The Argh Interview: Anne Stuart

JC: Welcome, Anne Stuart!

Full Disclosure: Anne Stuart, aka Krissie, and I have been close friends for many years and, with Lani Diane Rich, are now the Three Goddesses, maintaining spiritual retreats in Vermont (Squalor Holler), Ohio (Squalor on the River), and New Jersey (Squalor on the Lake) where we gather to discuss fiction, fabric, yarn, movies, dogs, and what we should eat next. Therefore I'm hopelessly biased in her favor. On the other hand, she is a living legend.

JC: So you're issuing a brand new ICE book, On Thin Ice, on Amazon. Tell me about that.

AS: I had a book I was desperate to write. A number of years ago I started writing my first series, loosely called the ICE series, about a group of covert operatives doing bad things for good reasons. Basically men who kill and the women who love them. I could have kept writing them forever, I expect, but my publisher declined the last one (several times), wanting serial killers instead (yuck), which left my poor hero kidnapped and held in a rebel camp in the Andes for three years. I had to get him out of there. I even wrote three chapters to lure my publisher and forwarded them hundreds of emails asking for another, to no avail.

JC: Meanwhile your next hero rots in Peru. I hate that, when characters won't leave after a book is done. It's like they're sitting there in the back of your brain, the last guest at the party, hitting you with puppy dog eyes to guilt you into writing them. Although I never stranded anybody in a rebel camp in the Andes.

AS: Not Peru. He's in a fictional country called Callivera since Colombia (my original choice) was uncooperative enough to be on the West Coast of South America. And I didn't want to leave poor Finn MacGowan stuck there, but I didn't seem to have any options. So my agent suggested I could write it anyway, and we'd work out something with Amazon. Which we did. The book was ready months ago, but these things take time. But I got a gorgeous cover and it debuted on Amazon a few weeks ago, to much praise and joy in the land.

The set up is simple – Finn's been a prisoner for almost three years, he's just about to escape, when more rebels arrive with an American aid worker named Beth Pennington, who just happens to be an heiress. Since Finn isn't adverse to being paid a huge reward he reluctantly takes her with him, as well as the bratty teenage son of a Hollywood movie star, and they make their way through rebels and waterfalls and ocean voyages and bad CIA bosses to a farmhouse in France, with lots of sex, violence, and cameos by the characters from previous books sprinkled throughout.

JC: On Thin Ice sounds like classis Stuart which means it's terrific. You're also reissuing seven of your earlier romances.

AS: Yup, we're doing a whole romantic suspense package with Amazon. I've published the long Maggie Bennett series, Escape Out of Darkness, Darkness Before Dawn, and At the Edge of the Sun; two of my beloved (by me, at least) Signet books, Moonrise, the story of an IRA assassin turned CIA assassin and the daughter of his mentor, and Ritual Sins, about a sexy, charismatic cult leader and a woman who wants to get her inheritance back; the one book I did for Pocket Books, pretty much a straight suspense novel called Seen and Not Heard, based on the true story of French grandmothers being murdered. The heroine, an expatriate American, is married to a mime, and things go downhill from there; and one of my all time favorite series books, Ritual Sins, a Rambo romance about the daughter of a politician with a savior complex, his daughter and the body guard she'd always secretly loved. With hubris born of desperation, I truly believe I can't write a bad book, but I particularly adore Moonrise, Ritual Sins and Against the Wind.

JC: Once again, your heroes are all types we hate: assassins, cult leaders, mimes. Can I assume you're going to be writing about a slum landlord, a land developer, and an investment banker in the future? What is it with your heroes? I mean, honest to god, a mime?

AS: Let it go, Crusie.

JC: Fine. And then there are the three Maggie Bennett books in which you do something that's a cardinal sin in romance. So we won't talk about that. The hero at the end of the series is based on a Georgette Heyer character. Let me guess: Vidal from Devil's Cub.

AS: And you'd be dead wrong about that. Not that Vidal hasn't inspired me. Though perhaps his father inspired me even more. No, believe it or not, this is Randall, the amiable snake from Behold, Here's Poison. I even named the character Randall. (I may have referred to him as an amiable snake as a small homage to Heyer).

