"The Charbor Chronicles": Author Appearance: Lissa Marie Redmond at Hornell Public Library, April 11, 2023

Author Lissa Marie Redmond speaking at the Hornell Public Library

Yesterday, author Lissa Marie Redmond spoke at the Hornell Public Library. I had heard about this on the day of the event itself. Presently, I am on a miniature vacation while visiting my mom locally, and am not myself a resident of Hornell or any town near it. However, it felt intriguing enough that I decided to go ahead and attend, after first making sure that this would be possible.

She arrived just as everything was scheduled to begin, and started by saying that she was sure that she was going to be late, but that she had made it on time. Her husband had driven, yet despite how tight there were on time, he had managed to get here on time while staying within the speed limit. She also mentioned how surprised she was by how big Hornell was, saying that after passing through so many truly small towns between her hometown of Buffalo and here, Hornell truly felt like a small city, almost like a smaller version of Buffalo.

Redmond also mentioned how she was glad to be speaking at a library, because she herself was deprived of access to a library when younger. She feels that they are very important - even critical - to society, and that once they are gone, we likely are in big trouble. So she always tries to make good on offers from libraries to speak. She mentioned how impressed she was with the Hornell library, and again drew a comparison to her hometown of Buffalo.

With that, she began to describe Buffalo in greater detail, since that is the setting of most of her books. Sometimes, she is asked why she chose Buffalo, and she responds that this is her home, the city she knows best, adding that novels set in New York City or Los Angeles or Chicago have pretty much been done to death. Also, she felt that western New York is often overlooked and overshadowed by New York City, although it is in fact radically different than the Big Apple. Buffalo is more like a big town than a massive metropolis, the kind of place where, she said, there is probably two degrees of separation, and it has a feel where everyone knows everyone else in and around town. She went on to say that when people referred to Buffalo, they generally mean that part of western New York from as far north as Niagara Falls all the way to the Pennsylvania border.

Redmond spent 22 years on the police force in Buffalo, and served as a detective on homicide cases. That said, she described herself not as a police officer who became a writer, but a writer who worked for a while as a police officer. Going back to the theme of how Buffalo is a small enough city where almost everybody knows everyone else, she mentioned how she ran into a family member of a murder victim while in a convenience store. Her daughter was present, and after the initial pleasantries and small talk, her daughter had asked how this man and her mom (Redmond) knew each other, and the man said that Redmond had solved her mother's murder case. It was likely the first time that the reality of what her mother actually did as a profession became real to her, Redmond said. It is for that reason, with Buffalo being a small enough city that you likely run into people you know or have known at some point or other, that she never uses any of the real cases that she actually handled as a detective, out of respect for the families of the victims. She also said that, as a writer, you never want to use real places, specifically, when something bad happens in them. As her example, she mentioned that if some fictional murder or tragedy happened at or somehow involved an actual local business in Hornell (or elsewhere), it might upset the real people working there. It is for this reason that writers, including herself, often create fictional towns, and cited the use of Derry and Castle Rock by noted author Stephen King. She also went on to add that she is a very big fan of King, and feels he is an amazing author.

Often, she was asked about her main character, Lauren Riley. In particular, she gets questions about just how autobiographical it is. But she says that the fictional Riley does not physically resemble her. In the first book in the series, Riley is a tall, very attractive blonde who is a bit stuck up. In fact, Redmond joked that Riley likely would not even deign to have lunch with her in real life. Sometimes, she received criticism for that, for having a tall, attractive blonde as her main character However, Riley changes over time. "Life happens to her," Redmond says. She has awful taste in men, and as she goes through heartbreaks and other aspects of life, she transforms, becomes a very different person. Redmond feels that Riley becomes more accessible, more relatable, in the later books.

Redmond also spoke of her own experiences as a writer. She had always dreamed of being a writer, although she would not always have guessed the specifics of an attractive blonde woman as a homicide detective in Buffalo. She also noted that there is a danger of repeating yourself as a writer, and explained that, for now, she is taking a brief hiatus as a writer precisely because she was worried about running out of fresh ideas. That said, she has written seven books in recent years, since 2018, but she was careful to note that she is not James Patterson, and does not have a team of writers working for her. She sits alone, hunched over her laptop, and has to try and create these stories on her own.

She also advised writers not to be afraid to make mistakes. That's why pencils have erasers, she said. "That's what the backspace is for." As an example, she said that her editor had told her that the beginning of one book was wrong. She came to see this as true, and made the revisions. She also stated that there is a lot involved with writing, but that she learned that perhaps the most crucial thing is to write a very good query letter. She had submitted 76 query letters before getting accepted. One friend had gotten accepted after one query letter, and another had sent over 200 query letters. So Redmond felt that she was right more or less in the middle, and 76 query letters before getting a positive response is likely average.

She was asked if she had ever delved into poetry, and responded that on some level, she had, joking at all 13 year-old girls do. But she feared that her poetry was not good, and that it is very, very difficult, similar to an author who is able to create a whole world, such as JK Rowling with the Harry Potter series, or the popular television series Game of Thrones. She mentioned Game of Thrones a couple of times, and also mentioned the television series Breaking Bad, and how impressed she was by the writers managing to turn victims into villains and vice-versa. Redmond went on to mention how difficult it is to write so effectively that the audience is rooting for someone in one show, then cursing them out as villains in the next episode.

When asked who some of her favorite writers are, Redmond mentioned Stephen King, who she reiterated is just a truly great writer. Agatha Christie is another of her favorite authors. She also mentioned another writer, who most people have never heard of: Anna Katharine Green. Green was a native of Buffalo, and was a significant inspiration for the works of Agatha Christie and Sir Conan Doyle, who actually traveled to Buffalo to meet her before creating Sherlock Holmes and Watson. There was a point in time when she and other noted writer F. Scott Fitzgerald lived within a couple of blocks of each other in Buffalo.

After the talk, Redmond signed copies of her books.