Jenny Siler

The sophmore effort of author Jenny Siler --- who made her debut with the critically acclaimed EASY MONEY --- ICED is an edgy, fast-paced suspense, laced with stark violence, hard-bitten insights and bone-chilling descriptions of the bitter Montana winter-cold. Intrigued yet? Well, your curiosity will surely be piqued once you read Bookreporter.com writer Jamie Engle's interview with Siler and find out the inspiration behind her atypical heroine, quirky secondary characters, all-too-real descriptions of winter in Montana and much more.

BRC: Where did you get the inspiration for ICED?

JS: The idea for this book grew out of two real life events. Although the character of Clay Bennett is not actually based on anyone, his story is that of an Air Force reserve officer who crashed his plane in the desert of southern California in the 1950's. That man survived for, I think, a couple of months. The Air Force had declared him dead when he walked out of the desert. At first he was a hero, but, when they couldn't find the plane, people became suspicious. Of course, this was the time of McCarthyism. The pilot was accused of being a spy, of having sold the plane to China or the Soviet Union. The Air Force brought charges against him. Though they were later dropped, the plane was never found, and the pilot's innocence was never proven. His wife left him. He was discharged from the service. The man died some years later, alone, still suspected of having been a spy. The amazing and sad thing about this story is that the plane was found by some Boy Scouts just a few years after the pilot's death.

The character of Tina Red Deer is based on a real person named Lucy Red Crow. When I was growing up Lucy was involved in a sensational murder here in Missoula. She and another woman and a man were drinking together in a motel room and watching soap operas. Lucy and the woman started fighting over a coat and Lucy stabbed the woman several times. She actually went to the room next door, covered in the dead woman's blood, to ask for a pack of matches. The motel was right on the river that runs through the center of Missoula, and she and the man, who were beyond drunk at this point, decided they would take the dead body out to one of the islands in the river and dispose of it there. This was the middle of the afternoon, and, of course, hundreds of people saw Lucy and the man carrying this bloody body out across the river. In Montana being intoxicated is a legitimate defense and Lucy could easily have gotten a lesser charge than murder, but when the police found Lucy and the man that day on the island, she lied about what they were doing. A prosecutor was later able to prove she had been sober enough to know what she was doing because she had been sober enough to think to lie.

Lucy was convicted and sent to prison, but she escaped and ended up living with a truck driver in a New Hampshire trailer park for several years. Unable to keep her mouth shut though, Lucy told her neighbor about her past. The woman turned her in and she was sent back to prison. I don't know why, but Lucy's story really captured my imagination. I followed her story through my mother long after I'd left Missoula and I never forgot her. I think part of what interested me so much about Lucy's story is that it was really horrific, yet so typical of the kind of crime we have here in the west, especially on Indian Reservations. There is a kind of smugness a lot of white westerners have, a sense that certain kinds of violence come from the Reservations. The whole idea of the Reservations creates this really bizarre dynamic. It's such a horrible situation. We've built what are essentially rural ghettos, places that are extraordinarily dehumanizing, with no economic possibilities, no industry. The Blackfeet Reservation, for instance, is in the middle of nowhere, right up against the Canadian border, yet they have all the problems of inner city Los Angeles: drugs, crime, alcoholism, domestic violence, gangs. We've dehumanized an entire group of people, and then when they act as anyone would act in their situation it's like we've been given an excuse to think of them as less than human.

BRC: Meg Gardner doesn't have a stellar past. She's tough yet sad or maybe resigned. How did you develop her character?

JS: I was giving a reading a while ago and the man who introduced me said that by the time I started writing, all the good heroines were taken, and I had to settle for the criminals and misfits and drug addicts. He was kidding, of course, and he meant this kindly, but he was right. My characters do tend to be kind of rough around the edges. In a practical, writerly sense, this grew out of my need for characters who could handle themselves in really tough situations. They might not have the training of a police officer or private detective, but they have the skill and savvy of criminals.

I have a friend in Missoula who used to be a repo woman, and I really wanted to base a character on her. An ex-con like Meg seemed to be the right woman for the job. The rest of her character really grew organically. I know that sounds kind of pretentious, but I don't do a lot of calculating. I come up with the vague outline of a character and then let that person talk to me.

BRC: Darwin, the cross-dressing veteran from EASY MONEY, makes an appearance in ICED. He's one of a cast of somewhat quirky (or at the very least, different) and interesting secondary characters in your novels. What draws you to these characters?

