First off, thanks very much for agreeing to be interviewed for my blog. I’m going to get my enormous fangirl SQUEEEEE out of the way right off the bat so we can get on to the interesting stuff.

OMG I TOTALLY LOVE YOUR BOOKS OMG THEY ARE MADE OF AWESOME!

*ahem*

An introduction: Chelsea Cain, author of New York Times Bestselling novels Heartsick
and Sweetheart
lives in Oregon. Before starting on her career writing thrillers, she worked as a journalist for The Oregonian as well as writing several non-fiction books.

On to the questions…

Heartsick was your first published novel, but not your first published book. How has the experience of launching what many call a “first” book with such success, including NYT Bestseller-dom, national acclaim and lots of media attention, been different from or the same as your experience with your first few books?

On the whole, it’s been pretty fucking awesome. I get to see my book in airport stores next to gum and neck pillows! And I have this great publisher full of great people whom I actually truly like, and they spend money to market me and to market the books, which is huge. I get to travel all over the world. I’ve been to Oslo. Oslo! (Can I just say how much I love the Norwegians?) Financially speaking, my life has changed completely. With my other books – mostly illustrated humor books – I wrote them for the process, and because they afforded me a little bit to live on. But I never actually considered the fact that I could make a good living writing – you know, be “successful” – because how many people actually get THERE? I’ve always just written to entertain myself. I wrote HEARTSICK because it was thick into a thriller faze and I had finished reading all the thrillers I loved, and it seemed easier to write one than to find one that somebody else had written. What’s the quote? “I’ve never understood why someone would write a book, when you can easily buy one for a few dollars?” I’m sort of the opposite.

On the other hand, there have been a lot more demands on my attention. I spend a lot of time doing marketing because people are interested, which is awesome. But it changes the ratio of writing time. It’s a constant challenge, because if I don’t write, I won’t have anything to promote, and if I don’t promote, people won’t find the book in great numbers, and then I won’t have the opportunity to write.

One of the reasons I picked up HEARTSICK (actually, I requested it as a birthday gift and got it, SCORRRRE!) was because I’m fascinated by the premise of a female serial killer. You’ve said “in real life, there aren’t that many violent female serial killers. We tend to kill quietly, suffocating our babies or poisoning our husbands, and we tend to get away with it. But I wanted to explore a woman who killed violently, like a man, because she liked it.” (via Chelsea interviews Chelsea for the Oregonian on your blog)

The idea seems to be that female serial killers most often don’t do it violently, or get a sexual charge from it, the way traditional male serial killers do – yet you created Gretchen Lowell, one of the most fascinating serial killers AND women I’ve ever read.

Did you worry at any point while writing the book you wouldn’t be able to pull it off? That you couldn’t make her…well…believable?

God, yes. I totally worried that she wouldn’t be believable. Because I did a lot of research. And the thing about psychopaths is that real textbook psychopaths are not very interesting. And there haven’t been a lot of violent female serial killers, so right there I was stretching people’s believability meters. But one of the things I did, in writing HEARTSICK – and a HUGE liberation to me as a budding thriller writer – was to say, the hell with it. I’m going to write the book I want. I’m not going to worry about avoiding stereotypes or clichés or being authentic all the time. I’ll just tell the story I want how I want to tell it, and I’ll hope that I can bring something to the narrative that elevates it enough that readers will come along for the ride. HEARTSICK, in many ways, is a kind of fan fiction. Because I took characters and situations I loved from books and TV shows and movies that I loved and I threw them all in a big stew and tried to tell my own story.

Did you think about how your novel and characters might be compared to another popular novel – Silence of the Lambs? Did it matter?

About halfway through HEARTSICK, when Susan and Archie go to visit Gretchen in prison, I was like, uh oh, this is SO Silence of the Lambs. I even put that line in where Gretchen calls Susan “Clarice,” so readers would know that I knew. But even so, I was surprised at how that comparison came up in every single review of the book. Because while there are similarities, they’re not huge. But I think that Silence of the Lambs is such a pop cultural touchstone that it’s hard to avoid. And it’s a great book, so I appreciated being compared to it in any way.

Hannibal Lector, the “villain” in Silence of the Lambs, is arguably as much the hero of that story as Gretchen is the heroine of Heartsick and Sweetheart. Why do you think readers love to love these characters who do the worst, most awful things – acts that nobody in their sane minds would find compelling, much less sexy – and yet we loooooove Gretchen on the page in a way I hope I wouldn’t if I met her in real life. Why???

That’s a complicated question. I think that we’re attracted to people with power who are good at their jobs. (Even if their jobs are serial murder.) We’ll also attracted to wit and charisma. I also think there’s something really compelling on our lizard brain level about people who are able to cross that social barrier that prevents the rest of us from committing murder. As for Gretchen, there aren’t a lot of strong female archetypes in fiction, especially thrillers, so think that readers enjoy seeing a woman who is so totally in charge.

I write romance and erotic romance and love to read thrillers and horror – imagine my twisted and somewhat shameful delight when I read Sweetheart and Archie and Gretchen’s relationship got the spotlight. You’ve said Heartsick is about the violence and Sweetheart was about the sex. Did you find writing the books different with those “slants” — is writing sex/emotion different or the same than writing violence/emotion for you?

