Tag Archive for: G.M. Malliet

Eating Apples in a Bathtub

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The author of Death of a Cozy Writer , G.M. Malliet is an Agatha Award Winner, recipient of an Anthony and Macavity Nomination for Best First Novel, recipient of a David Nomination for Best Novel, and an IPPY Award Silver Medalist (Mystery/Suspense/Thriller). Death of a Cozy Writer was chosen by Kirkus Reviews as one of the Best Books of 2008.

Is there anyone who by now does not know the story of how the Harry Potter series was conceived? Just in case: J. K. Rowling was on a train from Manchester to London in 1990 when the idea for the boy wizard suddenly came to her. As she relates it:

“I had been writing almost continuously since the age of six but I had never been so excited about an idea before. I simply sat and thought, for four (delayed train) hours, and all the details bubbled up in my brain, and this scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who did not know he was a wizard became more and more real to me.”

(Notice that she sat and thought. She wrote none of this down; she just let the ideas bubble away.)

But is this really how it happens? The idea for a beloved character just pops into your head? Or has the idea been there all along, percolating away, inspired by nothing more than a face in the crowd from months before, or a phrase overheard in a café? Some insignificant event that may not even have registered at the time? This question fascinates and vexes authors, who are always asked where their ideas/characters come from. In reply, we mostly go into blank-stare mode, or give some glib answer (“the idea tree”). The fact is, no one knows.

What is certain, however, is that a train ride is the world’s best conductor, so to speak, for the creative process. I think it’s because you are trapped. You can’t be distracted by the sudden urge to do laundry, or paint the house, or go make a cup of coffee. In order to do these things, you’d first have to throw yourself off the train, and wisely realizing that would be unwise, you are thrown back instead on your own thought processes.

This trapped concept doesn’t work—for me, at any rate—on airplanes, because I am too busy helping the pilot keep the plane aloft by aiming uplifting prayers towards the cockpit, and it definitely doesn’t work in cars, distracted as I am by some idiot changing lanes at high speed without using his turn indicator (just yesterday I saw a bumper sticker I loved. It said, “If Jesus Were Here, He’d Use His Turn Signal”).

You’d think the same “trapped” concept might work while you’re in the dentist’s chair, but it doesn’t seem to pan out that way. A dentist’s chair does seem to send my brain into high gear, however: What’s that noise? What is that big silver thing he’s holding now? Is that a needle—good heavens, is that a needle? Is this guy old enough to be a dentist, anyway? I wonder if I look like Hannibal Lecter in this rubber mask? Will this be over soon? What’s that noise?

In other words, it’s like having a hyperkinetic four-year-old trapped inside your head: It’s lively in there, but it’s hardly creative.

But on a train, the forward movement is restful. I’m freed from all obligations and distractions, especially if I’ve left the computer at home. Combined with the sense that I have been granted permission to just sit and daydream, that does the trick for me every time. Plot twists invented; characters who announce themselves, fullblown. It is pure bliss for a writer.

Agatha Christie wrote that her best ideas came to her while she was sitting in a bathtub, eating apples. Believe me, I would try this if I thought it would make me half as ingenious as she was, and I’d be willing to bet some mystery authors have tried it, but somehow I think this technique was unique to Agatha. Other authors swear by washing the dishes as a surefire generator of ideas, but that doesn’t really work for me: I just want to get the chore over with, not daydream. Walking? Sometimes works, but not really.

Maybe if I ate apples on a train while sitting in a bathtub…would another story as good as Murder on the Orient Express come out of it?

Please visit me at http://gmmalliet.com/

G.M. Malliet

Death and the Lit Chick

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G. M. Malliet worked as a journalist and copywriter for national and international news publications and public broadcasters. Winner of the Malice Domestic Grant (Death of a Cozy Writer) and the Romance Writers of America’s Stiletto Award, Malliet attended Oxford University and holds a graduate degree from the University of Cambridge.She and her husband live in Virginia. For a description of Death and the Lit Chick, see http://gmmalliet.com/

Several years ago, my husband and I belonged to a neighborhood book club. It lasted only about two years, then the group dissolved: attrition, conflicting and busy schedules, and all the rest made it too difficult to meet. What was slightly unusual about this club was that it was comprised of three men and three women. I don’t have statistics to back this up, but I imagine most book clubs are female only or predominantly female.

What was also unusual was that, about eighteen months into our monthly meetings, we realized we had read only books by male authors. I don’t remember the books now, except for Peace Like a River (lovely writing) and some god-awful attempt at imitating the Travis McGee books. My point is: We may have come a long way, baby, but somehow, without even realizing it, the women had gone along with choosing the more muscular books they thought the men might like, rather than making the men struggle through something like Sex and the City. I guess we knew they would flat-out refuse and that would be the end of that.

This is a pathetic confession to have to make; to this day I can’t believe we women behaved like this, without even realizing we were doing so. The whole episode has been in my mind now that the ramp-up to my second novel in the St. Just mystery series has begun. A key–nay, a crucial–part of this ramp-up is the unveiling of the book cover, which, rightly or wrongly, can raise or sink a book. The first book was called Death of a Cozy Writer, and it was beautifully illustrated, I thought, by a fountain pen dripping blood (trust me, it sounds awful but it looks great). The second book is called Death and the Lit Chick, the cover for which appears above.

My first reaction on seeing this cover was that I loved it–I thought it was clever and impactful, looking like the spilled contents of a woman’s purse (although it did portray many items not mentioned in the plot–a subject many authors over the centuries have ranted about so there’s no need for me to repeat the rantings here). But my husband took one look and declared that no man would be caught dead buying that book unless it came supplied with a brown paper wrapper.

Worriedly, I reported the findings of my two-person survey to my editor, fearing I was going to lose the male audience that I knew existed for the first book. The second book was in the identical, traditional British mystery vein (there is nothing chick litty about the plot). But would I lose the men forever with this one? She told me that my audience would largely be female, anyway, and female was the target audience.

Is this true? I hate to lose the guys over a cover. Perhaps Death and the Lit Chick can be a litmus test, the way my book club was. If challenged, will “real men” buy a girly looking pink-and-red book with lipstick on the cover?

We shall see come April.

G.M. Malliet
http://gmmalliet.com/