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PJ Parrish discloses the secret behind the pseudonym and a tidbit about the third Louis book.
Why the pseudonym? Reading "About the Author" -- which
so artfully avoided any gender references -- had me thinking "P.J." is
a female who feels (or for whom research proved) that male authors sell better.
-- Peg Snyder.
I am, indeed, a woman. Or to be more precise, two women (we are
sisters who collaborate) and it was pretty much an editorial decision: not
enough room on a cover for two names and a title. So we decided to use a nom
de plume. As for it being "neuter," that, too, was
calculated. Male authors do not sell "better" but
unfortunately, there is lingering bias among some, shall we say, less
enlightened readers. Indeed, I have had people at signings tell me "I
don't read women." It's extremely difficult to break into the
competitive mystery genre and our editors also felt that given the gritty,
realistic tone of our stories, our books might find a broader audience if
readers did not have any preconceived notions of "male" versus
"female" books. As an avid mystery reader, you undoubtedly know
there are countless wonderful women crime novelists, most of whom have equal
male-female audiences. (My own current fave is Minette Walters). Quite a few
women who use pseudonyms or initials. (Check out S.J Rozan, author of the
Edgar-winning Bill Smith-Lydia Chin series.) Who knows...maybe someday my
mail won't come addressed to "Mr. Parrish."
How
does your collaboration work? I would think it is hard to have two different
minds and styles at work in the same story. -- Ann Crisman.
This is Kristy answering here. Oddly enough, it works very smoothly,
even though we live in different states. The hardest part of writing a
mysteries is the intense plotting work (leaving the bread crumb trial, I
call it) and Kelly and I spend a great deal of time on the phone simply
working out story details. Then we give each other "assignments"
(like "you take the medical examiner scene in chapter 4, I'll go back
and redo the dialogue at the crime scene in 3"). The chapters
whiz back and forth in cyberspace over AOL and about once a year we meet
face to face for some hardcore work. (We're heading to Fort Myers this month
to soak up atmosphere for book three). We have found that we both have
strengths we can play to. Kelly is excellent at plotting; I'm good at
character development and description. (Kelly's first attempt at fiction at
age 10 was "The Kill"; mine was "The Cat Who
Understood." Nothing has changed.) When one of us gets stuck, we will
lateral to the other. With the pressure in genre writing to produce a book a
year, we are grateful for two brains. We also have been able to settle on a
style that is a blend of both of our voices. We've always gotten along well
as sibs, so the ego thing is not an issue. We seem to be able to tell each
other when something stinks. So what you are getting is not a solo but
harmony. Hey, it worked for Lennon and McCartney....
I
read a lot of mysteries and I think Louis Kincaid is one of the most appealing
characters to come along in a long time. Did you base him on a real person? And
why did you decide to make him so young and of mixed race?
Louis
was inspired by Kelly's great-granddaughters, Charlotte and Jackie, who are
biracial. We were interested in exploring the impact of growing up biracial in
today's society where race continues to be a polarizing issue. Louis, as he
himself has said, "walks in two worlds," which gives him a unique
perspective. As for his youth (he is 25 in "Dead of Winter") we wanted
to create a cop who was not experienced and already jaded. (Too many of those in
the genre already, we think!) He is still idealistic about law enforcement and
has much to learn about his chosen job, the world and himself. In plotting
our books, we try very hard to weave Louis's character development into the
action. Louis learns something about himself through his experiences, just as we
all do.
Your books have a strong sense of place. How
do you pick the locations you write about?
A. We
were born and raised in the Michigan and spent summers around the Houghton Lake
and Mio area, the site of the fictitious town of Loon Lake. Kelly also went to
college in the Upper Peninsula. So it was natural to have Louis raised in
Michigan by his foster parents. We both love the remote beauty of "up
north," as Michiganders call it, and the cold isolation of winter there
seemed a perfect place for a story about death -- literally and figuratively. As
for Mississippi (where the first book takes place), Kelly has lived there for
many years and was fascinated by the haunted feeling there. It is a state that
has made tremendous strides in overcoming its past yet still is plagued by its
ghosts. The third Louis Kincaid book will have Louis relocating to the
Gulf coast of Florida, another "small town" atmospheric locale.
(Despite Louis's ambitions, we don't see him as a big-city cop) .
How
important is research in your books?
