Laurie R. King is the author of thirty novels and other works. She is probably best known for her series of innovative Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes stories, which started with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice.
She has won numerous awards, including the Agatha, Anthony, Creasey, Edgar,
Lambda, Macavity, Wolfe, and Romantic Times Career Achievement awards. Also, she has an honorary doctorate in theology, and is a Baker Street Irregular. In 2022, she was named Grand Master by Mystery Writers of America and, alongside Lee Child, she co-edited How to Write a Mystery, the new handbook from Mystery Writers of America. She has recently published Back to the Garden, the first book in a new contemporary series featuring Inspector Raquel Laing of the San Francisco Police Department.
Home Laurie R. King (laurierking.com)
Carol: You have had a remarkably varied and successful writing career, moving between series and stand-alones. What do you consider the advantages and disadvantages of writing a series rather than a stand-alone book?
Laurie: When I start a series novel, a certain amount of research is already behind me, mostly to do with the main characters and with their time. I don’t have to invent a new world and entirely new people—although with a series like that of Russell & Holmes, each book does involve new characters, as well as research into that place and what was happening at the time. I also like writing characters I can watch develop over a number of years. Like attending a family reunion, I can catch up on people and learn things about them.
However, as a writer, too many such reunions make me want to get away. Alternating one series with another or tossing in the occasional standalone lets me tell stories I can’t tell within the other series. And it gives me a chance to return refreshed to the same faces and look forward to seeing what they’re up to.
Carol: Also, you have moved between novels based in the past and in the present. Have you any preferences between writing historical books and ones with a contemporary setting?
Laurie: I enjoy both. Though I will say that the historicals are more likely to be on the mystery or suspense end of the spectrum when it comes to pacing, while the contemporaries can have more of a thriller element. I suppose because it’s hard to incorporate heart-pounding suspense into something that takes place 100 years ago…?
Laurie: Characters who revisit past events is a theme in a lot of my books, series and otherwise. And sure, it complicates timelines and plots, but weaving in the past can enrich a story in unexpected ways.
Carol: Over the years a large number of authors have published books featuring Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes but your series is arguably the most unusual and certainly one of the most successful. How did the idea occur to you to give Holmes a young female apprentice who later becomes his partner in all senses of the word?
Laurie: I thought it would be interesting to write a coming-of-age story about an extraordinary young mind—and, since Holmes gets all sorts of credit for figuring out things any elementary school teacher or mother of young children would find obvious, I thought I’d make that mind his opposite in all the ways except its basic analytical nature: young, female, 20th century, interested in religion, half-American, etc. And I think the times when the two of them disagree, or even compete, are the most fun—certainly to write!
Laurie: Oh, I wish I’d had some idea back then, since I could have made my life so much simpler by planning things out deliberately. Instead, I keep having to go back and remember what they did when and with whom….
Carol: Most authors who write long and complex series struggle to keep their later books consistent but you seem to do so in a masterly manner. This is especially remarkable when you have to ensure your narrative accords with the original Sherlock Holmes canon of work created by Arthur Conan Doyle. Are you willing to share the secret of how you do this? Is it amazingly detailed notes or an even more amazingly ordered memory?
Laurie: See the above comment! But it also is the reason why The Beekeeper’s Apprentice begins in the spring of 1915, because Conan Doyle finished with Holmes in the summer of 1914, before the Great War erupted. I do often refer back to Holmes’ life before he met Russell, but other than making sure I get those details right, I don’t have to worry about fitting all the characters back into someone else’s timeline. It also means that I can allow Holmes to change during and after the War, as Conan Doyle never did.
Carol: I get the impression that you have a great deal of fun writing the Mary Russell books and recording the relationship between Holmes and Russell. Am I correct in thinking that there is a strong element of your own character reflected in Mary Russell, especially in her academic interests, such as theology, and in the strong feminist streak that is evident throughout her narrative?
Laurie: Of course, although as always with first-person characters, the reader is tempted to see the writer as the person who speaks on the page. I assure you, Russell is a whole lot brighter and more capable than I am. And more patient: I’d have pushed the man off some high place before the first book ended.
Carol: One sentence in your autobiographical essay resonates with me: ‘I am a writer, because I love and have been nurtured by books’. This is a terrible thing to ask anybody who loves books but if you were stranded on a desert island with only one author’s books to read, which author would you choose?
Laurie: There are any number of authors I’d happily share an island with, but it would need to be someone who lived for 150 years and published half a dozen books a year from the time they were 20.
Laurie: They have been enormous fun, and I’m looking forward to Nashville the end of August. Personally, I’ve loved getting to talk to friends on-stage: with Sherlockian Les Klinger in Santa Cruz, bookstore owner Barbara Peters and writer SJ Rozan in Seattle, and Sherlockian Peter Blau in Bethesda. (And I get to chat with Strand editor Andrew Gulli in Nashville!) We’ve had two different beekeepers, who both brought demonstration hives to their events, and both were such a hoot! And I have to say, I took a lot of notes with the speakers—both the lock-picking demonstrations and the slide lecture on how clothing changed in the Twenties, and why. But what I’ve loved most has been the affection of the community for Mary Russell. It’s fascinating, and humbling, how my writing has touched the lives of readers.
Carol: Last but not least, what are your writing plans for the immediate future?
Laurie: Russell #19, scheduled for June 2025, is set in England and Ireland. It again has that element of revisiting a past case, but also, we get to know a character who was mentioned in a short story, Russell’s rogue uncle Jake. He’s just a blast to write. And after that, a follow-up to Back to the Garden, with Inspector Raquel Laing.
Thanks for taking the time to talk to us Laurie
Her crime novels are set both in contemporary and Victorian times.
Her first book The Terminal Velocity of Cats was published in 2013.
Since then, she has since written 8 further mysteries.
Carol recently gave an interview to Mystery People. interview
To read a review of Carol latest book click on the title
Death and the Dancing Snowman
No comments:
Post a Comment