life, love, sex and what defines a family are things with which I might agree if the questions were posed to me.
Q. Is there an anecdote you can share about coming up with the story?
A. The idea for BEAUTIFUL LIES came to me in the mail. I received one of those postcards with the face of a missing child on the back. It was one of those age graduated pictures that tells you the child has been missing for years, no answer to what happened to her ever discovered. I’d received them before, of course, and the awful mystery of it has always stopped me in my tracks, imagining what might have happened. While staring at this particular photo, I asked a question: What if I looked at one of these postcards and recognized myself? From there, the story just spun out.
Q. What is your writing process like?
A. Most of my novels began with a question like I mentioned above. A “what if…” that builds and builds on itself. Or I might just hear a voice, someone with a story to tell. It could be a news story I read, or a sentence I hear or just an image that inspires me. And then I write. I write without an outline and without knowing exactly where the story is going. Sometimes I have a vague idea about certain events but generally speaking I write for the same reason that I read, because I want to know what’s going to happen. If I knew the ending it would suck all the life out of the process for me.
Q. What do you like to read for pleasure? What are you reading now?
A. For most writers, their first love is reading. And I have been an avid reader all my life. Once I became a professional writer, I lost that love a little bit. It has been hard in recent years to read fiction without reading critically … and by that I mean without studying what I’m reading, thinking “oh, that didn’t work!” or “why didn’t I write that?!” I miss the way I use to easily lose myself in a great book. Today, I know when I do lose myself that I’m in the presence of a master. And I so appreciate and respect that.
These days I find myself reading a lot of non-fiction. I just finished Devil in the White City, a really intelligent and compelling tapestry of American history and true crime. I recently read Stiff by Mary Roach which I found horrifying and positively riveting. There are things I read in that book that I wish I didn’t know. But I loved it!
Q. What writers have most influenced you?
A. Hmm … that’s a tough one. If you asked me who my favorite writers are, I would say: Truman Capote, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Irving, Ayn Rand, Keri Hulme, Tolstoy, Tolkein … the list would go on and on. Can I say that I’ve been influenced by these people? I suppose in certain ways, in that their works were what first inspired me to write. It was somewhere in those novels that I realized if I can read, if I can imagine, I can create worlds. I love the combination of terrible beauty, the lovely sadness and grim reality in Capote, the magical realism where the extraordinary, the supernatural dwell side by side with the mundane in Marquez. I admire the human folly and depth of emotion in Irving, the sheer brilliance and epic scope of Rand. I could never compare myself to these titans except to say that I aspire. Their talent has been a lifelong-inspiration.
My favorite people writing thrillers today would have to be Dennis Lehane and John Connelly. Again, I wouldn’t say I’ve been influenced by either of them. But I will say that I admire the way they each seamlessly blend brilliant plotting, riveting characterization, and simply gorgeous prose. There aren’t many people writing that well, mastering all the elements of great suspense.
Q. What’s next for Ridley?
A. She’s got a long road ahead of her, I think. When I closed the book on her, I really thought we were done. But I have since realized that there’s a good deal more to say. Let’s just say our Ridley’s not one to let the dead lie. There will be a sequel to Beautiful Lies. At this writing, it’s entitled GHOST.