An Interview with Linda Levy, author of A Kingdom of Madness
Q – I understand it has taken you twenty-one years to write A Kingdom of Madness. Why did it take such a long time?
A – I knew I had a great story, but it was a complicated one. Figuring out how to tell it was what took so long. It was some time before I realized I was really writing two stories that are parallel at the beginning, then intersect, and finally intertwine.
And you don’t just sit down and write a book, of course. In my case, I had to do a lot of research. I talked to all sorts of experts, who helped me understand what it would mean to live in a kingdom of madness.
Q – Would you have begun if you had known how long it would take?
A –I would have to give that an unqualified “Yes.” Because I knew the idea was a good one, even in my darkest moments I hung onto that. There were times through the years when I thought I was finishing, thought I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it turned out there were mirrors in the tunnel.
Q – Where did the idea for the book come from?
A – I grew up in Philadelphia, and we knew, among others, judges, lawyers and doctors. We also lived not far from the New Jersey Pine Barrens, which I always found intriguing, seductive, mysterious. I began to wonder: What would make a respected professional fall from grace and wind up there? And that’s the story behind A Kingdom of Madness.
Q – What drew you to the subject of madness?
A – From the time I was a child, I knew quite a few people who had something of a tenuous hold on reality. That always interested me. What are the universes people inhabit, universes about which the rest of us are totally unaware?
Q – How did you come up with that knockout title?
A – First of all, early on I had another title. I was reading a book review and saw that the reviewer had written a book called To This Day. Great title, I thought. But then I looked again and saw it said Someday. That’s when I knew I had my title. Until I interviewed one of the experts I mentioned, a psychologist. When I outlined the story, he said that one of the characters had “created a kingdom of madness.” Now there’s a title, I thought. There’s the title. I was on my second title and I hadn’t even started to write the book.
Q – What about the ending?
A – Years ago I was telling a friend about the book, and the baby sitter overheard. “Have a good ending,” she said. Have a good ending! Like have a nice day! But I’ve thought a lot about that, and it gave me a focus. In fact, I had the ending before I was quite ready for it, and then wrote in that direction.
Q – How do you write dialogue?
A – I am very lucky, in that I can hear the characters talking. I know what the vocabulary should be, the sentence structure. Then, of course, it’s important to realize that realistic dialogue is quite different from real-life conversation. The trick is to create the illusion of conversation
Q – This is your first novel. How did you make the transition from the other kinds of writing you had been doing?
A – Yes, I’ve been a writer for a long time, mostly as a newspaper columnist and features writer. There are lots of deadlines, and I thought it would be a nice change to give myself a little time between deadlines. Like twenty-one years.
Q – Many writers keep journals. Did you do that?
A – I did. I began to keep a journal in order to record the writing experience, and to help me sort things out as I went along. There were many times along the way when I felt that I was sort of sloshing around with the novel, that it wasn’t going anywhere. I had the comfort of knowing that at least the journal was going well!
Q – You mentioned talking with experts. Have you done much interviewing in your career?
A – I have done a lot of it. One mistake interviewers make is that they have a list of questions that they stick to, rather than letting the conversation kind of take its own course. You find out much more that way, because you hear what people want to say, as well as what you’ve thought to ask them. I said to one man, at the end of a very long interview, “I’ve met the most interesting people as I’ve worked on this project.” And he said, “Or made the most ordinary people interesting.” I love that.
Q – What was the most unusual experience you had while you were writing?
A – I learned how to use a gun! For the sake of the story, for making it believable and accurate, I needed to know that. So I went to Target World and spent an hour and a half with Joe and a Colt .38 with a four-inch barrel. I learned how to load, unload and fire it.
Q – Is there any advice to writers that you’d heard and found useful?
A – Actually, I did often think, “Show, don’t tell!” “Show, don’t tell!” “Show, don’t tell!” I sometimes thought I should write that out 100 times, or 1000, but I had to admit I could spend the time more profitably writing the book.
Early in the process, my husband and I were on a car trip, listening to an audio book. It was a good story but very, very slow going. Suddenly I turned to my husband (who was driving), and said, “The trouble is there hasn’t been any dialogue. And that’s the trouble with my book!” And I began a major rewrite, so that much more of the story was told through dialogue. You know, when you read dialogue, you are in the room, maybe even sitting at the table. But when you read straight narrative – well, you could be anywhere, couldn’t you?
Q – How about “write what you know”?
A – Everything comes from somewhere, even if you don’t “know” it from a personal standpoint. I remember seeing a news item about a Kurdish boy who was seen scratching his mother’s name onto a stone, for her grave. I found that incredibly affecting and thought it would make a wonderful scene. And it is there, in the book. I should add that my own early school years have just been waiting in my memory, waiting to be described in this book.
Q – Did you have to do a lot of fact-checking?
A – I did, and it was endless. I was doing that right up until the time I submitted the manuscript – just making sure things were as accurate as I could make them. At one point, someone was shooting at raccoons in the daytime, but it seems they are nocturnal!
Q – How did you proceed when you came to a stumbling block in the story?
A – I worked it out when I was taking a shower, or a walk, or was alone in the car. Of course I didn’t listen to the radio. I spent a lot of time in the car with the radio off.
Q – Has the story changed since you began writing?
A – Not the story itself, but scenes have come and gone, as have characters. One character arrived quite late to the story, yet she is an integral part of it.
Q – So now that you’ve come to the end, will you miss working on the book?
A – I’ll miss the characters. I’ve known them for twenty-one years, a generation! We’ve grown up together. Oh, yes. I will definitely miss the characters.
Q – Is there something particular you’ve learned from this whole experience?
A – That there is no magic, no trick, to accomplishment. It truly is the Nike ad – “Just do it.” It might work and it might not, but you have absolutely no chance at all if you don’t give it a shot.
Q – Where next?
A – I’m figuring that out right now. As a matter of fact, I was lying in the bathtub, thinking that I was coming to the end of a long, long road, a road I’ve been traveling for twenty-one years. And there in the bathtub I began to picture that road. It is so long I can’t see back to where it starts, and it is a dirt road, very narrow, just narrow enough for one person to travel. There is dust that has been kicked up, but the person traveling isn’t me. Or isn’t exactly me, anyway. It is someone with a big straw hat and a big shirt. I can’t see the person’s face. There is nothing at all in the landscape. It is just completely blank and empty, with only this one dirt road. At the end of the road there is a brilliant, green field, and it goes to the horizon and as far as I can see to the right and left. It isn’t grass, though – rather it is something cultivated. Yes, something is growing there. I don’t know what it is, but I know I will find out.