Interview with a Vampire

It's me, hi, I'm the vampire, it's me

I was in Tuscany last month. I played around with trying to say that in some humblebrag way — The sun was just beginning to set over the Tuscan hills, sending lacy shadows across the loggia where we were eating dinner/I was poolside in Tuscany when — but I think this text exchange with a writer friend¹ expresses it best.

The friend had texted me to tell me that the trailer for Lady in the Lake had gone live. As I conceded, it’s not the worst life, despite some ups and downs over the past few years.

Ann Hood has been running this writers workshop at Spannocchia for more than a decade and I have been going there since 2015. It’s not quite annual — the workshop has to work around a lot of complicated schedules, and there was a pandemic — but this summer marked my sixth visit to this lovely, rustic farm that has transformed itself into a retreat for travelers. I have taught workshops here, but the past few years I’ve done one-on-one manuscript consultations, focusing primarily on structure/balance/POV, using my unique² system involving art/craft supplies.

I teach at most twice a year — at Spannocchia and the annual Writers in Paradise conference, which is where I met Ann in 2007. On the Italy trip, I more or less break even: My room and board is included, but I have to pay for my plane ticket and if I bring my kid, as I did this year for the third time — oofa! So I’m not in it for the money. And, as much as I love the people on the faculty, I’m not sure I would travel all that way just for the pleasure of their company. After all, I get to see most of them in Florida every January.

Imagine these chairs filled with the coolest writers — and their spouses!

But at dinner one night — maybe technically not a loggia, but close enough — I was bubbling over with happiness and enthusiasm. (It helped that I was finally done revising my novel and that there was plenty of wine.) “I love this!” I proclaimed, and Ann’s husband asked me why I like to teach.

That’s when I confessed I’m a vampire. I teach because I draw inspiration and energy from my students. Thirty years and thirty books into this gig³ — I finished my first novel in September 1994, found an agent in 1995, saw it published in 1997 — I still make the mistakes I’m trying to help others not to make. At a session in Spannocchia, I found myself urging a student to “flip it,” a term I use for taking an expected/obvious/cliched character or situation, then inverting readers’ expectations. I also drilled down on a particular character I felt would be more interesting if he weren’t so villainous.

It was basically the same advice I had been given after submitting the first draft of my novel last fall.

I guess I should be embarrassed at making the same mistakes over and over. But I’m not because I’m willing to revise over and over. I made five passes on my current book, which took almost exactly two years. Pass #1 took 14 months; pass #2 was four months; pass #3 was three months; pass #4 was 12 days; pass #5 was 72 hours. (We were down to five questions by then.) Important to note: I did not disagree with a single note. Oh, sure, I had moments where my editor asked (paraphrased to avoid spoilers) “Why does this thing have to be here” and my knee-jerk answer was: “BECAUSE I NEED IT TO BE.”⁴ I had moments where — I’m always going to be honest — I cried a little, because I was working so hard and I just could not get across the finish line.

But I also was trying something different for me. Like — really different. I embraced Brene Brown levels of vulnerability writing this book and I cannot wait for people to read it.

However, it won’t be out until 2025 — but there is a really good television show you can watch in the meantime.

My favorite cottage at Spannocchia.

Read/reading: Long Island Compromise, Taffy Brodesser-Akner; Miss May Does Not Exist, Carrie Courogen; Moon Tiger, Penelope Lively; Cue the Sun, Emily Nussbaum; Bear, Julia Phillips. The Friday Afternoon Club, Griffin Dunne (audio); Brat, Andrew McCarthy (audio).

Rereading/Relistening: Bright and Precious Days, Jay McInerney. Nerd Do Well, Simon Pegg.

Me, me, me: Prom Mom is now in paperback! You can buy it through your favorite bookseller.

Lady in the Lake premieres July 19th on Apple+. May I tell you a funny story? When the trailer dropped I was impressed anew by the feverish energy Alma Har’el brought to the story. I was especially struck by the use of “The Impossible Dream,” which was historically accurate; the song was a modest hit single for Jack Jones in 1966 a year after Richard Kiley sang it on Broadway. How smart of Alma to use that, I thought. Several days later, I remembered the song was referenced in my book, in one of Cleo’s memories of her time with her married, older lover. Anyway, here’s the trailer. You know, the one I watched poolside in Tuscany. Also an article from Vanity Fair.

In addition to going to Italy, I went to Los Angeles for a wedding, fifty years to the month that the mother of the bride asked me to take the bunk under hers at camp.

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1. I’d tell you who it was but this paragraph is already too braggy and it’s about to get worse!

2. As I always tell students: I’ve never met anyone else who does this quite the way I do it and there’s probably a reason.

3. Twenty-six novels, two short story collections, one book of essays, and a children’s book.

4. This cannot be the answer. Duh.