An Interview with Douglas Weissman

Douglas Weissman is an award-winning novelist and travel writer, as well as a Los Angeles native who has lived in Florence, Rome, Sydney, and San Francisco. He can always be swayed by a good cookie or bad ice cream because even bad ice cream is pretty good.

He writes stories of friendship, of finding beauty in the grotesque, of finding magic in the mundane; stories about building bridges, about burning bridges, about growing trees, and about turning trees into bridges.

He is a graduate of the Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing at the University of San Francisco and currently lives in Los Angeles with his gorgeous wife, fun-loving daughter, anxious dog, and indifferent cat.

Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

I have been surrounded by stories my entire life. Bedtime stories with my mom, the folkloric stories about family history from my dad, the tall tales about life in New York from my paternal grandfather, or the jokes from my maternal grandfather—but in second grade I wrote a story about the “Unhappily Ever After of Cinderella,” and my teacher loved it. She understood the story, the joke, and the creativity that was there. While I had always been fond of stories and drawn to stories, that moment made me feel like I could also tell stories.

What inspired you to start writing this book?

I had once used the wrong words to try and explain my wife inspired Girl in the Ashes. To say someone specific “inspired” a book about a serial killer is not the best phrasing. So I wouldn’t say she inspired it but she came up with the original idea.

My wife and I were in the middle of watching the show Dexter. It was one of her favorites and I had never seen it before. But when we were in the California Central Valley for my cousin’s wedding, during a bit of a drive, my wife turned to me and said, “What if there were a female serial killer but in occupied Paris?” That immediately got my gears working and the story quickly spun out.

Tell us the story of your book’s title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

My titles tend to come organically from the text but I wouldn’t say that it’s easy either. Girl in the Ashes came probably midway through writing the novel. I was writing a scene about cleaning the ashes out of the kiln and remembered a joke blog post from years ago when it seemed every book published had the term “girl” in the title. Between those two ideas, the title flowed pretty easily and I think fits the content hiding inside the cover.

If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?

Perhaps some of the songs found on the soundtrack would be some of the songs I listened to on repeat when writing the book. It wouldn’t be a soundtrack without:

Yann Tiersen’s “Monochrome,”

The piano version of the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind,”

Nancy Sinatra’s version of “Bang Bang,”

and plenty of Dead Combo, especially Lisboa Mulata.

Describe your dream book cover.

If we’re talking about specifically for Girl in the Ashes, I think the artist and publisher nailed it. But if we’re talking about what I’d love for a book in general, something that screams grounded but hints of magic.

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

I try to be very open about myself and explain how my experiences become applicable in my writing. At the same time, I don’t overshare just to share, so readers probably wouldn’t know I sold timeshares for a bit of time. I really disliked that job because of the way we were trained to sell the product. I didn’t last long but it gave me plenty of interesting experiences and insights.

What books did you read (for research or comfort) throughout your writing process?

The books I read for research were definitely not comfort reads, considering I did a lot of nonfiction reads on the Holocaust, on Paris during the occupation, on serial killers…but the ones that I remember the most were:

When Paris Went Dark (nonfiction), The Paris Architect, The Nightingale, and THE NAZI DOCTORS: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, to name a few.

What is one thing you hope readers take away from reading your book? How do you envision your perfect reader?

I always wanted the book to be a conversation, a look at the morally gray and what we are willing to overlook if done for the right reason. At the same time, I wanted the story to be a Trojan Horse into Holocaust education. There are so many books about World War II and the upstanding citizen who does the right thing because it’s the right thing—and I love these books, but I didn’t want to write that book. I wanted a book that could attract fans of those books, as well as fans looking for something a bit different.

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