Research
is vital to any writer of mystery or suspense. Readers are incredibly savvy
today about police procedure (thanks to TV shows like Law and Order and CSI, the
new drama about a forensics detection unit.) If you get even a small detail
wrong, readers will catch it. We have cultivated police sources who can back us
up for accuracy, and almost anything can be found on the internet (from diagrams
of wound profiles to virtual autopsies). There are also some great police
resource books available to laymen -- gruesome but valuable. That said, we still
get tripped up from time to time -- as our readers nice enough to point out. In Dead
of Winter for instance, we have Louis hearing the a loon's call. As one of
our Michigan readers point out, loons need open water and the birds migrate in
winter. We used to vacation in northern Michigan as kids but never in winter so
were wrong on the bird thing. (Maybe Louis, having one too many that night,
heard them in his head? I think not.) Details, details, details...but still very
important.
Why
did you decide to set your books in the early 1980s instead of the present?
For
one very simple reason. We wanted a more "old fashioned" feel to the
procedures Louis uses to solve his mysteries and to get this we felt we had to
go back to pre-DNA days. The advent of DNA testing has drastically changed
law enforcement and the judicial system in recent years (in the last decade, DNA
testing has uncovered proof that 65 innocent people have been sent to prison and
death row). Also, in the early 80s criminal profiling was still dismissed as a
pseudo-science. As the Louis Kincaid series progresses, we plan to deal with
these exciting new tools. In fact, the third Louis book, which we are now
working on, will feature a young female FBI "profiler," whom Louis, as
a "traditional" cop has trouble accepting at first.
About Louis Kincaid
Louis Kincaid was born in Blackpool, Mississippi, on Nov. 18, 1959. (For you
astrologists, that makes him a Scorpio with a Libra rising; his mercury is in
Aries, which accounts for his love of police work). He is six foot, 160
pounds, with light-brown skin and gray eyes. He drives a rather beat-up 1965
white Mustang, and his tastes in music tend to run to rhythm and blues as well
as classic rock 'n' roll. He is the reluctant owner of a stray cat named Issy,
which he usually just calls "the cat."
His mother was Lila Louis Coleman, who was a young black woman from Blackpool.
His father was a white drifter, Jordan Kincaid, who deserted Lila soon after
Louis was born. Louis has two older siblings, a half-sister named Yolanda, and a
half-brother named Robert. Lila died in 1984 from cirrhosis of the liver, but no
one knows the whereabouts of Jordan Kincaid. Because of the pressures of
the small town atmosphere, Lila decided to give Louis up to foster care at age
8. He was taken to Michigan, where, after a series of foster homes, he went to
live with Phillip and Francis Lawrence in suburban Detroit. He grew up in the
care of the white couple, coming to love them as the parents he never knew.
Although he attempted to find his siblings, he was never able to track them
down.
Louis attended University of Michigan, where he lettered in track, getting a
degree in pre-law in 1980. But influenced by childhood memories of police he had
seen in his neighborhood and on TV (especially the Detroit race riots of the
60s), he decided to go to the police academy. He graduated in 1981 and applied
to his dream job, the Detroit Police Department. But with city cutbacks at hand,
he was forced to accept a job with the Ann Arbor (Mich.) police force. He
qualified as "expert" on the gun range, but saw only routine action.
In December, 1983, he received news through a distant relative in Mississippi
that his mother was dying. Although he had not seen her in nearly 20 years, he
took a leave of absence and returned to Blackpool.
There, he took a temporary position with the small sheriff's department led
by Sheriff Sam Dodie. After his mother's death, his return to Michigan was
postponed by his involvement in the case to identify the decades-old remains of
a lynching victim (the case is detailed in Dark of The Moon). He endures a
near-hanging himself and an gunshot wound before he identifies the victim as
Eugene Graham, a young black man who had disappeared from Blackpool 25 years
ago. Louis also testified in federal court in the trial of the deputy who
attempted to hang him, Larry Cutter.
Louis returned to Michigan in February of 1984 only to find his job with the
Ann Arobor force frozen in budgets cuts. After an idle period, he accepted a
low-paying position with the 8-man police force in Loon Lake, a northern
Michigan resort town. There, he became entangled in a complex and violent case
involving a man bent on avenging the deaths of his children by assassinating the
Loon Lake cops. (detailed in Dead of Winter). Louis also falls in love with Zoe
Devereaux, an artist. But the affair fell apart under the pressure of the case.
Zoe went back to Chicago, accidentally leaving behind her cat, Isolde. Louis
reluctantly adopted the cat and renamed it Issy.
In March, 1985, Louis received a call from his ex-boss Sam Dodie, who retired
to Sereno Key, on Florida's southern gulf coast. Broke and with no job prospects
in Michigan, Louis accepted Dodie's offer to work as a private investigator on a
murder case in Sereno Key. (detailed in the third Louis Kincaid novel, still in
the works).
Unless otherwise stated, this interview was conducted at the time the book was first published, and is reproduced with permission of the publisher. This interview may not be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the copyright holder.
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