We need to talk about Claire

An interview with Sara Gran about her new book and the Case of the Broken Rear Window

I was going to drive up to LA to see

Sara Gran

celebrate the release of Little Mysteries with Tod Goldberg at Skylight Books last night, but when I got to my car the rear window had been smashed with a brick. Yes, an actual brick.

There was a note on my window from a neighbor who said their car had been vandalized, too, and they left their phone number. I’d been in Barcelona and had no idea when this went down until the neighbor texted me the details. The general consensus is that teenagers are to blame but I prefer to think I have enemies now. If only Claire DeWitt, the World’s Greatest Detective, was available to crack the case.

The Case of the Broken Rear Window is a convenient metaphor for what’s happening to America right now. While I was fucking off in Barcelona vandals were wreaking havoc at home, making everyone less secure, less certain of the future while accomplishing very little other than making a big fucking mess for someone else to clean up.

Except I wasn’t really fucking off in Barcelona. I was working and looking at art and meeting with friends and spending time with animals and reading Colm Tóibin and George Orwell and learning about Franco and fascism.

Did you know that after Franco seized power he was dictator for 40 years? Did you know Orwell gave up his cushy life in England to kill fascists in Spain and was shot in the throat for his troubles?

This was before he wrote 1984 or Animal Farm. He was a millimeter away from never writing those books.

But did he kill any fascists?

I think he probably killed a few. He threw a grenade into a bunker full of fascist fighters, and when he took cover he listened to their screams, which might be my favorite thing about George Orwell.

Did he have any regrets?

What do you think?

Interview with Sara Gran about Little Mysteries

Today I want to talk about Sara Gran who is doing something extraordinary on and off the page. First the good news: for the first time since 2018 there are new Claire DeWitt stories in the world.

I did a complete run-down of Sara Gran’s literary output, including the three Claire DeWitt novels, here at Message from the Underworld a couple years ago, right after I profiled her for the LA Times. The thing you need to know about Little Mysteries is that in addition to the Claire DeWitt stories there are three Cynthia Silverton stories.

Wait, Cynthia who?

Well, in The Infinite Blacktop it’s revealed that Jacques Silette’s Détection isn’t the only inspiration for Claire’s career in sleuthing. When she was young she was obsessed with a series of books by a girl detective named Cynthia Silverton. That means the Claire DeWitt Universe is expanding to include Cynthia.

Wait, there’s more. The book concludes not with a Claire DeWitt caper but a novella featuring Poppy Killington-Wade.

Who is Poppy Killington-Wade?

You’re just going to have to read the interview to find out…

Nancy Drew doing Nancy Drew things

Jim Ruland: Did Little Mysteries emerge from the stories that you used to send out to your newsletter subscribers?

Sara Gran: Exactly. Yes, I used to do that for a bunch of years. I did a story every Christmas, and then some occasional ones after that, and that's exactly where it came from.

Can we talk a little bit about some of the childhood mystery series that inform this work and the worldview of Claire DeWitt?

Yeah, the Claire de Witt Extended Universe is very influenced by Choose Your Own Adventure books and Two-Minute Mysteries by Donald J. Sobel, who also wrote the Encyclopedia Brown books. I was never a huge Nancy Drew fan when I was a kid, but I find them interesting now. And they were a big inspiration, obviously, for the Cynthia Silverton stories. Another big influence, which I probably should have included a thank you to although there's no direct correlation is The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. It is this amazing children’s mystery I read when I was a kid, but I still reread it every once in a while. It's a fantastic book. I do feel like a lot of my writing career has been trying to recapture the exciting feeling of reading a Two-Minute Mystery and then turning the book upside down to see who did it.

Well, I loved Encyclopedia Brown. Just the idea that a kid who was really smart and driven by curiosity could make all the adults around him look foolish.

