Kate Gibson (3:23)

No, it's not at all. And I think it's interesting because Three Pines, she admits, is sort of idealistic, isn't it? I mean, it's a town that doesn't exist on maps. And she even says, I think in our last conversation, she said she was influenced by South American mystic writers, creating this sort of Brigadoon village, if you will. But yet I usually read stuff like that, and I think to myself, oh, you with your Land of Oz, stop being so cliche. And yet, as I read the Gamache books, and as I've read so many of them, I yearn for this town to be real. I yearn for these people to be real. I yearn for the fires at the bistro and the discussions of art in Clara's studio. And I think it speaks to her skills as a writer that she could take something that is so idealistic and take cynical people like myself and make this and yearn for that idealism. Well done, Louise Penny.

Charlie Gibson (4:20)

So we start out our conversation, the second part of our conversation with Louise Penny, talking about the fact that she has written one of these books every year since 2005, with the exception of last year, and why she's done that, why she does that, and the difficulty of maintaining the kind of discipline that it takes to come up with a book that is fresh and different and isn't just in writing a series, repeating the same thing over and over. The continuation of our conversation with Louise Penny. You have written a Gamache book every year, with the exception of last Year, you slaggard. But what's up with that? And I guess this is sort of a multi part. Talk to me about what kind of dedication that takes, how hard it must be to keep the mysteries fresh and talk me through your year between books. How is it divided? Do you spend three months thinking about what it may be and how does that year break down?

Louise Penny (5:23)

What happens is because now, as I mentioned before, they're essentially really. There's such a thread running through them. I figure that my contract with the reader is that the plot be resolved for the most part at the end. That's the understanding. But there's such an intuitive line that runs through all of that, the character development. And so as I'm writing one book, I'm beginning to think about the next and how they will flow one into the other. So I have a notebook. I make notes, I make little ideas, little thoughts. I write down characters, names. Because I've had so many books now I have to. I try not to have the same name. So some of them reappear unintentionally. So yeah, that's. I never am not thinking about the books and the characters. I don't think a day goes. In fact, I know a day doesn't go by when I don't consider them. Consider the next book, consider what can happen. Just think about them. They live now in my head. But when I start to write after making all of these notes and having it come, I don't outline hugely. I used to, but I don't do so much anymore. Sometimes I get it wrong, sometimes I leave it too loose and then I end up getting lost and struggle. Sometimes I do it too much and then I'm strangling the story. But I try to have that balance that allows for enough movement forward that I know where the story is going, but not so much that there isn't space for inspiration for those grace notes. So then I sit down and I start to write. And I. When I, I used to be a journalist for my sins. And then I. Then I started killing people. So I think it was a natural progression from being a journalist to murder. So I, I understood what discipline was, but it was, it was imposed from the outside. You can't, as you know, you cannot be the host of a live show and be late. You can't do it twice anyway. Well, so you, it's.

Charlie Gibson (7:36)

I, first of all, I firmly believe as a journalist all my life that, that you write on deadline, that that journalist will, will put off things, will procrastinate and Then finally, when the. When the deadline looms, you better batted it out. Yes. Do you feel?

Louise Penny (7:52)

Yes. Yes. It certainly helps to have to know when I need to deliver the book. What I have found is that I need to be self disciplined. I need to figure it out for myself. And I am incredibly lazy. So I tend to live on sort of the edges of things. So I'm either working really, really hard or lying on the sofa eating jelly beans and watching a Godzilla movie. So we just like heaven. So I. So I am extremely. I wasn't at first, when I first started, I quit work and told people I was going to write this book. Might have intimated it was going to be the best book ever, and then suffered five years of writer's block. I think partly because I kept expecting the muse to hit me. And I think I thought that it was going to be easy. And when it wasn't easy, I thought, something's got to be wrong. Then I finally actually started writing. And I can talk about that, how that happened. But I realized when I was writing the second book, and by then I had a contract and had to produce, it took me like 45 years to write the first, and then I had to write the second in one year. And what I realized was that there actually it was my agent. My agent who's a little nutty. She was British. I don't know about you, maybe it's the colonial in me, but when someone speaks to me, a British accent, I hear an implied, you idiot.

Kate Gibson (9:27)

I know what you mean.

