WARNING! PLEASE READ ABOUT THIRD PARTY ADS: Authorlink encourages writers to thoroughly investigate third-party ads on this or any other site offering free and easy publishing help. We subscribe to the highest standards of the traditional publishing industry, and do not necessarily endorse any advertiser on our site. Also, Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on our site enabling display of ads based on user visits to our site and to others on the Internet. Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy. Authorlink guidelines, #7 includes more on our own policies
an Exclusive Authorlink Interview With Laura Pedersen,
Author of
Last Call (Ballantine, January 2004)
April 2004
Last Call by Laura Pedersen
Buy This Book via Amazon.com
Laura Pedersen's third book, Last Call (Ballantine, January 2004), is the bittersweet love story between a dying, yet still vibrant man and a nun who has lost her faith. In an exclusive Authorlink interview Laura tells why she wrote the story, and of her difficult, but successful, move from nonfiction writing into the world of fiction. After a successful nonfiction career, her first novel, Going Away Party, was published in 2001 by Storyline Press. She later landed a two-book deal (eventually extended to four) with Ballantine, which released her second novel, Beginner's Luck, in 2003. A third Ballantine book will be in bookstores in January 2005."Last Call was born
out of personal sadness."
—Pedersen AUTHORLINK: How did the idea of
Last Call originate?
PEDERSEN:
Last Call was born out of personal sadness. I am a New Yorker and for many years I worked on Wall Street as a trader and journalist for
The New York Times. I lost quite a few friends in the 9/11 terrorist attack. I began to ask myself why it had happened. Religious differences were the root cause, and I wondered if we could find a way to live together with our various religions and still make our society work. I didn't know much about Islam, so in the book I used the divide between atheism and Catholicism, writing from my experience of growing up in Buffalo in the 1970s. As a child, I couldn't turn the corner in my neighborhood without running into a nun. I was raised Unitarian, but I had a good knowledge of Catholicism, so I used it as the basis from which to ask the question of whether we could all get along. The tale evolved into a love story, with elements of the debate over euthanasia.
AUTHORLINK: Are the characters people you really know? Or are they fictional?
PEDERSEN: I do steal a little from people I know or have met, but I needed characters who were larger than life, especially Hayden, the older man. I made him Scottish, though I'm Irish. The two nationalities are similar. Both create a bellicose environment. When we are not fighting each other we are fighting ourselves.
Hayden's character borrows from Virginia Woolf. He's the poet who must die so the rest of us can live. He's a man of tremendous vitality. His daughter, Diana, is a nurse. I grew up with a mother who was a nurse. If I came home from school with a bug bite on top of my head, my mom would say, "Well, it's either bug bite or a brain tumor. If it's a tumor you'll be dead in five days." In the middle of the night, she would take my pulse on the carotid artery, and I thought she was the Boston strangler. When I left for college the only advice she gave me was to watch out for rabid squirrels
Diana's character is a worrier, like so many mothers of our day. I like to draw from people that I find humorous. A favorite friend of mine is Mildred, a native Bostonian who is in her nineties. One beautiful June day I remarked about the gorgeous weather. Mildred retorted, "This is just the kind of weather people get sick in." I have tried to give my novels a down-to-earth humorous slant, and I've had many women say to me, "In your stories, you're talking about me."
". . . deep down, I wanted
to write fiction." —Pedersen AUTHORLINK: How did you sell your first book?
PEDERSEN: I sold my very first book, a nonfiction piece called
Play Money to Random House/Crown when I was 21-years-old. It was about how I became the youngest Wall Street stock specialist two years after starting to work on the trading floor at the age of 18.
But deep down, I wanted to write fiction. I had even gotten thrown out of high school for my creative writing. I submitted a poem to the student anthology and it contained a cryptic message. Somehow the poem was read aloud at high school graduation, and the teachers "got" the hidden message. I had to scrub desks all summer. But that didn't seem to stop me. I even wrote my own attendance notes. Mom worked nights. I was an only child. I came up with all sorts of creative diseases.
"My college roommate used to call the packages (of rejected manuscripts) boomerangs." —Pedersen AUTHORLINK: So, how did you find the publisher for
Play Money?
PEDERSEN: The yellow pages has always been my best friend. I grew up in a small town without connections. I had no built-in network. I got to the floor of the stock exchange by calling people out of the yellow pages. So, when I wanted to publish, I looked in the yellow pages under "publishers" and "agents." I sent out 12 copies of my manuscript and they all came back as rejections. My college roommate used to call the packages boomerangs. Finally, I got a call from the agent who had sold
Liar's Pokerby Michael Lewis (October 1990) He quickly sold
Play Money to Random House/Crown who were very eager to publish a book about a young woman on Wall Street.
