Guest Author Cornelia Read

I met Cornelia Read on an airplane heading for my first Bouchercon. I was wearing a shirt that read "Read Banned Books" that I think caught her attention, and we began to chat. I didn't have a contract yet and I was on my way to try to interest some editors and to get some pre-contract blurbs for my manuscript. Cornelia was the first to offer me one--and it was a doozy. 

So here she is today, with another fabulous book. But I'll let her tell you in her own words.

Though it is a novel and not a memoir, Valley of Ashes is heavily autobiographical, as are my three previous books (A Field of Darkness, The Crazy School, and Invisible Boy). The darkest of the subjects which the story explores—infidelity, suicide, death by fire, and autism—are, unfortunately, things with which I have had close personal experience.

My father, Frederick Harvey Read, committed suicide in May of 2010, while I was finishing the first draft of this manuscript.

The novel’s protagonist, Madeline Dare, relates the story of an event which I think may have precipitated my father’s lifelong struggles with mental illness: Dad’s having witnessed his best friend Hazy’s death when they were children.

My grandfather, William Augustus Read, owned an Autogyro which was an early form of helicopter. He kept it in a private hangar on the family property in Purchase, New York. Hazy and my father Fred were playing in the hangar one day, shooting “strike-anywhere” kitchen matches at the hangar’s concrete floor with their slingshots, trying to make them light on contact with the floor’s rough surface.

One of these matches bounced into a large barrel of varnish, which exploded in flames all over Hazy.

My father Freddy and I. Oyster Bay, 1967? Valley of Ashes is dedicated to Dad and to my great friend Rick Dage, whose own suicide I learned of ten minutes before my literary agent called me in 2005 to tell me that we had a publisher for my first novel. The character Cary in Valley of Ashes is loosely based on Rick.

Dad urged him to roll on the ground to extinguish the flames, but Hazy’s sister yelled for him to run to a nearby brook. He died before reaching the water.

My mother told me that shortly before she and Dad were married in 1961, he took her to visit Hazy’s grave, explaining that he still felt responsible for his friend’s death. For months afterward, he said, every time he heard a police car’s siren, he thought they were coming to the family estate in Purchase to take him to jail. He was eight years old when Hazy died.

While talking about my former husband’s infidelity and my daughter Lila’s diagnosis with autism are serious spoilers for readers of Valley of Ashes, both are things that have had a powerful impact on my life.  

Lila, 1999

I fudged the real-life timeline on a comment Madeline’s husband Dean makes to her during the course of this novel: “You need to give up this writing shit, because you’ve never made any money at it and I deserve a homemaker.” My actual husband said that to me several months after my first novel was published in 2006. That was the moment I decided he was going to be my ex-husband. Which has worked out pretty well, considering. Especially since I now out-earn him. Heh.

I hope very much that this novel, though dark, might offer some hope to women struggling who struggle to balance the care of small children with their own aspirations—especially when those children have special needs. As such, this novel very much embodies my favorite F-word: feminism, since Madeline is not only a wife and mother, but also a kick-ass hero therein.

I also hope that any woman who’s dealt with a cheating spouse enjoys reading the scene where Madeline beats the crap out of her husband’s mistress, not least because it was so damn fun for me to write. (Okay, I did not do that in real life. I am way more wimpy than Madeline is. Also, the real-life skanky mistress chick wasn’t a serial arsonist and murderer. At least as far as I know.)

Cornelia Read is the author of the mysteries A Field of Darkness, The Crazy School, and Invisible Boy. She has been nominated for an Edgar® and six other awards, but actually managed to win the Shamus for best short story and a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Read’s fourth novel, Valley of Ashes, is due out from Grand Central Publishing on August 14th. She lives in Upstate Manhattan. www.CorneliaRead.com

What writers learn from reading

Sandra Parshall

Over the years I’ve been fortunate enough to interview a lot of wonderful mystery and suspense writers, and one of my favorite questions for them has been, “What writers have influenced you? Who has taught you by example?” Here are some of their answers.

Laura Lippman

“Richard Price has shown me what one can do with a voice, an ear and endless empathy; I can't begin to reach his heights, but I'm inspired by his work. George Pelecanos has proven that crime novels can be very serious. Also huge and sprawling (Hard Revolution) or as tight and laconic as the author himself (Drama City). Daniel Woodrell works the English language, Ozarks style, like no writer I've ever known. Val McDermid and S.J. Rozan have shown me the sky's the limit. I could go on and on and on.”



