Colleen Cambridge Interview: For the Writers
Interview Conducted by Loviisa Pasternak
I was thrilled to sit down with Colleen Cambridge, the author of the historical mystery series An American in Paris. In this section of the interview, we discuss writerly questions, mostly focusing on Colleen’s writing process and publishing experience.
(Check out the first part of the interview here!)
The first half of our interview is already available on the Femmage Zine blog! In it, we discuss Colleen’s latest release, A Fashionably French Murder, which came out on April 29th, 2025. Prior to this interview, I received an advanced reader copy from the publisher via NetGalley.
Femmage Zine: In the first half of our interview, you mentioned that you don’t outline your books. I was going to ask you about outlining versus discovery writing, but since you already covered that, I’d love to get more into the nitty-gritty of what that initial process of brainstorming an idea looks like for you.
Colleen Cambridge: Really, it goes back to the body. Where is it going to be found? How is the victim gonna be killed? What is the circumstance surrounding the discovery? Then, the story goes from there. I write the Phyllida Bright mysteries, the An American in Paris mysteries, and I have another series that I've written three books in—the Quinn & Gates mystery series—which is set in Civil War Washington, DC. Every book in each of those series starts with, “Where’s the dead body?” I am a voracious mystery reader myself, and, in the books that I read, I like the dead body to show up very quickly—in the first or second chapter. I don't like to get halfway to the book without a dead body. That's a personal preference of mine, so I generally do that in my books, too. After that, I just start following the clues. I'm just doing what I would do if I was the amateur detective.
Femmage Zine: I love that. I love hearing how people connect to their characters in different ways, whether it's imagining how you would act in their situation or imagining you’re chatting with your character. Those details are really fun! You mentioned a little bit ago that you feel like your subconscious knows when you need to input a certain clue in a certain scene, though you only realize why you left that clue there when it becomes relevant to the investigation later on in the story. What do you attribute that ability to? Does it come from being a voracious reader, from studying story structure, or is it an innate skill that you’ve just always had?
Colleen Cambridge: I think it's just an instinct that I have. In my head, I do very loosely follow the two-tent-pole structure. Meaning, I'm going to have a plot twist or something significant is going to happen about a third way in, and again about two-thirds or three-quarters of the way in. That's probably the most that I think about structure when I’m writing, other than knowing that by the last 10,000 words, I better figure out whodunnit and explain why they've done it. Beyond that, it's very instinctual to me.
The first book that I sold was The Rest Falls Away, which is the first book in the Gardella Vampire Hunters series, the series I pitch as Buffy meets Bridgerton. I was two-thirds of the way through writing that book when I discovered the Hero's Journey for writers. I was like, “Holy crap, I've already been following the Hero's Journey in my book, innately, without even realizing I was following a structure!”
Femmage Zine: It’s so interesting to hear about embracing an instinctual approach to storytelling, especially as I’m more of an outliner myself! Now, you're so prolific. You've written so many books. Thus, I'm wondering, how long is your writing process for a single book? How much of that is researching, actively drafting, editing, etc. How are you as incredibly prolific as you are?
Colleen Cambridge: Well, I’ve written sixty-some full-length novels, then another maybe ten or twenty short novels, so I've written a lot, as you said. Writing is what I do for a living, so I can't succumb to Writer's Block. I write one draft, and when I get to the end of the book, it’s done. I'm ready to send it to my beta readers or my editor. I write a certain number of words every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Wednesdays and weekends are free days or catch-up days. All the other stuff that I do as a writer—the research, the newsletters, the social media, the press interviews, all of that other stuff—is outside of my drafting schedule. I draft four days a week, and I have to fit everything else around that. I use Scrivener — have you used Scrivener?
Femmage Zine: Of course! I love Scrivener (a specialty word-processing software for writers).
Colleen Cambridge: What I love about it is that I can input my date due and my word count, and it tells me how many words I have to write every day. As long as I hit that word count, I'm going to finish my book on time. Scrivener’s daily word count tally takes into account changes, deletions, additions-which is great, because every day when I sit down to write, I'm massaging what I've already written before writing new words. Sometimes I'm going back far, sometimes just a page, but I am constantly working the manuscript like it's a ball of dough. So, by the time I get to the end, everything's in place, it's all done, all the words are tweaked. The only thing I might have to check is some of my French. That’s my process!
Oh, and usually, I target 85,000 words for my novels. Though, they always come in at 87,000—it's really funny. There's always an extra 2,000 words, which isn’t a problem, it’s just an extra 2,000 every time, almost down to the word. That takes me about three-ish months. I'm working on the fourth An American in Paris book right now. I started around January 10th or 12th. It's due May 1st. I have my own deadline in Scrivener as April 11th, which means that if I really screw around one week and don't write, I can just bump my deadline by one week, and it’s not gonna be late.
I also know that I always write faster at the end of the book. The last 10,000 to 15,000 words, I write in two or three days as opposed to two weeks. So, my process is about three months. I do one draft, and any research or pre-research for a future book I might be doing, I'll do simultaneously. I'm always writing something, and I do three books a year.
