Author Interview: Jenny Dandy & The Loft at Broadway and 14th
Q: What made you decide to write this book? What is its backstory?
A: I love a good con. I’m intrigued with the kind of people who scam other people, and what kinds of people fall for it. In The Loft at Broadway and 14th (third in my Houses of Crime Mystery series), the scam is a romance scam. Ronnie Charles gets what she thinks is a legitimate job only to find out the guy she’s working with is involved in romance scamming lonely widows, among other things. Ronnie, a formerly homeless petty thief is one of the POV characters that is in all three books in the series. So part of the back story is the first book, since that’s where she started. The other POV character is FBI Special Agent Frank Jankowski. The two of them have an interesting, if not always easy relationship throughout the three books. She’s his CI, but she’s also her own person. It’s kind of a buddy/cop, father/daughter thing between the two of them.
Q: How long did it take you to write this book and get it published?
A: Hmmmm. That’s an interesting question. It really starts with the first book in the series, The Brownstone on E. 83rd. That one took forever because I was learning the craft. I started with the idea of the manipulative narcissist and I spent a few years researching narcissism. Then I took classes starting in 2015 at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver. That’s the date I think of as the start to the book. I had a lot to learn! I was accepted into their Book Project in 2018 and that was a total game changer. Our mentors in the Book Project give us a full, very careful read. I got back 16 pages of single-spaced notes. It totally made the book. The manipulative narcissist became the villain, Isabelle Anderson, who is trying to hold on to her brownstone by conning people.
I took a year to totally revamp the manuscript and started querying for agents in December of 2020. I got a lot of requests for full manuscripts but they all passed. It was a difficult time in publishing because everyone felt a little unmoored—no one knew where the industry was going and what to expect. I kinda suspect that the agents were also looking for a complete turn-key manuscript—no time and effort for the agents to put in figuring out what the manuscript needed, and how to get there. Because they don’t get paid until their authors do.
I had revised and revised until I had the best manuscript I was capable of producing, but no bites. I was working on the second book at that point, The Penthouse on Park Avenue. Any time I sent the manuscript to someone to read, I’d stop working on it, and start on the next one. And of course, when I was querying agents, I worked solely on the second book. I signed with my agent in May of 2021 after querying 93 agents. She was a new agent, and after I made the changes she suggested (which only made the manuscript better), we went on submission. She went through all her contacts, but since it was still the pandemic, she couldn’t attend any conferences to meet new editors. Meanwhile, I’d finished the second book and had begun the third. In 2023, my agent met Shawn Reilly Simmons of Level Best, and pitched the three titles. My first book came out in 2024—a debut author at 65!
So, if I were starting from scratch, I think a first draft (though I edit as I go) might take me a year. Then I have to figure out what’s wrong with it—usually doesn’t hit me until a month or two before the manuscript is due!—and then revise which can take up to a few months.
Q: What particular challenges do you face in your writing? What is difficult for you? Do you have any tips for writers who face similar challenges?
A: Plot is hard for me—I know, I know, in a plot heavy genre. I rely heavily on my critique partners. I’ll call one of them up and talk through something. She was a defense attorney so she asks questions like I’m opposing counsel and she wants to dismantle my case. Once I understood what she was doing (at first I thought she was questioning the entire project)—testing the soundness of my premise, my plot, my character motivations—I really found the process helpful. My best plot ideas come from her! One thing I found myself doing on The Loft at Broadway and 14th was to write out the plot so far, as if writing a synopsis. Or separate the characters (I have two POV characters) and write their arc. Sometimes just self-talking through what has happened up to that point sparks a lot of ideas.
My advice is to write the way you write—if you start with character, develop the characters and the plot will come. If you start with plot, do your outline, your plot treatment and figure out what characters will be best suited to that. Don’t try to make yourself outline if that’s not how you work best. It’s a messy process either way, and will always take far longer than you want it to.
My other challenge is a tendency towards exposition—info dumping, if you will. Again, critique partners are great at this because they have the distance from the manuscript and can point out where there’s not enough going on. I know something somewhere is wrong, but I can’t see it. I get seduced by my own words and think everything’s great.
Q: Can you talk a little about your editing experience for new writers? What made you choose your editors?
A: My editor and my agent have been my editors. I don’t pay an outside editor because I learned from the Book Project and from all the classes how to edit, what to look for. And I have my trusted critique group who can look at it with a fresh eye.
