Laura Lippman's Backstory

Like most writers, I work a year ahead. My deadline happens to fall on Oct. 1. So, in the late summer of 2003, I was finishing one book (By a Spider's Thread) touring for the one written the year before (Every Secret Thing) and . . . completely without an idea for the next book. I knew I wanted to do another stand-alone because I felt the first one had helped me write a better book in my series. Literary cross-training, if you will. But I didn't know what to write.

Then Anthony Neil Smith wrote and asked if I would contribute a story to the webzine, Plots With Guns. He was reaching out to several established writers in the field -- Steve Hamilton, Lauren Henderson and Eddie Muller among them -- and I was flattered to be included. Payment would be ten dollars OR a drink of my choice at Bouchercon 2003. I chose the drink and went to work.

In the early drafts, the story was about a girl who brought a gun to school. She was a capital-L loser, an outcast who planned to avenge herself against the alpha girls who had made her high school years miserable. But the story . . . wasn't working. It felt familiar to me. And, at the same time, alien. Because I wasn't a capital-L loser, but nor was I a golden girl. Like 95 percent of the people who attended high school, I fell in the middle, where one is sometimes victimized, yes, but -- if we're being truthful -- one also sometimes victimizes.

I recast the story as a girl's discovery of a gun, THE BABYSITTER'S CODE, and her decision to steal it. It truly is the backstory, although it has one key distinction with the novel that grew out of it. (Or does it? Perhaps someone is lying.) The girl's name also changed from the story to novel, by exactly one letter -- from Terri to Perri. And the girl herself might have changed in my mind.

But once I had written the story of a girl who stole a gun, I knew I needed to write a novel about what she did what that gun. Why did she take it? What were her intentions? In an early chapter, the school principal describes the subsequent shooting as "Not a school shooting, but a shooting at the school." A silly, cover-your-ass statement by a bureaucrat and yet true in a sense. This is not a novel about a school shooting. It's a novel about a once tight trio that has fallen apart.

Neil Smith bought me a Sea Breeze for the story. But I've told Neil that I owe him a drink AND a snack at Boucheron 2005 for helping me find my way into my 10th novel.

Laura Lippman's most recent novel, To the Power of Three is one of my ten best reads of the year.

Comments

[Mary]

Wow I feel really special now. I got the same offer from the guys at Plots with Guns when I took photos for an Edgar Week article Sarah Weinman was writing. Never thought I'd be able to say I had the same deal as Laura.

And the book was fantastic. One of my favorites this year. I'm sure its going to win all sorts of awards.

[Michael]

I am soooooo eager to read this book. I discovered Lippman from a rave about her book Every Secret Thing in Stephen King's EW column. And I loved it...read it in two days . I am now reading the Tess stories and loving them and am eager to read this one. Alas, while I'm a book-a-holic, my local library system doesn't have this one in the system yet and since it's new, can't do intralibrary loan...:(

[Engagement Rings]

I learned of Laura Lippman's work several years ago during a business trip to Baltimore. I have been an avid fan ever since. The Last Place is my favorite. It is a book I literally was unable to put down. Just right for a stormy weekend on the Maine coast.