Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T L Y M O N T A N A M A G A Z I N E • W I N T E R 2 0 2 2 24 before, the place I love best is the Rocky Mountain Front. I was privileged to write about the pull of the Front for a wonderful anthology, "A Million Acres: Montana Writers Reflect on Land and Open Space." WHY DID YOU CHOOSE THE BLACKFEET RESERVATION AS THE SETTING FOR MONTANA AS OPPOSED TO ANY OTHER MON- TANA RESERVATION? I'm more familiar with it than Mon- tana's other reservations and I also love the setting. The Rocky Mountain Front, with its breathtaking juxtaposition of mountains and plains, is my favorite part of Montana. More than anything, though, it has that crucial mix of bor- ders—the reservation's borders, the Canadian border and Glacier National Park—that make it easy for wrongdoers to slip across them and avoid law en- forcement. LOLA WICKS IS NOT FROM MONTANA, BUT WOULD YOU CALL HER A MONTANA OR WESTERN DETECTIVE? I think over the course of the books, Lola develops a Western sensibility, and slowly adjusts to the re- alities of life in the rural West. I had fun with that in the fifth book by sending her to Salt Lake City after several years in rural Montana and having her realize she'd lost her city smarts— she's late to a court hearing because she's forgotten to allow for rush-hour traffic, that sort of thing. Just one more way in which I tormented Lola. LOLA'S CHARACTER EVOLVES OVER THE COURSE OF THE SERIES. SHE MOVES TO A NEW TOWN, STARTS A NEW RELATIONSHIP, AND HAS A CHILD. HOW DOES BECOMING A MOTHER AND MOV- ING ON FROM HER BACHELORETTE LIFESTYLE AFFECT LOLA'S CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT? Because I live to torment Lola, it was really fun to give her a child and have her realize that for the first time in her life, someone is fully dependent on her. Yikes. It was also fun to see Lola, despite herself, soften some of those hard edges— until and unless something threatens her child. For me, the saddest thing about the series being discontinued is that I didn't get to write a book in which Lola's daughter is a teen- ager. Can you imagine the battles royale? YOU WRITE BOTH GENRE AND LITERARY FICTION. YOUR 2018 NOVEL SILENT HEARTS HAS ELE- MENTS OF ESPIONAGE AND POLITICAL INTRIGUE, WHICH COULD HELP IT PASS AS A THRILLER. WHAT FOR YOU MAKES THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GENRE AND LITERARY FICTION? IS THERE MUCH OF A DIFFERENCE ANYMORE, AND IF SO, DOES IT RE- ALLY MATTER? Damned if I know. I understand the need to classify books, but the lines seem awfully blurry to me. Most of the crime fiction I read is pretty literary. A lot of the literary fiction I read centers on crime. Silent Hearts was classified as literary, but maybe could also have been a thriller—except that if you look in stores that separate their mystery and thriller sections, you'll notice that most of the books designated as thrill- ers are written by men. Ahem. For sure, I don't think about genre when I write my books. I just try to write each one to the best of my ability. WHO ARE YOU READING RIGHT NOW? ANY RECOMMENDA- TIONS FOR OUR READERS? I'm in the midst of Deirdre McNamer's Aviary, and loving it, in preparation for a Montana Book Festival panel, and will be reading Caroline Patterson's The Stone Sister next for the same rea- son. I've been looking forward to that one ever since I first heard about it. Razorblade Tears, the fol- low-up to Shawn A. Cosby's breakout novel, Blacktop Waste- land, is screaming at me to pick it up, but I know that once I do, nothing else will get done. I recently stumbled across Lily King's Writers and Lovers and loved the sly insights about writing. I inhaled Laura Lip- pman's Dream Girl and Megan Abbott's The Turnout, and just finished listening to the audio version of James Lee Burke's Another Kind of Eden, because Burke. CAN YOU TALK A BIT ABOUT OTHER WRITING PROJECTS YOU'RE WORKING ON NOW? The Truth of It All, which starts a series featuring a young pub- lic defender named Julia Geary, came out in August and the sequel is due to the publisher in December. A weird combi- nation of things, including deadlines delayed due to COVID, means that the third book to the Nora Best series is also due in December. Gulp. I've finished the first draft to the Julia Geary sequel, titled The Least Among Us, and am nearly finished with a first draft of the Nora Best Book, tentatively titled Best Prac- tices. It's very nearly time to start polishing the heck out of those, which means that fall is going to be a bit of a blur for me. I'm grateful every day for this "problem." "The Rocky Mountain Front, "The Rocky Mountain Front, WITH ITS BREATHTAKING JUXTAPOSITION OF MOUNTAINS AND PLAINS, IS MY FAVORITE PART OF MONTANA."

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