Louise Penny (9:28)

Yeah. So, no, this didn't bode well for our relationship. She's British and I'm not. I'm hearing you idiot. So she called me up one day to say, now this is. I'm writing the second book. She said, now, how's the book going, dear? I said, you were going so well because I. Because I was afraid. And she said, first of all, she said two things, for God's sake, it's not War and Peace you're writing. And then she said, Most books are 90,000 words. Most writers can write a thousand words a day. Ah, three months, you're done. It was a little simplistic. First of all, my books aren't 90,000 words. But. But that was a sort of a ballpark. But what she did, I'm not sure whether intentional or not. But in a moment of clarity, I understood that there is actually a process. All I have to do is Charlie, as you were saying, set a deadline for myself, set a goal. And in that moment I understood. I Had a moment of insight where I realized I am very goal oriented. If I set a goal for myself, I will generally hit it. So If I say 1,000 words a day, that's, that's what I have to do. And so that's, that's becomes my day. When I first start writing a book, I try to set the bar low. I write 100 words, then I up it to 200 because I want to be. Writing a book is hard. I want to be kind to myself.

Kate Gibson (10:52)

I, you know, you've written 19 of these and it would be so easy. I mean, you said you came up with sort of a system for writing them and it would be so easy for these books to be formulaic, but you have a ton of different structures. Flashbacks, simultaneous storylines. One point you project an entire storyline back from a courthouse opener. Sometimes the person doesn't die until like the first half of the book is already done. So how do you, once you've come up with what your central story is going to be, how do you say, okay, here's how I'm going to build a structure around that that's sort of unpredictable and different? Or is that conscious or does it just naturally flow?

Louise Penny (11:30)

Sometimes it's conscious for sure, and sometimes it is more sort of organic that it grows out of whatever the plot and the theme is going to be. Generally, what I try to do is this is so simple. And this was actually one of the things that broke my writer's block was I just try to write a book I would read and not try to complicate it or anything. Just say, you know, I want it to be exciting, I want it to be riveting. I want it to be insightful. I want this one to be maybe a little bit more intimate. So, yeah, that's, that's. But you're absolutely right. Really, the challenge is not to either write the same book over and over or be sort of jump the shark, you know, become so ridiculous, oh, these gamach is going to the moon or something. Because I gotta be. Something has to be different.

Kate Gibson (12:19)

Well, with 19 books, we found out quite a bit about this town and these characters. How do you keep a repository of everything? Cause at this point, your fans must be so rabid that they might write you and say, no, that's Myrna's cousin. Don't you remember in the second book you established her as Myrna's cousin. So do you have a, I mean, do you have a repository where you keep those details straight?

Louise Penny (12:38)

You would have thought, you know, and I'M going to write that down right now. A repository, rather than. Not a suppository, a repository.

Kate Gibson (12:50)

Well, I had a fantasy writer once where I asked her how she came up with this whole fantasy world, and she said, I write a Wikipedia page from start to finish, and it's got wedding rituals and traditions and seasons and festivals and this and that. And she goes, and I may never use any of it, but at least that way I have a central reference base. And I figure when you've created, you've created some very serious fans. As a matter of fact, the reason that I was inspired to read Louise Penney, who I'd heard so much about, was our listeners were writing us about you. So, I mean, do you get letters that say, oh, you got it wrong. You didn't put the town square there. It's a little bit. It's a mile to the left.

Louise Penny (13:23)

Yes. No, I do, because what happens is it's taken me 20 years to write 19 books. They read the books in like, six months. So they see all the. You know, we had blue eyes here now with brown eyes, and where did the two children come from? And. Oh, my God. And in the first book, this was probably the biggest mistake. I described something that happened to my grandmother, and that was Gamache is describing or thinking about when his father died. His mother, the first thing she did when she found him dead was she called up the hairdresser and cancelled the appointment. That's what my grandmother did when she found my grandfather dead in bed.

Charlie Gibson (14:03)

I like your grandmother then.

Kate Gibson (14:05)

Yeah, I know.

Louise Penny (14:07)

A little suspicious I might come by this naturally. There happened to be a pillow over his face. But then later on, in the second and third book and subsequent books, we find out that Gamache's parents both died in a car crash when he was nine. So what's the real story? So I get that. I get that a lot. I got it.

Kate Gibson (14:32)

You said that you think of these books as 19 chapters of one book. Do you know how it ends?

Louise Penny (14:38)

Ah, probably with my death, to be honest. I plan to. I plan to ride this right into the ground. No, I don't. I don't. I don't. I really care about these characters. And so, no, I can't imagine killing off any of them, especially the duck.

Kate Gibson (14:56)

Yeah, I know, but you killed. You killed Peter. You can't be that sentimental. You killed Peter.

Louise Penny (15:00)

I know. That was. You know what? I actually cried. I cried and I didn't know he was going to. To die. When I got really. That stage in the. In The. When Clara is confront. You know, approaching.

Kate Gibson (15:11)

Yeah.

Louise Penny (15:11)

That. The cabin. I had no idea what would happen. Would they reconcile? Would they divorce? And I just started writing that scene. This is. It is. I mean, you get this day in, day out, when you. When you interview. It's the best job ever.

Kate Gibson (15:26)

Oh, yeah.

