Brave new words from Seattle author

Her younger sister had died in a police chase half a world away in Australia, the victim of the ensuing accident, but also of a drug habit that had led to the chase in the first place. And Nicola Griffith found herself suddenly plunged without bearings into a raw netherworld.

COMING UP

NICOLA GRIFFITH

WHAT: Reads from "Stay"

WHEN/WHERE:

Wednesday: Noon. Seattle Mystery Bookshop, 206-587-5737; 7 p.m. Kane Hall, Room 220, University of Washington, free tickets through the University Book Store, 206-634-3400

April 30: 7:30 p.m. The Elliott Bay Book Co., 101 S. Main St., 206-624-6600

May 14: 7:30 p.m. Third Place Books, 17171 Bothell Way N.E., Lake Forest Park, 206-366-3333

June 6: 7 p.m. Bailey/Coy Books, 414 Broadway E., 206-323-8842

"I had never lost anyone close to me before," Griffith recalls. "I had no idea of grief, or how it is like living with your skin ripped off."

Griffith's agony from the 1988 loss of her sister was intensified by many factors, including her sense of helplessness amid her sister's drug habit, plus feelings that went beyond sibling love to something almost maternal from all those times when she had cared for Helena in her youth. It was years before Griffith could convince herself that "grief finally does get better."

Grief and its hard lessons fill the pages of Griffith's gripping new novel, "Stay" (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 303 pages, $23.95). This is her second strong literary thriller featuring Aud Torvingen, a charismatic, yet borderline sociopathic former lieutenant in an elite unit of the Atlanta police. Torvingen is a rangy 30-year-old 6-footer with lethal skills and repressed emotions who tends to leave death in her wake and happens to be a lesbian, as is her creator.

Griffith, a British expatriate who lives in Wallingford, first developed a following with science-fiction novels with lesbian characters, a surprising development in a popular genre that tends to be conservative in outlook and readership. Her 1995 novel, "Slow River," even won a Nebula Award, science fiction's version of the Oscar. The 41-year-old writer also has won a World Fantasy Award, as well as four Lambda Awards, which recognize work by gay and lesbian writers.

A British expatriate now living in Wallingford, Nicola Griffith developed a following writing science fiction, then boldly veered into the thriller genre in 1998 with "The Blue Place." That book's sequel, "Stay," continues the saga of the lesbian heroine, Aud Torvingen, a former Atlanta police lieutenant who possesses lethal skills and repressed emotions. Renee C. Byer / Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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Yet Griffith is a restless soul and unrepentant "thrill junkie" whose past in England includes stints as a rock singer and as a martial-arts instructor. She fearlessly ventured forth with a departure from her past work in 1998 with "The Blue Place," her first Torvingen novel. The character had first come to her in a startling image from a dream: A women is sleeping naked on the carpet in her new, unfurnished apartment, then awakens to find a man standing over her and pointing a gun. The woman reflexively counterattacks, breaking the intruder's neck with a flashlight, the deed done in a matter of seconds.

That image and that character stayed with Griffith for six years before she finally started to write about her. Now, the writer has two Torvingen novels to her credit and can foresee writing several more. The recurring character and her creator are now closely linked in a relationship.

"I like her better, I like her less," Griffith relates. "Aud is becoming like a member of the family, so there are also times when I want to get her out of my life. But I remain fascinated by where she's going to go in her life. She's screwed up, she's smart, she's relatively adaptable. And she's definitely larger than life; she gives me a lot of vicarious experiences.

"So when I have bad service in a restaurant, I think to myself, how dare you piss off a writer? Aud will be meeting you some years hence -- I stick such people in my books, give them different names and then have things happen to them."

Torvingen has certainly had things happen to her, as well. In the opening pages of "Stay," she is living a solitary existence for five months in the mountains of North Carolina, using the meticulous restoration of an old cabin as a means to recover from the murder of her lover on the streets of Oslo, the murder of Julia Lyons-Bennet caused by Torvingen's own careless mistake.

Haunted by image

Torvingen is haunted by the image of her lover, who sometimes still speaks to her, and she wants nothing to do with the outside world. But a friend intrudes into her refuge with an urgent request: He needs her to track down his girlfriend, who has abruptly disappeared. Torvingen reluctantly accepts the assignment and thus begins an odyssey that will take her to New York City and rural Arkansas, where she alternates between close encounters with various malevolent characters and unexpected moments of caring and even peace.

