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Bestselling Author Sara Paretsky ReadersRoom: Sara Paretsky, welcome to ReadersRoom.com. Thanks for joining us here this evening! Sara Paretsky: It's good to be here. ReadersRoom: I would like to start this off by talking a bit about your latest novel Blacklist. Could you tell our readers a little about it? Sara Paretsky: Blacklist starts when my detective, V. I. Warshawski, is asked by her most important client to go to his family's old mansion in suburban Chicago -- his elderly mother, who now lives in a nursing home across the street, thinks she sees lights in the attic at night. V. I. investigates, doesn't see the lights, but stumbles on the body of a dead journalist.

When his family hires her to investigate the man's death, she retraces his footsteps and finds herself on a trail that leads back to scandals of the McCarthy era, and forward in time to the ominous powers the government has assumed under the Patriot Act. She's caught in a squeeze between some of Chicago's most powerful families, and between the police powers of the city and suburbs. Only her nimble wits, and an unusual alliance she forms with her client's mother and a teenage girl help her save herself. (By the way, my dog has entered the chat room!)

ReadersRoom: You draw some very staggering parallels between the McCarthy Era and the current powers granted the government under the current Patriot Act. Do your feelings on this extend beyond your fiction?

Sara Paretsky: I started writing the novel in the early months after 9-11, when I was scared and numbed, like everyone else in America. I had planned the idea of the story, a crime whose roots lay in the tangled mess of lies, secrets, betrayals of the fifties, before the attack on the Word Trade Center. It was as I was about halfway into the book that I began learning from libraries the scope of the spying our government was doing under the very broad powers of the Patriot Act. Also, through friends in Physicians for Social Responsibility, I learned that we were using Egypt and Pakistan to torture prisoners, since we don't use torture ourselves. These various acts of the government began frightening me very much; that fear started creeping into the text of the novel. I also, as some of your readers may know, am a public speaker, and was asked by various state library associations to address them on the topic of government invasion of libraries and bookstores to seize circulation, sales and Internet use records. This speech, Truth, Lies and Duct Tape, was published in the May 2003 Booklist and is also available on my website.

ReadersRoom: That would be www.saraparetsky.com

Sara Paretsky: Yes, thanks.

ReadersRoom: Sticking with this subject for a moment, are you concerned as an artist about the various provisions in the Patriot Act? Does it effect what you write?

Sara Paretsky: I am concerned as an artist that fear is silencing speech, yes. It's hard for me to evaluate how it affects what I write. I was speaking in Toledo, Ohio on the eve of our invasion of Iraq; the library asked me to give a soft speech about a day in the life of a writer because no one wanted to hear the truth, lies speech. I thought about it all day and finally decided that since the talk is about speech and the silencing of speech I needed to go ahead and give it, but I was very nervous. At the end, I'm happy to report, 500 people were there and gave me a standing ovation, saying they had felt alone and isolated in their fears and views which I think is the net effect of these government acts on the population -- they make everyone, not just artists, afraid to speak. I do wonder if my phone/computer is monitored -- but I can't spend my life second-guessing what I 'm trying to write. A police officer at the Toledo speech told me on condition of anonymity that the police are in fact doing everything we are worrying about -- in terms of spying on citizens, going into our homes to seize our files without telling us they've been there, etc.

ReadersRoom: You have never been shy about bringing up social issues in your fiction, and I would like to step back a novel to my personal favorite of your works, Total Recall. In that novel you deal with the Holocaust, the issue of reparations, and mind control to a certain extent. I am wondering if the issues come from the novels, or the novels are wrapped around the issues.

Sara Paretsky: Total Recall was the book in which I was finally able to tell Lotty Herschel's personal story. Lotty is a physician, a good friend of V.I.'s, who has been in the series from the beginning. For about a decade I had wanted to tell her history, her escape from Vienna as a child with her young brother, via the Kindertransport, and the painful secret she has carried for many decades. I had tried, first with Guardian Angel (1992) and then with Tunnel Vision (1994) to find a way to tell her story but couldn't. Finally, when the issue of the insurance companies' refusal to pay death benefits to Holocaust survivors because survivors couldn't produce death certificates came to light, I had found the vehicle for telling the story. So in this case the issue was definitely secondary to the story. And in any case, whether the issue comes first or second, what makes me want to write a novel is the story not the issue. I find characters who engage me and have a story to tell and that gives me my narrative drive.

