ReadersRoom: Gillian Roberts, welcome to ReadersRoom.com and thank you for agreeing to join us today!
Gillian Roberts: My pleasure.
ReadersRoom: I'd like to jump right in with the series for which you are best known, the Amanda Pepper Series. For our readers who aren't familiar with it, could you tell us a little something about it?
Gillian Roberts: Glad to. Amanda's an English teacher at a not-very-prestigious private school in Philadelphia. She also has the uncanny luck to stumble into mysteries that the Philadelphia police apparently can't solve. At the moment, her longtime live-in love has left the police force and is in grad school (for a Ph.D. in Criminology) and moonlighting as a P.I., and Amanda's helping the budget by doing clerical work at the PI office after school as well. Of course, in the manner of mystery series, that clerical work has a way of turning into an encounter with murder.
ReadersRoom: Your most recent Pepper Mystery --Claire and Present Danger -- is the 11th, I believe?
Gillian Roberts: Correct.
ReadersRoom: I suppose the question that springs to mind is, how you manage to keep your characters growing through a series like this?
Gillian Roberts: Time in the series moves at a glacial rate, but there have been changes, mainly in her ongoing relationship with C. K. Mackenzie, the homicide investigator who was investigating her in the first book and to whom she's now engaged. But she's also had the chance to grow emotionally through the events in the books--to have new perceptions and understandings about her family and friends, etc. Is that what you meant?
ReadersRoom: Indeed it was.
Gillian Roberts: Whew!
ReadersRoom: I wanted to ask you about the passage of time in the books. The first in the series -- Caught Dead in Philadelphia was published in 1987, and the most recent came out this year, yet only about three years have passed in the books.
Gillian Roberts: That's what I meant by that glacial time span. Interestingly--I've aged the full seventeen years, but she hasn't. How is that?
ReadersRoom: Do you find it difficult to "slow down" time in your novels, while still managing to keep them current?
Gillian Roberts: The books take place in a vaguely contemporary time. There are very few specific time markers in them. They do move chronologically, each one later in the year than the one before, and I hope that gives the sense of a clock ticking and time passing--but sloooowly.
ReadersRoom: The novels are set in and around Philadelphia. Can you tell us how you came to choose "The City That Loves You Back" as the setting for this series?
Gillian Roberts: I am a Philadelphian, and so it felt natural to set her there. Philadelphia felt underused fictionally, and very much in the shadow of New York. (Someone in publishing told me it was 'cute' to have thought of Philadelphia as a setting.) And the Bay Area, where I now live, is overpopulated with fictional female sleuths--every zip code has its own, so I avoided that for a long time. But the truth is, Philadelphia's a rich and wonderful potential setting, and it's provided lots of local color that's been fun to use--like the Mummers.
ReadersRoom: You have not been shy about having some fun with Philadelphia (and surroundings) -- everything from The Mummers (in The Mummer's Curse) to Atlantic City (in How I Spent My Summer Vacation) to the Main Line in just about every book. Have you received any positive -- or negative -- feed back from die-hard Philadelphians?
Gillian Roberts: The only negative feedback I'm aware of happened quite a while back--early in the series--when a sniffy review in Philadelphia of the first book in the series, Caught Dead in Philadelphia, criticized me because I didn't live there, so how dare I poke fun? But I had lived there quite a long time, and in fact, distance and perspective alerted me to things I took for granted when I lived there, e.g., the Mummers. I had no idea how unique and marvelous they were when they were just a normal part of my life. If I had known, I'd probably have finished my Ph.D. in American Studies by using them as my dissertation, and right now, I'd be a scholarly sort instead of a mystery writer. (I'm glad that didn't happen. Much more fun to kill a Mummer!) I hope that all the fun I have poked was done lovingly.
ReadersRoom: Since you mention it, you have lived on the West Coast for years. Do you travel back to Philadelphia often to soak in the "atmosphere?"
Gillian Roberts: I do go back to Philadelphia armed with a tape recorder and camera. And if I'm back here and stumped, I e-mail everyone I know there to check something out. With Helen Hath No Fury a copyeditor insisted that a scene in a bar on a Sunday couldn't take place because of the blue laws. I was fairly certain they were defunct, but a posse of Philadelphia friends sacrificed their time and went out for drinks proving that yes, you can serve alcohol on Sunday if you serve any sort of food at all.
ReadersRoom: It is great to have friends willing to go that extra mile!
Gillian Roberts: And that extra drink? Yes indeed
ReadersRoom: I'd like to move from Amanda for a moment, and turn to your more recent series -- "The Emma Howe Mysteries."
Gillian Roberts: Fine.
