Authors Interviewing Characters: Constance Sayers
Authors Interviewing Characters: Constance Sayers
The Ladies of the Secret Circus is a magical story spanning from Jazz Age Paris to modern-day America full of family secrets, sacrifice, and lost love set against the backdrop of a mysterious circus.
Paris, 1925: To enter the Secret Circus is to enter a world of wonder—a world where women weave illusions of magnificent beasts, carousels take you back in time, and trapeze artists float across the sky. Bound to her family’s circus, it’s the only world Cecile Cabot knows until she meets a charismatic young painter and embarks on a passionate affair that could cost her everything.
Virginia, 2004: Lara Barnes is on top of the world until her fiancé disappears on their wedding day. When her desperate search for answers unexpectedly leads to her great-grandmother’s journals, Lara is swept into a story of a dark circus and ill-fated love.
Soon secrets about Lara’s family history begin to come to light, revealing a curse that has been claiming payment from the women in her family for generations. A curse that might be tied to her fiancé’s mysterious disappearance
Now, ten months after his disappearance, Constance Sayers interviews her character, Lara Barnes.
Sayers: Thank you so much for talking to me. How are you doing?
Lara Barnes: What do you mean?
Sayers: Well…I know that ten months ago, your fiancé, Todd Sutton, disappeared. Have you or his family heard from him at all?
Lara Barnes: How do you think I’m doing? (Pauses) I’m sorry. It’s been a rough few months. That was a tough day for me. I was standing there in a wedding gown…there were guests…we had a reception. Then, in an instant, I had nothing. Once I realized he really wasn’t coming, I just wanted to get out of that church. But in answer to your question, no, there has been no sighting or word from him since October. He hasn’t used his credit cards or anything either.
Sayers: That has to be so tough. Not knowing. I’m so sorry. What do the police think?
Lara Barnes: Thank you. It is. Chief Archer is pretty tight-lipped.
Sayers: But you two are close?
Lara Barnes: What do you mean by that? Who said that?
Sayers: No. No. No one has said anything. It’s just that given he is investigating the case, certainly you two have talked a lot. Chief Archer has said that he doesn’t think there are otherworldly reasons for Todd’s disappearance, yet there are other theories about what happened to Todd. In the days after his disappearance you had reporters gathering at Wickelow Bend where his car was found abandoned the day after the wedding. Unfortunately, as a result of the TV show, Ghostly Happenings, you now have “fans” of the show camped out in the Wickelow Woods, looking for answers. Last month, Chief Archer had to close off the road. With all the theories out there, what do you think happened to Todd?
Lara Barnes: I think he just didn’t show. There are a lot of people who have these elaborate theories. I’ve heard them all. Like the one where he boarded an airplane at Dulles. I saw the surveillance video. It wasn’t him. Or the one where he was sacrificed by witches in the woods.
Sayers: Witches?
Lara Barnes: (Shrugs) It’s one theory that Ghostly Happenings featured as part of their episode “The Devil’s Bend.” It was the highest rated episode of the season, I’m told. (Eye roll) Another is that he walked into another dimension in Wickelow Woods. Of course, UFOs…because of the way the two cars have both been abandoned.
Sayers: By two cars, you mean Peter Beaumont whose car was found abandoned in the same spot, in 1974? On the same day, October ninth?
Lara Barnes: Yes. I guess some people think there is some mysterious force at work on the road there.
Sayers: One thing I thought was interesting was that your family owned Le Cirque Margot until the early 1970s on that same stretch of road. Isn’t that where the old entrance to that circus used to be? Do you think there is a connection?
Lara Barnes: No…why would you think that?
Sayers: Well, It’s a strange location. You say you think he just didn’t show, yet everyone who knew him said if he had just fled the wedding, he would have taken his car. He loved that car. It was a 1976 Ford Mustang. Yet, it was found half out on the road where it could have been hit. It just doesn’t sound like someone who calmly walked away from his wedding.
Lara Barnes: Look, the other guy, Peter Beaumont, was never seen again. Nothing gives me comfort. If what you’re asking is if I think Todd is coming back? No. I don’t and I’ve had to just live my life without him.
Sayers: In the spirit of moving on without him, I hear you bought a radio station.
Lara Barnes: I did. K-ROCK. I had worked there for a few years, doing the overnight shift.
Sayers: You didn’t want to own a circus. Keep the family legacy going?
Lara Barnes: As a kid, I did. Our family had all the old circus equipment in the back of the farm. I remember crawling on the old carousel pieces, the horses, the lions. I think my great-grandmother was disappointed that my mother had shown no interest in keeping Le Cirque Margot going but the times were tough in the 1970s. People had stopped going to circuses by the time my mother had me. TV was more entertaining, but the Rivoli Circus has continued.
Sayers: Your great-mother, Cecile Cabot, was a famous trick rider in Paris, wasn’t she?
Lara Barnes: Yes. We have this great painting of her riding a horse. By the time I came along, she had long given up riding, but from the look of the painting, she was once magnificent. She came over here when my grandmother was a baby and raised her alone during the Great Depression. Oddly though, she would never talk about her time in Paris. Her past remained a bit of a mystery, I’m sorry to say.
Sayers: She sounds like an impressive woman.
Lara Barnes: She was. I draw strength from her, even now. It’s made me wonder about her, you know. Why she never talked about Paris. I’ve gotten curious. I guess I’ve just had a lot of time on my hands. (Laughs.) Oh well…
Sayers: Lara, thank you so much for taking time to talk with me. I’m sorry if some of my questions were painful.
Lara Barnes: I appreciate that. It’s better than the people who avoid me in the grocery stores like I have the plague because they don’t know what to say to me. I’m just trying to get my life back together, you know.—
—
Constance Sayers is the author of A Witch in Time and The Ladies of the Secret Circus (Redhook/Hachette Book Group).
A finalist for Alternating Current’s 2016 Luminaire Award for Best Prose, her short stories have appeared in Souvenir and Amazing Graces: Yet Another Collection of Fiction by Washington Area Women as well as The Sky is a Free Country. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
She received an MA in English from George Mason University and graduated magna cum laude with a BA in Writing from the University of Pittsburgh. She attended The Bread Loaf Writers Conference where she studied with Charles Baxter and Lauren Groff. A media executive, she’s twice been named one of the “Top 100 Media People in America” by Folio and included in their list of “Top Women in Media.” She lives outside of Washington DC. Like her character in The Ladies of the Secret Circus, she was the host of a radio show from midnight to six.
Follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/constancesayers
Find out more about her on her website https://constancesayers.com/
Category: Contemporary Women Writers, Interviews, On Writing
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