Behind the Scenes with Judith MichaelThe twosome's career began with collaboration on magazine and newspaper articles about family, marriage, and relationships. At the end of a year, husband and wife found that they were successful at writing as a team, remaining married, and, for the most part, getting along, despite the added stress of criticizing each other's work. (After fifteen years, they can say they've pretty much solved those problems . . . except for the ones that leap up unexpectedly now and then . . . ) They eventually decided to take the plunge, eschew their other income sources, and concentrate on writing a novel.
The couple finds that its success involves combining fantasy and reality in a way that is unique in popular fiction. They begin with universal fantasies: "If only I could be someone else." "If only I could bring to life a dream that I've lost." "If only I could build a wonderful life even though something devastating has happened to me." and build them into stories centered in the elements of the everyday world: mortgages, the death of a parent, children buffeted by peer pressures, husbands and wives attracted to other sexual partners, etc. In Judith Michael's intertwined plots and subplots, readers may indulge in their fantasies and find everyday events that strike chords of immediate familiarity. As Michael says, "In our characters, readers recognize themselves, their hopes, and dreams, and the lives they lead."
Before beginning to write, Judith and Michael spend nearly a year talking about plots and characters in conversations (all beginning with "What if?") that start at breakfast, continue through lunch, and often go nonstop into dinner and late-night walks. They research all of the books' locales by traveling, photographing, and making notes throughout Europe, the Middle East, Australia, the Far East, America and Canada ("We force ourselves to go anywhere," they say solemnly, "to make sure our settings are accurate.") They spend weeks, sometimes months, researching, through interviews and observation, the professions of their major characters. These range from biogenetics to earthquake architecture, jewelry design to fraud in the cosmetics business, newspaper publishing to the television and computer industries, and, in their new novel, Acts of Love, the world of the theater.
Once plot, subplots, characters, and locales are agreed upon (often after spirited discussions and passionate defenses of cherished ideas that a partner might not share), Judith begins to write. Michael edits, chapter by chapter, and writes scenarios for upcoming scenes based on their research into various professions. "If Michael can make me understand biogenetics," Judith says, "I can write about it in a way that helps our readers understand it. And our mail tells us that they like that: they enjoy learning something new even while reading a page-turner."
After Michael's editing, Judith does her own, rewriting whole sections, deleting others, and adding new ones in response to Michael's comments. They pass chapters back and forth six or more times until they are satisfied. "Or exhausted," Michael says. "We've never managed to write a book in less than a year and in that time we find ourselves talking about the characters and working out plot problems most of the time, even when we're away from our desks. When we're finally done, we need a couple of months just to unwind and think about other things."
For Judith Michael, "unwinding" is done in a lot of ways, some of them aimed at getting away from each other after the intense togetherness of the writing time. Judith shops for antiques and bakes bread in blissful silence; Michael finds his own peace and quiet in his darkroom, where he prints and mounts the photographs he takes with his 2-1/4 Mamiya 645 at home and on their travels. When the two of them are together (which is most of the time) they spend time with their family; entertain at intimate dinner parties and go to dinners at friend's homes; enjoy movies, concerts, theater, and the opera; visit museums; and rent movies to watch with friends in their library at home. In Chicago, they take long walks along Lake Michigan and through Victorian neighborhoods; in Aspen, they ski downhill and cross-country, snowshoe, bicycle, hike, garden (vegetables and flowers -- whatever varieties the deer don't fancy), and travel by Jeep to remote mountain passes. They also take pleasure in hosting benefits for social service and cultural organizations in both Chicago and Aspen.
Since Deceptions, Judith Michael has built a loyal and responsive audience of 16-to-88-year-olds in all parts of America and in seventeen foreign countries, through the stories and characters in Possessions, Private Affairs, Inheritance, A Ruling Passion, Sleeping Beauty, Pot of Gold, A Tangled Web, and Acts of Love.
Books@Random
