Tag Archive for: Elizabeth Zelvin

A Multi-Talented Artist

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The Stiletto Gang is pleased to welcome Elizabeth Zelvin. Author, therapist, singer, Liz has lots to share about her new book, new CD, and so much more!

1. Where does your new book, Death Will Extend Your Vacation, pick up the story of Bruce Kohler?

Bruce got sober at Christmas at the beginning of Death Will Get You Sober. In fact, waking up from a blackout in detox on the Bowery on Christmas Day was his wake-up call, or as they call it in AA, hitting bottom. The short story, “Death Will Clean Your Closet,” takes place when he’s 90 days sober, which is a big milestone in recovery. He’s still in early recovery in “Death Will Tie Your Kangaroo Down.” There’s an unpublished novella (formerly a novel) that covers Bruce’s first sober summer. Death Will Help You Leave Him takes place in the fall. “Death Will Trim Your Tree” covers his one-year anniversary Christmas. And his sobriety is well established in the latest story, “Death Will Tank Your Fish.” So Death Will Extend Your Vacation tells the story of his second sober summer—long enough for him not to worry much about drinking again, no matter what’s going on, and ready for a girlfriend, if he can only get to first base with Cindy, the attractive and slightly mysterious woman who’s one of his housemates in the clean and sober group house in Deadhampton (Dedhampton on the tax map) where everybody has at least one secret. Bruce’s, by the way, is that the beautiful housemate whose body they find on the beach is the first girl he ever almost slept with when he was fifteen. Actually, he’s keeping another secret from his best friends Jimmy and Barbara, because he thinks they’d kill him if they knew. But you’ll have to read the book to spot it.

2. Has your writing routine changed since the publication of your first book, Death Will Get You Sober? Tell us about a typical day.

The nice thing about my typical day is that there’s nothing typical about it. I have, not one, but two careers that let me spend the day at the computer in my jammies: writer and online therapist. I usually say “sweats and bunny slippers,” but in fact, it’s usually one of a collection of ankle-length sleep T-shirts—very, very comfortable. My prime writing time is in the morning, but since the morning is my best time overall for anything that requires a lot of focus, I don’t always use it to write. I see my therapy clients regularly, but none of them is on a fixed schedule. One of the advantages of online therapy is its flexibility. For example, a client who lives in the UK is five hours ahead of me, so I have to see her during my afternoon, her evening; but when she goes on vacation to Australia, we can meet at my 8:30 AM, her 10:30 PM. And if she’s visiting her dysfunctional family for three weeks, believe me, she doesn’t want to skip her therapy sessions. Anyhow, I start the day with stretches. I run for an hour every day, usually around the Central Park reservoir. And when I’m in the zone with the writing, I might take a little nap on the couch in the afternoon (ah, the joys of not having a day job!) so I can go back to the computer with zest. But the best thing about an unstructured day is that I allow time for my mind to be in that relaxed state in which the characters start talking to me, the mist parts, and I can see where I’m going, at least enough to go forward. It frequently happens when I’m running or in the shower, but the best time is when I’m lying in bed, definitely awake but not yet ready to open my eyes and get up. If I had to leap out of bed to the jangling of an alarm, the way I did when I was working full time, my muse (or whatever you want to call it) would be a dead duck.

3. What have you learned from your fans?

The best thing I’ve learned from my fans, to my grateful astonishment, is that I can write the kind of characters I love to read: endearing characters who feel real to the readers. I’ve also learned that book club readers pay very close attention to details: the members of two book clubs—one mostly women over 50 and the other women in their 30s—noticed a problem with the age of the victim in Death Will Get You Sober. Guff, the déclassé aristocrat with the dysfunctional Park Avenue family who dies unexpectedly in detox on the Bowery, setting off Bruce’s sleuthing career, is supposed to have gone to Viet Nam just before the end of the conflict in the early Seventies. Then, when Barbara reads his medical chart, it says he’s 47, which these two groups of ladies pointed out didn’t make sense. They were right. I had a good excuse: the six years between when I started sending the manuscript out and when the book actually got published. I spotted many needed changes—for example, when the book was in galleys, I realized I couldn’t have the patients smoking in detox any more—but I missed that one.

