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AE:
So it was really the character of Vaun Adams, the artist, who
prompted that move?
LRK:
Yeah, she’s the main character of that particular book,
but as a story, as the investigative side of it, the main character
has shifted from being this girl [Mary Russell], fairly whimsical
setting of the Sherlock Holmes stuff—which is heavily tongue-in-cheek
the whole way through—to a serious storyline. I mean, if
you’re writing an amateur sleuth and it’s not a historical,
it’s really difficult to justify a continued series of private
eye or amateur sleuth investigations into murder. The only person
I think who does it really effectively is Marcia Muller, and even
she—you know, it tugs the form a lot.
Basically,
a private eye is not permitted to investigate a homicide (laughing),
so just because it was simpler than trying to come up with a reason
for, you know, the Jessica Fletcher syndrome—would you invite
this woman to dinner? No, because she’d find a dead body
in the pantry. I simplified matters by making the character someone
who was justified in investigating a homicide, i.e. a cop. And
with that came a lot of decisions that were made with that decision,
I mean with the choice to make her a cop.
People
often say, you know, why did you make Martinelli a lesbian, or
Italian, or whatever—it always puzzles me because my characters,
I can’t really say I make them anything. There are certain
choices made and the characters fill the requirements—they
simply are.
AE:
I guess to me, it seemed like kind of a big deal to make your
protagonist a lesbian, simply because there were very few lesbian
detectives.
LRK:
It wasn’t a thought that really occurred to me. You know
she simply, as it were, came out that way (laughing). I think
looking back…and analyzing why she was…lesbian, why
a number of things happened in that first book—I think looking
back I probably was faced with the question, how do you write
about someone who is a member of a basically paramilitary organization
like the police department, who is yet an outsider? Because it’s
only looking at something through the eyes of an outsider that
you can find a great deal of interest. Otherwise the story’s
just about cops and police techniques and really not very interesting,
in my mind. So she has to be an outsider in any number of ways;
her sexual orientation is only one of them. She is a woman who
is a very private person in any number of ways.
You
also have the problem that occurs in a lot of mysteries and especially
police procedurals, of if you have a woman who is partnered with
a male, how do you work around the question of sexual attraction?
You know if you’re in a car for hours and hours doing surveillance,
as a fictional tool it’s difficult to write about a friendship
between a man and a woman…. How do you write about a friendship
without sexual overtones? So probably this was in the back of
my mind as I was writing about Martinelli.
It
was not something I ever thought about consciously, but that’s
probably one thing that contributed to her sexual orientation…it
freed me up to write about her and Hawkin without the romance
involved.
AE:
That’s really interesting.
LRK:
I didn’t really want to get into it, that kind of cliché
where the woman and the man—
AE:
Yes, they do tend to get together.
LRK:
I didn’t want to write about it and if I hadn’t put
a wall between them of some sort it would always have been there
as a question. You know, when are Martinelli and Hawkin going
to get together? I didn’t want their relationship to have
any of those overtones. But again that’s making it sound
terribly conscious and deliberate, and I’m not that kind
of writer.
AE:
So you didn’t have any worries that A Grave Talent
would have more of a problem being published because of the lesbian
character?
LRK:
(laughing) It never occurred to me that having a gay character
would lead to anything.… I would have anticipated more problems
with her being Italian than with her being a lesbian. Only later
after it was published did I realize how really odd this was,
to have a straight woman writing a gay character, how the potential
for offense was there, sort of like a white author writing a black
character. It’s a very touchy subject. In the years since
then I’ve had nothing but positive response from the lesbian
community—very generous!
AE:
Well, your series is one of very few being published by a mainstream
publisher.
LRK:
That’s really odd; I don’t know why. I mean, surely
there can’t be that much of a concern about being banned
in Utah (laughing)… Martinelli was banned in Utah for a
while.
AE:
Since you write all the time, do you still have time to read?
Have you read any lesbian mystery novels?
LRK:
I probably have read several of them; I love the Lindsay Gordon
series, you know, that Val McDermid does. I love her stuff, and
in fact there’s a dog that we trade. I don’t know
that anyone has caught it, but Lindsay Gordon has a dog in one
of the books and then she has to move back to England, and so
she abandons the dog in the book. The dog later appears in Roz
and Maj’s household.
AE:
Oh, that’s the dog? I remember the dog!
LRK:
Yes, well, that’s Val McDermid’s dog, Lindsay Gordon’s
dog. It happens often in the writing world but nobody catches
it.
AE:
I remember that in A Grave Talent, Kate isn’t revealed
to be gay for a while, perhaps half the book. Is there a reason
you decided to not have her be out at the beginning of the book?
LRK:
It was interesting because—as I said I don’t write
consciously—my first draft, I tend to just follow the story
and there’s blinders on to everything on the side. But when
I sit back and look at the first draft I really thought about
that, because I didn’t want it to be a sort of unveiling
and you stand back and say, surprise! just for the sake of some
rather pale drama. But because of that specific book and the way
that the entire book is based on peeling the layers away from
Vaun Adams’s life, the whole storyline is the sort of onion
approach to storytelling. That is, each layer of this woman, you’re
looking to get inside it to the core person, and because the storyline
of Vaun Adams works that way, it felt right to me to leave Kate’s
revelation the same way. That is, with Kate you’re gradually
peeling away the layers and finding out who she is inside her
façade. If it hadn’t been for that being how Vaun’s
story was being told I think it probably would have been the wrong
approach for Kate. It would’ve been sort of a cheap attempt
at sensationalism, but because of Vaun I thought it worked that
way, and I left it.
AE:
Do you have any idea of what’s happened to Kate since
you last wrote about her (in Night Work, 2000)
and what we can expect in the next novel?
LRK:
Now you want an outline! I give you the scoop and now you
want an outline (laughing).
AE:
That’s right; tell me what’s going to happen
(laughing).
LRK:
The first choice I have to make is—because it’s
been, what, four years since Night Work? And it’ll
be another two years before the book comes out. |
 |
It’s
always the problem with a series character…do you keep up
with them chronologically, or do you sort of leave them in the
past? This is the first choice I’m going to have to make.
Do we pick up the story immediately after Night Work…or
do we let six years pass? (laughs) I haven’t even made that
decision.
One
of the questions obviously that needs to come up in the course
of the book is I think we left it that Lee is interested in getting
pregnant, and I think that probably…that will be one of
the central questions in the story. I’m tempted to have
the years pass because it would enable me to have them married
on the steps of City Hall. I would love to be able to do that,
and obviously I couldn’t if it starts back in the year 2000.
So I may fall for the temptation of letting six years pass….Anyway,
it’ll be fun.
AE:
Yeah, it sounds like it.
You
can visit Laurie R. King online at her official website, www.laurierking.com.