Yes, that's the good part of Encyclopedia Brown. What I don't like is his personality. He's so smug, he's such a fucking little know-it-all. I started to reread one of them recently, and I was like, “I hate this kid.” Go fuck yourself! But I think with all this stuff, there's some depth in that. I think kids often are aware of what's going on around them in a way that adults don’t realize, and that's why those mysteries are so resonant because they are aware that there's stuff they don't understand, but they kind of know it's happening.

Well, I think most people in real life would think Claire DeWitt and her world’s greatest detective shtick is kind of smug and insufferable.

Probably yes.

I love how every mystery has a case. Do you have a master list of all the cases that Clara DeWitt has been involved in?

I do not. I wish I was a better record keeper and an organized person and had the whole universe that she lives in on paper somewhere. But I do not.

There's a part of me that really wants to create that list. I can imagine a short story that's nothing but the titles of all of her cases.

Yeah, that could be so cool, and like just all the little references that come up. I do have some paperwork from my copy editors on it, but I waste a lot of time going back to the books and looking things up.

This book is incredibly dark. Claire DeWitt is a pretty dark person, but this feels like the culmination of all the terrible things that have happened in the beginning of the 21st century. Darkness piled on top of darkness.

I didn't think it was that dark honestly. I mean, some of the stories are, but I feel like a lot of them end on a hopeful note, which is unusual for me. I guess I was so taken by the form, I didn't really think about it. I'm gonna have to go back and look at the endings of all of the stories.

In Claire De Witt's world, there are many layers, but there are two facets that guide her: There's the hard-living Claire DeWitt who loves her drugs and has the bleakest worldview imaginable, which is informed by her dedication to Jacques Silette. And then the other facet is Claire's childhood and her friendships growing up, and the mystery around that, which is informed by the Cynthia Silverton books.

I feel like there's a third thing that you're missing. There's the Jacques Silette with the bleak worldview. There's the childhood worldview, which, to me, is the really dark part. But then there's also this sort of psycho-spiritual urge toward change and growth in the books. To me that's why I don't see them as bleak. There are characters in situations where there's an element of utter darkness, utter bleakness, and then hopefully, there's a next step, another step. So in the Cynthia Silverton story in which the girl detective gets lost in the woods, it ends with her coming to know herself and find herself and make a life for herself alone. Sort of like a yogi who goes into the woods.

Like a vision quest…

Then in the Choose Your Own Adventure story every step of the way she has to choose whether to trust other people or not. And most of the endings she chooses to and then in the one she chooses not to, her trust in other people is sort of forced on her when her enemy turns out to not be so much of an enemy after all. So she is definitely in perilous circumstances. But I think for Cynthia and for Claire there often ends up being, for me at least, this ray of hope. That sounds quite bad, but this further step suggests maybe things can be different. Maybe we can create a better world to live in. Maybe we can make better choices. And I don't mean better choices like the drug thing. It's fine that she takes drugs, it's fine that she has sex instead of being in a relationship, but those are not the better choices. The better choices are putting other people first, seeing human beings as equal value. That kind of better choice.

In Little Mysteries, we get what feels like a Cynthia Silverton mystery, but we also get a Cynthia Silverton mystery that's told in the style of Claire DeWitt in that it's not for children.

Definitely not for children, although I would have liked them when I was a kid, I think.

But I guess the question I'm getting at is yes, kids are in danger in these books we grew up on, but the danger is never quite believable. But here it really is. I mean, they're in real peril, and maybe that's where the darkness comes from.

Yeah, but she's not a child. She's like a late teenager. She's like 17 or 18. So she's not like a little kid in peril. She's sort of like a young adult.

I think my concern for these characters speaks to my attachment to them. Like if they were people, I'd want to check in with them. I don't think I'm exceptional in this regard. Among your many fans, people have very intense feelings about Claire DeWitt and now you're introducing new characters. Where does Poppy Killington-Wade fit into the extended universe?

