CAMERON ABBOTT is an attorney in New York City, where she litigates complex commercial disputes involving a variety of high tech industries. She is also an adjunct professor of law at a New York law school, and an arbitrator in the securities industry. In her spare time, she writes novels.

Can you remember where the initial spark came from that made you want to write?
Vividly. I read a lot of lesbian fiction, some of which is quite good, but much of which in recent years has struck me as, well, less than stellar. So one day in August 2000, while riding the bus to my office, I finished a particularly awful lesbian novel -- I closed the book and thought to myself, "I could do better than that". I took a pen and legal pad from my bag, and wrote the first lines of "To The Edge". Six legal pads later, the novel was complete.

Who are some of your literary heroes?
Right at the top of the list is Rita Mae Brown. Not only is she gorgeous and funny (two essential features for any crush of mine!), she's also frighteningly talented and smart. I heard her speak once at the Cazenovia women's writing conference, probably 25 years ago, and she was truly inspiring. I've loved every word she's ever written. A close second would be Sarah Waters -- breathtaking prose! After those two, several names come to mind, all impressive in different ways: Jeanette Winterson, Jennifer Levin, Lori L. Lake, Stephen Hawking, Stephen King, John Varley, Steven Pressfield. Eclectic bunch, I know, but I'm a pretty eclectic reader!

Are you currently working on a new book? Is it a sequel to An Inexpressible State of Grace? Do we get to find out what happens with Ash and Claire, Ash and Robbie?
Yes, I'm currently working on a new book, but it's not a sequel. Once I'm finished with a book, it's over for me -- I can't imagine going back to the characters and their lives. Then again, I've received an amazing number of emails from readers asking that very question -- for some reason, that novel has created a bit of a groundswell for a sequel. So maybe I'll rethink my policy and see those characters want to take me somewhere new after all. As for the current book, it's very different from all the others. At first I wasn't even sure it would have any lesbians in it -- but I soon realized, 'who am I fooling?', I love writing about lesbians and I can't resist throwing in some steamy sex! Anyway, it's about half finished, and I'm hoping to get it wrapped up in the foreseeable future. All that I'll say about it is that half of the novel takes place in the 15th century. As I said, very different from my previous books.

Why the long break between books?
Funny you should ask -- blame my clients, who can't seem to stay out of lawsuits long enough to let me finish my novels!! But seriously, my first two novels I wrote pretty quickly, but there's about an 18 month lag time at Haworth between acceptance of the manuscript and the pub date. Haworth is great, by the way, but they're huge with a lot of titles coming out all the time, so the pipeline is necessarily pretty long. The current delay is really my fault, not Haworth's, because I've been so innundated by my caseload that I haven't been able to sit down and just finish the manuscript. But it's coming, I promise!!!

Your first two books, To the Edge and An Inexpressible State of Grace both focused on college romances between a beautiful young woman coming out and her first romance with a woman—an emotionally unstable woman. Is this art imitating life?
Not especially. I think that situation is fairly common -- many lesbians in my life seem to have figured it out during their college years, for a host of reasons -- and it's a scenario that's naturally fraught with emotional intensity, so I went back to the same well a second time with An Inexpressible State of Grace. The backdrop works dramatically -- the innocence and eager experience-seeking of youth, the suddenly parent-less environment, the fact that women who start out as strangers are essentially living together for a long period of time -- it's a virtual recipe for coming out! That being said, I'm tired of writing about college life (and I'm sure people are tired of reading about it, at least in my books!), so I'm determined to keep the college romances out of the picture for my new book.

Does you feel you have more to say about this subject?
I always have more to say about any subject -- I'm a lawyer, after all! -- but on the subject of college life, no. On the subject of coming out, I think it's just an inherently interesting and sexy motif, so I'm sure I'll continue to have coming out episodes in future novels.

What are some of your favourite lesbian novels?
Rubyfruit Jungle, Six of One, The Water Dancer, Choices, Pages for You, Fingersmith, Tipping the Velvet... to name just a very select few.

Are you still with The Haworth Press? They seem to have shifted their focus onto science fiction and fantasy of late.
I'm not sure if I'm "still" with Haworth -- I haven't submitted my current manuscript yet, because I haven't completed it. But I'll certainly send it to Judith Stelboum when it's finished (she's the publisher at the Haworth lesbian fiction imprint, Alice Street Editions, and she's also a wonderful writer herself!). I'm confidant Haworth/Alice Street Editions continues to be committed to lesbian fiction of all stripes -- I certainly haven't heard any differently.

