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Q. How did you come to write The Magician's Tale and why the pen name?
A. I moved from the East Coast to San Francisco two and a half years ago determined to write a novel set here, using a different voice than I'd used before -- a first person female voice. Since both the voice and the setting were a departure from previous work, it seemed appropriate to attach a new name.
Q. Why not a female name?
A. I considered it, but I didn't want to be deceptive. I also think it's kind of interesting for a male author to write in a female voice, just as I thought it was interesting when Susan Isaacs used a first person male cop narrator in Magic Hour.
Q. What was it like to write as a woman?
A. Actually a lot of fun. I was worried about it naturally, afraid I couldn't bring it off, prepared to put the project aside if I couldn't. But then, as my book progressed, I began to think: "Wow! I really like this woman! I really like getting into her head!" It was gratifying that when I finished, all the women who read the manuscript liked it and not one found fault with the voice.
Q. In The Magician's Tale you do a lot to evoke San Francisco.
A. It's always been my favorite city. I think so long as I live here I'll have stars in my eyes about the place.
Q. Kay Farrow, your sleuth -
A. Excuse me, I really can't stand that word! To paraphrase Hermann Goering's awful comment about culture: "When I hear the word sleuth I want to reach for my revolver!"
Q. Then let's say your character, Kay -
A. Much better ... thanks!
Q. --is a pretty interesting sort: an art photographer; daughter of a retired cop (her father) and a suicide (her mother); formerly the lover of a much older man, a federal judge; strong-willed; opinionated; tolerant; honest; direct to the point of being blunt; and, in addition to all that, afflicted with achromatopsia, a rare genetic disorder that makes her photophobic and totally color-blind. What made you decide to make her color-blind?
A. I remember that when I was conceiving her character, I felt she needed some sort of physical problem, perhaps something she would have to work hard to overcome. I always like it when a hero or heroine has a weakness that he or she then turns into a strength. When I first thought of color-blindness, I wasn't sure it was possible ... since all the color-blind people I'd known were males who suffered from some degree of green-red confusion. Then, when I found out about achromats, how rare the condition is and how severe, things suddenly fell into place. Here's a thirty-something woman, a visual artist, who has a serious visual weakness, which in her black and white photography, she indeed can turn into a strength. It also gives her a unique slant on things, an ability to see the world in terms of black and white, thus good and evil. The photophobia and the good night vision worked for me too, since it made Kay a night person ... which turned out to be important in the story.
Q. According to the jacket copy, there'll be a second Kay Farrow novel.
A. I'm already well into it. I decided I like this character too much to give her up, and I'm having great fun putting her into another psychological murder situation.
Q. Which raises a question -- why do you write murder stories?
A. I really can't think of anything more appropriate to do as we near the end of the twentieth century. Crime stories, it seems to me, perfectly fit the times, not just because we live in a fairly murderous era, but also because these kinds of stories often tell us important truths. That really is the purpose of fiction, isn't it? -- to try and make sense out of our lives.
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