House of Glass
Page 24
But several aspects of the case were impossible for me to forget. One in particular: the mother was taken from the home by one of the killers and driven to a bank where she was forced to withdraw money. She believed that when she handed over the money, her family would be freed. She knew her husband had been beaten and her children were vulnerable and defenseless.
I can’t imagine a more desperate moment for a mother. I decided to retell the story with a different outcome, giving her a bit of luck, a few unexpected allies and strength she didn’t realize she possessed, from a source she had forgotten.
Like House of Glass, your previous novel, Garden of Stones, also featured a mother in a harrowing situation, forced to make a difficult decision in order to save her family. Is this a recurring theme in all your novels? What is the message you’re trying to send about motherhood?
When my agent, Barbara Poelle, pointed out this recurrent theme, I was surprised. I hadn’t noticed that it was such a consistent thread. Soon, though, I came to see that it is the element that binds my work in all my disparate genres.
It’s probably no accident that all my published novels were written in 2007 or later. In that year, my children were twelve and fourteen, no longer children but not yet adults, and I had experienced some of the challenges of raising adolescents and glimpsed the long shadow of the challenges to come. A mother of an infant is fiercely protective; a mother of a teen—a person with some autonomy—must face the terrifying fact that she can’t protect against all the danger in the world. I think my stories were an effort to direct all this helpless maternal protectiveness and fear.
Now that my children are nineteen and twenty-one, they have experienced and survived any number of hurts, and I have been forced to admit that I am no longer the axis around which their lives turn. This, too, is an aching change for a mother. But there is recompense: the older they get, the more frequent the glimpses of their own strength and capability.
In House of Glass, both children are instrumental in helping the family survive. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I think this reflects my own shift to seeing my children as powerful on their own.
Is there a message there? Other than “Parenthood is not for the weak,” I’m not sure. Maybe it would be more apt to see my work as a sort of therapy journal....
What was your toughest challenge, your greatest pleasure and your biggest surprise as you were writing House of Glass?
I was going through a divorce while writing this book, and as a result, my poor fictional couple was saddled with all kinds of angst that wasn’t the least bit germane to the story. There was a memorable three-way phone call in which my agent and editor gently broke it to me that I had to go back to the drawing board and, in essence, reimagine these characters while remembering that they are not me. I don’t think I will ever really learn this lesson—all my characters are me in some sense, from the most heinous criminal to the bratty kid down the street—but this experience did teach me to create a little distance in a very crowded creative realm.
My greatest pleasure was probably joking around with my sister about “her” character. Early in the first draft, Jen’s sister, Tanya, was a feckless sort who brought about her own ignominious end—and also drank too much and had really trashy taste. I loved calling Kristen up and saying “You’ll never believe what you did today.” I figured it was only fair, since the early version of Jen was uptight, snobbish and dismissive. As the book progressed, I was able to report to Kristen that “her” character got stronger and wiser while Jen had to learn a few hard lessons. I’m very lucky that Kristen is a forgiving sort.
As for my biggest surprise—I suppose it would be the effortlessness of writing Ted, the husband. As someone who spends a fair amount of time bashing middle-aged white guys for any number of sins and irritations, I was surprised to find that I not only understood his motivation, his emotions and shame and longing, but that I had great compassion for him.
Can you describe your writing process? Do you outline first or dive right in? Do you write scenes consecutively or jump around? Do you have a schedule or a routine? A lucky charm?
I am still searching for my best process, and I’m getting the feeling that search will last a lifetime! True to my restless nature, I try lots of different things. I’ve written with detailed outlines and none at all; in chronological order and jumping around.
I do keep a detailed guide for every book and series. This includes a table of characters with their most salient characteristics, a timeline and a list of significant places. As for schedule…I adore the fact that this job lets me set my own hours. I work throughout the day—from first sip of coffee through the glass of wine that marks the end of most evenings—but I take breaks whenever I feel like it: to do chores, go to the gym or hiking, have lunch with friends, hang out with my daughter after school.
I have a variety of talismans in my office. There are three little plastic penguins, a mini Etch A Sketch on which my son wrote I Love You when he was eight or ten, a tiara given to me by a writing friend and the card that came with the flowers my brother sent to mark the publication of my first novel.
What can you tell us about your next novel?
In January of 2013, I visited a “man camp” in an oil boomtown in western North Dakota and was moved to write a story set against that backdrop. All of my assumptions were challenged: from what a rig would look like, to what an oilman—or woman—would be like, to how it would feel when my little prop plane touched down on a toy-sized runway on a zero-degree winter night. The story itself came to me in one blinding flash: two twenty-year-old boys go missing from their oil rig jobs, and their mothers must join forces to find them.
We hope you enjoyed this Harlequin ebook. Connect with us on Harlequin.com for info on our new releases, access to exclusive offers, free online reads and much more!
Other ways to keep in touch:
Harlequin.com/newsletters
Facebook.com/HarlequinBooks
Twitter.com/HarlequinBooks
HarlequinBlog.com
ISBN-13: 9781460327067
HOUSE OF GLASS
Copyright © 2014 by Sophie Littlefield
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
www.Harlequin.com
" -webkit-filter: grayscale(100%); -moz-filter: grayscale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share