Interrogation Room #45: Julie Berry, author of THE SCANDALOUS SISTERHOOD OF PRICKWILLOW PLACE

We have a repeat offender in the Interrogation Room today: acclaimed author Julie Berry! We hauled her in this time last year to talk about her Edgar-nominated YA mystery ALL THE TRUTH THAT'S IN ME. Julie just can't seem to stay out of trouble, and now she's surrounded by scandal, with the release of her new middle grade mystery, THE SCANDALOUS SISTERHOOD OF PRICKWILLOW PLACE -- out today from Roaring Brook/Macmillan Kids!

We have lots of questions for Julie today, but here's a bit about the new book (whose title we'll abbreviate to SSPP, since we love abbreviations and acronyms here at SSA!):

There's a murderer on the loose—but that doesn't stop the girls of St. Etheldreda's from attempting to hide the death of their headmistress in this rollicking farce.

The students of St. Etheldreda's School for Girls face a bothersome dilemma. Their irascible headmistress, Mrs. Plackett, and her surly brother, Mr. Godding, have been most inconveniently poisoned at Sunday dinner. Now the school will almost certainly be closed and the girls sent home—unless these seven very proper young ladies can hide the murders and convince their neighbors that nothing is wrong.

The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place is a smart, hilarious Victorian romp, full of outrageous plot twists, mistaken identities, and mysterious happenings.

And now, here's the transcript of our second interrogation of Julie! (Plus, her mug shot!)

SSA: So here you are, a repeat offender . . . we last saw you in here one year ago, when we summoned you to answer questions about your YA historical mystery, ALL THE TRUTH THAT'S IN ME.

JB: When do I get to call my lawyer?

SSA: Not so fast. You're a slippery one, Ms. Berry, and we need answers. It seems you've been trespassing into different genres. In short succession, you've written TWO unconventional and historical mysteries -- one in experimental form, and now this new one, a farce. Can we see your poetic license?

JB: Yes, right here.

SSA: Ah. Okay. Well, we've noticed the two books couldn't be more different in tone as well as time periods. How did it feel to go from Puritan America in ALL THE TRUTH THAT'S IN ME to Victorian England in SSPP? And did you learn anything about mystery writing from writing ALL THE TRUTH that helped you with the new novel, despite the vastly different content?

JB: It's kind of fun to go from promoting one novel with a very serious tone to peddling one this playful. I like to mix things up. Both stories have some darkness to them, I'd say, but the flavors are very different. I definitely do think that ALL THE TRUTH gave me invaluable craft practice. I learned how to be very disciplined about clues, details, mechanics, pacing, motive, and what to reveal when. I think these will be useful for any book I write in the future, whether overtly a mystery or not.

SSA: What appeals to you about farce? And what's challenging about writing farce?

JB: Comedies yield laughs, but farce done right threatens the audience with death by laughter. It's one big crescendo of crazy humor, and I love it. I grew up on writers like P.G. Wodehouse (and later, Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels), and on films like Arsenic and Old Lace and His Girl Friday. Nowadays, my family does a lot of community theater, and I've watched more British farces than you can shake a stick at. Over time, I began to deconstruct them to try to understand what makes a farce a farce. Slamming doors? Mistaken identities? Corpses? Or was it more than that?

There's a lot more. Farces have a particular energy and pace. Timing is everything. Careful plotting is crucial. A sort of everyman (or everywoman, or everykid) protagonist is confronted with an unplanned, improbable, twist-of-fate dilemma, and a series of characters who represent extreme stereotypes until the protagonist is totally destabilized by dealing with such loonybirds--until he or she becomes, in essence, one of them. In the process, though, they become less flat-vanilla, and more human, more round, more likable. Miraculously, things work out, balance is restored, and everyone can go on about their lives, but old assumptions, old walls, have been broken down a bit. Cary Grant as Mortimer Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace may flee from his insane relatives, once he learns he was adopted, shrieking, "I am not a Brewster!" but his bug-eyed stare proves he's become at least a bit of one.

SSA: We understand you did quite a bit of research to bring this 19th-century British boarding school to life. (Not to mention other harrowing scenes, like burying a dead body!) What is one of the most deliciously fascinating facts that you uncovered?

JB: I got to read some wonderfully gruesome accounts of crimes, poisonings, and medical investigations during the Victorian era. Since I've never personally poisoned anyone with cyanide (I swear, I haven't!), I needed to read lots about it. There were some wonderfully lurid poisonings going on, and some truly dastardly poisoners. The relatively recent innovation of life insurance, combined with easy-to-buy poisons and as-yet underdeveloped techniques for detecting them, turned, I regret to say, certain people's unpleasant relatives into solutions for their shopping addiction. Or opium addiction. Insert your addiction of choice.

SSA: How did you get the voice in this novel so pitch perfect? Did you watch a lot of British period dramas on PBS? Read numerous Victorian novels? Or -- our suspicion -- are you actually a time traveler from Victorian England?

