Transcription of Tess Gerritsen for the show Musical Journeys #211
Lisa: We have many amazing people in Maine who are doing things on the international scene. One of these individuals is Dr. Tess Gerritsen who is both an international bestselling author and a physician. Dr. Gerritsen, Tess, is known for the Rizzoli & Isles series, which was just renewed for its seventh season on TNT, and it’s going into syndication. Her latest book is “Die Again.” She also has the book “Playing With Fire,” coming out, not a “Rizzoli & Isles” book but something I think people will want to read because I certainly found it to be a page turner. Tess is creating a feature horror film set in Maine with her son and she lives with her husband in Camden. Thanks so much for coming back in and talking with us today.
Tess: Oh thanks, it’s great to be back.
Lisa: Well you came in and had a conversation with Susan Grisanti not so long ago. Susan is the editor of Maine Magazine. You were talking about your book “Playing With Fire” and you really got us interested because it has the strong musical theme. You’re a musician, you were a musician-
Tess: And strictly amateur.
Lisa: Okay, but still you have a very strong musical background and there is something about that, and also this idea of travel to a foreign place because this next book is set in Italy. All these things came together to create this book for you which is very different than the “Rizzoli & Isles” series. Tell me about this.
Tess: I think of it as a gift from the larger world. It’s usually when I sit down to create a book my editor wants a particular type of book, and that is the “Rizzoli & Isles” mystery series which sells very well. This book came to me as a gift almost from the universe. I was in Venice for my birthday and I had a nightmare. I dreamt that I was playing my violin and it was very dark and disturbing piece of music. As I was playing there was a baby sitting next to me and the baby’s eyes suddenly glowed red and she turned into a monster.
I woke up thinking, “I have no idea where this dream comes from.” I mean yes, I do play the violin, but who was the baby, and why did the baby turn into a monster. I was really quite haunted by that whole idea of music turning innocence into horrifying people. I walked around Venice that day thinking there’s a book here. I don’t know what the book is about, something about evil children, and where does this music come from.
I ended up in the Jewish quarter, the origin of a ghetto in Venice and was walking around where they had these memorials to the 246 Venetian Jews who were deported to Poland and executed. All of a sudden the whole story came to me, just like in a flash. I mean just from beginning to end I knew what the story was about. I went home and I began to write it. It is about a woman violinist who picks up a mysterious piece of handwritten music in Rome, takes it home and every time she plays it her three-year-old goes berserk and does something violent. This is the monstrous child. What is the history of this music?
The book really goes into great description about the piece what it sounds like. I mention devil’s cords, and those of you who are musicians will understand what those are, they’re tritones and they’re very disturbing to listen to. One morning after having worked on the book for about a year I woke up with the melody in my head. This was the other thing it was a gift from the universe. I heard the music from my dreams and I composed it. So not only do we have a story about this mysterious piece of music. We also have a piece of music that is recorded by a very, very well-known violinist and will be available for readers to hear as well.
Lisa: I’m interested in the story of the bedeviled child because it’s not something a lot of authors want to take on.
Tess: It was scary. For those of us who are parents, it’s probably the worst thing you can imagine is being terrified of your own child. I made the child three because that is that an innocent age, that’s an age when you don’t think of children as being evil. So this mother who is confronted with the possibility that her child is evil, she’s living this horrifying life now because her whole family is falling apart. She is afraid of her three-year-old and everybody else thinks she’s going crazy because who’s afraid of a three-year-old?
Lisa: That was something that as I was reading the book I was struck by that her husband didn’t believe her, it was threatening to break up her marriage. She actually had to leave and get away from her husband so that she could get her head on straight. Then there’s an interesting twist at the end. Turns out that the child, well, I don’t even want to …
Tess: That’s a spoiler.
Lisa: I don’t want to say anything. There’s an interesting twist at the end let’s just say. One of the things that you and I talked about with Susan Grisanti was the fact that you do the type of work that you do always has some basis in reality, it was important to you that there would be a good reason for this all to have happened.
Tess: Right, I don’t like to play with the supernatural I mean I like to tease you with the possibility of the supernatural because the supernatural fascinates me, but I am at heart a science person and I always want to circle back to something logical, to something believable, and to something possible.
Lisa: You also in the book “Die Again” you go into an interesting thing for me which is the killing of animals.
Tess: Yes, which is in the news now surprisingly, yes.
Lisa: Exactly, exactly. Talk to us about that.
Tess: I went to Africa on safari a couple of years ago, and we had really, my husband and I had an interesting experience out in the bush. Those people who’ve been on safari will know you take a plane out in the bush and some guy meets you in a jeep at the airstrip. Our guide who met us said, “I’m here to keep you safe. You must not get out of the jeep unless I tell you it’s all right,” and we listened to that, his advice, because a couple of months before there had been a group of Chinese tourists who did not understand those instructions, and they stopped to look at lions and two men jumped out and were killed. So of course we stayed in the jeep.
