Omnimystery News Conversation

Thank you to Lance Wright and Omnimystery News for interviewing me. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation.

MONDAY, JANUARY 13, 2014

A Conversation with Novelist Babette Hughes

with Babette Hughes

We are delighted to welcome back novelist Babette Hughes to Omnimystery News today.

Babette first visited with us last Novemberwith an excerpt from her second Kate Brady novel, The Red Scarf (Lamplight Press; August 2013 hardcover, trade paperback and ebook formats) and we wanted to catch up with her to talk a little more about the book.

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Omnimystery News: Tell us a little more about your series character, Kate Brady.

Photo provided courtesy of
Babette Hughes

Babette Hughes: In The Hat and its sequelsThe Red Scarf and The Necklace, I have taken Kate Brady's character from the age of 18 to 80 — not only for the changes it offers in the writing, but also because of the different political, social and economic forces that exist at each age.

OMN: Are the characters in your books based on any real people?

BH: My father, a bootlegger who was murdered by the Mafia in a turf war when I was a baby, inspired the character Ben inThe Hat and Solly in The Red Scarf. But those are the exceptions. The other characters just spring on the page as I work, fueled by the richness of the unconscious. All of which makes fiction writing not only difficult, but mysterious and interesting.

OMN: Describe your writing process.

BH: Some writers work from an outline, but I don't. I try to develop the plot organically instead of from the top down. In other words, if I can get my characters to come alive on the page I'll just follow them along as they tell me their stories.

OMN: And where do you usually write?

BH: It's my own space with my favorite things — books, files, notes, manuscripts. Computer and printer. Phone that I can turn off. Light from two large windows. Plants. That is where I close the door and turn on my imagination.

OMN: Have any specific authors influenced how and what you write today?

BH: Alice Munro, who just won the Nobel Prize in literature, has been my favorite writer for years, whom I read and reread. Also Elmore Leonard for his clean, crime prose. Philip Roth. Norman Mailer. I could go on and on. I learn from reading.

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In addition to her novels, Babette Hughes is a contributing blogger forThe Huffington Post. She has also been published in the Saturday Review; been contributing editor of Cleveland Magazine; a twice-weekly columnist for the Cleveland Press; and has published articles and book reviews in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Sunday Magazine. She has also written, produced and appeared in television documentaries and news and feature stories for Cleveland television stations WKYC-NBC and WNBK-UHF.

In addition to her writing career she has been been National Director of Women's Political Action for Hubert Humphrey in his 1972 Presidential campaign, as well as founder and President of Discover Yourself, Inc., a motivation and self realization program for women. She has also been Director of Public Relations for Revco D.S., Inc. in Twinsburg, Ohio, and Account Executive with Frazier Associates, in Washington, DC. She and her husband live in Austin, Texas, and are the parents and step-parents of eight children.

Learn more about the author and her work on her website BabetteHughes.com.

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The Red Scarf
Babette Hughes
A Kate Brady Novel

The Red Scarf opens with Kate Brady, aka, Mrs. Ben Gold trying to find a normal life as the widow of the Godfather of the Jewish mafia, Ben Gold. Ben Gold is dead and the file is closed as far as law enforcement is concerned. The angry remaining Sarsini brother is the killer, or at least that's what the FBI believes. Good riddance is what they and everyone who knew Ben Gold think, and Kate agrees wholeheartedly. Ben had treated her badly, was not a good man, and frankly deserved exactly what he got.

And, so, as The Red Scarf picks up her story she is attending college, living on the millions of dollars of ill-gotten gain that Ben had left her, and trying to put the life of a moll behind her. But once again, even from beyond the grave, Ben Gold drags her back into the dangerous world of gangster and guns.

When handsome FBI agent Adam Fairfield is introduced as a guest lecturer, she feels immediately drawn to him, and he to her. A torrid love affair ensues and soon, she is risking her life by revealing her darkest secret to him, trusting that he won't put her away for life, or worse.

For Kate, this story is about more than the thrill of bringing down another bad man who is intimidating her community and abusing his wife. This is about redemption. It's about getting on with her life and leaving behind as best she can the lengthy laundry list of mistakes she had made as a young and impressionable woman.

