Famous Authors Enlighten Perkins
Three of the state’s most popular novelists swapped humorous stories about the writing life, gave tips to would-be authors and read excerpts from their books at a panel sponsored by the Braille & Talking Book Library at Perkins School for the Blind on October 6.
More than 200 library patrons, Perkins students and staff turned out to hear and meet Dennis Lehane (Shutter Island and Gone Baby Gone), Barbara Delinsky (Escape and While My Sister Sleeps) and Hank Phillippi Ryan (Drive Time and the upcoming The Other Woman).
The event was designed to promote the Braille & Talking Book Library to an estimated 100,000 people with disabilities in Massachusetts who could use its free services, but aren’t aware they are eligible to do so. Books by all three authors are available at the library in audio, large-print and braille formats.
Lehane, whose gritty mystery novels are set in and around Boston, said he first developed a love for reading as a child when his mother took him to a library in Dorchester.
“I’m here because of libraries. It’s quite simple,” he said. “So I can’t say enough about libraries. What they do here at the Perkins library every day is an exceptional act and a type of living prayer.”
Lehane had the audience laughing out loud as he recounted how his Irish-born father never believed he’d make a living writing books, and encouraged him to apply for jobs at the Post Office. When Lehane finally hit the big time and sold the movie rights for his book Mystic River to Clint Eastwood, he called his father to tell him the news. His dad’s response: “Who the hell is Clint Eastwood?”
For aspiring novelists, Lehane said there is no one right way to write. “If you write best with a plate of apples and a bottle of whiskey, get a plate of apples and a bottle of whiskey,” he said. “Whatever it takes to get it done.”
Delinsky took an unusual path to becoming a published author. She was a stay-at-home mom with three children when she read a newspaper article profiling three female writers. Three months later, she had written and sold her first novel. “I wrote my very first book almost on a whim,” she admitted.
Delinsky started out writing Harlequin romances, and penned about 50 of them under a pseudonym before making the jump to mainstream fiction. She has now written 17 bestsellers, mostly character-driven dramas about marriage, parenthood and friendship. Her secret is writing books she enjoys reading. “I am my quintessential reader,” she said. “I am so like my readers.”
One of the best aspects of being a writer, Delinsky said, is hearing from those readers. “Some of them said my books have given them courage to tackle a problem in their lives. I never dreamed of being able to touch people that way.”
Ryan credits her writing career to a fictional teenage sleuth. “I knew that I always wanted to write mysteries, starting as a little kid when I read Nancy Drew,” she said.
Instead, Ryan became an award-winning investigative television journalist on Boston’s WHDH-TV. She won 27 Emmy Awards over 30 years, and didn’t write her first book, Prime Time, until she was 55.
Ryan wrote about what she knew, making the hero of her Charlotte McNally mystery series a hard-charging TV reporter in Boston. She also drew on the skills she developed writing for television to write her novel.
“They’re sort of the same, right?” she asked. “It’s all about telling a great story, with compelling characters and a problem that needs to be solved. You want the good guy to win, and you want the bad guys to get what’s coming to them. In television and in writing mysteries, you want there to be justice.”
After the forum, Ryan was presented with a braille edition of Prime Time. The book, the first of her novels to be printed in braille, was produced at Perkins by the Braille & Talking Book Library.
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