I think the thing that really helps to learn about editing is to take some workshops. And one of the good things to come out of the pandemic is there are so many of them online now, if you don’t live near a creative organization. Of course, there are also so many, many books out there. No doubt one of your favorite authors has written one. In workshops, other writers can ask you questions, give you reactions. You learn what responses to take to heart and which to dismiss; you learn to trust your gut. I always try to ascertain whether the workshop person is a plot-driven or character-driven writer. Of course everyone has plot and character, but if they like to read a heavily action thriller, then they might get impatient with the time I spend on character. Though, I can learn a lot about plot from them, too.
What kept me going in these workshops and critique group is the desire to create the best manuscript I was capable of creating. I think that helped me take the emotion out of the work (as much as any writer is capable of), and not hold on to things that need to go. It’s hard. These are your words, the work is your baby and you don’t want to let go. I created a folder titled Kill Your Darlings where I put everything I cut, telling myself it’s not gone, it’s still there. Someone else calls it Spare Parts because she might use something from that again.
Also, you can treat the edit as merely an exercise. Open up a fresh document and rewrite the scene and see how it feels. It’s not permanent yet, and it lets you try it out. One exercise I do when I can’t get at what’s happening with a non-POV character in a scene is to rewrite it in first person from the other character’s POV. Really revealing.
Q: Are you a traditional or self-published author? Why did you decide this was the path for you?
A: I’m a traditionally published author. When I first got out of college, I worked for Doubleday in New York. I’ve always believed that traditional publishing was the way to go for me. I feel that the more professional eyes on a manuscript, the better it turns out. But it’s a tough path to tread, the rejections from just trying to find an agent are brutal, and I get why people choose the self-publishing path. If you go that way, make sure you have a relentless editor who can see the flaws and help you make it the best book possible. Too many people decide to self-publish because the critiques make them mad (probably more likely hurt their feelings) and they refuse to cut. Cutting is painful. But if you know it’s in service of a better book, and you know you’ll learn a lot about the craft doing it, why not? This is not to say that every critique should be acted upon. Some people, even seasoned editors get it wrong. So again, trust your gut. If deep down, you know they could be right, take the plunge, try it out, see if it doesn’t work better with their suggestions.
Q: Can you describe your publishing experience for writers who hope to publish one day?
A: My editor is great. She has a way of pinpointing what is wrong with the manuscript that I thought was completely perfect. Makes it a better book every time. Level Best has a very short schedule—they’re lengthening it a little, but when I turned in my first book, it was six months from that date to pub. Other publishing houses might take a year, year and a half, or two. We don’t push on the preorders—other publishers will have a long lead between Advanced Reader Copies and pub date to get blurbs and preorders. I know of one author who sold out of the first very large print run with preorders.
I could only sustain my publisher’s short schedule because the first drafts of the 2nd and 3rd books had already been written by the time the first manuscript was due to my editor—so I had a year to get the next one in shape.
For the most part, all of the publicity is up to the author. Different publishers support their authors in different ways. But it’s a small margin business, so even if you’re with one of the big 5 (or are they down to 3 now?), you’ll still have to do most of the promoting. One nice thing that Level Best has that I don’t think any other publisher does—a Facebook group page. It’s run by them, and it’s a great place for Level Best authors to get their questions answered, to promote themselves, but also give advice and support. And, unfortunately, to alert others to the current scams running around.
You want a small or non-existent advance because you want to earn that out. You don’t want to be known for not earning out your advance (royalties go against the advance until you’ve earned it out, then you start getting royalties, your agent gets paid, the house makes some money).
Because I’m with a small house, everyone wears different hats. For example, my editor is also the one who designs all the book covers, which is great, because she thoroughly knows the book. With the cover for The Loft at Broadway and 14thshe totally nailed how I envisioned the indoor space.
Q: What is one piece of advice that someone gave you that you'd like to pass on to other authors?
A: There are too many to narrow it down to just one!
Maybe the thing that I’ve always tried to keep in mind is: arrive late, leave early. In other words, after you get done telling yourself the story (draft 1), cut out all the scene build-up, and start in the middle of the scene. Maybe another piece of advice is to “start ‘em in conflict.” Don’t wander your way into the emotion of that scene: start in the emotion. You can go back and explain it (lead up to it) later.
Oh! Can I offer another one? Read. Read everything. Read your genre, read outside your genre. See how other people handle what you’re writing. Try to figure out why it works. Just absorb it all and when you sit down to write, it’ll still be your writing, but you’ll be buoyed by everyone who you’ve read.
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