Jennifer McMahon Promises to Tell a Great Ghost Story
By Amy Lilly
Promise Not to Tell: A Novel
Jennifer McMahon
Harper Paperworks, 2007
256 pp.
In her black-and-white author photo, Jennifer McMahon looks like a grown-up version of one of the misfit girls she likes to write about: withdrawn, secretive, dark. In fact she is a warm, open person who readily agreed to meet with me in her home, a sunny, yellow Victorian at the top of a steep hill in Barre. In the second story living room, her nearly-three-year-old daughter Zella zoomed excitedly in and out, closely followed by Zella's other mom, Drea. During our interview, McMahon talked about finding the right agent for her debut novel, Promise Not to Tell, the advantage of writing multiple books at once, and her discovery of lesbian literature.
Vermont Woman: How would you describe your narrative voice in Promise Not to Tell? Is it similar to your own?
Jennifer McMahon: Kate has a similar sense of humor-wry, I would call it-but I intended her to be more skeptical than I am. If I was confronting something like that [evidence that the ghost of a girl whose murder was unsolved may be involved in a copycat murder in the same Vermont town decades later], I would say, "Of course it's a ghost!" Then I'd pull out my ouija board. Kate's skepticism worked better for the story, I think.
VW: You say on your Web site that you're from "suburban" Connecticut but were living in a cabin with no electricity or running water when you began writing Promise. Were you trying to reenact the failed 1960s back-to-the-land movements in Vermont that form the backdrop of your novel?
JM: I'd say I played at it for a while, about two or three years, but I wouldn't want to do it again. It's really hard hauling your groceries by backpack through the snow, wearing snowshoes, with nothing but a headlamp to guide you. It does save a lot of money, though. Drea and I had bought 36 acres of land in Marshfield. Our plan was to live in the cabin in the woods while we were building our real home nearer to the road. We built the house ourselves using cordwood masonry, where the ends of the logs are visible in the walls. It worked for a while, and we added a second story, but it was still very small and rustic. Then I got pregnant and my mother was starting to need help, so it made more sense to move into town. This house was already divided into two apartments, so my mother could live on the first floor.
VW: How did your novel get published?
JM: Promise Not to Tell is actually the fourth novel I wrote. With my first novel, I found an agent by looking in the Guide to Literary Agents, checked out from the library. Then I wrote a second, and my agent started shopping that one around, too. While she was trying to sell the first two, I wrote another and put it in a drawer.
Then I wrote my fourth, Promise, and I thought, "This is it, this is what's going to do it." Instead, my agent quit on me because she hadn't been able to sell the first two, and she just didn't "do" ghost stories. So I sulked for a while. By this time I had online access at home, so I pulled myself together and looked on the Internet for a new agent, and also in the acknowledgments of a lot of books that seemed similar to mine. The agent I found was actually an assistant at the time. He had some wonderful suggestions for revisions which helped me turn Promise into a much better book. His boss eventually rejected it but he had just started taking on clients of his own, and he asked to represent me. He found a publisher, HarperCollins, about a year later.
VW: Who writes the now ubiquitous "Reading Group Guide" questions on the publishers' Web sites?
JM: In my case, I wrote those, and my editor contributed a few. Some of them I can't even answer myself. I read a lot of other Q&A lists to get a feel for it-there are whole Web sites out there now for book groups.
VW: How did you get involved in the grog (group blog) The Debutante Ball, which features you and five other debut women authors?
JM: I didn't even know what a blog was before I got into that. The author, Kristy Kiernan, who was launching it recruited one of my agent's other clients, Tish Cohen. Then Tish recruited me, through our agent. It's a great support system. I've met so many people-online, I mean. It's not a huge commitment; I contribute once a week, just for a year. I have two more books coming out in 2008, so I'll no longer be a "debutante."
VW: Can you talk about your forthcoming novels?
JM: The third manuscript I wrote - the one I stuck in a drawer because it was so complicated -- is being published by HarperCollins probably in the summer of 2008. It's another adult crime novel; the working title is Rabbit Island. The other book is A Cure for Your LaSamba Blues, a young adult novel being published by Dutton Children's Books, also coming out in 2008. LaSamba is the story of two girls who fall in love. I had a murder and rape and a lot of horrible things in there that they took out. I have two other books in various stages of completion--it's good to have more than one project going for when I get frustrated or stuck.
VW: Is it different writing heterosexual love scenes, like the ones in Promise, than writing lesbian ones? Do you have to make more of an effort to put yourself in the shoes of your heterosexual characters?
JM: I think all aspects of writing require putting myself in the characters' shoes. Romance is romance. With LaSamba, I had to remember what it was like to be in high school again, so I looked through some journals I had saved. It was a very angst-y time.
VW: You describe the two 15-year-old girls in LaSamba as "freaks" on your Web site, and the girl in Promise, 12-year-old Del Griswold, is a "pariah." Why write about girls who are outcasts?
JM: I always considered myself an outsider. In Connecticut where I lived, it was unusual to be from a divorced family. I grew up with my mother and grandmother. And I was starting to realize my sexual orientation. I had my first relationship at 13. It was very hidden; we both pretended to like boys at the same time. We did what we could to pass. I felt like I was living two lives-that happens a lot in my fiction. I dropped out of high school when I was 16-it was stupid, but it was what I thought I needed at the time. Later, I got my GED and started taking classes at a community college, and then I got into Goddard College. That's the first time I felt like I was in a community of fellow outcasts, people who "got" me.
VW: When did you start reading lesbian fiction?
JM: It wasn't until college, and then I was reading mostly lesbian poets, since I was studying poetry. I remember being blown away by that book everyone reads, Rubyfruit Jungle [Rita Mae Brown]. But the first time I saw two women kissing was in a movie called Personal Best, which I saw in high school. I watched it over and over; I stayed up late to watch it on HBO. I was amazed: two girls kissing! I made my girlfriend of the time watch it, and she was horrified!
VW: Does it seem to you that gay men have more visibility in our culture these days than lesbians, particularly in the book market?
JM: Maybe, but I'm afraid I don't know much about the market for lesbian writers. I've certainly been out all along with my agent, editors, and on my Web site, but my sexual orientation hasn't really affected things. I am more of a "writer who happens to be a lesbian" than a "lesbian writer." I'll write about lesbians if I feel like it works for the story. LaSamba is geared toward 13- to 15-year-olds generally; it's just a book I would have loved to read at that age.
VW: You seem to fit in well with a growing cadre of Vermont mystery writers, like Joseph Citro, Sarah Stewart Taylor, Archer Mayor, and Nancy Means Wright, to name a few.
JM: I met Sarah Stewart Taylor, Carla Neggers and Nancy Means Wright because we all belong to the organization Sisters In Crime, for women mystery writers. The four of us read at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Montpelier to celebrate Sisters In Crime's 20th anniversary. That was a wonderful experience--it was my first public reading. I also joined the League of Vermont Writers last winter, and went to the conference, where Tanya Lee Stone did a workshop on voice.
VW: Which novels about lesbians would you recommend?
JM: Sarah Waters is a great lesbian author: Victorian era, lesbian themed-very well-plotted, wonderful twists and turns. My favorites are probably Affinity and Fingersmith. Sandra Scoppettone also has a really good series featuring a lesbian PI named Lauren Laurano.
For more information on Jennifer McMahon or the Debutante Ball, visit www.jennifer-mcmahon.com and www.thedebutanteball.com.
Associate Editor Amy Lilly lives in Burlington.
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