Karin Slaughter

“I grew up on Flannery O’Connor and Margaret Mitchell. I loved the novel (to me) idea of women writing meaty stories. What I learned from them is a sort of fearlessness. I suppose I benefitted from not knowing that women are supposed to stick to romance or children’s books. I wanted to write about violence and social issues and tie them all up with some sort of social statement. I think good writers do this effortlessly, so it’s always been my goal to reach that point of craftsmanship.”




Julia Spencer-Fleming

“Margaret Maron, Archer Mayor and Sharyn McCrumb for their regional settings. Lawrence Block, Steve Hamilton, and Elmore Leonard for language and dialogue (although I'll never manage to be as spare as they are). Outside the genre, Lois McMaster Bujold, Joanna Trollope, Jodi Picoult--women who create the perfect reading experience for me.”





Cornelia Read

“Listing the fiction writers who've taught me by example would crash your server. Every book you read can teach you about writing--both what works and what doesn't.

"[These] books are examples of what works superbly well: Ken Bruen's Priest, Daniel Mendelsohn's The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, Alan Furst's Dark Star. “




Erin Hart

“Some of my favorite crime writers are P. D. James, Elizabeth George, Martin Cruz Smith, Ian Rankin, Minette Walters, and Iain Pears, among others. I've also [enjoyed] books by Leslie Silbert, Michael Connelly, Denise Hamilton, Mark Billingham, Natsuo Kirino, John Connolly, David Hewson, Janet Gleeson--there are so many others I've been meaning to read, too, but haven't had a chance yet. I seem to have a weakness for historical crime novels, and stories that are grounded in very specific places or cultures.

“To me, there's an element of mystery in all great fiction writing; there may not be a murder or a swindle at the heart of the story, but not knowing what will happen next keeps you turning the pages. My taste in mainstream fiction is pretty eclectic, but I'm extremely fond of A.S. Byatt and Edna O'Brien. The list could go on and on--Roddy Doyle, John Fowles, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Alice Munro, Tim O'Brien, Michael Frayn. For sheer glorious entertainment, you still can't beat Dickens, Austen, and Tolstoy. And I'm a theater person at heart, so of course you must include Shakespeare, Shaw, and Chekhov, along with contemporary writers like David Hare, Michael Frayn (again), Brian Friel, August Wilson.”

Cynthia Riggs

“One of my favorite writers is Donald Westlake, who's not exactly a mystery writer, but I find him one of the funniest writers ever. I try to copy his manic sense of humor in my writing, but of course it can't compare with his. I love Agatha Christie, Rex Stout's Nero Wolf, Ruth Rendel,l P.D. James, Michael Dibdin. I tend to keep the mystery books I buy, and have run out of bookcase room. I probably read two to three books a week, mostly mysteries, and borrow a lot from my local library. Just last night I learned a tip from reading Patricia Highsmith, how to allow a point of view character to see into another character's thoughts without the reader suspecting it's a trick.”

Cornelia Read: From Stringbean to Maddy Dare

Interviewed by
Sandra Parshall

Cornelia Read is a refugee from the Social Register who was raised by hippies on the California coast. Her first novel, A Field of Darkness, was published in 2006 to rave reviews and was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Novel. Her second book, The Crazy School, will be out in January 2008. She lives in California with her husband and two daughters.

Loved the photo of you in a tux at the Edgars banquet. How much work was involved in getting into it?

You can’t tell in the photo, but it’s actually tails. I got the shirt, vest, tie, and collar from Brooks Brothers. The shirtbox was printed with an eight-step set of directions for getting all of it on, which took half an hour with my sister Freya’s and friend Heidi’s assistance.

I have gained a new and profound empathy for the plight of Victorian men.

What was it like to be at the Edgar Awards as a nominee? Stressful, dream come true, or less exciting than you expected?

I cannot remember ever having more fun during the course of a single twenty-four-hour period. I mean, getting to hang out in a banquet hall jammed to the rafters with my favorite people… the only thing at all comparable would be joining up with a bunch of scathingly well-read and articulate pirates to commandeer a super-tanker of Dom Perignon off the coast of Monte Carlo.

Seriously.

Now that you’ve accumulated all the rave reviews, plus an Edgar nomination, you can relax in the knowledge that your first book has been a success. But did you have any doubts and fears before it was released? Did you have nightmares about it ending up on remainder tables, marked down to $2.95?

I still have those nightmares, only there’s a huge DayGlo sign on each table that says, “Three for $.99! Burns like a charm in campfires, woodstoves!”

How long were you writing before you published? Did you always want to write mysteries?

I’ve been writing since second grade—mostly dreck, but it was fun.