ReadersRoom: That is an excellent segue to my next topic -- and that is your secondary characters. Lotty, Max Loewenthal, Mr. Contreras ... even Peppy are so well drawn and consistent through out the novels, I have to ask if they are based on real people?

Sara Paretsky: I'm glad they seem so real, because they are very real and vivid to me. I learned the hard way with my second book, Deadlock, that I'm not good at the Gore Vidal kind of novel with real people playing roles. At that time I was still working for CNA Insurance in Chicago, and I worked with a guy who I longed to satirize in print. I wrote about 250 pages and had kind of written myself into a corner, so I sent it to my agent, who said it was not just unpublishable, but unfixable. It took me about six months to scrape myself off the floor and get back to work, and when I did, I realized a big part of the problem was using real people as models -- the action became very wooden because I was trying to accommodate what real people would be doing. Characters like Mr. Contreras may have idiosyncrasies suggested by real people (the way he calls V.I. "cookie" or "doll" and runs on for a day or two without stopping every time he speaks was suggested by one of the agents I worked with) but the two have nothing except that speech mannerism in common. And Lotty isn't based on anyone real, but I think with her, and with V.I.'s dead mother, Gabriella, both, I see my own grandmother, who was 4-11 but projected six feet, she was so energetic. I always picture the jet earrings she wore vibrating with her intensity. Unfortunately she had no sense of humor, so being with her was a bit like being with a tsunami, but I loved her dearly.

ReadersRoom: Speaking of secondary characters, perhaps the most lovingly drawn would be the entire city of Chicago. V.I. certainly has a love affair with the city, and I wonder how much of that is really you.

Sara Paretsky: I came to the city when I was 19 to do community service work (I grew up in rural Kansas) and the city really got under my skin that summer. I think part of why I write about it as I do is because Chicago is the place where I came of age. I came back here to work full time when I finished university and, except for a brief stint in New York (where I thought I'd become a writer and instead became a secretary) I've always lived here since. So I think I'm aware of the city in particular ways that someone who grew up here might not be, or someone who moved here well into adulthood might not be.

ReadersRoom: In 1998, you published Ghost Country, which is, I believe, your only non - V.I. novel. Was there a reason you chose not to tell that story from V.I.'s point of view?

Sara Paretsky: Ghost Country was a book I had worked on for many years, trying different narrative structures. It could have been a V.I. story, I suppose, but then, because V.I. is so very grounded in the world of the real it couldn't have had the tinges of magic realism that I wanted to introduce. I am someone who yearns for magic, even though I don't believe in it, and I did want the suggestion of magic in the novel. I just heard a lovely quotation, of whose I can't remember, that "the consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation".

ReadersRoom: In 1995, you published Windy City Blues -- a book of short V.I. Warshawski stories. Are you comfortable with the "short" form, and will there be another book of short stories anywhere down the line?

Sara Paretsky: I don't think my short stories are as good as my novels. Like Dorothy Salisbury Davis, I tend to be plot heavy, and often have too much to work out in a short form -- although I do like some of them very much, especially The Maltese Cat, my homage to Hammett. I have used short stories to explore specific themes that I didn't want to spend a whole novel on. Lately, I've been in a bit of a writing slump and I haven't been thinking about some of the things that I'd like to write about -- but I hope when that passes and my creative energy returns, I'll write more short stories.

ReadersRoom: For what it's worth, I thought Grace Notes was a lovely story. Okay Sara, since we announced this chat we've had a lot of reader's questions sent to us. Will you answer a few for us?

Sara Paretsky: Yes -- and thanks, I liked Grace Notes, too. It could have been expanded into a novel, I guess, but I'm happy with it as it is.

ReadersRoom: From Holly R. Littleton, CO: Thank you for Blacklist. When you finish a novel and it is in the bookstores, what is your emotional tie to the book that is finally out on its own?

Sara Paretsky: What a great question. I think there's an effort to withdraw from it emotionally, as a kind of protection against criticism. Also, I've been with the book so long and through the book so many times, often rewriting six or more times depending on the section, that I can't see it as a whole piece until several years after publication.

ReadersRoom: From Linda B. Shreveport, LA: When you took a break to write Ghost Country did you enjoy the process? Did your writing schedule change? Did you miss "V.I."?

