Interview with Catherine Coulter

From the vault: Catherine Coulter is the bestselling author of The Edge, The Cove, Hemlock Bay, Riptide, Eleventh Hour, and many other suspense and romance titles. With 50 million + copies of her novels in print, Catherine Coulter lives in Mill Valley, California.

JONATHAN LOWE: You started writing Regency romances, and some historical romances. Then you started writing contemporary suspense novels. Now you write both. Why the switch, back and forth, and which interests you most?

CATHERINE COULTER: Can you imagine two more disparate genres than historical romance and suspense thrillers? And that’s why I do both — I’ll never get burned out. I hope I can continue to do both forever. Well, I don’t want to get carried away here. How about for another fifty years?

LOWE: Okay. Of course that’s not up to me! What is your background?

COULTER: I think of background as what happened yesterday. To go way back, my background started when when I was riding quarter horses with no saddle and sometimes no bridle as well, which drove my mother mad. At twelve I was in love with Little Joe Cartwright and wrote my first novel — it was fourteen pages long and is, thankfully, in oblivion. After the horses and Little Joe, I got degrees in history, English lit and psychology. Yes, you might come to the conclusion that I was a professional student. When I decided to try my hand at a novel, I knew I’d come home. Oh yeah, I wrote funny speeches for the president of an actuarial company on Wall Street. What I wrote was really funny; unfortunately, he wasn’t.

LOWE: Wall Street is definitely not funny these days. Did anyone influence you to become a writer?

COULTER: No one influenced me to become a writer. I didn’t visit Tibet and meet with a beautifully-complexioned monk who laid his hands on me and intoned, “Write.” Nope, I read everything in sight, including cereal boxes, and the #writing came along with it. My very favorite writer growing up was Georgette Heyer, and she certainly influenced my first novel.

LOWE: When I interviewed Lincoln Child, he told me he prefers to do something new and different each time out, rather than a series utilizing series characters. It’s harder to sell books that way, these days, since you have no faithful readers of characters. What are your thoughts on series?

COULTER: You know, I really like series for the simple reason that you get to know the people and want to know what happens to them. I’ve done both single books and the series — series are the most fun as well, in my own humble opinion. Maybe you could say that a single book is like coming out with a new kind of cereal every year and then it’s gone and there is no more. But what about all those folk who happened to love that cereal?

LOWE: You’ve got a point. I’m not crazy about serials, though, or cereal. With the exception of MacDonald’s Travis McGee series, or Cussler’s Dirk Pitt. Which novels have done best for you, sales wise?  

COULTER: The very best top-selling book for me is The Cove, which turned out to be the first book in the FBI series.

LOWE: Do you go on book tours? Any surprises along the way, there? I know some writers who get a flood of people in one city, and hardly anyone in the next.  

COULTER: Book tours and surprises, both pleasant and unpleasant, go hand in hand, like having a stretch limo drive me from Dayton to Chicago in time for an early TV show and running into the most violent thunderstorm of twenty years. I’ve toured now for years, some years more intensive than others. This summer one of my stops will be in eastern Tennessee because Blindside is set there.

LOWE: What’s this about a writer’s retreat you’re attending?

COULTER: I have three very dear friends: Iris Johansen, Linda Howard, and Kay Hooper. We met in Las Vegas. We call it a “retreat” — it makes the accountants happier.

LOWE: Let’s hope the IRS isn’t listening. Describe your latest book, if you will.

COULTER: I just finished Blindside, the next FBI thriller, set primarily in eastern Tennessee. Sherlock and Savich are in it big-time. The Sheriff, Katie Benedict, is remarkable. I have a feeling she’s going to be getting her own fan mail.