Do you let anyone else read your work during the writing process?
I let my lover Michele read everything, because she's my toughest critic (she's not an avid reader of lesbian fiction -- in fact, she doesn't really like it at all), but only after it's complete. I write in a way that doesn't really lend itself to commentary along the way: I usually have no idea where a plot arc is going to take me until I get there, which means I'm playing "what if...?" the whole time I'm writing, with no clue how anything will resolve until I write the resolution. As a result, I need everything to play itself out before I can look at it and start reshaping it if necessary -- there's no way I could take feedback in the middle of that process. And once the manuscript is complete to my satisfaction, I don't want to hear comments from anyone but Michele and my publisher. Kinda' isolationist, I know, but that's just how I work.

How do you approach re-writes?
I do a fair amount of that along the way -- I actually write everything out by hand at first (weird, I know, but that's part of the exercise that makes the entire process very different from what I do as a lawyer, where I'm practically chained to my computer!). Every 20 pages or so, I go back and re-read what I've written and add or delete some stuff, because I've gotten further into whatever plot development was being played out, so I can shape it a bit at that point. When I finally get down to typing it into the computer, I will have gone through that write/re-read/shape process 3 or 4 times, and the exercise of typing it into the computer gives me yet another opportunity to tweak things a bit. Once I've input and printed out the whole thing, I'll re-read and shape it 2 or 3 more times online, but that's it. It's very rare that I would take out a whole section or re-do an entire plot point -- what I write down by hand is pretty much what ends up in the book, with fairly minor modifications along the way.

Do you think it's important for new writers to belong to a writer's club or some type of critique group?
I have no idea. Truly. I was a "new writer" until I wrote my first novel, and I did it in isolation. I now belong to an online group of gay writers, but I don't circulate drafts to any of the members -- it's more of a community for sharing ideas about the business. I guess for a new writer who needs lots of support or feedback, joining a group would make sense, but for a writer who works best in a room of her own, doing it alone makes more sense.

Where did your interest in law come from?
I've always been interested in the law, and knew I'd be a lawyer some day. In An Inexpressible State of Grace, the protagonist Ash muses a bit about her affinity for the law, and that part of the novel was definitely autobiographical. It's just the coolest profession, and I don't know why everybody isn't clamouring to do it!

What are some of your pet peeves in life?
How much time do you have?! In no particular order:
1) people who block traffic (should receive the death penalty for that!),
2) people who are too lazy to think,
3) the Bush administration as a whole (I realize, of course, that's basically a continuation of #2 above),
4) the New York Yankees

Which fictional character comes closest to describing you?
Hard to say. I'd like to say one of the Charlie's Angels (the smart one! Kate Jackson?), or Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, but it's probably something closer to a female Tom Jones!

Tell us something about Cameron Abbott no-one else knows.
That's a hard one -- I'm sure there's someone (probably my lover) who knows practically everything there is to know about me! But here's something that, judging from their emails, most of my readers don't seem to know about me: I actually live a very quiet, boring life with my lover and two cats in a very comfortable but nothing-fancy apartment in New York city.

What do feel are your weakest and strongest points as a writer?
Strongest points are that I have a pretty good ear for dialogue and can plot out an arc that makes the reader want to continue reading. Weakest points are obvious from reading my novels -- I include too many sex scenes, with too much detail!

Have you found your own style of writing has changed in significant ways since the release of your first book?
Not really. My legal writing is so fundamentally different from prose writing, it feels like an entirely different form of expression.

What's the best advice you can give to aspiring writers?
Write. Even if you have nothing to say. Even if you feel you've hit a "writer's block" (whatever that is), write anyway. Rita Mae Brown has an amazing quote (see how I manage to mention her yet again in the space of a single interview?), about how a writer facing writer's block should put a piece of paper in the typewriter (shows you how dated the quote is!), and concentrate until blood appears on her forehead! The image is a good one -- force yourself to write, just do it, and if you do it enough, something worthwhile very well may emerge. Then re-write. Then re-write again. And in the midst of it all, read good writers, not crap writers.

Is writing always an enjoyable experience for you?
Always. I only do things I enjoy (I'm incredibly hedonistic that way!) -- if I didn't enjoy writing, I wouldn't do it. And I also only write about things I enjoy (which, judging from my novels, probably tells you more than you want to know about me!)

A happy writer is…
A writer who gets to write.