Today, we're thrilled to be able to interview fellow author, Liz Zelvin, whose debut mystery, DEATH WILL GET YOU SOBER (St. Martin's Minotaur) has just been released to much acclaim. In fact, Liz is up for a coveted Agatha Award for her short story submission, "Death Will Clean Your Closet."
We had so many questions for this fascinating author that we'll talk with her more tomorrow. Liz is a fellow member of "Sisters In Crime," a delight to get to know and a highly-trained therapist whose on-line therapy work is groundbreaking. And... she also happens to be an excellent writer!
Q) First of all, Liz, congratulations on the upcoming release of DEATH WILL GET YOU SOBER (St. Martin’s). Can you tell us a little bit about the book?
A) Death Will Get You Sober is a traditional whodunit and a story of recovery from alcoholism and codependency. It’s also a novel about friendship and second chances. When Bruce wakes up in detox on the Bowery on Christmas Day, his worst fear is dying of boredom if he stays sober. Instead, he’s catapulted not only in to a murder investigation but also into the world of recovery and 12-step programs in New York. Helping Bruce in his quest to stay sober and find the killer are two friends he thought he’d lost: Barbara, the world’s most codependent addictions counselor, who loves to help and mind everybody’s business, and her boyfriend Jimmy, a computer wiz and history buff who loves AA and the sidewalks of New York.
Q) My Black Widows could use a bit of on-line therapy. How’s that going and how do people respond to a “virtual” therapist? By the way, could you handle four new clients, one of whom is extremely socially dysfunctional, one who can’t seem to control her mouth, one who likes the bottle and one who is a bit repressed? How much time do you think it would take to straighten them all out?
A) I’ve been treating clients from all over the world via chat and email on my website at www.LZcybershrink.com since 2000, and I love reaching people who might otherwise never get the help they need. In Manhattan, where I live, you can open your door, and if you spit, you’ll hit six therapists. Online I get the stutterer and the flasher and the farmer’s wife whose husband won’t stop drinking and the gay man or lesbian in the military—people who can’t just walk into a clinic in their own community and talk to someone. Some people find it easier to be honest and authentic through the written word than face to face. Many feel safer not being seen. Imagine, for example, if you weighed 400 pounds, and everyone who’d ever met you in your whole adult life registered that fact the first moment they saw you—until your online therapist, who couldn’t see you, listened and responded to the person you are inside.
As for your Black Widows, straighten them out? The old joke springs to mind: How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the light bulb really has to want to change! I’d first want to know about each of them if the social dysfunction, as you call it, the tendency to get in trouble with her big mouth, the heavy drinking, and the inhibitions are, to use the hundred-dollar shrink words, ego-syntonic or ego-dystonic. In other words, are these women happy or unhappy with the way they are? If they’re comfortable with how they are—or in denial about the problems the traits you mention are causing them—I wouldn’t get far with them. Therapy is not about “advice” and telling people what to do or how to be. It’s about helping people decide what their goals are and empowering them to make choices that lead toward whatever it is they want. Most people want love. Not everybody wants to pay the price for emotional health or freedom from fear or anger or compulsive behaviors. That’s the same online or face to face. If your character is starting to worry about her drinking, I’d be glad to work with her. Or she could start by reading Death Will Get You Sober. ;)
Q) What’s the oddest job you’ve ever done?
I sold life insurance for about a year and a half back around 1980. What a nightmare. I used to come home and cry for two hours every night. And the only way I made my quota every month was to sell insurance to myself and my boyfriend, now my husband. To this day, we’re pretty well insured.
Q) We share a common love of music. Do you come from a musical family and who are your musical influences?
I wouldn’t call my family musical, although they were the kind of family who went to the symphony and gave the kids piano lessons. I played cello for a while in junior high and high school, and then I started playing the guitar. I’d been hearing and singing folk songs my whole life, and in both high school and college—in the late Fifties and early Sixties—I carried my guitar everywhere and could usually gather a group to sing along. My mother would always ask me why I couldn’t sing any cheerful songs. Traditional ballads are like murder mysteries. Somebody always dies.
I’ve had a couple of stretches in my life when I was writing songs of my own and performing with other musicians. I sometimes wish I’d had the kind of family that all played and sang harmony on the back porch. And my idea of musical heaven is singing my own songs with great backup: instrumentalists a lot more skilled than I am and singers who can do harmony vocals. I eventually moved from traditional folk song structure to more sophisticated acoustic songwriting, songs that had a bridge and two different melodies for the verse and chorus. But I’ve been playing the same fifteen chords for half a century, and that’s been kind of limiting.
Stay tuned for Part 2 tomorrow...
A big thank you to Martha Jones, the staff at the Rye, NH Public Library, and all the nice folks who came out for my reading of THE BLACK WIDOW AGENCY last night. They were the first ones to get a sneak peek at the forthcoming title, SPUN TALES - A BLACK WIDOW AGENCY mystery, due out July 1st. Special thanks to my pal, Tere, for being there.
