Karen Odden, author of A Lady in the Smoke.
AUTHOR KAREN ODDEN
Karen Odden's interest in the Victorian era goes back to her New York University doctoral dissertation, which explored how the medical, parliamentary, and literary representations of nineteenth-century railway disasters helped to create a discourse out of which Freud and other psychologists fashioned their ideas of “trauma.”
She loves writing mysteries partly because the narrative always drives backwards as well as forward. That is, if there is a dead body on page 3, the rest of the book is really the story of someone figuring out how it got there in the first place. In keeping with her interest in psychology, she is fascinated by how childhood events shape characters' beliefs and assumptions, which later experiences must often illuminate and correct. She loves family secrets and marginal voices, 1870s London including the smelly Thames and the costermongers, medical puzzles and odd facts about poison, anything Scotland Yard, the true weird stories that surround musicians and visual artists, and good old-fashioned romantic plots.
Karen served as an Associate Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and taught classes in English language and literature at New York University and the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. She has contributed essays and chapters to books and journals, including Studies in the Novel, Journal of Victorian Culture, and Victorian Crime, Madness, and Sensation; for ten years, she served as an Assistant Editor for the academic journal, Victorian Literature and Culture (Cambridge UP); and she has written introductions for Barnes and Noble’s Classics Series editions of books by Dickens and Trollope. Prior to receiving her Ph.D. in English, she worked as an Editorial Assistant at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and McGraw-Hill, as a Media Buyer for Christie’s Auction House in New York, and as a bartender at the airport in Rochester, where she learned how to stop being shy. She is a member of SCBWI and Mystery Writers of America. Her first book, A Lady in the Smoke, was a USA Today Bestseller and won the 2017 New Mexico-Arizona award for eBook Fiction. Her second book, from William Morrow/Harper Collins, is A Dangerous Duet; and her third Victorian mystery, A Trace of Deceit, will be out in December.
Karen currently resides in Scottsdale, Arizona with her husband, her two children, and her ridiculously cute beagle, Rosy.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS WITH KAREN
1. How do you deal with writer's block?
Hm. I don't usually get writer's block. Elizabeth Gilbert gave a brilliant TED talk in which she said, "I love writing more than I hate failing at writing." And while our writing is different (I think hers is marvelous, by the way) what she said is true for me, too. The only time I feel a sort of paralysis at my desk is if I start wondering, "What will my agent think of this? What will readers think?" But those are the wrong questions. So I head back to the right ones: "Lady Elizabeth just woke up in a strange bed with the smell of lye on the sheets and loud banging noises outside her door, and she has no idea where she is. How does she feel? What does she do next?"
2. What is the best thing about being a writer?
The best thing about being a writer is getting lost in the writing. There are days when I have a scene playing in my head so clearly it's as if I'm watching real people moving and speaking; I'm merely recording it. For example, the day I was writing the first confrontation between Lady Elizabeth and Mr. Flynn--when he thinks she's an earl's daughter, flirting with Mr. Wilcox out of boredom, and she assumes he's an unethical newspaperman intent on digging up dirt to sell papers--I could see her hands tugging on her shawl and the changing shape of his mouth; I could hear their words and the tones in their voices. They did everything themselves; I just wrote it down.
3. Where did you get the idea for A LADY IN THE SMOKE?
The idea came out of my doctoral dissertation at NYU, about Victorian railway disasters, of all things. Railway crashes were something like a national obsession in the mid-1800s in England, partly because they were the first enormous, violent accidents that cut across all the social boundaries. The victims ranged from titled aristocrats to writers (Charles Dickens crawled out of one in 1865) to railway engine drivers and laborers. As a result, all kinds of people—doctors, members of parliament, newspapermen, novelists, and so on—wrote about them, trying to figure out why they happened, what could be done to prevent another one, and how to cope with all the injuries and death that came out of them. Eventually, I decided I wanted to write a novel that started with a Victorian train wreck—partly because I knew a lot about the complicated historical context and partly because extraordinary events can call forth extraordinary aspects of character.
