Set in Carmel-by-the-Sea and Hollywood, Typewriter Beach is the story of the unlikely friendship between an Oscar-nominated screenwriter, Léon Chazan, and a young actress, Isabella Giori, hoping to be Alfred Hitchcock’s new star in 1957. The story alternates between1957 and 2018 as twenty-six-year-old screenwriter Gemma Chazan tries to sell her grandfather’s cottage and finds a hidden safe full of secrets—raising questions about who the screenwriter known as Chazan really was, and whether she can live up to his name. Clayton shares her writing journey here:
AUTHORLINK: How did the premise of Typewriter Beach develop?
CLAYTON: I’ve long been fascinated with Hollywood the blacklist – this idea that the US government would use intimidation to silence Americans. I’d stalled on another novel after my dad passed away, so I decided to set that aside and try to get a few words on the page for a novel about the blacklisted screenwriter I’d been noodling. Leo, a blacklisted writer with Dad’s middle name, splashed onto my page and offered me a glass of Dad’s scotch. It was 9 a.m. and I hate scotch, but it was a fictional drink. Gemma — that comes from my name backwards. Her mom’s legs are my mom’s, as is the typewriter Leo was sitting at. It isn’t our story at all, but the love Leo has for Gemma, that is my dad’s big, generous heart.
AUTHORLINK: Who was your model for Isabella Giori?
CLAYTON: Iz doesn’t have a single model. She’s drawn from the collective experiences of many of the women of 1950s Hollywood, drawn from reading dozens of biographies and memoirs, and watching a lot of old Hollywood films, which was a lovely way to spend afternoons working! What I did for Iz—and Leo too—is absorb everything I could learn in terms of what real actors and writers of the time experienced, and then set it aside and write.
AUTHORLINK: What draws you to historical fiction?
CLAYTON: I love reading historical fiction myself. I love learning about history through nonfiction books and film and the like, but it is often delivered from a bit of a distance. I get an intellectual understanding of what happened, which is important but not always moving. Historical fiction, when it’s well done, allows you to experiencing history as if you were living it. And that emotional reaction stays with me, and makes me reflect more deeply on how that history might be relevant in the present.
AUTHORLINK: What are the challenges and rewards of the genre?
CLAYTON: The challenge is trying to think about everything, because there are so many things we take for granted that often didn’t exist, and ways of thinking and acting that are common now but might have been scandalous in earlier times.
The rewards … well, the best rewards for me are connecting with people who really were part of a story, and having them say I got it right. And honestly, hearing from any reader who has been moved by what I’ve written—that’s more special than you can imagine.
AUTHORLINK: How can historical fiction inform our view of current events?
CLAYTON: I think every little dent we make in our hearts through reading, every shoe we step into through a book, makes us better, more caring people, who are more inclined to take a stand that might be difficult, and help others in need. And we learn by example how to be courageous. It’s not always an opportunity everyday life provides us for learning.
AUTHORLINK: What was your attraction to the blacklist era?
CLAYTON: People’s lives were destroyed by fear mongering politicians. Some were genuinely concerned about what they saw as the threats of communism, with the cold war, the fall of china, the soviets having the bomb. There were real reasons to be afraid, and that’s interesting to explore—how people react in difficult times. So many people turned on friends out of fear for their own futures, but others stood on principal. And that’s what makes for interesting stories.
AUTHORLINK: Talk to me about how you settled on the structure of the novel with three parts and a jump forward in time from 1957 to 2018.
I’d imagined it would be a straight historical novel, but when I sat down to write, the first thing that came was Gemma at Leo’s cottage after he’d passed away. That was me working through my grief at losing my dad. I thought it was just a way into the story that I would cut. But as I wrote, I came to see that Iz and Leo have secrets, and they wouldn’t tell them to anyone, so I needed someone to uncover them. And in having Gemma do so, I also had the opportunity to consider where women were in the 1950s, and where they are now. How much things have changed and how much they haven’t. When I settled in on having the dual timeline, I set the more contemporary story in 2018 as that was deep into the #MeToo movement, which does seem to be making some impact, although how much seems a little murkier as we go on.