One afternoon we stopped for cocktails in the bush. We all got out of the jeep because we thought it was safe and we were sitting around looking and drinking our gin and tonics. My husband said, “I need to go pee. I’m going to go walk into the bush over there.” Our guide said, “Why don’t you go in the other direction because I’ve heard reports of a leopard being seen down that valley.” So my husband walked in the other direction and less than a minute later out of the bush that he had originally been headed for a leopard walked out.
We’re all out of the jeep, we’re all standing around with our cocktails, and the leopard came towards us. Our guide just, he just stepped between us and the leopard, made himself really big and the leopard decided she didn’t want to tackle him and walked back into the bush. I realized after that he saved our lives, that man; we have to trust our guide. But then of course the writer always takes over and the writer thought, “But what if you trust the wrong person? What if the man who picks you up at the landing strip is not who he said he is? What if it turns out the most dangerous creature in the bush is on two legs?” That was the basis for “Die Again.” As you mentioned, it talks a lot about big game hunting, about the killing of protected animals, and a lot about the nature, the real nature of cats.
Lisa: I think what I liked about “Die Again” was again it was an interesting twist at the end because there was these two stories, the two story lines, and I couldn’t quite see how they were all going to come together, but I had an idea, “Well, maybe this is going to happen,” but at the end you surprised me. I turned the page you surprised me and I was like, “Wow, she’s masterful.” Obviously you’re very good at what you do.
Tess: I try, I try. The truth is I did not know the answer to that mystery until about two thirds of the way through the first draft. That’s the way I work. I really kind of … I set off without a net, standing up there on the tight rope, trying to figure out just step by step by step and then about two thirds of the way through I thought, “Oh, now I know the answer.” That’s just my technique for writing. I don’t recommend it because it drives you crazy and I get writer’s block but it works for me.
Lisa: It is very interesting because as a physician in many ways even though we have to be problem solvers we’re also trying to be fairly linear. So there’s algorithms, you follow the algorithm and then you come out with what you hope is going to be the expected outcome. That’s not the way writing is.
Tess: Yeah, it’s crazy, isn’t it? Because I know lawyers who are also novelists and they line up their ducks, they have their ducks all lined up in a row, they plot out their book and then they write it. I’m sure that the average doctor would probably do it that way as well. I’ve tried to do it that way. What happens is that about halfway through the book I just veer off my outline because I get bored. I think part of it is that when you have an outline you know what’s going to happen and it takes the excitement out of writing the story. I like the opportunity of being able to veer off the track to let the characters do something that surprises you. I’m always waiting for them to surprise me and when they do I’m just thrilled.
Lisa: Well I appreciated that and I appreciated actually both of these books. I was reading them at the same time and I was thinking the idea that you could come up with something that was not what the reader would expect is pretty wonderful.
Tess: It is and I, again I just go back to my subconscious, I don’t know where it comes from. I think that part of creativity is … This is my theory about creativity about where you come up with new ideas, is all your experiences, your reading, all the kinds of things that you, all this data you collect, the facts you collect, if you can somehow match up part A with part Q, things that people don’t even think are connected, that is what causes you to have something new and creative and new and different, is that you are seeing connections between things that have no connections. That’s what I’m always trying to do with the books. For instance, with “Playing With Fire” we start off with music and we start off with a crazy child, but then I also put neuroscience into it, and that all ties together at the end for the solution.
Lisa: You also threw in a little bit of interesting history in about the Jews that were deported to Poland from Italy. What you also were describing to us when you came in and you were saying that the interesting cultural aspect of Venice that kept it so there were only so many Jews that were deported compared to some of the other countries were so many more.
Tess: Well that was what really fascinated me about this topic. I mean yes, the book was about music, but it’s also about World War II and Italy and how Italy was so different from the rest of occupied Europe. I was looking at the statistics of Italy. They were an axis power and yet 80% of their Jews survived the war. What made it different from Germany where 90% died, Poland where 90% died, even Holland where I think it was like 80%, 77% of their Jews died. What was different about Italy and the stories that I came across from what really moved me the most, because it was, I think it was the courage of the common ordinary Italian which was so beautiful. People would hide their neighbors. They had nuns and priests who would hide Jews in convents and monasteries at risk to their own lives.
There were some funny things too about what made Italians different and there was one psychologist who said, “Well, drive around Rome and you will see that Italians don’t follow the rules if they don’t believe in them,” just traffic. That’s true. I mean, if they don’t believe in the law they won’t follow it. I think that’s what happened in Italy is that a lot of Italians just said, “You know, screw this. I’m going to turn over my neighbors.”
Lisa: That must’ve really appealed to you. You’re the person who likes to veer off the track.
Tess: Isn’t that funny because this really moves me. I guess the idea of quiet heroes, people who don’t have to do something heroic and do it anyway, I mean even when I was writing the book I was just so moved by these stories.
Lisa: It’s interesting that even now it brings up these emotions for you.
Tess: It’s going to be talked. I’m going on book tour with this particular book.
Lisa: Yeah, I feel it’s …. I think you’re interesting. Well having interviewed you twice you have this very sort of let’s take control of the, I don’t know, the horror mystery. Then there’s these things that crop up for you and they kind of tweak you in a way that you don’t expect.