4. Tell us about your new CD, Outrageous Older Woman?

This is a project close to my heart. I’ve been singing almost as long as I’ve been writing, I learned to play guitar when I was 13, and for the past half century or so I’ve been writing songs and performing them for my friends with an occasional coffee house gig. Over the last two years, I finally recorded them, singing lead vocals myself but getting some terrific musicians far more skilled than I as backup. The result is Outrageous Older Woman, which is available in CD or mp3 download form on my music website at  lizzelvin.com as well as CD Baby, iTunes, and Amazon. If you go to my site, you can hear six of the songs in full and previews of all sixteen. If you’re in New York this weekend, I’m performing live with a couple of those musicians on Saturday May 19 at 8 pm at the People’s Voice Cafe, details on my music site. What are the songs about? A very nice review by John Lindermuth said, “Love is a consistent theme, though only three of the songs actually deal with love.” He got that exactly right. The title song is about empowerment, and there are songs about Internet dating, aging, family, alcoholism and recovery, abuse and healing, moments of decision, and characters who have inspired me. As with my books, I want to make the listener laugh and cry.

5. What’s new on the horizon for you? What projects are you working on? Another sequel? A new series?

Death Will Extend Your Vacation is just out, so I’m trying to spread the word about that and the Outrageous Older Woman CD. I’m also trying to find a home for Voyage of Strangers, a YA novel about what really happened when Columbus discovered America. It’s the sequel to my two short stories about Diego, a young marrano sailor with Columbus, which both appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. And Untreed Reads is publishing “Shifting Is for the Goyim,” an 11,000-word paranormal whodunit about a nice Jewish girl who’s a rising country music star and happens to be a shapeshifter. Either of those protagonists might be the star of the next manuscript. Or if Bruce and Barbara start talking in my head, the next story could be about them. But in fact, I’m currently working on an academic piece, revising my chapter on partners of substance abusers for the third edition of a friend’s book.

Elizabeth Zelvin is a New York psychotherapist, a three-time Agatha Award nominee, and author of the mystery series featuring recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler, starting with Death Will Get You Sober.  The third book, Death Will Extend Your Vacation, is just out, and “Death Will Tank Your Fish” was a 2011 Derringer Award nominee for Best Short Story. Liz has also just released a CD of original songs, Outrageous Older Woman. Her author website is www.elizabethzelvin.com  and her music website, www.lizzelvin.com. Liz blogs on Poe’s Deadly Daughters and SleuthSayers.

Death Will Help You Leave Him

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“If the cops say it’s murder, ‘I’m sorry’ is the wrong thing to say.”
– Elizabeth Zelvin

The quotation above is one of my favorite lines from my new mystery, DEATH WILL HELP YOU LEAVE HIM. I take no credit for it. My protagonist, recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler, sits there on the inside of my head and thinks these things up. But he’s put his finger on the problem of codependents, who compulsively apologize for everything, whether they’re responsible for it or not.

The codependent in this particular case is Bruce’s sidekick Barbara’s friend Luz, who becomes the prime suspect when her abusive boyfriend is found dead in her apartment. I usually describe Barbara as a world-class codependent. She is always sorry, but she’s also always controlling and helping whether you want her to or not and sticking her nose into everybody’s business. It makes her a terrific amateur sleuth. She’s even found a way to channel her compulsion to rescue and fix everybody around her by becoming an addictions counselor. And she goes to Al-Anon, not only for help with her long-term relationship with recovering alcoholic Jimmy, but also to try to develop some boundaries. She tries really hard, but she’s always backsliding, which is what makes her so much fun to write.

Anyhow, Luz is Barbara’s Al-Anon sponsee, and her abusive boyfriend Frankie (the dead guy by the time we meet him in Chapter One) is a typical addict (he’s been to rehab, but his motivation is questionable) who controls the relationship by concurring with his codependent girlfriend that everything is all her fault. That ill timed “I’m sorry” is not Luz’s confession, but her apology for calling Barbara in the middle of the night and inconveniencing her—and Jimmy and Bruce, whom of course Barbara drags along as she gallops to the rescue—by asking for support with cops in the apartment and her lover dead on the floor.

