By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Little Harriet Ann Sablosky used to retreat to the hayloft in the barn behind her rural Indiana home to read Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes mysteries. When she grew up, she wanted to be either a detective or write her own mystery novels.
That was back in the 1960s.
Now Harriett has grown up, and as Hank Phillippi Ryan she’s published 10 mysteries and thrillers. Ryan may not have been a detective, but she worked as an investigative journalist during a 43-year award-winning career.
What would little Harriet think of her grown self’s work?
Ryan laughs at the question. Yes, her younger self would approve, the writer said in a recent telephone interview. “What I loved about books when I was a kid was that a smart author would tell a story that would keep you turning the pages and then surprise you, in a fair way.”
The reader, Ryan said, would realize: “‘I could have figured that out.’ But the author was more clever than I was.”
That’s the same effect she strives for in her own novels.
Ryan will be the featured guest at the Wood County District Public Library’s Crime Solvers’ Weekend, March 22 and 23. She will speak at an after-hours event Friday, March 22, 7 p.m. in the library’s atrium. Free tickets are available at the library.
“It’s such a joy” to be able to get out and meet her readers, Ryan said. Writing is a solitary pursuit. Reading is a solitary activity. “When I get to be with readers and writers, that’s when we get to share how wonderful this experience is. My books are not fully realized until someone reads them.”
Ryan came to writing books mid-life. She is an investigative at WHDH-TV, 7News, in Boston.
During her career she’d never ventured into mystery writing, she said, because she could never come up with a good plot. “That’s a problem if you’re trying to write a mystery,” she said. “So that dream got put in the background.”
Then in 2004, she was at work at channel 7, and a story occurred to her. She came home and announced to her husband: “I’ve got this good idea for a mystery.”
The idea turned out to be her first novel, “Prime Time,” about, no surprise, a female TV investigative journalist working in Boston.
“It wasn’t as if I was thinking and working on it and trying to come up with an idea, it just presented itself. It was such a perfect idea.”
As a reporter she knows a good story when she encounters one. “I was just compelled to write this book.” She did, and it won an Agatha Award as best first novel.
The ideas haven’t stopped presenting themselves. Her 11th novel, “Murder List,” is due out in August, and the 12th is already in the works. She’s getting ready, she said, to ink a contract for two more beyond that. Her most recent is the thriller “Trust Me.”
Writing mysteries and thrillers is akin to her work as an investigative journalist. As a reporter she’s always looking for “a compelling character and problem that needs to be solved.”
There are “bad guys” who get what’s coming.
“In the end, you want to change the world a little bit and get some justice.”
And, Ryan added, “as a reporter and a crime fiction author I need to enchant you, entertain you, educate you. As a writer I want to keep you riveted to the page. I want you to miss your stop on your train because you’re reading my book.”
She said she doesn’t worry about keeping her work fresh, the stories do that for her.
“I am telling you a story you can’t resist,” she said. “Every story is brand new. That’s the joy of it — coming up with a story that’s brand new. … It comes out fresh when I sit down at the computer.”
That’s not to say she isn’t diligent about her craft.
Ryan constantly is asking herself what could be more interesting, more engaging, more entertaining, than what she’s already put on the page.
“I think intensely about how to make it the best book it could be, word by word, sentence by sentence. I’m in it to tell a great story.”
She’s also interesting in sharing her own story. “I’m the poster child for following your dreams at mid-life, and I love to talk to people about that as well.”
For the first decade or so she was writing fiction, she continued working full-time as a reporter.
“That was an incredible juggle,” said Ryan, who continues to work part-time in journalism.
“Cooking was the first to go.”
Her husband, who has his own demanding career as an attorney, lived on “carry-out salmon,” she said.
“I just worked all the time. For the first six, seven years of being an author, I took no vacations. I took all my vacation time to write. We gave up having dinner parties and going to movies. I’d come home from Channel 7 and write, and my husband was completely supportive of it.”
She recalls that while writing “Prime Time,” she started to have doubts.
She called her mother and told her: “I’m not sure this is going to work. I’m not sure I can do all these things”
Her mother responded: “You will if you want to.”
Ryan realized she needed to pursue her passion, her desire, her obsession to write the book.
“We all do what we want to and make it happen, and I made it happen.”
People will tell her she “sacrificed” for her dual career as a mystery writer and journalist.
“I don’t look at is as sacrifice. I look at it as I win. I succeeded. I followed a dream.”
