As soon as I finished reading the manuscript of Little Black Dress, I had so many questions for Susan. I just wanted to sit down and have some girl talk with her, and also get some more details to add to my marketing campaign. Here is the transcript of our ensuing phone conversation. Enjoy!
Tavia: Susan, hello! Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me about your new novel, Little Black Dress, and about little black dresses in general. You had me hooked in from the moment you quoted Coco Chanel in the epigraph.
Fashion gurus have always said that a classic little black dress can carry a woman through myriad social events, as long as we accessorize properly. So we could say that the little black dress is perfect for every woman. But what I love about what you’ve done in this novel is that you’ve taken the universality of this wardrobe staple one step further and made one particular dress perfect for every woman in the Morgan family, regardless of her height or measurements. So part one: How did you get the idea for this enchanted dress that enhances every woman’s natural beauty even as it leads her closer to her destiny? And part two: Where can I get one?
Susan: I thought of family heirlooms that get passed down through generations, usually jewelry, that turn into good luck charms—or bad luck charms—and end up with almost a superstitious quality. I realized I wanted my heirloom to be something very tactile and changeable. What better than a little black dress? Particularly one that’s made from silk spun by spiders and is indestructible. So once it’s yours, it’s hard to be rid of it. The idea that this black dress fit each of the three women—Evie, Anna, and Toni—even though they’re different sizes was inspired by the jeans in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. When you don the dress, it enhances all your best qualities. It also gives its wearer glimpses of her future, things that can’t be changed, which is a little scary.
You know, I’m not sure where you can buy one! You could try googling “magic black dress” and see if anyone’s got one to sell. (Let me know if that works!)
Tavia: I sure will! Have you ever worn a dress that made you feel so beautiful and powerful that you thought it was magical?
Susan: My wedding dress! It did make me feel special and magical in many ways.
Tavia: How many little black dresses do you have in your closet?
Susan: One really old one. So I’d say it’s time to go shopping!
Tavia: Oh yes, I have three LBDs and they are in constant rotation. From working with you a little I know that you found your true love and married later in life, like Toni Ashton, the main character of Little Black Dress. Susan, how much of yourself do you put into your novels?
Susan: I don’t intentionally put pieces of myself into my novels, but I think little bits work themselves in anyway. The longer I live and write, the more experiences and emotions I have to draw from. Before I was forty, I hadn’t been deeply in love, hadn’t married, hadn’t gone through breast cancer or watched my mom and aunt go through it. I hadn’t been pregnant or miscarried. All of these things that have happened to me—and even things that have happened to people around me—add depth to my books, whether or not I use any specific experiences. I had not miscarried, in fact, when I first wrote about Evie’s miscarriage. Then I had to revise the scene once it had happened to me because it became so real. The characters I create are fictional, truly. The situations I dream up for them aren’t real. But I can’t deny that tiny threads of me weave their way into everything I write. My brain works in mysterious ways!
Tavia: Pardon my ignorance, but is there really a winemaking industry in Missouri? I enjoyed the subplot of Toni’s family winery, and Evie’s commercial scheme to get their label certified organic.
Susan: Yes, there’s a really healthy wine industry in Missouri with about eighty or so active wineries as of this moment. It goes back to the early to mid-nineteenth century when we had a big wave of German immigration. In 1876, when a pest attacked French vineyards, it was Missouri grafts that saved them. So who knows if there would even be French wines today without Missouri vines!
Tavia: Of course, my interest in the winemaking part of the story was increased once you introduced dreamy Hunter on the scene. The Romeo and Juliet archetype never gets old, does it?
Susan: Nope, it doesn’t. We all dream of finding a soul mate (even if we don’t want to admit it). We all want someone to share our lives with, who understands and accepts us, and who doesn’t take away from us but adds to us. Who makes everything better. I was lucky enough to find that kind of love after I turned forty. So I enjoy sending the message through my stories that sometimes love comes when you least expect it or when you’ve sworn it off. I think all the love stories in Little Black Dress are kind of unexpected, aren’t they?
Tavia: Yes, they are, and it’s part of what makes the novel such a delight. While you were writing Little Black Dress, which of the women looked the most beautiful in the black cocktail dress—Anna, Evie, or Toni? Be honest. Surely you had a vision of them in your mind as you wrote? I imagined that Anna was the most stunning.
Susan: Anna’s a very dramatic character, both in her looks and her personality, and she truly embraces the dress and its magic. So I see how she would stick out in your mind. Evie and Toni are much more wary of the dress. They want to understand it and try to control it, which is rather impossible. Honestly, I imagined the dress looking different on each woman and just magnified what’s special about each.
Tavia: Secrets do so much damage in real life, but in a novel they can do so much to create a dramatic, moving story. My heart was really in knots over the secrets that were kept for decades by nearly every character in the novel. Secrets that spanned generations! You do a great job keeping the reader guessing until the end if all the secrets will come out into the light. Did you know from the start what secrets would be unearthed through the work of the little black dress?
Susan: I did know their secrets once I started writing the book. Since the story line comes full circle, I had to realize the outcome in order to write toward it. It’s amazing how secrets affect everyone’s lives, and not just the secret-holders. Part of the drama in Little Black Dress comes when honest people are forced to lie—or lie by omission—and then live with those lies. How can they stop worrying and looking over their shoulders? How do they embrace their lives fully when they’re so afraid these secrets will come out? Is it always better to tell the truth than keep some people in the dark? I don’t know if the novel answers all those questions—or if there’s an answer—but it sure made the story fun to write!
Tavia: Okay, one last question. Who plays Hunter in the Lifetime movie production of Little Black Dress? (My vote is for John Corbett.)
Susan: Oh, gosh, I don’t know! I hadn’t thought about it. Hmm, maybe someone along the lines of Gerard Butler, kind of rough around the edges but smart with a great sense of humor. I have a feeling readers will come up with other ideas of their own!