BOOK CLUB FRIDAY -- GUEST AUTHOR KATE GALLISON

Kate Gallison has been at various times a store clerk, a bill collector, a computer programmer, a technical writer and a museum docent. As Kate Gallison, her writing credits include three private eye novels and five traditional mysteries. Under the name of Irene Fleming, she writes a series about silent movie production in the early twentieth century. THE BRINK OF FAME will be released this coming Tuesday. Visit Kate/Irene at her website to learn more about her and her books. 

Kate is offering a copy of THE BRINK OF FAME to one lucky reader who posts a comment to the blog this week. Be sure to check back on Sunday to find out who has won. -- AP

Irene Fleming and The Brink of Fame

First of all, thanks to Anastasia for offering me a platform on Killer Crafts.

It's been my experience throughout a long career of writing that the stuff I invent is more attractive to readers than the truth I tell them. Still I try to be truthful. I think of myself, most of us think of ourselves, as Artistes with a capital A. We may be successful in the eyes of the crass material world, or we may be failures, but if we respect ourselves, we adhere to our visions and we try to tell the truth. In order to do this effectively we make things up.

As for me, I'm a middle-class half-Canadian, brought up never to make a scene or talk about my private life in public.  As an Artiste, however, I'm free to blat about anything I like, as long as I cast it in the form of fiction.

To further protect my privacy I started writing under the name of Irene Fleming. Irene's first book was all about early film making. Called The Edge of Ruin, it was packed solidly with historical research, not only about film making in New Jersey and Thomas Edison's Motion Picture Trust, but also about the wild labor movement of the time, left-wing politics, the smell of the Hudson River.  What did I know about any of this stuff, aside from what I read? Nothing. The critics loved it. Publishers Weekly loved it.

At the end of The Edge of Ruin it became clear that the marriage of the plucky protagonist and her neglectful husband was on shaky ground. In the next book Emily and Adam were going to have to break up. Here was a chance to go back and visit a place in my head that I had kept sealed for thirty years, a really ugly place; here was a chance, perhaps, to wring a few laughs out of it.

I wrote the book, calling it The Brink of Fame. The marriage fails. Emily and Adam break up. In the course of dealing with this she has to solve a crime, but, hey, I'm a crime writer; my publisher and my readers are expecting a crime novel. I threw a crime into the stew and tried to keep it relevant.

Publishers Weekly hated it. Harriet Klausner hated it, for God's sake. The story of the plucky heroine abandoned by her husband, betrayed, humiliated, impoverished, her professional competence shaken, and how she works her way back from that, was not what they were looking for. They wanted, I guess, to go on the set and ogle the Hollywood movie stars. Or maybe they wanted a tighter murder mystery.

Not me. I love that little book. (You might love it, too.) When the first copy came in the mail last week I unwrapped it and held it the way you unwrap your newborn infant. I experienced pangs of guilt for paying the smallest attention to the slighting remarks of Publishers Weekly. I said to myself, I have to have a party for this sweet little book. It will take place at the Lambertville Free Public Library next Tuesday, August 16, which is the official release date, between 7 and 9 PM. Drop by if you're in the neighborhood. There will be wine and cheese.

Best of luck with the new book, Kate. Readers, if you’d like to see for yourself whether PW and Harriet are wrong, post a comment to enter the drawing for a free copy of The Brink of Fame. -- AP