Tell Me Lies by Jennifer Crusie

From the Publisher

Maddie Faraday's life would be perfect--if it weren't for
her cheating husband
her suspicious daughter
her gossipy mother
her secretive best friend
her nosy neighbors,
and that guy she lost her virginity to twenty years ago...

In Tell Me Lies, Jennifer Cruise dishes up a funny, sexy, suspeseful novel about small-town secrets, big-time betrayals and the redemptive power of love, laughter and choclate brownies.

Redbook

A ferociously funny, sexy read.

Library Journal

Maddie Martindale has been the nice girl of her small town of Frog Point where gossip is major entertainment. Comfortably, if not happily, married to bigshot Brent, who is running for mayor, and mother to a sweet girl, Maddie seems to have a perfect life. But after she finds crotchless panties in her husband's car, Maddie's pristine reputation unravels. An imminent divorce, her husband's murder, and the precipitate return of Maddie's sexy high school flame, C.L. Sturgis, lead to her quick fall. C.L., the rebel bad boy who never dropped his torch for Maddie, has straightened out handsomely and plays a seductively vital role. The town is agog with talk of Maddie, the adulteress and murderess. An exciting, sensual romp, chock-full of mystery and intriguing characters, this light novel provides hours of fun reading. For all fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/97.]Sheila M. Riley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, D.C.

Kirkus Reviews

A popular paperback author dives headfirst into familiar territory: the mystery romance. On her way to self-actualization and a worthy lover, a small-town girl enters a classic merry chase of general upheaval. It all begins when Maddie Faraday of Frog Point, Ohio—where gossip is the major sport and everyone knows everyone else's business—finds a pair of crotchless black lace underpants under the seat of her husband's Cadillac. Like an Erma Bombeck femme whose personal sphere is defined by fixing her broken microwave and washing her dirty macaroni-and-cheese skillet, Maddie (who calls herself "the perpetual virgin of Frog Point") has always been a good girl, a good wife, a good daughter, and a good mother to her precious eight-year-old daughter Em. But the discovery of a few triangles of illicit lace begins a weekend that sees the uprooting of Maddie's entire life. Right in the middle of her tumultuous morning, C.L. Sturgis, a "rebel without a clue" who long ago took Maddie's virginity and has grown up 20 years later into a hot-looking accountant (there's been a dearth of rugged CPAs in recent romance fiction) appears at her door, looking for her husband, Brent. Brent, it seems, is suspected of embezzling a lot of money. Then, as if a bad morning and a marriage spent cleaning up EggMcMuffin wrappers weren't enough, Maddie's car is totalled and she suffers a concussion. Plus which Brent, who's disappointed a whole posse of Frog Pointers, is found shot in the head on a former lovers' lane. The identity of the killer is fairly obvious; somewhat implausibly, Maddie grows estranged from C.L. Still, for lovers of chocolate brownies, fairly explicit sex, and heroines who let itall hang out, an entertaining hardcover debut. (Literary Guild selection; author tour)

Product Details

• Interviews & Essays

Interviews & Essays

Jennifer Crusie: I'm delighted to be here, although still getting the hang of this.

Jennifer Crusie: This is one of those "whatever gets you through the book" answers. My good buddy Patricia Gaffney outlines everything first; I don't outline at all. I write the first draft by doing the scenes I want to write first (and some of them never make it into the book at all) and then I look to see what I've done. Sort of "I don't know what I'm saying until I see what I've typed." Then I start analyzing the script and breaking it into acts and looking for turning points. That way I can keep the energy and freshness of a first draft and still have a tightly constructed final draft. And thank you for reading the books, Joy!

Jennifer Crusie: I start with character and relationships. With Maddie, I knew she had a best friend and a daughter and a mother, and I knew there'd be a hero in there someplace. I wrote scenes to find out not only who Maddie was but also how all those relationships worked. Then I thought, "What's the worst thing I can do to this chick?" and it was in the scenes already, so I broke the action into five acts (because I ended up with four turning points) and made sure that the trouble escalated each time, but always through Maddie's actions. She'd try to solve her problems, but her logical attempts only got her in deeper. Story has to come from character, so I explore character first.

Jennifer Crusie: Actually, TELL ME LIES is a romantic comedy with a mystery subplot. So we're calling it a lot of things. What would you like to read today? [laughs] A romantic comedy is a romance novel that's funny. The romance genre is huge: There are historical romances, romantic suspense, romantic comedy, paranormal romances, SF romances, inspirational/Christian romances...dozens of subgenres. So the label is just to help you determine what kind of romance it is. If I had to describe it, I'd say it's a relationship novel that is also extremely gentle social satire with a strong mystery subplot. This is why they never ask me to describe my books.

