It was a different world when I set out to organize CrimeReads’s first live event in my new home base, Toronto. I put together an excellent panel of Canadian female crime writers—some who are well known in the US and some who might be new names to American readers. The lineup was Shari Lapena (The End of Her), Kathleen (K.A.) Tucker (Until It Fades), Laurie Petrou (Sister of Mine), Sheena Kamal (No Going Back), Jennifer Hillier (Little Secrets), Nicole Lundrigan (Hideaway), Ausma Zehanat Khan (A Deadly Divide), and Amy Stuart (Still Here). We had a night reserved at an indie bookstore in my neighborhood. This was going to be fun.
And it was fun—though the time between the panelists saying yes and the orders coming down from the Canadian government to self-isolate was around a week. One by one they sent emails bowing out, and the bookstore had to close. Suddenly we were in a different world. I arranged for us to have our panel virtually a few weeks later. This is the first half of our conversation. Stay tuned for part two.
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“I didn’t know I was a crime writer with my debut.”
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Lisa Levy: So do you all know each other?
Shari Lapena: I’ve met Sheena, Amy and Nicole.
Kathleen Tucker: I’ve met Amy and Jennifer.
Laurie Petrou: It’s been really lovely to make writerly friends who are local-ish.
Sheena Kamal: I’ve met Shari, Ausma and Jennifer.
Jennifer Hillier: I haven’t met nearly enough Canadian writers!
Lisa: Well, I hate that we didn’t get to do this in person. I was looking forward to meeting all of you.
Laurie: Agreed!
Shari: Same! I feel that there are so many crime writers here now, and not many opportunities to meet them.
Sheena: Sometimes we run into each other at Bouchercon or Thrillerfest, but it’s never enough time!
Amy Stuart: My first book was published four years ago and one thing that’s amazed me is how supportive the writing scene is here, particularly among thriller and crime writers.
Lisa: It’s hard to socialize at the conventions, but the paradox is that’s where everyone is who you want to meet.
Shari: I find crime writers very supportive everywhere.
Amy: The conventions are overwhelming!
Laurie: My first book was published in 2007 and everything has changed since then. The community of writers seems more elastic and also more connected.
Amy: Yes Shari. I think among crime writers there is definitely a sense that a rising tide raises all boats.
Sheena: Crime writers are the best.
Laurie: In the same way I feel like I’m not really a Ph.D., I feel I’m not really a crime writer. I kind of float around. I have writer friends in a few genres.
Kathleen: I’m a bit of an outlier in this group. I’ve written two crime-based books but I’m predominantly a romance and women’s fiction writer.
Laurie: I wrote a book of short stories; a suspense book, and a YA book. We can talk genres more but I have learned that many books cross genre divides.
Lisa: Okay, let’s talk about genre for a minute! Do you ever feel like you are pigeonholed as crime writers? Kathleen, Laurie, and Sheena, you’ve all written outside the genre. Did you feel like people were supportive?
Shari: I also wrote literary/general fiction before switching to crime.
Ausma Zehanat Khan: I contemporaneously write a fantasy series. I don’t feel pigeonholed, but I do think crime fiction has broader appeal.
Lisa: Interesting, so almost all of you have varied experience. I wonder if Canada is a bit freer about that.
Sheena: Everyone was pretty supportive. Fight Like A Girl, my YA book, is still crime-y, though. I didn’t know I was a crime writer with my debut—I thought I just wrote a crime novel—but people started calling me that, and I ended up being okay with it. I love crime fiction.
Lisa: A lot of American and British crime writers I talk to definitely feel like they can’t play in the other sandbox.
Nicole Lundrigan: My first few books were literary, but still had crime. I’m not quite sure where I fit in.
Sheena: I’ve heard that, too, Lisa. People using pseudonyms and whatnot.
Lisa: I don’t think crime and literary fiction should be opposed.
Hillier: I call myself a psychological thriller writer, but I’ve also heard domestic suspense.
