You've written 13 mysteries under your real name, R.D. Zimmerman, but you're writing historical fiction set in Russia as Robert Alexander.
Hey, I'm a guy who owes his writing career to the KGB (they tailed me for months back in 1978, gave me the idea for my first mystery), so things Russian are a natural for me. But writers often use different names for different categories—I've done children's books under yet another name, and for my short mysteries that appeared on 15 million boxes of Total cereal, well, I was anonymous for those.
Your first historical novel, The Kitchen Boy, was a bestseller, and the announced first printing for Rasputin's Daughter (click here to read the review) is 75,000 hardcover. Your mysteries have not enjoyed the same success.
You do have to write a good book, of course, but then so much about selling a book is product placement. And with a name like Zimmerman, the shelf space sucks. Alexander is not only a family name, but for once in my life I wanted to be at the front of the bus.
What is it about Nicholas and Alexandra that still intrigues people?
To paraphrase Shakespeare, the fall of kings is but fodder for the entertainments. We're all interested in the fall of the high and mighty. But few have fallen as fast and far as Nicholas and Alexandra. Throw in secret notes, hideous murder, a half million dollars of missing jewels, missing royal bodies, not to mention true love, and who can resist?
In The Kitchen Boy, you use a narrator who is mentioned only once in Empress Alexandra's diary. In Rasputin's Daughter, you again focus upon a little known character Why not use larger historical figures?
When you start a book you look for a particular point of view, to serve as entry into that story. On the last page of Alexandra's diary she mentions how their kitchen boy, Leonka, was suddenly and oddly taken away, which set my imagination spinning. History tells us that Leonka did indeed escape execution, only to vanish into the revolution. But if he could be found, what could he, as the last living witness, be able to tell us about the last days of the Romanovs? And Rasputin's real daughter, Maria, she was with her father in his last days, she was the only one of the family to escape Russia, became a lion tamer for Ringling Brothers, was mauled in Peru, Ind., and then became a shipyard riveter (she died in 1977)... and you think, wow, I want to make her come alive and see what she has to say!
Betrayal by friends and lovers is another theme that runs through both of your novels.
Hey, once a mystery writer, always a mystery writer. I miss all my mystery writer friends, what a great bunch—and I hope to move back into that trailer park someday.