It's a whole new thing. It's a whole new universe that will be extended at some point. It was just something I wanted to do for a long time, and I wasn't 100% percent sure it fit in with the book. But in the end, I hope it did. I think it did, and I do want to do more stories set in that world and around Aunt Julia. I'd always wanted to do an older woman detective, like a Miss Marple. I love those characters. I am becoming that age myself. So I'd always, always, always wanted to do my own take on that older female detective. So that was really fun to do.

Every kid needs that adult in their life that takes them aside and says, "Yeah, fuck what these other people think, you just do what you do." Aunt Julia does that for Poppy.

I wanted her to be a character like Miss Marple, who just sort of shows up and tells everyone very politely and very kindly that they're fucking it all up.

Are we ever going to see the man himself, Jacques Silette, in a story?

I think so. I think he's going to be in the next one, which I have been struggling with for a long time. We will see him at work.

In the next Claire de Witt novel? What's happening with her? You left her in quite a jam.

Yes, it's been harder on the next book because I sort of dug myself into a hole plotwise at the end of the last one. A lot of readers said, “We don't really care if everything works out perfectly,” but I care. I want it to all track, and I built this incredibly complicated plot with a lot of characters, but I also kind of want to stay true to the vision of each book working like a standalone book. So that's hard. Also, one of the reasons I always wanted to do a series is because I wanted to write a character who changes and grows as I change and grow as the case may be. Life changes and life catches up with you. I've changed and I have to see how that reflects on the character. Who is she now? She's my age. She's 53. She can't be the same person she was at 43.

Yeah, Claire needs to cool it with the cocaine and ecstasy.

Maybe, but then what? What's next in life for her, and what's next in life for me are the questions I need to get a handle on. I want to keep writing the character, but I also want to stay really true to that original vision of growth and change and always being 1,000% honest. I think she'll have to lose her attachment to Jacques Silette a little bit, but not give up on it altogether. I think as you grow up, you have to become more of your own person and think for yourself.

You can say, “You can't ask me that!” but will Claire DeWitt ever solve the mystery of her missing friend?

Yes, she does.

There’s a line in Little Mysteries that had me really worried: "The mystery is the hole that's been created in the fabric of your life," which is what Claire says to her assistant about the difference between a mystery and a crime. I had to go look out a window for a while and think about my life after reading that. Maybe that's where my concern for Claire comes from, I don't want her to come to harm, but it's a mystery story, a crime novel. You lose people. You lose characters. Sometimes a lot of them.

That's one of the challenges. You don't want it to be a bloodbath where everyone kills each other, but you also don't want it to be trite or a fake happy ending. You want to have hope going forward for everybody, and you want to point to some interesting possibilities. So it's a lot. I intentionally, to some degree, but more than I intended to, really dug myself into quite a hole here, but I will dig myself out of it. I will do whatever one does to get out of a hole.

I always get hung up on the dumbest stuff in my stories. How can someone get through this door or get to Chicago in the time allotted?

I don't think that stuff is dumb at all. I think it's a difference between something that really works and lasts and has merit and something that doesn't. I think that's the whole deal: worrying about all the little things and really putting yourself into them and making sure they track. I think it's worth the time to figure it all out and to make it all work, and not just do a big deux machina. but to make sure you're constantly digging into the things that you already have and bringing them through, and also making sure that there's not a door where there was a wall five minutes ago.

How hard has it been juggling being Sara Gran the writer and Sara Gran the publisher of Dreamland Books?

It's not hard. What's hard is juggling my writing life and my TV writing life. That's what's hard. The books and the publishing go pretty seamlessly together, and that was one reason why I wanted to do it. And it isn't for everyone, but for me, it's easier and more seamless than it was working with another publisher, because I just get to make every decision myself, so I don't have to step outside of my creative control, my creative vision, at any time, for any reason. I can completely execute my vision exactly the way I want with input from wonderful people like my book designer and my publicist and all of those people.

But is it a lot to juggle?