AUTHORLINK: How long did it take you to write Typewriter Beach?
CLAYTON: Writing—that started February of 2022, but just a few days after I started it my mom died, so I didn’t really start in earnest until June of 2022. And I suppose I finished in the late summer of 2024, so that’s a little more than two years. It was a tough time, handling my grief and my parents’ estates with some serious family health issues thrown in. So it feels a bit of a miracle to have it done.
AUTHORLINK: Tell me about your research. What was the most interesting thing you came across in the research for Typewriter Beach?
CLAYTON: We moved to Carmel in the first months of the pandemic, when I couldn’t get to, say, Paris, to check out whatever particulars I needed to know to set a novel anywhere else. So I just explored Carmel, which was so much fun.
Lucky for me, the Carmel Pine Cone, our local paper, is archived online going back forever. The columns Iz reads really did run in the paper, which is full of news like the fact that Bing Crosby was back from wherever he’d been, or Mrs. So-and-So has a new telephone in Big Sur so you can call ahead to make sure she will be home when you visit. And the ads! Whenever I get annoyed at ads now, I remind myself that they will be a great source for future historical fiction novelists.
I climbed Hawk Tower (more than once), and read everything I could find about Hitchcock and Hollywood and the blacklist.
One of the most interesting things I learned was that under the studio contracts, actresses could be required to have plastic surgery. I didn’t even know there was such a thing back then. And even Elizabeth Taylor—after she was a star—had a nose job, because as she aged her nose broadened and that was seen as less attractive.
AUTHORLINK: How do you avoid getting lost in the research process?
CLAYTON: I don’t think I avoid it. I love the research. And even though the reader only sees a little of what I learn, the more depth I have, the more I can deliver.
AUTHORLINK: You’ve written eight other novels to acclaim. How has your writing process changed, if it has changed?
CLAYTON: The last few novels, I’ve started by writing the stories as a screenplay first. It really helps me sort out the story first. I’d like to say it’s easier now, and maybe it is, but with each novel, it is so hard to get that first draft.
AUTHORLINK: What impact has success had on your writing?
CLAYTON: Oh gosh, on my writing? I’m not sure. I don’t think what I write is any different than it always has been. I hope I keep getting better at it. I certainly try to. But I’ve always turned to what moves me, what I feel passionate about, as I’m deciding what to write. I suppose having some success as a writer does give me more access. I’m less shy than I used to be about asking people to share their expertise with me.
AUTHORLINK: Please share the best advice you’ve gotten about writing in the course of your career.
CLAYTON: I used to say Tim O’Brien talking about using extraordinary actions by your characters to illuminate ordinary emotions. But now, I think Margaret Atwood: A word after a word after a word is power. I embrace that now as I write, in so many ways. It makes it easier to start. Just start with a word. And keep writing, because your writing—moving hearts through writing—really can help provoke change for the good.
AUTHORLINK: Discuss what you are working on now.
CLAYTON: Well, I’ve become too superstitious to do that. After The Wednesday Sisters was a lovely success, I kept saying my next would be a novel based on the real experiences of the female journalists who covered the liberation of Paris in WWII. But it was only after I stopped talking about that book being next that it was published as my fifth novel, The Race for Paris, three books later. So I don’t want to jinx myself.
New York Times bestseller Meg Waite Clayton is the author of nine novels, most recently USA Today bestseller Typewriter Beach and the international bestsellers The Postmistress of Paris and The Last Train to London. Her books have been featured on Good Morning America and the New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice list, and in People and other newspapers and magazines all over the world. They have been IndieNext, Library Reads, LoanStars librarians, USA Today, Book of the Month Club, Costco and Target Book Club, and Amazon Editors’ picks, as well as finalists for the National Jewish Book Award, the Langum Prize, and Barbara Kingsolver’s Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction.
