Interview with Laura Lippman

From The Edmonton Journal --

Good counsel from Laura Lippman --

By Colette Bancroft --
February 19, 2010 --

Creator of detective series dishes on the perils of working at home and her true-crime inspirations

"Always throw away your first line."

Novelist Laura Lippman says that is one piece of advice she gives students at creative writing classes.

"Just this week I've been reading Anna Karenina," she says, and was intrigued to discover from the book's introduction that the famous first line of Leo Tolstoy's novel -- "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" -- wasn't the original opening line.

"It was the second sentence, 'All was confusion in the Oblonskys' house.' I happen to think that's a better opening."

Lippman knows something about writing first lines. She has published 14 novels, 10 of them about series character Tess Monaghan. Like Lippman, the quirky, independent Tess is a former newspaper reporter; unlike her creator, Tess became a private eye. Lippman, 50, wrote her first seven novels while still working at the Baltimore Sun, but now revels in writing fiction full time.

The novelist's life is usually a solitary one. She does most of her writing in a coffee house near her Baltimore home. "I like the buzz," she says, because it reminds her of the newsroom. Her usual spot is next to the children's play area, and one day a kid was throwing a tantrum right next to her as she tapped way at her keyboard.

"The manager said, 'I don't know how you can work.' I said, 'Hey, I worked at the Baltimore Sun. This is not the first time someone was screaming and crying while I was working.' "

Besides, she says, she gets more work done than she would at home. "Home is the procrastination palace. If you're a stay-at-home writer, it's 'Oh, the laundry.' Pretty soon it seems like the right time to be cleaning the baseboards with a Q-tip."

Lippman is speaking by phone not from Baltimore but from New Orleans, where her husband, television writer-producer David Simon ( The Wire), has been overseeing filming of his upcoming HBO series, Treme.

"Yeah, I'm kind of getting that whole get-out-of-winter thing."

She likes New Orleans, but says she doesn't think she'll ever write a book set there. "People are lining up to write about it. New Orleans has no shortage of champions. Baltimore needs me."

Her last novel about Tess, like Lippman a Baltimore resident, was Another Thing to Fall, published in 2008. The same year, she wrote a serialized novel for the New York Times, The Girl in the Green Raincoat, in which Tess has a baby. It will be published as a book, although a date hasn't been set.

"I'm really kind of glad for the time to think about it," Lippman says.

She expects to write about Tess again, but it will mean "writing about a significantly altered universe. If I hadn't had her have the baby, I think I would have had to end the series."

Lippman's most recent book, Life Sentences (2009), is a stand-alone novel. "I had never written a book about a writer, and I wanted to do that."

The writer is Cassandra Fallows, author of two bestselling memoirs and a not-so-successful novel. She returns to her hometown, Baltimore (of course), to research a non-fiction book about a former schoolmate whose baby mysteriously disappeared. The self-centred Cassandra discovers that her childhood friends and family members have read her memoirs and don't remember things the way she does -- with some shocking repercussions.

"I also wanted to write about a deeply unpleasant person," Lippman says. "My agent said about Cassandra, 'You know people will think this is you.' That was liberating to me. I thought, I'll make her even worse."

One theme of Life Sentences is the consequences of a writer's use of other people's lives. "It's an issue for all novelists," Lippman says, noting that one of Tolstoy's inspirations for Anna Karenina was a local woman who threw herself under a train. "He even went to her autopsy."

Her books are always based on a true crime story to some degree. "People ask me, 'Did you get permission to write about that?' I know it sounds kind of cold, but I don't need permission. But I understand why they ask."

Lippman turned in the revised manuscript of her next book three days before Christmas. "After spending a year in the life of Cassandra, I wanted to write a novel about a happy person."

She says she expects readers to think the inspiration for I'd Know You Anywhere is the Elizabeth Smart case, but it's not. "I'm being very veiled this time about what inspired the book. It's a not very well-known case of a killer who raped and killed all his victims except one.

"I thought, the one left alive -- wow, what happened to that person?"

In Lippman's novel, after being attacked as a teen she grows up to become a "happy, secure, centred" woman who keeps her past a secret from all but a few people -- until the killer writes her a letter from Death Row.

