Interview: Miranda Armstadt
A week or so ago I finished reading and wrote a review of Cut Back to Life, the debut novel from Miranda Armstadt. I realized I had some questions for her about the story and some of her background. Here's a chance to get to know a little about her and the novel before jumping in.
U.L. Cut Back to Life features characters with diverse backgrounds. What in your personal history informed your writing, and what research did you do to prepare for this novel?
MA: I had no plan to even write a novel, let alone this one. I literally started writing it the day after I met with a self-publishing friend for lunch. I’d had spinal fusion surgery just four-and-a-half months prior. My own professional background includes a lot of show business stuff: singing, TV spots, acting. I’d lived in SoCal for a long time. I know what auditions and producers are like. **smirks**
As for the characters, I’m sure Anna has some pieces of me in her, and the doctor is very representative, I believe, of this super high-achieving level of surgeon. The discipline it takes to do this work is incredible, and hopefully I portrayed that these guys are kind of superheroes of skeletal reconstruction.
Roger, the personal trainer, well, we’ve all met people who could have the world by the tail, but they’re kind of their own worst enemies. And that’s Niles: he just can’t stop screwing up his own life.
U.L. This is, for the most part, a romance novel. I mean, we’re dealing with these folks trying to get together when we get down to it. What’s your ideal romantic relationship like and is it at all portrayed in the novel?
MA: Great question! As a matter of fact: I would say to some degree, it is.
In a novel, we are spared so many mundanities that inform real-life relationships – that's the key differential. We’re not seeing Mark unsure which kind of cream cheese to pick up at the supermarket when Anna gives him a “to buy” list, after all.
But a man who is there in times of crisis, and one who can handle my past (which isn’t like Anna’s per se, but has plenty of its own baggage) -- yeah, I want that, definitely. And hope to offer it back as well.
U.L. Let’s talk characters for a minute. Anna, to put it mildly, has a dark past. By the time we meet her she’s in her 60’s, years beyond when the initial trauma occurred. Talk about the thought process of having a main character her age.
MA: Oh lord—well, the whole “OK Boomer” thing, and TV spots that show people with white hair who are retired and in jog suits: I don’t know anyone like that.
Let’s just say I am Boomer-generation, and even my friends who are retired aren’t sitting around. The majority of us can’t afford to retire, and maybe that’s not all bad. We are at the top of our game, and many are in great shape and very attractive. The story ain’t over for us yet. Yes, we are still having hot sex! Surprise, kids! Lol.
So I wanted to show that. My guess is, it’s going to be a whole genre unto itself.
U.L. Mark is a successful surgeon. He’s successful even for a surgeon, actually. What makes his romance with Anna, considering her past, so intriguing?
MA: So here’s this man who wants for nothing, not even the potential to bed beautiful women much younger than he is. Most men's’ dream, right? But is it really?
I think guys are a little deeper than we sometimes give them credit for. I know men like Mark. He’s incredibly intelligent, obviously, but his emotions are stuck. Anna is less inhibited in many ways, even though it’s not stemming from anything that was her choice. She isn’t wanting him for his bankroll. She doesn’t need his money-- she is already rich in her own right.
So they are equals that way, and that makes for the best partnerships, in my opinion. Yet they complement each other's strengths and weaknesses. And let’s face it, they’re both hot as hell. No one is sacrificing looks for personality—they're getting both.
U.L. In a way, the setting is a character in Cut Back To Life. Talk about how Hollywood and Los Angeles play a role in the novel.
MA: Yeah, that’s something I wanted to take issue with in your Goodreads review. You said I glamorized Hollywood, and I don’t think I did that at all.
The only thing I showed was the fancy real estate in certain areas, and I even Googled Zillow for real homes up for sale in the parts of L.A. mentioned. See, there is “Hollywood” the concept: where movies are made in people’s minds. And then there is geographical land-map Hollywood, which I agree is seedy as hell.
