Friday, April 16, 2021

Linda L. Richards ENDINGS is (fortunately) only the beginning

HALLIE EPHRON: A few months ago I had the great good luck to be asked to consider blurbing Linda L. Richards's thriller, ENDINGS. I said I would try to get to it. Which I did. And then something that rarely happened did--I couldn't put it down. Really. I could not.

The blurb practically wrote itself:
"Brilliant. Terrifying. Compulsively readable."


Linda is the author of 15 books and the founder and publisher of JANUARY MAGAZINE. I'm thrilled to have her as a guest today on Jungle Red, pondering her main character, a woman unlike any I've encountered previously in crime fiction.

Take it away, Linda...

LINDA L. RICHARDS: Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of good and evil.

That sounds so trite, so predictable. But hear me out. It’s worth considering.

The narrating character in my most recent book, ENDINGS, is a hit woman, a contract killer. She kills people for money. That isn’t the sum of who she is or even anywhere near the totality of the story she stars in, but it’s an easy way for us to begin to understand her.

She is not a bad person. I mean, she should be, right? She kills people; takes their lives. What kind of good person does stuff like that? But, like all of us, she has been forged by the situations that brought her to the point in her life when we meet her.

While writing Endings I researched these things: good and evil. Do they even exist as forces in the world? While I researched, a political vortex composed of both of these things seemed to shift around my feet, like so much sand. For a while over the last couple of years, it would seem as though evil was reflected every day on the evening news. I still emerged from the experience as I went into it: we are -- all of us -- the sum of our parts. We are created not only by DNA, but also by circumstance.

People have asked me how I managed to make the protagonist in Endings relatable. I think it’s because I didn’t try. She exists in the world on her own steam, as it were. Her world. Like all of us, she was forged by her circumstance.

So: relatable. The protagonist in Endings reacts to things in a human way. Early in Endings, she loses her child, and ultimately her husband, in a freak accident. And these things alter her.

In fact with the second book complete and while I’m heading into a third, I find she is still reeling from those events. Not in an obvious way. But they have changed her in ways she doesn’t understand. In ways, honestly, maybe even I don’t fully understand on a conscious level. But readers are getting it.

I was astonished when, on release day, the narrator of the audiobook version of Endings encapsulated perfectly what had been in my heart. But I would have been hard-pressed to find words for some of what I poured into the book. Human things. Things that had nothing to do with taking lives, but everything to do with living them.

So on release day, narrator Jennifer Wren Warren tweeted that, in addition to being a thriller, Endings was “a meditation on loss and redemption and the media, and it made me cry!” Her words made me cry, too, because certainly those things were on my mind as I wrote the book. They were never top of mind -- if they had been, it would not be enjoyable fiction. But criticism of the media’s handling of hard news was one of the things I was chewing on as I wrote. And the twinned themes of loss and redemption figure starkly in the whole work.

And, of course, Endings is a thriller. One is not to lose sight of that. It is intended to make you catch your breath, and there are certainly whole chunks of the book when the reader is meant to be perched on the edge of her seat. So it is meant to be all of that, and also more.

Many years ago I interviewed a very famous crime fictionist for January Magazine who told me about a super fancy German photographer who was taking her picture for a big deal magazine. He instructed her to stand erect and then pull her leg up behind her, by the heel. She told him it hurt. “Of course it hurts,” he said, or something very like that. “That’s the point. It must hurt. There is no art without pain.”

I’m not entirely certain I believe all of those words: that there is no art without pain, but I certainly believe in what they represent. To be satisfied with art -- a book, a movie, a painting, whatever -- there must be more than what can be seen on the surface. There must be layers. Depths. Did I reach those depths and layers with Endings? I hope so. If you read it, maybe you will let me know.

HALLIE: This got me thinking, is pain an essential ingredient for a really good crime novel? For the author? For the character? And what about for the reader?

And while you're thinking about that, make room on your TBR list for ENDINGS.

