Michelle Cox, author of A Girl Like You and A Ring of Truth
When will your next book be published?
My next book, A Promise Given, will be out April 24, 2018 with She Writes Press. It is the third book in the Henrietta and Inspector Howard series.
How did you become interested in writing?
I think I was always interested in writing. I used to try to write rip-offs of Louisa May Alcott’s books, but I always failed miserably. So then I started trying to illustrate her books instead; I guess I could endure bad art more than I could bad writing!
When I got to college, I decided to pursue literature (note: not creative writing) after a brief two-year stint as a pre-med. But even then, I still wasn’t ready to write. I tried to get a job as an editor at one point, but instead ended up in customer service in a graphic arts company and then as a social worker in a nursing home—you know, the natural progression of anyone who has graduated with an English degree. From there I got married and had kids and then got distracted for another twenty-ish years. It’s only recently that I decided maybe it was time to finally try writing a novel. I think it took me all this time to work up my courage.
What is a day in the life of an author like?
Horrible. No, just kidding. I love the time I actually get to spend writing whatever manuscript I happen to be on. The promotion is the tough part.
Do you write a certain number of words, do you write in the morning or evening, etc?
I always write the first thing in the morning, while my brain is still relatively clear. During the school year, my kids get on the bus at 6:50 am, so as soon as they’re gone, I’m upstairs at my desk, coffee in tow. I allow myself a brief glance at social media, but I don’t let myself respond to anything—unless it would be some emergency notification, like I hit the New York Times bestseller list, say. So far that hasn’t happened yet, but you never know. If it does, hopefully I’ll be ready. But barring anything like that, I ignore my inbox and instead open up my document in Word and just start. Summertime, on the other hand, when the kids are roaming free around here, is a bit of a different story. Then I really have to get creative with my time.
I don’t have a certain word count. I try to limit myself to writing on the manuscript for only one hour a day, but it usually spills over into an hour and a half or even two. I have to restrict myself, though, because after that long, my brain gets a little mushy, and, to be honest, the whole rest of the day (until I have to switch back to my mom job when the kids come home) has to be spent writing articles, blogs, newsletters, interviews or doing any number of other PR/marketing tasks. There is a ton more I could be doing, but I only have so many hours!
Do you plot the entire book first, then write or plot as you go?
I write a pretty detailed outline before I begin. I need to know the whole arc of the main story, which is usually the mystery portion of the book, as well as how all the subplots and story arcs are going to progress and weave in and out. Also, since this is a series, I’ve found that knowing the basic premise of the next book helps me to plot the current one. I can’t really end one book without knowing how the next begins. This requires a lot of extra thinking, but it’s worth it when I sit down to write the next book, as I already have something to go on.
That’s not to say, of course, that things don’t change as I go. That happens all the time. Certain ideas or developments that I had originally planned sometimes just don’t fit right, or maybe an entirely new idea occurs to me that seems better. So it’s definitely a flexible process.
Do you use real people and places as models for your books?
For book one of the series,
A Girl Like You, I did actually base the main character, Henrietta, on a woman that I met while I was working as a social worker in a nursing home. I borrowed a lot of elements from her life, such as her “man-stopping body” (which is how she used to describe herself to me!); her family history; her long string of strange, risqué jobs during the Depression; a neighborhood boy that followed her everywhere; and a lesbian gang that she worked with in a burlesque house in Chicago in the 1930’s who served as her protectors. I mean, right there, you’ve got the makings of a great novel! Then all I had to do was invent a murder and the aloof Inspector Howard to make it a mystery, and it just progressed from there.
As for the places, many of them, such as the Aragon and the Green Mill, are real, but some are made up, too, like Clive’s family estate, Highbury, in Winnetka or even Poor Pete’s, the bar Henrietta originally works at as a 26-girl.
As the series goes along, so many new characters come into the mix. None of them are any real person, but are sometimes close copies or amalgamations of people I’ve met in my life. Oddly, no one recognizes themselves, which is probably a good thing!
Who is your favorite author?
That’s a hard one. Really, my all time favorite author is Charles Dickens, followed closely by Anthony Trollope. But that’s not what most people want to hear, I’ve found. They’re more interested in what contemporary authors I enjoy reading. And if that’s the question, then I’d have to say that I really love Lauren Willig, Beatriz Williams, Helen Simonson, and Kate Morton. None of these, you’ll notice, are straight-up mystery writers. This should also give you a hint as to the direction I’m trying to take the series.
How do you promote your books?
Ah. The million dollar question. Promotion is so hard and, as I mentioned above, it takes up most of my “writing” time. I do employ a publicist, Booksparks, to help me get some of the bigger hits I’ve been lucky enough to get. They’ve been great so far in getting me reviewed in Kirkus, Booklist, and Library Journal, for example, as well as getting me on the “top-reads” lists of a lot of online media sources, such as Buzzfeed, Popsugar, Culturalist, Redbook, Elle, etc.
Still, there’s a lot to be done on one’s own as well—an endless list, actually. I maintain a blog, “Novel Notes of Local Lore,” which features stories of Chicago’s forgotten residents, and I put out a monthly newsletter, as well. I do tons of book signings, both locally and around the country, and I speak to various groups, either as a solo act or part of a panel. I also do book clubs, radio interviews and podcasts, and I try to write and publish as many articles as I can get out there.
It’s all about making yourself visible, which is easy to do in this modern social media culture, but hard, too, because you’re competing with millions of other people for a few seconds of bandwidth. There is no more “fifteen minutes of fame”—it’s more like fifteen seconds!
It can become really overwhelming, so I do what I can each day and then try to turn it off. It helps to just focus on the actual writing; after all, that’s where my joy lies and it’s what all the rest of this is for!
For a review of
A Girl Like You, click here.
Reeling from the sudden death of her husband, Inspector Agnes Luthi has been transferred from the Financial Crimes Division to the Violent Crimes Division of Laussane. In Swiss Vendetta by Tracee de Hahn, Agnes is about to leave for home at the beginning of severe ice storm when a call comes in about a death at the aristocratic Chateau Vallotton in Ville-sur-Lac.
