I guess I've always been interested in serial killers and
other assorted psychos—not in an obsessed kind of way, but curious in a
writerly way, how some people are able to convince themselves that murder is
justifiable or even desirable. For me,
character is always paramount when I’m thinking of writing a book, and serial
killers make great characters. A woman
serial killer, too—a powerful noblewoman with a famous family, locked in a
tower for the last years of her life.
How gothic! Who wouldn’t want to
write about her?
My first book was about nice people trying to get by in some
not-so-nice circumstances. I was aching
for the chance to write about some not-so-nice people for a change. Bad people doing bad things makes for good
fiction.
2. You have meticulously researched Bathory's life. How long
did it take you to write The Countess?
It helps (at least from a time-management standpoint) that
there are so few decent non-fiction books in English about Báthory, only two or
three really. A lot of the others read
like S&M manuals, and most are heavily reliant on myth instead of
fact. When I finally found some
reliable, dispassionate historical sources, I read each two or three times so
that I really knew the story, and then I wrote (literally) like a
madwoman. The first draft took about
nine months, and then another six for revision.
I can actually write fairly fast once I get on a roll, maybe five pages
a day or so.
3. As I read the book, I find myself having a great deal of
sympathy for Elizabeth on many occasions. Did you find this true for yourself
as well?
Absolutely. And that
was a deliberate choice—not because I believe her when she says she’s innocent,
but because I want to believe her. I
keep hoping she’s not going to do the things she’s accused of doing, that it’s
really going to be some terrible mistake, but of course it isn’t. For most of us murder is so foreign to our
understanding of ourselves—something we can’t imagine ourselves actually
committing—that I think it’s only natural to place murderers in a category as
people completely separate from ourselves.
In this book I wanted the reader to get uncomfortably close to her view
of the world, see things through her eyes, but who’s going to do that if they
don’t like her, at least a little bit?
She starts off in the novel as a child, and it’s hard not to sympathize
with a child. But as the story goes on,
that sympathy starts to erode. It’s a
little bit like sitting next to someone on an airplane as he tells you his life
story, and little by little you realize he’s completely nuts. You don’t start out wanting to dislike him,
but that’s where you end up.
4. I find it interesting how the Countess relates to women
and how she interacts with men. Why do you think she has different
relationships with men than she does with women?
She is encouraged from a young age to view the men in her
life as her saviors and protectors, and their love as her ultimate
achievement. But if her most important
role in life is to secure the love of a man—any man, including her son—to
protect herself, then other women are nothing but threats. Any woman who might prove herself to be too
attractive to a man is not someone Bathory befriends. She surrounds herself with oddities, so that
in comparison she always looks better.
Most women of her station would have as her inner circle refined friends
and relations, people of equal or only slightly lesser stature, while Bathory’s
most trusted confidantes are the ugliest, roughest women in the household, women
who don’t threaten her sense of herself.
5. What was your overall impression of Elizabeth Bathory as
a person?
I think she suffered from a massive ego and an enormous
sense of entitlement that came with her wealth and her powerful name. And yet she was a loving, even doting mother,
and clearly a capable businesswoman. At
a time when most families in Hungary were struggling financially, she managed
to build her family’s wealth and influence, even after her husband died. This image of her as a blood-crazed
psychopath doesn’t jibe with the intelligent, well-educated and influential
person she was during her lifetime. I do
think she was capable of violence, and of viewing people, especially servants,
as possessions, which then would give her the ability to look on their
suffering as insignificant. Remember
this was a time when people believed that wealth and consequence were things
bestowed by God rather than good fortune—if you were rich, it must be because you
were more virtuous. God would never let
the unjust be prosperous, right?
I do wonder, though, if anyone would have cared what
happened to her servants if her nephew Gabor hadn't been causing so much
turmoil in Transylvania at the time. The
palatine had plenty of reasons for imprisoning her other than murder, which I
think the book explores pretty thoroughly.
There are some Eastern European scholars who think she was absolutely
framed. I don't agree with that assessment,
but I can see where they'd get the idea.
6. If you could pick music to play while you read this book,
what would it be? (Did you listen to anything when you wrote it?)
I always listen to music when I write. I usually write in coffee shops (if I try to
write at home I end up, instead, having the cleanest house in town) so I
usually need something on in the background to drown out the sounds of other
people around me. My playlist for this
novel included some Fleet Foxes, Sun Kil Moon, and The Shins to get me warmed
up, and then I switch to music without words so I can concentrate. The Cocteau Twins are great to write to. I like jazz too, especially Miles Davis.
7. What are some of
your favorite authors?
Oh, dear, do I really have to pick? I think more of favorite books than favorite
authors, books like Nabokov’s Lolita and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and John
Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces and Shirley Hazzard’s The Transit of
Venus and William Maxwell’s Time Will Darken It. I can’t say that I’ve read all the books
published by those authors, but those books stand out without having read
everything by each author.
8. Are you a fan of vampire movies and books? Do you think
Elizabeth Bathory falls into their ranks, or was she more a victim of her time?
I would not list Bathory among the vampires. She absolutely was not a blood-bather or
-drinker of any kind—that’s a Victorian idea that got grafted onto her story
more than a hundred years after she died, when the witch trials were really
gathering speed. Those claims don’t
appear anywhere in the actual testimony of witnesses called upon when the
palatine was gathering evidence against her.
Nor did she kill 600+ girls (a claim made by only one “witness” out of
hundreds, who heard it secondhand from someone else and reported it as fact, a
series of events that definitely would not stand up in a modern court). Her four senior servants, who were really the
only people in a position to know, listed the number of her victims very
reliably at between 35 and 80, and really, isn’t that enough? Part of what interested me in her story was
that these “facts” (the blood-bathing and 600 victims) are stated over and over
with such authority by so many when really neither of them is true. I wanted to get at the historical Bathory,
not the Bathory of legend. The
historical Bathory is a victim of nothing but her own massive ego. Like most people, she does the really
permanent damage to herself.
As for vampire books, I recently finished The Passage by
Justin Cronin, which I loved and which is so different from his first book,
Mary and O’Neil, which I also loved and which is much closer to what I normally
read. The Passage is so smart, so
well-written and engrossing, I can’t wait for The Twelve to come out. But honestly I don’t usually read much
vampire fiction. I find Dracula
irritatingly Victorian in its treatment of the female characters as poor
victims, fainting flowers who must be protected by the big strong men in their
lives. I don’t know any women like that
in real life, do you? Intellectually I
suppose I understand the draw in the sensual power of bloodlust and the
undercurrent of sex, but vampires are not my favorite monsters. I’m more interested in humans.
9. Do you find it easier to write loosely or outline your
work? Perhaps a combination of the two? Aspiring writers would love to know...
I like to write loosely, with maybe a few “beats” plotted out
and an endpoint in mind but not a real firm commitment to any particular
plotline. My stories are driven by
character, so I like to be able to surprise myself, to make connections in a
story that maybe I wouldn’t have thought of beforehand. If I write a detailed outline, I am instantly
not interested in writing the story any longer.
I write because I want to know what happens, too, and most importantly
why it happens.
10. What is your next project?
I think here I will plead the fifth. I have so many new ideas that I go back and
forth every day trying to decide which one to do next. If I say for certain which one it is today,
tomorrow it will be something different.
My husband keeps telling me I need to commit, to stop cheating on all my
literary wives. But I’m hoping to know
for sure by the end of the year and have a chunk of a new draft written.
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