Success of an Ambitious Woman: Barbara Ross

ROBERTA: We at Jungle Red get SO excited when one of our writing friends publishes her first book! And today we're delighted to introduce Barbara Ross to talk about DEATH OF AN AMBITIOUS WOMAN. Welcome Barbara and congratulations on your book! It's a thrill isn't it? I love your protagonist, Acting Police Chief Ruth Murphy. Tell us about how you came up with this character. (And how does this relate to the line in your bio: "She knows something about the stresses of being the boss.")

BARBARA: Thanks, Roberta! I knew I wanted to write a professional sleuth. You write what you love, and if I were marooned on a desert island, the books I would want would be P. D. James’ and, most of all, Ruth Rendell’s Wexford series. So the question I had to deal with was—what perspective could I bring to that world? I decided it was the experience I had as someone who’d known the responsibility and occasional isolation of being the boss. Of course, I’ve never made life and death decisions, but I have made decisions where people’s money, employment and careers were potentially at stake, so I know how that feels and I decided that was one of the things I could bring to the character.

ROBERTA: We talked yesterday about where our cop details come from--this must be especially important in a police procedural. How did you manage to get it right?

BARBARA: I didn’t aim for “right,” I aimed for “believable.” I wanted to create a fictional world people would accept. I took a community policing course, did a ride-along with a female police officer, interviewed prosecutors and defense attorneys and a state accident reconstruction specialist. There’s a lot of literature around about women in policing, much of it written for college criminal justice courses, and that supplied a larger context. One of the reasons I didn’t go for “right,” was I’m not sure it’s achievable. One of the incidents in the book is something the accident reconstruction specialist swore he’d seen with his own eyes, yet a police officer I interviewed was sure “it would never, ever happen like that.” So “right” is sometimes in the eye of the beholder.

ROBERTA: And for readers who are as yet unpublished, please tell us a little about your path to publication. Any good advice for future published writers?

BARBARA: This book had a really long path to publication, but now I’m having a blast and can easily say it was all worth it.

What have I learned? Hmm—they sound like such platitudes—be persistent, write the best book you can, don’t let the rejection wear you down, but they’re all so true.

I wondered why, in my day job, I could pitch a company to venture capitalists and if they weren’t interested, it hardly affected me emotionally. Their loss, I would think. But rejections for my book from agents and publishers were devastating. More upsetting than someone saying your baby is ugly. Because you know darn well your baby isn’t ugly. But new writers often don’t have the same confidence as new mothers or entrepreneurs. The rejection can undermine you.

So I guess that’s what I learned. If you’re confident what you’ve written is the best book it can possibly be, you can keep going through the inevitable setbacks. And if you’re not sure, go back and keep writing until you are, because that chink in your confidence can make it really hard.

ROBERTA: As if your writing and your day job and your volunteer work with Sisters in Crime aren’t enough, you've also gotten involved with Level Best Books. Tell us about that project.

BARBARA: Mark Ammons, Kat Fast, Leslie Wheeler and I have been a part of a writers group for close to fifteen years. We are huge fans of the Level Best anthologies. Two of us had our first fiction publication with Level Best. When the previous editors, Kate Flora, Ruth McCarty and Susan Oleksiw, announced they were done, we understood, but like many in the New England mystery writing community, we were also sad. We started talking about taking it on. Kate, Ruth and Susan were so supportive and helpful that the little “what if” became a reality, and now we’ll have an edition—titled Thin Ice—this year in time for the New England Crime Bake. It’s exciting and fun—and we haven’t killed each other yet!

ROBERTA: Thank you for stopping in today and we wish you much success with this book and all that comes later!