Louise Penny makes writing best-selling books look easy. After all, since she published her first mystery novel, Still Life, 13 years ago, she’s banged out an amazing book a year in her Armand Gamache series. Her fourteenth, Kingdom of the Blind, will be released this month.
Louise’s novels aren’t going unnoticed in the literary world either, winning international recognition and awards. Number 13, Glass Houses, hit No. 1 on the New York Times and Globe and Mail lists, won the Agatha Award for best novel, the Left Coast Crime award, and was the Library Reads choice for August of 2017, just to name a few.
One of those enviable folks who knew from a young age what they wanted to be when they grew up, Louise knew she wanted to be a writer when she first read Charlotte’s Web as a child. Before that, she had been afraid of spiders, and after reading E.B. White’s beloved novel, recognized the power of words to help and heal.
It was only after a career as a journalist and a broadcaster with CBC that everything aligned for Louise to sit down and start fulfilling her dream of writing a novel. She’d married Michael Whitehead, the love of her life, moved to the Eastern Townships (which became the setting for her books), and met a great group of women who encouraged her to risk failure. After a false start at attempting to write a historically-based novel, Louise switched to mystery and her first novel, Still Life, was born. Even then, though, things didn’t go smoothly, and like many great writers, she was turned down by publisher after publisher.
“I got to the stage where there was nobody else,” she says. “I had been turned down by everyone. And I didn’t get rejection letters, I got silence. Nobody even bothered to write back to say ‘no’… that’s not true, there was one letter that said ‘no’ – it was actually scrawled across my own letter. So, I had run out of options.”
Louise continues, “I had entered a contest that I hadn’t forgotten that I’d entered, but I thought the deadline had long passed, and obviously more silence. I didn’t know where else to turn. It was heartbreaking when this Great Silence happened.”
At that point, Louise had given up and given in to self-doubt. “I remember looking at the manuscript and thinking I’m going to put it in a shoebox and stick it under the bed to let my heirs worry about it because there’s nothing else I can do.”
As serendipity would have it, however, it was almost that same day that Louise got an email from the contest organizers for the Crime Writers’ Association in the UK, the contest for the best unpublished crime novel that she had entered. The deadline hadn’t passed, and she had been short-listed out of 800 entries world-wide.
This was Louise’s big break: “I didn’t win, I ended up coming in second, but it was enough to bring me to the attention of a literary agent, and then this book, that nobody wanted, was suddenly sold around the world. That was Still Life, essentially unchanged, and it went on to win all sorts of awards. It was an eye-opener – you hear about things like that, like with the famous case of A Confederacy of Dunces, and other cases where novels have been turned down and then end up finding a publisher and being a success.”
Louise freely divulges that her protagonist, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, is based on her husband (who passed away in 2016), a good and moral character.
“Initially, the main character was going to be Clara,” Louise says, “and then Gamache appeared so fully formed that when I realized the series was going to have a future, I figured he was probably better positioned to carry the role than Clara. I was afraid with Clara that people would grow a little weary of her. I felt that a cop in a crime series would be a more natural fit. Why I didn’t choose a female cop, I honestly can’t explain. Although, because he was inspired by my husband, I may have chosen Gamache, so I could always feel close to my husband.”
When Louise’s husband died, continuing to write about Gamache felt heart-warming, and she confides she’s a bit surprised it hasn’t evolved into a more difficult experience because of the loss.
“Actually,” she shares, “grasping onto Gamache because of the loss of Michael has lessened, and it’s become much more natural and normal. It’s a very comforting feeling. Gamache isn’t Michael, and Michael wasn’t Gamache, but there are qualities that they share which is very calming and comforting to be in that company. While writing about situations, I know exactly what Michael would have done in that same situation and, strangely, or perhaps not, it’s pretty similar, except for the gun play, to what Gamache would do.”
Upon a second’s contemplation, Louise concludes that even the gunplay would have been similar. “Gamache hates guns, he puts the gun down. Michael was a healer as well. What Michael had – that Gamache also does, among many other things – was integrity. He also didn’t take things personally. I can take things personally – I can be very sensitive. It’s not that Michael was insensitive to others, but someone could say something incredibly rude to him and it would roll right off him. He wasn’t insensitive to the fact that he’d just been insulted, but he didn’t take it at all personally. He had such a good, clear sense of who he was, and I just admire that so much.”
“And, honestly, I don’t find it difficult writing from the male perspective,” Louise continues. “I think it’s because Gamache is a humanist and most of the people in the series are humanists – not necessarily Jews, Christians or Muslims. They are humanists. They believe in and love their fellow man, and I think that’s what makes it fairly easy to write, because as humans we share – whether we’re man, woman, Black, Asian or Caucasian – at our core the desire for the same thing. We want to belong, we want to love, we want to be loved.”
Although Louise humbly admits that she’s not sure if men would say she’s nailing the male perspective, she has done on-stage presentations with male police officers who have read her novels.
“Never once did they say ‘no, that’s not the way it is.’ In fact, it’s kind of the opposite where they’ve talked about the way I’ve described Gamache’s emotions, or Jean Guy’s emotions, when dreadful things happen and colleagues are put in danger, and these cops have told me that’s what it’s like to hear that one of their own has been put in danger.”
