Full Disclosure. I met author Kim Taylor Blakemore online a few years ago. She's the author that made me fall in love with Historical Suspense. I immediately joined her writers community, Novelitics, taking workshops that upped my writing game and meeting other supportive authors who let me know the writing journey does NOT have to be a solitary one. Did I mention Kim's books are fabulous? She has been a finalist for the Women's Fiction Association Star Award and a recipient of a Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award, both for her novel The Companion. Welcome, Kim!
You write about dangerous women. In both THE COMPANION and AFTER ALICE FELL, there are multiple women who qualify for that title, and what makes them dangerous is as unique as the women themselves. If you had to make a choice, what circumstance do you think makes a woman her most dangerous?
A woman trapped–emotionally, physically, or circumstantially–and threatened with all loss of control can become very dangerous. She will look for a way out. And when she sets her mind that a certain method is the ONE AND ONLY WAY to get out of her situation, then we see how dangerous she can become.
I just got shivers! Your characters draw us in because they are nuanced, just like we are. Do you find it difficult to give your "good" characters dark elements and your "bad" characters sympathetic moments?
Well, I love my “bad girls” and find writing their idiosyncrasies and contradictions fun and fairly easy. The key is to find their hidden hurts, what they are really trying to fill in themselves and what traps them and keeps them from getting that. “Good” characters are harder for me, honestly. Marion Abbott in After Alice Fell is a straight up heroine. I wanted that after writing the moral ambiguity of Lucy in The Companion. It was important to keep Marion’s heroics from being cardboard, and to give her flaws that rounded her character out. She’s stubborn, pig-headed, obsessed with finding the truth of her sister’s death. But it was when I dug in and found her hidden hurt, and the terrible story that came with, that I found the key to what compelled her actions throughout the book.
One of the first scenes in AFTER ALICE FELL has Marion Abbott at Brawders House Asylum identifying the body of her sister, Alice. It is extremely emotional, and I found myself holding my breath along with Marion. I assume (possibly wrongly) that you've never had to identify a body. Did you draw from another real-life experience to create that tension?
Fortunately, I have not had to identify a dead body. But I understand shock and loss. And Marion’s coping strategy is to look outward, to catalog what is in the room, to catalog details of her sister’s body. A memory intrudes once–and it is enough to undo her, so she returns to that catalog of external objects. Craftwise, that “look outwards” is a method to show tension without explaining the tension and heartbreak.
To take the above question a step farther.... You are a strong, independent, modern woman. Because of the time periods you write in, your female characters are often constricted in their ability to act on their decisions and desires. Sometimes, that restraint is even physical. But were there advantages to being a woman living in 1855-65? (The years THE COMPANION and AFTER ALICE FELL take place.)
That is an interesting question! I would love to have a sweeping answer to that, but I don’t. It was advantageous for some women and desperately hard for others. I can say the same of men’s lives. The world at the time was very hard, with backbreaking work, high infant and maternal mortality, death a conscious part of life, opportunities limited. Although men could reach farther in the world, pick up and make their way to the gold fields or travel the Oregon Trail to make new lives in the West.
Certainly, there was agitation for women’s suffrage, and many women saw how stark their economic disadvantage really was. They might shunt a widow without means from house to house, as was the unmarried niece or cousin. A widow from a middle-class prosperous household might take over the store or have the means to live comfortably alone. If the woman had children, and often there were many, she might find herself in dire straits, taking in washing to make the pennies stretch.
If a man were a widower and left with children, he could keep his job, but there was not always the money for a nanny or live-in help–and thus began the search for a second wife. And–there are counterpoints–the women who struggled to become doctors and artists and writers and influencers, to run boarding houses and dry goods, who had good long loving marriages, and all those who made their way with their wits. A long climb, in a world where commerce was the purview of men, but women succeeded in it.
Which all makes the past sound brutal. Which it was. And I am not even addressing the Civil War or abolition or slavery. No denying that day to day and the grit and audacity it took to survive. My guess is that I wouldn’t make it a day in that world.
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In your next book, THE DECEPTION, (which I've had a sneak peek at and LOVE!!!) two women face off in what is almost a battle between good and evil. Do you believe in good and evil?
I wouldn’t write thrillers or crime if I didn’t. ☺
THE DECEPTION releases on September 27, 2022. Can you tell us what you are working on now?
I just finished up THE GOOD TIME GIRLS. It’s about two ex-dancehall girls on a road trip of vengeance in 1905 Kansas, looking to kill an old enemy before he gets to them first. But the road abounds with mishaps, blunders, bounders, con artists, and the circling noose of the law. Think Sister Brothers meets Thelma and Louise.
(Note: I saw a snippet of a scene and spit coffee all over my keyboard. Enough said.)
Thank you, Kim, for taking time out of your busy schedule to answer a few questions. To keep up with Kim's news subscribe to her newsletter here and get an exclusive exerpt from The Deception!
Time isn't all Kim's given us. Here is a link to enter the Goodreads Giveaway to win one of five paperbacks of After Alice Fell, signed by the author!
