Interview With Cara Black
http://www.carablack.com/
Aimee's a thoroughly modern Parisian who works in computer security. Her father was a flic, her grandfather too, giving her a criminal investigative background via osmosis. Raised by her father after her mother abandoned them, Aimee grew up doing homework on the marble Commissariat floor and hearing flic's tales over poker at the kitchen table. When her father left the force, joining the detective agency his father started, she began to help out. She often gets pulled into criminal investigations, against her better judgment.
2) What made you decide to set the series in France?
Sometimes, I think Paris chose me. Many have asked me where I got the idea. The inspiration came from many places but the seed was planted in Paris. In the Marais. My first introduction to the Marais was in 1984 when my friend, a Parisian, invited me to explore a part of the city that not many knew of at that time. We descended from the green open-backed bus down the narrow cobblestone streets and past the 16th century hotel particulars, still as yet ungentrified. Cobblers, Yiddish bookshops and Jewish restaurants with Middle Eastern food lined the rue des Rosiers. And I knew this quartier was special, unique and in a very odd way felt like “home“. I saw former aristocrats mansions with plaques commemorating victims of the Gestapo executions shot at that spot. And then my friend gestured toward an old stone building and told me the story of her mother’s life. All afternoon, as we walked in the Marais, she recounted the story of her mother, a young Jewish schoolgirl, who hid from the Germans. And how her sisters, brother and parents were taken by the French police under German orders, and how they never returned.
Her mother’s story haunted me as did the Marais with itÕs layers of history. If only those stones could talk! Ten years later, I re-visited France, staying in the south on a lavendar farm with my husband Jun, and young son, Shusei. We spent our last few days in Paris, around the corner from Place des Vosges the magnificent square once home to medieval jousting tournaments built by Henri the fourth. At night I walked around and my friends mother's story came back to me, as vivid as if she’d stood next to me on those narrow cobbled streets.
Arriving back in San Francisco, I suffered jet lag, couldn’t sleep. So in the middle of the night, I sat down at the computer and Hartmuth’s story poured out, then Sarah’s. I was in a writing group at the time, and this group process helped me clarify my ideas and thoughts to help weave the characters and their lives in a thread that spans fifty years. Three and a half years later, Murder in the Marais, emerged.
I visited Paris many times after that, researching and documenting history and daily life from that time. I went to the Jewish Documentation center. It was important to find ration cards, see the uniforms school children wore and many other details so intrinsic to that era. And the most important, to feel those cobbles under my feet again, smell the espresso and scent of Gauloises. I met and interviewed three of the four female French private detectives who had their own firms at the time. One remains a good friend and through her introductions, I’ve met private investigators and the former police chief of Paris, now retired. But disturbing to me, were the riots and demonstrations in Paris protesting immigration, so reminiscent of the feeling of the Vichy laws against Jews during the war. It felt as if history repeated itself. I tried to understand modern day France’s reactions to new waves of immigrants, the legacy of their colonial empire.
On my last visit to Paris for research on my third book, I had the fantastic opportunity to tour the Quai des OrfŽvres, the police headquarters, and see the “office” of Inspector Maigret, Simenon's famous detective.
3) Do you put any of yourself in Aimee? Are you as Hip as Aimee?
I wish. And I wish I had her apartment on Ile St. Louis.
4) So, I noticed that you ride a Moped. And you actually admit it! Is it a safe way to travel?
Uh..oh. Well no endorsement but in Paris I ride a bike or walk or hit the Metro...but I often wish I had my old moped. Saves those legs on the Montmartre hills!
The Mom job...a preschool teacher, running the espresso machine in the Basel (Switzerland) train station, teaching English in Tokyo.
6) How much research goes into your books?
A lot. But never enough, as I tell my husband, when those cheap RT fares to Paris come across my eyes and I feel the need to jump on the plane and really see how that corner looks and would that shop be there, could she really jump over that fence etc. But I really fact check everything, and make sure that all the Metro exits really are where she exits. Geographically you can follow along in the book, via the map and go where she goes. Sometimes the little passages and narrow streets aren't on the map in the book but are on a bigger Paris map.