JC: I loved Randall, so you had me at "amiable snake." Tell me about Maggie instead.

AS: Maggie's a tough lady. She can kick ass, shoot, rescue herself and others. Originally I was going to write about Maggie and her two sisters, but my editor decided that having Maggie as the centerpiece made more sense, so in books two and three the sisters are simply supporting characters. It was also this sea change, mid-series, that forced me to commit the unpardonable sin.

JC: So that's seven reissues? I'm in awe.

AS: Yes, and six of them are really good.

JC: Stop that. I have learned that if you say any book of yours isn't good, it insults all the people who loved it. And I bet a lot of people loved that book, whatever it was.

AS: It sold 5000 copies.

JC: Oh. Was it the one about the mime?

AS: Yes.

JC: You should have seen that coming. Okay, here's something about your new book and reissues that I'm not crazy about: they're exclusive to Amazon, which means they're only Kindle-ready. Are you happy with that?

AS: Mixed feelings. On the one hand, I want everyone to be able to read my books, and for a year this shuts out Nook, Kobo, Sony, and print readers. OTOH, I adore Amazon, which brings me books in two days and other glorious things, and I adore my Kindle. I think there's a backlash against Amazon because it's grown so big and successful, but for me it's been an amazing gift for someone living in a remote area. Amazon sells more books than anyone else, and sells more books in electronic format than print, so it made sense to go with them for the first round. Besides, just about everything electronic (apart from those e-readers) can run a Kindle app. I've been perfectly happy reading a Meredith Duran book on my iPhone when my Kindle ran out of power.

JC: So are you going to do that in the future? Are the Maggie Bennetts going to be exclusive to Amazon, too?

AS: All seven reissue titles and the new ICE book are exclusive to Amazon for the first year. Then they'll go wide.

JC: Hmmmmm. Still not crazy about that. But aside from the exclusivity problem, how do you feel about e-publishing in general?

AS: I've never been a Luddite, so I never thought I'd hate an ereader, even in the early days. I was surprised at how much I loved it, once I got one. So much that I paid full price for the latest Eloisa James to put on my Kindle, rather than buy it at Walmart for much less. So I love the technology.

JS: I agree. I'm completely sold on the iPad.

AS: But what I love even more about e-publishing is the ability it gives writers to write what they want and know it will get out there. I've wanted to write the ICE book for three years, and they always said no. People like Connie Brockway and others are in the same position — their series were cut short by a publisher and they had more to tell. They can write those books for epublishing and know they'll be read.

JS: I think that part is great. I have short stories I want to write that nobody would want to publish—who wants a 30,000 word short story collection?—but e-publishing makes it all possible. And Jen Weiner just did something I thought was impossible, finish a story on Thursday that her publisher will issue on Monday. That's just flat out amazing. But at the end of the day, it's still publishing, which means making public, not just printing. Amazon's size must mean that they can really promote you. Are they as good as print publishers at getting you interviews, reviews, basic promotion?

AS: Uh … in my old age I'm learning discretion, since I've had perfectly harmless statements turn around and bite me in the butt. Let's say that Amazon is new at this, the entire business is new, and they don't have the kind of machinery in place that would help. The key word in e-publishing is discoverability. There are so many books out there, how do you find the ones that you'll love? You can't wander in a bookstore, and there's nothing set up for e-published books to get responsible reviews. So you somehow have to find a way to call attention to a book you think people will love, and that's hard. It's one thing to go around beating my breast like Eisler and Konrath, but otherwise who's going to notice? Yes, Amazon doesn't have the set-up to get reviews and interviews and attention, the kind of things I get with traditional publication (which I have no intention of giving up). But there's a bright side to that.

Because Amazon doesn't have the kind of huge overhead and salary base that traditional publishing does, they're not as tied to a bottom line. For a traditional publisher to accept something, they have to know it will pay for their building in Manhattan, everyone from the mail room clerks to the CEO, distribution, printing, etc. And they've gotten more frightened by the shrinking market.

JS: Actually, Amazon does have a huge overhead. They're just so diversified that it doesn't matter if the profits on one book aren't enough to cover them. They're selling microwaves and gift baskets and DVDs, so they're not dependent on any book selling large.

