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His name is James, he is a big, juicy, rollicking writer

25 August 2007, possible 10.16am… James sits across from American writer Jeffery Deaver in the middle of the Merlyn Theatre’s stage.

James sits to the left and Jeffery to the right of the low, black and square coffee table. The coffee table is already covered in books, water glasses and a glass water jug with a red lid which from a distance looks like a red flower. Silver microphones on long stands are bent and angled to just catch the men’s words.

A little too large for the velour, lime green bucket chair with chrome legs, James sits upright with his right ankle resting on top of his left knee. It is highly likely he would be slouching with his chin resting on his left hand if the chair was a little deeper and wider.

Jeffery sits comfortably upright in his own lime green chair. His right leg hangs easily over his left leg, his elbows resting on either chair arm.

Both men wear suits. Jeffery’s suit looks dark navy under the bright Malthouse lights. Underneath he wears a black-and-white stripe shirt and a burgundy tie. The centre strip of his head is bald, flanked by two thick strips of dark hair. He also wears a goatee and small-framed glasses.

James is wearing an almost-black suit and white shirt. The first couple of shirt buttons have been purposely left undone – he chose not to wear a tie today. His thick and dark hair covers is whole head. His young face is slightly fuller than his thriller writing peer who he met at Thillerfest in New York the year before. He wears black lace-up shoes. Jeffery wears black loafers.

“I was a solicitor,” Jeffery Deaver tells the Melbourne Writers’ Festival audience. “There were private jets and limousines so it was all very exciting work.”

The large theatre, predominantly used for plays and other types of performances, is two thirds filled with greying Deaver readers. They are here to hear about how Jeffery wrote short stories and songs during his undergraduate years and how he wrote his first thriller while commuting to-and-from work.

“Now that’s an interesting story I want to share with you,” Jeffery tells the audience. James watches with an easy smile with the sheet of paper holding his questions dangling in between his two uncrossed knees.

“So I wrote another one while commuting back-and-forth. After I’d finished I went back and read the first one and found out it wasn’t a fluke. They were consistent. They were awful. I had that disillusionment that ‘I DID it’ – and it was utter garbage.”

James grins. The audience laughs. “If my mother was a publisher, she would have rejected it,” Jeffery says with dry wit and self-depreciating humour of this third attempt at writing a thriller. “All writers get rejected.”

James, relaxed in his role of interviewer, talks to the audience about the “horrific things” in Jeffery Deaver’s popular novels. His novel The Bone Collector was made into a big-budget movie starring Denzel Washington in 1999.

 “I hear that your write in the dark,” James says in the high voice of someone in his 20s inclined to punctuate sentences with dirty words during more casual conversation conversations.

“I’ve read James’ work – his work is very visual,” Jeffery responds with warmth to his thriller writing friend. James’s second book, Patriot Act, displays Jeffery’s “big, juicy, rollicking tale” feedback on the cover.

“Write with the light on,” James recommends without missing a beat, a wry smile creeping across his face.

Jeffery explains how he has a switch to “leave the darkness behind”, how it is important not to “disgust the readers” and how his “philosophy of writing comes from Mickey Spillane from the ‘50s” before arriving at the topic of character Lincoln Rhyme.

“Your books often start with a murder,” James says while holding up a copy of Cold Moon. A murmur of appreciation emanates from the audience.

The elderly couple in their 70s sitting at the end of the fifth row bristle with anticipation. He in a grey suit, white shirt and tie grins at the stage. She in a lighter grey suit and floral scarf wrings her hands around her blue, grey and white floral silk scarf. Another grey-haired Deaver fan lifts her chin from her chest and opens her eyes. 

“I best get you to talk about your characters now or your fans will attack me in the foyer,” James says looking at the audience. 

“I’ve written the plucky young crime (guy). I thought this time I’d do a completely different character. I wanted to get back to Sherlock Holmes. I never in a million years thought he’d take off like he had. Lincoln has an Albanian fanclub. It’s been a real curiosity to me. I do this for the fans.

“The climate is that people like series characters. I had in mind that I’d like to spin off a character from the Lincoln Rhymes series. I hoped Catherine would be that character. She is the opposite to Lincoln.”

With 10 minutes left of the one hour the early morning session, the two men banter with familiarity. Conversation shifts to the topic of the upcoming third book in Jeffery’s Twisted short stories series.

“I’m still trying to come up with a name (for the new book),” Jeffery says. 

“Twisted Ultimatum,” James says quickly followed by a big grin. Both men smile as if this is a joke that they’ve shared many times before and will tell again in the future.

Jeffery tells the audience that a “typical Deaver short story” starts with an innocent high school girl being stalked. Her father avenges the daughter and is sent to prison, only for it to turn out that the daughter had “set her father up for the fall because he wouldn’t let her go to the prom”. 

“You are known for being…” James starts to say. “Twisted??” Jeffery interrupts.

Someone from the audiences asks Jeffery to talk more about how it takes him around eight months to plan and research each book.

“At the end of the eight months I’ll have a 150-page outline,” he says, explaining to the audience that in crime writing “everything has to be explained”. 

“Emotionally it’s hard physically to do. You wake up one spring morning and you just don’t feel like killing anyone.”

A few chuckles sound from the audience, causing Jeffery to raise his eyebrows as he says “some of you didn’t laugh – that worries me”.

“This is Melbourne – I’ll explain it to you later,” James says in quick reply with a slight in-the-know nod of his head.

Looking out into the audience, James winds downs the session with a final “writing in the dark” reference. The lights over the audience quickly brighten as the stage lights dim. The two writers lean forward to talk, and then stand to finish talking in the stage shadows.

Around 15 minutes later James walks into the bright sunlight of an unusually warm August day. He sits down with a few friends in the warm courtyard, slides a large pair of sunglasses onto his face and scans the busy courtyard for friends, acquaintances and other writers.

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