Read Talks of WASPs, Touring, and Epiphanies

Cornelia Read's first novel, A Field of Darkness, met with immediate critical acclaim. A thriller written in what she dubs WASP Noir style, it was showered with positive reviews from Kirkus, The New York Times, and others.

It can be a difficult book to read, as the young journalist, Madeline Dare, moves through a world that is alternately dingy and upper crust. She's surrounded by people who range from eccentric to extraordinarily cruel.

Read herself comes from an old money background where despite the money being gone, her family was still listed on the Social Register. In another interview, Read talked about how she first started writing a book that was more memoir, only it didn't have anywhere to go because the characters just kept repeating their foolishness rather than learning anything.

So instead, Read wrote a mystery/thriller novel that draws upon her background while still being entirely fictional.

BookHelpWeb: You have an interesting family with a wealth of vignettes to draw from. How much of your own background can be found in the pages of A Field of Darkness?

Cornelia Read: I imagine that a lot of the true stuff in Field must strike readers as being the most outrageously fictional. The old gardener reminiscing about making linden-blossom tea when he was in the Hitler Youth, for instance, or Madeline Dare's (and my) ancestor Captain John Underhill leading the massacre of the Pequot tribe in 1635.

Madeline and I have a lot in common: same tattoo, same schools, same bi-coastal childhood, plus our "money is so old there's none left." A Field of Darkness is by no means straight autobiography, however. It's more like random chunks of personal experience that've been whacked around in a Cuisinart, with lashings of Tabasco and gunpowder and cheap bourbon thrown in to keep it all from sticking to the sides of the workbowl thingie.

In some senses, Maddie's who I'd like to be. She's tougher and braver than I am, not to mention way more handy with shotguns and snappy comebacks.

But she's also volatile in ways I don't want to emulate. Maddie does a lot of leaping-before-looking, and I'm too much of a wuss for that. She's also kind of a bitch at times-though there's a lot of thoughtful sweetness lurking at the center of her tiny black heart.

BHW: Madeline Dare goes through major changes in this novel. Is she someone that you plan to write about again, or is this the one great adventure of her life?

Read: Field was pitched as the first book in a series, and I'm revising the second novel right now. It's called The Crazy School, and is scheduled for publication next June.

Madeline and her husband Dean have moved to the Berkshires in western Massachusetts, where she's teaching at a boarding school for emotionally disturbed kids. She adores her students, but is appalled by virtually everything else at the "therapeutic" Santangelo Academy. Dean pretty much nails it when he tells her, "if you stay in that place one more week, they're going to shave your head and make you sell flowers in an airport."

BHW: What would you say was the most important lesson that Madeline learned? Was there anything that stands out that you learned in the creation of this novel?

Read: To me, the most important thing Madeline learns in A Field of Darkness is that her heritage can't dictate her destiny without her consent. She struggles to make sense of her family's history, the dark legacy of privilege and evil I call "WASP Noir." She must come to terms with the full beauty and horror of that heritage, despite the pain she knows her honesty will cause for the people she loves best.

I think that's the hardest lesson all of us have to learn-how to forge our own future no matter what hand we're dealt-and it's one into which I like to think I gained some lasting insights during the course of writing Field. Some days the insights seem to have more permanence than others, though.

BHW: In many ways, the novel is a period piece-it resonates with the 80s and the concerns, politics, and recreational past-times of people in that decade. What led you to choose that particular time period? What would you have had to change if you'd set it in the 2000s?

Read: I started writing about the late 80s because it's when I lived in Syracuse, so it's from that temporal perspective I knew the city. I was just out of college and trying to figure out how to make my way in the world. I wanted to revisit that place and time since there are so many "concerns and politics" whose meaning I still want to make sense of-not least Iran-Contra, genocidal ancestors, and the way post-industrial macro-economic shifts have savaged the hopes and dreams of so many people in the Rust Belt.

From the technical aspect of mystery writing, that choice of time period turned out to have unexpected benefits. If Madeline had had access to Google or cellphones or even fax machines, the novel would have required much fancier plot footwork. I hope I get better at that, if I get to keep writing about her down the years.

BHW: What was the most surprising thing you learned while researching your book?

Read: The most startling epiphany was discovering what the book wasn't about. I thought it would involve neo-Nazis, and had done a ton of research on everything from the history of anti-Semitism in America to the tattoos now sported by members of white supremacy groups. In the end, the characters in Field wanted to be in a completely different story.

