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Good Reading : August 2009
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author profile with surveillance equipment and little moral compunction about using it to find out about Izzy’s love life. Spending 10 years on the script of Plan B taught Lisa a lot about being a novelist. For one thing, she learnt to be patient. For another, she became more open to criticism. ‘My editor – and I think book editors in general – has a different experience working with screenwriters because we’re used to being cooperative. In Hollywood when somebody says, “change this” and you say no, they’ll find another screenwriter. So immediately when I finally got the book deal, my editor had huge notes and she was terrified of what my reaction would be, because we changed quite a lot. But my ge But there is a real-life family that, response was the same as it had always been: “Okay” … I thought about it and I figured out a way that worked for both of us.’ And Lisa learnt another thing during her screenwriting years, something rather surprising about herself as a writer. ‘I think I learned, during the course of writing Plan B, that I was a comedic writer. I didn’t understand that at first,’ she admits, adding that, initially, the movie was to be a straight thriller. ‘When I was in high school I was a serious kid, I came from a serious family – I mean my family isn’t that hilarious. I didn’t understand even what a joke was.’ Although this might sound a little hard to believe, especially to someone who has read the comic Spellman books, Lisa insists it’s true. There’s no resemblance between the Spellmans and the Lutzes. ‘Honestly, my family is almost the exact opposite of the Spellmans. It’s more like a family that I could have lived with. I have one sister, and she’s learning disabled. I have a mother and my stepfather, and we were all very serious. It was a very strict household … And when I went to college, all hell broke loose. And I think that’s partly where Isabel came from, because I was so in control as a child that I think I grew into someone much more like Isabel as a grown-up.’ while not similar to the Spellmans, at least inspired Lisa to write about this unusual family business. One of Lisa’s odd jobs while she was an aspiring screenwriter was for a family of private investigators. So what do they think of the books? ‘Oh they love them,’ says Lisa. ‘They come to all the readings. The head of investigations is a retired FBI agent and he loves to go to the readings, plant himself in the front row and interrupt me every once in a while and tell a story, or shout out, “We’re so proud of her!”’ A Spellman will rarely have a conversation without taping it, which is a handy editorial device for their creator, and it means that we’re all privy to hugely entertaining ‘private’ conversations that usually end with the e following: don’t know it yet. And I couldn’t get Lisa to divulge anything other than the fol each other but they just do enjoy their suffering. They ‘I think we’ll see what happens, but anyone who ends up with Izzy will in some way be suffering, but enj have to know what they’re getting into. She’s not going to change. Well she can change, but she’s still going to be, at her core, who she really is … it takes a long time for real change to happen. I think that it will be gradual with Izzy.’ In the latest book, Revenge of the Spellmans, Izzy has to partake in some self-reflection in the form of courtordered psychotherapy. It’s punishment for behaviour in the previous book that saw her curiosity take Izzy to the wrong side of the law. ‘Don’t you think she’s improving?’ Lisa asks me, hopefully. The fourth book in the series will be called The Spellmans Strike Again and it will be out next year. After that, Lisa plans to write something different: a straight fiction novel. She’s constantly asked if it will be a mystery, and she says, ‘I will have the story unfold like it’s a mystery because all mysteries are creating questions at the beginning, [making readers] want answers. And you give answers piece by piece to keep the reader hooked … I mean I’m nervous about writing a book that is not a Spellman book, but I can’t imagine getting anyone to read what I’ve written unless I’ve created it in a way that there’s some momentum or some reason to keep reading.’ Revenge of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz is published by Simon & Schuster, rrp $32.95 Lisa Lutz will be attending the Melbourne Writers’ Festival in August. AUGUST 2009 ı goodreading 19 He and Izzy are made for ea question, ‘are you taping this?’ The person usually asking that question is the perpetually bemused Detective Henry Stone. Henry is handsome, patient, neat and clever. H D H p REVENGE SPELLMANS
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