Jennifer Crusie: Oh, Gina, if you only knew how many times I wrote that beginning. First I learned from Lee K. Abbott in the creative writing program at Ohio State that a good storyteller always starts where the trouble starts. And I knew from studying screenplay writing that a strong image is also important (yes, in print narrative, too). So one of the earliest drafts began: "The black crotchless bikini underpants lay on the yellow Formica counter like a bat in butter." There's a real grabber, right? Yeah, except nobody could get past it. Four pages later, I had readers saying, "Wow, a bat in butter." So I had to keep reworking it until it grabbed without stunning the reader into stupefaction. The big thing to remember about beginnings and endings, I think, is that they're always inherent in each other; that is, the seeds of the ending are in the beginning, as long as you have the right beginning. And you get the right beginning by starting where the trouble starts -- in Maddie's case, by finding something not even she can ignore -- and ending where the trouble ends.

Jennifer Crusie: Oh, it is something you want to read, Oren. [laughs] My background is varied. I started out in art, which actually was good training for writing because so many of the design concepts are the same. Then in the '80s I got my masters in professional writing (business and technical), which was excellent training, and in feminist criticism. Then in the '90s I began my Ph.D. in literature and discovered romance novels, a form I'd been too much of an intellectual to read before. What a dummy I'd been: I fell in love with the genre and switched my research to a feminist analysis of romance as subversive feminism. And then I started to write them. After five, I knew I needed to know a lot more about writing, so I put the Ph.D. on hold and went into the MFA in fiction program at Ohio State, which is where I began workshopping both TELL ME LIES and the book I'm working on now. I started writing fiction in the summer of '91, sold my first book in '92, saw it on the shelves in '93, got my MFA in '97, and now my tenth book is in hardcover. And I still haven't finished the Ph.D. Everything else you ever wanted to know and more is on my Web site, at www.sff.net/people/jennifercrusie, including the first chapters of all my books. And thanks so much for asking! (Aren't you sorry you did?)

Jennifer Crusie: Hello, Michelle, right here in town! I graduated last June from the MFA program at OSU; now I'm finishing the Ph.D., which analyzes the way romance novels revise the toxic traditions that fairy tales and myths have given women. It's called THE FEMINIZATION OF ENCHANTMENT, and my dissertation adviser is dying to read it. The creative writing department at OSU is superb. Lee K. Abbott is a great teacher, as is Melanie Rae Thon, and the program has made a huge difference in my writing and my career. My literary studies have always been in feminist criticism, so that's had a huge influence on my work, too.

Jennifer Crusie: Oh, Francine, don't get me started, we'll be here for days. I think the stereotypes stem from two biases: Romance is a woman's genre, and we don't respect anything dominated by women (look at teaching, nursing, and child care, three vitally important aspects of our culture). Romance is about love, and we're uncomfortable with idea of love as a powerful emotion, one that people can die without, one that makes everyone act like morons when it has them in its grip. It also emphasizes other things that many radical feminists (note: I'm a feminist -- a really, really passionate feminist) want to deny, that women are interested in clothes and houses and kids, for example. The thing that makes me nuts about all this is that the people throwing stones generally haven't read enough romance to make a judgment. Sixteen hundred romance titles were published last year alone. Yet scholars still make judgments based on a handful of romances that might span ten years. Finally (actually, I have a lot more to say, but I'll stop), the general trashing of romance is intellectually dishonest, because no intelligent critic judges by subject matter. Saying "all romances are trash" or "all romances are alike" is as intellectually bankrupt as saying "all literary fiction is good" or "all stories about dogs are alike." People blinded by fear and bias make bad critics. As far as why people don't want their books called romances, it's because of the stigma. Me, I wrote a romance.

Jennifer Crusie: You know, my life would be a lot easier if I could. But it kills the book. I had a great idea about a bunch of people stuck on an island, a modern day takeoff on Christie's TEN LITTLE INDIANS, and I had all the alibis and murders plotted and all the back story done, and all kinds of research, but when I went to write it, it died on the page. Never again. Now I start with the characters and let them go where they want. Sometimes they're dead ends, but that's okay. Sometimes you have to write to get to the book you want to write. It's just part of the process. But boy, after the first draft, I have a 48 by 72 inch white board that gets covered in diagrams and arrows and color-coded loglines.... I love it. The illusion of control.

