'Edgier alter egos'

At first glance, Glendale author Denise Hamilton seems like any suburban mother — she is married with two school-age children, can guzzle a large black coffee in under an hour and is never more than a fashionable five minutes late to any of her multifarious daily engagements.  

But Hamilton — whose most recent novel, “The Last Embrace,” is currently on the LA Times bestseller list — will be the first to admit that appearances can be deceptive. And what distinguishes her most from other LA soccer moms is the vibrant and pulsating world constantly developing inside her head.

“Characters enter my mind before I’ve even committed them to paper,” Hamilton said. “And as I think about a particular plot or character, wispy, ethereal ideas solidify.”

Since transitioning from journalism to professional fiction writing, Hamilton, a former reporter for the LA Times, has transformed these wisps into the widely acclaimed Eve Diamond mystery series, contributions to an award-winning anthology (“Los Angeles Noir,” of which she was also the editor) and her current bestseller.
Hamilton’s first stand-alone novel, “The Last Embrace,” adds an historical element to her crime literature repertoire, placing its heroine in post-World War II Los Angeles. Though still inspired by the darker side of LA, Hamilton enhanced the plot by posing a very real question faced by women living in that era — how to maintain the respect and credibility that society had granted them during the war.

Though Hamilton’s 10-year career as a reporter for the San Gabriel Valley bureau of the Times honed her writing prowess and permanently cocked her ears to listen for story fodder, she was at first hesitant to embark on a novel. “I didn’t dare to dream of myself as a novelist,” she said. “It would have psyched me out.”
But Hamilton’s desire to weave together stories longer and more involved than journalistic parameters permit moved her to join a fiction-writing group in 1994.

“Unlike some of my colleagues, I didn’t believe in putting words in people’s mouths,” Hamilton said. “As a reporter I stuck to the facts, but as a writer I realized that embellishing the truth was so much more fun.” 
A native of East Los Angeles, Hamilton soon discovered that her hometown provided the ideal setting for crime, thriller and mystery novels. “This is LA,” she said. “You don’t need to make stuff up. Whatever bizarre, surreal and dark things you can imagine —somebody’s doing it here.”

Inspired by such authors as Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy, Hamilton was determined to write crime novels with a personal flair. Though she refused to label herself as a feminist author, Hamilton admitted that female protagonists develop themselves more clearly for her.

“You can’t out-Ellroy Ellroy,” Hamilton said. “So I never intended to ape my favorite authors. I wanted to tell somebody else’s story, and that somebody was usually the woman.”

It is no coincidence that the onset of Hamilton’s fiction-writing career coincided with her first years as a mother. “Here I was at home with two babies in diapers but writing about these women who were my wilder, edgier alter egos,” she said. “All of my characters have a little of me in them — even the villains — but writing the heroines is an escape for me. They catch more bad guys than I do and go on more dates.”

Though the writing in itself is fulfilling for Hamilton, she is constantly reminded that it is, in fact, a career. Raising two children in the suburbs of LA requires more than one paycheck, and Hamilton stresses the importance of staying disciplined.

“I don’t believe in writer’s block,” she said adamantly. “It’s just a euphemism for laziness. Writers just need to sit down and write — they can’t wait around for the muse to strike.”

Hamilton applies both her gift for storytelling and her “no excuses” attitude to mothering as well as writing. “I make sure that my kids read rather than watch TV or play video games,” she said. “With one of my sons this was a much greater struggle, so I would read aloud to him. Then, whenever we came to the exciting parts in the book, I would hand it over to him and say ‘Now you finish it.’”

And to get them to eat their vegetables, “I’d tell high-intensity super-hero stories at the dinner table. Then — just when I was coming to the end — I’d make them eat a few pieces of broccoli before telling them what happened.”