31 comments:

  1. Congratulations on your newest book, Linda . . . “Endings” is definitely on my must-be-read list . . . it sounds amazing and I’m looking forward to reading it . . . .

    I think the play between good and evil lies at the heart of many good stories and is not at all trite [and probably not predictable, either].
    Is pain an essential ingredient for a really good crime novel? I suspect every reader may have a different answer and I’m not certain myself . . . but I think some pain, or doubt, or introspective consideration might well be necessary for the story to resonate with the reader . . . .

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    1. Thank you, Joan. It's been an amazing exploration. I'm so glad to have you be part of the journey.

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  2. Pain is certainly part of the writing of a novel, as any of the authors here can attest! But that's making light of the question.

    The book and the protagonist sound amazing, Linda - congratulations. Did you start out writing a standalone or did you always know it would be a series?

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    1. To be honest, at first I didn't even know I was writing a book. I began with a short story. And I liked the story a lot, but I didn't think it was enough of a premise to sustain a whole book. Lady goes around killing people for money. It's been done. But once I realized that wasn't the story: that it was really about her redemption, that's when the book took off for me. And about 3/4 of the way through writing the book in earnest I realized there were further things I wanted to do with this character.

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  3. This sounds amazing. Loss, redemption, and the media. I'm off to order Endings!

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  4. LINDA: Congratulations on your thriller ENDINGS.

    Pain, yes someone has to experience it in the book. A client who hires the hit woman, or the family and friends of the victim. But like you said, the story has to have depths and layers to make it an enthralling read for the reader, and to perhaps feel their pain.

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    1. Also, it can't be pain without point. It has to rise from the characters themselves. Their situations. Gratuitous pain would be... well, ugly to read, I think. But what did Robert Frost say? “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” I've been thinking about that a lot lately.

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  5. Welcome Linda--if Hallie gives you a rousing endorsement, it must be an amazing book! I can't imagine crime fiction without pain, but photography? will have to think about that one:)

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    1. I think it was meant in the creation of art. If we don't feel... something, how can our readers? And maybe it doesn't really have to be pain, but something that is strongly felt, whatever the case.

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  6. Congratulations on your new release! I agree about a character's emotional pain. I adore Daniel Silva's Gabriel Allon books (how can a Renaissance art restorer be an assassin?) because of who Gabriel is, and not what he does. I'm sure I'll feel the same way about your main character.

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    1. Good point, Margaret - you reminded me of Lawrence Blocks Keller novels - a contract killer - and as always with Block , very funny

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    2. Thank you so much, Margaret! And I hope you do enjoy it.

      And, Hallie: I love those books. Block has such an amazing voice! How do you make that subject funny? And yet. He's terrific.

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  7. Interesting question. I would certainly say growth is an essential element (for me) in a good crime novel, and there are those who argue there is no growth without pain, so maybe?

    ENDINGS sounds fabulous.

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    1. Yes, I think you're right: growth is essential in any novel. Without some kind of development, what's the point? Why spend all the necessary time with a character -- as a reader -- only to have there be no transformation? To move us, I think, a character must be moved.

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  8. Congratulations, Linda! You've certainly given me thoughts to ponder today. I guess I better read the book to find out the effect on me.

    Pain? I think it makes sense that an artist might struggle and have pain before finally achieving their goal. But for a reader to experience pain? Maybe of the vicarious variety for the characters but I definitely wouldn't want my reading to be painful. Could be I just don't get it.

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    1. The pain I was referring to is on the part of the artist. Again, if I don't cry when I'm writing, how can I make you cry? If my heart isn't at times filled with love, how can I make you feel great passion? Or longing? Method writing, maybe?

      But when I think about it, it's pretty universal. The best singers -- the ones we love and who endure -- don't necessarily have the very best voice. But they deliver their song with the passion of conviction. They believe the story they are telling. This is something like that, I think. So "pain" in this context might also just be "conviction". Maybe.

