Author2Author: Susan Kandel & Chelsea Cain, pt. 3

Susan Kandel: So I never did find out what Nancy Drew meant to you. Were you one of those kid devotees? Did you read Trixie Belden, and the Dana Girls, too? And what about parody? It seems like a real balancing act. You can't go too far or you wind up being Mad Magazine. I thought you did an amazing job. It can imagine it took a lot of self-control. Is this a genre you can imagine exploring again?

Chelsea Cain: I was a huge Nancy Drew fan as a kid. We are talking unwavering, cult-like devotion. I read them under my desk at school and I distinctly remember looking up during a third grade math class and having absolutely no idea what the stuff on the board was (it turned out to be long division). Naturally I went right back to reading. I also read Trixie Belden, the Three Investigators, the Hardy Boys (only in dire straits, mind you, when Nancy was unavailable), and all manner of other sleuth adventures. I tried the Dana Girls because they were also by "Carolyn Keene," but they never took. In middle school I graduated to Chandler and Hammett. I think I just really liked the notion of reading a series. I liked the idea of being able to plow through a book and then immediately pick up another one. I even wrote a college admission essay on Nancy Drew. I believe the topic was "write about a person who inspired you." Sorry, Marie Curie.

Imagine my shock when I went back and reread the books as an adult and discovered that they were (forgive me, Sleuths) bad. The early ones are much better than the later ones, but I was amazed at how much better the boys' books were. Christopher Cool: TEEN Agent, for instance, has way more zip (and adjectives) than Nancy.

The parody thing is tricky. I had the idea for like two years before I started writing. I mean, I started writing about six times during that period but each attempt was miserable and didn't make it past half a page. The trick was to figure out how to tell the story. Present tense or past? Was it going to be from an elderly Nancy's point of view? How would it be divided? A straight memoir narrative just didn't work. Then I stumbled on the idea of having each chapter be a different period of Nancy's life and a discreet adventure sort of following the arc of a Nancy Drew book, and that seemed to help things fall into place. I sat down and started writing and found the tone (essential in parody) and it all came together. The next breakthrough was to accept the fact that if Nancy Drew had existed that all those sleuths in her general universe must have existed too. Once I could bring in "guest stars" it helped keep things interesting. The big fear, of course, is the SNL rule of comedy, which is funny sketches don't always make funny movies, and I was worried that I could get a vaguely amusing chapter out of the idea, and then nine chapters of chuckle-less tedium. Bringing in other characters allowed me to keep things fresh and to keep me interested. I don't think I could do another parody though. I know the Nancy Drew universe so well and have such a child's passion for it, that I enjoyed mucking around in River Heights for a while. I think parodying something else would be hard. And I don't like to do things that are hard.