Origin Story

Bonus episode of Shaved Meats, Piled High.

I usually have a pretty straight-forward answer when asked where I got the specific idea for a book. But lately, people (reporters) (reporters are people) have been asking about where Lady in the Lake came from and . . . I’ve been a little confused. I knew all the elements, but I couldn’t sort out the chronology.

And then I heard the voice of Carrie Feron, the editor with whom I worked from 1995-2023: “Does it have to be a prequel?”

We were at lunch, maybe at Nobu, which happens to be on the first floor of the building where my publisher is now located. If I was talking about a book that ended up publishing in 2019, this conversation almost certainly took place in late 2016/early 2017. It definitely took place after the presidential race of 2016 because I had just pitched a book about the Maryland governor’s race of 1966, which had some interesting overlaps with ‘16. It had been established within the Tess Monaghan universe that her parents, Patrick and Judith, met while volunteering during the Democratic primary in 1966. (Actually, they met on a double date with other partners, but they also were Democratic volunteers together.)

I inferred from Carrie’s question that it would be better to write a stand-alone; while my series had won awards and had ardent fans, my stand-alones had better sales. I’m a commercial writer, earning a commercial writer’s paycheck. It was fair of my publisher to want to maximize my sales, assuming that was the subtext to Carrie’s question. She may have been asking a simple question, with no agenda. But I’m glad she asked. I began to think: How could I write a 1966-based story that wasn’t a prequel to my series?

So, winter 2017. Very clear on this. I was mulling how to take the prequel I had imagined and make it a stand-alone. I think I must have already had the idea of contrasting the media coverage/public reaction to the deaths of a white girl and a Black woman. And I wanted to explain why a character in the Tess series was a convicted felon. But what one character could link all these stories?

I actually wrote an intro for MM in 2020, which I totally forgot.

Around this time, I was re-reading Marjorie Morningstar — I reread it almost every year — and I had come to that strange little epilogue, in which Wally Wronken, the boyish nerd who had yearned after Marjorie for so many years, catches up with her in the suburbs. He’s a successful playwright, she looks like a “grandmother,” with her gray hair and complacent life. He’s so relieved she spurned him. Their age difference would have been a problem.

She is, IIRC, thirty-fucking-nine and they are maybe two years apart.

I began to imagine an alternative Marjorie Morningstar reality. How had she felt the following morning, after her reunion with the man who mooned after her 20 years ago? Had he reminded her of her snuffed out ambitions, dreams? What happens when we see someone who remembers what we said we were going to be?

Those ideas were bopping around my head after I dropped my daughter off at school on a frigid morning. There were traces of snow on the ground. I walked into the house, turned on my computer and checked in with Twitter. My friend Megan Abbott had shared photos from the long-shuttered adult camps of the Catskills, a central location in Marjorie Morningstar. And that’s when I knew what I was doing. I was writing a Marjorie Morningstar what-if story. What if, the day after she saw Wally Wronken, she realized she still had time to pursue her dreams?

My Marjorie became Madeline “Maddie” Schwartz. Her dream is writing, not acting. As a character, I find her — not exactly unlikeable, but remarkably single-minded in her pursuit of a newspaper career. One reporter said he didn’t see anything in Natalie Portman’s portrayal that was unlikeable. “Well,” I said, “it’s possible that Natalie Portman’s depiction of the character is deeper and more layered than what I wrote.”

I haven’t seen all the episodes of Lady in the Lake yet; I am looking forward to watching episodes 4 through 7 like a “civilian.” But the two I’ve seen indicate that the series is bigger than the book I imagined, raising the stakes for both characters. When novels are adapted into two-hour films, it is common for characters and subplots to be jettisoned. Lady in the Lake added characters and stories. Alma Har’el and her writers room clearly had a sweeping vision and what I’ve seen so far is enthralling.

Yes, I wore Farm Rio to the premiere, along with a Betty Cooke cocktail ring.

Anyway, just a peek behind the curtain, but pay no attention to the woman there. I do hope, however, that you will check out Lady in the Lake when it begins streaming on AppleTV later this week.

Update: My former editor, who is now at another publisher, checked in with me after reading this and said she probably asked that question because she wanted to make things easier for me and a prequel would lock me into all sorts of existing characters/scenarios.