But I don’t think I ever said anywhere in this book that Hollywood—where they make movies -- is anything but a very tough business, all about profit and looks. We see Anna worried that she is at the tail-end of her career, based on her age. And she’s probably not wrong, unless she wants to just do cameos. That’s why her agent is discussing lucrative infomercials with her.
U.L. Let’s get into some nuts and bolts of writing. I was surprised it wasn’t told in first-person or third-person close. From previously speaking with you on the subject, you didn’t seem too concerned with the point of view of the narrative, but what are your thoughts on your approach to the storytelling?
MA: I guess I don’t understand why you were surprised. What advantage would writing from one character’s perspective have? Maybe it’s my news writing background, but I like to tell the whole story as if we are looking at it from all angles. I don’t even know what “third-person close” means. I’m not into all these terms. I just write the story I want to tell, and I write it the way I want to.
U.L. I’m always curious about process. I’ve noticed that, as an author myself, I stopped paying attention to word count and kind of just make sure I’m not being lazy with my time and I stay focused. How do you approach time management and goal setting in your writing?
MA: I wrote and published Cut Back to Life inside of five months: I didn’t know it’s not possible😊 That was while working a full-time job and recovering from spinal fusion myself. My self-publishing guru – who gets a shout out in my acknowledgments – told me to make it 50,000 words to be a novel, but beyond that, just to make it as long or as short as it needed to be to tell the story.
I have no time management. My entire life is the “just-in-time" manufacturing model. If it’s not bleeding out, it’s probably not happening. But I get to decide what has to wait on a gurney in the hospital hallway.
U.L. Now a slight shift. What’re your goals for reading? Do you do a lot of reading, a little reading? What are you reading? When do you read, assuming it’s something you do? Yeah, all that.
MA: I grew up reading all the classics: Tolstoy, Dickens, Thackeray, Shakespeare, Hugo, Dostoevsky. And a few 20th century writers like William Styron and Harper Lee.
Not Stephen King. Have never read a word he’s written, which seems to make me some kind of heretic in the current Twitter writing community. I honestly hadn’t read much in terms of classic literature in decades when I wrote Cut Back to Life, but those authors I mentioned above are in my cranial stem cells.
Now, I read mostly for stress relief. I am addicted to the slightly erotic Regency romances. As strange as I know it sounds to most people, they reflect many pieces of my own upbringing, which obviously was not typical by any standard. A little sex, when part of the plot, is spicy. When it’s just there to be there, not so much.
U.L. I follow you on Twitter. You mention an upcoming novel that involves plenty of research, and it sounds somewhat personal. Tell us a little about that.
MA: Yes, it’s called CIA Princess. As the title implies, it’s a play on the old “Mafia princess," where a girl is raised in splendor, but largely shielded from what her daddy does to make his money. This is the other side of that, because the good guys live in just as much secrecy as the bad guys, and it affects their families and so many aspects of their lives also.
I don’t want to give everything away, but years after my dad passed, me and my siblings started finding these trails, and they all pointed in the same direction: that what we had always assumed was a US State Dept. gig in Yugoslavia during the Cold War was actually almost certainly a cover for his real work with the CIA.
There’s no way to definitively prove this stuff. But we just found so many markers that indicated that is what he did. So that is the loose premise for the book.
But it will be fictional, and the protagonists will be the adult (yes, Boomer!) daughter of the now-deceased operative exploring her past along with her lover: a sex-addicted Southern lawyer whose own father was a Holocaust survivor. There are whole bodies of psychology on how that affected parenting, so it will create a really fascinating relationship dynamic.
It’s going to be minimum a year yet for this one. It’s massive, both the historical research and my own family archives to sift through. I think it will be worth it, though.
U.L. Parting words? Anything to add?
MA: Buy my book. READ my book. Cut Back to Life
By the way, guys have been loving my book, even though it’s labeled “romantic suspense.” I must be hitting some chords with them, which is really cool. But women like it, too.
