Interview: Sarah Lovett
Sarah Lovett is the author of Dark Alchemy, Dantes’ Inferno, Dangerous Attachments, Acquired Motives, and A Desperate Silence as well as 25 nonfiction travel and science books written primarily for children. The five novels in Lovett’s crime fiction series, featuring forensic psychologist Dr. Sylvia Strange, have been translated into a dozen languages, her non-fiction books include the award-winning “Extremely Weird” children’s series, which also aired as a network television special. Her short fiction and how-to pieces are included in anthologies, and she has worked as a freelancer for newspapers, magazines, and National Public Radio. She is currently collaborating with former CIA covert operative, Valerie Plame Wilson, co-authoring the second book in a series of “Vanessa Pierson” spy novels. (Bio adapted from sarahlovett.com).
TCJWW: What was the first book that you wrote, or short story, Sarah? Could you tell us how you began writing?
Lovett: I wrote very romantic horse stories in 3rd and 4th grade—and I drew quite a few horses, too. At 19, I launched into a hardboiled mystery novel set in the Northern California Delta; never finished the novel however I do continue to write about the Delta. In my early twenties, i was living in Los Angeles, bartending, auditioning for dance parts, and taking classes with an actors’ lab. I wrote a play in 36 hours; woke up in the middle of the night with the words flowing out of me. Not a memorable play but it was my ticket into what was then the Padua Hills Playwrights Workshop and Festival, where I studied with Irene Maria Fornes, Sam Shepard, Murray Mednick and other talented writers. I then founded a small nonprofit theater—Theatre-in-the-Red--in Santa Fe. Everyone, actually, was paid, that was very important to us. We succeeded well for 5 years and received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. Realizing I had to make a choice to become full-time artistic director and fundraiser for the theater or move back into my first love, writing, I chose the latter. I wrote more than 30 nonfiction books for children and adults with small publishers, and took various jobs, including a job as a legal researcher that meant hours inside the Penitentiary of New Mexico. The prison experience led me to create Dr. Sylvia Strange and I sold my first novel in that series to David Rosenthal at Random House. I published five books in the series for Random House and then Simon and Schuster. How/why I began writing: As a child I was extremely quiet, exceedingly shy, and writing was a way to find my voice, almost literally. For me it has been lifesaving.
TCJWW: Any advice for women writers, who may be starting out their careers?
Lovett: Know your passions, follow your heart, learn your craft, know where you are weak and need to be stronger, learn about the business of writing, and stay eternally curious about the world. There are so many opportunities now to carve out a career, and I like the notion of writers who manage to multi-track, publishing with the big houses and also self-publishing when it serves their creative and commercial goals. I know first-hand how difficult and demanding it can be to depend upon your creativity to cover the mortgage or the rent. It’s not for everyone, and, in fact, I think very few creative people manage to support themselves well solely through their creativity. Look for mentors, we are out in the world. Always, be professional.
TCJWW: What do you find most difficult about writing?
Lovett: Really, there is nothing difficult about writing. It’s play! I love to sit down and dive into a world, a scene, a character’s way of seeing and being. What’s difficult is learning the craft so you can truly translate your stories to the page in a way that captures and communicates and elicits what you want others to experience. What’s difficult is the business of writing as it collides with creative spaces. At those times it can be very hard to keep your faith. And you must keep your faith. When you’re living inside a new story, when you are birthing a story, in many ways it is the same as acting onstage—you need the 4th wall to be strong. I encourage Creatives to pump up their Faith Muscles. A breakdown is no fun and some creative people are not prepared for exposure. When you let people read what you write, when you publish, you face exposure. That’s just the way it is.
TCJWW: Who are some of your favorite authors, in suspense?
Lovett: As a child I was definitely influenced by Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayers, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Ian Fleming, among others. My taste for reading now is eclectic and I spend quite a bit of time reading nonfiction for research. (The Triple Agent by J. Warrick and Glenn Carle’s The Interrogator: An Education were both excellent. I’m about to read Guantanamo Diary.) But in fiction, I enjoy Kate Atkinson, Louise Penny, Laura Lippman, Greg Rucka, Lee Child, Doug Preston and Lincoln Child—and many non-suspense authors.
TCJWW: When and how did you meet Valerie Plame Wilson?
Lovett: In July 2009, Valerie and I met for what we joke was a "blind date" at the Santa Cafe in downtown Santa Fe. Our agents set up the lunch with the agreement of David Rosenthal, our eventual publisher at Blue Rider/Penguin. Our agents are friends and David Rosenthal published my first five novels (at Villard/Random House and then at Simon & Schuster) and he published Valerie’s memoir at S&S. Valerie was interested in collaborating on a series of fictional spy novels and I believe she approached David and her agent and it flowed from there.
TCJWW: What was the experience like, writing Burned with Valerie? Did you both incorporate real events with fictional ones?
Lovett: Writing Burned was intense in part because the larger cast of players meant a larger canvas for the story. As far as locations, we both drew on our knowledge of place and we also asked for the help of friends living in France, Turkey, and the UK. Valerie abides by the oath she signed with the CIA—she reveals no classified information and the manuscript must go through Agency review before we can publish. But we very much collaborate on story development and of course she draws from her experiences. I relied on her sense of how situations in the intelligence world would feasibly play out. We also depend upon the generosity of experts in other fields—so many of them are incredibly willing to help. I’m an avid researcher and there is much to read between the lines of open source intelligence. So, yes, we certainly drew from real experiences and intertwined them with “what if…” One of the big challenges of spy fiction and thrillers is staying ahead of the headlines.
TCJWW: Why do you like writing suspense novels?
Lovett: I’ve written novels that are not what I would call outright suspense/thrillers but they do keep a pace and hopefully keep the reader turning pages. I’m not interested in writing cardboard characters—believe in character driven stories—and I like a story that intrigues, educates me, and lets me explore various world views. Finally, I would say, the exploration of archetypal darkness and light (within the human psyche, within the universe) is required territory when it comes to writing crime, mystery and thrillers, and writing these stories is my way of coming to terms with duality.
TCJWW: Why are we so interested or fascinated with crime or solving crimes in suspense and mystery novels?
Lovett: I’ve always loved puzzles. When I was a kid I was introduced to Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, James Bond, and those books provided me with a way to escape what was an overwhelming world at times. I believe writing about crime, espionage, the darkness and the light of human actions in times of duress is a way of trying to understand the world and our human nature. Mysteries acknowledge the darkness and the light—its organic to the form.