Femmage Zine: Wow, that is so impressive! And that feeds well into three rapid-fire questions I have for you. First, it sounds like you don't, but I wanted to ask, do you work on multiple projects at once?
Colleen Cambridge: I don’t usually, but I happen to be doing that right now! It’s not my favorite thing to do, but the deadlines aren’t the same, so I'll finish one book, then I'll work really hard on the second one to get it done before I have to start my next book for Kensington (Colleen’s publisher), which is the the sixth Phyllida Bright book. But generally, though I may be thinking about my next book and doing pre-research, I'm not usually writing two books at once.
Femmage Zine: Next, I wanted to ask the where and the when! I know some folks are coffee shop people, some folks prefer to write on their couch or at their desk. Do you have a specific where? And then also, I hear a big dichotomy between the early-morning writers and the late-night writers. Which camp do you fall into?
Colleen Cambridge: I used to write in a coffee shop, but then I screwed up my wrists and shoulders, so I don't do that anymore. I don't write anywhere except at home. I have a treadmill desk with a fabulous ergonomic keyboard that I ordered online, and that's my favorite keyboard. I have two of them. I generally do probably two-thirds or three-quarters of my writing at that treadmill desk. In the summer, I have a really nice setup on my deck where I will sit on my deck and write—with my special keyboard, but not on the treadmill. Occasionally, when I travel, I have to write just to keep up.
As far as the when, I'm always happier if I get my word count in the morning before lunch, but that only happens maybe fifty-to-sixty percent of the time. I'm sometimes in bed with my laptop, finishing my work for the day so that I don’t get too far behind. There's not necessarily a certain part of the day that is best for me, but like I said, I'm the happiest and I feel the most accomplished when I can get it all done before lunch.
Femmage Zine: That makes sense, for sure! Now, I’m especially excited to hear your answer to this one. How does being in active drafting mode change your habits as a reader? Do you read solely in the genre that you're writing in, solely in others, do you not read at all?
Colleen Cambridge: One of my favorite genres to read and write is historical-set mysteries, so I still do that, but I'm a really, really, really, really picky reader. There are very few series or books that I can read that I don’t pick apart as I'm reading, which is difficult. Because of that, I find myself doing a lot of comfort reading, especially when I'm in drafting mode, which is most of the time. To me, comfort reading is reading the same authors’ books that I've already read multiple times. I'm not critiquing them as I'm reading them, which is important because I'm already critiquing my own stuff as I'm writing it. If I'm reading for pleasure, and I can't turn off the editor in my head, then it's not pleasure anymore. So, I'm definitely heavy on the comfort reads.
I will also read new books. It’s always a pleasure to find another author or series that I don't want to pick apart. The other stuff that I read is research, but usually the research I'm reading is entertaining and interesting to me!
Femmage Zine: That totally makes sense. Reading needs to be a break from editing! Up next I’ve got some publishing-related questions. First off, how do you know that a book is done, the best you can make it, and you’re ready to send it out?
Colleen Cambridge: I've already gone back through it in my [head] as I'm writing, I'm already making it the best I can. Unless my beta reader or my editor gets back to me and says, “You’ve got a plot hole that you have to fix!” Really, when I get to the end—and I actually do write the end at the end of the book, just for myself—it's done.
Femmage Zine: I really appreciate that perspective. I love hearing from someone who is able to edit as they write. That's not something that I hear very often, and I love authors who are able to make a unique strategy work for them. That's very, very cool to me.
Colleen Cambridge: I want to emphasize this because I've done a lot of talks to a lot of writers in different stages of their careers. Everybody's process is different, and you just have to find a process that works for you, whether it's planning (outlining a novel before drafting) or pantsing (not outlining a novel before drafting) or a hybrid. I knew a woman who, when she was on deadline, would go to a hotel for a week, lock herself in the hotel room, and literally not leave not leave until the book was done. That was how she wrote her books. Everybody is different. There is no one way to do it. Trying different techniques is encouraged.
Femmage Zine: Woah, that example is wild! But as you said, whatever works! Next up, in broad strokes, could you please walk us through your journey to becoming a hybrid published author (one who is both traditionally-published by a publishing house as well as self-published)?
Colleen Cambridge: When I was first published, there was no such thing as Kindle. If you wanted a chance to be published without being self-published, which at the time had quite a stigma, and still sometimes does now, you had to go through New York or Toronto. I wrote eight or nine novels for the New American Library, which is part of Penguin (Penguin Random House, one of the Big Five trade publishing houses). Then, I wrote three books for Harlequin MIRA (an imprint of HarperCollins, another of the Big Five trade publishing houses), then I wrote six books for Avon (another HarperCollins imprint). Right around that time, when the third or fourth book from Avon was being released, the Kindle came out. That changed the publishing business hugely. There was this new thing called KDP or Kindle Direct Publishing, where you could take your book and publish it for the Kindle via Amazon all on your own. I had written a whole bunch of books that I had not been able to get traditionally-published, so I put a couple of them on there, to supplement my New York publishing income.
