Author R&R with Sheila Kohler

 

Sheila Kohler was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is the author of a memoir, Once We Were Sisters and fourteen works of fiction including the novels Dreaming for Freud, Becoming Jane Eyre, and Cracks, which was nominated for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and made into a film starring Eva Green. Her work has been featured in the New York Times and O Magazine and included in the Best American Short Stories. She has twice won an O. Henry Prize, as well as an Open Fiction Award, a Willa Cather Prize, and a Smart Family Foundation Prize. She teaches at Princeton University and lives in New York City.

Her latest novel is Open Secrets, in which the lies between a husband and wife are revealed, unraveling their family in a story that moves between the French Riviera, Switzerland, and Amagansett. When Michel, a Swiss banker, discovers his wife Alice's betrayal he turns for help to a Russian client who leads him into unknown territory, endangering not only his own life but that of Alice, and above all, his fourteen-year-old daughter, Pamela. Their charmed life—a beautiful house on the French Riviera, elegant vacations, and boarding school in Switzerland for Pamela—is not all that it seems. As the repercussions of Michel's illicit deals move closer in around them, Alice finds herself in Amagansett with her artist sister who is having a crisis of her own, while the danger circles around Pamela. Open Secrets is a suspenseful novel about relationships, family, love and the inescapable consequences of one's own actions.

Sheila stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about researching and writing the book:

On research and writing

All fiction attempts to portray life in a believable way whether it is science fiction, magic realism, or historical fiction. The reader needs to suspend disbelief to be interested by the story. This verisimilitude often comes with the authority of the voice. There are writers who manage to make us believe even the most extraordinary of events and others whose voice does not ring true. I have often had students who protest that something really happened but on the page render this event unbelievable. How, then, to make something believable?

When I was writing my first historical novel, The Children of Pithiviers, much of which takes place in Vichy France in the early 40's, I had some advice from my fellow countryman and Nobel prize winner: John Coetzee. He told me, "Don't stay too close to the facts." Certainly it is a more difficult task to blatantly alter historical facts. Research gives us the necessary confidence and the sort of precise detail that enables us to create a believable world, a world which rings true on the page. Even Don Quixote in his maddest moments renders his imaginary knights with marvelously real detail.

With my latest book, Open Secrets, I spoke to bankers, I read accounts of banks and banking systems in various parts of the world; I had also first hand dealings with Swiss banks through my sister whose money was stolen from a joint account in a Swiss bank with a numbered account by her husband, yet in the writing of the book, I found it necessary to take some distance from all of these "facts." I had to shut up the books and let the story come to me on the page through the characters who may have originated to some extent in my life but took on a life of their own. The story one is telling has its own truth  which we need to discover in the process of writing it, or so it seems to me.

 

You can learn more about Sheila Kohler and Open Secrets via her website and follow her on Facebook and Twitter. She also has a live online Q&A with Sheridan Hay via the Center for Fiction in New York coming up on July 14. Open Secrets is available this week via all major book retailers.

Author R&R with Jane Stanton Hitchcock

 

Bestselling author Jane Stanton Hitchcock was born and raised in New York City, where she led a seemingly privileged life. Early on, she learned the trappings of wealth and fame are not nearly all they are cracked up to be, themes she has since explored in her creative works dealing with murder and mayhem in high places. Before turning her hand to crime novels, she actually started her career in screenplays, one of which, Vanilla, was directed by Harold Pinter in London. (Fun factoid: Jane’s mother, actress Joan Alexander, originated the roles of Lois Lane on the radio serial The Adventures of Superman and Della Street on the radio serial Perry Mason).

Jane is also an avid poker player who regularly competes in the World Poker Tour and the World Series of Poker, and her sixth novel, Bluff (which just won the Dashiell Hammett Award for Literary Excellence in Crime Writing from the North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers), plays off that theme. One-time socialite Maud Warner polishes up the rags of her once glittering existence and bluffs her way into a signature New York restaurant on a sunny October day. When she walks out again, a man will have been shot. Maud has grown accustomed to being underestimated and invisible, and she uses her ability to fly under the radar as she pursues celebrity accountant Burt Sklar, the man she believes stole her mother's fortune and left her family in ruins. Her fervent passion for poker has taught Maud that she can turn weakness into strength to take advantage of people who think they are taking advantage of her, and now she has dealt the first card in her high-stakes plan for revenge. One unexpected twist after another follows as Maud plays the most important poker hand of her life. The stakes? To take down her enemies and get justice for their victims. Her success depends on her continuing ability to bluff—and on who will fold. Can she win?

