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Sue Grafton
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Sue Grafton has a thing for cheaters, liars and scam artists. "I love criminals. I love trying to figure out what they're up to," she says. You'd expect nothing less from a woman who's written 16 best-selling mystery books over the last 20 years, and who plans to write at least 10 more. Featuring the famed private investigator, Kinsey Millhone, who fancies herself a "Philip Marlowe in drag," Grafton's alphabetically titled books are perhaps the most recognizable and widely read mystery series going.
P is for Peril is the latest offering from the nationally-acclaimed sleuth-maker. CityBeat caught up with Grafton in her Louisville home before she kicked off her nationwide book tour. We talked about the alphabet, the struggles of writing, her recent book, the criminal mind and what she has to do every day to continue writing at her current pace.
CityBeat: What are you going to do when you run out of letters?
Sue Grafton: People have been asking me that, and my theory is that they're already getting into separation anxiety. People feel that Kinsey Millhone is a good friend. The truth is I won't finish until 2015 if I'm lucky and get these books out in a timely fashion. If Ms. Millhone feels we have other adventures to catalog, we will do so.
My attempt is to stick with the series as long as I have the juice. It requires great energy and great concentration to do these books. I just don't want to get to a point where I'm faking or cheating or just pushing books out to hit my marks. If I thought I was doing that, I would quit. What I generally do is focus on each book as it comes out.
CB: Do you think that the privacy of book writing is crucial to your being able to maintain the energy to write?
SG: Yes. To me, it's a very necessary element, because that's where the struggle is, that's where the discovery is. There's something about the intensity and the anxiety of working alone that I think brings you to your best effort. You know, what I'm learning is that probably all creative effort has resistance attached. There's always an element of fear attached, too, because if you work at any level, you're taking horrendous risk and always risk failure, making a fool of yourself, you risk other people's disapproval. That's not comfortable work, but I think that if you're not willing to operate out on that outer edge of your ability, you're just coasting.
CB: What did you have to do to write P is for Peril?
SG: I read the paper and I clip anything that sparks my interest. I have elaborate, fat files full of just odd things. Generally, if a file reaches a point of enough information, I'll start looking at that as I did with Medicare fraud. Every third week there was an article about somebody cheating Medicare.
The other thing that interests me or intrigues me in P is for Peril is that I had seen a television show about people who vanish. What it talked about was the fact that when someone vanishes, everybody comes up with a theory and the theory is a reflection of their own biases. And that interests me, too. It's understanding something about the people who offer up those explanations, because it's really revealing what we speculate. That tells a lot about who we are and what we think about and where our imaginations take us.
I get interested in the mental process. Most of us fancy that we're law-abiding, as far as anyone knows. Criminals are like that, too. Scam artists, in particular, interest me, because that requires intelligence and preparation, all the very qualities that would make those persons contributing members of society. Those same qualifications, take them down this other road entirely ... I'm just glad they get caught.
CB: Let's talk about your day-to-day writing life.
SG: OK. Generally, I get up at 6, I walk three miles, I come back, shower, have breakfast. I work till noon, take a brief break for lunch, work again until maybe 3 or 4. But by then, I've had it. I don't think you've worked productively for more than a couple of hours creating new pages. You can revise or you can do research. But writers who claim they go in their offices for eight or 10 hours at a stretch, I know they're on drugs. I just resent that they're not telling me what drug it is.
CB: Do you do this seven days a week?
SG: Yep. Sometimes I take a day off, but most days I work because it's easier to stay connected to the work. You take two days off, it takes you two days to remember what you were up to.
CB: How do you avoid distraction?
SG: That is the number one question. The truth is there's no magic answer. And everyday it is the same struggle. Understanding that the struggle is the process. The struggles, the distractions, the frustrations, the writers block, the stumbling blocks. That's all part of it. I used to look at those as impossible obstacles. People say to me, "Do you ever have writer's block?" And I say, "Oh, just daily! Just every damn day of my life."
Sue Grafton reads and signs her new book, P is for Peril, at 7 p.m. Monday at Joseph-Beth Booksellers.