Within a couple months of the Kindle coming out, one of the biggest distributors of mass market paperbacks went out of business. At the time, most genre fiction books were mass market paperbacks (the smaller, cheaper, more portable paperbacks—think of the format of the stereotypical Harlequin romance novel). You don't see them very much anymore. Most books are trade paperbacks or hardcovers. So, the publishing industry changed. It blew a hole in the series I was writing for Avon, which crashed and burned. They didn't release me from the contract, but they didn't really publish the last few books very well.
So, I was struggling to kind of rebuild my career at that point. I had sold a steampunk series to a midsized publisher called Chronicle, so I was writing that, but my New York career did not survive the changes in the market. I took the opportunity to do hybrid work. I use the term indie-publishing rather than self-publishing because it's more akin to indie musicians and it clarifies that the author isn’t vanity-press published (vanity presses charge authors to publish their books). Over the years, I've been able to regain the rights to the books that I published with the New American Library, Harlequin MIRA, and Avon. I have all those rights back, and now they've been republished through KDP. I still have some frontlist books (recent releases, as opposed to a backlist, which is composed of books that have been out for a while) that were indie-published, but I'm also pretty busy writing two books a year for Kensington.
Basically, I became a hybrid author because I was trying to salvage a career that got disrupted by this huge change in the market.
Femmage Zine: Geez, the market has changed so much. I'd be really interested to hear what advice you have for authors who hope to indie-publish versus those who hope to traditionally-publish.
Colleen Cambridge: Well, it's a lot harder to be successful in publishing now than it was five or six years ago. The market is extremely different. It's oversaturated. The way Amazon, who is the giant in this business, manages, distributes, and algorithm-izes the books published through KDP is very different than what it used to be. It's not the cash cow, gold rush that it was. I have friends who still make a lot of money through KDP because they were extremely successful during the very hot season, and I have others who are very successful during the hot season, but could not maintain that success. For authors starting off now, being successful in indie-publishing is no easier than getting published in New York, in my opinion.
It’s ugly. It’s tough. Unless your book becomes a TikTok darling or goes viral on Instagram, it's extremely difficult to get a foothold because there's nothing working for you like KDP used to. It's not a great situation. Even people who've been doing it for a long time, who had luck with the algorithm, who had the name recognition, are not seeing the success that they used to. It's tough.
Femmage Zine: That is valuable insight into how things have changed! Finally, my last two questions are a bit lighter, hopefully a bit of fun. So, you write under the pen name Colleen Cambridge for the An American in Paris series and for the Phyllida Bright series. How did you end up choosing to write under a pen name, and how did you choose that pen name specifically?
Colleen Cambrige: Because the Colleen Gleason books had not done as well and were very different. Most of the Gleason books have a paranormal element to them, and they aren't mysteries, although many of them are historical. So, when Kensington and I got together to do the Phyllida Bright series and then the An American in Paris series, we agreed to use a pen name. I thought it was a great idea. In the publishing world, your sales are always attached to your name. When anybody goes to buy copies for a bookstore, they look at your past sales. So, launching a new pen name is a great way to sort of fool the industry, if you will.
Plus, these books were extremely different from anything I'd written, so it was a way to basically create a new brand. It's all branding. The brand of Colleen Cambridge is historical-set mystery, not a costume-historical mystery, but a well-researched historical mystery, with a famous person as the anchor, as the sidekick to the main character. That's not what I had done previously. The closest thing I’d previously published was the steampunk series Stoker & Holmes, which stars Sherlock Holmes's niece and Bram Stoker's sister, but that was in an alternate world, so it didn't really follow.
So, those were the reasons for a new pen name! I picked Cambridge because the first series that I did under the new name was about Agatha Christie's housekeeper and I wanted Cambridge to be near Christie on the bookshelf.
Femmage Zine: That’s so interesting. I really love hearing about the business and marketing aspects of being an author. Finally, this is such a cliche, but I feel like I have to ask: what is your favorite and least favorite piece of common writing advice that is always given to authors?
Colleen Cambridge: I have a million! I hate that they say don't write a prologue, don’t head-hop—I mean stupid stuff because writers do them all the time. Any advice that says, “You have to do it this way,” because there is no have to. Write a compelling book, that's all you need to do. The best advice is to just write. You have to just get your butt in the chair and write. You can talk about it, you can plan, you can research, you can plot, you can interview your characters—you can do that forever. But you're not going to have a book unless you actually try to write it.
Femmage Zine: That is a very good point. It’s not going to happen if you don't get the chair—or, in your case, step on the treadmill?
Colleen Cambridge: Yes, though I only go two, maybe two-and-a-half miles per hour when I write.
Femmage Zine: Well, that's good. We don't want any writing injuries! Those are the questions that I had, and I really, really appreciate being able to chat with you, both about this story and about your writing process. I know you have such a busy schedule, so really appreciate you taking the time.