Books rarely arrive fully formed—they evolve from stray ideas, late-night questions, global tramping, and the troublemakers who won’t leave an author’s mind alone. Here’s how each one of mine found its way into the world.
Daylight Girls, the first of the series, was written many years ago in draft form. Even then, I had the character of Buck Madison firmly in mind. The manuscript was titled Moonlight Girls then. I learned from Raymond Chandler that it was a damned good idea to cannibalize your previous works and did so — added a difficult love interest and his personal trauma, though it took a while with Anne, to fully know her. Then added more psychos for Buck to grapple with, an action chase scene, and twisty ending! Within the political ecosystem of Washington, DC, there lurk many strange and deadly characters.
Black Iris, the second book in this series, was written as a romp. It’s really a silly 1960s-style “How to Steal A Million” thing layered with a lot of contemporary art world griping and a spicy touch of magic realism and Buck’s anger. And there is an action thriller climax. Great fun to write. And never has there been such easy research into the artist. Georgia and her husband Alfred Stieglitz were prolific letter writers, and they sometimes wrote as many as three per day. They both seem to have kept every letter and one can read them today in book form. Nirvana.
Open Window was inspired by a trip to Nice. We stayed at the Beau Rivage Hotel, the place where Matisse lived during World War I. During the research for this book I came to admire Matisse a great deal for his courage and his independent stance in the face of much criticism from the French art elite.
For Mont Sainte Victoire , a recent trip to Aix En Provence brought us in contact with Paul Cezanne, an artist I’ve always admired and knew very little about. The notion to write a book set on the James River, in what was the heart of slave country (on a former plantation) offered ideas having to do with property and legacy. The Virginia river provides an ethereal beauty, in opposition to the scenes of a dysfunctional family, driven by its billionaire patriarch. The family secrets spill over into an art heist and eventually the case turns feral, as the violent deaths increase. Two difficult personalities, in Paul Cezanne and the antagonist of this story, reflect one another. And yet there, among the chaos, is Cezanne’s art, the serene painting of his talisman, the mountain.
Starry Night Crimes came about because I thought Van Gogh’s time in the asylum at St. Remy would be interesting as a theme. The big misconception of this book was that I imagined that the volume of Vincent and Theo’s correspondence would make it all a breeze to write. Boy was that wrong! There was simply too much. And Vincent’s tragic mental health was not something to trifle with, even in fiction. So I kept it episodic, and dramatized his lifelong struggle.