ReadersRoom: With a successful series (not to mention an Anthony Award) under your belt, what prompted you to undertake a new mystery series?
Gillian Roberts: There were a few reasons. I wanted a chance to write an older protagonist (Emma), and to play with several voices. I also wanted to write a professional, so that building a novel around a crime seemed more natural. The tone of the series is also different--darker, perhaps, and dealing with different issues. And it's set here in Marin, where I live, and I have to say getting into my car and looking at a site rather than flying 3000 miles was a definite plus. So my reasons were selfish--giving myself a new writerly challenge, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
ReadersRoom: Can we expect both series to continue?
Gillian Roberts: I'm working on the 12th Amanda Pepper book now and then--we shall see. I love making up new characters and having the chance to vicariously live other lives, so I don't know to whom I'll return.
ReadersRoom: Could you give us a little preview of the next in the Pepper Series?
Gillian Roberts: The twelfth book is called Till the End of Tom and the first line is: "My mind was on Steinbeck; my foot was on a hand." There is a dead man at the foot of the stairs at Philly Prep...more?
ReadersRoom: Whatever you are comfortable with -- without giving too much away!
Gillian Roberts: It appears he'd visited Amanda's (empty) classroom before he tumbled--or was pushed--down the staircase, and that he left a container of iced coffee that proves to have been drugged. A favorite student turns out to be a prime suspect.
ReadersRoom: And when can readers expect Till the End of Tom to be released?
Gillian Roberts: I've been told early autumn 2004.
ReadersRoom: I'd like to turn now to something that I find completely unique and fascinating -- and that's your monthly "How to Write a Mystery" lessons, which are posted on your Web site (www.gillianroberts.com) Can you tell us a bit about how that came about?
Gillian Roberts: I've been teaching writing for quite a while in adult ed classes and also at USF's MFA in Writing program. So when Writers Digest contacted me about writing this book, I thought it would be a snap--I'd simply transcribe my teaching notes and direct them all to the writing of mysteries. Need I say it wasn't quite that way? However, it was fun, and later, I thought I'd adapt some of the ideas for the website. I meant to make them monthly lessons--but perhaps my calendar is about as slow as Amanda's, so I am perpetually behind. You've prompted me--I will write the next lesson this week. I believe about half a year ago I promised it would be about burying clues...
ReadersRoom: The book is You can Write a Mystery, part of the "You Can Write It!" series?
Gillian Roberts: Yes.
ReadersRoom: Okay. Since we announced this interview, we have had a number of
questions from our readers mailed to us. Would you answer a few of them?
Gillian Roberts: I'd be delighted to give it a try.
ReadersRoom: From Cara in Atlanta: The Amanda Pepper series is funny, and engaging, and since you've been writing it for a while, it really was the forerunner to a whole slew of "amateur" PI novels that incorporate humor in the plot, making you the Queen of Cozies. How does it feel to at the forefront of this genre, and did you have any idea how popular this type of fiction would become when you wrote the first Amanda Pepper book?
Gillian Roberts: I think you're exaggerating my contribution (and status) Cara, but thank you! I've never been called the Queen of Anything before. To tell the truth, I had submitted Caught Dead in Philadelphia a few years before it finally sold. Its humor was "the problem." I'd been warned about that by seasoned mystery writers, and they were right. But I wasn't the first. Julie Smith had a series about Rebecca Schwartz that had humor, and her books, in fact, prompted me to tell my agent (by then, I'd sold two non-mysteries) to send it out again. The market had changed, and the book sold in a week. I think that once women were writing mysteries, humor had to come into the genre. We can't beat people up with the panache men can, so we rely on our brains more than our brawn, and perhaps see the world with a little lighter view. Humor is one of the defenses of the weak(er sex?) or the underdogs...
ReadersRoom: From Sharon in San Diego: With the obvious fondness you have for
Philadelphia (which shows through even as you write about its drawbacks) I was wondering why you moved away, and how often you return.
Gillian Roberts: I moved because my husband's new position was in Los Angeles, where we lived for five years. Then we moved again--for the same reason--to the Bay Area (so I wrote a novel called The Silent Partner about a "trailing spouse." It's lovely to vent your frustrations in fiction.) I go back at least once for each book, but I also have many friends and relatives there, so I also go back for special events and non-research visits. I'm glad my fondness shows--it was a terrific place to grow up, and to go to college, and an easy place to live.
ReadersRoom: From Chris in Billings, Montana: How do you come up with your hilarious titles (The Mummer's Curse, Adam and Evil, etc) and do you have any help doing it?
