4 weeks ago
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I’ve known author Victoria Zackheim since my days at Writer’s Digest. Back then I remember discussing an anthology she was shopping around that focused on the question What happens when we end up on a path we didn’t envision for ourselves? It was eventually published as The Face in the Mirror: Writers Reflect on Their Dreams of Youth and the Reality of Age, released by Prometheus.
Since then, Victoria has turned primarily to fiction writing (the publishing trends that once favored anthologies faded long ago), and I greatly admire how she has kept her projects moving forward even as issues related to age and health could easily keep her down. (She is not shy about revealing she’s in her eighties.)
We recently had an email interview about her works releasing this year and next.
You have multiple mystery novels releasing within a two-year period by a small indie press, Level Best Books (LBB). Meanwhile, the publisher of your fourth novel is one of the largest in the world. How did this happen?
These are two very different stories, to be sure. LBB bought my three-book mystery series based on the murder-solving partnership of San Francisco journalist Aria Nevins and Paris Homicide Inspector Noah Roche. As it happens, I wrote the first draft of that novel, The Curtain Falls in Paris, in the late 1990s, and too many subsequent drafts to count. With input from my agent, Darlene Chan, and a few very talented authors who love me enough to be brutally honest, I did one last massive edit … and the book sold. Number two in that series, Murder at Hotel Gloriosa, released on September 15, and I’m halfway through writing the third, coming out next year.
As for the novel published by Ballantine in April, Death Times Seven, it’s far more personal. Author Anne Perry fell ill in December 2022 and died four months later. At the time of her death, she had written the outline and the rough draft of the first nine chapters in her Daniel Pitt series. Her Ballantine editor, Susanna Porter, asked if I’d complete the novel. Anne had been a dear friend, and I had also been her personal editor through ten novels and five novellas, so I knew her style. Whether I could emulate it was the big question. (And the source of more than a year of high anxiety!)
Tell me more about that—how did you handle stepping into her shoes?
They were very clear that this had to be written in the voice her fans expected. We were all passionate about this project—and I include her UK and US literary agents, Meg Davis and Donald Maass. Together, this made for teamwork I had never experienced. I had the benefit of working from Anne’s outline, which we created via collaboration. Therefore, I knew where the story was going regarding characters and plots. I can’t tell you the number of times I willed her to be standing behind me as I typed, whispering the words, but the closest I came was closing my eyes, imagining her nearby, and working very hard to emulate her voice and style. I still smile, recalling how we laughed that a devout Mormon from the UK and a Jewish kid from Compton could work together with such ease and enjoyment. (That she was also a liberal and a feminist helped!) Back to your question. I handled it, at least initially, with great anxiety and insecurity, that little voice in my head asking how I dared think I could carry this off.
Can you tell us how these two publishers differed in terms of support?
Many writers warned me that I would receive personal attention from LBB, but should expect lengthy delays whenever I reached out to Ballantine. They were half right. LBB was very responsive during the writing and editing processes. If I sent an email to clarify something, I usually heard back that same day. With LBB being a small indie press, there are fewer editors working with a large number of authors. But I always received a response to my questions, and I also understood that I might overwhelm their editorial team with too many questions. (We authors can be a very insecure lot!)
At Ballatine, I was working with two editors, both of them thoroughly involved with this novel because they had worked with Anne—I think Susanna Porter had been her editor for nearly thirty years—and because this was the last of her novels, it was that much more important. As a result, Susanna and editor Anusha Khan participated in every step, from the comprehensive outline to the character and plot development. When I reached out, both Susanna and Anusha responded within a few hours, sometimes minutes, even on the weekends!
In both cases, their responsiveness belied so many of those complaints we hear about being ignored by editors. My editors were kind and supportive. And I never failed to tell them how much they were appreciated.
So, the editing support is solid. Can you speak to the marketing and promotion side—similarities and differences?
I wasn’t included in these areas, primarily because my contract was not with Random House/Ballantine, but with Anne’s literary estate. However, they’ve given me fairly free rein to arrange events, whether at bookstores or through interviews/blogs. Other than Book Passage in Corte Madera and Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, I doubt there will be further on-site events. I’m in the middle of writing that third mystery, my UCLA course just began, and I’ve got several freelance editing jobs in the works. At my age, that’s enough!
How are you handling all this publishing activity in your eighth decade?
I nap, but it’s between morning writing and afternoon writing! In so many ways, it feels magical. I pass a mirror and wonder, who is that old woman? And then I sit down and write for six hours. It’s exciting, challenging, sometimes a bit daunting. Okay, sometimes it’s very daunting. With so many of my novels suddenly being published, the word that comes to mind is not a self-congratulatory remarkable. Instead, it’s posthumous!
Read another interview with Victoria at this site, published in 2015.