Sara Paretsky: I very much enjoyed the challenge of writing a book from many points of view. And I did miss V.I., which was great -- I had gotten stale with her, or she with me, and I think my next books, Hard Time and Total Recall, were much stronger because I had taken a break. I am currently in the early chapters of another V.I. novel, but after that I will take another break to do a different kind of book.

ReadersRoom: From Steve S. Pottstown, PA: My aging mother enjoys your books on audio. When you arrange to have your books published, is the audio contract totally different? Do YOU get to decide who reads the book? Who is your favorite reader?

Sara Paretsky: I'm glad your mother can enjoy the books on tape. The audio rights are usually sold separately from the book rights. I suppose I could suggest a reader, but to be honest, I don't listen to them, because in my head, V.I. speaks in my voice, and I'm afraid listening to an actress portray her would affect how I hear her, and therefore how I write about her.

ReadersRoom: From Janice P. Santa Fe, NM: Last year, during an illness I read Hard Time. How wonderful it was to escape everyday thoughts and fall into your book. Do you view writing as a "GIFT"? An "ART"? A learned process that you excel at? Please forgive me, but I have one more question ... when you wish to escape into a book, who is your favorite author?

Sara Paretsky: When I see a comment like yours, Janice, I feel very moved to know that my words speak to you and give you a place to escape to -- especially to escape a difficult illness. I think writing is a gift, an art, and a craft: you have to work at it to be good at it, and you have to study how to improve in your craft. I hope I can keep growing and exploring but I will always be wedded to the story -- that is, I'm not much interested in experimental narrative -- I love stories, as a writer and as a reader. When I want to escape the quotidian, I read people very different from myself -- Jane Austin, Barbara Pym, Margery Allingham, Peter Dickenson. I just read Madame Bovary for the first time and loved it, loved the language, the imagery.

ReadersRoom: Okay -- and our final reader question is from Robert N, Austin, TX: A few years ago, you hosted a signing, with part of the night's proceeds going to the Pittsburgh Holocaust Center. What a great idea! Do you have any plans in the future, where you combine a signing with a local charity?

Sara Paretsky: I do this from time to time, depending on the book, the place, etc. With Ghost Country I did 3 events, one in Philly, one in NYC, and one in Chicago, to benefit local homeless shelters, and I would do more of these if the appropriate venue arose.

ReadersRoom: Thank you for answering those. Before we wrap this up I would just like to touch on a couple of other things.

Sara Paretsky: My dog, (15 month old Golden named Callie) ate 2 envelopes and a roll of toilet paper during the chat!

ReadersRoom: I won't tell you what my three year old Boxer did!

Sara Paretsky: Now I want to know!!!

ReadersRoom: I'd like to ask about your writing schedule if I could. Do you have set working hours? A set number of pages per day?

Sara Paretsky: My schedule varies because of commitments I have outside the house, but I work almost every day. I like to work early in the morning, when my energy is highest, but in the winter, I need to run early while the light is good. In the early stages of a novel, I don't have set goals because I'm struggling with story and narrative arc, but I like to write about 5 pages a day when I'm going well. When I was young I could write 5000 words a day but now 1500 - 2000 is really, really good for me.

ReadersRoom: And since I am not only the interviewer but a fan I HAVE to ask -- what's next from Sara Paretsky, and when do we get to see it?

Sara Paretsky: Well, as I said, there's this writing slump, but I'm thinking of hiring a coach, perhaps Sammy Sosa's batting coach. I've written four chapters of a new V.I. novel. The contract deadline is June 1, but I don't think I'll finish it until next fall, if I get out of my slump -- which means fall 2005 as a publication date.

ReadersRoom: May I offer my half-hearted condolences on your Cubs this year (Phillies Fan).

Sara Paretsky: Phillies fan in Milwaukee? Doesn't compute!

ReadersRoom: I'm a transplant and Milwaukee is the :::shudders::: Brewers! Sara, is there anything you would like to say to your fans who may read this, in closing?

Sara Paretsky: I enjoy hearing from readers -- I often learn a new perspective on life or writing or reading from readers. And I'm pleased whenever I know my work has spoken to someone. (People can reach me through my website if they are inclined to write).

ReadersRoom: www.saraparetsky.com

Sara Paretsky: Yes. Usually I run a contest before publication of a new book so that people can have a chance to win an advance copy. Also, there are a couple of discussion boards on the site.

ReadersRoom: Sara Paretsky, thank you so much for taking the time to do this with us, and much continued success!

Sara Paretsky: Thanks a lot for your interest. Goodbye all, and thanks.


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