4. What scene in A LADY IN THE SMOKE was your favorite to write?
I’d say it’s the second day of Paul’s trial, when Lady Elizabeth takes the stand, telling her story to a jury of men who have been cynical and unsympathetic so far. She finally articulates the horror of the railway crash and, for the first time, feels it with all her heart. I’ve probably read it 50 times, and I still cry with her.
5. What or who inspired you to become an author?
I was the geeky, lonely kid who read in the corner all the time, so I’d say I was first inspired to write by other authors. (I grew up on Mary Stewart, who could mix suspense and romance like no one else; A Lady in the Smoke certainly owes something to her!) Now, I have some books that draw me back to them again and again, inspiring me by the way they use language, and by the honesty with which they plumb the human heart. Lit by Mary Karr, The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney, Into the Woods by Tana French, Too Late the Phalarope by Alan Paton, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, March by Geraldine Brooks, Up a Road Slowly by Irene Hunt, and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell are some of them. (Yes, I’m all over the map.)
6. Who is your favorite fictional character from literature?
Probably Anne of Green Gables. I’m a red-head, too, and her utter fearlessness—her willingness to be exactly who she is, to love passionately, to crack a slate over someone’s head if he’s making fun of her, to laugh at herself—is something I admire hugely!
7. What is a typical day like for you?
I get my two kids off to school on the bus at 7 a.m. (a process that is a bit like herding cats sometimes), hike with friends till 9 or so, and then put my butt in my office chair. I usually write for three or four hours, on days I’m drafting or revising. (A friend asked me once if I ever took a day off of writing. I replied, Well, it’s kind of like taking a day off from brushing my teeth. I can do it; it just doesn’t feel very good!) Other days I google “Victorian crime” and just read and read. Then I pick up the kids at 3:30, take them to their various activities, walk my sweet aging beagle Rosy, put together dinner (sometimes eaten in shifts, as kids and husband come home different times), and fall into bed by 10 p.m. after reading for three minutes.
8. BAM. You're a superhero. What's your superpower?
Am I allowed to pick time travel? If not, I think I’d like to be invisible. I’ll own it: I’m terribly curious about what happens when people think no one is watching.
9. What are you currently working on?
My next book is tentatively called "Down a Dark River." It's about a detective inspector at Scotland Yard in 1880, which is three years after a wildly public scandal rocked the Yard and sent three Inspectors to prison for fraud and taking bribes. My protagonist's name is Michael Corravan, and he grew up in Whitechapel, working on the docks and bare-knuckles boxing. One morning, there's a dead girl floating down the Thames in a boat. She's beautifully dressed and clearly wealthy--in other words, a nightmare for the Yard's new superintendent if the newspapers get hold of the sensational story before the case is solved, seeing as the public is still disgusted by what they imagine to be widespread corruption and ineptitude in the plain-clothes division. Corravan begins to follow clues that seem to lead in one direction. But then another girl floats down the river, and everything he thinks he's discovered makes no sense. And then comes a third girl--and the newspapers take up the story, blaming Corravan, who must plumb his own dark past to understand the murderer, prevent another girl's death, and save his career.
10. Do you have a motto, quote or philosophy you live by?
I try to live by the words of Henry James: “Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.” The other piece of advice is this, courtesy of a friend: “As you drive around every day, at each red light, think of something you’re grateful for. It might sound a little strange, but it’s a good practice for today’s world.” Now, all that about kindness and gratitude being said, I believe to write a good book you have to be willing to grapple with the ugliest the human heart has to offer. My next book is about an embittered man, a vicious and ruthless criminal, and the London underworld.
Represented by Josh Getzler
Hannigan Getzler Agency
jgetzler@hsgagency.com
37 West 28th Street, Floor 8
New York, NY 10001
Follow Karen Odden's journey on her blog, Facebook, and Pinterest. Email Karen.Odden@gmail.com.
