Nancy Pickard, interviewed by Carolyn Hart

Over the years, the NorCal East Bay chapter of Mystery Readers International has had many "At Homes"—intimate evenings with favorite mystery writers. We've hosted Anne Perry, Lawrence Block, Sue Grafton, Elizabeth George, Janet LaPierre, Sharan Newman, Laurie King, Rochelle Krich, Carolyn Hart, James Ellroy, Steven Saylor, Janet Evanovich, Eddie Muller, Taffy Cannon, and many others. These events are held in private homes, and they're similar to Literary Salons. Since so many of our cyber members and friends aren't able to attend these intimate evenings, I thought it would be fun to have a "visiting" author each month interviewed by another "visiting" author. This month we feature Nancy Pickard, interviewed by Carolyn Hart. Nancy Pickard is the author of sixteen popular and critically acclaimed novels, including the Jenny Cain and Marie Lightfoot mystery series. She holds the distinction of having won more Macavity Awards than any other author—five! (Marriage Is Murder, I.O.U. and The Virgin of Small Plains won Best Novel Awards, and "Afraid All the Time" and "There Is No Crime on Easter Island" captured Best Short Story Awards.) She is a 3-time Edgar Award nominee, a Mary Higgins Clark award finalist, and a recipient of a Lifetime Achievement award for suspense fiction from Romantic Times. She is a founding member and former president of Sisters In Crime and a former national board member of the Mystery Writers of America. Our interviewer Carolyn Hart writes, "Nancy Pickard is the Amelia Earhart of crime fiction (including the flying lessons), a star, a winner, always seeking a new challenge, never settling for the humdrum. Nancy is a fascinating mixture of qualities, a college sorority girl who got her sorority pin jerked for moving into an apartment when that wasn't allowed for girls, a young corporate success story who quit her job to bum around Europe with her boyfriend, and grew up to be a writer who analyzes, dissects, reasons, then writes with passion." —Janet Rudolph

Carolyn Hart: When did you first realize that you look demure but your heart is willing to take chances?

Nancy Pickard: I have to laugh, because you have so nailed me here. I spent an embarrassingly long part of my youth trying to prove I wasn't as nice as I looked, lol. That attempt started in high school and it was, I am now happy to say, a total failure. I knew it was all for naught when years later I ran into a guy I'd known years before. He said of me and the girls who had been my roommates after college, "I remember you. You were the nice one."

Sigh. At that point, I realized that I might as well give up trying to make people think I was a Wild Thing. I also admitted that being "nice" wasn't such a bad thing to be.

But I think your question gets to something else as well, which is my attempt to prove to myself that I wasn't a total wuss. I used to be scared of a lot of things, and I didn't enjoy being a fearful person. So it's true that I have frequently tried things that scared me to death, just because they scared me to death. Flying a plane was one, for instance. Quitting my paying jobs and plunging into writing fiction full time was another. I seem to like to consciously put myself into situations where I have to either fly, or crash. And speaking of crashing, those flying lessons I took lasted for 20 hours, and I did fly solo a few times. But I quit before getting my license. I didn't want to be like the writer of whom it was said, "he was too much of a poet to be a good pilot." I thought of that quote on the day that I was doing touch-and-goes at the airport with my instructor, and at one point he said to me, "Did you hear that?" "Hear what?" I asked him. "The control tower has called you three times to give you permission to land." Oops. I'd been thinking of plots, instead of piloting! I decided I didn't want to share Amelia's fate!

What drew you to write mysteries?

Nancy "Drew" me. I loved mysteries. By the time I was ready to try writing one, they were the form of the novel with which I was the most familiar.

Tell us about Jenny Cain and why you left her behind.

The tenth book, Twilight, felt valedictory to me. Jenny was tired, and I was afraid the series might get that way, too. Besides, I had nearly depleted the population of Port Frederick, what with all those murders. It was time for me to try new things with my writing. I wanted to escape from writing in first person. I wanted to try some new things structurally. I wanted to try writing some things that had more edge and darkness, which included feeling that I needed to delve deeper into the Bad Guys' characters than I had in Jenny's stories. It was time, for Jenny and for me.

The Marie Lightfoot series with the book within a book format required enormous skill as a writer. What did this require from you and what did you learn from it? Do you consider the trilogy complete?

Thank you for recognizing that they were hard to do! They were! But oh, the things I learned from doing them... I got to mix past and present tenses, and first and third person. I got to move back and forth in time frames. And I got to delve more into the psyches of villians. The easiest parts to write were the chapters that were "written by Marie," those sections that were "excerpts" from her true crime books. The hard parts were the first-person, present tense parts. Getting the balance between the tones of those two different kinds of writing was tricky. But I suppose the hardest part was getting into the hearts of men like Ray Raintree. I discovered that while that stretched me as a writer and a person, I didn't want to stay there in my fiction. I do consider the trilogy complete. It was always going to be a trilogy, but when the publisher put the first one out of print before the third one was even out, I knew it was over anyway. Marie has appeared in a few short stories since then, and she will probably show up in more. Jenny probably won't. In my opinion, she's not a short story kinda girl.

