Q. Excuse me, but I can't help wondering: "Frequently?"
A. Oh, fine, not frequently. But people do ask sometimes.

Q. Okay. Since your most recent books are mysteries, let’s concentrate on those. Now, why is "Corpse de Ballet" set in a ballet company? Were you ever a dancer?
A. I have not danced in a ballet class since I was about five years old, and what I mostly remember from that is wanting desperately, hopelessly, to scratch my nose during a recital.
However, in 1997, when I was working as a freelance journalist (see "Journalism") the New York Times Magazine assigned a story to me. I was to watch the well-known modern choreographer, Lar Lubovitch, create a full-length ballet, based on Shakespeare's "Othello," on the dancers of the American Ballet Theater. The ABT had agreed to give me access to every aspect of the creation of this ballet, including one-on-one sessions between the choreographer and the composer, meetings of all other members of the creative team (costumer, lighting designer, set designer), all choreographing sessions, and even fund-raising meetings between the executive director. It was an incredible opportunity for someone interested in the creative process (that would be me) and I spent three months enthralled by the process.
But after I took this wild mass of research and wrote it into a story--intended to be a cover piece--the editors of the Magazine decided that the people described in it somehow did not "come to life." They revised the assignment, asking me instead to write a more-or-less standard profile of Lar Lubovitch, something I could have done in two weeks rather than three nonstop months. (Let me hasten to add that the editors very generously paid me everything the original contract promised, despite their disappointment with the story and their right to pay me much less.)
The profile ran in the Magazine on May 11, 1997 (you can read it by going to the "Journalism" or "Mysteries" section), leaving in its wake a couple of cartons of extra research and 19 notebooks full of handwritten notes. Not long afterward, when I decided to try writing mysteries, I realized this research was a trove that could be turned into a great setting for a murder. (As an aside, it has been a matter of considerable satisfaction to me that several reviewers of "Corpse de Ballet" specifically mentioned the way its characters "come to life.")

Q. Why did you decide to write a mystery?
A. I always liked reading mysteries for fun. I first tried to write one around 1985 or so, thinking they would also be fun to write. But I didn't plan far enough ahead and wound up not knowing how to get from the middle to the end. When I started "Corpse de Ballet," I made myself think ahead through every scene and outlined the whole book on paper before writing sentence one.
I still like reading mysteries for fun, by the way.

Q. And writing them? Did that turn out to be fun?
A. Oh. Well, that is a more difficult question.

Q. Yes. But since it has been raised, could you please answer it?
A. Yes, if you insist. They have been fun to write so far, in many ways. It's fun to create new characters and situations, and to try to think up ways to divert and distract a reader.
In addition, I often feel that going into a small room where it is your job to think up ways to kill imaginary people is a very therapeutic activity, very relaxing and good for releasing aggression that might otherwise accidentally wind up aimed at real people. It also makes a fine complement to child-rearing.
But the phrase "fun to write" is a bit of an oxymoron for me. I like to think up books, I love them when they are pristine--i.e. unwritten--and destined to become works of extreme ingenuity or beauty. But once the work begins, it is so grubby and difficult (at first) and so bewildering (after a short while) that "fun" really hardly enters into it (though I do laugh at my desk sometimes, particularly if I happen to come up with a turn of phrase I consider to be unusually apt).
In this connection, I will share two quotations I think of often. The first is from Isak Dinesen.
"'At the moment when I begin a book,' says a novelist in her short story, Consolatory Tale, 'it is always lovely. I look at it, and I see that it is good. While I am at the first chapter of it, it is so well balanced, there is such sweet agreement between the various parts, as to make its entirety a marvelous harmony and generally, at that time, the last chapter of the book is the finest of all. But it is also, from the very moment it is begun, followed by a horrible shadow, a loathsome, sickening deformity, which all the same is like it, and does at times--yes, does often--change places with it, so that I myself will not recognize my work, but will shrink from it, like the farm wife from the changeling in her cradle, and cross myself at the idea that I have ever held it to be my own flesh and bone. Yes, in short and in truth, every work of art is both the idealization and the perversion, the caricature of itself."
The second observation was quoted to me aloud (so alas, I don't have it verbatim--please let me know if you do!) and attributed to William Styron: "Writing a novel is like walking from Vladivostok to Madrid on your knees."

Q. The plot of your second "Nine Muses Mystery," "Slightly Abridged," turns in part on the memoirs of the famous courtesan Harriette Wilson. How did you get interested in her?
A. During my long stint as a writer of Regency Romances (see "Regencies") I naturally came across Harriette Wilson's name. She was notorious during the English Regency and carried on liaisons with an astonishing array of Regency celebrities.
Eventually, I read the version of her memoirs edited by Lesley Blanch. At the time, I was mostly looking for Regency locutions and bits of lore to stick into my Regencies. But I was captivated by her insouciant writing and the Mae-Westian style of her sexual allure. I became very interested in her. I felt that, given the limited job opportunities for women when she lived, she had not been given a fair shake by history, and it occurred to me to try writing a biography of her.
When, in 1987, my husband accepted a six-month-long assignment in London, I went with him--

Q. I'm sorry, what was your husband doing in London? Is he a writer, too?

A. Wouldn't it be more appropriate to consult his website for that information? As I was about to say, I spent several delirious months in the old Reading Room of the British Museum, and doing research in various other museums, libraries and archives elsewhere in England and Paris. In the course of this, I got in touch with Professor Kenneth Bourne of the London School of Economics, the author of "The Blackmailing of the Chancellor." He met with me several times and was extremely kind to me, sharing his hunches as to further possible research, and in particular putting me in touch with Fran?oise Albrecht, who as a Ph.D. candidate at the Sorbonne had recently written her dissertation on Harriette. Fran?oise Albrecht then continued the kindness by corresponding with me about her subject. Reading her dissertation, I was astonished by how much she had uncovered, through serious, careful research, that Blanch and others had not even questioned with regard to Wilson's life.
However, once I got back to New York and started circulating a proposal for a biography among American publishers, I learned that there was a very limited market for such a book, and almost certainly not enough of one to justify the cost to me of the years of research and writing that lay ahead. This was probably a good thing, since I doubt if I'd make much of a biographer. The truth is that, with a few noteworthy exceptions, I am much more interested in imaginary people than real ones.
Still, once again, when it came time to look for a likely body of knowledge on which to base a new mystery, there were my cartons and cartons of Harriette Wilson research, just waiting.

Q. Do you intend to use other bits of spare research for your next mystery?
A. Yes, I am hoping to clean out my file cabinets completely.

Q. That sounds a little rude--like feeding guests leftovers.
A. That's not really a question, is it?

Q. No, I guess not.
A. Well, then, I think we're done here.