I think of these books as their own sort of twisted romances. I realized early on that Archie and Gretchen’s relationship was all about the intimacy of violence. So it seemed natural to explore both sides of that. The “slant” is the same. Intimacy. It’s the power that shifts. Every scene between Archie and Gretchen is about these tiny and colossal shifts of power – who has it, and who doesn’t.

Which do you think Gretchen likes more? Killing or having sex?
I think the two are totally entwined to her.

You wrote Heartsick while pregnant and with a small child in the house, without a contract in hand. How was writing Sweetheart a different experience for you? How about Evil at Heart, a third Archie/Gretchen book coming out in September 2009 (OMG I CAN NOT WAIT! I CAN NOT WAIT! I CAN NOT WAAAAAITTTT!!)?

It was weird, because when I was writing HEARTSICK it was to not get a job. I kept thinking if I can just finish this book and sell it then I won’t have to get a job. That’s a real motivator, let me tell you. But when SWEETHEART came along, it was my job. I’d been given money. And a deadline. We were suddenly very comfortable. So I found myself not writing for myself anymore, but for all of the people counting on me – my editor and agent and publisher, the marketing staff, my husband and daughter, etc.

How do you resist the siren song of Twitter and Facebook long enough to get any writing done? Or actually…I’m not sure you do…

It’s hard! Social networking is such a distraction because it pulls me out of the zone. It may just be a moment – a quick update, an attempted witty rejoinder – but then I go back to the work and I’ve lost the momentum. On the other hand, it’s an important way to keep in touch with readers and stay on people’s radars. And just touch base with friends. I’m still negotiating it, obviously. I need to start making rules. One hour in the morning. One hour at night. Did I just write that? That will never happen. But it sounds like a good idea, right?

Something that just occurred to me: Archie and Gretchen both have a strong “ch” sound in their names. How did you choose their names? Do you have a special method for choosing character names, do they have to have a special meaning, or is it always just crazy random happenstance?

That’s very insightful of you! I liked the way that their names sounded together – that hard consonant sound in the middle – like even their names belonged together. Names are always fun. And curiously hard to come up with. I have this terrible habit of getting sounds stuck in my head, so that I’ll write a scene and realize that I’ve given everyone names that start with A, which is really confusing to the reader. Or I’ll name a character after someone famous without realizing it. These days I like to work my friends’ names in. Just their first names or last names, never both. There are lots of things like that in my books – in-jokes for me and one or two other people.

You’ve compared yourself to Susan Ward rather than Gretchen Lowell, and it’s obvious from your website you like coloring your hair, a trait Susan shares. Do you ever color your hair crazy colors, say…oh…blue or purple? And do people stare at you in the grocery store or say “what color were you trying for, hun?” And do people say stuff like “oh, right, you’re that ‘creative’ type” as though that were the name of a disease? Or…is that just me?

I’ve done many shades of red (from natural to magenta), pink stripes, platinum, blonde, brown and black. Black lasted five days. I looked like a Goth seventeen year old. Even worse: I looked like a thirty-something mom TRYING to look like a Goth seventeen year old. Color is funny. There are always some people who love it, and some people who don’t. I’m not good with hair compliments, though. When someone tells me they like my hair, I immediately change it. I don’t know why.

You write thrillers. What do you like to read?

I’m a very loyal series reader. I still read everything that Robert B. Parker puts out. Ditto Jonathan Kellerman. I love Val McDermid’s thrillers. But my taste is all over the map. Mostly I go for the funny and sublime. Give me a smart-ass with a lyrical prose voice, and I’m yours. The narrative vehicle is secondary. TV. Comics. Books. Poems.

What are you working on right now?

Book four of the “heart” series. Let me know if you have any titles with the word “heart” in them, that aren’t totally irritating.

**Editor’s note…Heart of Glass?

What’s the book you haven’t written yet but would love to write?

I’m planning on starting a new series soon, and I’ve got a story knocking around in my head that I’m anxious to get out on paper. Every time I get to steal away some time for it, it’s a treat.

What’s the book you will NEVER write?

I will never write a children’s book.

Rapid fire portion!

Chocolate or vanilla? Chocolate.
Back or front? Back.
East or West? West.
Up or Down? Down.
In or Out? Out.
Left or right? Left.
On or off? Off.
Sam or Dean? Dean.
Kirk or Picard? Picard.
Kirk or Spock? Spock.
Sex or violence? Sex.
Sects or violins? Sects.
Wars or Trek? I can’t decide this one.
Mac or PC? Mac.

You stand before three doors. What colors are they, what’s behind each, which do you choose and why?

Black – past
Red – present
Pink – future

I choose the red door, because I live too much in the past and future and not enough in the present. It’s something I need to work on. Plus, red is my favorite color.

Thanks so much for answering my questions, Chelsea, and good luck with your next release. (OMG I CAN NOT WAAAAIIIITTTTTT!!!!)

And one last question: when will Archie and Gretchen come out with an episode 2?

Three words: Labor Day episode.

Find out more about Chelsea Cain and her fabulous and delicious Heartsick, Sweetheart and Evil at Heart at her website. Find her on Twitter, too!

Thanks for the interview! (I ordered Evil at Heart and can’t wait to read it. Srsly.)

M

New book trailer!

And don’t forget to pick up a copy of Evil at Heart from your favorite bookstore. Comes out Sept. 1!