Violence still remains Torvingen's companion, usually by choice. As she says, "Violence is usually a tool, like any other, but occasionally it is much more. Occasionally it takes me to a place where time and light seem to stretch, and the air is tinged with blue. In that blue place, the test of bone and muscle becomes a pavane where everyone but me is locked into preordained steps while I dance lightly, mind clean as a razor: faster, denser, more alive. There I exist wholly as myself, wholly outside the rules, and the world is stripped to its essence: clean and clear and simple."

Griffith brings a similar take-no-prisoners approach to her writing. She battled with her previous publisher over the ending of "The Blue Place," which concludes with the murder of Torvingen's lover. Editors there cautioned her that such a downer could cost her readers, but Griffith refused to revise the ending.

"I'm not trying for readers at all," she says. "That's not why I'm writing; I'm doing it because I have things to say. ... That publisher insisted, 'You can't piss off your readers.' I countered, 'This is what I have to do, and readers will follow.'"

Literary reputation

"Stay" has a new publisher, a publisher with a reputation for literary work, which is what Griffith had hoped to find. And those at Nan A. Talese/Doubleday are pleased to have signed up a writer who seems to have the distinct potential to "break out" and appeal to many more readers beyond the constraints of genre, which is exactly the conclusion about "Stay" offered by Publishers Weekly, the influential journal of the book trade.

Griffith, who has an encyclopedic Web site (www.nicolagriffith.com), appreciates working with a publisher who respects her writing, but also suggests ways to improve it. "Stay" is her first book that has undergone real editing and it makes her wistful about how much better "The Blue Place" might have been with similar diligence from the editor and the writer herself. Griffith did devote far more effort to "Stay," laboring through 18 rewrites of the novel, eight of them with significant changes. She had important themes that she wanted to explore, including Torvingen's loss of innocence and her gradual steps toward engagement and insight.

"I feel this book takes a real literary risk," Griffith says. "I'm not sure many writers are trying to reconcile all the things that are separated in our culture -- body and mind, urban and pastoral, lyricism and hardboiled, men and women, joy and grief. I tried to do quite a lot, but I wanted to create a serious work of literature."

Griffith's increased devotion to her writing comes, in part, because she can no longer submerge herself in the physical activities she loved. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1993 and her condition these days requires her to walk with a cane. Yoga is now the only physical activity open to her, a matter of considerable frustration. Her writing also is hampered by her affliction.

"There are days when I should be writing and I am so tired that I can't," Griffith says. "And the fatigue also affects my emotions, making me not even care about writing. There are days when I wake up so angry I can barely speak, and also days when I am so sad."

Move to Seattle

Her multiple sclerosis did bring Griffith to Seattle. She met American Kelley Eskridge at a six-week writers conference at Michigan State University in 1988 and the two partners later landed in Atlanta. But Griffith's condition suffered amid the temperature extremes in Georgia, as well as the inhospitable social environment, and that led them to seek out a place with more benign climates of both kinds. A whirlwind trip to the Northwest convinced them to settle in Seattle.

An entire floor separates the two writers in their blue Wallingford bungalow. Eskridge, whose futurist first novel ("Solitaire") will be published in September, works in her basement office, while Griffith works in her own office two floors above. The two women, who are only nine days apart in age, share the satisfactions and frustrations of the writing life, including the insecurities that come with what it takes to fill a page and "the seriously low cash flow" that is far too constant.

Griffith's heroines share her sexual orientation, but she remains outspoken about what she sees as the common flaws of many novels by other lesbian writers, especially their focus on sex.

"Most lesbian novels are about coming out," Griffith says. "To me, that's old news, what I did at 16. I want to write about grown-up things. Sex may be a great part of life, but that's not all there is to it. ... I feel very clear -- none of my work is about being a lesbian. Nor has my life been about that either. It's about as important to me as the color of my eyes."

Griffith is just as outspoken about critics and readers who have tried to fit her into some confining category with her work.

"I'm tired of being considered a lesbian writer, tired of being a science-fiction writer, tired of being a thriller writer," she emphasizes. "I'm a writer. Period. Story matters to me."

P-I books reporter John Marshall can be reached at 206-448-8170 or johnmarshall@seattlepi.com.

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