Definitely not a traditional romance novel, you said that in your Goodreads review, and I appreciated that. I will not be insulted by anyone calling my writing “literature.” That’s as good as it gets.
U.L. Cut Back to Life features characters with diverse backgrounds. What in your personal history informed your writing, and what research did you do to prepare for this novel?
MA: I had no plan to even write a novel, let alone this one. I literally started writing it the day after I met with a self-publishing friend for lunch. I’d had spinal fusion surgery just four-and-a-half months prior. My own professional background includes a lot of show business stuff: singing, TV spots, acting. I’d lived in SoCal for a long time. I know what auditions and producers are like. **smirks**
As for the characters, I’m sure Anna has some pieces of me in her, and the doctor is very representative, I believe, of this super high-achieving level of surgeon. The discipline it takes to do this work is incredible, and hopefully I portrayed that these guys are kind of superheroes of skeletal reconstruction.
Roger, the personal trainer, well, we’ve all met people who could have the world by the tail, but they’re kind of their own worst enemies. And that’s Niles: he just can’t stop screwing up his own life.
U.L. This is, for the most part, a romance novel. I mean, we’re dealing with these folks trying to get together when we get down to it. What’s your ideal romantic relationship like and is it at all portrayed in the novel?
MA: Great question! As a matter of fact: I would say to some degree, it is.
In a novel, we are spared so many mundanities that inform real-life relationships – that's the key differential. We’re not seeing Mark unsure which kind of cream cheese to pick up at the supermarket when Anna gives him a “to buy” list, after all.
But a man who is there in times of crisis, and one who can handle my past (which isn’t like Anna’s per se, but has plenty of its own baggage) -- yeah, I want that, definitely. And hope to offer it back as well.
U.L. Let’s talk characters for a minute. Anna, to put it mildly, has a dark past. By the time we meet her she’s in her 60’s, years beyond when the initial trauma occurred. Talk about the thought process of having a main character her age.
MA: Oh lord—well, the whole “OK Boomer” thing, and TV spots that show people with white hair who are retired and in jog suits: I don’t know anyone like that.
Let’s just say I am Boomer-generation, and even my friends who are retired aren’t sitting around. The majority of us can’t afford to retire, and maybe that’s not all bad. We are at the top of our game, and many are in great shape and very attractive. The story ain’t over for us yet. Yes, we are still having hot sex! Surprise, kids! Lol.
So I wanted to show that. My guess is, it’s going to be a whole genre unto itself.
U.L. Mark is a successful surgeon. He’s successful even for a surgeon, actually. What makes his romance with Anna, considering her past, so intriguing?
MA: So here’s this man who wants for nothing, not even the potential to bed beautiful women much younger than he is. Most men's’ dream, right? But is it really?
I think guys are a little deeper than we sometimes give them credit for. I know men like Mark. He’s incredibly intelligent, obviously, but his emotions are stuck. Anna is less inhibited in many ways, even though it’s not stemming from anything that was her choice. She isn’t wanting him for his bankroll. She doesn’t need his money-- she is already rich in her own right.
So they are equals that way, and that makes for the best partnerships, in my opinion. Yet they complement each other's strengths and weaknesses. And let’s face it, they’re both hot as hell. No one is sacrificing looks for personality—they're getting both.
U.L. In a way, the setting is a character in Cut Back To Life. Talk about how Hollywood and Los Angeles play a role in the novel.
MA: Yeah, that’s something I wanted to take issue with in your Goodreads review. You said I glamorized Hollywood, and I don’t think I did that at all.
The only thing I showed was the fancy real estate in certain areas, and I even Googled Zillow for real homes up for sale in the parts of L.A. mentioned. See, there is “Hollywood” the concept: where movies are made in people’s minds. And then there is geographical land-map Hollywood, which I agree is seedy as hell.
But I don’t think I ever said anywhere in this book that Hollywood—where they make movies -- is anything but a very tough business, all about profit and looks. We see Anna worried that she is at the tail-end of her career, based on her age. And she’s probably not wrong, unless she wants to just do cameos. That’s why her agent is discussing lucrative infomercials with her.
