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Q&A with Karin Slaughter from Random House
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Christine
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Jul 01, 2014 05:44AM
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In "FALLEN" Faith gets her mothers cut off finger from her adopted son. Was that meant to be symbolic or just to be taken at face value? As in "Faith was given the finger."
Since you live in Atlanta are your books based on the city and their police force?
Love to know how you keep your characters from getting stale
Yes, my current books are based in Atlanta. Cop Town takes place in 1974 and gives you an idea of how far the city-and its police force-has come.
Where do you come up names that are in your books?
Do you identify yourself with any of your characters?
Haha, Douglas, I never thought of the double meaning, but yes, I assume that the criminal mean that as well.
Hi Karin and Welcome. I was wondering if you have any pets? What is your favorite book of yours?
Jennifer: I think of my characters as real people. and I've always got one or two of them in my mind, so new things about them come to me a lot--songs they would like, situations they might find funny (or find themselves in). While I loved writing new characters in Cop Town, I also needed a break to think about the next chapter in Wil Trent and Sara Linton's life. Unseen had a fairly happy ending (at least for me!) and I have to consider the next step in their relationship as well as the Awful Thing that will either tear them apart or bring them closer together.
Hi Karin! What is your process? Do you map out your book ahead of time or let it go where it goes and how do you edit/revise?
I think a lot about the names because they define the characters for me. With Will, I liked the idea of him having two first names because, as someone who grew up in foster care, he never felt like he "owned" a last name. With Kate and Maggie in Cop Town: I love the name Kate (I think most women do thanks to Mz. Hepburn) and Maggie is my cat's name.
I don't necessarily identify with all of my characters, but I'm sure there's a piece of me in all of them. I think writers write ideals for their leads, so Sara is a lot taller than me and certainly more athletic!
I really enjoyed writing a stand-alone, and I thought of Cop Town as such for much of the time I was writing it. Then, I got to the end and I really felt like I didn't want to leave the characters behind, so it's kind of a standalone that turned into a (hopefully) series. I need to get back to Will and Sara before that, though, because I think my next book will be a true stand-alone! As for the challenge: it was scary and exciting to write a book with completely new characters. I haven't done that since creating Will in Triptych, and I loved working without a tight rope. When you write a series, you go in already knowing a lot about the characters, so it was a challenge to introduce myself to Kate and Maggie and their various connections and relationships. I also had a lot of fun writing from the perspective of patrol officers, because I've never done that before.
Karin, when did you know you wanted to be an author?
Joe: I don't really do outlines. Sometimes, I will look carefully at chapters when there are time shifts (such as in Criminal, or in Unseen, where Lena's chapters were told in reverse chronology and I needed to make sure they synced with the present-day chapters in the right place) Mostly, when I write a book, I always know how a book is going to start and how it is going to end, and I definitely know the bad guy (or woman!) but I like figuring out the rest as I go along. All writers are different, though, and I think the ones who have outlines have it easier in some ways, but I've been doing this for so many years that I think it's too late to mess with the process.
Maikku-I have two cats, Grace and Maggie. I post photos of Grace all the time on Facebook, but Maggie won't stand still for photos. I suppose I could post a gray blur but people might be disappointed. Favorite book...well, Gone With the Wind, Flannery O'Connor's short story collection, To Kill a Mockingbird. A book I've read recently that I really enjoyed was Lee Child's new on, Personal, which is out in a few months. Fantastic stuff.
Faith is diabetic, do you know someone close to you who is also?
Grant County: I was always told to write what you know, and I know small towns because I grew up in one. I think you should also write what you want to know about, and I wanted to explore what happens when a crime shakes a small town. So, I created Grant County to be an amalgamation of the towns I knew as a child, and then had some really terrible things happen. Sara Linton, the town's pediatrician/coroner, has lived in Grant County most of her life. Her ex-husband, Jeffrey, is a newcomer and also the chief of police (so anytime someone dies, they have to work together), then there's Lena, a detective on the police force who has a big chip on her shoulder. She's meant to be a very polarizing character, and she makes some really bad choices for herself, but even in her badness, she's interesting. You just want to know what kind of crap she's going to land herself in next. Oh, and there's also lots of sex.
