Lori Rader-Day--What's Your Obsession?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I am such a fan of Lori Rader-Day and I am beyond chuffed to have her visiting us again here on JRW. And this book, WRECK YOUR HEART, I have to tell you, is an absolute corker! It's a pick-it-up-and-don't-put-it-down read, so I'm warning you. Block out some time for this one. 

And this cover?? If there were awards for most fun covers, this one would definitely be in the running!

What’s your obsession?

By Lori Rader-Day

I have been lucky enough to be invited to visit Jungle Red Writers for every one of my books.

In my guests posts here, I have talked about Muppets and nail polish and cookies made of ground-up angel’s wings. About the metaphor of the time loop in the movie Groundhog’s Day reflecting the realities of writing. On the death of Saturday morning cartoons, the “Dukes of Hazzard,” and the hazards of nostalgia. About the fantastic cream teas and afternoon teas I’ve enjoyed as “research.” About stargazing and my cousin the astronaut and my childhood, viewed from the back of a motorcycle. And about the playlists I have always made for my books, from the music I listen to as I write.

But really? I have only one topic, no matter what I’m writing about.

Obsession.

Writing is all about obsession, absorption. What can I care enough about to spend the vast amounts of time required to write a novel? What can I care about, even as the muddled middle stagnates, as the first draft’s finish reveals my disappointments and the long road of revision ahead? What can I care about all the way to the last, teeny, tiny edit, when I can finally let it go? 

(My agent once said of my editing process, "No one does it like this, Lori," and I am still chilled by that.)

Time passing means we never cross the same river twice, as the saying goes. What I’m obsessed with right now might be spent in the process of writing, used up, and I’ll never think about it again. (Except when I’m holding up a copy of the book in front of readers and explaining why they should join me in my obsession, at least for a few hundred pages.) I might regret the loss of that obsession, that glorious time when I was able to dedicate myself fully to a topic, when it was my job to care so much about, say, the historical records of one lovely English house once owned by Agatha Christie.

 

(It was a lovely time to be obsessed with Agatha's house while I was stuck in mine in the pandemic lockdown.)

As writers we get asked a lot… isn’t it easier to write a book once you’ve already done it a few times? The truth is… no. It gets harder. One of the reasons this is true, I suspect, is that we are worried about stepping into that river and finding the same water. We don’t want to write the same book over and over. Even series authors want to outdo themselves from book to book. But as a standalone author, I am at pains to keep discovering new things to obsess over to form the basis of my character’s job and life and dilemma. For each book, I must learn enough to, if not to become the leading worldwide expert, then at least not embarrass myself. As someone who is research averse, it’s about finding new topics I don’t mind spending the time on.

For my latest book, Wreck Your Heart, it was music.

Am I a musician? No more than I was a sociology professor, hotel cleaner, handwriting expert, night-sky photographer, construction company administrator, or a rejected and reassigned World War II nurse. No more than I was a mother, or widowed, or kidnapped as a child, or Agatha freaking Christie herself. I write fiction, so I’m allowed to play with these roles, imagine and reimagine what these lives might be like so that my readers receive the same opportunity.

If I do my job right, my readers will wonder about each character… is their obsession mine?

For instance: Am I a good singer? No. But I was willing to put the time the vocalist protagonist of Wreck Your Heart needed. Oh, poor me. I had to listen to music (which I would have been doing anyway; here’s the playlist for Wreck Your Heart). I was compelled to read memoirs by some of my favorite recording artists. I was forced to witness the awe of the shared experience of a live music audience, to watch how audiences interact with performers, how stage lighting paints skin. Again and again, concert after concert, poor me.

(See that little woman with the big shadow on the wall? Look for her in Wreck Your Heart!)

Actually, though Wreck Your Heart is about a musician yearning for rockstar status, the book became, in the end, about obsession, about putting your whole self into what you care about, about laying yourself open to criticism and derision and vulnerability by being your truest self. Loving something or someone fully is what makes us human. The thing you love most can be the lens through which you see the world in all its brightest colors.

I said it to Jungle Red Writers readers long ago: obsession is good for you. It’s been good to me. As soon as I figure out my next obsession, I’ll start singing about it. So to speak.

What are you obsessed with, Jungle Red readers? Tell me everything.

Here's more about WRECK YOUR HEART: 

Ann Cleeves called it “wisecracking and wonderful.” Elle Cosimano called it “Phenomenal.” Library Journal and Publisher’s Weekly both gave the book starred reviews. 

 

The book is the instant USA Today bestseller Wreck Your Heart, a crime novel with a big heart, about a country and midwestern singer out to catch her big break before family—or murder—wrecks everything.

 

Dahlia “Doll” Devine had the kind of hardscrabble beginning they write country songs about. As part of Chicago’s—yes, Chicago’s—country music scene, Dahlia is an up-and-coming singer in spangles and boots of classic country tunes. Up and coming, that is, until her boyfriend up and went, taking the rent money with him.

 

So Dahlia is back to square one, crashing in the apartment over McPhee’s Tavern where she performs and relying on the kindness of the pub’s owner—again. When the mother Dahlia hasn’t spoken to in twenty years shows up and then disappears again—really disappears, leaving a distraught half-sister Dahlia didn’t know she had—and a body is discovered outside McPhee’s, the two mysteries threaten not just the place Dahlia has made into a home, but everything she’s believed about her past, her dreams for the future, and the people she was just, maybe, beginning to let into her heart.

Lori Rader-Day is the USA Today bestselling author of eight novels including Wreck Your Heart, The Death of Us, Death at Greenway, The Lucky One, and Under a Dark Sky. She has been nominated for crime fiction’s highest award, the Edgar Award, and has won the Mary Higgins Clark Award, the Agatha Award, three Anthony Awards, and an Indiana Author Award. She has also been nominated for Thriller, Barry, and Macavity awards. Lori is a former national president of Sisters in Crime and a former national board member of Mystery Writers of America. She lives in Chicago, where she co-chairs the crime fiction readers’ event Midwest Mystery Conference and teaches creative writing at Northwestern University. Visit her at www.LoriRaderDay.com.

DEBS: And you can stop in today to say hi and tell Lori all about your obsessions!