Louise Penny (15:26)

It's just the most amazing thing to just be able to explore. We get to try things. We get to be wrong. We get to be wrong and go back and do it again. How often in people's jobs do they get to, in fact, not only get to be wrong, it's encouraged, because that's the only way you're going to get to where you want to be.

Charlie Gibson (15:45)

So our thanks to Louise Penny. And we're gonna ask her now to take a few rapid fire questions. We always love doing that. Rapid fire questions for Louise Penny. Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes?

Louise Penny (16:01)

Sherlock Holmes.

Charlie Gibson (16:03)

Really?

Kate Gibson (16:04)

Why?

Louise Penny (16:05)

Oh, much more complex. Hercule Poirot was. Was a great creation. But one note, he was the same man in the Mysterious Affair at Stiles as he was essentially at the very end.

Kate Gibson (16:18)

Yeah.

Louise Penny (16:18)

He did not evolve.

Kate Gibson (16:20)

Plus, as I recall, Sherlock Holmes is an addiction.

Louise Penny (16:22)

Yeah, he is.

Kate Gibson (16:24)

He's a cocaine addict.

Louise Penny (16:25)

Yeah. Doesn't make him.

Kate Gibson (16:27)

I think he's more interesting as a result. Hercule Poirot would probably not have been as interesting if he was shooting up in the bathroom. Okay, you type the end at the end of the book. How do you celebrate?

Louise Penny (16:38)

Oh, with an eclair. Always. Maybe two.

Charlie Gibson (16:43)

Do you read mysteries now?

Louise Penny (16:45)

You know, that's a really interesting question. I write mysteries because I love them and I understand them and I have great affection for them. A Mystery was the first book that I shared with my mother. She handed me an Agatha Christie, still warm from her hands. It was the first adult book. And when things got tough with my mother later in life, as they often do between mothers and daughters, our one, when we were about to say something that could never be unsaid, one of us would inevitably say, what are you reading? And that was the white flag. And then we would find the common ground through reading.

Kate Gibson (17:19)

Oh, I wish I'd known that when I was in high school. So did my parents.

Charlie Gibson (17:23)

Do you still read mysteries?

Louise Penny (17:26)

I read the Golden Age mysteries. I cannot read my contemporaries. And that's the only sadness in a. In a world, in a life, far better than I ever thought I'd have, because I love mysteries. And I. And I have friends, obviously close friends, who are crime writers. I will, if. If they hand them to me and. And Say, will you endorse this? I will often read them, but I don't want, you know, it's. I read for pleasure. I read for relaxation. Now is like a busman's holiday. If I'm reading a crime novel, I'm always analyzing, why is this working? Why isn't it working? This is brilliant. Or this is a piece of merd, in which case I'm really annoyed. So I read a lot of true crime, I read a lot of nonfiction, and I don't want to be. I don't want to be influenced by the book that I happen to be reading at the time, because if it's really good, that's what I want to write. And that's really not encouraged.

Kate Gibson (18:27)

Three writers, alive or dead, that you will read just because they wrote it.

Louise Penny (18:34)

Oh, well, John Irving, Agatha Christie, and God, I'm trying to think. I'm trying to think. Erik Larson. Oh, yeah, the People in the White City. And yeah. Oh, the other one is. Can I add another? Yes, because this is very little known Canadian writer, sadly, Mordecai Richler. Have you ever heard of Mordecai Richler?

Kate Gibson (19:00)

No. He wrote Writing It Down.

Louise Penny (19:02)

He wrote Barney's version. But my favorite book of his was Solomon Gursky Was Here. Fabulous. Fabulous.

Kate Gibson (19:10)

What a great title.

Louise Penny (19:11)

Canadian Writer.

Charlie Gibson (19:12)

Have you ever asked another mystery writer for an autograph?

Louise Penny (19:17)

I have asked them to autograph a copy of their book that I have.

Charlie Gibson (19:22)

Yes.

Louise Penny (19:24)

I will buy the hardcover and go up to them and ask, has another.

Charlie Gibson (19:28)

Mystery writer asked you for an autograph?

Louise Penny (19:32)

Yes, I think to be polite.

Charlie Gibson (19:34)

Of the Three Pines residents who most embodies Louise Penny, it started off as.

Louise Penny (19:41)

Clara, because even though she's a visual artist, a painter, and I'm not, I understand that angst of creativity. And I think all creation comes from the same taproot. It just comes out in different ways. So I understood her sense in one of the books. I described that at 2 in the afternoon, what she's done is brilliant. At 2 in the morning, it's a piece of merde. And that's exactly how I feel. But then as the books evolved, it became more and more Ren Marie and that the relationship that she and Armand have was very close to the one Michael and I had.

Kate Gibson (20:17)

So thank you so much for taking the time to sit with us. This was so much fun.

