Interview with Susan Wittig Albert

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What books did you read as a child?
I read and reread the Little House books, by Laura Ingalls Wilder (and grew up to write a book about
their secret co-author, Laura's daughter, Rose Wilder Lane). I also read Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys (and grew up to be both Carolyn Keene and Franklin W. Dixon.) I loved reading. We lived on a small farm, and I looked forward all week to a trip to the library in town. Reading was my entertainment, my doorway onto a big world, my escape from an unhappy home (my father was an alcoholic), and my solace.

What was the most recent book you read? 

I'm currently reading The Gown, by Jennifer Robson. I love the novel’s premise (the intersecting lives of two women who worked on Princess Elizabeth’s wedding gown in 1947) and its portrayal of women's enduring friendships and care for one another.

What drew you to writing mysteries? 

I write the kind of books I like to read. I enjoy reading realistic, tightly plotted books that hold my attention and portray characters who act with purpose and who have a problem to solve. I like stories that engage me, don’t give me all the necessary information all at once (or too soon), that keep me guessing, keep me asking questions. And I like stories that teach me something I didn’t know—about people, places, present and past times. The best mysteries do that, I think. I wanted to write books like that.

If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be? 
Just keep on doing what you're doing, Susan--you're on the right track. Follow your instincts and pay attention. Oh, and you might lighten up a bit. The outcome will surprise--and delight--you.

What kind of research do you do, and how long do you spend researching before beginning a book. 
That depends on whether it's one of the contemporary or historical mystery series or a standalone. The research for A Plain Vanilla Murder took (off and on) a week or so before I started to write and continued as I wrote. Because the subjects are highly topical and of current news interest, most of it was done on the Internet. For the contemporary mysteries, I do the research as I write. I'm back and forth to the Internet all day, looking for details and material to deepen what I think of as the story’s “information value.”

(For a review of A Plain Vanilla Murder click here.)

The pre-writing research for The General's Women  (the story of Eisenhower’s driver, Kay Summersby, during/after WW2), took at least 3 months, before I started to write and was mostly book research—Eisenhower biographies and books about the war. Then, when I began to dig into Kay Summersby's post-war life, I used Internet newspaper archives and kept digging as I wrote, finding out more and more. Nobody had ever looked into Kay’s story so I was doing original research and the deeper I dug, the more I wanted to know. There was one person I wanted to interview: the still-living editor who knows the backstory of Kay’s second memoir, but he is inaccessible. Frustrating!

I put the same kind of research effort into Loving Eleanor, but since the primary materials (the 30 years of letters between Lorena Hickok and Eleanor Roosevelt) were held at the Franklin Roosevelt Presidential Library, I made a couple of trips there (Hyde Park, NY). There were some other places I would like to have visited (Lorena’s apartment in New York, her house on Long Island, her third-floor rooms in the White House) but those were off-limits, for various reasons. Another kind of frustration—but that’s the story of research. There’s always something you’ll never know.

The research for A Wilder Rose (a book about Rose Wilder Lane, the daughter of the woman who is recognized as the sole author of the Little House books) actually began when I was in grad school in the early 1970s. I thought at first I might write Rose’s biography, but when I learned that there was a biography underway (William Holtz's The Ghost in the Little House, published in 1992) I decided to write a novel about the writing of the Little House books. It took another 20 years before that book was done.

How long does it take you to write a book?
For the mysteries, I usually set aside 3-4 months for a book. I work best when I have a string of consecutive days to write, without interruption. Otherwise, it's harder to manage the necessary continuity of plot, character, and voice.

On the other hand, A WILDER ROSE took over 30 years, start to finish.

How do you market your books? 
That's changed over the years. In the 1990s and through about 2010, I did a lot of book travel, speaking at libraries, garden clubs, bookstores, conferences--anywhere I could find an audience. That was fun and useful, because it helped to build personal relationships with readers, many of whom I still hear from.

Now, though, I am an author-publisher and most of my marketing is done online. About 75% of the hardcovers are sold to libraries, so I use email marketing (through IBPA, the Independent Book Publishers Association) to reach out to them. The remaining hardcovers are sold through bookstores and online retailers, and I market them through reviews in the usual trade publications (Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly).

The e-books are sold online, directly to readers. I spend a lot of time and effort letting readers know when the books are available, via my website, blog, and social media (mostly Facebook but also Instagram and Twitter). I use NetGalley to get ARCs to people who might write a review. I also do a monthly direct e-letter mailing to readers, and occasional mailings of a different e-letter.

If you could invite five people - living or dead - to a dinner party, who would they be?
I would invite Kay Summersby, Gertrude Bell, Lorena Hickok, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Rose Wilder Lane. Each of these women is a character in one of my books or in a writing project that hasn’t yet become a book. I have some very pointed (and very personal) questions for each one of them.