Charlotte: I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be an author. I think you don't choose to be a writer; writing chooses you.
Yes, I know someone who is diabetic. I also talked to someone who's been living as a diabetic all of his life for pointers on what Faith's life is like. I always try to get at least two or three perspectives on various issues and then mix them all together to find my character's voice. For Cop Town, I spoke with three different police officers who came up in the 70s (two women and a man) and several people who lived in Atlanta in the 1970s.
To follow up on Charlotte's question, how did you decide to become a mystery/crime writer? Were mystery novels a genre of choice when you were younger?
Leigh wrote: "Lots of sex makes things interesting. Ha, ha."Agreed! lol
What's a vacation? Ha! I travel so much for my books that I really don't want to go anywhere other than home when I have the chance. Every few years I try to force myself to get away, and I love St Martin. It's very quiet on the French side and I just lay around and sleep all day and read all the books that I want and the only thing I have to worry about is getting sunburned. Bliss!
I just finished reading Triptych. I loved it and look forward to the rest of the WT series. Q: How are you able to paint such a vivid, creepy picture with so few words? I’m thinking about John’s experiences in prison. You were incredibly economical with the words used to describe it but there was no mistaking your meaning. That made it more personal and palpable for the reader. I literally shuddered while reading all he endured!
Leigh-I grew up on Cagney and Lacey. Loved, loved, loved that show. And as a woman, I am so annoyed that there's not a serious police drama out there with two female leads. I suppose Rizolli and Isles is the closest thing we have, and while I love Tess's work, I don't think you can com are the tone to an NYPD Blue or Cagney and Lacey. There can be a woman lead, but they always have to make sure a man is her partner to keep her from going crazy (the Killing) or make her have a softer side (Castle, Bones, etc).
I grew up reading crime novels, so it seemed like a natural thing for me to write in that genre. Also, the best, most enduring books in our culture all have some sort of crime in them, so I am following in some great footsteps.
What kind of tv shows do you like to watch and what of movies do you like to watch?
Hi Karin! Wow,the questions just started popping! I love your characters in all of your books, even the ones I don't like.
I guess I have two questions. In Triptych you introduced us to Angie, Will and a character John Shelley. I kind of felt that Angie and John made some kind of connection in this book...is there a chance you might bring this character back for a visit?
My second question how far in advance did you know you were going to bring Will and Sara together?
By the way, I am loving Cop Town! You certainly hit it right with the attitudes towards women and the feelings in south for that time period!
Kim: thanks for noticing! I was very careful with the John scenes, because I just had to let the brutality speak for itself. I didn't want to "milk" it for melodrama. Also, I had to keep in mind that I was telling it from a man's perspective, and most men aren't really taught to sit around talking/thinking about their feelings, so I had to make his recollections more matter-of-fact in order to make them feel realistic to the kind of kid he was (and with the kind of distant, cold father he had; boys tend to learn to model their emotions after their fathers)
Hi Karin! I have just recently read my first of your books, Blindsighted, and I am hooked! It had everything that I love in a thriller - it was suspenseful, dark, and you wrote characters in such a way that I felt very invested in their lives by the end of the novel. I especially admired your nuanced handling of the relationship between Sara Linton and Jeffrey Tolliver, which added another layer of enjoyment to the book. There was definitely "chemistry" there, without it ever veering into "cheesy" territory.
The Will Trent series starts with Triptych. I knew when I started writing that book that eventually, Sara Linton would come into Will's orbit, so I worked very hard to make sure that book (and Fractured, which follows) gives you an idea of Will's progression away from Angie, his crappy girlfriend, and toward being a man whom Sara could be interested in. He kind of finds his voice, especially in relation to Amanda, his ball breaking boss, and Faith, who tries to mother him but ends up smothering him most of the time.