U.L. Let’s get into some nuts and bolts of writing. I was surprised it wasn’t told in first-person or third-person close. From previously speaking with you on the subject, you didn’t seem too concerned with the point of view of the narrative, but what are your thoughts on your approach to the storytelling?
MA: I guess I don’t understand why you were surprised. What advantage would writing from one character’s perspective have? Maybe it’s my news writing background, but I like to tell the whole story as if we are looking at it from all angles. I don’t even know what “third-person close” means. I’m not into all these terms. I just write the story I want to tell, and I write it the way I want to.
U.L. I’m always curious about process. I’ve noticed that, as an author myself, I stopped paying attention to word count and kind of just make sure I’m not being lazy with my time and I stay focused. How do you approach time management and goal setting in your writing?
MA: I wrote and published Cut Back to Life inside of five months: I didn’t know it’s not possible😊 That was while working a full-time job and recovering from spinal fusion myself. My self-publishing guru – who gets a shout out in my acknowledgments – told me to make it 50,000 words to be a novel, but beyond that, just to make it as long or as short as it needed to be to tell the story.
I have no time management. My entire life is the “just-in-time" manufacturing model. If it’s not bleeding out, it’s probably not happening. But I get to decide what has to wait on a gurney in the hospital hallway.
U.L. Now a slight shift. What’re your goals for reading? Do you do a lot of reading, a little reading? What are you reading? When do you read, assuming it’s something you do? Yeah, all that.
MA: I grew up reading all the classics: Tolstoy, Dickens, Thackeray, Shakespeare, Hugo, Dostoevsky. And a few 20th century writers like William Styron and Harper Lee.
Not Stephen King. Have never read a word he’s written, which seems to make me some kind of heretic in the current Twitter writing community. I honestly hadn’t read much in terms of classic literature in decades when I wrote Cut Back to Life, but those authors I mentioned above are in my cranial stem cells.
Now, I read mostly for stress relief. I am addicted to the slightly erotic Regency romances. As strange as I know it sounds to most people, they reflect many pieces of my own upbringing, which obviously was not typical by any standard. A little sex, when part of the plot, is spicy. When it’s just there to be there, not so much.
U.L. I follow you on Twitter. You mention an upcoming novel that involves plenty of research, and it sounds somewhat personal. Tell us a little about that.
MA: Yes, it’s called CIA Princess. As the title implies, it’s a play on the old “Mafia princess," where a girl is raised in splendor, but largely shielded from what her daddy does to make his money. This is the other side of that, because the good guys live in just as much secrecy as the bad guys, and it affects their families and so many aspects of their lives also.
I don’t want to give everything away, but years after my dad passed, me and my siblings started finding these trails, and they all pointed in the same direction: that what we had always assumed was a US State Dept. gig in Yugoslavia during the Cold War was actually almost certainly a cover for his real work with the CIA.
There’s no way to definitively prove this stuff. But we just found so many markers that indicated that is what he did. So that is the loose premise for the book.
But it will be fictional, and the protagonists will be the adult (yes, Boomer!) daughter of the now-deceased operative exploring her past along with her lover: a sex-addicted Southern lawyer whose own father was a Holocaust survivor. There are whole bodies of psychology on how that affected parenting, so it will create a really fascinating relationship dynamic.
It’s going to be minimum a year yet for this one. It’s massive, both the historical research and my own family archives to sift through. I think it will be worth it, though.
U.L. Parting words? Anything to add?
MA: Buy my book. READ my book. Cut Back to Life
By the way, guys have been loving my book, even though it’s labeled “romantic suspense.” I must be hitting some chords with them, which is really cool. But women like it, too.
Definitely not a traditional romance novel, you said that in your Goodreads review, and I appreciated that. I will not be insulted by anyone calling my writing “literature.” That’s as good as it gets.
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