Who are some of your favorite authors?
I’m in awe of writers who can pair beautiful language with great storytelling. In no particular order: Kate Atkinson, Jane Austen, Colm Tóibín, Lily King, Louise Erdrich, Jhumpa Lahiri, Ian McEwan, Edna O’Brien, Michael Ondaatje, Tim Winton, David Mitchell. Poets Seamus Heaney, Richard Hugo, Leanne O’Sullivan, and Emily Dickinson provide insights into possibilities of language, imagery, and rhythm. Music is such an important part of my life, and singer-songwriters such as Tori Amos, Glen Hansard, Beth Orton, Damien Rice, Mark Knopfler, and Emmylou Harris are present in my writing, even if you can’t hear them!
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Write every day. No excuses. Everyone has at least half an hour they can capture for writing instead of watching television or scanning social media. Schedule it, prioritize it. Read every day; read widely and deeply; study your favorite authors; study the craft of writing. Keep a notebook of words, sentences, passages that resonate with the reader and writer in you. Take classes, workshops; attend conferences. Observe the world around you with every sense. Make notes of conversations; what people wear and how they wear it; the sounds of their voices; aromas in the café, on the bus, in the woods; what your food tastes like; how skin feels. Pay attention when you are in physical and emotional pain, when you are walking on air. Write. Be deliberate. Be thoughtful. Submit your stuff for publication; learn how to take criticism and rejection. Revise. Edit. And write some more. Talent has only a small part to play in being published: grit, determination, and an indefatigable work ethic are far more important.
What is the most challenging part of being a writer?
In general, turning off the inner critic and believing that, in time and through many revisions, the story will sort itself out, the layers will deepen, and the thing you are working on will not be the piece of utter crap you are certain it is in its early stages or when you run into trouble (which is inevitable).
At this specific point in my career, my challenge is to balance many projects and many different roles: writer, editor, promoter of my work. Each demands a different set of skills and uses different parts of my brain and creative energy. Sometimes I must do all three in one day, but I try to balance my workload.
What drew you to this story, and why?
The Languedoc region itself. I attended university in France many years ago, and I make it a priority to visit France every couple of years. I have many France-based stories pulling at my heart. In 2011, my husband and I spent a few weeks in Languedoc, exploring all the places Lia visits in the book and many more. I was enchanted by its fierce beauty, the generous, proud spirit of its people, and I was enthralled with the history of Languedoc—particularly the history of the Cathars.
What kind of research or preparation did you engage in before writing this book?
Our time in the region was one long, wonderful research adventure. We visited every Cathar site we could and collected several books on this history of the area. Each night, I would read about the places we’d explored that day. I didn’t know then that I was building the foundation for a novel, but that exploration brought me fully into the history of the Cathar faith and the crusade that ended their story.
A year later, when I began to write In Another Life, I knew that if I started with the research, I might never emerge from early-thirteenth-century Europe to write the actual story. I didn’t want to delve so deeply into medieval history that those scenes dominated the narrative. My challenge was to create a balance of detail between the past and present; my goal was to give a flavor, an impression, of the medieval lives of Raoul, Paloma, Lucas, and Jordí without losing the reader in the details.
I started with my basic premise—an alternative history of the assassination of Archdeacon Pierre de Castelnau—and worked out the historical details as I wrote and refined them as I revised.
Several books were invaluable resources: Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie; The Albigensian Crusade by Jonathan Sumption; Medieval France: An Encyclopedia (Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages) by William W. Kibler, et al; Paris in the Middle Ages by Simone Roux; and Jo Ann McNamara (translator); Romanesque Churches of France: A Traveller’s Guide by Peter Strafford.
What is your writing process like?
You’re going to groan when you read this, but I get up between 4:00 and 5:00 every morning. I read, journal, work on a blog post until 6:00 or 7:00 a.m. Then I run or swim or practice yoga, eat breakfast with my husband, clean house. By 9:00 or 10:00, I’m at my desk, in a café, or at the library, back at work. I typically work on one project at a time during the day. I work six to seven days a week, five to eight hours a day, knocking off in the mid- to late afternoon. I go for a walk or to yoga class, make dinner, read, go to bed. One day a week I reserve for writing “business.” I don’t schedule days off, but I take one when I need it.
Which parts/characters/places are factual, and which did you create?
Archdeacon Pierre de Castelnau; Philippe du Plessis; Abbot Arnaud Amalric; Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse; Hugh de Baux; and Pope Innocent III were historical figures, though I have completely fictionalized their personalities, physical descriptions, and actions. Castelnau was assassinated outside Saint-Gilles by an unidentified assailant, and the pope did indeed declare a crusade against the Cathars in 1208 as a result.
All the town and cities and street names in the story are real, with the exception of Cluet. Cluet is a fictional town, based on the city of Béziers, which was sacked in July 1209 by a crusading army led by Abbot Arnaud Amalric. The church of Saint-Maurice in Gruissan and its destruction are fictional, but the cathedral in Narbonne, the basilica in Carcassonne, Minerve’s Candela, the chateaux in Lastours, Termes, the lovely small city of Limoux, and the sites and street names in Paris are places you can visit. You can even book Lia’s favorite room in that hotel in Paris, if you find out the hotel’s real name. And I highly recommend all the food stalls at the Marché des Enfants Rouges in the Marais.
This story has both historical and contemporary scenes. Did you find one or the other more challenging or enjoyable to write?
Of course, the historical scenes had the significant challenge of creating an authentic medieval setting. But I loved being in that world. The rhythm of the language is slower, richer, more lyrical—something I found that carried over when characters from the past became part of the present. Lia’s scenes rolled out so easily. I felt such a strong connection to her healing process and the renewal of her sense of self.
This is your first published novel. What was your journey to becoming an author?
When I was six years old, I read Louise Fitzhugh’s wonderful Harriet the Spy and decided that when I grew up, I would become a writer. I modeled myself after Harriet and began keeping a journal and creating worlds on the page.
Then life intervened. There was a thirty-year hiatus from the time I stopped writing stories as an adolescent to the first short story I penned as an adult. After undergraduate and graduate degrees, I worked for many years as a university study abroad program manager and adviser, then as a wine buyer. Over the years, I filled dozens of journals and did some professional and feature writing during my career as a university administrator, but I was so afraid that if I tried my hand at fiction, my dream of being a writer would be shattered by my own lack of talent and grit.
The impetus to begin writing came after personal tragedies in my late thirties and early forties. I realized I wasn’t going to have the sort of life I imagined I would have. So I had to create and fulfill other dreams. I knew that if the second half of my life could be lived as passionately and authentically as I tried to live the first half, it would be as a writer.
In October 2010, when I was forty-one, I took my first writing class at the superb Hugo House, a writing center in Seattle. From there, I wrote and published my first short story in 2011. Other short stories and essays followed. In July 2012, I wrote the first words of In Another Life. In October 2014, when I felt the novel was ready to take its chances in the publishing world, I pitched it at a writer’s conference. Three weeks later, I signed with a literary agent and received an offer from a publisher on the same day. And now you’ve just read the result!
Where do you get your story ideas?
I’m fortunate to have lived in some extraordinary places: France, Japan, central Africa, New Zealand, and I’ve traveled the world over. I draw many story ideas from these settings, their histories, and my experiences living and traveling abroad. My characters are often challenged to look at themselves and respond to the world differently because they are in unfamiliar surroundings.
In addition, I listen and observe the world around me. Story ideas have come from a passing remark, an overheard conversation, an expression on someone’s face, a line in a newspaper article, a photograph. The stories are there for the taking.