I was more about espionage than mystery, as a kid. Passed through a serious Harriet-the-Spy/Ian Fleming phase, following close on the heels of my Batman/Lawrence-of-Arabia period.

I wrote the diary of a child CIA agent when I was in sixth grade. The title was “Call Me Stringbean.”

Like most writers, you probably spent a long time perfecting your first book before you sold it. Do you remember how many drafts you did of A Field of Darkness?

I started writing it the week before 9/11, 2001 and my agent was finally happy with the final version just before New Year’s, 2005. I did two more rewrites with my first editor, Kristen Weber.

I don’t know exactly how many drafts that was, all told, but I still have every page of them piled up in the top shelf of my desk—each incarnation of the thing, in chronological order—and the stack’s over two feet tall. Weyerhauser loves me.

Was the second book more challenging, or less, than the first?

Writing The Crazy School was terrifying. Partly because I didn’t want to disappoint the people who were so kind about Field, and partly because I am a total wuss whose self-confidence is a delicate little flower—pale and wan, trembling in the slightest zephyr.

Did you always intend to write a series, or did you want to write stand-alones?

I hoped a publisher would like A Field of Darkness well enough to entertain the idea of a series featuring Madeline Dare. She seemed like a chick it would be fun for me to embark on continuing adventures with, but I didn’t know if anyone else would agree.

I’ve just started the third novel in the series, but am hoping to try my hand at a World War II thriller for number four. I am completely, obsessively smitten with the idea I have for that book—very much hope my agent and editor think it’s worth doing.

Does your editor require that you submit an outline or proposal for a book before you start writing?

They didn’t for the first two. I described the third one over the phone and my new editor, Les Pockell, liked the idea. Madeline travels to Kashmir around 1990, and the first line is, “ ‘I hate India,’ said my mother. ‘It’s just so Sixties.’ ”

For the fourth they’ve requested a written pitch.

You’re a wife and the mother of two daughters. Has it been hard to balance home life, book promotion and travel, and writing?

Very, very, very hard… on everyone. I never feel as though I’m doing any of it well enough: parenting, writing, promotion, marriage. I live with a constant undercurrent of guilt and unfolded laundry.

I’ve started daydreaming about kibbutzes—also polygamy.

Do you still have the same critique partners you had before you sold your first book?

Yes, and they’re amazing. I am lucky lucky lucky lucky to have found my writing group. May blessings rain upon them for all eternity. [Cornelia, second from left in the above photo, is shown with her critique partners, Daisy James, Sharon Johnson, and Karen Murphy.]

What’s the best thing about being a published writer? What’s the worst?

The best thing is the people I’ve had the great good fortune to meet as a result. See above: Pirates. Dom Perignon.

The worst is when things don’t go the way I want for fellow writers. This is a subjective, no-backs-no-gives, despite-our-best-intentions-and-purity-of-essence crapshoot of a business, for all concerned.

I want the good guys to win, damn it.

What aspects of your writing have you worked hardest to improve? Who are some of the writers you’ve learned from, and what have you learned from them?

I have the hardest time with tangents. I get carried away, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the… um… yeah.

Suffice it to say that my revisions require stout boots and a sharp machete.

Listing the fiction writers who’ve taught me by example would crash your server. Every book you read can teach you about writing—both what works and what doesn’t.

The last three books I’ve read are examples of what works superbly well: Ken Bruen’s Priest, Daniel Mendelsohn’s The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, Alan Furst’s Dark Star.

Books specifically on writing that I’ve learned crucial stuff from include:

You Can Write a Mystery
Gillian Roberts

Writing & Selling Your Mystery Novel: How To Knock 'Em Dead With Style
Hallie Ephron

If You Want to Write
Brenda Ueland

On Writing
Stephen King

Bird by Bird
Anne Lamott

The Art of the Novel
Milan Kundera

The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers
John Gardner

Self-editing for Fiction Writers
Renni Brown and Dave King

A friend of mine says it’s bad enough that The Sopranos is coming to an end and The Wire’s new season doesn’t start till September -- why does she also have to wait so long for your next book? Can you give her a little taste of the story to help her survive?

Can I say I am in love L-U-V with your friend? Because I so am.

Here is a brief rundown of The Crazy School: Madeline has fled Syracuse, New York, for the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. She’s teaching at a boarding school for disturbed kids, but soon discovers that the only true psychos on campus are the grownups in charge. The book also features a helicopter, Sixties nostalgia, Eighties ennui, contraband caffeine and nicotine, the Loma Prieta Earthquake, and a missing batch of C-4 explosive.

Visit Cornelia’s website at www.corneliaread.com.