JB: I'm the Doctor. Take a look. It's bigger on the inside.

The real Julie Berry!

Guilty on all counts. Who doesn't love Dickens, or the Brontes? I think I was born in the wrong century sometimes. Except that I would never want to have to wear what the Victorians wore underneath all those poufy-sleeve dresses, if you catch my drift, nor visit their doctors if I was ill, nor attend their finishing schools (except maybe this one), nor tolerate their prevailing views of the roles of girls and women. But we owe a great debt to a number of women during this era who made tremendous strides.

SSA: What do you hope contemporary teens or tweens take away from this novel? Is it pure entertainment, or do you think there are bridges they can find to their modern lives?

JB: Pure entertainment is always my goal. My job is to divert you. I wouldn't mind it at all if readers came away with a bit more of an affinity for these genres I've played with, and go hunting on their own for drawing-room mysteries and farces, past and present, to enjoy. If a little girl empowerment was sniffed around the edges, so much the better, but truly, I really just want you to laugh and keep the pages turning.

SSA: Is there anything scandalous about your writing life that you'd care to confess?

JB: Alas, I was scandalously late turning in my most recent manuscript. And I sometimes go scandalously long between showering. Working from home will do that to you. Other than that, my actual writing life is fairly boring. Anything colorful going on in my writing life, to quote the immortal Mr. Tweedy of the Aardman film Chicken Run (who, incidentally, makes a teensy cameo as a constable in my novel), is "all in me head." 

SSA: Thank you for answering our questions, Julie! We'll let you off the hook again. Stay out of trouble -- or rather, stay in trouble -- we love the creative risks you take, and we can't wait to see what you're cooking up next! 

You can track Julie down at her website, on Twitter (@JulieBerryBooks), and on her Facebook fan page. 
You can buy THE SCANDALOUS SISTERHOOD OF PRICKWILLOW PLACE and Julie's other books on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or at Independent bookstores near you.

Please enjoy this fabulous trailer for SCANDALOUS SISTERHOOD, and then . . .  enter our giveaway! One lucky winner will get a signed hardcover of Julie's new book!



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Creative License: When NOT To Research

Confession: I'm an ex-academic. I languished in a Ph.D. program for years, endlessly researching an uninspired dissertation that I ended up never finishing. My long experiment with graduate school is a story for another post, I guess ("Why Pursuing a Ph.D. Should Be a Calling, Not a Fallback Option During an Economic Recession." Or, "Why You Should Cut Loose Your Safety Net -- Because It's Not So Safe!")

In those years I spent training to be a literary critic and a scholar, I developed a facility for research. That's good, right? Yes. I knew how to find information, and fast.

But I also developed a certain defensiveness.

In grad school, we were always on the defense, fortifying ourselves against professors who probed for intellectual potholes, or opportunistic young colleagues eager to knock down our arguments in a seminar and score a few points for themselves.

Or maybe it wasn't like that at all. Maybe I simply had a luxury of time back then to overthink, and to worry, and this is what sent me scurrying to the library day after day after day.

That need for research eventually carried into my fiction writing. First I wrote historical novels (not published), which might have still been that unwritten dissertation, in new clothes.

Then I wrote a mystery (Tokyo Heist) which centered on worlds that interested me greatly, but that I knew little about, initially: art conservation, the Japanese yakuza, Vincent van Gogh, Japanese woodblock prints, manga . . . if I didn't know about it, I was determined to find out about it and put it in my book!

With all the research I had to do, it's no wonder that book took eight years to write.

That pace is unsustainable, of course, for an aspiring career novelist. So when I had to write my next mystery -- with a book contract and a deadline -- I knew I didn't have the luxury of researching every detail.

For my forthcoming Latitude Zero, I chose a topic a little closer to home for me -- bicycling, a sport that I do -- and a country, Ecuador, where I once lived and worked. However, as I rounded out my main character's world, I realized I still had to do some research. (How do bike mechanics work? How are professional racing teams organized? How has Ecuador changed since I lived there over a decade ago?) But this time, I saved most of my research for after the first draft. I tried to get the story straight before I worried too much about facts. This saved me hours -- maybe weeks or months -- of research that was not needed, research I might have been tempted to shoehorn awkwardly into my plot.

I also found creative freedom in writing this book by letting go of the need to research every last detail myself. I had experts in various fields read the manuscript and vet facts or descriptions that I was worried about.

And a few things, I let go of completely.

I have a scene, for example, where a character is trapped in a shipping container with a whole bunch of bikes. In the past, worried about getting this key scene right, I would have arranged to see a shipping container packed with bikes up close. Not impossible. There's a bike shop here in Boston that packs up containers with bikes to send overseas, and they're always looking for volunteers. I volunteered at an art museum as part of my research for Tokyo Heist, so I thought I would do similar hands-on research with this book.