Shari: I think maybe the pigeonholing comes not from the readers, but from the publishers.
Kathleen: I would say I have a harder time appealing to my reader base. They’re mainly romance readers and many don’t switch over. I also have romantic elements in my crime-based books, which is a harder sell for the non-romance readers.
Laurie: I didn’t know I’d written a thriller until the publishers told me I had. I didn’t know I’d written a YA book (adult crossover) until the publishers told me I had. Because my books seem to crossover between lit fic/gothic/suspense, I seem to be okay just moving between them.
Ausma: So I’m Canadian, but I live in the US (spending three months in Canada a year). I had trouble getting crime readers to follow me into fantasy, but the other way around seems easier. Kathleen, I also found some resistance to romantic subplots for my detectives in my crime series. Personally, I adore following the love lives of detectives in series I read. I think romance belongs in every genre.
Kathleen: Ausma YES! I agree.
Amy: I don’t feel pigeonholed. Laurie and I have talked about this! I think crime/mystery/thriller etc. has expanded so much in terms of what the genre allows. You can write in a very literary tone and voice and still have it be a thriller. My books are marketed as thrillers but are still in the fiction section of the bookstore.
Nicole: My last two books were characterized as thrillers, but I don’t think they are actually thrillers. Maybe more suspense. Which upsets some readers. I’ve read in reviews about my books they’re not ‘true thrillers’.
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“No one is reading crime books for insight into healthy relationships.”
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Laurie: The [relationships] in my books are def not healthy.
Lisa: Who wants healthy???
Nicole: Mine are mostly about dysfunctional families.
Lisa: You’ll never run out of material, Nicole.
Ausma: My editor was fine with [a romantic relationship], but some readers insisted I focus on crime. I wondered if some of the discomfort was because my detective is an exceptionally handsome man of color, and a Muslim to boot.
Amy: No one is reading crime books for insight into healthy relationships.
Ausma: Nicole lots of dysfunctional families in mine too.
Sheena: Amy agreed!
Shari: I love your dysfunctional families Nicole!
Nicole: Thank you Shari. Def no shortage of material Lisa.
Lisa: So why do people read crime books? And do women and men read them for different reasons?
Sheena: Dysfunctional relationships and unhealthy sex, Lisa.
Lisa: Sheena you are my kind of woman.
Ausma: I think people read crime novels because we are all fascinated by puzzles and have an instinctive desire to solve things.
Jennifer: I think we read crime fiction as to way to make sense of crime, and criminal behavior, and as a way to feel a sense of control over the things that scare us. At least that’s why I do.
Ausma: And crime novels center the puzzle around human behavior and recognizable human motivations.
Sheena: To explore darkness and light. And for a plot that moves.
Shari: I agree with you Sheena.
Ausma: Sheena yes, definitely to an exciting plot, where you simply *have* to know!
Jennifer: Also to feel a sense of resolution. You might not like the ending, but you definitely know what happened.
Kathleen: I enjoy watching characters struggle with moral choices when faced with gray-area conflict.
Nicole: Definitely the puzzle-solving part of it—both in the story and the mind of the criminal.
Ausma: Kathleen me too! I love rooting for or against characters. The books I don’t finish are where I don’t care at all what happens to the characters involved.
Amy: Kathleen I totally agree with that. I think the theme that will always appear in my writing is that the notion of good/bad people is rarely clear cut. Most bad things are done by people who genuinely believe their motives are good or rational.
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“My characters are not here to make friends.”
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Lisa: The problem with a lot of literary fiction: NOTHING HAPPENS.
Amy: I’ve thought a lot about why the “domestic thriller” has taken off with women in the past ~10 years. I think it has a lot to do with our outer versus our inner lives and the conflict we often feel. So much can be expected of us in so many aspects of our lives, and often domestic thrillers center around women who either don’t live up to those expectations, or who accidentally or purposefully go against them.
Ausma: Amy the ones who refuse to conform, or who finally break away.
