Lisa Lutz, author and creator of THE SPELLMANS series of novels
Only a little time is left to enter to win one complete set of all the four SPELLMAN books (with the latest – THE SPELLMANS STRIKE AGAIN – signed by author Lisa Lutz) as well as two copies of the latest also signed by the author. Super easy to enter…just email me at jim@jimhalterman.com before midnight PST tomorrow (May 26th). Winners will be announced on the site on Friday at 10am PST. Good luck!!
Yes, despite my loyal TV watching I do sometimes need to take a break from the boob tube and (brace yourselves) crack a book. I can’t seem to remember when I first picked up The Spellman Files but this novel about a family of private investigators won me over immediately with it’s humor, elements of mystery and the very human elements of how being a private investigator can really come in handy when trying to one-up your family and find out the real truth about potential boyfriends. The first book was a hit and spawned three follow-ups – Curse of the Spellmans, Revenge of the Spellmans and the just-released The Spellmans Strike Again.
I first interviewed Spellman author Lisa Lutz last year when Revenge of the Spellmans hit bookstores and I was genuinely nervous because despite chatting with television and film celebs on a regular basis, I had never interviewed a real life author before. One immediate upside? Talking with Lutz instantly made me want to dust off the novel I’ve been writing for…well, a looooong time. She’s also lovely, pleasant and the fact that she lives in one of the coolest cities – San Francisco – makes her even cooler.
Earlier this year when I got wind that The Spellmans Strike Again was coming out, I knew I wanted to do a follow-up and it turned out she was going to be in Los Angeles (where I now reside) at the recent Los Angeles Times Book Festival. The following chat took place over coffee at the W hotel near the UCLA campus.
Jim Halterman: You recently reached a milestone with the New York Times Best Seller List, right?
Lisa Lutz: Yes, number 16 was the highest we’d ever been. Actually, the first second two books – Curse and Revenge – didn’t make it on the list at all while the first book made it on the extended list. Here’s the thing – the print list goes to 15 so everyone was saying there was a slight chance you could make the print list and when they sent it to me I saw I was 16 and said ‘Aw, shucks’ but when my publicist called me she pointed out that there was an asterix next to the 16 and that I’d tied for 15 so I had to go into the paper. I made it by a hair! I thought it was awesome!
JH: Is there anything political to getting on that list or is it strictly sales?
LL: It’s sales but there’s a way to push it. We did a strict ‘on-sale’ for the book which meant you couldn’t sell the book before it came out so there couldn’t be pre-sales trickling in so the first week you got all the pre-sales. It was exciting.
JH: There has been talk of a Spellmans movie for the last year or so. Any update?
LL: It’s in a sort of holding pattern now and it just seems to be the way it goes in Hollywood. I’m hoping that in the next few months that something can be set up but it’s no longer with Paramount.
JH: I was reading the latest book and thought it really should come to life on the big screen or a television series.
LL: It would be awesome and I hope it happens. I’ll see what I can do to make it happen.
REVENGE is the third book in the SPELLMANS series
JH: Your books often falls into the mystery category and I was wondering if mystery fans are as quirky and odd as the stereotype plays them?
LL: Mystery fanatics are quirky and odd; that is absolutely true. But they are also quite lovely when you go into these mystery bookstores. They have a loyal customer base so people go to the store and don’t know what they want. The staff doesn’t turn around too much so they will hand the customer a book and the customer buys the book. End of story. That’s not going to happen at Borders and Barnes and Noble. That’s what goes on in these stores and I’m grateful for them. When the first book came out I was so adamant that it wasn’t a mystery and I continue to say ‘Look, they aren’t mysteries’ because I understand people’s expectations of a mystery but I’ve had to tone that down just because mystery bookstores have sold my book so well. So now I rephrase it that I write about more mundane mysteries. There’s no murder but the mysteries of human behavior.
JH: In approaching the latest book, I’m always interested in how you want the characters to progress but you also don’t want to change them too much. How do you work that?
LL: Realistically how much can a person change over six months? In essence, a year passes between each book so I try to keep it in that sense of real time. Yes, Isabel is growing up and she’s going to become a little bit more aware of who she is and what she does but nothing in her life has happened yet that would completely transform her so she’s still going to be herself and I need to keep her funny so I can’t have her grown up too much.
CURSE is the 2nd book in the series
JH: Her relationship ups and downs are a big part of her character and, without giving too much away, I’m glad there is some progress in the new book.
LL: She’s figured a few things out and I think that’s good for all of us.
JH: The Rae storyline with the Innocence Project is really interesting and I didn’t know anything about that organization until this book. How did that become a part of this book?
LL: My discovery of the work in the Innocence Project came a little bit later when I was doing research but wrongful convictions have bothered me for years, as they’ve bothered anyone. Someone from the Innocence Project asked me once when did I become interested in the subject and I was like ‘How could you not be interested once you hear of it?’ It’s actually something that a private investigator would do because the police would not go back and look at a case when they think it’s closed. I liked that idea and I thought Rae was the perfect foil for that. You know, kids can really get up in arms about things and it’s the younger people who make change for the most part in this world and I liked the idea that she would go overboard in her involvement.