Karen Odden's interest in the Victorian era goes back to her New York University doctoral dissertation, which explored how the medical, parliamentary, and literary representations of nineteenth-century railway disasters helped to create a discourse out of which Freud and other psychologists fashioned their ideas of “trauma.”
She loves writing mysteries partly because the narrative always drives backwards as well as forward. That is, if there is a dead body on page 3, the rest of the book is really the story of someone figuring out how it got there in the first place. In keeping with her interest in psychology, she is fascinated by how childhood events shape characters' beliefs and assumptions, which later experiences must often illuminate and correct. She loves family secrets and marginal voices, 1870s London including the smelly Thames and the costermongers, medical puzzles and odd facts about poison, anything Scotland Yard, the true weird stories that surround musicians and visual artists, and good old-fashioned romantic plots.
Karen served as an Associate Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and taught classes in English language and literature at New York University and the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. She has contributed essays and chapters to books and journals, including Studies in the Novel, Journal of Victorian Culture, and Victorian Crime, Madness, and Sensation; for ten years, she served as an Assistant Editor for the academic journal, Victorian Literature and Culture (Cambridge UP); and she has written introductions for Barnes and Noble’s Classics Series editions of books by Dickens and Trollope. Prior to receiving her Ph.D. in English, she worked as an Editorial Assistant at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and McGraw-Hill, as a Media Buyer for Christie’s Auction House in New York, and as a bartender at the airport in Rochester, where she learned how to stop being shy. She is a member of SCBWI and Mystery Writers of America. Her first book, A Lady in the Smoke, was a USA Today Bestseller and won the 2017 New Mexico-Arizona award for eBook Fiction. Her second book, from William Morrow/Harper Collins, is A Dangerous Duet; and her third Victorian mystery, A Trace of Deceit, will be out in December.
Karen currently resides in Scottsdale, Arizona with her husband, her two children, and her ridiculously cute beagle, Rosy.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS WITH KAREN
1. How do you deal with writer's block?
Hm. I don't usually get writer's block. Elizabeth Gilbert gave a brilliant TED talk in which she said, "I love writing more than I hate failing at writing." And while our writing is different (I think hers is marvelous, by the way) what she said is true for me, too. The only time I feel a sort of paralysis at my desk is if I start wondering, "What will my agent think of this? What will readers think?" But those are the wrong questions. So I head back to the right ones: "Lady Elizabeth just woke up in a strange bed with the smell of lye on the sheets and loud banging noises outside her door, and she has no idea where she is. How does she feel? What does she do next?"
2. What is the best thing about being a writer?
The best thing about being a writer is getting lost in the writing. There are days when I have a scene playing in my head so clearly it's as if I'm watching real people moving and speaking; I'm merely recording it. For example, the day I was writing the first confrontation between Lady Elizabeth and Mr. Flynn--when he thinks she's an earl's daughter, flirting with Mr. Wilcox out of boredom, and she assumes he's an unethical newspaperman intent on digging up dirt to sell papers--I could see her hands tugging on her shawl and the changing shape of his mouth; I could hear their words and the tones in their voices. They did everything themselves; I just wrote it down.
3. Where did you get the idea for A LADY IN THE SMOKE?
The idea came out of my doctoral dissertation at NYU, about Victorian railway disasters, of all things. Railway crashes were something like a national obsession in the mid-1800s in England, partly because they were the first enormous, violent accidents that cut across all the social boundaries. The victims ranged from titled aristocrats to writers (Charles Dickens crawled out of one in 1865) to railway engine drivers and laborers. As a result, all kinds of people—doctors, members of parliament, newspapermen, novelists, and so on—wrote about them, trying to figure out why they happened, what could be done to prevent another one, and how to cope with all the injuries and death that came out of them. Eventually, I decided I wanted to write a novel that started with a Victorian train wreck—partly because I knew a lot about the complicated historical context and partly because extraordinary events can call forth extraordinary aspects of character.
