THE LIAR'S DIARY
by Patry Francis
Dutton; Brilliance Audio
February 2007
When a teenage boy is arrested for a particularly brutal murder,
his mother seeks to learn the truth, and finds herself increasingly
ensnared in a web of lies.Patry Francis has published stories
and poems in The Ontario Review, Tampa Review, Antioch Review,
Colorado Review, The American Poetry Review, Massachusetts
Review, and elsewhere. She is a three-time nominee for the
Pushcart Prize and has been the recipient of a grant from the
Massachusetts Cultural Council twice. Patry is a member of
Killer Year, the Class of 2007. She has two blogs, Simply Wait
(aka The Marvelous Garden)
and I’m Really Not a Waitress .
The Liar’s Diary is her first novel and will debut in
February 2007. It will also be published in Germany, France,
and the Netherlands.
J.B.: Let’s start with your involvement with Killer Year.
What does being a member of the Class of 2007 mean to you?
How did you come to choose Tess Gerritsen as your mentor?
PATRY.: Killer Year has connected me with an amazing and diverse
group of novelists – all of whom have something unique
to contribute. I learn something new from this group literally
every day. But most importantly, we have discovered that we
can do things as a team which we could never do as individuals.
A couple of years ago, I received a copy of The Sinner as a
gift from a family member who had been raving about Tess Gerritsen
for years. It didn’t take long to understand why! I gobbled
up the novel, and promptly went out looking for another fix.
When we were asked to choose five possible mentors, I figured
I might as well aim high. Truly, I never expected Tess to say
yes. But now that I know her better, I’m not so surprised.
Tess Gerritsen is not only a terrific novelist, she’s
one fine human being – accessible, supportive of other
writers, and generous. I can’t wait to meet her in person!
J.B.: Give us a quick synopsis of The Liar’s Diary.
PATRY.: Like a lot of novels that deal with a violent crime,
The Liar’s Diary began with a story from the headlines
that I just couldn’t forget. An adolescent universally
considered a “good boy” from a “good family” had
committed a particularly gruesome murder. The writer in me
wanted to know who this family was beneath the veneer of respectability.
How – and why – had they ignored the signs of trouble?
Once I began to write, my novel had no connection to the case
from the newspaper. But the questions remained the same. As
did the ingredients for disaster: a perfect family that’s
not so flawless when you scrape the surface, a deeply troubled
adolescent who puts on a cheerful face to the world, and a
beautiful, charismatic woman who becomes the object of the
family’s obsession.
J.B.: You’re a gifted poet – what brought you to
the decision to write a novel?
PATRY.: I wrote my first novel when I was fifteen, an abomination
called “Season of Sadness.” At eighteen, I wrote
another, typed it up single spaced and naively sent it off
to publishers; then I sat back and waited for fame and fortune.
It was a long wait – and given the quality of those novels,
the gestation was clearly a blessing. At the same time, I was
writing poetry. For me, it’s not really such a different
medium. My poems have characters and mini-plots, and my fiction
relies a lot on the kind of telling detail that animates a
poem.
J.B.: How long was your “process” – from
writing the novel to finding your agent to getting the deal?
Besides writing, what were you doing during that time?
PATRY.: The Liar’s Diary was a really fun book to write
because it has so many plot twists, and because I really loved
the characters I was writing about. Since I truly didn’t
know who had committed the murder or why until I wrote the
ending, I raced through it – probably completing a fairly
polished draft in three months. The book also sold quickly – two
weeks after my agent first submitted it. The time consuming
part came in the middle. It took months of sending out my hopeful
little queries before I persuaded a few agents to read it.
And then once I signed, my agent and I spent several more months
whipping the manuscript into shape. Total time? Probably eighteen
months. Or a lifetime of experience and dreaming and honing
my craft. Depends on how you look at it.
J.B.: You said in an interview last year that your two blogs
represent the two sides of your “split personality”.
Can you elaborate on that?
PATRY.: I started “I’m Really Not A Waitress” as
a humorous, fun blog. It was flippant, a little edgy, very
much reflective of my “waitress personality”. Simply
Wait was more spiritual – in the broadest sense of the
word. As time passed, the blogs have merged and now have the
same content – partly because maintaining two blogs is
way too time-consuming, but mostly because I’ve realized
that humor is spiritual, and spirituality without laughter
is dead.
J.B.: How does your faith influence your writing?
PATRY.: Stephen King once said all stories come down to one
thing: “God versus the devil. Who wins?” Crime
fiction takes that on in a particularly direct and visceral
way, which is one reason it’s so appealing to me. In
my work, good defeats evil. Every time. Not right away, and
maybe not in the way we’d like it to do, but eventually.
To me, that’s what faith is all about.
J.B.: You have a marvelous story about meeting Pulitzer Prize
winner Marilynne Robinson, the author of Housekeeping, which
you list among your favorite books. Can you describe how that
experience affected you, both as a person and as a writer?
PATRY.: When I met Marilynne Robinson, I was young, completely
starstruck – and a total dope. I didn’t even have
the courage to tell her how much I loved her novel! Since then,
I’ve learned that a human being is a human being, no
matter how accomplished; and that if you have a chance to say
something good to someone, whether it’s the waitress
who went out of your way to get your steak cooked just right,
or one of your literary idols, you shouldn’t let the
opportunity pass you by.
J.B.: What kind of beverage best describes you and why?
PATRY.: I’m a double shot of espresso. Once you start
reading me, your heart will race, your blood pressure will
rise – and no matter how tired you are, you’re
not going to sleep any time soon. (How’s that for shameless
self-promotion?)
J.B.: Do you still have that pair of waitress shoes you were
going to hang up?
PATRY.: They’re hanging in my garden right now!
ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER
J.B. Thompson is the author of two novels of romantic suspense currently in publication http://www.jbtauthor.com. In addition to conducting author interviews, she writes book and movie reviews. J.B. blogs at “Let’s Do Lunch – The World According to J.B.”. She lives near Nashville, Tennessee with her husband and three teenagers.
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