Shari: I agree Lisa. I find it interesting that recently some literary types have crossed over a bit into crime.
Lisa: Amy, that’s my territory. I write the domestic thriller column for CrimeReads, and I think that [identification with female characters] is definitely part of their appeal. But I also think we live in a society which encourages women to doubt themselves, and the books dramatize that self-doubt.
Ausma: Lisa so interesting. You don’t view it as a question of complexity?
Lisa: Ausma what kind of complexity?
Ausma: I think women have so many different sides to them: things they hunger for, things they deny themselves, fears, doubts, resolve, uncertainty. My detective Rachel Getty is like that: incredibly competent at her job, but uncertain in other areas of her life.
Jennifer: Lisa yes, so much this.
Lisa: Yet it’s all marketing, Shari. Why isn’t Celeste Ng a crime writer?
Sheena: Oooh, good point.
Laurie: My characters are often ‘unlikeable’, and Amy I agree re: domestic thrillers and inner lives. I also think that ‘domestic’ is a way of connoting things that we never see male characters do: parenting, working from home, etc.
Kathleen: Amy yes, and pulling the reader into that headspace is so interesting (to me).
Amy: When my first book came out, Laurie, almost all of the media around it (interviews, reviews) focused on the main character’s unlikeability. I think in general we are less kind to flawed women protagonists as readers.
Ausma: Laurie Great point!
Shari: It’s people making bad decisions, based on where they’re coming from, and that includes being controlled by others.
Sheena: My books aren’t considered domestic, but my heroine is definitely considered unlikeable. Bothers me to no end.
Laurie: I’m embracing it. My characters are not here to make friends.
Ausma: Amy yes, to your comment about unlikeability. I heard quite often that the heroine of my fantasy series was unlikeable because she wasn’t particularly emotional and didn’t feel the need to rely on others much.
Amy: Sheena the bar is far lower for women to be unlikeable, in fiction and in politics!
Ausma: In a man, we would call that self-reliance.
Lisa: Ausma I think that a lot of you (and other writers) can convey that, but at its core the domestic thriller in its current guise is very much about questioning women’s progress and status, and that questioning is done by both the female characters and the people around them.
Ausma: Lisa very interesting!
Shari: I don’t think characters have to be likeable.
Sheena: Amy oh, absolutely. Who cares about their inner lives, as long as they’re smiling, right?
Nicole: I agree with Laurie. I try to let my characters be who they want to be. I’m unconcerned if they are likeable, as long as they are interesting.
Sheena: As long as I feel their struggle, and their journey, I’m with them.
Lisa: I’d much rather go to the party with interesting people than likable ones!
Jennifer: I remember workshopping my first novel in 2008 and being told by one of the men in the workshop that nobody would read it because my main character was an unlikeable woman. He was wrong.
Laurie: Yes, he was.
Ausma: #successisthebestrevenge
Shari: I wonder where he is now Jennifer!
Lisa: He’s still workshopping his first chapter Shari and Jennifer.
Nicole: I don’t understand the mindset that a main character has to be likeable. Isn’t dysfunction and deviance so much more captivating?
Ausma: Sheena I’m always interested in the struggle too.
Sheena: I was once asked by a radio interviewer, on air, why men would want to read my book. I said because it’s good.
Laurie: I always say that no one complains about Dexter or American Psycho as being unlikeable, so move on.
Ausma: Sheena no!
Jennifer: At the time it confused me. I didn’t know women characters had to be so likeable. I did a ton of revising based on that feedback, and the book never went anywhere. Then I finally changed it back—made her unlikeable again—and that’s what got me an agent and my first book deal.
Laurie: Folks asked me if men would read my book because it had the word ‘sister’ in the title. I literally had David Chariandry’s Brother on my night table at the time.
Lisa: Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about likable men???
Sheena: Lisa I’ve never met one.
Shari: Yes, that’s it, no one talks about unlikeable men. Women are people, end of. We don’t have to be nice.
Laurie: Shari preach!
