With more than 50 million copies of his novels in print worldwide, Nelson DeMille is one of the publishing’s most successful purveyors of political thrillers — most recently focusing on the exploits of NYPD homicide detective turned terrorist-hunter John Corey.
In town to support his most recent Corey novel, “Radiant Angel,” at the Printers Row Lit Fest, DeMille will also discuss his books and his career June 7 at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire. The Lake Forest Book Store and the Vernon Area Public Library are co-sponsoring the event.
To mark the occasion, we caught up with the author for a chat about his life as a reader and writer.
Q: When did you first become interested in books?
A: I was pretty athletic as a kid, I played a lot of sports, but I was a reader too. We didn’t have all the distractions back then that kids have today, so I read all the time. It was entertainment and it was cheap entertainment. Getting a free book from the library was a pretty good deal. And my father was in the Book of the Month club, so there were always hardcovers around the house.
Q: Do you consider your own books to be a form of entertainment?
A: Yep. They have to be entertainment. Some of my books, like “The Gold Coast,” have more literary trappings, but they’re still popular fiction. So they have to be entertaining. If you can’t entertain, you’re not going to hold the reader. Especially not today when there’s so much competition for their attention.
Q: What were your favorite books growing up?
A: As a kid, I read a lot of the classics like “Ivanhoe,” Treasure Island,” whatever I could get my hands on. But when I got a bit older I started reading Graham Greene and Somerset Maugham because my father loved the British writers. He turned me on to Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie and I became a voracious reader of British mysteries. My favorite was Sherlock Holmes. I read all the Holmes stories by the time I was 13 and then re-read them again and again.
More Top Picks Best Proofing Cabinets
What I learned from those great mystery writers is that you don’t need fancy prose. A great story, simply told, with a linear plot is all that’s needed.
Q: What made you decide to become a writer yourself?
I had three years in the army in Vietnam and that experience really changed my life. I realized that after being an infantry commander there wasn’t much that was going to interest me in terms of choosing a career. A lot of people come back from war and want to settle into a comfortable routine, to get as far away as possible from that intense experience, but I felt just the opposite. I had a couple of regular jobs but I couldn’t hold them. I was looking for action and adventure. And writing offered a form of that. It was also my post-war therapy. It helped me adjust to civilian life.
A: Was it the action-and-adventure aspect that made you choose to write thrillers?
Yeah, probably. (Laughs.) But I also knew that if you want to get published, you have to choose a genre that will entice editors. You have to look at what people in the business are reading and buying if you want to get into this game. Then, if you’re successful enough, you can possibly get away with writing what you want. So now, every once in awhile, I think about writing a more serious novel with less emphasis on action-adventure and gunplay.
Q: You’re well known for injecting a sense of humor into your books. Is that something you felt the genre was missing?
A: Yeah, I did. But I also knew that people tend to draw on humor even in the most intense situations. That’s another thing my army experience did for me. I remembered the dark humor that goes back and forth among soldiers, even when they’re being shot at. Because making a joke is the only way to get through it. I also think of that as an American sense of humor. I think Americans are funny. We make wisecracks. It’s part of the national character.
In any case, I thought adding humor really livened the books up, and the readers responded very well to it. And I always listen to my readers.
Q: Aside from keeping it real and keeping it funny, what advice do you have for aspiring writers?
A: I always give the same advice, which is to read, read, read. Read it all. Don’t just read one genre. If you really want to be a writer, you have to synthesize all that stuff. Go back in time and see what made Shakespeare great. Then think about what made Updike and Cheever great. Eventually, you’ll realize there are common elements in all the great writing in all the great books. And you can synthesize those common elements in your own voice.
I also tell people it’s important to learn about the business. It’s not good if you don’t know what to do with a manuscript once you’ve finished with it. A lot of young writers don’t have a clue about that. You’ve got to do your industry homework. If you’re writing just for yourself, fine. But if you want to be published by a major publisher and have people read what you write, you really need to know how the business works. I think that’s one of the saddest things I can think of: a good manuscript that goes nowhere because it’s been written by someone who doesn’t know what to do with it.
Nelson DeMille
1 p.m. June 7
Adlai E. Stevenson High School, 1 Stevenson Drive, Lincolnshire.
Admission is $15; $30 including a copy of “Radiant Angel.”
(847) 234-4420; lakeforestbookstore.com