Goodreads Choice Awards 2025

Ask the Author: Erika Mailman

“This is Historical Fiction Week at Goodreads! Feel free to ask me a question about my novels Woman of Ill Fame (1849 San Francisco) or The Witch's Trinity (1500s Germany). ” Erika Mailman

Answered Questions (6)

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What’s the best thing about being a writer?
Erika Mailman The fact that reading other fiction is considered work and I get "credit" for it. :)
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Happy to see you are doing a book about Lizzie Bordon. Really look forward to it. Read & enjoyed both "The Witch's Trinity" and "A Woman of Ill Repute" years ago and have been waiting all this time for a new book. BTW I was raised in Oakland Hills just above Montclair. Great place to grow up. "Sorry, your question needs to contain a question mark"?
Erika Mailman Ha! I love how you circumvented the need to have a question mark. I'm excited about the Lizzie Borden book too; I've been fascinated by her for a longggg time. How fortunate to grow up just above Montclair! SO beautiful an area. I adored my time in Oakland (13 years) and miss it still. Thanks for writing, Maryjane!
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Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?
Erika Mailman I'm working on a novel about Lizzie Borden for release from a small press in 2017. I had been fascinated by this accused-but-acquitted ax murderer ever since I heard the rhyme "Lizzie Borden took an ax, gave her mother forty whacks...." I've read widely on the case, including a wonderful old volume that has the court transcripts. This last summer I was able to visit the house in Fall River, Massachusetts, where the crimes took place. It definitely helped me fill out and flesh out the novel. Check my blog at erikamailman.blogspot.com for posts about Lizzie Borden (if you see the upper right hand of my blog home page, there's a place to click to see all the Lizzie posts).
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Erika, I'm posing for you the question that you asked me. How do you get "in the mood" to write about people who lived in the distant past? I'm specifically thinking of The Witch's Trinity that was set in a world that was so bleak. Do you have any rituals to invite the past into your writing practice?
Erika Mailman What a hard question! Why did I ever ask that of you? LOL. For me, the woodcuts of medieval Germany with their bleak, crude lines helped me get in the mood. I'm a very visual person so that artwork provided a great way to sink into that world. I credit Brueghel's The Hunters in the Snow for my envisioning the village of Tierkinddorf, where The Witch's Trinity takes place.
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How do you deal with writer’s block?
Erika Mailman I make myself just write ANYTHING. Get the pen (or the cursor) moving. If I let myself remain motionless, then I tend to start looking at social media and email instead of writing, so I force myself to write crappily just to get the crappy juices flowing.
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What are you currently working on?
Erika Mailman I'm working on revising a behemoth novel about medical school, infertility, cancer and being an artist in a world that doesn't always reward artistic endeavours. I'm trying to shorten, carve down and whittle (and in fact that sentence itself could easily be abbreviated! ha)
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Erika Mailman
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