Interview:
Tess Gerritsen: Switching Genres, Taking Risks and Surviving Twenty Years in Publishing
By Sandra Ruttan
Sandra: You have survived for twenty years in the publishing business, and have enjoyed success in two genres. How hard was it for you, twenty years ago, starting out?
Tess: Starting out was the easy part, because I didn't know what the heck I was getting into. There's a special joy in being a first-time author. You just write for the sheer pleasure of it, without being restricted by rules or deadlines. You believe that all things are possible. You can take all the time you want working on and polishing your first book. I've never enjoyed writing a book as much as I did writing my very first one.
Sandra: When you decided to switch gears, and genres, did you consider writing under a pseudonym? How do you think your writing in romance has impacted your rise as a thriller writer? Did you learn anything from romance that gave you an advantage moving over to thrillers?
Tess: I wanted to keep the same pen name because I knew I had romance readers who would follow me to another genre. After building up a fan base, it's insane to leave those readers behind. But the downside has been that thriller readers disdain even a sniff of romance in their books. Even worse, they're suspicious of any author who once wrote romance novels, so I've had to work much harder to prove myself as a thriller writer. Ironically enough, though, I think that writing romance has given me a big advantage as a thriller writer. It taught me to focus on characters and not just on whiz-bang gun-play and car chases.
Sandra: Since you have switched genres, how important is the genre label to you as an author? Do you find any romance readers following you over, or mystery readers crossing back to read your earlier romances? What would you note as the particular differences between the readers of each genre?
Tess: The genre label is certainly important to mystery/thriller readers, many of whom despise romance novels and wouldn't be caught dead reading one. I think romance readers are much more open-minded about crossing over into other genres.
Sandra: Your blog contains a lot of candid posts about the publishing industry. Other authors have backed off from venting frustrations or talking about issues of concern publicly, for fear of a backlash, yet your posts seem to be well regarded and well received, and many appreciate your heartfelt honesty. First, why have you chosen to be so open about the publishing process and the highs and lows when many others prefer to present the game face, and act as though everything in the industry is perfect, and second, why do you think you’ve been able to avoid the backlash some others have experience?
Tess: I started the blog more as a self-therapeutic exercise than anything else. Which means I blog when I'm frustrated, or when my emotions are high -- probably not the best time to be writing a public confessional! I've written a few posts that I've come to regret because they sounded a little whiny. And yet, I think other writers appreciate hearing my thoughts because it demonstrates that everyone, at every career level, faces frustrations. We all struggle to finish our books, we all struggle to reach the next level of success. We all have issues combining our personal with our professional lives. Am I more open about my problems than others may be? Perhaps. But I do have a personal policy never to say anything negative about anyone on my own publishing team, mostly because I really have no complaints about any of them. I try to blog about the whole publishing biz in general -- particularly the aspects that frustrate me.
Sandra: What, for you, was the biggest writing challenge you’ve put in front of yourself during your career, and why?
Tess: Taking on high-risk projects that stood a good chance of being total flops. There were two of them in particular: GRAVITY and my latest, THE BONE GARDEN. Both books required me to drastically switch gears, to tackle completely unfamiliar subject matter. GRAVITY (about the space program) meant throwing myself into months of research, and writing a book about disasters in space when all I really knew about the space program was what I'd read in the lay press. The challenge scared the hell out of me, and yet the premise was so powerful I had to write it. THE BONE GARDEN was an historical novel set in 1830, and again, I had to face a whole new set of challenges, from the period details to the language to the science of the times. It's difficult enough just trying to craft any novel with believable characters and a suspenseful thriller. It was even more of a challenge to set it all in an unfamiliar time period, with real historical characters, and to complete it within the year allotted to me.
Sandra: THE BONE GARDEN involves different timelines and multiple characters and point of view switches. What were the challenges you faced with this type of set-up for this novel?
Tess: BONE GARDEN had to have a past/present story structure because of what I was trying to accomplish. I wanted to tell the story of early medicine's first inkling of microbial theory. I wanted to show Oliver Wendell Holmes - a real physician who contributed immensely to the theory of contagion - early in his career, as he gets the first inkling that diseases could be spread by dirty hands. But the only way for the reader to appreciate the scope of Holmes's contributions is in retrospect, from the point of view of modern characters. Including a present-day story allowed me not only to introduce a secondary mystery, it also gave the reader more insight into exactly how important Holmes was to American medicine. I had another reason for the modern story as well, and it had to do with the emotional theme of THE BONE GARDEN: that past tragedies can be redeemed in the future. Yes, there is a tragic love story in the past. But the lessons learned from that tragedy can result in a happy ending for a different set of lovers in the future.
Sandra: When I was reading BONE GARDEN, I was thinking about the fact that you’d fictionalized a real person who made a significant contribution to the medicine in the US and had wondered if you’d started off with the intention of drawing attention to this with the book, or did you realize that the story of THE BONE GARDEN lent itself to highlighting the problems of contagion from doctors?
