It was announced last month that Lady in the Lake will premiere July 19th on AppleTV+. Five years from publication to limited series may seem like a long time to some people, but it’s actually pretty swift, especially when one factors in the 2023 strikes.1 To be clear, the production of LitL, as I shall now refer to it here, was not affected directly by the strikes — production wrapped in fall of 2022 — but there were still scheduling repercussions.
The issue of adaptation fascinates me. The fact that I adore the film Adaptation, based on Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief, should give you an inkling of where I stand on this topic: Fuck fealty! I don’t write for the screen, I write for the page. I have almost anti-cinematic instincts. I was happy to entrust LitL to Alma Har’el. I think the best way to think about adaptation is to imagine two chefs presented with a pantry full of ingredients and asked to make whatever they like.
My version of LitL was an attempt to work out the ethics of what I do — and also write a valentine of sorts to the newspaper culture of my father’s generation. When I watched the first episode of LitL, I was put in mind of one of my favorite works in the American Visionary Art Museum2, an untitled painting by James Franklin Snodgrass. It’s essentially two different paintings, depending on where one stands in the room. From a distance, it’s an impressionistic portrait of two reclining women; get up close, and it’s hundreds, maybe thousands of people. When it comes to LitL, I feel that Alma focused on the two women at its center, while I was playing with a more granular portrait of Baltimore in the mid-60s. Maddie Schwartz and Cleo Sherwood are the two main characters, but there are 20 discrete POVs from the men and women who cross Maddie’s path, each one with a resonant story to tell — if only she would stop and listen. As I have often said of Maddie: If you want to be a human interest reporter, it helps to be interested in humans.
Cleo’s role has been expanded for the series, a good call, an essential call. While Cleo is a ghost in the book, she insists on owning her own story; she is the first and last character to address the reader, via her imagined dialogues with Maddie, who she sees as her nemesis.3 But her story, condensed on the page, needed to be expanded.
I would also like to mention this: LitL is a consciously meta book. It centers on a white lady writer who uses Black pain to further her career ambitions. I’ve been writing crime novels for a long time and I’m still wrestling with the ethics of taking inspiration from real crimes and creating fiction. While there are obviously real-life cases that parallel the events of Lady in the Lake, it is wholly a work of fiction. I was interested not in the lives of the actual victims, worthy as those lives were, but what the juxtaposition of two deaths — a white girl, a Black woman — could tell us about Baltimore/the world in 1966.4 Who got the front page? Who was ignored?
When I started writing this month’s newsletter, I was filled with petty grudges, but then — I am always filled with petty grudges. I had been mulling over some slights I have experienced, sometimes even at the hands of friends. A lot of people treat me as if I'm, well, kind of dumb? I was going to dish on those experiences, the hurtful things people have said to me, but then I decided I’d rather celebrate the people who have helped me along the way. Fuck my feelings!
So here’s an inevitably partial list of the teachers/friends/pros who believed in me when I was just getting started: Meredith Steinbach, Sallie Gaines, Sandra Cisneros, Michele Slung, Joan Jacobson, Vicky Bijur, Carrie Feron, Lynda Robinson, Lisa Gallagher, Michael Morrison. (“Just getting started” doing a lot of work here, taking us from 1980 to 2005. Also, let’s give both ex-husbands a shout-out! They were definitely believers and boosters.)
Oh, and I’d also like to thank Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram — a Baltimore native, fyi — for making Maddie Schwartz and Cleo Sherwood absolutely theirs. And Alma for the passion she brought to this project, and the producers . . . at this point, the orchestra is playing me off. The point is, I have far more people in my life to thank than scores to settle. I need to remind myself of that from time to time.
Read/Reading: The Divorcées, Rowan Beaird; Summers at The Saint, Mary Kay Andrews; Fear of Dying, Erica Jong; Columbo, David Martin-Jones; student work for my June teaching gig. Joyful Recollections of Trauma, Paul Scheer. (audio)
Reread: Pick a New Dream, Lenora Mattingly Weber. I will aways be fascinated by this particular Beany Malone book, in which Weber chose to recognize that her series protagonist did not, in fact, have a writer’s temperament. If you’re a fan of Betsy Ray (me) or Jo March (not particularly)5, you have to marvel at a writer who went to pains to point out that her longest-running character did not, in fact, have the stuff.
Me, me, me: I honored a pre-pandemic commitment and traveled to Bristol, UK, for Crimefest and, boy, was I glad I did. Saw old friends, made new ones, won the eDunnit for Prom Mom, disgraced myself in the general knowledge portion of the quiz. I also participated in this nifty podcast. But — and I have to be circumspect here — what I will remember forever are the gorgeous Scottish vowel sounds in a certain sentence repeated over and over by Denise Mina.6 Denise has a way of showing up when I need her the most.
Another more high-profile novel acquired about the same time as LitL has yet to make it anywhere near production, despite reports of multiple large options and big-name players. One of my older books is on its fourth or fifth option — and it has a mega star attached. It’s a tough business and William Goldman was right: Nobody knows anything. Although the good news is that Alafair Burke’s The Better Sister is in production with a killer cast.
Is this newsletter just a stealth advertisement for AVAM? YES.
Billy Wilder came to me in a dream and reminded me: Why not have a dead person tell the story?
The real-life cases happened in 1969, but I was much more interested in 1966. And that’s a pretty significant change, another reason I don’t like the term “ripped from the headlines.” My work does not traffic in wink-wink roman à clef; most of the real-life stories that have inspired me aren’t particularly well-known.
Sacrilege, I know.
I’ll never tell.
I still take selfies, but this terrible little drawing from May 27 is my favorite photo in my phone this month. I gave it to my daughter on her 14th birthday and she seemed genuinely touched. Or maybe she just has good manners. Hey, it’s a win either way.
“I have far more people in my life to thank than scores to settle. I need to remind myself of that from time to time.”
I shall attempt to take this energy into the rest of my week!
I'm SO excited about the show! And, of course, loved the book. Also: anyone who thinks you're dumb is an actual idiot.