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  9. Where are the words when I need to make sense? I just ordered Endings, because I would like to find out the motivation behind a contemporary hit woman. I am struggling with the idea of pain in a crime novels, it seems so necessary. As far as in a Thriller, wouldn't writing one with the absence of pain be called a Tedium?

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  10. Wow, what an endorsement! Cannot wait to read this. Congratulations! Pain like physical pain? Or emotional pain? Pain like heartbreak or loss and despair? It’s a good thriller – – at this certainly sounds like one – – is about decisions and actions, then pain is certainly a believable motivator.

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  11. And if we're talking about writing being a pain, I can vouch for that. On so many dimensions. ON THE OTHER HAND some of the best writing I've done has been painless. Easy. Albeit short lived.

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  12. Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, Hallie - the pain in my art is definitely the actual writing. Or maybe making myself sit down and write.

    I'm super excited to read ENDINGS. I admit I'm a sucker for hit men novels, if done well - I adore Lawrence Block's Keller series. But the instances of women doing the job are vanishingly small, and I've always thought it would be a fascinating character study to explore someone who still has empathy doing the dirty work.

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    1. Oh Julia, please watch The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) with Geena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson. Geena is a former hit woman who unexpectedly returns to her former life as an assassin. One of my favorite movies!!!

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  13. I am ready to try to peel that onion, Linda! From family woman to hit woman is quite a journey and I'd love to find out how that happened. I'm curious if the pain of losing one identity is lessened or overwhelmed by the new adopted persona.

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    1. You'll have to tell me what you think, but it seems to me she is so overwhelmed by what happened to her she drops her old self completely and is in some ways sleep walking through her new life. Until yet more bad stuff happens.

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  14. I love books that make me take a look at matters or beliefs I thought I had all figured out. Your book, Linda, sounds like just that sort of reading. When I read Jennifer Hillier's book Jar of Hearts, I was stunned that I found myself considering a character's horrible actions from a more understanding or benevolent place. Bad is bad and evil is evil, right? Well, maybe it's not as black and white as I'd thought. Your statement, "We are created not only by DNA, but also by circumstance," is such an important one to note. Those of us who read crime/mystery as a daily diet have come across statements from murderers that we are all capable of murder, given the right circumstances. So, no matter how much someone professes that it's just not in them (DNA) to commit murder or a horrendous act, there are those circumstances that could change everything a person thinks he knows about her/himself.

    And now, in your book Endings, Linda, there is a hit woman who promises to get beyond our revulsion of someone who chooses to do that for a living. I will absolutely be reading Endings and discovering once again how something outside of my comfort zone can be within my grasp of understanding. One of my favorite movies is The Long Kiss Goodnight with Geena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson. Geena plays a former hit woman/assassin who suffers a long period of amnesia, during which time she has a child and becomes a teacher. She starts having memories of her life as a government assassin and finds herself embroiled in a fight for her life, as her skills return along with her memory. Samuel L. Jackson accidentally becomes involved. Seeing Geena's character is both her mother mode and her assassin mode gives an understanding to her that doesn't seem possible at first thought. So, again, I really enjoy stories that push the envelope of what we think we know or feel about people or situations.

    Thanks for stopping by the Jungle Reds today, Linda. Your post was so interesting, and I know your book is going to be amazing.

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    1. Thank you so much for your heartfelt message. This is the first time the words "comfort zone" have come up in this conversation, but I think you've nailed it. Comfort zone is exactly it. It does us good sometimes to move outside that, artistically, one way or the other. And thanks for the heads up about The Long Kiss Goodnight. It's one I've missed: I'll have to look for it!

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  15. Very excited for this - you had me at “compulsively readable”, Hallie. Congrats on the release of Endings (great title), Linda!

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  16. Very excited for this - you had me at “compulsively readable”, Hallie. Congrats on the release of Endings (great title), Linda!

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    1. Oh thank you! And thank you again, Hallie! Your support has meant so much.

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