Authors: Suzanne Hayes
Empire Girls (23 page)
A Conversation with Suzanne Hayes & Loretta Nyhan
As of the publication of your debut novel,
I’ll Be Seeing You,
you had never met in person. What has your experience been like since, and what was it like to finally meet face-to-face?
Suzanne: This is such a hard question to answer. In many ways, when I met Loretta, it felt as if we’d known each other forever. Still, we only knew our best selves. The process of writing
Empire Girls
was very different from writing
I’ll Be Seeing You.
We had to be much more involved with each other’s writing, lives and flaws. I’m fast and impetuous, prone to tantrums and quick recoveries. Loretta is the opposite (thank God!). Meeting her was the fulfillment of this dream that came true for both of us. It was surreal at the same time as it was the realest moment ever. If that makes any sense.
Loretta: Our first meeting was magical—we cried (okay, truth be told—we sobbed!). And then, like old friends, we went out to lunch and talked each other’s ears off. Since then, I think our relationship has evolved. We’ve always talked about all kinds of things, but after meeting in person, I’ve noticed we talk less about books and more about our personal lives.
What was your inspiration for
Empire Girls?
How, if at all, have your own personalities and backgrounds informed the characters of Ivy and Rose?
Suzanne: I think I was on the back lawn of the Rockport House when I called Loretta and said something like “Don’t kill me, I have this idea... Two sisters in a tenement in New York.” At first, we set it in 1918. But as the concept grew, the story moved itself to 1925. The interesting thing is that at the outset Loretta and I decided to write the character that was most opposite of our own personalities. I became practical Rose, and she became the devil-may-care Ivy. As we wrote, however, each of us discovered those parts of our personalities. That personal growth translated on the pages as Ivy and Rose discovered strengths and weaknesses in each other and themselves as the novel progresses.
Loretta: In order for Suzy and I to write historical fiction together, we needed to pick an era we both felt comfortable living in for a year. The 1920s appealed to us—who doesn’t like flappers and speakeasies? As far as characters go, at the start I thought Ivy’spersonality was as far away from mine as it could be. I was so wrong. I began to see so much of myself in her—I don’t think I did that on purpose, but after Suzy pointed it out to me, I began to understand. I moved to New York when I was twenty-two, and all the feelings I had—excitement, fear and even some disappointment—began to filter into Ivy to a degree.
You’ve created such a dynamic cast of characters—specifically Ivy and Rose—but the rest of the “Empire Girls,” as well. When you started writing, did you have all of these players and their journeys planned out, or did they reveal themselves as you wrote? Did any of the characters surprise you or change along the way?
Suzanne: This novel had many different “lives,” so to speak. Many of these characters arrived spontaneously, as others were taken and transformed from other versions. We wanted to create a community at Empire House, so that cast of characters, though peripheral, was vital to the novel. This is the portion where the coauthoring became essential. Loretta and I had to make sure we didn’t overpopulate it, or underpopulate it, and that each of the characters lent something to the narrative. I have to say, I miss the world we created there already!
Loretta: Ivy and Rose had always been strongly defined characters, though they did end up quite different from what we’d initially planned! The other characters developed as a true joint effort. It was our hope that two opinions would add layers to our peripheral characters, ultimately enriching the narrative. In reality, two opinions sometimes meant two very opposing points of view, but Suzy and I had a way of working things out. We each stated our case and then ultimately decided together what was best for the story.
Empire Girls
is, at the heart, a novel about the incredible bonds of sisterhood. Do either of you have sisters or friendships that influenced your portrayal of Ivy and Rose’s relationship?
Suzanne: I’ve learned more about sisterhood than I could ever imagine through my friendship with Loretta. I have a younger brother, and my three daughters who show me the bonds of sisterhood every day. My great-aunts were all so close, and they were the basis for my novel
The Witch of Little Italy.
Sisters fascinate me, and this novel helped me explore the complicated dynamics of DNA.
Loretta: I am lucky enough to have an incredible sister and sisters-in-law in my life. My sister, Joyce, is seven years younger than me, so I really didn’t get to know her until we were both adults, which is reflective of Ivy and Rose. Though they’re only a year apart, they lived separate lives until moving to New York. I also feel that women pick up sisters along the way as we form strong female friendships. Those relationships—though fraught with tension at times—are so valuable.
In
Empire Girls,
prohibition-era New York City is almost like a character in and of itself. What drew you to this setting and time period, and what kind of research did you do to bring this fascinating moment in history to life?
Suzanne: Loretta and I are huge history buffs. I’m a high school history teacher by day, and this era enchanted both of us. We wanted something that reflected women at a moment in history when social roles were changing. We’d had luck with that in
I’ll Be Seeing You,
but wanted to move back in time a bit. I think, if you asked us both independently, we’d go back to 1920s New York City in a heartbeat. I mean, we’re writers! Give us that, or Paris, and we’re good to go! I think our love of the era shines bright in these pages. Research was primarily web-based for the time period, but the Village itself was part of my growing-up years. To this day there is an apartment on Carmine and Bleecker that still welcomes me back whenever I get to spend time in the city.
Loretta: New York has always been the place people go to follow their dreams, but Greenwich Village in the first half of the twentieth century was such a crazy, dynamic hot spot for painters, actors and writers, and for those simply looking for excitement. Following the brutality of WWI, people in the ’20s wanted to let loose and have fun—there’s an ebullience to the era Suzy and I both found irresistible.
Can you describe the process of writing a novel as a team? Do each of you write your own cast of characters (and if so, who wrote which characters)? Do you each take turns with the manuscript, passing it back and forth to each other? Or is one person the organizer (if so, who)?
Suzanne: I was Rose, and the characters closest to her. So Claudia and Santino were also created primarily in my chapters. But this book was so different, as Ivy and Rose interlap, that there were many characters we created together. Cat, Papa, Asher, Daisy—those were characters we ended up sharing. And even though each of us had specific characters, it was so important for us to fully explore, on our own, each player in this novel. We swapped the manuscript back and forth, and each took it one chapter at a time. This novel had several “lives” so to speak, and all that rewriting helped us overlap characters, arcs and plots. It was a wild and sometimes harrowing experience that left me wondering, more than once, if our lives weren’t paralleling those of Ivy and Rose! Also, in terms of organizing...that would be Loretta!
Loretta: In
I’ll Be Seeing You
we were in charge of our own separate worlds. In Empire Girls, we shared characters, which meant we had to come to agreement about physical characteristics, personality traits, story arcs, etc. It was definitely a difficult process at times, and our relationship grew as we both fought for certain things and made concessions. However, we were able to play with this a bit, as Ivy and Rose are two very different people and their impressions of others are colored by their disparate worldviews.
ISBN-13: 9781460330104
EMPIRE GIRLS
Copyright © 2014 by Suzanne Palmieri and Loretta Nyhan
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