AUTHORLINK: After you published
Play Money in 1991, you also wrote a second nonfiction book,
Street-smart Career Guide : A Step-by-Step Program for Your Career Development (Random House/Crown, 1993).
Making the switch from an established nonfiction career to fiction must have been difficult.
PEDERSEN: The move was very difficult. For years I tried to talk editors and agents into taking a look at my fiction--all to no avail, until I met a wonderful woman, Judith Ehrlich, who is now my agent. I had already won a fiction prize from Story Line Press which published my first novel.,
Going Away Party, in 2001
When I met Judith, I said, "Please, I just want to write fiction. I'm tired of nonfiction. Judith was extremely supportive, and she took a crack at selling
Beginner's Luck (Ballantine, 2003) and landed a three-book deal with Ballantine. I have a wonderful editor there, Maureen O'Neal.
"At The Times you learn to edit your work, move quickly.
There is no time to have
writer's block."
—Pedersen AUTHORLINK: How did you wind up getting a job at
The New York Times? PEDERSEN: As the youngest expert on Wall Street, I was doing speeches on finance and appearing on shows such as The Today Show and Good Morning America. One day in 1990,
The Times called and made me an offer. I worked for them for ten years. It was all very nice, wonderful training. I had never taken writing in college. At
The Times you learn to edit your work, move quickly. There is no time to have writer's block. When you are doing a column, you have to go and go fast, whether you have the flu or whatever. But newspaper work wasn't my ultimate dream. Fiction writing was.
AUTHORLINK: What can a person do when he or she has writer's block?
PEDERSEN: . Maybe the story just isn't working. Maybe it is flawed, or you don't have a strong ending. Maybe you don't like the story, or it's the wrong time for you to write.
AUTHORLINK: What are your writing habits. Do you have any tricks for spurring your imagination?
PEDERSEN: I do a lot of work when I am roller blading. I find that speed helps. My stories evolve organically, though I have to have the ending in mind from the start. Then I develop the story arc and resolution, how I'm going to tie things up, make both the reader and me feel satisfied. If I have the opening and the ending clearly in mind, the middle of the journey comes fairly easily. About three-fourths of the way through the writing process, I become psychotic. My characters start carrying on conversations all by themselves. Hayden remarks and Diana Answers back, without me!
I have a home office where I commit everything to the computer. But I travel a lot as a ghost writer for comedians. When I'm on the road I carry a notebook where I jot down ideas. I also teach reading and math in East Harlem. Many ideas come to me there.
AUTHORLINK: Do you think living in New York has given you an advantage in getting published?
PEDERSEN: New York is the publishing capital of the world. So, it helps. But it doesn't matter how many editors or agents you know if you don't have a product to sell.
I was a small town girl with no connections, but because of my experience on Wall Street, I was then drafted into the job with
The Times. All of this happened despite the fact I swore I'd never be a journalist.
My grandfather was a wonderful journalist when he was and wasn't drinking. He was a colorful alcoholic who drank his way out of many jobs. I called him a drinker with a writing problem. So, I decided I wasn't going to be a journalist.
AUTHORLINK: What advice do you have for first-time writers trying to break into the publishing world.
PEDERSEN: Get a short piece published first, whether in a local newspaper, an anthology, or magazine. Try to get published somewhere, anywhere. Enter short story contests. From these beginnings you can build a portfolio.
The days of writing a few paragraphs to sell a novel are over. If you have a novel to sell, finish the whole thing, and polish it. For nonfiction you need a terrific proposal that will truly sell it. The proposal itself can run 50 pages, including a sample chapter. The industry is increasingly competitive and there are no shortcuts. But also, there are many good books about fiction writing and proposal writing to help the newcomer understand the craft and the business.
"I love to make people laugh." —Pedersen AUTHORLINK: How would like for your readers to remember you?
PEDERSEN: I love to make people laugh. Not to steal too much from St. Francis of Assisi, but where there's despair I want to offer hope. Where there is sadness I want to shed joy. When you read a book and see someone in there you know, then perhaps you don't feel so alone in this world.
About Laura PedersenLaura Pedersen is married, has two step-children, and lives in Manhattan. Her work with kids in East Harlem is a big part of her life.
Visit her web site at
www.laurapedersenbooks.com —Doris Booth
