L-word: Let’s talk about the show. The pilot was based on “The Apprentice” and somewhat on “The Surgeon” but after that the writers went their own way. Why did they choose not to use your book’s ideas to make it more familiar for people who read the books?

TG: I think it’s because the producers just felt that they want to have ownership of their own stories, they wanted to be able to tell the stories. The way Janet Tamaro put it is that I am the birth mother and she’s the adoptive mother. My girls had left my house and they are now living in her house and they have to do what she says. So that’s really what happened and they’ve changed in that particular way.

L-word: What’s your involvement with the TV series?

On a set of “Rizzoli & Isles” ©Tess Gerritsen

TG: I don’t have any writing involvement. It’s really all TNT’s baby.

L-word: It’s like Kathy Reichs with the series “Bones”, for example. She’s the executive producer and the consultant on that show. Did the TNT offer that to you or was it your idea not to be involved?

TG: Well, Janet was very nice. She invited me to come and write a script but I have the books to write. It would be too demanding and knowing how chaotic a TV production sometimes seems, how demanding it is because you have all these voices asking for different things, I’m not sure that TV writing would be the world for me. I like being able to have total control of my product.

L-word: Do they consult you on certain things?

TG: Not really, no. They do their own thing.

L-word: So they took your characters and do what they want with them but they are still your creation.

TG: My books characters are still there.

L-word: After you watched the TV series and when you write your new books do you see the TV characters in your head and does it influence your writing now?

TG: You know I still see them the way I’ve always seen them. I see Jane sort of mop-haired, not very well dressed, not really good looking, just an average woman. And I still see Maura looking a little bit like Catherine Zeta-Jones, so they haven’t changed too much in my own head.

L-word: So when they were casting for the show that’s who you saw playing Maura? Catherine Zeta-Jones?

TG: Yeah, someone along those lines and I was imagining for Jane somebody like Marisa Tomei. Now they have their own cast and the cast works really well, they have some incredible chemistry. These are the faces that people see.