I guess it's too bad I didn't know that before I ordered the ginormous pile of books for what ended up being wholly tangential research, but I'm still glad I read them.

BHW: How did you celebrate the publication of A Field of Darkness ?

Read: I bought takeout sushi from the fancy grocery store here in Berkeley, bought new Converse sneakers for my husband and daughters, and treated myself to a downloaded song from iTunes. Do I know how to party, or what?

BHW: What has been the most satisfying or fulfilling response to your book?

Read: I have been knocked out by the kindness and generosity with which the book has been received. It's not a story that's easy or comforting to read, for many reasons, and I feel blessed that people have found things in it to savor-especially when they tell me they feel a kinship with Madeline.

The best response I got, though, was from Lee Child after he read the first twenty pages at a writing conference. He told me he was hooked from the moment he read the second sentence, then offered to write me a blurb once I'd finished my agent's revisions.

When I saw Lee at the same conference the following summer, he asked me to go on tour with him this year.

Life doesn't get much better than that.

BHW: What are your upcoming plans? Do you have another novel in the works? If so, what is it about?

Read: Revisions on The Crazy School are due back to my editor in October, so that's the first thing on my plate. I have a two-book contract with Mysterious Press, and am keeping all appendages crossed that they'll want to see more adventures with Madeline. I'd love to set the third book in Manhattan, and have a story idea in mind.

I just got asked this morning to submit a short story for A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir, which Megan Abbott is editing for Busted Flush Press. I'm very, very excited about that!

The other cool thing that's happened lately is having actor/director Peter Riegert option the film rights for Field. I've been a great admirer of his work for many years, and I'm honored that he wants to tackle a movie version of my book.

BHW: You're in a writing group called Naked Authors. Why the name? What has been their biggest effect on your writing?

Read: Naked Authors is a wonderful group blog I got invited to join by Patty Smiley. It's a diverse collection of writers-Patty, James Grippando, Paul Levine, and Jacqueline Winspear-and I'm the least experienced of the gang. It's been a lot of fun to hang out with them all online, and I've now met everyone but James in real life.

My writing group is Mysterious Writ, founded by Charles King here in Berkeley. I saw his post announcing it on craigslist in the summer of 2001, shortly after I'd been laid off from a dotcom editing job. I'm the first member to get published, but I won't be the last. It's a tremendously talented and dedicated group of writers, and without them, I would never have finished Field-much less found an agent and publisher.

BHW: What do you think is your biggest strength as a crime novelist?

Read: I think I manage to evoke a strong sense of place on the page, and occasionally I'm funny. At least I hope so!

BHW: In your acknowledgements page, you mention Epinions. Given that Epinions was the setting in which we first met, I'm curious about how you would describe the effect it had on your writing and how it was influential to you.

Read: Epinions had a HUGE influence on me. I started writing product reviews for them during one of the toughest periods of my life. My twin daughters were about three years old, my husband was traveling to Asia for work a great deal, and I was coping with the aftermath of one child's diagnosis of severe autism. I was exhausted and depressed and had given up on the idea of writing professionally.

The very first review I wrote for the site was on a Timex watch that was supposed to function as a sort of rudimentary Palm Pilot-something I'd hoped would help me keep all the doctor and therapist appointments for my daughter straight, but which failed miserably even at keeping time.

People responded to that piece with a lot of encouragement, so I kept writing little articles for Epinions in between everything else that was going on in my life. I soon found that I'd fallen into an astonishingly gracious and thoughtful community of writers. They gave me my writing chops back, and saw me through some very hard times. I never made a lot of money writing those reviews, but getting involved with Epinions literally changed my life.

BHW: What aspect of publicizing your book have you enjoyed the most?

Read: Getting to tour with Lee was so much fun I can't believe I wasn't arrested for it. He's one of the earth's great good people, and his fans utterly rock.

We got to do four joint book signings, in Houston, Scottsdale, LA, and Seattle, and I still can't believe it all actually happened.

I got to meet a lot of old friends on tour, including a bunch of people from Epinions I met in person for the first time. That was incredible!

BHW: How old will your daughters be before you let them A Field of Darkness ?

Read: I planned to ban it from the eyes of my offspring for a good twenty years, but my daughter Grace snuck off with an advance copy without telling me. She read it in a morning and said she liked it a lot. I told her she can't use any of the swear words, at least when I'm in the room. So far, so good..

--B. Redman