My Left Breast – Chapter 1

May 7, 2013, The Huffington Post, Babette Hughes

We sit in a circle. The husbands, too. Both facilitators are breast cancer survivors. Everyone, except the husbands, takes turns talking. The stories are heartbreaking and boring. And routine, astonishing, terrifying and exhausting. But after the husbands are taken into another room (to talk about, ahem, their breastless feelings), the stories get more interesting. There is the boyfriend who ran away after the diagnosis, the husband whose insensitivity borders on sadism ("All he said after my diagnosis was, Can we still go skiing next week?") A mother cries because she doesn't want to wear a wig to her daughter's wedding. The woman who has already outlived by a year her prognosis of imminent death talks and talks as if her unbroken chain of outpouring words are keeping her alive. Fear, like a foul smell, permeates the air. Outside, there are the familiar sounds of cars heading to the office, supermarket, dry cleaners or daycare, as if we were not sitting here in a circle of surprised despair. The air is crisp out there, and you remember other autumns when you were growing up in Cleveland. The air was fragrant then, the trees brilliant with color, and you would not have been able to imagine sitting in Texas with a group of ladies soon to be maimed -- or to die.

I sit mute, listening to each sad story, as if it weren't my story, too, as if I had wandered into the wrong movie at the multiplex. Then it is my turn to speak and all eyes turn to me, waiting. I sit there. I have nothing to say to these strangers. I have no story to tell. All I can think to say is I'm angry.

When the facilitator says I should validate my anger, I want to hit her. I hate the psychobabble, the hard plastic chairs, the snacks, the outpourings, the shared misery. I hate the word "share." I feel patronized. But also strangely relieved. I didn't know until that moment how angry I was. I suddenly remember that in last night's dream, I was standing alone somewhere, surrounded by the fury of an enraged gale. And that I woke damp with perspiration and a pounding heart.

What am I angry at? My breast? How can you be mad at your own breast? At God? Please. God doesn't do breasts. At my kind, supportive, sensitive, frightened husband? Yes, you bet, for his health and breastless body.

I -- we -- are given platitudes. About mental imaging. Meditation. Optimism. Sharing feelings. About attitude. As if cancer gives a damn about attitude. Or about validating your anger, for that matter. Although Norman Mailer once wrote that if he hadn't stabbed his wife he would have got cancer, it is obviously too late for me to stab anyone. I want to go home.

At the end of the session, everyone hugs. I smell their face powder, feel their arms around me. One lady just wants to shake hands. Her skin is as soft as a baby's. I leave the support group feeling as if I have a "C" tattooed on my forehead.

But I don't want to be defined by cancer. What I really am is a mother and stepmother. What I really am is a grandparent, a wife, a writer, a friend. What I really am is a reader of books, a watcher of movies. A listener, a walker, a weight lifter! I never go back to the support group. I don't belong there. It is a case of mistaken identity.

But I am diagnosed. I don't even have to say "with cancer," because no one ever says I've been diagnosed with the flu, or I've been diagnosed with arthritis or I've been diagnosed with shingles. "Diagnosed" is the code word for cancer. It contains all the news.

The word slides off your brain like rain because you know your doctor is mistaken. Cancer is an abstraction, a ridiculous interruption of your life. You know it is out there with the criminals and rapists and hurricanes; of course you know that. It is what happens to your grandmother, or your friend's mother-in-law, or your neighbor. But surely not to you. Laboratories make mistakes like that all the time. Ask the experts, read the statistics: If you're slender, if you don't smoke, if you eat your vegetables and exercise and get mammograms and have no cancer in your family and take an aspirin every day, a cancer tumor doesn't just grow in your right breast like a weed. Obviously, my mammogram has been substituted for someone else's, some poor, sick woman. (You'll take her your tuna and mushroom casserole; you'll drive on her car pool days; you'll do her grocery shopping; only please, please, let this thing be hers.)

But I was sent for a sonogram. The lady doctor pushed a gadget over and over the suspicious breast like some crazy old scavenger with his metal detector mining for treasure at the beach. Her tone announcing cancer is as brisk and matter-of-fact as the plumber's who came to fix your shower last week. But you still don't get it. Your brain has shut down. The word coming out of this doctor's mouth could have been "lamp" or "tree" or "allergy." Baring your breast and having cancer is too embarrassing. Your mind has skittered away; it has looked elsewhere.

As I make my way to the dressing room, I think insanely that my breast and I would have been perfectly fine if it weren't for that stupid f*cking sonogram.