AS: True enough. I should have said their ebook publishing arm doesn't have much of an overhead. So lack of promotion aside, the great thing about e-publishing is that you really can follow your heart, and if you're a good writer with a track record you can do anything. I'll finally get to write my WWII RAF pilot novel. And it can be any length I want. I feel like a Goddess — I can do anything.

JC: Like a mime hero?

AS: Bite me.

JC: Fine, be that way. And it is true, you are a goddess, and Anne Stuart books in any format are a divine gift, so I'll quit complaining, especially since the future reissues will be going wide. What's next: historicals or romantic suspense? Oh, and I should tell you, some bimbo named Kristina Douglas is claiming to be you, although her Demon books are really good, so maybe that's not a bad thing.

AS: Ah, Kristina. She's a gorgeous forty-something with a boy toy and the world at her feet. She loves writing paranormal — she wrote her first faux vampire in 1981 and she's been wanting to do the real thing ever since then. Plus, fallen angels? Yum.

JC: That's very generous of you.

AS: Well, Kristina and I are very close. But enough about her. I adore both romantic suspense and historicals. I need to finish the Rohan cycle. I left poor drug addicted Brandon to his own devices. I gotta stop doing that).

JC: Was he in Peru?

AS: No one's in Peru! Callivera. And Brandon Rohan's in London, with PTSD from the war in Afghanistan. The one in the 1800s, that is. Right now I'm working on a big fat glorious classic romantic suspense (with tons of sex, naturally), so we'll see how that goes. It's always been my career downfall, wanting to write too many things. Years ago an editor said I needed to choose what I wanted to be when I grew up, a historical writer or a romantic suspense writer. Problem is, I can't. A girl's gotta write what a girl's gotta write, and career planning can just fly out the window.

JC: That was terrible advice for you. I'm so glad you didn't take it. Speaking of writing too many things, you showed me the first part of a book once called Death and the Vicar's Daughter. As I remember, it carried your Difficult Heroes series to its logical conclusion when the Daughter fell in love with Death. I loved the part I read. Are you ever going to write that one? Please?

AS: I would love to. My agent loved it as well, but thought the concept brushed too close to the Kristina Douglas books.

JC: Oh, I definitely think it's an Anne Stuart. It's a vicar's daughter. Death is just a bonus. Now what about the rest of your backlist? It's huge and wonderful.

AS: I'm in the midst of getting my historical backlist available, and those will go in e-editions to everyone, including the ability to download and print up a version if you can't stand reading by machine. We'll be doing two a month, starting with To Love a Dark Lord and Shadow Dance, with my delicious novella, The High Sheriff of Huntington, coming first.

JC: That's my favorite novella of yours. Bet I get this one right: you used Alan Rickman as a placeholder for the hero, didn't you?

AS: Of course. And not just Alan Rickman, but Alan Rickman as the Sheriff of Notthingham. Over the top and completely delicious, though he doesn't threaten to cut anyone's heart out with a spoon.

JC: At least he wasn't a mime. So that means lots more books from Anne Stuart and Kristina Douglas?

AS: Some writers decide to retire after they've been in the business a long time, like Lavyrle Spencer and Maeve Binchy. I won't ever retire — I just want to stop dancing to the publisher's tune and write what I want to write. I'd love to have the books published traditionally and electronically, but the whole industry is undergoing a seismic shift, so we'll have to see what happens.

JC: Any more mime heroes?

AS: Kiss my ass, Crusie. Your next book should combine your love of dogs and cooking with a spunky heroine who bakes dogs into pies and feeds them to her enemies while singing Stephen Sondheim ditties.

JC: Uh, no. I don't write dark. I AM dark, I write light. Whereas you are sunny and good-natured and lovely and write the Heroes From Hell. Inexplicable.

And that's the latest from Living Legend and Goddess Anne Stuart. You can get her new ICE book and seven latest re-issues at Amazon now—one with a mime!–so go do that. And thank you, Anne, for another riveting interview. Now go get that poor guy out of Peru.

AS: Callivera, damn it!

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