{"id":1910,"date":"2016-03-24T16:47:25","date_gmt":"2016-03-24T23:47:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=1910"},"modified":"2016-03-24T16:47:25","modified_gmt":"2016-03-24T23:47:25","slug":"author-interview-allison-leotta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/author-interview-allison-leotta\/","title":{"rendered":"Author Interview: Allison Leotta"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"allison-leotta\"Allison Leotta is the author of the Anna Curtis series, about a DC-based U.S. Attorney who specializes in sex crimes. The first three books were set in DC; last year, Leotta brought Anna back to Michigan (<\/em>A Good Killing) and in her new novel, Anna is in a town that sounds oh-so-similar to Ann Arbor. Leotta, a native Michigander who also worked as a sex crimes prosecutor in DC, brings real life chops to this wonderful and engaging series. I read her new book, <\/em>The Last Good Girl, in one sitting, and was thrilled she agreed to an interview.<\/em><\/p>\n

Q: Obvious question first: how did you turn to writing, away from, I’m assuming, your busy and compelling job as a prosecutor? \u00a0How does your work inform your writing? \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>A: Writing was cheaper than therapy. Prosecuting sex crimes was a crazy, stressful, haunting, rewarding, heartbreaking, enlightening, engrossing experience, and I never stopped thinking about it, could never leave the job at the office. Every prosecutor I know has some hobby they turn to for their mental health, from ultra-marathon running to ultra-marathon shopping. Writing was my way of processing everything.<\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0\u00a0Did you always want to write suspense\/thrillers? \u00a0Or is this the form that came naturally to you as you started to write?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: I wasn\u2019t aiming for a particular genre, I just wanted to tell an authentic story about a sex-crimes prosecutor.\u00a0\u00a0Turns out, the life of a sex-crimes prosecutor plays out a lot like a thriller.\u00a0\u00a0Every day at the USAO, I\u2019d walk the halls wondering what would happen next.\u00a0\u00a0Every time I thought I could no longer be surprised, something surprised me.\u00a0\u00a0That makes for a lot of good raw material, and for a naturally suspenseful story.<\/p>\n

Q: I like that your novels often address a very timely issue. \u00a0How do you choose what you’d like to write about? \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

A: Unfortunately, there\u2019s always some bad man doing some bad thing in the world (sorry, it\u2019s almost always a bad\u00a0man<\/em>\u00a0in my line of work).\u00a0\u00a0There\u2019s plenty of \u201cinspiration,” and I always have several ideas percolating. When it\u2019s time to pull the trigger on a book idea, I talk to my editor, my agent, my husband and a few trusted friends about these ideas, spinning out how they\u2019d work.\u00a0\u00a0After several conversations, I start to get excited about one in particular, and that\u2019s the one I write.<\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0\u00a0This new book and the last one have taken Anna from Washington, D.C. back to her home state, Michigan. \u00a0What do you feel makes telling a story in Michigan an important part of Anna’s story arc? \u00a0(As a Michigander, I’m all in favor!)<\/em><\/p>\n

A: I\u2019m from Michigan, too, so it\u2019s easy for me to write about!\u00a0\u00a0And I\u2019ve always been fascinated by Detroit.\u00a0\u00a0The city has represented the very best and the very worst that America can be.\u00a0\u00a0And where it is now \u2013 poised between desolation and renewal \u2013 is such an intriguing moment.\u00a0\u00a0I love the people who are working to find creative ways to bring it back, and I try to highlight that spirit in my books.<\/p>\n

Q: I really like the way Anna’s gender is portrayed in terms of how she’s treated by the general public. \u00a0I don’t see the people she works with as sexist, but she certainly encounters sexism, and it’s especially vivid in this novel. There’s a sentence toward the beginning “Being underestimated could be a power in itself.” \u00a0I felt like that really illustrated the way Anna has adapted and used possible negatives as positives as far as her work is concerned, and it stuck with me after I’d finished the book. \u00a0Do you want to comment on that?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: When I first started at the Justice Department, I was twenty-six years old with unlawyerly long curly blond hair.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019d walk into a conference room filled with a bunch of older male lawyers, and they\u2019d look behind me to see where the attorney was. One guy ordered coffee from me.\u00a0\u00a0(To his credit, he was embarrassed when he learned I was the prosecutor, not her assistant.)\u00a0\u00a0I was underestimated pretty much every time I got a new case. It didn\u2019t take long for me to learn how to use that to my advantage \u2013 to out-prepare, out-research, and out-strategize the other guy \u2013 and enjoy the look on his face when he realized he\u2019d been bested by the girl he thought was going to fetch him a half-caf.<\/p>\n

Q: I’m interested in the way you approached the research in this book which involves the way students live on college campuses now, and their attitudes toward one another. \u00a0It seems very “right” – how did you achieve that?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: Thanks!\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m so glad you think so.\u00a0\u00a0This didn\u2019t come naturally to me \u2013 it\u2019s been twenty years since I graduated from Michigan State. I hung around campuses here in DC, watching students interact and checking out the new scenery, like vending machines offering condoms and lube.\u00a0\u00a0I spoke to college students about their take on modern campus life.\u00a0\u00a0And I watched a lot of vlogs \u2013 video logs \u2013 of college students on YouTube.\u00a0\u00a0I took notes on how they were talking, and, you know, kind of, gave that to my characters.<\/p>\n

Q: A technical question: your books are brilliantly paced. How do you achieve that in the writing process? In a way I think writing a good suspense novel is like writing a good poem, as it can’t have anything extraneous that drags it down. It has to be lean and mean!<\/em><\/p>\n

A: Thanks again!\u00a0\u00a0I agree that a good suspense novel has to be lean and mean.\u00a0\u00a0I definitely don\u2019t achieve that in the writing process \u2013 that happens during editing.\u00a0\u00a0My first drafts are sloppy and oversized.\u00a0\u00a0I spend as much time editing my books as writing them.\u00a0\u00a0I try to carve away everything that isn\u2019t essential to the story or entertaining to the reader. If a paragraph can be expressed in a sentence, I use the sentence. I kill a lot of darlings.<\/p>\n

Q: Who are your writing influences\/inspirations? \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

A: Too many to list!\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m a lifelong bookworm, always reading when I should have been sleeping.\u00a0\u00a0Two of my favorites are Jane Austen and George Pelecanos, and I like to think of my work as Pride and Prejudice<\/em> meets \u201cThe Wire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q: What read for you in life was “transformational”? \u00a0The book you read that opened your eyes or changed your life? \u00a0(It might be a book you read when you were 10).<\/em><\/p>\n

A: This has nothing to do with my genre, but the non-fiction book Guns, Germs and Steel<\/em> by Jared Diamond changed the entire way I look at the world.<\/p>\n

Q: Finally what’s next for Anna? \u00a0Any tidbits you’d care to share about what’s coming up for her?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: Poor thing, I\u2019ve put her through a lot the last few years. She might need a little rest while I look into writing something new. I\u2019ll keep you posted!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Allison Leotta is the author of the Anna Curtis series, about a DC-based U.S. Attorney who specializes in sex crimes. The first three books were set in DC; last year, Leotta brought Anna back to Michigan (A Good Killing) and in her new novel, Anna is in a town that sounds oh-so-similar to Ann Arbor. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1910"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1912,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1910\/revisions\/1912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}