You have a master’s degree in social work, and worked as a youth counsellor and in the field of medical social work, as well as having a private psychotherapy practice. How does this background inform and influence your work?
My background helps me understand how people “tick.” It also gives me a deep appreciation of the struggle people face as they try to cope with tragedy. I loved being a social worker and love being a writer. I feel lucky to have had two careers that let me touch people in a positive way.
How did you feel when your first book was signed?
It’s impossible to explain the joy I felt that day! It had been a long time coming, and the realisation that my story would finally reach readers was simply amazing and very rewarding. I called my family and my writer friends. It was exciting…However, the book wasn’t actually published for a very long two and a half years!
Where do your characters come from and do they ever surprise you as you write?
They surprise me all the time! I love creating characters and breathing life into them. I want them to be both believable and memorable to my readers, and I spend much of my writing time getting to know them. When I was a clinical social worker, I took a seminar on hypnotherapy. During that training, I not only thought about how useful the techniques I was learning would be for my psychotherapy clients, but how they could help me understand my characters as well. In the beginning, I approached using this new tool in a very formal way. I’d sit in a comfortable chair with a pad and pen, put myself in a light trance, and imagine I was the character. Then I’d start writing about “my” life, in the first person, from the character’s point of view. I didn’t censor myself, but simply let the words flow. As my subconscious took over, I learned things about my character I never would have come up with consciously. It’s an astonishing experience and often full of surprises. If I’m surprised by what happens, I’m quite sure my readers will be as well. Our subconscious minds are amazing things if we just tap into them. Now that the technique is second nature to me, I often use it when I’m feeling perplexed by, or simply out of touch with, a character. I close my eyes and ask her to tell me what’s going on with her, or perhaps how she’s feeling about another character in the story. Sometimes the answers I receive are pure gold.
Which book do you wish you had written?
E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, and not only because I would now be very wealthy! I have always loved that children’s book and it was an early inspiration in my longing to write. It’s a beautifully crafted book and a lovingly told story.
Do you have a favourite character that you’ve created and what is it you like about that character?
I have many favourites, but CeeCee from The Lost Daughter is definitely one of them. I like that she’s a blend of vulnerability and strength. I think many readers can relate to those qualities in her. I also like that, despite the fact that she’s done something very wrong, she’s still a person with high moral standards. It’s that conflict that forces her to make a devastating choice at the end of the book, and it’s that conflict that truly humanises her.
A WRITER’S LIFE
Paper and pen or straight onto the computer?
Both. I often start with paper and pen, and then hit a certain point when ideas are coming too quickly for me to keep up. That’s when I move to the computer.
PC or laptop?
Both. I am more comfortable working on my PC because I love my big monitor and ergonomic keyboard. But I also love working in coffee shops, so my laptop is a must.
Music or silence?
Music, but without lyrics. I listen to particular soundtracks when I write. I like soundtracks with high drama, such as Braveheart, Blood Diamond, and Dances with Wolves. They make me feel very emotional, and that is reflected in what I’m writing.
Morning or night?
I’m a night owl, definitely.
Coffee or tea?
Coffee. Half caffeine, half decaf, with a little milk.
Your guilty reading pleasure?
Hmm…I don’t think I have one. I really must work on that.
The first book you loved?
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White.
A DAY IN THE LIFE
This depends on where I am in the writing process. If it’s early on, you might find me lolling around the house with a faraway look in my eyes as the story begins to take shape in my imagination. If I’m outlining, you’ll find me hunched over my dining-room table, surrounded by note cards, each one containing a scene from the book as I move them around to form a cohesive story. If I’m in the middle of the book, I’ll often start my day at a local coffee shop, going over what I wrote the day before. Then I’ll come home and get to work at the computer. If it’s the last few months before deadline, you’ll find me at the computer bright and early, then all day long, then late into the night. And I’ll have a crazed, frantic look in my eyes!
TOP TEN BOOKS
Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, which was not only a great read, but an eye-opener for me into the twentieth-century history of the Congo.
Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, because of its connection to the sea and beach and because of its exploration of a very real marriage.
White Horses by Alice Hoffman, because it was the first book of hers that I read, and it inspired my early writing. When I reread my first novel, Private Relations, I can recognise the passages that were written during my “Alice Hoffman phase.”
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy, because it’s beautifully told and a fantastic, gripping story about a wildly dysfunctional family—my favourite kind.
The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, because it’s so inventive and so very touching.
The Colour Purple by Alice Walker, because I started sobbing on page one.
The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh, because it keeps me centred.
I Know this Much is True by Wally Lamb, because it’s an amazing story, wonderfully told. I reread it when I want to write from a male character’s point of view. It helps me understand how a man thinks and feels.
