7 minute read
INSIDE VOICES
INSIDE VOICES
Robert Gwaltney and Jeffrey Dale Lofton Introduce Emily Carpenter
Emily Carpenter is the critically acclaimed, bestselling author of suspense novels, Burying the Honeysuckle Girls, The Weight of Lies, and Every Single Secret. After graduating from Auburn with a Bachelor of Arts in Speech Communication, she moved to New York City. She’s worked as an actor, producer, screenwriter, and behind-the-scenes soap opera assistant for the CBS shows, As the World Turns and Guiding Light. Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, she now lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her family.
Inside Voices/Jeffrey: Emily, congratulations on the upcoming release of your novel, Gothictown. The novel is set into motion by pandemic-era incentives that entice New York City restauranteur, Billie Hope and her family to Juliana, an idyllic small town in Georgia. Will you set the story up a little more for us?
Before that email arrives in Billie’s inbox, we’re very briefly in 1864 Juliana, Georgia at a clandestine meeting with the town’s three elders, the founding fathers. The Civil War is raging, and these men know they are in the path of General Sherman, who is burning his way through Georgia to get to the sea. They also know they have a very valuable gold mine with an entire work force of women and children, who are filling in for the men who’ve left to fight in the war. What they decide to do will seal Juliana’s fate and have repercussions for decades to come.
Inside Voices/Robert: Billie Hope takes a huge leap of faith that the Juliana Initiative is all that it seems. In the wake of the pandemic, so many people, like Billie, were left existentially reevaluating their lives. Talk a little about what inspired you to write the book.
It was a combination of the pandemic, and then losing my agent and being dropped by my publisher. So even though the idea had been percolating before that, Billie’s state of mind became real for me, this desire, maybe even a little desperate, to find a place that felt safe and sustainable. To get back to normal. I’m a person that if I’m not writing, it’s not good. I get squirrelly. So I understood how at loose ends Billie felt and how she might overlook certain red flags in her determination to start over.
Inside Voices/Jeffrey: People and places aren’t always what and who they seem. This is especially true in Gothictown. The townsfolk of Juliana remind me a bit of the residents of the Bramford apartment building in Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby—eccentric and seemingly harmless at first. Share your thoughts on the descendants of Juliana’s founding families and how they found their way to you.
Okay, I love Rosemary’s Baby, the book and the movie. I’m a sucker for a story where the whole town is in on the secret, so I knew I wanted to do that from the start. I’m also fascinated by people who are educated, bright, resourceful, but don’t question the beliefs they’re born into – especially beliefs that, in the harsh light of day, are kind of appalling. The citizens’ love for their town is strong because the town is GREAT and worth preserving. Their way of life – of being this tight knit community and supporting each other and being self-sustaining, for the most part, is really a goal worth fighting for. But they don’t question if what they’re doing to keep the status quo, or improve things, is right or ethical or moral. I think we can draw some parallels to modern life, here—this me-first attitude at the expense of others.
Inside Voices/Robert: The novel, as the title suggests, is gothic in nature. How do you define the Southern Gothic genre, and what is your approach to keeping it fresh for the modern reader?
Southern Gothic is actually just plain, old gothic with that uniquely Southern twist. With straight up Gothic you have crumbling houses, ruined aristocracy, grotesque characters, taboo sexual and religious situations, darkness and death, secrets from the past, and ghostly apparitions, etc. Southern Gothic is the same, but instead of being based on the English aesthetic and thematic focus, everything’s Southern and you’re addressing the sins of the South’s past: slavery, the Civil War, and racism. Obviously, not every Southern Gothic book or movie addresses those issues head-on, but they’re almost always somehow tangentially involved.
While the racist South is still a relevant idea, I chose to tell a story that addresses something that I believe underlies racism, which is the fear of losing your way of life. This desire that some people have to cling to the power and safety they have. Or go back to some imagined golden age where they felt safe all the time and no one challenged them. I loved exploring that human desire and sort of running with it.
Inside Voices/Jeffrey: How does your background as an actor, producer, and screenwriter impact how your approach the written page as a novelist?
Basically, I act out all the parts by reading the dialogue out loud, so that’s where the acting background comes in handy. Screenwriting really taught me about following a tight, three-act structure, and that’s particularly helpful in writing suspense.
Inside Voices/Robert: You shared some exciting news recently that AMC is in the early stages of developing Gothictown as a series. What can you share about the project?
Abby Ajayi, our talented writer and showrunner, is executive producing, so I feel really excited about that. Apparently, the development process of TV shows is slow, so I’ve got nothing for you yet!
Inside Voices/Jeffrey: The dreamy Jamie Cleburne, a prominent member of one of Juliana’s founding families, is a very handsome temptation for Billie Hope. Any thoughts on who you might like to see cast to portray him in the series?
Casting questions are so funny for me as an older woman. I’m not as aware of younger actors, so a lot of times I write characters who, in my mind, are “a younger version of…” whoever. So Jamie, to me, was like late 40s Jude Law. I mean, come on. Impossible to resist. But he’s a bit out of reach, so I’d probably cast Clayne Crawford, who’s blond and gorgeous and from Alabama. He was on one of my favorite shows called “Rectify,” and he’s a really underrated actor. I think he’s really talented and good at radiating that smarmy charm thing.
Inside Voices/Robert: Emily, I am so excited for Gothictown to make its way into the world and into the hands of readers. Do you mind sharing what’s next for you in your writing life?
My next book is called A SPELL FOR SAINTS AND SINNERS and it’s about a young psychic working in Savannah who does an incredibly accurate reading for the daughter of a wealthy family in town and then gets pulled into her family’s very strange, very twisty lives.
