Today’s post by this month’s featured author, B.A. Shapiro | @BA_Shapiro
Most people have heard the adage, “Write what you know,” but I’m on my tenth novel and ran out of things I know nine books ago. So I subscribe to a different axiom, “Write what you want to learn about.”
I’d wanted to learn about Isabella Stewart Gardner ever since I first encountered her while researching my first novel. Belle was an eccentric, tough-minded lady who wouldn’t accept the prescribed role women were dealt in upper-class Boston at the turn of the twentieth century. She went on to became the first great American art collector, man or woman, and seemed the perfect subject for a novel. But the more research I did, the bigger she became, and I couldn’t work out a way to manage her many exploits.
Then in 1990 there was a robbery at her museum in Boston, The Gardner, in which over $500 million worth of art was stolen. Twenty-two years later, none of the works have been found. It remains the largest art heist in history, solved or unsolved, and I figured now I could write my Belle book. But how to connect a woman who died in the 1920s with a crime that occurred seventy years later? Once again, I was stymied. Then I stumbled on another topic I wanted to learn more about: art forgery. I was fascinated by everything about it: the crime itself, the people who committed it, the techniques they used, their motivations and punishments. But how to combine Belle and the heist with forgery?
It wasn’t until I moved into the city of Boston and was walking distance to hundreds of galleries and some of the best art museums in the world that I finally figured out how to fit all the pieces together – and had the opportunity to learn about all the things I was so fascinated by. The Art Forger is the result.
About Ariel Lawhon
Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, storyteller, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.
I love that you write “[I] ran out of things I know nine books ago.” As I made my way through the book, I marveled at the amount of research you must have done into the world of painting and fine art. Looking forward to hearing more about this during the book group discussion.
This is very interesting! I’d love to learn more about what specific research the author conducted.