The Virgin of Small Plains is a triumph and has been recognized here and abroad for its brilliance and warmth. ( It won the Agatha and Macavity, and was a nominee for the Edgar, the Anthony, and the Dilys. It was named a Kansas Notable Book, and it has been chosen to be the book for Kansas Reads '09.) Once again you are forging a new path. What is your compass and where are you headed?

I loved writing that novel. It is currently my compass. I'm heading in the direction of writing more books "like" that, which is to say... small town Kansas, intertwined family dramas, romantic, sensual, mysterious and suspenseful (I hope), with sometimes a touch of the mystical, but always with, I hope, likeable characters that stay with the reader after she puts down the book.

You are also recognized as a brilliant short story writer. Please tell us your favorites that you have written and why?

You are so nice! Thank you! I LOVE writing short stories. My favs, of my own stories, would include a kind-of fantasy that I wrote about a week when Marilyn Monroe's image appeared on Mt. Rushmore, and a story set in New Zealand, and a story inspired by the movie "Out of Africa," and a story about Harry and Bess Truman in the White House, and a new story that has vampires and a werewolf, oh my! That one will appear before Christmas of '08 in the anthology Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni Kelner.

You are also a writer's writer, fascinated by words and thoughts and inspiration. Tell us about your book on writing.

Personally, I think the hardest part about being a writer is the emotional toll it can take. It's not just the isolation, it's also the continuing pressure to create, and the difficulties of making a living doing it. For beginning writers and for experienced writers who lose their publishers, there is the pain of rejection. For some writers, there are difficulties balancing writing with the rest of life. And there is always the need to submerge one's ego in order to take editing, critquing, reviews, etc. It's enough to make a writer, working alone in her room, feel crazy sometimes. Although the writer's life looks enviable from the outsider, when you're inside of it full time, you know it can be lonely, frustrating, scary, infuriating, and sad. It's not coincidental that so many writers have killed themselves. Addiction and depression commonly afflict writers, as well as other artists. I wrote Seven Steps on the Writer's Path, with my psychologist friend Lynn Lott, for every writer who needs to know that we're all nuts sometimes. I wanted to give them some hands to hold.

Your books are not only bestsellers, they have reaped every imaginable mystery award including the Macavity (5 times), the Agatha (4 times), the Anthony (2 times), the Barry, and the Shamus, plus three Edgar nominations for Best Novel and one Edgar nomination for Best Short Story. And you've been a finalist for the Mary Higgins Clark award. What does it mean to you to receive such honors?

I'm actually only a bestseller at the mystery bookstore level, and not at the, say, New York Times level. Which only goes to show me, yet again, how important mystery bookstores have been to my career. As for the awards, I will unabashedly confess that I love them. They are so encouraging and affirming. Often, they have come right when I needed encouragement, too. So I'm grateful, yes, indeed, I am. Thank you, Macavity!

I'll tell you which awards thrill me the most. They're the ones that come when I've tried something new, or tried to stretch myself as a writer. That Marilyn Monroe story, the first and only fantasy I ever wrote, made it into a collection of the year's best fantasy and horror stories. I was thrilled by that recognition from people who really know and love that genre. My Shamus award came for the first private eye story I ever tried. (I give the Private Eye Writers of America a lot of credit for giving me their award, because I killed off three PI's in that story, lol.) Being nominated for an Edgar for The Whole Truth felt great because that was the first one of the Marie Lightfoot series, and I had really stretched to write that one. All the recognition for The Virgin of Small Plains has been wonderful, because that marked the first book of a new path for me, too. It's really nice, after being "gone" a while when I'm working on something new and different, to come back a few years later and get recognition for it.

What's this I hear about you having a blog?

'Tis true, and I have the most fun with it. Sometimes I write about writing, but most of the time we just hang out. The "regulars" are writers and non-writers, and they've formed a little community of people who are funny, smart, and nice. I invite anybody who's interested to come stick your nose in. Introduce yourself, and you'll be welcomed! http://sweetmysteryoflife.blogspot.com/

Archived At Home Online Interviews:
Track 1:
Val McDermid, interviewed by Ian Rankin
Ian Rankin, interviewed by Peter Robinson
Peter Robinson, interviewed by Michael Connelly
Michael Connelly, interviewed by Laurie R. King
Laurie R. King, interviewed by Dana Stabenow
Dana Stabenow, interviewed by Jan Burke
Jan Burke, interviewed by T. Jefferson Parker
T. Jefferson Parker, interviewed by Harlan Coben
Harlan Coben, interviewed by Laura Lippman
Laura Lippman, interviewed by S.J. Rozan
S.J. Rozan, interviewed by Qiu Xiaolong
Qiu Xiaolong, interviewed by Cara Black
Cara Black, interviewed by Peter Lovesey
Peter Lovesey, interviewed by Anne Perry
Anne Perry, interviewed by Carole Nelson Douglas
Carole Nelson Douglas, interviewed by Nancy Pickard
Nancy Pickard, interviewed by Carolyn Hart

Track 2:
Ken Bruen, interviewed by Reed Farrel Coleman
Reed Farrel Coleman, interviewed by Megan Abbott
Megan Abbott, interviewed by Theresa Schwegel
Theresa Schwegel, interviewed by Michael Koryta
Michael Koryta, interviewed by Steve Hamilton

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