This month I interviewed Deanna Carlyle screenwriter and author of young adult and adult chick lit. Her break into prose fiction came when one of her short stories, “Dead Men Don’t Eat Quiche” was anthologized in THIS IS CHICK-LIT alongside the work of several bestselling chick-lit authors. Since then, her first TV pilot was produced for German TV, and her young adult novel THE LAST VIRGIN AT ST. GILLES CHARM SCHOOL won first place in the Romancing the Novel contest.
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Welcome, Deanna. Could you tell us what “Dead Men Don’t Eat Quiche” is about?
Thanks for having me here, Josie! “Dead Men Don’t Eat Quiche” is a comic mystery about a young woman whose parents visit her in Paris for their 30th anniversary. While dining out with them in a chi-chi restaurant, she has to solve the murder case of a vice count who tried to hit on her. She’s at a disadvantage as a self-professed goof who failed her critical thinking and logic requirement in college, but somehow she rises to the occasion and figures out whodunit. Vive la Underdog!
How does your own writing process work? Do you have a schedule?
Think Jackson Pollack doing his action paintings, and you'll begin to get the picture.
You live in Europe. Does that influences your work?
Oh, yeah. They say travel broadens a person. My thighs are living proof of that. But it's not just the good food that brought me overseas. It was my Krautmann. No seriously, I'm fascinated by culture contact and culture clash (aka, my marriage), and since I'm over here for life (aka, my marriage), so far I’ve set all my fiction abroad. It's a great setting for fish-out-of-water situations, a staple for most running jokes (aka, my marriage).
You’re the founder of the 1000+ member networking group, ChickLit at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chicklit. How do you define chick lit as a literary genre?
Good question. The way I see it, chick lit is fiction written by chicks--or chick-friendly non-chicks--for chicks, about chicks, or about things that chicks care about. That about covers it. Anything else people say about the genre is sour grapes or sophistry.
You graduated last year from a ten-month screenwriting program in Stuttgart. Do you think film and television influence the literary market?
Oh, sure. Commercial novelists are writing shorter and tighter, getting right to events and themes rather than dwelling on non-story digressions better suited to non-fiction. All these techniques are inspired by the seventh art. But what's great about the novel is you get to tell your characters' thoughts, too, if you need or want to. A novel is like one long voice-over soundtrack, except it's not redundant.
And then there are the content-based trends that got their start in film and TV and moved on to print: paranormals, for instance, which got their boost across the board in the book market when Harry Potter went to Hollywood.
Do you have any suggestions for writers new to writing novels?
Here are some tips from a girl who's been in the trenches slinging literary mud for a while now (sorry if some of these are already on your 'been there, done that list'). All of these tips require time, patience and trial-by-error experience, but if you keep doing them for a few years, they’ll pay off:
1) read the genre you want to write
2) read lots of how-to books, take classes
3) get a good critique group or critique partner
4) work on removing inner blocks and resistance to your own truth
5) practice as often as you can
6) have patience and faith
7) Ignore all this and trust your intuition. Just keep trying everything you can think of until you find your voice and understand longer fiction forms.
8) Never give up. Never even entertain the notion.
Great advice. Thanks for the interview, Deanna.
You’re welcome, and thanks for having me, Josie, and for all you do to get the word out about chick lit and women’s fiction!
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Read an excerpt THIS IS CHICK-LIT here . . .
Buy THIS IS CHICK-LIT here, from Amazon
Click here to go to Deanna Carlyle's website.
You can also read an excerpt of Josie Brown's IMPOSSIBLY TONGUE-TIED here . . .