For me, it's actually seamless, and that was one reason I wanted to do it, because I wanted the package of the book, how we present the book to the world, how we promote the book, to be of one vision with the text of the book. Of course, some of it is a fucking drag, like dealing with production issues and stuff like that. That is a fucking drag where I have to step outside of that creative part of my brain and actually sit down and measure margins and shit like that. So that sucks, but it sucks less than having to compromise on my creative vision for how the book is going to meet the universe of planet Earth.

You do a lot of collaboration in the TV world, I can see why it would make you more protective of your own baby, so to speak.

Everyone's different. Some writers only want to write and don't even want to think about the rest of it. And that's completely fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But for me, I think of the book as a whole, as a physical object, what is it going to be? Not just the writing of it. It's all of a piece to me. So it's quite a joy to be able to just have that one creative vision take over the whole project.

When you sent out your newsletter on why you’re doing this on Substack, which everyone should subscribe to, I felt like you were talking to me. Why aren't you, Jim Ruland, doing this yourself?

Yeah, Jim. Why? Answer my question.

Fear.

Of what? What's the fear?

Being responsible for other people's work.

Yeah, that's the scary part.

As a writer, if I want to take a day off, I can watch a bunch of movies and read a bunch of books and then the next day go at it again. But if I do that as a publisher, I’m letting someone down. And if I do it two days in a row, or a whole week, maybe I shouldn't be a publisher.

Yes, that's why I'm starting with my own books, obviously. And then I'm doing some public domain books for the rest of the 2025 and 2026 and then if those go well, then I'm going to start publishing other people, but I have to really make sure my ducks are in a row, and that I can handle it, that I have structures in place, like a good bookkeeper. I'm not going to be able to do the bookkeeping. But do I have a good bookkeeper? Do I have a good royalty system, because so many people get fucked by these small publishers that start and don't handle people's money correctly, and don't handle people's rights correctly, and that's bad. That's a really, really bad thing to do to someone. So yeah, I definitely want to not ever do that. I'm having so much fun with these public domain things, and I feel like there are so many small publishers out there who are really doing cool stuff. I'm not sure if the world needs another small publisher to do fiction, which was my original thought, is that I would publish other people's fiction. I think enough people are doing that. I don't think there's a huge amount of great literature at this particular moment that's going unpublished, because there are so many wonderful small presses that have sprung up. They're using print on demand technology like I am. I get sent a lot of books, and when you see what's getting published, I'm not sure there's a whole lot left out there. I think five or 10 years ago, it was a very different story,

What are some of the challenges?

The hard part is figuring out how to give people the experience they deserve and make sure they get their money on time and their rights are well cared for. Publicity is very expensive but there's more and more you can do yourself. I'm experimenting. As far as I know, I'm the first person to do this, but I’m using Substack as a distributor, not just to publish on Substack, but to attach the books as an eBook on my Substack. So if you subscribe to my Substack, you get everything I publish. So one reason why I wanted to do that was because, if it does work, that could be a really good model for small publishers going forward, because I only have a couple thousand Substack subscribers, but there's people who easily have 20,000 Substack subscribers, or even 100,000. If you can publish a book that way, you're already doing so much better than most publishers are. You do that, you do eBook on Amazon, you do print on demand through Ingram, that's it. That's the whole deal and you're outselling Random House.

I feel like I've been given homework.

Yeah, you certainly have, and when I see you at Bouchercon, I want a full report.

Well, this started as an interview with the great Sara Gran has turned into an interrogation.

Yeah, they always do. No one gets off the hook. No one gets off easy in my interviews.

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If you liked this newsletter you might also like my latest novel about healthcare vigilantes Make It Stop, or the paperback edition of Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records, or my book with Bad Religion, or my book with Keith Morris. I have more books and zines for sale here. And if you’ve read all of those, consider checking out my latest collaboration The Witch’s Door and the anthology Eight Very Bad Nights.

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