JS: First of all, most of these quirky and interesting characters are real people, people I've found too good to resist using. I think I'm drawn to characters like Darwin because they are so real, and because the traits that make us all human (vanity, confusion, insanity, anger, etc…) are simply magnified in them. Not to mention that they make a good story. In the original version of EASY MONEY, Darwin was killed. Everyone who read the book was so upset by her death, that I had to rewrite the book so that she lived. The fact that readers loved her so much speaks volumes to me about her humanness. I'd use her in every book I wrote if I could.

BRC: The descriptions of Montana's winter brought a chill. At times they were just stating, 'how it is;' at times the descriptions were lyrical. Do you find it easier to write about a place you've visited, where you've lived, than someplace you've never been?

JS: Absolutely. I can't even imagine writing about a place I've never been. I couldn't do it. Landscape and physical surroundings are so important to me that I'd have a hard time grounding myself or any of my characters. And how could I possibly know what my characters were thinking if I couldn't put myself in their shoes?

BRC: Your mother is an author, too. How much influence did that have in your choice to pursue writing?

JS: Obviously, I knew writing was an option. And that also comes from having grown up here in Missoula, around so many writers. I think a lot of people don't even consider writing when they're thinking about a profession. So it helped to know from watching others that I could actually do it as a job. But the biggest thing my mother did for me was to read to me incessantly when I was a child. She read everything from Dickens, to E.B. White, to William Blake. And then later, when I could read on my own, I had a huge amount of books available to me. I was allowed to read anything I wanted. I remember doing a book report on Dante's Inferno when I was in sixth grade. The other wonderful thing my mother did for me was to offer constant encouragment. It takes a lot of self confidence to write, to have your work read and misread, and criticized. My mother always made me feel like I was brilliant, and could do anything I wanted with my life.

BRC: Do you plan to write other types of novels, either in a different genre or a different type of suspense/thriller?

JS: I certainly hope so. I'm only thirty years old and, though I love writing in this genre, I'm not sure I could keep my sanity if I kept doing the same thing for the rest of my life. That's one reason why I don't want to do a series right now. I just don't feel like I should lock myself into anything. People love to categorize you as a writer, but it's important for me to be able to try new things.

BRC: Some authors have a story first and then develop characters: some have characters first and then find the story. How do you start a novel?

JS: I guess I have a little bit of both. Plot and story are especially important in the genre I work in, so I guess I'd have to say story is the most necessary element to have when starting a new book. I usually get my story ideas from newspapers or magazines. Then I can take some character I've had lurking in the back of my head and see if I can make them fit that particular story. It seems like I have lots of characters in my head waiting to come out, but finding a good plot is not so easy. And I can't start writing without it.

BRC: What's your writing schedule like?

JS: I try to treat writing as if it were a real job. When I'm working on a book, I work in the morning, break for lunch, work in the afternoon until about four, then quit for the day and go to the gym for an hour or so. I find this routine is very important to me. I'm not someone who can write while I'm travelling. I need my space, my office, my kitchen. For me, the difficult part about being a full-time writer is the down time when I've just finished a project, or I'm waiting to hear from my editor, or I'm trying to come up with an idea for a new book. It can be hard to manage your life constructively when you don't have anything specific to do. So I always try to get up at the same time and get some exercise. And I try to use that time to take trips, or read, or do things around the house.

BRC: How do you research your novels?

JS: Usually something from a newspaper or magazine will catch my eye, and I'll try to find out more about the story. I do some research on the internet, but I've found that there's a lot of junk out there. There's no filter for anything online, so it's hard to tell what's true and what isn't. Though I do find a lot of good conspiracy and anti-government stuff. I do a lot of reading in the library, old newspapers and periodicals, and non-fiction. And I generally read any other fiction I can find on the subject. Doing the research on Vietnam for EASY MONEY was incredible. There's just been so much written about that subject. I couldn't even scratch the surface.

BRC: What authors inspire or influence you?

JS: I enjoy so many different kinds of writing. I've always been a huge fan of Dickens. If I had to choose my favorite writer of all time, it would probably be him. The way he tells a story is just so incredible. And his characters are so perfect. I also love Graham Greene and John Le Carre and, of course, Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiassen. Also, the book, SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW, by Peter Hoeg. There are just so many authors I love. A.S. Byatt, Kazuo Ishiguro, Stephen King, Truman Capote, Alice Munro. I could go on and on.

BRC: Are there any books you've read in the past six months that you could recommend to our readers?

JS: A BROTHER'S BLOOD, by Michael White. It's a beautifully written story about a small town in Maine, and a decades-old mystery that surrounds the German prisoner-of-war camp that was located just outside the town. It's an absolutely riveting book, and one that deserves much more attention than it has gotten.

BRC: What writing projects are you working on now?

JS: I'm in the middle of a third book. I prefer not to say too much about it.

BRC: Do you have a web site?

JS: I don't, but I'm in the process of having one created.