Louise Penny (20:21)

I don't want to leave. Can I just hang out? Can I just be in the background of all your podcasts?

Charlie Gibson (20:27)

We would love to have you do that. And at this point, we're Going to pause when we come back after these messages from the people who spend huge amounts of money making this podcast possible. My goodness, they're rich. We're going to get a story from Louise Penny, which I think is really so sweet, as I say, about how she kept writing when her husband was suffering so. Michael, her husband was suffering so from dementia.

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Louise Penny (21:21)

Blinds.com is the goat shopblinds.com right now.

Ollie (21:24)

And get up to 40% off select styles plus a free professional measure. Rules and restrictions may apply.

Kate Gibson (21:35)

Thank you for sticking with us here. Now the final part of our conversation with the great Lupin.

Charlie Gibson (21:40)

You've spoken lovingly about your husband Michael, who came to you relatively late in life. He had dementia and you were a caregiver for some period of time before he died. And on Good Morning America, I remember talking to many spouses who had to do what you had to do and how hard that is. And to see someone that you love diminished and disappear and in some cases even forget who you are. How did you, during that period of time, maintain the discipline of writing?

Louise Penny (22:12)

Well, I thought that because Michael was my life and the love of my life, that when he got sick that I would have to stop writing. Not because I wouldn't have the time or energy, though that would probably be it. But just because Michael was gamache and that my gamache was dying and that I couldn't. I just couldn't continue. Do you know, it's a strange thing. I actually started writing the books after 9 11. That was one of the things that got me out of my writer's block, was a couple of things. One was the sense that we just don't know. You know, the joke's up. If you're ever going to do it, do it now. The other thing was that it became clear to the world never more than to people, of course, in, in the United States, that no place is safe. And we all, I think, at that point yearned for, for a sense of safety and became clear that you can't, you can never guarantee physical safety, but you can guarantee emotional Safety. And you do it by having a community around you. And that's what Three Pines became, is that safe place for us emotionally. And I wanted to reflect that, but I sort of did it as an offering to the world. It never occurred to me that it would become my safe place. And when Michael became sick, when I was facing the end of my world, I was able every morning after looking after him, to go into the kitchen and sit down, and he was safe in bed and write and go to Three Pines and be comforted by the bistro, by the sense of community, by the sense of belonging. And as well, I must admit, the sense of control I had over that world. So it became, I think, if it didn't save my life, it certainly saved my sanity, the writing. Then I discovered something else, that far from being afraid of losing Michael, what happened was Michael became immortal. Michael is now immortal. He is with me. I am with him all the time, all day, every day.

Charlie Gibson (24:31)

Such a nice story and interesting that reading for all of us who are literature fans can be such a tonic and such a sort of safe space of peace. But so, too, to find that for a writer as wonderful as she is, that she could do that while she cared for her husband, Michael, I just think that's a really nice story.

Kate Gibson (24:57)

Yeah, Yeah, I think it's an amazing story. And again, speaks to the warmth of.

Charlie Gibson (25:01)

Her writing and that she sees now Michael as Gamache, and Gamache as Michael.

Kate Gibson (25:07)

And, as she says, and herself as Ron Marie.

Charlie Gibson (25:11)

Yeah, that's right. And therefore he's with her all the time. That's really nice. Anyway, before we go, we should bring you up to date on what we're going to have next week because we've got someone who has written widely, but it's a little different because she's now adapted one of her books to a Broadway show. Talking about Delia Ephron.

Kate Gibson (25:29)

Yeah, it's going to be. It's fantastic. When we read that she was bringing left on 10th to Broadway, we said, oh, we got to have her back. Just because we wanted to talk about. I mean, we've talked about so many different processes in writing. We had a writer on, David Kapp, who was a screenwriter, and I loved talking to him about the difference in processes. And so we'll get to talk to the great Delia Ephron, one of the great writers, about what it was like to bring such a personal story and put it up on the stage for everyone and critics to see. So do tune in for that.

Charlie Gibson (25:57)

The book was well reviewed and left on 10th. She spent two and a half years developing as a play now running on Broadway. So how you make that process as a novel writer to shift to a playwright? First play she's written, she says. We'll talk to her about it next week, but in the meantime, we'll bring you up to date on the people who make this podcast possible. And then coda from Louise Penny.

Kate Gibson (26:17)

The Bookcase with Kate and Charlie Gibson is a production of ABC Audio and Good Morning America. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions. Our executive producers are Laura Mayer and Simone Swink. We want to make mention of Taylor Rhodes, Amanda McMaster and Sarah Russell at Good Morning America and Josh Cohen, Asal Asanapour, Meg Fierro and Amira Williams at ABC Audio.

Louise Penny (26:39)

It's very simple. Goodness exists.