Thank
you to Liana Laverentz, author of Thin Ice
and reviewer Cynthia Murphy for a wonderful, in depth interview!
It took 17
years to get Thin Ice published, and it
has definitely found a large
audience. Why do you think traditional publishers passed on this
novel?
Because it didn’t fit into the parameters of what they
thought would be a commercial success. It’s
not part of a trend, it’s longer than most romances, it features a
sports
hero--I was told women are annoyed enough by the amount of time their
men watch
sports, they don’t want to read about a character who reminds them of
the time
or reason their men aren’t paying attention to them--and it was too
“linear.” Meaning it didn’t have enough
diverse plot threads in it to hold a reader’s interest.
The focus was too tight for a book of that
length.
What inspired you to write
this story, and how did you stay motivated in spite of the rejection?
I think at the time, I was getting rejection letters that
said my stories didn’t have enough conflict.
I’ll admit I was confused about what constituted conflict in a
story
back then. So I started with the conflict. What could cause the most conflict between a
woman and a man in a romance? I came up
with a woman in a healing profession and a man in a violent one. It didn’t start out to be a story about
domestic violence, it just sort of grew into one as I learned more
about the
characters and tried to personalize the main conflict.
In the end, Emily’s internal conflict was
about personal safety, and Eric’s was simply his longing for a home and
family.
How did I stay motivated?
Well, the motivation came and went over the years, as I worked
on other
projects, but Thin Ice has always
been my favorite, and so I kept coming back to it, and each time I
revised it,
I would fall in love with it all over again.
How did the story
change
with the many rewrites over the years?
Mostly the external elements changed, as the times changed,
but the characters grew and deepened as well.
That came from getting to know them so well through the many
re-writes. I just kept adding layers to
their psyches—and then I had to strip it down again, to keep the focus
on the
main internal conflicts. To write a
believable character, you need to know everything you possibly can
about them,
but only what’s pertinent to the story can appear in the story.
As for the external elements, nobody
had cell phones when I first wrote Thin Ice.
I had to add them in. For another,
Emily needed a very large car
for a special reason, and they’d stopped making the car I had chosen
for her—a Crown Victoria Station Wagon. I had to go shopping online for another big
car, her Suburban. That was fun,
including a friendly disagreement with a car aficionado friend, who
insisted
she needed a Jeep Grand Cherokee, because it was classier.
The NHL also reorganized several times over
the years, and each time I had to re-write the book to reflect the
addition of
new teams and re-structuring of the conference divisions.
The hockey team Eric plays for is in Minnesota. When I originally wrote Thin Ice, the
North Stars were the only NHL team in Minnesota. So I created the St. Paul Saints, to be their
arch-rivals. But by the time I was
sending out the manuscript a second time, the North Stars had moved to Dallas. By the last time I re-wrote it, the Minnesota
Wild was in St. Paul,
where my
original team, the St. Paul Saints, had originated. So
I had to go back to the original concept of
two teams in Minnesota
who were
arch-rivals, but this time my team was the Minneapolis Saints, instead
of the
St. Paul Saints. The NHL had also added
several new Stanley Cup champions over the years, and so that had to be
re-written as well. Now I understand the
St. Paul Saints are a baseball team.
There is a glitch in the book that
I totally missed, and I am still waiting for someone to notice and
write to me
about it. I’ll have to come up with a
special prize for them when they do J. I remember the day I realized it.
But it was too late. The book was
already out.
You’ve included
a dark
element with the emphasis on the long-term effects of domestic
violence.
Why did you include such a dark topic in a romance novel?
I like to make my stories as real as possible. Darkness
is a part of life. Once I started research
into the subject, I
found there were many ways to present the same conflict through several
characters, since each person’s experience with and reaction to
domestic
violence is different. Overall, I wanted
to say that domestic violence can be found in any type of family, rich
or poor,
and can happen to any woman, educated or uneducated, young or old,
homebody or
career woman. Domestic violence knows no
social boundaries.
You are very
sensitive with
your treatment of the topic of domestic violence. Is this a
subject that
is close to your heart?
It has become so through my research, but didn’t start out
that way. I am now more aware of the
signs and ramifications of abuse in a family, and can spot abusive
situations
in a heartbeat, but did the story arise out of an abusive situation of
my own? If so, it was subconsciously. A few years ago, I happened across my
journals, written while I was in high school, and was of course
obsessed with
boys. As I read the entries, and all the
heartbreak in them, because this boy or that one didn’t call or show up
or didn’t
treat me right in some way, I realized how lucky I was that they dumped
me,
because with my new awareness, I could spot several abusive situations
in the
making.
I figure must have had some kind of internal radar, even
then, that sent out signals that I was not the kind of girl who would
stand for
such treatment for long, and that was why they moved on to more
amenable
ground. Abusers look for victims, and I
apparently wasn’t enough of one to keep their interest.
