RED HOT LIES – INSPIRATION

By Laura Caldwell

(Red Hot Lies, June 2009, MIRA Books)

My first book—Burning the Map—caused some unanticipated trouble in my personal life. My mother, who was convinced I’d used her as inspiration for the mother in the novel, was irritated at certain traits that the character had but which she did not. I explained that was because the character was not her, but she remained wary about the whole thing, and was relieved when the mother character in my next book barely made an appearance. My real-life secretary (who was so lovely I referred to her as Mother Teresa) somehow saw herself as the bitter, sniping shrew of a secretary in the book. Nothing I could say could convince her otherwise, and it broke my heart.

Those experiences rattled me so much that while writing my next six novels, I took pains not to have any character reflect even remotely on anyone in my life, including myself. But a few years ago, an author friend of mine asked why I wasn’t writing more about lawyers in Chicago (since I was a lawyer in Chicago) and why my protagonists were never redheads (since I’m a redhead). I told her about people mistaking themselves for fictional characters and also assuming I was the main character in most of my books. “Who cares? “ she said. “The law is fascinating, Chicago is hopping these days and everyone knows redheads have more fun. You have to write that stuff.”

From that conversation, my Red Hot mystery series was born. In the first book, Red Hot Lies (MIRA, June 2009), Izzy McNeil, a sassy red-headed lawyer from Chicago begins moonlighting as a private investigator after her fiancée disappears a few weeks before their wedding and on the same day her client is killed. I’ve never moonlighted as a PI, and many of Izzy McNeil’s traits are not mine, but we share more things in common than I ever have with any of my other characters. And speaking of characters, I’m finally making Chicago a protagonist, too. And like any good protagonist, she’s sizzling fun, full of contradictions and always mesmerizing.