Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Lori Robbins. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Lori, appreciate you joining us today. Looking back, do you think you started your business at the right time? Do you wish you had started sooner or later?
I do sometimes wish I’d begun the path to publication sooner, but central to my identity as a writer is that I’m a serial late-bloomer. This pattern began when I was a teenager and decided to ignore conventional wisdom that dictated dancers had to begin training at a very young age. The result was a ten-year career onstage that defied the odds. Success as a dancer, of course, meant that I didn’t attend college until long after my peers got their degrees and began their grown-up lives. Luckily, the New York City public university system welcomes nontraditional students like me, and I graduated from Hunter College shortly before giving birth to my third child.
The habit of late starts didn’t end there. I was the oldest beginning teacher at my first job and didn’t publish my first book until the youngest of my six kids graduated high school. This personal history may explain why I love reading and writing stories about people who reinvent themselves.
Starting late and starting over is a central theme in my books as well as my life. I write two mystery series and am in the process of writing a standalone thriller. Series often feature protagonists who deliver a comforting consistency, but my characters aren’t the same people at the end of the book as they are in the beginning.
The On Pointe series is set in a New York City ballet company and features a ballerina on the wrong side of thirty with two surgically reconstructed knees and an uncertain future. She defies expectations, both fictional and factual. Yes, she’s embroiled in a murder mystery, but the stakes are higher for her than they would be for someone at the start of her career. Those challenges make her observant, wary, and more than a little cynical. In other words, the perfect amateur sleuth.
The Master Class mysteries leap across the Hudson River to suburban New Jersey and feature an English teacher who also is at a crossroads in her life. Her marriage, her job, and her sense of self alter as this personal journey is reflected in the larger story of a murder investigation. I love puzzles and had a lot of fun integrating clues from books into the narrative. Every chapter title includes a reference to a famous poem or book that might help the reader solve the mystery. Or, it could be a red herring. Teasing out truth from lies is at the heart of these books.
Work is central to the identity of both protagonists. It’s how they define themselves and how others define them. And yet, both rebel against those easy labels to forge an identity filled with the possibilities of what might be next.
Me too.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I write crime fiction. Although other genres occasionally beckon, my past lives as a dancer and English teacher provide me with plenty of inspiration for writing about murder. How often do we hear friends whisper their desire for a certain boss or coworker to relocate to A Better Place? In reality, the farthest I’ve gone in this dark direction is wishing my neighbor would move. Not necessarily to the Afterlife. The West Coast would suffice. But how delightful it is to have that kind of power, at least on the page.
As much as we value fiction for transporting us down paths we don’t dare follow in our everyday lives, it’s got to feel real. One of my goals, in writing the On Pointe series, was to render life in a professional ballet company in a way that mined its inherently dramatic setting but respected its traditions and its limitations. Very rarely do movies or books capture how intense and exhausting life as a ballerina can be. Most depict dancers indulging in nonstop sex, drugs, and barhopping. The truth is that they rarely have the time, money, or energy that would enable that kind of lifestyle.
Dancers talk with their bodies. We don’t often get to hear their words, although many are remarkably eloquent speakers and writers. My books give them a voice. It’s for this reason that each chapter begins with a quotation from a dancer, choreographer, or other artist. In the Master Class mystery series, however, the quotations serve a different purpose, as they provide clues to solving the murder. Not all clues, however, are created equal! Some are genuine leads and others are designed to deceive. I love puzzles, and those references reflect that. Like my English teacher protagonist, I’m a hardcore, armchair detective, I want my readers to solve the mystery with me.
After teaching writing workshops for authors at every stage of their careers, I’ve learned that everyone has a compelling story they want to tell. The ones with a genuine voice are the ones I want to read. And write.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
Writers face many challenges that will sound familiar to owners of small businesses and entrepreneurs. The first involves the number of hours you have to work to succeed. When I worked for an employer, I was on a set schedule with clear expectations regarding hours and time off. When I began writing, those boundaries vanished. Now, there aren’t enough hours in the day or days in the week to get it all done.
Like others who are self-employed, writers have to take an active role selling their product. Publishers expect their authors not just to write books, but also to promote them. In other words, the hard part isn’t limited to the creative end, although that remains the most rewarding aspect.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I sold my first book, Lesson Plan for Murder, to a small publisher that went out of business. This bad situation was made worse by the fact that the company also had the rights to the second, as yet unpublished, book. I was at a loss. I couldn’t get an agent or sell the book[s] to a new publisher without a letter of rescission and had to wait many months to get it.
With no other path forward, I wrote an entirely different book, titled Murder in First Position, which sold quickly to Level Best Books. That was in 2019. The fifth book in the series will release in a few months. And that first book? My publisher bought it as well. Study Guide for Murder, the sequel I didn’t think would ever get published, will release on September 3, 2024.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lorirobbins.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lorirobbinsmysteries/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lorirobbinsauthor/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/lorirobbins99
- Other: https://linktr.ee/lorirobbinsmysteries
https://www.bookbub.com/profile/lori-robbins
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16007362.Lori_Robbins
Image Credits
Alice Kivlon