Maggie Smith
In a career that’s included work as a journalist, a psychologist, and the founder of a national art consulting company, Maggie Smith now adds novelist to her resume with the publication of her debut, Truth and Other Lies in March 2022. In addition to her writing, Maggie hosts the weekly podcast Hear Us Roar, where she interviews debut authors about their novel and their path to publication and blogs monthly for Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. A board member of the Chicago Writer’s Association, she’s Managing Editor of their Write City Magazine.
Instagram: @maggiesmithwrites
Twitter: @magpie0218
Are there particular films that have influenced your writing?
I took a craft class from the novelist Barbara O’Neal where she asked us to write down our favorite films. My list had Body Heat, Chinatown, North by Northwest, Vertigo, and Casablanca on it and when Barbara read my choices, she said “So that’s the kind of book you write?” And I realized it was. Complex plots with people who are not necessarily who they seem, stories where you think you know what is happening but the actual outcome is very different. I like those reversals and tend them in all my stories.
Another profession you’d like to try?
Since I’ve been an avid film buff all my life, I think I’d like to direct a movie. For many years I ran a business selling artwork across the US where I had to juggle overseeing not only design projects, but a multi-disciplinary staff, marketing campaigns, a manufacturing operation, and at the same time, watch the bottom line so I think I’d enjoy the teamwork involved in making a small film and having my pulse on all the different facets of the operation. And of course, as a writer, I’d love a chance to bring another author’s vision of a story to life on the screen. I’m always casting particular actors into roles when I’m reading a novel. For my own debut, I’d pick Annette Bening for the older famous journalist, Laura Linney for the politician mother, and probably Kiernan Shipka as my protagonist Megan.
What piece of clothing tells the most interesting story about your life?
A knee-length white mink coat. My mother, a Tulsa resident, had bought it for next to nothing at a going-out-of-business sale at a local department store. She’d talked about it a lot on the phone as she patiently waited for the price to drop and I found myself imagining this heavy full-length black mink ala Mamie Eisenhower. When I visited her right before she sold her condo and moved into assisted living, she offhandedly told me to take anything I wanted from the spare bedroom, and when I saw, not the old-lady mink but a white fox-colored dream hanging in the closet, I snapped it up. It exactly matched my hair coloring and I live in Wisconsin, so I knew it would get a lot more use than it would in Oklahoma, not to mention my mother’s days of attending fancy parties had sadly come to an end. I still have it and even though my mother passed away a few years ago, it reminds me of her when I wear it. And it also reminds me of how often the two of us misunderstood what the other was trying to communicate.
Do you collect anything?
I have a collection of hand mirrors which I display on the wall of my master bathroom. When I’m traveling, it’s fun to hit the local antique stores but it’s much more enjoyable if you’re looking for something in particular. Hand mirrors are sometimes in short supply since they often break and are then thrown away, but I’ve found everything from elaborately carved figurative ones to Bakelite plastic designs, in a variety of different sizes and finishes, about fifty in all.
Is there a work of art that you love and why? Have you ever visited it in person?
It’s actually a series of paintings by Monet, thirty in all, of the Rouen Cathedral. He painted the same location at various times of the day and during different seasons so I find it fascinating to study them and see how much the surrounding environment and the light affects what we see in our everyday world. That’s a good lesson for me as a novelist, too. I need to be clear about what my protagonist is experiencing from a visceral standpoint, and how the environment may be affecting the other characters in a totally different way. Most of the paintings are displayed in Paris where I’ve never been, but I did get to see one of them a few years ago at the Metropolitan Museum in NYC in their Impressionism wing.
