Q&A with Ellen Thompson

  

Ellen Thompson

 

 

Ellen Thompson is the author, with her late mother, Victoria Thompson, of the new novel City of Promises. Victoria Thompson was the author of the Counterfeit Lady series and the Gaslight Mystery series. Ellen Thompson is a screenwriter and playwright. She lives in Los Angeles. 

 

Q: You wrote City of Promises with your late mother, Victoria Thompson — how did you continue her work on this novel?

 

A: My mom fought cancer for several years, and at the end, she was halfway through writing a draft of City of Promises. When she realized she wouldn’t be able to finish it, she asked my sister and me, who are both writers, if one of us would finish writing it for her. I was the one who had time, so I got the job.

 

All I knew about the book at the time was that it was Counterfeit Lady Novel #8 and it was a crossover with her Gaslight Mystery series.

 

My mom had written a proposal for the publisher, but it just set the story up. She wasn’t working with an outline, so I had to come up with the middle and end of the novel. I also had the challenge of making the book sound like it was written by a single author.

 

Luckily, writing in my mom’s style came fairly easily. Words and phrases I never used in my life came out of me. I would read back what I had written and say to myself, “Did I write this? It doesn’t sound anything like me!” The only way I can explain it is that I was channeling my mother.

 

Q: As you mentioned, City of Promises combines characters from two of your mother’s series — why did she want to blend the two worlds?

 

A: My mom had the idea to do a crossover because she was hoping to introduce more Gaslight Mystery fans to the Counterfeit Lady Novels. It also made sense because both of the series take place in New York City about 18 years apart, and the main characters are in the same social class.

 

Q: What inspired the plot of this new novel?

 

A: I don’t know how my mom came up with the idea of a romance scam, but most of her ideas came from research. She had a big book on historical cons that I inherited called Hustlers & Con Men by Jay Robert Nash. I suspect that may have been the source.

 

Personally, I had an interest in cons, scams, and narcissists long before I started working on City of Promises. Since I didn’t know where my mom wanted the story to go, I let the characters drive the plot to its destination, and I was able to pepper in my experience dealing with real-life narcissists.

 

Victoria and Ellen, 1979

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: I hope when people read the book they see the parallels between things that happened in the past and things that continue to happen today.

 

Times have changed, but not that much. Women’s rights are still in jeopardy and romance scams—which now happen mostly online—are a major, life-ruining problem, particularly for senior citizens. We can’t afford to get complacent. We need to keep voting, keep speaking up, and stop stigmatizing victims of scams.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I just turned in the manuscript for Gaslight Mystery #28, Murder on Park Avenue. I wrote it entirely on my own, based on the previous books in the series. It’s scheduled for release in September 2027.

Victoria and Ellen, 1999

 

Between revisions, I’ll be editing The Blue Group, a documentary film I produced and directed about my college acting class 30 years later.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I’m thrilled to have this incredible opportunity to carry on my mom’s legacy, and I hope her fans enjoy reading City of Promises as much as I enjoyed working on it.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb