Although April Smith had had an auspicious debut as a
fiction writer--a story she'd written as part of her thesis for the
creative writing program at Stanford sold to the Atlantic
Monthly>--she eventually ended up in Los Angeles, where she
wrote and produced for dramatic series, including Cagney and
Lacey, and made-for-TV movies. When the Writer's Guild went
on strike in 1988, she returned to fiction writing, and her first novel,
North of Montana, was published five years later. Critics
acclaimed her as a hot new thriller writer to watch, but, she says as
we chat in her hotel room during the New York Is Book Country fair,
"I didn't see it as a thriller, as amazing as that sounds. I just saw it
as a story about this housekeeper and this woman she worked for.
That's really where it started, then I knew there would be a law-
enforcement person who would come in and sort of create the moral
balance again, solve the problem, resolve the chaos. Anna [Gray, the
FBI agent/protagonist] took over the book, and when that happened,
it became a kind of thriller, but I didn't characterize it that way. In
fact, I was naively surprised when it got put in the thriller-mystery
category and all of a sudden I was talking to mystery groups and
mystery bookstores."
With her second novel, Be the One, there's no doubt about the
thriller classification, but it's still the characters that hold the
reader's attention first and foremost. Cassidy Sanderson is the only
female scout in major league baseball, and when she finds a
phenomenal young player in the Dominican Republic, it's a huge
career achievement for her. But when he starts receiving anonymous
threats just before spring training begins, and she gradually mentally
connecting them to something that happened with the rich investor
she's dating, the tension begins to mount...
RH: You'd been writing throughout your life, but if it
hadn't been for the strike, it might have taken you a lot
longer to become a novelist. How did you turn such an
adverse situation into a positive opportunity?
AS: A lot of situations start out as adversity and you don't
realize that there's going to be something good coming out of it. You
just do something out of desperation, feeling that you really don't
have a choice but you've got to do something to just make the
situation palatable. We were just so devastated financially and
emotionally from the strike; you had a choice of either staying at the
bottom of the well or creating your own reality. So that's what we
did, my husband and I--my husband went back to school and got his
degree in poetry from Warren Wilson and I started writing prose
again.
It was very, very scary the first day that I sat at my desk. I was
home. I didn't have an office anymore. I didn't have a secretary.
The phone wasn't ringing. I was literally gripping the arms of the
chair because I felt like demons were coming at me, all these demons
of insecurity.
I had no idea what it really is like to write a novel. But it's like
climbing several mountain peaks, you always think you're there and
you're not. But, luckily, I didn't know that when I started.
RH: And how long did it take you to write that first
novel?
AS: It took five years. Also, the second novel took five
years.
RH: That was going to be my next question. I can guess
some of the reasons for the long gap between these novels,
but can you tell us about them?
AS: I was doing television, and I wrote both of these novels on
spec. I didn't have a contract going in, so I'd [write] for six months,
then I'd run out of money, then I'd have to start making money so
I'd go back to television, do a TV movie, work on the book again, go
back and do another TV movie. But the TV movies really take a year
out of your life, on and off.
The other problem was there was a lot of research in Be the
One. Every location in the book, I went to. The Dodger
organization was incredibly generous in welcoming me into the
Dominican Republic, to Vero Beach, and to Dodger Stadium whenever
I wanted to go there. So I had a great time kind of wandering
around the world of professional ball, but that took time as well.
For my third book, which will be the sequel to North of
Montana, I do have a contract in place and my editor has said,
"You have to deliver this in a year," so I'm not doing TV and I think
I'll get on a more normal office schedule now.
RH: What was the story seed for Be the One?
AS: It was really the dramatic triangle between Cassidy, the
scout, Joe, the builder, and Alberto, the player. There was a lot of
potential for conflict in that triangle, because of the power balances
and imbalances, and what attracted me was that triangle--and
betrayal, who's after who.
Also the notion of a baseball scout has always intrigued me. Before I
really knew what it was, I thought it very romantic. Scouts are a lot
like writers in that they go out looking for the gold. They don't know
what they're going to find. It's exploration, but you've also got to
have the chops to do it, and you take risks. And it's kind of a solitary
thing, too. So I identified with what they do.
RH: You got a lot of access from the Dodgers, in the last
years that they were owned by the O'Malleys.
AS: It was the end of an era. It really was like a family. They
were confident. Not that we were winning, which we haven't been in
twelve years, but they were confident. There wasn't any sort of
bureaucratic paranoia. In fact, one of the nicest moments was when
I was invited to go to this high-level, secret meeting of scouts, which
becomes a major scene in the book, and the scouting director said to
all the guys in the room, "This is April Smith. She's going to be
taking notes. It's okay. She's part of the family." Really nice. A nice
moment.
I had to do a lot more research in Be the One because as much
as I love baseball, I still had to learn the language of the sport. By
language, I don't mean just hits and runs, but the business of it, the
way it operates--learning the whole front-office operation, from the
secretaries to the lawyers, to the accountants. That took a lot of
hanging around.
RH: What's it like to return to Anna Gray, a character you
haven't worked with in at least five years?
AS: I have to get to know her again. I have to reread the
book and kind of remember where I was, in terms of her
development... but it's like coming home. I'm really glad to be doing
it.
RH: You had an established reputation in television and
then all of a sudden, you're a novelist. How do your
colleagues react?
AS: They're envious. (laughs) They all want to do it.
A lot of them are, you know. Peter Lefcourt is a guy who's crossed
over, and Robert Crais, a good friend of mine, a terrific writer. I hired
him on Cagney and Lacey when I produced it, and he, while
doing television, wrote his Elvis Cole series. He just wrote a
standalone thriller, Demolition Angel, which sold to the movies
for a million bucks. So the skills you learn in TV can really help you
in books.
I think the only person who wasn't so impressed was my TV agent.
He was darling, he's very supportive. But it's hard. It defeats you in
each area to start building momentum and then switch. Last year, I
was a producer on Chicago Hope for the final season; all of a
sudden, I'm in the TV-series game again. And then they wanted me
to work on ER, but that wasn't in the cards. I went on a lot of
sort of series interviews, but my heart wasn't in it. I'm in a position
now to commit to writing books.
RH: And after that?
AS: Signs are pointing toward another strike. I think a lot of it
is bravado because the writers have to convince the producers that
we would really walk out. But actually, privately, people are saying
they think it will happen. And in that case, I'm really glad to be
writing a book. I don't know what we're looking at, if there's going to
be a long period of time of work stoppage or not... I would be happy
to keep writing books and maybe someday adapt them to the big
screen. That would be nice.
RH: Has there been any talk about film versions?
AS: There's talk and there's interest, but there's nothing solid.
It apparently takes a long time to find the right home for a book in
the movies. You read about things like Bob Crais' million dollar deal,
but that's really rare, especially for a book with a woman
protagonist. It's a hard sell in Hollywood; you've got to find someone
with vision. People think because I'm in television and I live in L.A.
that it's just naturally going to happen. It isn't . My agent says don't
think about it or you can go crazy. I guess, like everything, it
happens when you least expect it. You just go on.
Visit April Smith's official website.
