October, 2008
Chadwick Ginther, of McNally Robinson Bookstore in Winnipeg, asks: One common theme
in your work seems to be the past intruding upon the present. Rather than writing
a straight historical novel, the events of the past are shown to have ramifications
to our modern world. Do you do this to keep a point of relation for readers not necessarily
versed in the period of your work?
Not really, no. Unlike those stage directors who think Shakespeare has to be performed
in modern dress and out of context for a modern audience to “get it”, I’ve always
trusted that my readers – even those who may not know the history when they start
a book – are smart enough to grasp the parallels themselves. My blending of present
and past likely comes from my own fascination with history, and my personal belief
that the past does intrude upon the present, that you cannot separate the two, that
we are what and who we are because of where we come from. The British psychologist
Havelock Ellis once said that “Man’s destiny stands not in the future but in the
past.” I’d agree with that, just as I’d argue that what we do now will have lasting
effects that we cannot foresee, in the future. So my mysteries are most often rooted
in things that have happened before, and my characters have to dig deep and look
back for the cause of a present-day conflict before they can find its solution.
To read Chadwick’s entire interview with me, click here.
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September, 2008
The members of the Ajax Chapters Book Club, with whom I spent a lovely evening last
month in discussion of The Winter Sea, are asking this month’s question: When you
wrote The Winter Sea, were you already making plans to write a sequel?
August, 2008
Sandy from Alberta writes: My reading partner and I both read The Winter Sea and
were hooked. We have both tried to find copies of your other novels, but with no
success. We live in Edmonton and if Chapters or Indigo do not have copies, we are
out of luck. I have tried second hand book sellers, with no success. Ordering your
books is not a problem, but I feel strongly about supporting Canadian writers and
if books are not visible in the stores, other potential first time readers will miss
a good read. Do writers have any influence re: this issue?
July, 2008
Judy from Grandview, Missouri, writes: Hello, I just finished The Winter Sea and
loved it. I saw that you are working on November Eve. Do you know when it will be
published? I love Cornwall as a setting. Could you give me a brief synopsis about
what November Eve is about? Any information will be appreciated. Thank you.
June, 2008
Leslie from Ontario writes: I am a big fan of your writing, you are my favourite
author. I once told my husband, if a fire was to happen in our house, here are my
Susanna Kearsley books on my top shelf; make sure to run quickly and grab these books!
I find that your books totally draw me into the story where I don't want to put the
book down, I want to savour each line and I don't want the story to end. I was wondering
if you had a favourite author(s) that you feel the same way about?
May, 2008
Jean from AncestorStuff asks: Why is your new book, The Winter Sea, not listed on
Amazon.com in the US? It is listed on the Amazon site in both the UK and Canada.
I would love to order it but not from Canada or England. Could you please get it
listed on the US site? Thanks.
March, 2008
Susan asks: I have been desperately looking for your book, Rosehill for months now
and can't seem to come up with a copy in English. I did, however, find several in
Germany, in German. Could you please tell me where in Canada or US I might find a
copy?
February, 2008
This month I’ve got a question for YOU:
A number of fans have been writing me recently expressing their concern about the
thought of Mariana being made into a movie. And although the movie, if it’s ever
made, is still a long way off, I thought I’d take this opportunity to ask YOU, for
a change...
January, 2008
I was wondering with regards to the artist of the cover of the book being published.
The person that draws the cover for you, do they get a percentage of the profit per
book sold?
December, 2007
As a museum curator you once “worked” a lot with history and you still pursue this
interest while writing your novels. Is our present not exciting enough to you?
October, 2007
How do you balance the importance of the romance vs. the suspense in your novels?
Is it something you consciously manage as you write, or is it more a function of
the particular plot and characters in each specific work?
September, 2007
What qualities do you look for in a heroine/protagonist?
August, 2007
Why do you make references to or include some of the characters in Mariana in some
of your books but not all of them? And why do you choose Mariana in particular?
July, 2007
Why are your books set in Europe, not Canada?
June, 2007
Which of your books is your favourite?
May, 2007
Why aren’t your first two books, Undertow and The Gemini Game, featured on your Web
site?
April, 2007
What advice do you have for people who want to try writing or want to get a book
published?
When did you begin writing and how did you realize you wanted to be a writer?