It wasn't easy. I tried on four separate occasions to get to a bike container load so I could see what it looked like firsthand. Family obligations got in the way every time. I was not a parent when I drafted my first book. Now I am. I don't have the luxury of time to immerse myself in every aspect my main character's worlds, as I had done before.

Beta readers looked at the scene -- and said it was gripping. I finally saw the light. I didn't need to research the life out of that scene. It was enough for me to watch a video of a shipping container bike load, to study some pictures of how the containers were locked, and then go write the scene. Readers were not likely to complain that my portrayal was not realistic. After all, how many people have been locked in a shipping container with 400 bikes? I'm guessing not many. If anyone came forward to accuse me of inaccuracy ("being trapped in a shipping container isn't like that at all!"), they'd be few and far between. So I decided to give myself some creative license and make up the experience myself. And it was fun!

In that spirit, towns in my book -- once real -- were demolished, and rebuilt as fictional entities. This freed me from the need to go out and check road signs and intersections and travel times from point A to point B. And after fruitlessly looking for a charity bike ride that my main characters might embark on, I made one up from scratch, including a route and all the logistics.

I still think research is important. Incorrect facts can pull readers right out of a book. And I still have a fat binder of research that I did for this new book -- and I still ended up venturing into unknown worlds, because I love to explore and to learn. But I've also learned to be more focused, more selective, in my information-gathering. We can let research take over, or become an excuse for not writing. As novelists, we have the license to make up a whole bunch of stuff. We should embrace our creative freedom -- and run from the temptation to over-research!

What about you? Do you tend to do too much research? Too little? How do you find a balance? When in the process do you do your research?

PS . . . have you entered SLEUTHAPALOOZA, our biggest giveaway yet? Help us celebrate our two-year anniversary and enter to win, or help spread the word! 

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Diana Renn grew up in Seattle and now lives outside of Boston with her husband and young son. Her first novel, TOKYO HEIST (Viking/Penguin) came out in 2012. Her next YA mystery, LATITUDE ZERO, will be published by Viking in July 2014. She is also the Fiction Editor at YARN (Young Adult Review Network).

Criminal Writing Offenses In KidLit: The Important Life Lesson

There’s a secret to writing middle-grade—well actually, it’s not all that much of a secret. To write for the eight-to-twelve year-old kid, you have to be able to think like a kid. Remember what it was like to have your lunch stolen (or maybe just your pudding cup, but that’s bad enough, wouldn’t you say?). Feel that brick in your stomach when you’re bringing a bad report card home. Stick out your tongue and get stuck to a lamppost, or at least imagine it (since that one's sort of a bad idea and all).

When I wrote DOUBLE VISION, that connection to a twelve year-old was the most important and enjoyable part of writing Linc Baker’s (that’s my main character) story. I want my books to be fun reads, and hope to keep that kid connection going as I write the series sequels. It's fun to be twelve, even if it's just pretend.

So to me, the biggest crime a writer of middle-grade or YA can commit is to lecture to kids. I hate it. And it happens far more often than you’d think. I can’t count the times that an aspiring MG writer has told me: “I want to write my book so I can teach kids that (bullying, cheating—fill in the life lesson) is bad.

Don’t get me wrong—I get the intention of these writers. The truth is, there are many published books that have these life lessons clearly stated on the page. Usually, there’s some sort of wise grown-up delivering that message. And I think those message-driven books are a crime—just my opinion, but I’ll bet if you ask a random MGer that they’ll pass on the lesson too.

Here’s why I think this kind of writing is a crime:

1. Kids don’t need another lesson.

Think like a twelve year-old for a second: how many times a day are you told to do something, act a certain way, stay in your seat, finish your dinner—I could go on for a while, but you get my point. Kids get told what to do all day long.

2. Reading should be fun.

Do you like life lessons woven into your nighttime blockbuster read? I sincerely hope not. Let’s leave the afterschool specials in the eighties, where they belong. Reading mysteries should be fun.

3. It’s cheating.

Now, we all want to say something with our fiction, right? But being didactic with your important life lessons is just plain cheating as a writer—it’s the ultimate violation of the show-don’t-tell rule. Instead of telling your kid reader that he shouldn’t cheat on his test, show him the consequences. And add a good bicycle chase scene while you’re at it—those are so much more fun anyway.

4. We want kids to keep reading.

This one’s sort of obvious, but do you think kids will pick up books after the required reading is over if we cram them full of Valuable Life Lessons? Of course not. Make your story fun. Leave the lessons for Mom, Dad, teachers, and other parental types. They've got it covered, trust me.

I’m all for having something to say—I’m pretty opinionated myself, as you can probably tell. But write your books from the kid perspective, my fellow writerly people, not from the adults’. Or I may just come over and roll my eyes at you. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

How about you, Sleuths and Spies? Any criminal writing you want to share?