7) The SOHO books all look great. I love the design of them. Are you going to take any of the photos used for the covers?
Thank you! Yes, they used my photo on the cover of Murder in the Sentier. The scene you see was taken from the rue St. Denis with several streetwalkers behind me peering into the courtyard with garment sweat shops in historic hotel particulars and a very wonderful one in the back, Hotel St. Chaumond, that unfortunately you can barely make out.
8) How does your creative process work? Do you have set writing hours? Do you work from an outline?
I work in the mornings, during the day, until I pick my son up at school. The outlining I do is with colored post-its...since the plots get complicated and different points of view, it's easy to move them around. I also tape butcher paper on the walls and steal my son's markers and do vague broad notes and what to include.
9) Who are some of the authors you enjoy reading?
There are so many. Right now I'm reading The Piano shop on the Left Bank - wonderful book and a very nice author who I met who lives in Paris. Paretsky, Rendell, PD James, and many others.
10) What’s the coolest thing about being a writer?
I get to go to Paris every day with no passport, avoid those long security lines in the airport and the hassle of paying extra for baggage in those Paris taxis! And I'm home by three pm.
11) Do you enjoy the signings and Mystery Conventions?
Sure. I love meeting people who like mysteries and who ask me about Aimee, her dog Miles Davis and Rene’ her partner, a dwarf and computer wizard. People always want to know about Rene’ and want more of him. After sitting in small room at a keyboard for a year or more, it's great to get out in the world and breath and talk about these characters who've you've lived with for so long.
12) Where did the idea for Rene’ come from? Not too many mysteries with dwarves in them that I know of except George Chesbro.
Nice segue. Here's a generalization but often when people look at a dwarf they see only her or his limitations and diminutive size. Not the possibilities. We had a dwarf apply for a job at the preschool I taught at and this was the case. This short statured person was hired at a neighboring school. Later, we all realized we were the losers as she was an excellent teacher and the children loved and learned so much from her. So, I hope to explore more of Rene’s issues in later books.
13) Your books have a wonderful feeling of place in them. Having been to France, I get flashbacks reading them. Have you spent much time there?
Never enough. But I lived in Basel, Switzerland on the French/German border and often went to Paris and France. I've stayed for long periods of time in France and in Paris and went twice last year. I'm wearing out my friend's couch in Montmartre!
14) If you had a week to do what ever you wanted, wherever you wanted, what would you do ?
Only a week? Can I use a Lear jet? Walk the streets of Prague at night, spend a day on Paros, ride the moped to the artesian well in the middle of the island, (my favorite Greek island), eat noodles in the old part of Peking, dive in the corals off Madagascar, see the orangutans in Indonesia, be given the keys to Paris by the mayor who'd allow me peek inside any wonderful building I wanted, hang out with the computer security division of the Brigage Criminelle and do a ride along with the flics, have a night to take all the Paris night photos I want, there's more but I guess with jet lag, this would about take care of it.
15) After getting the first book published, I imagine that you are expected to get books out on schedule. Does that make the writing harder?
My editor is great and says when the book is done then the book is done.
16) Is there anything thing about being a published writer that you weren't expecting? Any thing about the whole thing that surprised you? Did it give you any insight having a husband who owns a bookstore?
My husband encourages me to 'get out there' and talk about my book and says if I don't do it, it won't get done. And I'm surprised that people think I make a lot of money. I have to say most of us don't do it for the money, we have someone else to support us.
17) Okay, in the first book you had neo nazis, in book two you had illegal immigrants and political intrigue, what is in store in book three?
70's European terrorists, Senegalese in sweatshop conditions in the Sentier and clues to Aimee's mothers disappearance.
18) Do you have any self set limits in terms of what you will and won’t write about?
I don't like serial killers and I'm just about to break that rule.
19) If people see you at a convention, what could they say to really make your day?
Take my airplane ticket to Paris...you need it more than I do. Thank you for writing about things that matter.
20) What’s the one thing always in your refrigerator?
Good French CHAMPAGNE AND DOG SNAUSSAGE