I started reading at the age of two, and fell in love with stories, but I can’t remember
when I first began to write on my own. I do remember being seven, sitting at the
kitchen table writing Chapter One of something, while my mother did the dishes. That
was the year that I read Little Women, and connected instantly with Jo. I thought
it would be wonderful to be a writer, just like her. After that, I was always writing
something - stories, poetry, song lyrics - but I never thought that it was something
I could make my living doing. Writers were people who lived in New York and wore
black and were angst-ridden, and I was none of those things. So I went into museum
work instead, which I absolutely loved. But then I finished my first novel and that
feeling was like nothing else. I realized then that writing was the thing that I
was meant to do, the thing that made me happiest.
How did you go about getting your first book published?
When I finished my first book, a short mystery-romance called Undertow, I was very
naive about publishing. I sent the book out and it came back, rejected, and I threw
it into a drawer for a year. But then I read Phyllis A. Whitney’s wonderful Guide
to Fiction Writing, which reminded me that ‘luck can’t happen to manuscripts left
in drawers’, so I took her advice and learned all that I could about the business
of publishing - studying the markets and the editors, to find the companies that
might be interested in publishing my style of writing. Four years and a lot of stamps
later, the book finally sold to a small New York firm. I’ve always found it funny
that, after all those years of wanting to be just like Jo in Little Women, my first
book sold for the same advance that Jo was paid for her first book....over a hundred
years earlier.
What is your writing schedule like?
It changes. In the beginning, because I had another job - first as a museum curator,
then when that became too difficult to juggle with my writing time, a waitress -
I wrote at night. That was the only time available to me, and besides, I liked the
peace and quiet, and my subconscious seemed somehow more active at night. Then,
when I had children, my writing time became their nap time - early afternoon, because
by nighttime I was too exhausted to do much real writing. Now that they’re a little
older, I’m more fluid in my schedule - sometimes morning, sometimes afternoon, and
even sometimes back to those late nights I used to love the best. When I get near
the end of a book though, I write at all hours, whenever I can, because the story
by that point is coming much faster and I’m so wrapped up in it then I don’t like
coming out of it.
How do you go about your research?
As a former museum curator, getting the facts right is very important to me. I always
travel to my settings, which are usually small towns and villages, places where the
people take me in and love to help me. I need to know what flowers grow along the
coastline, and how the ground feels underneath my feet, and how the air smells when
I breathe it. And I come home with hundreds of photographs, to help me hold those
memories. But the research doesn’t stop with setting. For The Winter Sea, for example,
I had to learn the history of the Stewart kings, the Jacobite movement, and the period
of Union between England and Scotland - a turbulent time - which meant trying to
track down old first-hand accounts to get close to the truth of what actually happened.
On top of that, I had to study the various theories of memory and how the brain
stores it and what role genetics might play in the process. And then I had to read
up on the navy of Queen Anne, and naval warfare, and the movements of the ships along
the coast. And Scottish fashion of the period - the types of wigs that people wore,
their manners and the food they ate, and since the story takes place north of Aberdeen,
I had to learn a little of the Doric language still used in that area. The research
and the writing form a symbiotic process - what I research drives my writing, and
what I write determines what I need to research. It’s a process that begins when
a story first starts to take shape, and continues right through to the end.
So how do your stories start to take shape? Where do you get your ideas?
There’s no simple answer to that - every story is different. Mariana began with
a scene from the book that just came to me, out of thin air. I saw it like a movie
in my mind, and I just wrote it down - the dialogue and all. And when I read what
I had written I could tell it was a woman of the present day, but speaking of an
incident that happened in the distant past, so then I knew the book would have to
feature time travel. I wasn’t keen to tackle that, but the characters just wouldn’t
go away, and so at last I had to try. On the other hand, The Winter Sea had its
beginnings almost twenty years ago, when I was browsing in a bookstore and by chance
(or serendipity) picked up a book by historian John S. Gibson about the Franco-Jacobite
invasion of 1708. Titled Playing the Scottish Card, the book began with a quote
from Lord Dacre that said: ‘History is not merely what happened: it is what happened
in the context of what might have happened.’ That line caught my fancy, and I bought
the book. And when I finally got around to reading it years later, I was captured
by the true-life tale of treachery and intrigue, and my own imagination started spinning
scenes and characters from that.
