By Michele Karlsberg–
Michele Karlsberg: This month J.M. Redmann brings us the eleventh Micky Knight mystery, Transitory. As a reviewer at Amazon wrote: “It tells of the horrible things happening in our Trans community that people prefer to ignore. The book has Micky much more matured in her late 40s. I know what she is waiting on and I am waiting with her. JM Redmann had me drawn into Micky’s life like we are actual friends.”
J.M. Redmann’s first book was published in 1990 and presented one of the early hard-boiled lesbian detectives. I recently interviewed Redmann for the San Francisco Bay Times.
Michele Karlsberg: How does it feel to have Micky called a “lesbian Kinsey Millhone”? (Editor’s Note: Kinsey Millhone is the name of a popular detective in a bestselling Sue Grafton-penned mystery series.)
J.M. Redmann: It was meant as a compliment and I’ll take it as such. Besides, it is a hell of a lot better than some other things she could be called. Maybe someday some new detective will be called “the straight Micky Knight.”
Michele Karlsberg: Mickey has grown and changed through the course of the series. Has this reflected changes in your own life?
J.M. Redmann: Not in the least and of course. Micky’s struggles and changes do not directly reflect mine, but, of course, my life influences my writing. I wasn’t interested in writing a static character, the Miss Marple who never changes from book to book, so in the first book Death by the Riverside, I started out with her as on the edge of being unlikable. And I knew that life was going to teach Mick a few lessons. One big overlap with my life and hers was Katrina in August of 2005. Everyone in New Orleans was affected; the entire city was evacuated, myself included. So, Micky and her circle of friends had to experience it as well. I’ve let her age, although she hasn’t aged as relentlessly as I have.
Michele Karlsberg: You’ve tackled some heavy issues in your work, including child abuse and violence against women. Was that a conscious choice, or did it just work within the context of the story?
J.M. Redmann: I’ve never sat down and thought, “I want to tackle child abuse in this next book.” To me, issues are what we look at from a faraway vantage point, but it’s peoples’ lives when you live the everyday reality of it. Besides, the best way to “argue” an issue is to simply tell the story of how it affects one person’s life.
As a writer, I search for the conflict, the rough patches, and seek to explore who is she (or he), how does she deal with this, what are the consequences of the consequences—for example, what are the myriad ways that having a rough growing up affect someone twenty years later? How many places does this seep into your life? I have consciously tried to weave the cases that Micky takes with hot spots in her emotional life, because that way they echo each other and it forces her emotional terrain to be one of the mysteries to be solved.
Michele Karlsberg: How much of you is in Micky?
J.M. Redmann: That would be telling. Actually, anyone who knows me would tell you that I’m not Micky and they’re right. That’s part of the fun of writing her, I get to live a whole different life from my own boring, mundane existence. She can say the witty come-back in real time that took me three days to come up with.
For more information on J.M. Redmann and her work: https://www.jmredmann.com/
Michele Karlsberg Marketing and Management specializes in publicity for the LGBTQ+ community. This year, Karlsberg celebrates 34 years of successful marketing campaigns. For more information: https://www.michelekarlsberg.com
Words
Published on October 5, 2023
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