"Cassandra wrote books that book clubs read. I wanted to write about the person who's in the book club, sitting there with her glass of white wine talking about the book."

Interview with Laura Lippman

From The Toledo Blade --

Author Laura Lippman talks about the job of writing --

By COLETTE BANCROFT --
January 24, 2010 --

"Always throw away your first line."

Novelist Laura Lippman says that is one piece of advice she planned to give students at the Writers in Paradise conference here.

"Just this week I've been reading Anna Karenina, she says, and was intrigued to discover from the book's introduction that the famous first line of Leo Tolstoy's novel "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" wasn't the original opening line.

"It was the second sentence, 'All was confusion in the Oblonskys' house.' I happen to think that's a better opening."

Lippman knows something about writing first lines. She has published 14 novels, 10 of them about series character Tess Monaghan. Like Lippman, the quirky, independent Tess is a former newspaper reporter; unlike her creator, Tess became a private eye. Lippman, 50, wrote her first seven novels while still working at the Baltimore Sun but now revels in writing fiction full time.

She is teaching for the fifth time at Writers in Paradise, which was co-founded six years ago by bestselling author Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone).

Lippman and Lehane have been friends since meeting at a writers conference in 1996. "We're the same generation in terms of our publishing careers. We're part of a like-minded group we don't take ourselves seriously, but we take the writing and books seriously."

The novelist's life is usually a more solitary one. She does most of her writing in a coffeehouse near her Baltimore home. "I like the buzz," she says, because it reminds her of the newsroom.

Her usual spot is next to the children's play area, and one day a kid was throwing a tantrum right next to her as she tapped way at her keyboard.

"The manager said, 'I don't know how you can work.' I said, 'Hey, I worked at the Baltimore Sun. This is not the first time someone was screaming and crying while I was working.' "

Besides, she says, she gets more work done than she would at home. "Home is the procrastination palace. If you're a stay-at-home writer, it's 'Oh, the laundry.' Pretty soon it seems like the right time to be cleaning the baseboards with a Q-tip."

Lippman is speaking by phone not from Baltimore but from New Orleans, where her husband, television writer-producer David Simon (The Wire), has been overseeing filming of his upcoming HBO series, Trem.

"Yeah, I'm kind of getting that whole get-out-of-winter thing." She likes New Orleans but says she doesn't think she'll ever write a book set there. "People are lining up to write about it. New Orleans has no shortage of champions. Baltimore needs me."

Her last novel about Tess, like Lippman a Baltimore resident, was Another Thing to Fall, published in 2008. The same year, she wrote a serialized novel for the New York Times, The Girl in the Green Raincoat, in which Tess has a baby. It will be published as a book, although a date hasn't been set.

"I'm really kind of glad for the time to think about it," Lippman says. She expects to write about Tess again, but it will mean "writing about a significantly altered universe. If I hadn't had her have the baby, I think I would have had to end the series."

Lippman's most recent book, Life Sentences (2009), is a standalone novel. "I had never written a book about a writer, and I wanted to do that." The writer is Cassandra Fallows, author of two bestselling memoirs and a not-so-successful novel. She returns to her hometown of Baltimore (of course) to research a nonfiction book about a former schoolmate whose baby mysteriously disappeared. The self-centered Cassandra discovers that her childhood friends and family members have read her memoirs and don't remember things the way she does with some shocking repercussions.

"I also wanted to write about a deeply unpleasant person," Lippman says. "My agent said about Cassandra, 'You know people will think this is you.' That was liberating to me. I thought, I'll make her even worse."

One theme of Life Sentences is the consequences of a writer's use of other people's lives. "It's an issue for all novelists," Lippman says, noting that one of Tolstoy's inspirations for Anna Karenina was a local woman who threw herself under a train. "He even went to her autopsy."

Her books are always based on a true crime story to some degree. "People ask me, 'Did you get permission to write about that?' I know it sounds kind of cold, but I don't need permission. But I understand why they ask."

Lippman turned in the revised manuscript of her next book three days before Christmas. "After spending a year in the life of Cassandra, I wanted to write a novel about a happy person."