I’ve been writing and lecturing about codependency since long before I wrote any mysteries about recovery. Neither Bruce nor I made up the line about how when codependents are drowning, someone else’s life flashes before their eyes. It’s a well known phenomenon. Codependents also apologize when somebody steps on their toes. They go through agonies of guilt about saying no to anyone, whether it’s a panhandler asking for a dollar or the boss demanding they work overtime on their birthday. One of recovering codependents’ mantras is: “ ‘No’ is a complete sentence.” Easy to say, but very hard to do if you’re addicted to caring what other people think. If whoever said, “Never apologize and never explain,” (Disraeli?) had said it to a codependent, the codependent would have tied him- or herself into knots explaining why even though it was wonderful advice, they personally could never do that—and they were so, so sorry.

Elizabeth Zelvin

Elizabeth Zelvin is a New York City psychotherapist. Her second mystery, DEATH WILL HELP YOU LEAVE HIM, is available for preorder and will be in stores on October 13. The first in the series, DEATH WILL GET YOU SOBER, was a David award nominee, and a related short story was nominated for an Agatha. Another story appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and a third will appear in A GIFT OF MURDER, a holiday anthology to benefit Toys for Tots. Liz’s author website is at www.elizabethzelvin.com. She blogs on Poe’s Deadly Daughters.

Death Will Get You Sober

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Today Evelyn David interviews Elizabeth Zelvin, author of Death Will Get You Sober (St. Martin’s, in bookstores April 15). Liz’s story, “Death Will Clean Your Closet,” has been nominated for an Agatha award for Best Short Story. The story appeared in the anthology Murder New York Style and is available as a free download on Liz’s site, http://www.elizabethzelvin.com/.

Your journey to published author has had a lot of twists, turns, and detours. What gave you the impetus to keep moving and writing?

I had dreamed of getting a novel published for too many years to give up at this late date. I first said I wanted to be a writer when I was seven years old—about a hundred years ago—so I’ve had a lot of practice. Of course there were moments, still are, when I look at my work and think it’s no good. I think every writer has them. But there are more moments when I knew that there were readers out there who’d enjoy what I had written, if I could only find that elusive agent and publisher. Death Will Get You Sober was always meant to be the first of a series. Once I’d written it, my protagonist Bruce and the other characters, especially Barbara, the codependent addictions counselor, kept making clever remarks in my head, so I had to keep going.

Recently, there was a lengthy discussion on a mystery listserve about humor in whodunnits. Some love it – others don’t want to mix mirth with murder. Death Will Get You Sober features a recovering alcoholic – any laughs for such a serious subject?

I think Death Will Get You Sober is hilarious. Not everybody will agree, but I bet that people in recovery will. I didn’t create the humor. It was already there. There’s a lot of laughter in AA meetings. Recovery is all about getting honest about yourself, and for that, you need a sense of humor. Alcoholism is serious. Our society tends to think of certain kinds of drunkenness as funny. I don’t agree. But recovery can have a lot of fun in it, and that’s what I wanted to convey.

What do you know now about writing and publishing that will make a difference for subsequent books?

I made a lot of mistakes that people warned me about, but it took a while for them to sink in. They said, “Don’t send out your first draft, and don’t burn through too many agents right away.” I learned the hard way. My manuscript went through many drafts, and I queried many agents and editors, before St. Martin’s took it. I’m grateful it had time to turn into the book people will read. They said, “Kill your darlings.” In other words, there’s such a thing as too much, even if you’re in love with every clever word or well turned phrase. I had a three-week arts residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida in 2006, a paradise for writers and other creative artists. SJ Rozan was the “master artist” I worked with. She said, “Liz, two good lines are enough for any paragraph—you don’t need three or four.” After she said that a few times and my colleagues in the workshop agreed, all of a sudden I could see what needed cutting. Having to put together a reading where you’d get the hook after three minutes also helped me streamline my work.

About publishing: I knew going in that nowadays the writer has to do the promotion, unless you’re a celebrity or a bestseller. Working with St. Martin’s, I’ve been lucky to realize that people at the publisher’s can be enormously helpful if you take the time to learn what they actually do and develop a relationship with them. You may book your tour yourself or hire a publicist, but they’ll make sure the booksellers and librarians hear about you, and they’ll get the books there.

Any special rituals or favorite foods that you need to kickstart your writing?

No. The best writing day for me is one that starts with me stumbling right out of bed to the computer with a scene or sentence or line of dialogue tugging at the inside of my head. Of course, that doesn’t always happen. But when I can get the world to leave me alone—and that includes my husband and my email, both irresistible at times—it can be a morning when the words come pouring out.

Why did you choose to have a male protagonist?