It looks like you already partially answered my question: did you research Atlanta, 1974, for COP TOWN, and how did you conduct it? I always want to know how much of fiction is based on fact.
As a writer hoping to get published someday, I'm curious about how you first got published. Agent? Straight to publisher? Rejections?
My favorite movie of all time (in crime, as least) is Clay Pigeons. It's hilarious and deadly, sort of like Fargo, but a precursor (I believe) TV: Suits, Justified, Masters and Johnson, Nurse Jackie, Breaking Bad (still), Covert Affairs (I love watching her kick some butt), Orphan Black (how did they find all those actresses who look alike?!), Falling Skies, Game of Thrones...the list goes on.
You have been a big supporter of Save the Libraries which raises money for and awareness of our public libraries. You write on your website about your fond memories as a child visiting the library. My question is Do you ever use libraries as a plot setting in your books? By the way, I just placed a hold to check out Cop Town from my local library. (There is a long line ahead of me!)
In case you aren't joking about Orphan Black, or someone else doesn't know what she's talking about, it's all one woman.
JoAnn--I don't think I could put John and Angie together. I think Angie was right: he's been through enough crap without having someone like her in his life.I knew when I wrote Faithless that Will and Sara were going to meet. I saw that Sara was getting too happy in her life, and while you guys think you want to read about happy people, you really don't. They get kind of boring. Even Maeve Binchey had folks start off miserable before they got happy.
As to the last part of your post, I feel the need to say that it wasn't just in the south that women were treated this way. It was all over the country. Fair housing laws weren't in place. Women couldn't get credit cards and home loans-not just in Atlanta, but in New York City. I't wasn't until (I think) 1972 that unmarried women were "allowed" to legally obtain the pill. They had to have a man's permission first. We've come a long circle, baby!
Karin do you belong to any charities?
Kim wrote: "Leigh wrote: "Lots of sex makes things interesting. Ha, ha."Agreed! lol"
I feel that authors who resort to writing lots of sex into their books do so because they aren't good enough writers to think of something original to say. Sex is unoriginal.
Laura G: thanks for noticing. I really worked hard to make Sara and Jeffrey's relationship believable and understandable. I loved that subtle dance they do in the Grant County series.
I wish I knew what inspired me, and where I got my ideas. It's weird, because I'll just be sitting around reading or staring out a window or playing with my cats and the idea comes to me almost fully formed. While I'm not haunted by any particular book, I feel like I always have the characters' voices in my head, and if I leave one in a bad way, I'm really thinking about them a lot in context of how I'm going to move on with them in the next book. Sometimes, that takes a lot of research. Someone mentioned Faith's diabetes before, and I wanted to use that as a plot point, but also show her as a strong, capable woman. It's an important theme in my work to show people who are disables being productive and strong people.
Karin wrote: "You guys seem to really like your sex!"No, Karin, please see my comment. Lots of sex in a book is a bad sign. Pease don't resort to that
Karin, I have a non-book-related question: what is your favorite southern meal?
Research: I spoke with tons of people. I also read lots of magazines and newspaper stories to get some idea of what was happening in Atlanta as well as the rest of the country. This was really the first decade where we saw women doing real policing in cities around the countries. Their involvement has had a lasting and effective impact on what it means to be a cop (both to cops as well as the communities they serve).As for fact vs fiction: the stuff that happens to the women in Cop Town is what happened to a lot of women back then. The feces in the locker, the various DNA samples in their purses and squad cars, the groping, the ill-fitting uniforms...that was all true, and they all put up with it and did their jobs anyway.
The sad thing is I just read a story this morning about women in science, and how statistically unlikely it is for them to achieve tenure as opposed to their male counterparts, and one of the women said (I am recalling this from memory) that she was told that her ponytail was too floppy for her to be doing cancer research in a lab. I mean...come on.
Hi. I just discovered your books with our latest group read and I'm so glad I did!My question: We have so much technology now. Is it difficult going back to a recent time, yet one where there aren't cell phones, internet, and other tools that would be so handy for investigators? It really seems to me that you've done some research on what was and was not available.