She says she expects readers to think the inspiration for I'd Know You Anywhere is the Elizabeth Smart case, but it's not. "I'm being very veiled this time about what inspired the book. It's a not very well known case of a killer who raped and killed all his victims except one.

"I thought, the one left alive wow, what happened to that person?"

In Lippman's novel, after being attacked as a teen she grows up to become a "happy, secure, centered" woman who keeps her past a secret from all but a few people - until the killer writes her a letter from Death Row.

"Cassandra wrote books that book clubs read. I wanted to write about the person who's in the book club, sitting there with her glass of white wine talking about the book."

Author Lippman stays in touch with the world (Laura Lippman)

From Pittsburgh Tribune-Review --

Author Lippman stays in touch with the world --

By Rege Behe --
Sunday, March 29, 2009 --

There are clues in Laura Lippman's new novel, "Life Sentences," of what it is like to be an artist who has achieved some measure of independence.

The book's protagonist, Cassandra Fallows, is, like Lippman, a best-selling writer. At one point ,the character comments on how she had "become accustomed to how self-employment dulled the days, blurring all distinctions. Monday, Monday? She not only trusted that day, she rather liked it."

Lippman, who appears Friday at Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont, acknowledges the necessity of being engaged beyond one's own work.

"I need to remain in touch with the world," she says. "I work by myself. I have a very pleasant life. And if I weren't careful, I would be in such a remove from day-to-day life I'm not sure what I would have to write about. I've done everything I can to stay grounded, to stay in the world."

For Lippman, that entails basing many of her stories on real incidents. For "Life Sentences," she took plumbed details from a story that happened years ago in her native Baltimore. A mother, who was being monitored by a social-service agency, spent seven years in jail for contempt of court when she refused to answer questions about the disappearance of her son. The case still is unresolved.

Lippman took the story, changed names and wove it into Fallows' biography, giving the character another reason to investigate her childhood. The question Lippman had to answer, as she does in almost every novel, are what stories are fair game for fiction.

"I make a distinction between being inspired by something that's been in the news and ripping something from the headlines," she says. "I make that distinction, some other people don't. ... On some level, this book was written to explain that. And it would have been a little too easy, a little too pat, to make Cassandra a fabulous person, a likable person, even. It was much trickier and much more of a challenge to have this person who is not always likable and does have some real ethical problems, to say that even she is entitled to write what she wants to write. It's there in the first chapter: Why do I get to write it? Because I'm a writer. And the implication is anyone can write what she or he wants to write if she or he is strong enough to deal with the ramifications."

In "Life Sentences," Fallows has become a literary star because of two memoirs. When an attempt at fiction fails, she is encouraged by her editor to return to memoir, to find more stories that will resonate with readers.

The problem is, Fallows has exhausted the essential material: her parents' divorce, her failed marriages. When she hears a news account referencing Calliope Jenkins and her refusal to talk about her son's whereabouts, Fallows realizes there's a connection. Jenkins was a classmate in grade school. Inspired, she returns to Baltimore and starts to hunt down other classmates, many of whom are unhappy about their portrayal in Fallows' memoirs.

That her former classmates and friends Tisha, Fatima and Donna are black -- Fallows is white -- adds to the tension. For Lippman, this was potentially volatile material, given that some of her ancestors owned slaves.

"I can't make that nice," she says. "It's a sad, ugly fact to be hanging over a family, and it is my family."

But Lippman did not hesitate to write about race in "Life Sentences." She thinks that as long as a writer has listened closely to the stories and the history of race relations, anything is permissible. Lippman recounts an anecdote from her career as a journalist, when a black man came to her newspaper's office seeking a job as a reporter.

The receptionist automatically thought the man meant "porter" and told him to go to the train station.

"Imagine that experience for a college-educated man looking for a professional job, and because of the color of his skin, it's assumed he doesn't want to be a reporter," Lippman says. "These stories are out there if people will listen and pay attention. And if you listen and pay attention, again, you get to write it. I had no qualms writing about Tisha, Fatima, Donna and Callie."


Rege Behe can be reached at rbehe@tribweb.com or 412-320-7990.