JH: Did you see it as a way to flesh out her character a bit, was it about plot, or was it both?
LL: It was both. I have to be honest. I did have an agenda in bringing out this issue of wrongful convictions and trying to figure out how I can talk about it and make it funny; it was the biggest challenge in the whole book. I’m talking about a serious issue and I don’t want to diminish it in any way but I’m writing comedic novels and I can’t let go of that either. Fortunately, I contacted the communications director at the Innocence Project and I had him read the book to see what he thought and I did do my research so I had the back story straight and surprisingly they were really on board and appreciated a humorous take to how this issue was brought to life.
The book that started it all - THE SPELLMAN FILES
JH: I don’t see you on Twitter yet so what’s up with that?
LL: I have an account but I’m a little afraid of it. I will say with the next book we’re going to have to do Twitter for that one. What’s funny is I actually know one of the guys who founded Twitter, Biz Stone. My advice column, Ask Lutz, used to be on Biz Stone’s personal website. He was trying to get me to blog back when nobody was blogging and said “Look, I’m going to build you this really simple page on my website” and that’s when I started “Ask Lutz.”
JH: And now he’s dancing in money…
LL: I haven’t seen him in years…
JH: …that’s because he’s too busy dancing in money! [laughs] So, there’s one more Spellman book after this one. Since you have four under your belt at this point do they get easier or more difficult to write?
LL: I still feel the sense of ‘How am I going to keep this fresh?’ and there’s some part of me that thinks I’m going to write a bad book. Not deliberately but because everybody probably does write a bad book if you keep writing. I don’t know if you can escape that. One day it will just happen. If I keep writing until I die, one or two or three of those books will be bad. It’s a scary thing especially with a series.
JH: You told me last year about how you organize your notes and book structure.
LL: I have a big bulletin board that is not that organized but it’s more like ‘Oh, I thought of this joke’ or ‘I though to this plot thread.’ I have some big ideas and I know they’ll change as I go along.
JH: Do you wipe the board clean after every book is complete?
LL: There tends to be other things on the board, too, but when the book is finished many things are removed.
JH: Now tell me about this non-Spellman project.
LL: The reason a lot of people thought the fourth book was the last is because I said I wasn’t writing another Spellman book right away and I didn’t tell them what I was writing. A lot of writers will do a proposal, especially if you already have a book done, and they’ll try to get paid for a book they haven’t written. I had one idea at this point and one book I had started a long time ago. I didn’t know if they would be good, if they would work so I had to write them all the way through. When I wrote screenplays I always wrote them on spec and never tried to sell an idea. So, I was back on my roots and one was a more literary straight novel and at the same time I came up with this idea.
JH: And you’re not writing it alone, right?
LL: My ex-boyfriend, who also works as my editorial assistant since he’s a copywriter and he kept saying ‘I think we should collaborate on something’ and he meant a screenplay. I said ‘A, I’m not going to write a screenplay and B, I’m not going to write a screenplay with you.’ I kept telling him to write a novel and he was really reluctant because he’s an ex-poet. I said ‘I think I have a way for us to write a novel together and it would get rid of all the pitfalls coming our way since we have a tendency to fight bitterly over really stupid things. ‘What if we built the fighting into the collaboration?’ It’s called Heads You Lose and it’s a more traditional crime novel in some ways. I write the odd numbered chapters, he writes the even numbered chapters and we leave notes for each other at the end of the chapter. We’re clearly not on the same page and we let loose so, for example, sometimes he uses really fancy words because he has that kind of vocabulary and then I mock him for it. If he has a character I don’t like, I’ll say in the notes that I don’t like this character. I’ll threaten the character and then eventually I kill the character so the body count rises as I grow more perturbed. There is a proper story and murder mystery that is actually solved however in between we are butting heads at every turn while trying to figure out why we cannot collaborate on some psychological level.
JH: Was there a model for writing a book that way?
LL: There have been a few collaborations where you try to outsmart the other collaborate but this is about a collaboration gone wrong.
JH: Release date for that?
LL: We just sold it to Putnam and it’s going to come out in the Spring of next year so when I get home we start editing right away.
The Spellmans Strike Again is available on Amazon.com and you can find out more about Lisa at www.LisaLutz.com. To find out more about the Innocence Project, go to www.InnocenceProject.org.
Jim Halterman spends his days interviewing the top tier of talent and creative forces in the entertainment world and then, because he's that kind of guy, he brings it all to YOU! And, because we all like free stuff, check back often for giveaways!! 
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Great interview! I haven’t read these books yet cuz I only have the first 2. I hate having to wait between books so I’m waiting til I get the others before I start the series.
Awesome interview Jim! I found the Spellman books a little over a year ago and fell in love with the characters. They are so quirky, kooky, and nuts, but I love them. Lisa Lutz is a comic genius in every sense of the word.
Please tell me that sometime in the furture there will be another spellman book so I can sleep again haha