Interview with Gail Hewitt for LOVED ME ONCE

Date: August 3, 2009

Q: What’s the book about?

A: On one level, LOVED ME ONCE is about a woman who for several reasons thinks she’s hit the lowest point of her life, but who is suddenly presented with an unexpected way out, actually two ways out – and to make a good decision about two very different futures she must be able to distinguish between reality and perception. On still another level, the book is about the way in which love and infatuation – which we often confuse – create their own environment, affecting how we view the real world.

Q: Are you saying love isn’t real?

A: In no way. It’s just that love takes us to this charmed place where we tend to interpret everything that’s going on within that place’s context. Probably a better way to put it would be that love affects our ability to perceive what’s around us objectively and deal with it in a way that works best for us in the long run.

Q: Your main character, Maggie, is beautiful, bright, gets along with most women, and seems to have no trouble attracting men. In fact, she seems almost too good to be true. Is she completely made up, or is she based on someone you’ve known?

A: Like every writer, I’ll confess that my approach to Maggie and the situation in which she finds herself was triggered by several people – and situations – I’ve come across both personally and while consulting in the world of very large corporations.

Q: Which first gave you the idea for the book?

A: It was someone I came across a long time before I even considered writing a novel. I knew a woman who both socially and professionally seemed to have everything going for her. She was smart. She was reserved, but in a good way. She was well-educated. She worked hard. She got along well with people. She was from a good, well-connected family that had had a lot of money at one point. She was gorgeous. And, on top of all that, she was a very nice person. Yet, for some reason, she was never able to pull all of it together. We lost touch and I’m not sure what’s going on with her now, but during the several years that I knew her she bounced around from job to job, never quite settling. She got married, but divorced almost immediately, and after that just dated and played the field. She never seemed miserable, exactly, but she never seemed happy either. It was almost as if she accepted that she didn’t have the right to expect anything other than the ability to endure. Her attitude always puzzled me, given her obvious advantages in life, and it occurred to me at the time that it would be interesting at some point to write something about an apparently advantaged person who for no obvious reason simply didn’t get what she seemed to merit out of life.

Q: Well, at least Maggie gets her act together better than that.

A: And that’s because of the second and third triggers for the novel. One was a girl I knew whose wealthy parents had kept her from marrying a poor boy, just because he was poor. I mean, they physically packed her off on a world tour with an aunt who watched her nonstop. Then, later, her family became relatively poor, and the boy she’d wanted to marry – who’d since married someone else – became extremely successful. I always thought that rich/poor – poor/rich switch would make an interesting story. Think of what her parents must have felt like. Every time they saw or heard anything about the poor-boy-made-good, they had to have ground their teeth – the guy’s money would probably have come in handy!

Q: At the least – certainly an ironic twist. So what was the third trigger?

A: A story in my family that my grandmother told me. She had a somewhat younger sister, a really beautiful girl named Clara, who fell madly in love with this rather plain, but evidently dead-sexy, somewhat older fellow named Frank. According to my grandmother, they were both from good families of about the same economic and educational standing, both with good reputations in the community, so there was no problem there. Clara’s parents, my great-grandparents, gave their consent, and so did Frank’s father, but he was his mother’s oldest son, her pet evidently, and she made him promise to wait a year. She pointed out that, if he and Clara really loved each other, a year would prove to be nothing, that true love could certainly handle waiting a year. Well, Frank was apparently a sensible kind of son and knew he and Clara would never hear the end of it if he went against his mother, so – without consulting Clara – he promised. When – in front of her sisters – he told Clara what he’d done, she protested, rather vehemently, I gather! She told him that his mother had tricked him and that he had to choose between her or the promise. He didn’t take her seriously at first, and tried to make a joke of it. That made Clara so mad that she turned to the one she called her #2, a extremely handsome but evidently rather clueless young man named Johnny who’d practically grown up next door and had followed Clara around since they were kids. When Clara began to go out with Johnny, Frank thought she was just making a point and told her to let him know when she’d come to her senses and was ready to settle down and wait out the year. Clara just laughed and made another date with #2.

Q: Can’t blame her.

A: No way. So, a few weeks later, when he realized that Clara and #2 were seriously dating, Frank had second thoughts about the promise he’d made his mother. He first tried to call Clara at her father’s place of business – this was in a part of the country that was still in the process of having residential phone lines strung to every home. When that didn’t work, Frank sat down and wrote Clara a letter saying that he was sorry and that he was ready to get married if she was. Unfortunately, the day he mailed it, Clara and #2 eloped. She found Frank’s letter when she returned from her honeymoon. It’s easy to consider that kind of crossed-wires scenario as a plot device rather than something that happens in real life. But I’ve come across several examples of what you could call “meaningful dropped connections” – lives that were changed in some significant way because of phone calls that got interrupted at the wrong time, a word that was misheard or misinterpreted, a letter lost in the mail, a text sent to the wrong person, an unavoidable emergency that kept someone from showing up, that sort of thing. I thought it would be interesting to devise a version of a dropped connection – or a combination of dropped connections – that changed lives, and to use it in a book sometime.

Q: There’s a lot in the book about current business practices and economic conditions.

A: I’m a consultant. Big business and the outfits that service it make up a world I know well, the world I know best, so it’s natural to incorporate certain kinds of issues – certainly cuts down on research!

Q: Do executive coaches really wield that much influence over business leaders?

A: Over some of them, they do. It’s not what I do, but as a consultant, I’ve watched several very good ones at work. It’s always interesting to observe the arc of those relationships. In one sense, it’s a reflection of the fact that these people who make it to the top in the business world are usually not only smart, but also knowledgeable about how to delegate to best effect. If they feel they’re being held back by some aspect of their lives, even if it’s personal, they’re sensible enough to seek help if they think it’ll lead to a quicker resolution and free up their focus on the task at hand.

Q: What was most inspirational to you from your consulting experience in business?business?

A: I don’t know if “inspirational” is the right word. I’d say “motivational,” and it related to the poor way that most companies handle downsizing and also the combination of two businesses, which usually leads to at least some downsizing. Even handled well, it would be traumatic for those being downsized. The way most companies handle it, especially the psychological component, makes an executioner’s guillotine look almost humane.

Q: That’s harsh.

A: That’s the truth. I’ve seen some good people have their self-esteem totally trashed by companies not thinking through the best way to handle the process. It makes the people at the very top seem like jerks when they’re really not – they just don’t always know how to handle something that makes them uncomfortable, and downsizing makes almost everyone uncomfortable.

Q: That sounds like a book you could write.

A: My lips are sealed.

Q: Back to this book, were there any other triggers, or influences, for LOVED ME ONCE?

A: Actually, there were, but I’m going to beg off answering because talking about them would give away too much of the plot line of both this book and its sequel.

Q: So you’re already at work on a sequel?

A: Part-way through, in fact. I’m supposed to deliver it in a few months. The first chapter of LOVE ME NOW is included at the end of LOVED ME ONCE.

Q: Do you want to say anything about the sequel?

A: Well, as I indicated, it’s called LOVE ME NOW. In broad terms, it’s about the same thing as LOVED ME ONCE, even the same cast. These bright, essentially decent, but flawed people continue to try to sort out the difference between appearance and reality and along the way to find love, lasting connections, and meaning in a world going mad around them.

Q: Sounds as interesting as this one.

A: Thanks. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

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