Jennifer Crusie: Oh, Kathi, from your mouth to Toronto's ear. I think it's a distinct possibility, but right now it's still up in the air.

Jennifer Crusie: First of all, what a great name. That should be on a book cover. Then about BRADLEY: Used bookstores are your only hope. It's been out of print for about four years now. Uh, Toronto? About those reprints...?

Jennifer Crusie: Hi, Hallie! Always glad to hear from a fan. Actually I'm always delighted to hear I have fans. No, I'm a mess when it comes to writing. I just went on a mystery-writing cruise with Nora Roberts, and while I baked in the sun every morning, she stayed in her cabin and wrote. This is why she's famous and I'm not. On the other hand, when I finally do find my way into a book, I'm obsessive and I work on it night and day until I've got the first draft down. Then I calm down for the dozens of rewrites I do. It's not efficient, but it works. Sort of.

Jennifer Crusie: Yes. (Did you really think I'd say no?) But seriously, yes, because men have read it and liked it. My favorite guy reader story is from St. Martin's, my publisher. My editor handed the book to a marketing exec there, and he said, "You don't pay me enough to read a romance." She said, "Oh, yes we do," so he read it, and when we met at a sales conference, he told me how he'd resisted the book and then read it -- stayed up until three to finish it, in fact. And then he said, "Are you sure it's a romance?" Yep. Or there's the close personal friend of mine now living in New York who called and said, "Exactly where did you learn to write sex scenes like this, and why wasn't I there?" Not that you'd be interested in sex scenes, Paidrick. I know you're not that kind of guy.

Jennifer Crusie: No and yes. No because none of my characters are based on real people. The real people I know and love aren't that interesting, and the real people who are that interesting I try to avoid. Also fictional characters have to behave logically, and real people seldom do. But yes, because I think any good writer puts something of herself in every character she writes, even the villains. You have to love and sympathize with them all. But literally, no.

Jennifer Crusie: First the books. I think Robert McKee's STORY is brilliant. Linda Seger's MAKING A GOOD SCRIPT GREAT is also wonderful. These are both screenwriting books, but they're essential for fiction writers, too, I think. Renni Browne and Dave King's SELF-EDITING FOR FICTION WRITERS is a huge help. A good text book is Janet Burroway's WRITING FICTION. And the conferences: RWA does some fine conferences, including the national one held in Anaheim this year at the end of July. There are some terrific regional ones, too, like Moonlight and Magnolias in September in Atlanta. And of course other organizations holds conferences, too. I've heard Sisters in Crime does a wonderful one. Conferences are good for workshops, but their greatest value is the networking that goes on. That's invaluable.

Jennifer Crusie: Sure. (And thanks for the compliment!) The biggest thing to remember is that humor has to flow naturally from character. That is, your character's sense of humor will determine the humor in the book. Forgetting this leads to most of the unfunny humor out there. For example, people think that humor is inherent in situation. "I'll write a scene in which two women wrestle in lime Jell-O," somebody thinks. "What a hoot." Yeah, but what if one of the women is wrestling to get the money to save her child/job/Tara/whatever? Then Jell-O wrestling become high drama. Look at "The Full Monty," for example. That movie would break your heart if it weren't for the essential good tempers and great senses of humor that the characters possess. This is a story about men pushed to the limits of desperation, and yet it's wonderfully funny because the humor isn't in the situation -- amateur male strippers -- but in the way the characters deal with the situation. Look at every great piece of comedy narrative -- film or print -- and you'll find that comedy isn't in one-liners or pratfalls, it's in character. Of course, if you're talking farce -- "Hot Shots" or "Spaceballs" -- all bets are off. But for fiction, well-developed stories about people the reader cares about, it comes from character.

Jennifer Crusie: They're with me now. As a matter of fact, I've shoved one of the cats off my lap three times during this chat. (What is it about cats and computers, anyway?) The dogs are all stretched out on the floor, and everybody's happy. I'd love to write more series romance, but I'm still in a standoff with Harlequin's legal department over a clause they put in the contract that I won't sign. Actually, the standoff was over long ago when we both wandered off, but until the clause is gone, I can't write category, since HQ and Silhouette have the monopoly. (And where is the Justice Department when you need them, anyway?) But I'd like to. I really love the form.

Jennifer Crusie: Gee, and I was just getting the hang of this, too. Thank you to all who asked questions -- great questions -- and to the moderator. I had a great time!