When E. Lynn Harris answers the phone for our scheduled interview, I’m bowled over before he says anything more than hello. He has a voice that sounds like melted chocolate tastes — the deep rich tones of a radio announcer made all the more irresistible by a faint southern accent. I’ve already decided that I could spend all day on the phone with him.
But more than the allotted 30 minutes in this bestselling author’s day is impossible. Harris is not only busy with the final touches to his latest novel Any Way the Wind Blows, due out in July, but he’s also working on a memoir, and the screenplay to the remake of the 1976 African-American cult favourite Sparkle. And Ever since Doubleday created an E. Lynn Harris website (www.elynnharris.com) on the publication of his New York Times bestselling novel, Not a Day Goes By, Harris has been deluged by a staggering number of messages from his devoted fans. “Just today, I’ve got 470 e-mails to answer,” he tells me with a chuckle, “and when I’m on tour, it can be thousands a week!” What is remarkable is not the number of e-mails he receives, rather, that he answers them all himself. “It sometimes takes me two to three weeks to answer but everyone gets a reply eventually and I always apologize if it’s late.”
It was Harris’s humble beginnings as a writer that instilled in him an abiding appreciation and respect for the people who make his success possible. In 1991 Harris completed his first novel, Invisible Life, after a particularly difficult period in his own life. He had quit his job selling computer software for a small firm and was diagnosed with clinical depression. “It was hard. I was losing a lot of friends to the AIDS epidemic and I really wanted my life to make an impact.” He started writing Invisible Life as a kind of therapy. “I was always a good letter writer but writing was not an option as a career in Little Rock [Arkansas, where Harris grew up]. Words always struck me as powerful; they could take you to a completely different place.”
When the book was completed, Harris could not get a publisher or an agent. He took to selling the book from the trunk of his car. He focused his efforts on black-owned beauty salons where he felt he might have an audience. Not daunted by the apparent lack of interest from the publishing industry, Harris was convinced that he had written something special by the overwhelming reactions of the people who read the book. After seven months, Harris landed an agent and signed a book deal with Doubleday, who had heard about this self-publishing phenomenon. With over one million copies of his books now sold, Harris knows that his success is thanks to his fans.
After six books, his fans remain just as devoted. One woman who arrived at a signing came with a Tupperware container full of “a whole southern meal,” Harris laughs, “sweet potato pie, fried chicken, the whole thing.” He was wary at first to eat it but succumbed later in his hotel room. The meal was so good that Harris returned the container with a note of thanks. Even more recently, while on a vacation in Vancouver, BC, he and a friend were walking back to their hotel from a restaurant when they stopped to ask a young man waiting at a bus stop if they were heading in the right direction. At first the man answered casually, but then he recognized Harris. “His eyes got as big as plates and he said, ‘Oh my God, you’re E. Lynn Harris.’ So we invited him to join us for drinks and we had a great time. I’ll always remember Vancouver for making me feel so good.”
From people on park benches to the likes of Toni Braxton, Harris’s fan base is so diverse that it’s hard to find a category broad enough for him. In fact, it’s so hard that “What genre does E. Lynn Harris write in?” was the $64,000 question on an episode of the hit TV game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. The media have often called his work “African-American romance,” but he prefers to think of himself as an urban chronicler. Harris describes his books as having “a bit of love, a bit of conflict, family and friends.” His stories focus on real-life conflict, triumph and resolution in a funky, upper-class urban setting.
But in the end, the answer to the $64,000 question is … it doesn’t really matter. Whether you call it romance or a recipe for pea soup, Harris’s writing is intoxicating. It’s impossible not to be hooked from the first chapter to the last. The most potent element, aside from his sexy characters and oftentimes laugh-out-loud dialogue, is the glimpse you get at a life that isn’t your own. Reading his books is like looking in people’s windows at night when they have their lights on, or sneaking a peek in the medicine cabinets at a party. You have the guilty pleasure of seeing things that would normally be hidden from view. And according to Harris himself, “I guarantee you a great, great ride when you get there.”
Interview reprinted with permission. Copyright Random House Canada.
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