The life of an author on a book tour is full of contradictions: It can be exciting yet isolating, as well as busy yet lonely. For multiple-award-winning TV journalist Hank Phillippi Ryan, it is also the inspiration for her newest thriller.
Ryan, a Newton resident and well-known WHDH-TV reporter, spoke on September 10 about her writing process and her latest work, All this Could be Yours, during the title’s launch party at the West Newton Cinema.
With about 90 fans in attendance, fellow author Lisa Gardner interviewed Ryan, who gave lively answers and later answered audience questions.
Describing her writing as “Hitchcockian,” Gardner said Ryan’s latest book is “diabolical and fiendishly clever … but it’s also clearly a love letter” to booksellers, librarians, and other “book nerds.”
Ironically, Ryan got the idea for her 16th novel while on a previous book tour. She related that, as she was signing autographs at the Poison Pen Bookstore in Arizona, she included the date and location of the event on the page. Suddenly, it occurred to her that by adding this information, she was inadvertently providing a perfect alibi for someone who might commit a crime. That experience became the inspiration for the plot of All this Could be Yours.
Social media and book tours provide an author’s personal information to the public, telling fans where writers will be and when they’ll be there. Although writers want large audiences, the published schedule can also make them vulnerable.
“I really wanted you to feel what it’s like to be on book tour,” Ryan said of her protagonist, Tessa, whose family depends on her as a provider.
Ryan herself said she has never felt that she was in danger while at events, but said “there is a line.”
She and Gardner also praised independent stores like Newtonville Books, which sold their novels at the event.
“Our lives depend on independent booksellers,” said Ryan.
Writing journey
Ryan said that, as she sat at her Channel 7 desk one day about 20 years ago, she suddenly had an idea for a novel. When she told her husband, he was supportive but also asked if she knew how to write one.
She was confident that she could write, since she was an avid reader. She added, “I soon learned how hard it could be, but I was obsessed with writing it, and that became my first novel and first published novel, Prime Time,” which came out in 2007.
“It was such a spur-of-the-moment decision to write it, and it shows you what can happen if you are brave enough – and naive enough! — to follow your dreams,” she said.
Ryan has written two series and many standalone titles. When asked which protagonist is most like her, she said, “Every one of my characters is me, and every one of my characters is not me. … [But] the character that’s the very most like me is probably Charlotte McNally, in my first books. And that makes sense – she’s a TV reporter in Boston.”
Known for her own in-depth investigations, Ryan said she’d consider writing a nonfiction title “if I found the perfect topic. … Although none of my novels are my investigative stories turned into fiction … it’s only logical and wonderful that some of my experiences as an investigative reporter have been translated – loosely – into fiction.”
As for her next book, Ryan said it’s already in the works.
“It’s about a mysterious plane crash, a missing influencer, her precocious 11-year-old niece, and a fanfiction author who is searching for happy endings,” she said.
