People say you should write what you know, and while I agree, I think that doesn't go far enough.

I think you should write what you feel.

Don’t feel bad if you didn’t know this, because it’s taken me almost twenty years and twenty books to figure it out.

Call me slow on the uptake.

Let me explain what I mean by write what you feel. I’m what’s known as a people person. I love people, and so it’s no surprise that characterization and relationships between people are the strongest part of my novels. That’s where my heart is.

That’s what I feel.

Relationships between girlfriends, women and men, and family members populate every page of mine, and I like it that way. I try to write an entertaining story with a fast-moving plot, but what I want you to remember, when you close the book, is the people between the covers. Not to get too English major-y on you, but the fact is that characterization and plot are the same thing.

We are what we do, after all.

So to stay on point, it occurred to me that when I look at my life, the most important relationship to me, and the one that abides time and even space, is my relationship to my daughter, Francesca.

In other words, it’s all about the mother-child relationship.

I love her more than I can say, and I’m in the words business, so I should be fired. And as she’s grown up and moved out, I’ve gained a new perspective on her that makes me want to write more and more about that relationship. Paradoxically, now that she’s moved out, I think about her more. I see us with new eyes. And our relationship has changed and grown to one between two adults, I still remain her parent, no matter how old she gets.

Motherhood has no expiration date.

I used to thing that I felt our relationship so intensely because I’m a single mother an she’s an only child. In fact, I remember that she came home from grade school one day and asked this priceless question:

“Mom, if I’m an only child, does that mean you’re an only mom?”

Uh, yes.

But now that I’m a new empty nester, and comparing notes with all of my girlfriends, I’ve come to the conclusion that the intensity of the mother-child bond doesn’t turn on how many children you have, or if you have a hubby or not. It’s inborn, and cultivated, both, and it powers most of my thoughts and hopes, worries and fears.

Feel me?

(As the kids say.)

So it makes sense that later in my life, which is now, I’d turn to writing more and more about the mother-child relationship. I’d written about it in FINAL APPEAL, which won an Edgar, but hadn’t returned to it often in the past, for one very practical reason – in a suspense novel, you need a mom getting herself in trouble, and if she did that with a kid, you wouldn’t like her much.

Neither would I.

I needed a fictional sitter, and you know how hard those are to come by.

I returned to moms and children in LOOK AGAIN, and I think the strength of the bond between a mother and her child gave the story an enormous force and emotional power.

If I don’t say so myself.

And I think the same is true of SAVE ME.

It’s intense, the story of a woman who tries to save her child, tries to save another, and finally, ends up saving herself. I think any mother will find themselves in this book, and wonder what they’d do if they were in its heroine’s shoes.

And if you’re a mother, you could be in her shoes. Tomorrow, or the next day.

We never know where life will lead us, but we mothers know we can cope, and lead, and nurture, and love.

Because that’s our job, to me, sometimes I feel as if I were put on earth to be a mother.

I feel it.

After reading SAVE ME, I bet you’ll feel the same way.

So open the book.

And feel.

A Conversation with Lisa Scottoline

Like LOOK AGAIN, SAVE ME is an emotional thriller that examines motherhood and the relationship between mother and child. Why did you return to this theme, and is this a new direction for you?

Although I love being a writer, my most important and cherished role in this life is being a mother. It always came naturally to me, even though it wasn’t always easy, especially in the early days, when I was a broke, single mother. (I’m still single but not broke.) Still I felt I was born to be a mother, and my daughter Francesca Serritella and I are best friends and now, writing partners, in our nonfiction books!

Being a mother is all about love, and I’m a love monster. Bottom line, if I meet you, I’m hugging you, case closed. Come to a signing and see.