Beloved by Toni Morrison. I didn’t love it until I had to reread it for a book club. Then it suddenly came together for me, and I’ve reread it several times since.
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, because it’s about three of my favourite things: food, spirituality, and relationships.
THE LOST DAUGHTER
Don’t miss Diane Chamberlain’s number one bestselling title, The Lost Daughter.
Would you live a lie to keep your child?
In 1977, pregnant Genevieve Russell disappeared. Twenty years later, her remains are discovered and Timothy Gleason is charged with murder. But there is no sign of the unborn child.
CeeCee Wilkes knows how Genevieve died—because she was there. She also knows what happened to the missing infant, because two decades ago CeeCee made the devastating choice to raise the baby as her own.
Now Timothy Gleason is facing the death penalty, and CeeCee has another choice to make. Tell the truth and destroy her family. Or let an innocent man die to protect a lifetime of lies.
Available now from all good booksellers
BEFORE THE STORM
by Diane Chamberlain
Read on for an exclusive look at Chapter One
Coming soon from MIRA Books
Chapter One
Andy
WHEN I WALKED BACK INTO MY FRIEND Emily’s church, I saw the pretty girl right away. She’d smiled and said “hey” to me earlier when we were in the youth building, and I’d been looking for her ever since. Somebody’d pushed all the long church seats out of the way so kids could dance, and the girl was in the middle of the floor dancing fast with my friend Keith, who could dance cooler than anybody. I stared at the girl like nobody else was in the church, even when Emily came up to me and said, “Where were you? This is a lock-in. That means you stay right here all night.” I saw that her eyebrows were shaped like pale check
marks. That meant she was mad.
I pointed to the pretty girl. “Who’s that?”
“How should I know?” Emily poked her glasses higher up her nose. “I don’t know every single solitary person here.”
The girl had on a floaty short skirt and she had long legs that flew over the floor when she danced. Her blond hair was in those cool things America-African people wear that I could never remember the name of. Lots of them all over her head in stripes.
I walked past some kids playing cards on the floor and straight over to the girl. I stopped four shoe lengths away, which Mom always said was close enough. I used to get too close to people and made them squirmy. They need their personal space, Mom said. But even standing that far away, I could see her long eyelashes. They made me think of baby bird feathers. I saw a baby bird close once. It fell out of the nest in our yard and Maggie climbed the ladder to put it back. I wanted to reach over and touch the girl’s feather lashes, but knew that was not an appropriate thing.
Keith suddenly stopped dancing with her. He looked right at me. “What d’you want, little rich boy?” he asked.
I looked at the girl. Her eyes were blue beneath the feathers. I felt words come into my mind and then into my throat, and once they got that far, I could never stop them.
“I love you,” I said.
Her eyes opened wide and her lips made a pink O. She laughed. I laughed, too. Sometimes people laugh at me and sometimes they laugh with me, and I hoped this was one of the laughing-with-me times.
The girl didn’t say anything, but Keith put his hands on his hips. “You go find somebody else to love, little rich boy.” I wondered how come he kept calling me little rich boy instead of Andy.
I shook my head. “I love her.”
Keith walked between me and the girl. He was so close to me, I felt the squirmies Mom told me about. I had to look up at him which made my neck hurt. “Don’t you know about personal space?” I asked.
“Look,” he said. “She’s sixteen. You’re a puny fourteen.”
“Fifteen,” I said. “I’m just small for my age.”
“Why’re you acting like you’re fourteen then?” He laughed and his teeth reminded me of the big white gum pieces Maggie liked. I hated them because they burned my tongue when I bit them.
“Leave him alone,” the pretty girl said. “Just ignore him and he’ll go away.”
“Don’t it creep you out?” Keith asked her. “The way he’s staring at you?”
The girl put out an arm and used it like a stick to move Keith away. Then she talked right to me.
“You better go away, honey,” she said. “You don’t want to get hurt.”
How could I get hurt? I wasn’t in a dangerous place or doing a dangerous thing, like rock climbing, which I wanted to do but Mom said no.
“What’s your name?” I asked her.
“Go home to your fancy-ass house on the water,” Keith said.
“If I tell you my name, will you go away?” the girl asked.
“Okay,” I said, because I liked that we were making a deal.
“My name’s Layla,” she said.
Layla. That was a new name. I liked it. “It’s pretty,” I said. “My name’s Andy.”
“Nice to meet you, Andy,” she said. “So, now you know my name and you can go.”
I nodded, because I had to hold up my end of the deal. “Goodbye,” I said as I started to turn around.
“Retard.” Keith almost whispered it, but I had very good hearing and that word pushed my start button.
I turned back to him, my fists already flying. I punched his stomach and I punched his chin, and he must have punched me too because of all the bruises I found later, but I didn’t feel a thing. I kept at him, my head bent low like a bull, forgetting I’m only five feet tall and he was way taller. When I was mad, I got strong like nobody’s business. People yelled and clapped and things, but the noise was a buzz in my head. I couldn’t tell you the words they said. Just bzzzzzzzzz, getting louder the more I punched.
I punched until somebody grabbed my arms from behind, and a man with glasses grabbed Keith and pulled us apart. I kicked my feet trying to get at him. I wasn’t finished.
“What an asshole!” Keith twisted his body away from the man with the glasses, but he didn’t come any closer. His face was red like he had sunburn.
“He doesn’t know any better,” said the man holding me. “You should. Now you get out of here.”
“Why me?” Keith jerked his chin toward me. “He started it! Everybody always cuts him slack.”
The man spoke quietly in my ear. “If I let go of you, are you going to behave?”
I nodded and then realized I was crying and everybody was watching me except for Keith and Layla and the man with glasses, who were walking toward the back of the church. The man let go of my arms and handed me a white piece of cloth from his pocket. I wiped my eyes. I hoped Layla hadn’t seen me crying. The man was in front of me now and I saw that he was old with gray hair in a ponytail. He held my shoulders and looked me over like I was something to buy in a store. “You okay, Andy?”
I didn’t know how he knew my name, but I nodded.
“You go back over there with Emily and let the adults handle Keith.” He turned me in Emily’s direction and made me walk a few steps with his arm around me. “We’ll deal with him, okay?” He let go of my shoulders.
I said “okay” and kept walking toward Emily, who was standing by the baptism pool thing.
“I thought you was gonna kill him!” she said.
Me and Emily were in the same special reading and math classes two days a week. I’d known her almost my whole life, and she was my best friend. People said she was funny looking because she had white hair and one of her eyes didn’t look at you and she had a scar on her lip from an operation when she was a baby, but I thought she was pretty. Mom said I saw the whole world through the eyes of love. Next to Mom and Maggie, I loved Emily best. But she wasn’t my girlfriend. Definitely not.
“What did the girl say?” Emily asked me.
I wiped my eyes again. I didn’t care if Emily knew I was crying. She’d seen me cry plenty of times. When I put the cloth in my pocket, I noticed her red T-shirt was on inside out. She used to always wear her clothes inside out because she couldn’t stand the way the seam part felt on her skin, but she’d gotten better. She also couldn’t stand when people touched her. Our teacher never touched her but once we had a substitute and she put a hand on Emily’s shoulder and Emily went ballistic. She cried so much she barfed on her desk.
“Your shirt’s inside out,” I said.
“I know. What did the girl say?”
“That her name’s Layla.” I looked over at where Layla was still talking to the man with the glasses. Keith was gone, and I stared at Layla. Just looking at her made my body feel funny. It was like the time I had to take medicine for a cold and couldn’t sleep all night long. I felt like bugs were crawling inside my muscles. Mom promised me that was impossible, but it still felt that way.
“Did she say anything else?” Emily asked.
Before I could answer, a really loud, deep, rumbling noise, like thunder, filled my ears. Everyone stopped and looked around like someone had said Freeze! I thought maybe it was a tsunami because we were so close to the beach. I was really afraid of tsunamis. I saw one on TV. They swallowed up people. Sometimes I’d stare out my bedroom window and watch the water in the sound, looking for the big wave that would swallow me up. I wanted to get out of the church and run, but nobody moved.
Like magic, the stained-glass windows lit up. I saw Mary and baby Jesus and angels and a half-bald man in a long dress holding a bird on his hand. The window colors were on every-body’s face and Emily’s hair looked like a rainbow.
“Fire!” someone yelled from the other end of the church, and then a bunch of people started yelling, “Fire! Fire!” Everyone screamed, running past me and Emily, pushing us all over the place.
I didn’t see any fire, so me and Emily just stood there getting pushed around, waiting for an adult to tell us what to do. I was pretty sure then that there wasn’t a tsunami. That made me feel better, even though somebody’s elbow knocked into my side and somebody else stepped on my toes. Emily backed up against the wall so nobody could touch her as they rushed past. I looked where Layla had been talking with the man, but she was gone.
“The doors are blocked by fire!” someone shouted.
I looked at Emily. “Where’s your mom?” I had to yell because it was so noisy. Emily’s mother was one of the adults at the lock-in, which was the only reason Mom let me go.
“I don’t know.” Emily bit the side of her finger the way she did when she was nervous.
“Don’t bite yourself.” I pulled her hand away from her face and she glared at me with her good eye.
All of a sudden I smelled the fire. It crackled like a bonfire on the beach. Emily pointed to the ceiling where curlicues of smoke swirled around the beams.