What Louise does find surprising, especially with the early books in the series, is that women have said that men like Gamache cannot exist. “I find that clearly more of a statement about their own experiences, than about Gamache. Because I know they exist, I was married to one. And when I look around, most of the men in my life, while not necessarily as remarkable as Gamache, have integrity and they are decent human beings who are struggling. What I don’t have in my life is all the characters – the brutal characters – that you often read about in crime fiction. That seems like more of a fiction than what I’m writing about.”
Despite the loss of her husband, Louise has no plans to move from their house in the village of Knowlton, Québec, the inspiration for the Three Pines fictional setting for her series (many of Louise’s fans actually travel to Knowlton to see the setting first-hand). She also assures that even if she made a move, it wouldn’t necessarily change the setting of the series.
“I travel a lot now. Initially for the first few books, I felt I had to be at home in order to write the books. Now I don’t because Three Pines has become part of my DNA. I know what the cold feels like, and the rain. I know the spring. I come back here not necessarily because it’s my literary roots; I come back because I love it, this is home, this is where I want to be buried.”
Some mystery writers grow tired of their characters and switch to a new series like Agatha Christie did with her Poirot and Miss Marple novels, but Louise assures that she can’t imagine changing her protagonist or moving away from crime novels.
“My novels are really clearly and proudly crime novels, but they are not really about the crime,” she says. “They really allow one to explore all sorts of issues and themes about being human that I find interesting. I don’t feel I need to find something else. I don’t feel at all limited by the characters, or by the fact that it’s crime fiction. And I also don’t have any other ideas – that’s the limiting factor,” she jokes, “but really, no, I will happily spend the rest of my life with Gamache, and then die before he does, which is really good – I’m guaranteed that.”
It’s apparent that Louise loves doing what she’s doing. At 60, she’s nowhere near considering retirement. When pressed on how she might know down the road when she’s written her last book, Louise doesn’t have the answer.
“You know, so often it’s the person who really should be stepping back that is the last person to know. I’m hoping I’ll be like Sue Grafton or Agatha Christie and die with a pen in my hand. You know… or drop face first onto my laptop. I mean, some days it’s hard – many days it’s hard – where I just think I can’t do this anymore. I’m exhausted, it’s too hard, I can’t, it’s not fun anymore. And, in fact, it isn’t fun for that day or that week, because it’s just really hard work, but it becomes fun again. And it’s also what I do.”
“Every now and then, when I do consider it, just because I’m in that mood, I think honestly, what else am I going to do? I’m 60 years of age, and I have 25 more good years ahead of me. What am I going to do? Stare at the television? Which I can do for quite a while! But a year of that and it’s time to do something else.”
Although, at first, Louise had a contract that stipulated a book a year, she’s continued the habit. Even after her husband died, she thought she would take a year off. “I did take a number of months off,” Louise shares, “but then, not telling anyone, I just quietly started writing again. I just woke up one morning and sat down – I had an idea anyway. I didn’t tell anyone for six months.”
Over the years, writing has become easier for Louise, but her later work has become more complex than the original novels. “So, what has happened is that there is still performance fear there, not as much for sure, as there was in the beginning, so it’s a much more of a pleasant experience. I’m not one of those people who is at their most creative when they’re terrified. I really need to be in a place of calm and confidence because this is hard enough. I used to be afraid that I couldn’t write a book because I didn’t know how to – even after I’d written a couple, it still seemed like magic. Now I know it’s not magic. It’s just hard work and discipline.”
“But the fear now is that I want it to be worth people’s time. I want it to be worth the money that people shell out for these books. And I want it to be worthy of these characters. These characters have given me such a great life, and they deserve to be well treated by me. I don’t want to seem too precious about it, but it’s the relationship that I feel I have to them. So yeah, the fear is that the book won’t be as good as it should be – not that it won’t be written.”
SIDEBAR:
Q-If you were to meet your 20-year-old self, what advice would you give to her?
A- “The advice I would give her is ‘be young, enjoy life.’ I’ve felt so old all my life and now, at the age of 60, I look back at my 20-year-old self and just wish I’d had more fun, been more light-hearted, worn silly clothes, taken some chances. I’ve been so bound for most of my life. It’s only in the last number of years that I’ve been free of the bounds of what others think of me. I wish I could go back and tell myself just don’t worry about what others think; just be yourself.”
Q- Who or what has influenced you the most, and why?
A- “I would have to say being an alcoholic and then being in recovery. Finding a 12-step program. That obviously changed my life. I went one day – I wanted to die, and later that same day, I wanted to live after that first meeting. I didn’t know how to live, I didn’t know how it was going to happen necessarily, but I had hope. You know when you stand on that abyss in despair, on the verge of killing yourself, and then you find hope, I mean that is a life-changing experience. I’ve never forgotten that. The gratitude and awareness that comes with that.”
Q- What are you most grateful for?
A- “Clearly, my sobriety I’m most grateful for; but wrapped up in that is loving. Being able to love. And not necessarily being loved. I’ve been loved. I’m very fortunate I’ve been loved a lot in my life. It took me a long time to recognize that, but I have. But really, it was learning in my 30s to love and that I could love. That was a gift.”
Q-What does success mean to you?
A- “Freedom. I have freedom of choice now; I can choose things that when I was struggling – and I certainly went through not just emotional struggles, but financial struggles – I could not. I had no choice – I was indentured to a job; I was indentured to not very nice people I had to be around and smile and tug my forelock. Also, contentment. In the end, it’s not really how many people read the book or how much money you make, it’s how content you are. I think some people feel that happiness equates with a certain amount of ignorance. I don’t. The happiest people I know are people who have been through hell and come out the other side.”
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