And now that I’m an empty nester, I’ve had a lot of time to think about what it means to be a mother. I’ve learned that motherhood has no expiration date. You never stop being a mother, and you’ll do everything you can for your child. I’m fascinated by the lengths to which a mother will go to protect her child, and that’s something I really wanted to explore. And also to turn that on its head and see where sometimes protection can hinder, or even smother. I don’t think it’s all that new for me because relationships have always been the keystone of all my books, and I’ve written about motherhood before, in LOOK AGAIN and in FINAL APPEAL, which won the Edgar Award for excellence in suspense writing. The most special relationship in life is that between a mother and her child, so it’s something I plan on continuing to write about, in books to come.

What sparked the idea for SAVE ME?

Everyone asks, “Where do you get your ideas? And you know what? I LOVE that question! It’s one of the few I always have an answer to. Yay!

The idea for this book came from a conversation I was having with my best friend Laura. She’s a mom of two sons and somehow we got to talking about if she had one car seat and she had to pick up a friend’s child, which child would get the car seat – her own child or her friend’s? We yapped about that on the phone for an hour. It was something we really had to think about and would struggle with.

And I knew I had my next novel.

My goal always is to write an entertaining book, but I love the idea of creating a realistic story that will spark conversation, and make people think about what they would do in a given situation. Having a child is such an extraordinary responsibility, and it made me think about what would happen if you were forced, maybe in an emergency, to choose between saving your own child or someone else’s.

In SAVE ME, Rose was faced with making an instant decision of whether to save her daughter or her daughter’s bully, in a life-threatening situation. It could change her life forever, just like many situations we could face in our own lives. We really never know where life will lead us, do we? You tackle the hot-button issue of bullying from a very different angle in SAVE ME. Why was that important to you?

Many of us have been bullied as children, me included. I was called “rat” since there weren’t many Italian-Americans kids in my neighborhood, and the other kids at school teased me that Italians lived in sewers, like rats.

Not funny.

I never forgot it, and still feel that sting. But it’s gotten worse, in our society. Bullying is a national epidemic that has been exasperated by the Internet and social networks. Bullying is so damaging to children, and shapes so much of who they become and how they face life. The only thing equal to the pain of a bullied child is the pain of a parent, watching it happen to their child. Parents are often in the very difficult position of trying to save their child fro

The more I thought about it, I realized that bullying not only affects children. Many adults are the victims of bullying, and the impact can be equally as damaging. That was another angle of bullying that I wanted to explore. So in SAVE ME, the community of Reesburgh bullies Rose, and her lawyer encourages her to bully others, using litigation as a weapon.

All of your books have women as the star or main protagonists, even your non-fiction column books. Why is that?

When I first starting writing, I noticed that in popular books and movies, women didn’t get to be the star of the book. We were always the expendable girlfriend or sidekick.

And I missed Nancy Drew!

I wanted my books to feature ordinary, extraordinary women, like those in my life such as my mother, daughter, and friends, and let them be the main protagonists. And few years ago, I noticed that there weren’t enough female voices in the newspapers, and I began writing “Chick Wit” with my daughter, Francesca. It’s a funny, witty look at life as a woman in today’s society.

And I missed Erma Bombeck!

The columns have given voice to women everywhere, and have been collected in Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog, My Nest Isn’t Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space, and the upcoming Best Friends, Occasional Enemies.

What is your favorite part of being a writer?

My favorite part of being a writer is connecting with people. While this may sound ironic, as writing is such a solitary profession, I see it completely differently. Books connect us, heart to heart, and that’s why they’re so important. I always say that a book isn’t completed until it’s read, and that’s because a book means something different to each reader, depending on who they are and what they’ve experienced. So, in effect, we write each book together, author and reader!

Cool, huh?

Nothing is more rewarding to me than getting out from behind the desk, and meeting, talking with, and hugging readers. I write for them, and they definitely help inform my writing. And I love feeling that I am tied to all of them, and everyone is tied one to the other. That’s what being fully human is all about, and my heart is full, with gratitude, to all of my readers, every day.

So thanks.

And love.

xoxoxoxo