This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Community Corner

Kia Heavey Talks About Her Debut Novel

The Glenville resident uses some life experiences to create a woman's fictional travail.

Glenville resident Kia Heavey took time to answer some questions from Literary Lines columnist John Linsenmeyer about her debut novel "Night Machines." To read Linsenmeyer's review of the book, please click here.

LITERARY LINES: So what prompted you to write your first novel and where did you get that title for a book about a cop’s wife and her dream love-affair?

KIA HEAVEY: Well, the story was turning around in my head, plus I had some weird dreams of my own, an unsatisfying job, and I couldn’t find much current women’s fiction that I enjoyed reading. The title came from something my young son said when we drove past a nighttime highway repair crew. It struck me that sometimes characters, real people too, contrive mechanisms or ‘machines’ to satisfy their goals, even if it’s strictly under cover of night.

Find out what's happening in Greenwichwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

LL: You mentioned the current state of some ‘women’s’ fiction. Isn’t that sometimes pooh-poohed as “chick lit?”

KH: That is exactly what I did not want to write. For me, “chick lit” is brainless stuff about ‘must have’ handbags, shopping and even ‘hooking up.’ Women’s fiction, on the other hand, should address what real women think, do and worry about: family, relationships, or the problems with real-life marriages. It’s not only wives of cops who are frustrated with solving a nasty murder or the other awful things they may see. Husbands and wives can each, or sometimes both, be under stress from business, or illness, or kids’ troubles at school, or any number of things, and need to deal with how this affects a mate, or the children, or the whole family. This is not to say that I don’t like a nice dose of fantasy. One of my favorite tales is "The Phantom of the Opera," psychological manipulation, even a love triangle that pits a good, true lover against a dangerous, hypnotic one.

Find out what's happening in Greenwichwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

LL: You stay pretty close to home, don’t you, in your real life as well as in your novel.

KIA HEAVEY:  Why not?  Why would I try to write an English country house mystery when I never lived in one - and besides its been done plenty of times. I was born in Purchase across the state line and grew up in northern Westchester County. After I was graduated from Barnard College of Columbia University - yes, just like Maggie - I moved to Greenwich for work.

LL: And that’s where you met your husband Jim, our new deputy chief of police. 

KH: Yes. You may think it’s odd for a woman of Greek ancestry to want to learn to play the bagpipes, but I did. So I joined the local pipe band - it was formerly part of the Greenwich Police Emerald Society  - and met Jim. He was a fairly new police officer then, but I had never met anyone like him. In the book, I really didn’t want to make Maggie’s husband a Greenwich detective. Somebody would be sure to try to guess who I’d modeled him on. For the same reason, I just made up Vale, the town where they live, as a composite of a number of places; I’m not sure I could pin “Vale” down much beyond that.

LL: So, since it surely isn’t “chick lit,” how would you classify "Night Machines"?

KH: Well, let me start by saying that perhaps my favorite novel is one Joyce Carol Oates wrote under the pen-name Rosamund Smith in 1990; it’s called "Nemesis." My favorite author, I’d have so say generally, is Andrew Klavan, a novelist and screenwriter of ‘psychological thrillers.’ What I find lacking in so much contemporary women’s fiction is a willingness to have characters who have a solid core of morality, who when they make a mistake face up to and try to do the right thing, to “get back up” as it were.

LL: One final question: Do you have any more books in the works?

KIA HEAVEY: Nothing on paper yet, but I have two more books cooking in my head. One is a sequel to "Night Machines" and the other is something totally different. Of course a lot will depend on how this book is received; writing a novel is a huge time commitment, plus all the subsequent editing and marketing - and of course I do have responsibilities at home as well. But I’m sure one or both will happen at some point.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?