4. What scene in A LADY IN THE SMOKE was your favorite to write?
I’d say it’s the second day of Paul’s trial, when Lady Elizabeth takes the stand, telling her story to a jury of men who have been cynical and unsympathetic so far. She finally articulates the horror of the railway crash and, for the first time, feels it with all her heart. I’ve probably read it 50 times, and I still cry with her.
5. What or who inspired you to become an author?
I was the geeky, lonely kid who read in the corner all the time, so I’d say I was first inspired to write by other authors. (I grew up on Mary Stewart, who could mix suspense and romance like no one else; A Lady in the Smoke certainly owes something to her!) Now, I have some books that draw me back to them again and again, inspiring me by the way they use language, and by the honesty with which they plumb the human heart. Lit by Mary Karr, The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney, Into the Woods by Tana French, Too Late the Phalarope by Alan Paton, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, March by Geraldine Brooks, Up a Road Slowly by Irene Hunt, and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell are some of them. (Yes, I’m all over the map.)
6. Who is your favorite fictional character from literature?
Probably Anne of Green Gables. I’m a red-head, too, and her utter fearlessness—her willingness to be exactly who she is, to love passionately, to crack a slate over someone’s head if he’s making fun of her, to laugh at herself—is something I admire hugely!
7. What is a typical day like for you?
I get my two kids off to school on the bus at 7 a.m. (a process that is a bit like herding cats sometimes), hike with friends till 9 or so, and then put my butt in my office chair. I usually write for three or four hours, on days I’m drafting or revising. (A friend asked me once if I ever took a day off of writing. I replied, Well, it’s kind of like taking a day off from brushing my teeth. I can do it; it just doesn’t feel very good!) Other days I google “Victorian crime” and just read and read. Then I pick up the kids at 3:30, take them to their various activities, walk my sweet aging beagle Rosy, put together dinner (sometimes eaten in shifts, as kids and husband come home different times), and fall into bed by 10 p.m. after reading for three minutes.
8. BAM. You're a superhero. What's your superpower?
Am I allowed to pick time travel? If not, I think I’d like to be invisible. I’ll own it: I’m terribly curious about what happens when people think no one is watching.
9. What are you currently working on?
My next book is tentatively called "Down a Dark River." It's about a detective inspector at Scotland Yard in 1880, which is three years after a wildly public scandal rocked the Yard and sent three Inspectors to prison for fraud and taking bribes. My protagonist's name is Michael Corravan, and he grew up in Whitechapel, working on the docks and bare-knuckles boxing. One morning, there's a dead girl floating down the Thames in a boat. She's beautifully dressed and clearly wealthy--in other words, a nightmare for the Yard's new superintendent if the newspapers get hold of the sensational story before the case is solved, seeing as the public is still disgusted by what they imagine to be widespread corruption and ineptitude in the plain-clothes division. Corravan begins to follow clues that seem to lead in one direction. But then another girl floats down the river, and everything he thinks he's discovered makes no sense. And then comes a third girl--and the newspapers take up the story, blaming Corravan, who must plumb his own dark past to understand the murderer, prevent another girl's death, and save his career.
10. Do you have a motto, quote or philosophy you live by?
I try to live by the words of Henry James: “Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.” The other piece of advice is this, courtesy of a friend: “As you drive around every day, at each red light, think of something you’re grateful for. It might sound a little strange, but it’s a good practice for today’s world.” Now, all that about kindness and gratitude being said, I believe to write a good book you have to be willing to grapple with the ugliest the human heart has to offer. My next book is about an embittered man, a vicious and ruthless criminal, and the London underworld.
Represented by Josh Getzler
Hannigan Getzler Agency
jgetzler@hsgagency.com
37 West 28th Street, Floor 8
New York, NY 10001
Follow Karen Odden's journey on her blog, Facebook, and Pinterest. Email Karen.Odden@gmail.com.
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