I’ve always had a mind of my own in
relationships. But I never associated
that with being dumped so often until recently J.
I think my interest in the subject came from always having a
soft spot for the underdog in any situation, and what is more
oppressive than
living with an abuser? As women, we’re
socialized to go along to get along, to be people pleasers, to put
relationships first above all things--including ourselves--and when our
relationships aren’t working, we tend to look to ourselves for the
solutions,
thinking there must be something wrong with us in that we can’t make
this
relationship work. This is exactly the
kind of mindset an abuser looks for in a partner and takes advantage of
by exploiting
that self-doubt, and convincing her that yes, “she” is the problem, and
if she
would only do xyz (lose weight, dress better, keep the kids quiet, keep
the
house clean, stop talking to her friends and family, have dinner ready
on time,
be less demanding, be more sexually available, etc.) the relationship
would be
just fine. But it doesn’t work. Abusers are broken people, and we can’t fix
what we didn’t break.
Emily and Eric
are
well-crafted characters. How did you develop such strong
characters and
their backgrounds?
By spending so much time with them, and getting to know them
inside and out. The more time I spent
with them, the more layers they revealed to me.
Emily and Eric are as real to me--maybe even more so--than many
of the
people in my life. Most people don’t
open themselves up to others as completely as Emily and Eric did to me. In our hurry, hurry, get it done now culture
of instant gratification, we don’t always take the time to get to know
the
people in our lives—or in the case of writers, our characters--as well
as we
could. It makes for a lot of missed
opportunities, because getting to know the people in our lives,
bonding, making
memories, is what it’s all about. At the
end of your life, it’s not going to be about how much money you made or
how
much stuff you acquired, but whose life you touched, and who touched
yours.
Thin Ice
is very different from your other books. Do you plan to write
more novels
like it in the future?
Oh, definitely. My
other novels were targeted to a certain market, because the market was
limited
at the time, and I wanted to sell a book.
Now, with the advent of e-publishers and small presses, I can
write the
books I want to write, the books that are in my heart, like Thin
Ice was and is, and I have no doubt
I will be able to find a home for them.
If you could
give your book to one person, who would it be and why?
I would give it to a woman who has been abused, or is being
abused, to let her know she’s not alone and there is hope.
In most cases, women who are being abused
don’t even know they are being abused.
Abuse comes in many forms—including physical, mental, emotional,
spiritual, financial, and sexual. Most
abused women are conditioned to think what they are experiencing is
normal, and
due to the isolation abusers impose on their victims, aren’t exposed to
the
kind of information that would let them know otherwise.
A book like Thin Ice might open her eyes to the
fact that something is wrong in
her relationship with her partner, and set her on a path of looking for
more
information. She may not choose to
change her situation, but I would much rather that she consciously make
that choice
out of awareness, rather than stay in her situation out of fear and
ignorance.
What is your
writing
process?
I write the first draft without
stopping, so I know how it ends, and can work toward that end while I’m
editing. I also write in layers. First I write the dialogue, straight through,
until the book is done. Then I go back
and decide who has the most at stake in each scene, and write the scene
from
that character’s point of view. Then I
add in the stage directions (who crossed the room, slammed the door, or
gripped
the pen too tightly, etc.). Then I go
back and make sure I have the five senses covered, and then I go back
and add
in clues, or foreshadowing.
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Last, but not least, I go in and
tighten the focus, cut out every word that doesn’t need to be there,
and pretty
it all up. It’s the last part that gets
really intense for me. I try to do what
I call “hold the whole book in my head” at one time, and while I may be
at the
bank or grocery store or school function in body, my mind and spirit
are at
home with my characters. It’s during
these times that people perceive me as vacant or spacey J. The lights are on, but nobody’s home.
What advice
would
you give new authors?
If you don’t write your stories, nobody’s
going to do it for you. Don’t wake up
one day and wish you’d had the courage to follow your dreams. Do it now.
Make the time, and be persistent in your efforts.
Polite, but persistent. Never give
up. Ever.
If it’s important to you, then find way to do it today. Don’t put it off until you have the time,
because you will never have enough time in your life to get everything
you want
to do, done. It just won’t happen.
So make time for you. Make your writing
time sacred. And when your behind is not
in the
chair, take classes, join a critique group, join a writer’s group, and
partner
up with a friend who supports and encourages you, and will help to keep
you on
track.
To help people figure out how to do all of this,
I host a discussion the first Thursday of every month at the Long and
Short
Reviews Yahoo Loop on Finding Your Balance.
To read my articles on Finding Your Balance go to http://longandshortarchives.blogspot.com/2008/01/article-finding-your-balance-pt-1.html
and http://longandshortarchives.blogspot.com/2008/02/article-finding-your-balance-pt-2.html
then mark your calendar to join us at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LongAndShortRomanceReviews/?yguid=306787988
For more information on me and my books, please go to www.lianalaverentz.com
Thank you, and have a great day!