Author Q&A

Author Q&A: Mary Lee Malcom

By Jennifer Pullinger, WIW Member

Author Mary Lee Malcolm knows a thing or two about reinventing oneself. Malcolm was born in New York , grew up in the South, spent a year studying in France , lived in our nation's capital and, as of late, has become a Los Angeles transplant. It is tempting to draw parallels between her ability to create a new life wherever she moves and the story told in her first novel, Silent Lies, which was published this month by Longstreet Press.

Silent Lies grew out of Malcolm's fascination with events that occurred in her husband's family.

Leo, the novel's protagonist, is an amalgam of characters based on the Hungarian grandfather of Malcolm's husband. The grandfather was compelled to leave home at an early age to build a new life for himself and his great aunt, who eluded the Nazis by escaping to Shanghai .

Themes of escape, survival, religious and political persecution and reinvention intermingle to create a stirring tale of fortunes made and lost. The story follows Leo as he is born into poverty in Hungary and ultimately establishes a new life for himself in Shanghai . He is a "reverse James Bond,” Malcolm says, an emigrant who has weathered his fair share of Life's challenges.

The book is set in dramatically different locales from pre-World War I Budapest to Shanghai during the 1920s and 1930s. The period between World War I and World War II especially fascinated Malcolm. That was the "golden age of Shanghai ," she said— a place where you could show up, no questions asked and start over.

Malcolm never lets the overarching theme of the book, the silent lies we keep, slip away. "My feeling is you really can't ever outrun your past, no matter how many times you try to start over and reinvent yourself, there is always something that will come back to bite you."

Malcolm holds degrees from Emory University in International Studies and Political Science and a J.D. from Harvard Law School . She's been successful in many diverse arenas. She's been a lawyer, travel-agency owner, reporter, communications professional, and full-time mother. She's also an award-winning short story fiction writer and she's added scriptwriter to her credit with her screenplay for Silent Lies. And Malcolm has found time to begin writing the sequel to Silent Lies.

JP: Leo is by no means a heroic character. Yet you made him the main character of Silent Lies.

MLM: I think it was William Faulkner who said something to the effect that there's only one story: sin and redemption. I just find complex characters inherently more interesting than really single vision characters. I think all of us are constantly forced to make choices, but a character is more interesting when they have to make difficult choices.

JP: How important was your experience touring Northern France to creating the realism necessary to a novel set during World War I?

MLM: I would say that my experience in France really directed me toward the period between 1910 and the end of the 1920s in Europe because of the great trauma of World War I. I didn't really decide to do a military history. It was more about the sociological impact of the war, which, having learned about that in France and having met some WW I veterans, sparked my interest.

JP: Did your many years living in the South influence your writing, even though the novel is set in Hungary and China ? You mentioned Faulkner. Could there be a thread of Southern Gothic in your writing?

MLM: I don't know if I've ever really thought about it that way. It could be, only to the extent that when I think Southern Gothic, I think of sort of wildly dysfunctional families where you have charm on the outside and total deviant behavior behind closed doors. So I think there definitely is a little bit of that in the novel, but I would have to say that the impact would have been totally unconscious. The structure in my novel ¾ in my head ¾ was kind of a film noir setting with mysterious and nefarious overtones of evil weaving in and out of the landscape. But I certainly have read a lot of southern writers and I've walked the walk and talked the talk!

JP: On to the business of writing. What is unique about the Washington , D.C. , market as opposed to other cities for working writers?

MLM: Washington , D.C. , has absolutely the most opportunities for writers, maybe not for fiction writers, but definitely for nonfiction writers with the possible exception of New York City . I was talking to a senator once who said, "The most valuable commodity in Washington , D.C. , is information." So the ability to communicate makes you very valuable in pretty much every aspect of Washington life. As a writer, especially if you can communicate effectively with others, the opportunities are unlimited.

JP: How difficult do you find it to distinguish your novel from the hundreds of others out there?

MLM: It's really hard. I ended up going with a small press, which has its advantages and disadvantages. But it certainly, I think, makes it even more difficult to make it into the public eye. You don't have this huge publicity machine behind you that you do if your novel has been adopted by one of the big houses such as The Historian by first-time author Elizabeth Kostova, for example. It's a great book, but it was also a best seller before it was released. There was a huge publicity train behind that work. When you have that, it is certainly a heck of a lot easier to get your book sold.

In terms of distinguishing one's own work in the marketplace, everybody likes a good story. If it is well written and it engages the reader, you've got a shot. The question is how to get the book in enough people's hands so that word-of-mouth recommendations can build.

I've read lots of really fascinating stories about how books make it or not. One of the most interesting I heard about recently was Anita Diamont and her book The Red Tent. Her book was not selling well at all and was in fact about to go back to the shredder when she begged the publisher for 1,000 copies, which she then sent to synagogues and rabbis all over the country because it is a Jewish-themed book. That sort of got it going, but I think it was almost three years in print before it actually became a best seller.

JP: How do you typically structure your day?

MLM: I do a lot of my writing in my head before I actually ever write anything down. I tend to work in sort of vignettes. Getting back to the movie analogy, I really do see a movie in my head. When I have a theme ready, I then go write, but I'll write at night. I'll wait for everybody to go to bed when the house is quiet and I'll write from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. I'll get just enough sleep to be able to drive the kids to the bus stop and then go back to sleep for a couple of hours. It creates a sort of reverse existence that's not very healthy, but I just am a night person. I'm more creative at night when there are fewer distractions.

JP: How are you approaching turning Silent Lies into a screenplay? What are the differences between writing a novel and writing a script?

MLM: The differences are enormous. In a screenplay, you lose a huge part of the power of words. A screenplay has to be about 90–110 pages and you use words so differently. In a screenplay, you have to choose your words precisely so that you can create a vivid image of action in the reader's mind. When the person evaluating your screenplay reads it, he or she has to see the movie in his or her head. So a lot of what I find enjoyable about writing narrative fiction, which is the word craft in terms of how you describe something ¾ the analogies, metaphors and historic references ¾ that's all out the window. Every word has to help create an active picture in the reader's mind. That's a challenge. It's a very, very different type of writing. But it's fun.

JP: What is your second novel about?

MLM: That's Madeline's story, Leo and Martha's daughter. It's a sequel to Silent Lies. It is a story about how her life unfolds after she finds out about all of her father's silent lies. She follows a sort of parallel life without realizing it. She lives in New York and learns about all these truths about her family and her past. It's about it's about her personal struggle to figure out who she truly is and how she wants to live her life and pursuing her career as a pianist.

JP: Any words of wisdom for writers on the craft and business of writing?

MLM: On the craft, there's always room for improvement. The best thing you can do as a writer is learn how to accept criticism, Regardless of the raw talent you have, there's always a way to write better. The analogy I use: Tiger Woods still takes lessons.

As far as the business is concerned, never give up. You have to want it badly because the rejection is enormous. Second, learn how to use your personal connections. Practically every unknown writer with the possible exception of Margaret Mitchell has gotten a foot in the door somehow because they knew someone or someone they know knew someone. A terrific example is Charles Frazier who wrote Cold Mountain . He worked on this book for fifteen years, but his wife was a friend of Kaye Gibbons, who is a well-known southern writer. His wife showed his novel to Gibbons who liked it, and she gave it to her agent, who liked it. You really have to get very bold about it because that is the best way to get your foot in the door.