Tess: I think writing for me is very much an emotional process. I think you can’t tell a convincing story unless you are so thoroughly entwined in your book that the emotions come through you. I think that’s what happened with “Playing With Fire” was that the emotions of this young couple that fall in love and this doomed love affair, and then the overall tapestry of a whole country trying to come to grips with a leadership that is telling them to do things that they don’t believe. How do you react to that? Why were the Italians different from the Dutch who were by and large liberal people but nevertheless they did things they knew were wrong because somebody told them to do it? You ask yourself what would it be like in the United States if something came down from above, turn over your neighbors, turn over all the Muslims, turn over all the Jews, what would Americans do?
Lisa: I think when I went to the Holocaust museum in Washington I wondered the same thing, what would I do if I was one of these people. I’m not Jewish. I’m Christian. Would I be the one who was hiding my neighbor in my cellar, or would I be the one who felt compelled to turn my neighbor over?
Tess: Even take it a step further, would you be the one to hide your neighbor in a cellar at risk of getting yourself executed? That was the extra step they took, to risk their own lives or families lives to do the right thing.
Lisa: This book was so important to you, “Playing With Fire”, that you were willing to take a risk and say to your publisher, “Look, I know this is nothing like ‘Die Again.’ It’s nothing like ‘Rizzoli & Isles.’” In fact, on the front page of the book there is a note from the publisher that says, “This book is nothing like ‘Rizzoli & Isles.’ This book is going to be what it is. You’re going to love it anyway.” But it was a huge risk for you. You felt really strongly about this.
Tess: The books that I love the most that I write are the ones that nobody actually wants. They’re the books my publisher goes, “What is this? What are we going to do with it?” I remember I wrote a book called “The Bone Garden,” which again completely off topic, no “Rizzoli & Isles,” not even a contemporary novel. It was set in 1830s Boston. I think my publisher was not quite sure what to do with it, but luckily we’ve been working together so long that they realized, “Well, she wants to publish this book, and this is an important book, and even though it may not sell as well there it goes off to market.”
Lisa: You’ve also championed something that is maybe not as I guess popular as perhaps some other medical problems, and that’s Alzheimer’s. I mean we have a huge outpouring of support for breast cancer and breast cancer research, and Alzheimer’s which impacts so many of us doesn’t have quite the same cache. You raised $50,000 which went directly to Alzheimer’s research in your first campaign. You’re doing a second campaign and that was important to you because your father had dementia. You don’t necessarily … When you feel strongly about something you get behind it.
Tess: I think I’m not only behind it, I’m angry about why it is not getting more attention. I always go back to how much money we spend on wars, how much money goes into building an aircraft carrier or some new B whatever B2000 bomber and we spend so very, very little on neuroscience research. Yet this is what is going to destroy us as a country in terms of money. By 2050 we’re going to be spending a trillion dollars on taking care of Alzheimer’s patients. Now that to me is worth saying let’s declare war on this particular disease.
If we were to put a lot more resources into just the research aspect of it, the basic science research, how does Alzheimer’s arise and how do we treat it, we would be saving our country a lot of money. This is the penny … What is it? Penny wise and pound foolish, that the way we’re going about it now is ignoring the situation and letting baby boomers who are now coming into the danger time of Alzheimer’s really suck up all the Medicare dollars and suck up a lot of our resources and families’ resources because it’s not just hospitals and nursing homes, it’s all the families that cannot work because they have to take care of their loved ones.
Lisa: You’re putting your money where your mouth is. You’re actively raising money for Alzheimer’s research. Also you were talking about how much we spend on wars. You’re supporting the troops anyway. You’re still going out, you have a USO tour coming up with another author, Diana Gabaldon. It’s not that you’re saying that we shouldn’t be putting support over here. You’re saying, “And. And we also need to be putting support over here.”
Tess: You look at what is really affecting our country and what is killing Americans right now at this moment. I just, I’m appalled that we don’t put more money into neuroscience research. When I started this idea of raising funds the idea was that it would go straight to scientists. I wanted to go to the people who were in the labs who were doing the basic science research. I chose the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego and Florida because I know this institute, I know the scientists, I know that it will go straight to them. But I just wish that other people would step in and find and identify their own research institutes that are in their states. It doesn’t have to go to Scripps. If you can do your own fundraiser and identify something in your own state that’d be great. But we really have to get down to basic science here for this.
Lisa: Tess how can people find out about your fundraiser or the work that your other novels that you’re writing?
Tess: Can all go to my website at tessgerritsen.com and I have sort of like where I put everything. I’m also on Facebook and on Twitter if anybody is interested.
Lisa: It really has been a pleasure to have you come in and speak with us today. We’ve been speaking with international bestselling author and physician Tess Gerritsen. I, having personally read “Die Again” and “Playing With Fire” they were page turners, I encourage people who are listening to read them, and I do encourage people who are listening to consider putting some money behind Alzheimer’s research because as a physician I see this on a regular basis, how much it impacts patients and their families. Thanks so much for all the work that you’re doing Tess.
Tess: Thank you.