Jane stops by In Reference to Murder for a Q&A:

1) BLUFF grew out of your own mastery of poker. In what ways did the game inspire this book – and how is the idea of bluffing a catalyst for suspense?

First of all, I would never say I had “mastered” poker.  If anything, the game is my master.  It’s taught me a lot about life and how to deal with adversity – namely, there’s no point in dwelling on bad luck or one’s mistakes.  Hard as it is, you sometimes have to say “Next Hand” and get on with it.  I also realized that at the poker table I was being underestimated just as I had been in life.  Players never expect an older woman to play anything but Old Lady Poker, just like the guy who swindled my mother out of millions of dollars never expected me to find out about his larceny and ultimately help put him in jail.  When I made this connection I found a way into the book:  Combine being underestimated in life and in poker and write a twisty tale of murder, revenge, and bluffing.  I hope the reader will be intrigued by the characters and swept up in the twists and turns of the story.  The book is one long poker hand with a Flop, a Turn, and the River.  As they play the hand with me, I want them to be thinking:   “How the hell does she get out of this?”  Only one way:  Bluff!

2) “Mad Maud” Warner is a complex character – and a timely one, given the fervor of feminism and the #MeToo movement. In what ways do you see her as an everywoman of sorts – and how did you balance likability with believability in developing her person? 

I say in the book: “Older women are invisible, and we don’t even have to disappear.”  Power derived from supposed weakness is a theme of the book. In the very first scene, Maud is able to escape because no one can fathom a woman like her – an older, well-dressed socialite – could have had the balls to commit such a shocking crime in a posh and crowded restaurant.  

The book is told in two voices:  Maud’s own, as she recounts what led her to commit murder; and the third person, which details the crime and its aftermath on all the people involved.  My hope is that the reader will be rooting for Maud as she explains what has led her to such violence and why she thinks she can possibly get away with it if she literally plays her cards right!  I guess she’s a #MeToo murderer!

3) You also satirize high society. How do you view humor as a tool for enlightenment – and what’s your rule for achieving a sense of fun (and funny) without crossing the line into farce or offensiveness? 

I like what Abba Eban said: “The upper crust is a bunch of crumbs held together by dough.”  I grew up in so-called “High Society” and, as I say in the book “money is a matter of luck; class is a matter of character.”  Maud knows she can trust some of her dicey poker playing pals much more than the “social” friends she’s known her entire life.  I also say:  “Money exaggerates who people are.  If you’re good you’ll be better, if you’re bad you’ll jump right down on the devil’s trampoline.”  A lot of people think having money makes them better than other people.  I like to aim my pen at such pretension and there’s no better way to do it than with humor.  I’d have to be Dostoevsky to write my own family’s story without humor.  As the book shows, money doesn’t save anyone from addiction, swindling, and death.  In fact, money often makes things worse.  But there’s nothing more exasperating than self-pity.  So telling my family’s story was a challenge.  It took me nineteen drafts!  But the poker theme eventually helped me harness the humor in all the darkness.

4) In addition to a novelist, you are also a playwright and screenwriter. In what ways do these disciplines inform one another – and what are the greatest challenges of the novel in comparison?

 Movies are really a directors’ medium so a writer is blessed if he/she has a good director.  Enough said.  Playwriting taught me about creating scenes and developing characters through dialogue.  In the theatre time on the stage grows more expensive with each minute.  You have to engage the audience.  Therefore, you always have to ask yourself:  What’s at stake?  Why should people care about these characters, this situation?  You have a captive audience sitting there waiting for things to develop in a finite amount of time.  The novel has no such constraints.  But I confess, I love a good, twisty plot. I like every scene to further the story.  But I also think it’s important for the reader not to be one jump ahead of me.  It’s when surprise meets inevitability that I feel I’ve done my job.  I want my readers to say:  Wow I didn’t see that coming, but now it all makes sense!  

I try and give the reader a sense of place without overloading the description.  Action is character and I really like writing dialogue, putting myself into all the characters – the good, the bad, and the ugly.  It’s fun to create a good villain and more fun to see the villain get his/her comeuppance.  But in my books, there is usually an anti-heroine who is, herself, operating in an amoral sphere.  In Bluff, I want my audience to be complicit in Maud’s revenge and root for her to get it – otherwise the book doesn’t work.   

5) What does winning the Hammett Prize mean to you?

It’s an incredible honor.  I never expected to win it!  Being nominated was enough, particularly among such a talented group of writers, not to mention the distinguished nominees and winners of past years.  Frankly, just to be favorably mentioned in the same sentence with Dashiell Hammett is a mystery writer’s dream. 

 

You can learn more about Jane Stanton Hitchcock and the Hammett Award-winning book via Jane's website and follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Bluff is available via all major bookstores.