Q&A with Maria Semple: 'Bernadette,' 'Today Will Be Different' and other muscular books

A couple of years ago, I posted a note on Facebook asking for reading recommendations. Where'd You Go, Bernadette? kept coming up. Friends from college. Childhood friends. Reporter colleagues. Academic colleagues. Men and women. They loved the pace of the book, the humor, the surprises. It was a fun, smart read, they said.

Bernadette's author, Maria Semple, says she doesn't really want to know what clicked with so many people. Because then she'd keep trying to do it again. She just wants to write her books, which she describes as "muscular stories."

In her new book, Today Will Be Different, the lead character is, again, a strong woman who just doesn't fit into people's expectations in the town of Seattle. Eleanor lives with her husband, Joe, a hand surgeon, and their son, Timby. Different focuses on a day in the life, but of course, it's not just any ordinary day. Again, the novel is getting rave reviews in the media and among friends.

Semple was on her way from her home in Seattle to speak at a panel in Vancouver when we interviewed her. She was being driven in "a very nice black town car," and she was determined not to drink anything because she didn't want to make a pit stop en route. She was also a little mad at Canada for scheduling the panel during the the final Clinton-Trump debate.

She's coming to speak at The Free Library on Tuesday. It's a free event.

In your last book, Bernadette disappeared. She just fled when things got to be too much. Many people talked about that choice with no small degree of envy. Did you ever flee like that?

That's an example where I had no idea that I was making that point when I was writing. A lot of people connected to it, but it wasn't intentional. Did I ever run? I feel like that every day. But I would never do it. I would think about it and create elaborate fantasies about it, though.

Did Eleanor Flood from this book know Bernadette Fox from your last book? Bernadette shows up for a second in the new one. If she did know Bernadette, did she like her?

They don't know each other. I think they would like each other. I've thought a lot about it, and they are both women who like other women. They aren't snarky women who don't like other women and see them as threats. They are both rare birds who would not be threatened by the other one. Most people in the world would be threatened by them, because they are so strong.

Your books clearly mock the Seattle life. Have you become more of a Seattle person?

No, I'm never a Seattle person. You could never smooth my edges; they are jagged and here to stay. That said, I love Seattle. I love the city and the anonymity it provides for me as a writer. I'm not in the middle of L.A. with the movie industry, or New York, the center of publishing. Seattle gives me a lot of perspective and a lot of power creatively. It took a long time to accept. I would tell people that I live in Seattle but I'm from L.A. Now I say Seattle's my home.

Your writing seems so ... effortless. What is your process like?

It actually is pretty effortless and comes to me pretty easily, and there's a lot more where it came from. A lot of stuff in the book is what occurs to me in the moment I'm writing it. It's not that it's easy. I write and I rewrite and I rewrite, because there's a difference between talking and writing, and you have to make sure that there's enough information in there that people get the joke. It's hard if it's your joke and your perspective. I'll write something and give it to three or four people, and if no one mentions something I think is hilarious, it's usually because I left out a key piece of information. You don't want to overwrite and make it too twisty.

Your father, Lorenzo Semple, Jr., was a screenwriter for the TV series Batman and the movie Flash Gordon, among others. You mentioned that Carroll O'Connor, who played Archie Bunker in All in the Family, sometimes drove in your neighborhood carpool. What was that like?

He was kind of scary, in that brooding-quiet-dad kind of way, the way that all dads are. He was cursing his life that he had carpool duty. It's like any dad: When you realize that something is very wrong with this universe and this is your life, doing carpool.

Rumor has it that Cate Blanchett is going to play Bernadette in the movie. What are your thoughts on that?

It would be great if it happens, and hopefully it will happen soon. I would be so over the moon because, you know, she can play tough and mean but also sweet.