Gillian Roberts: Thank you for saying that! I'm not sure from whence most came--lucky moments--but when I think of a phrase that might work somewhere, I put it into a file of titles waiting for books to happen. (Most times, I don't use any of them because another idea appears, but they are there, and that's a comfort.) The one title with which I've had lots of help is the forthcoming one--Till the End of Tom. My editor is currently fond of these punning titles (which began with Adam and Evil) and I'm not a natural punner, so I ran a contest on my website and received over 800 suggested mystery titles punning on a name! They were amazingly clever, so with all those titles, I can now write 800 more books!
ReadersRoom: From Albert in Juneau: Tell us the truth--did you always know what C.K.'s initials stood for--or didn't stand-for, or did you decide when you wrote the book that finally answered the question?
Gillian Roberts: Here's the truth: I initially had a different set of names for the C and the K, and a very long story behind them. I had no idea there would be all those books, and that his name would become a running joke, and with each book, I felt more apprehensive because the payoff wasn't going to be worth the game. So imagine my surprise when I realized what they could mean (which was at about book 5--long before Helen and the answer). I then planted clues to it in the two books preceding Helen . The only other desperate solution I had come up with was to have the final book in the series be set in an old age home, with Amanda and C.K. living there. She would ask him to finally, finally say his name, and he'd agree-but he'd be unable to remember it!
My editor had said we should wait till people write angry letters demanding the real name, but I hate to wait till people are storming the gates--so I decided to spill the beans.
ReadersRoom: And finally: From Sandra in Boise, Idaho: What type of fiction do you most enjoy reading, and who are some of your favorite authors?
Gillian Roberts: I love fiction that opens up other lives to me--whether it's in the form of a mystery or not. If it also plays with language, I'm a happy reader. I am reluctant to name people whose work I love because I always leave names out-but here are some authors I'd want to read no matter what they wrote: in the crime field: Raymond Chandler, Jan Burke, Robert Goddard, Scott Turow, Ian Pears, Dennis Lehane, Michael Connelly, Ruth Rendell, Minete Walters, Peter Dickinson, Margaret Maron, Nancy Pickard, etcetera, etcetera, and in general fiction: Barbara Kingsolver, Margaret Atwood, Nick Hornby, Chang-Rae Lee, Russell Banks, Sue Miller, Elinor Lipman, Anne Tyler, Michael Chabon, Richard Russo, Carol Shields, Ann Patchett--that's for starters...
ReadersRoom: Thank you for answering those. I just have a couple of other questions. Gillian Roberts is the nom de crime of mainstream novelist Judith Greber. What, if anything, has Judith been writing lately?
Gillian Roberts: She's written a novel about a woman who receives a puzzling inheritance--a letter from a great-aunt suggesting that a "great injustice" has been done the family, and there is a fortune to recoup. She supposedly can do so because she's a scholar and therefore used to research. She does find out what the woman meant, but it involves the history of the Inquisition in the New World. (Once again, that part of me that was once a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies prompted a story.) So Finding Anica is a contemporary story with this 500 year background playing through it. I used some of what I hope I've learned about constructing a mystery as she's doing this academic sleuthing and putting together the scant "clues" she finds in the dead relative's house.
ReadersRoom: Do you find it at all difficult to separate the two "yous" when you sit down to write?
Gillian Roberts: People tend to make a major distinction between mysteries and other novels, but I don't. The difference is that the central problem/issue in a mystery is a crime, and that the writer is obliged to "solve" the problem by resolving who did it, why, etc. A non-mystery can resolve itself however feels organic, but mystery readers would be peeved if you ended the book-- as I've been so tempted to do when stuck--with the sleuth saying "I don't know who did it and I don't care, so let's all go out to dinner now." I love writing mysteries because it's like playing a game with rules. The writer tries to play within--and yet end-run those rules and make them new so that the results do not feel routine. And I love writing non-mysteries because there aren't any rules-except the one rule that applies to all writing (I think Henry James said this, but I'm not sure)--to make the reader want to keep on reading.
ReadersRoom: Finally, is there anything you would like to say to your many fans out there who may read this interview at ReadersRoom.com?
Gillian Roberts: Thank you for this virtual visit, and for caring and wanting to read about Amanda et al. I love hearing from readers, so if anyone wants to continue the conversation, I'm at: Judygilly@aol.com, and reachable as well via: www.gillianroberts.com. (The writing lessons--and the 800+ pun-titles are there as well.) And I want to thank you, too, ReadersRoom, for this most enjoyable honor! I've loved spending time with you.
ReadersRoom: Gillian Roberts -- and Judith Greber -- thank you for taking this time to chat with us!
Gillian Roberts: My pleasure. Thank you so much for inviting me.
Copyright 2003 by ReadersRoom, LLC. All rights reserved.