Tess: It was Oliver Wendell Holmes and my interest in early medicine that inspired the book. He was my starting point, and the mystery was my vehicle for calling attention to the medical themes.
Sandra: What did you do to research the time-period for BONE GARDEN?
Tess: I started off reading a number of books about Oliver Wendell Holmes, 19th century medicine, childbed fever, and the cadaver trade. I collected quite a history library in the process, including books about the history of Irish in Boston, the Boston police, historical clothing, and the Transcendentalist movement. One of my favorite sources was an 1809 edition of Samuel Cooper's "The First Lines of the Practice of Surgery", a textbook I bought from an antiquarian book dealer. It's a surgical how-to textbook, with detailed descriptions of various procedures. I used it when I wrote the amputation scene in BONE GARDEN. I also read a number of newspapers from the era, as well as fiction contemporary to the times (Nathaniel Hawthorne, for instance.) And I had a Boston map from 1832. In the end, though, it all got down to the characters -- who were they, what challenges did they face, and how would they overcome them? There are some things that are universal to the human experience, and no matter what the little period details may be, what matters most is whether the people themselves are believable.
Sandra: One of the things I wondered reading THE BONE GARDEN was whether or not it’s difficult for a person of science – a doctor – to suspend that part of the equation writing what is, in part, a murder mystery. Historical works, such as this one, can’t use fingerprints, DNA, handwriting analysis or any of that to prove a case - you pretty much have to catch the culprit in the act or find some sort of written confession. I’m thinking of what you said about writing romance making you focus on characters. Did that help with this aspect of BONE GARDEN, or did it not bother you to be cast back to a more primitive scientific safety net, in a manner of speaking?
Tess: It was actually a relief not to worry about the forensics. Instead of fussing over whether I'd gotten the science right, or how a crime lab would handle the evidence, I could focus more fully on the setting and the characters. It also made my heroes credible targets of suspicion. Because when there's no evidence to exonerate you, an innocent character can easily become a suspect.
Sandra: Recently, there was an exhaustive discussion about whether or not the mystery genre is stagnate. You stated:
“If you write something different, REALLY different, you get punished for it in reader confusion and poor sales. The vast majority of readers want the same thing, over and over again. If you give them something they’re not expecting, the chances are, only a minority will truly appreciate what you’ve done.
“So your sales suffer. And that begins the downward spiral of your sales, a spiral that could well turn into a death spiral from which your sales may not recover. And then you can’t sell ANY books, and that’s where being truly creative got you.
“Some years ago, I wrote what I think of as my best book, GRAVITY. A thriller without any villains. A thriller set in orbit. It got the best reviews of my life and yet it sold the fewest copies. And it took me years for my career to recover from that disastrous experience.
“Some of us long to write the truly creative, truly off-beat book. But we must do so with the full realization that for the most part, the reading public wants plain old-fashioned vanilla. “
How hard do you find it to balance the scales between the idea calling to you, the thing you’d love to try, and the idea you know can sell?
Tess: Oh, it's really hard! When you take on a risky and starkly different project, you'll face resistance from just about everyone. Publishers want you to repeat your past successes again and again. Booksellers may not know where to shelve your new book. Cruelest of all are the readers, who may simply pass by your daring new book and reach for someone else, someone predictable. I'd like to believe that my readers are open-minded enough to stay with me, to follow me in a new and different direction, but I know many of them won't. They certainly didn't reach for GRAVITY. When a book I love does poorly, I'm most disappointed in my readers. I think the only way one can survive as both an artist and a working writer is to limit the number of risks you take. You have to give the readers what they crave, the books they've come to expect from you. But every so often, just for yourself, write a book you need to write.
Otherwise you'll get to the end of your career and look back with regret on all the projects you didn't write, but dearly wanted to.
Sandra: You won first place in Honolulu Magazine’s short story contest. Which do you prefer, writing novels or short stories, and why?
Tess: I love to write both! Unfortunately, there's scarcely a paying market in short stories, so I focus entirely on novels.
Sandra: A few years ago you were nominated for an Edgar Award. How important was this nomination to you, both personally and professionally, as an author?
Tess: It was immensely important, on a personal level, because at last I felt a measure of acceptance. Coming out of romance fiction, I've felt a bit like the disreputable stepsister, someone who'd never be accepted as a real mystery or thriller author. After the nominations were announced, it was disappointing to notice in the blogosphere that some people were astonished I'd been nominated. "What the hell is SHE doing on that list of nominees?" was the reaction. So I know I have a long way to go before I'm truly accepted in the genre, even though the largest part of my body of work is indeed mystery/thriller.