That was sort of an accident. I wanted to write a recovering alcoholic, and I wanted to write someone who nobody would think could possibly be me, which meant a man. But I took it for granted I’d have a female voice as well. So I originally had two protagonists, Bruce and Barbara, the codependent who loves to help and mind everybody’s business. They alternated chapters as first-person narrators. I got inconsistent feedback: some agents and editors had no problem with it, others thought it didn’t work. One or two wanted me to throw Barbara out, one at least wanted me to get rid of Bruce. Then the first editor who saw the manuscript at St. Martin’s told me he thought Bruce made a terrific protagonist but Barbara would do better as a sidekick. First I thought, “I can’t.” (My husband says my process always starts with, “I can’t,” and he’s probably right.) Then I thought, “St. Martin’s! This could be my shot.” So I rewrote it, and the editor was absolutely right. It made Bruce stronger and Barbara, oddly, more endearing. And that’s the book St. Martin’s took.

Which camp are you in? Long-hand or computer?

Keyboard all the way. I was a poet for thirty years before this turn to mystery, and I never wrote a poem that was a “keeper” in longhand, even when I used an old Royal manual typewriter, long before computers. I love writing on the computer because I can type faster. I was always a crackerjack typist, but I think fast too, and it’s good that my fingers can always keep up. As I get older, I’m sometimes afraid I’ll forget my best lines before I can get them down. It’s happened! But I usually carry a little digital recorder in places I can’t type, like when I’m driving or running around the Central Park reservoir.

Success as a mystery writer came later in life for you. How did being older influence you as a writer?

Oh, all those books in the drawer! The three mysteries from the Seventies, completely outdated now. The book about my first marriage—thank heaven that never got published. Mainly, it’s not so much that I became a better writer, though I certainly became a better editor. And in the course of writing Bruce, I’ve found my voice, which is something I believe you can’t fake or force. But what I have to say owes everything to life experience and whatever wisdom advancing age has brought me. I might not even want to read the novel my 24-year-old self might have written today.

You seem very comfortable online. In your other career as therapist, you have an online therapy and counseling site, www.LZcybershrink.com . Why should writers establish an online presence?

I wouldn’t say “should.” In fact, it’s a word I almost never use. I’ve said in a professional context that online therapy is for those who love it, both therapists and clients. I think the same is true of cyberspace in general. I’m no techie. My family is still astounded that I can not only use a computer but am at it all day long in both my “hats” as therapist and writer. I’ve been seeing clients online since 2000 via chat and email, after twenty years in traditional private practice as a psychotherapist and day jobs directing alcohol treatment programs. I made a lot of my mistakes and went through my very gently inclined learning curve with my online therapy site. I was able to put my author site, www.elizabethzelvin.com , together relatively quickly once I got my contract and knew it was time. I already had a webmaster, and I knew what each of us could and couldn’t do. He can program anything so it works across platforms (a concept I didn’t even understand for my first five or six years in online practice), but he can’t write my text or spot a typo. I do my own design too, because I have an eye. I took the photos on both sites (except for the head shots) and did the drawings on the LZcybershrink site.

But the websites are only part of the story. For me, becoming a published writer has been all about networking. And networking is just another word for making friends and, as we say in New York, schmoozing. I love to schmooze! I used to look at authors’ Acknowledgments pages and wonder how they got to know all those other writers they were thanking. Now I know hundreds: in part, thanks to living in New York and belonging to such great organizations as Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America, but also because of the amazing online community of not just mystery writers but also mystery lovers of all kinds: readers, booksellers, librarians. I’d never have gotten past the first draft of Death Will Get You Sober without the Guppies, the online chapter of Sisters in Crime for newbies trying to break in—and now, many who have, like me. I love the very different flavors of DorothyL and CrimeSpace. And what I’ve learned from generous pros sharing their experience on the e-list Murder Must Advertise is priceless.

Another unexpected pleasure has been blogging. I’m lucky to belong to Poe’s Deadly Daughters with five terrific blog sisters, fellow mystery writers Sandy Parshall, Lonnie Cruse, Sharon Wildwind, Julia Buckley, and Darlene Ryan. I love the community, and I love the writing, which for me is like being a journalist once a week—a columnist with freedom to write about whatever I want. And most of all, I love saying I have “blog sisters.”

Elizabeth Zelvin
www.elizabethzelvin.com