Sandra: On your blog, you stated, “Now a confession: to be nominated has been my dream for as long as I can remember. No matter how many books I sell, or how big my advances, the one thing that has driven me, since childhood, is the hunger for respect. To have people care what I have to say. Maybe it’s the fact I grew up a minority. Maybe it’s the fact that I heard a few too many racial epithets while a child. It left me with a lifelong need to prove myself.” Now, I find myself wondering if that contributes to your empathy as an author, particularly in how you portray the Irish in THE BONE GARDEN? Do you feel more of a connection with Rose Connolly as opposed to characters such as Eliza Lackaway?
Tess: Absolutely, that sense of being the underdog informs almost every one of my books. Because of my own status as a minority, I identify with characters who don't "fit in," who feel they have to work harder to be accepted.
Sandra: I’ve heard some theorize that writers are typically observers of life, and sometimes by being set apart from the masses it enables us to see the things about human nature and behaviour that we end up writing about. How much do you think growing up feeling like an outsider influenced you to become author?
Tess: David Morrell once told me that we writers are driven to write because of childhood hurts -- that we're always trying to right the things that went wrong for us when we were children. I think he's absolutely right. It's the outsider who interests me, because that's who I am. It's one of the reasons I feel a bond with my character Jane Rizzoli, even though she and I are such different people. She's a woman working in a man's profession, a girl who grew up having to fight for attention in a family with two brothers. She's someone I always want to root for, even when she's being a bit of a bitch.
Sandra: In addition to the books you’ve had a script turned into a movie of the week on TV. How did it differ, seeing your work on television, from walking into a bookstore and seeing your printed book on the shelves?
Tess: By the time a script gets onto the screen, it undergoes so many re-interpretations by the director and actors that you no longer feel a strong sense of ownership. I guess that was my reaction on seeing "Adrift" for the first time -- that I didn't quite imagine the scene THAT way, or the line of dialogue spoken THAT way. But with a book, you feel absolute ownership. You know that, however good or bad it is, it's your baby. You have control over that universe between the covers. I like having that control.
Sandra: You said in an interview with Shots Magazine that you can only see one book down the road at a time. Is that still the case? What’s next for Tess Gerritsen?
Tess: It's still the case. While I write my current book, all I have for the next book are fragments of ideas that haven't yet come together. That's why I devour newspapers and magazines every day. I feed my curiosity because I know that some little fact, some little news article, could be the spark that jump-starts the next book.
Sandra: As a child I played the fiddle, which I always found hard on the shoulders. Probably something to do with posture and having scoliosis, but what I do recall is the incredible discipline and coordination involved in playing the fiddle. I play bass guitar and used to play piano a bit as well, but to me, the fiddle is more challenging as an instrument. What drew you to playing the fiddle? And what, specifically, do you like about Irish music? Do you still have your band?
Tess: Ah yes, the fiddle is not kind on the neck and shoulders! It was only when I finally got properly fitted with a Kun shoulder rest that I could comfortably play my fiddle for long periods of time. It does require discipline -- far more than the piano, which I also play, because you're not only trying to stay in tune, you've also got a multitude of different bow techniques to master. I played when I was a child, but then put it aside when I went to college. Only when my own kids started learning string instruments did I pick up my fiddle again. I was inspired partly by the amazing number of Irish musicians we have up here in Maine. I remember sitting in on a jam session and being amazed by how many ways you could take any Irish tune and alter it, putting your own personal stamp on it -- while still maintaining the essential melody. There's so much creativity with Celtic music that isn't allowed in classical music.
Sandra: How important do you think these other creative outlets are for you as a person and an author?
Tess: They're certainly important to me as a person. Writing is only one facet of my life -- if that were the only thing I did, I'd be pretty unhappy. They do creep into my writing as well. Gardening, for instance, often finds its way into my stories - witness THE BONE GARDEN!
Sandra: When Tess Gerritsen isn’t touring to promote a book, what does a typical day look like?
Tess: Struggling to get my daily quota of 4 pages written! The writing doesn't always come easily, and very often I spend hours at my desk feeling like an utter imposter. I often get distracted by the activities of daily life -- email, phone calls, gardening. I have to say that every book seems harder to write.
Sandra: If your eternal fate was to live as one of the characters in any of your own books, who would you want to be and why?
Tess: Jane Rizzoli. She's somehow, against the odds, managed to find happiness. And she's sensible to almost always make the right choices.
Sandra: And if your eternal fate was to be shipwrecked on that proverbial desert island with a character from one of your own books, who would it be and why?
Tess: Jane's husband, Gabriel. Who wouldn't want to be shipwrecked with a gorgeous and competent Marine?
About the Interviewer:
Sandra Ruttan's novel, WHAT BURNS WITHIN, will be released by Dorchester in
May 2008, to be followed by THE FRAILTY OF FLESH November 2008. Ken Bruen declared her work "totally mesmerizing" while Clive Cussler concluded, "Ruttan has a spellbinding style." She is also an editor with Spinetingler Magazine. For more information, visit her website at www.sandraruttan.com