Authors speak about works

The lives of writers, from little morning rituals to career choices, are often rich sources of inspiration.

Author John Grisham and anthropologist and writer Kathy Reichs have each mined their career experiences extensively to create their best-selling novels.

The authors spoke to a full house Thursday night in Memorial Hall as the first keynote address of the N. C. Literary Festival.

The festival continues this weekend. All events are free and open to the public, although keynote speeches require tickets.

Both discussed the way their careers influenced their writing.

Grisham was a practicing criminal lawyer in Mississippi for about 10 years before he put pen to paper and crafted his first novel.

When he heard a 12-year-old girl testify in court about being raped, he felt moved to write.

“It was one of the most gut-wrenching things I’ve ever sat through in my life,” he said.

Although Grisham had never written anything but legal briefs before, he started writing on his legal pad.

“The idea of capturing this story through the eyes of a young small-town lawyer in Mississippi became an obsession,” he said.

This became the basis for his first novel “A Time to Kill.” After almost two years and a round of rejections, it was published in a run of 5,000 copies.

Grisham bought 1,000 himself and expected to sell them all in his hometown. But only about 100 sold at his release party.

“I was furious! I took names of all the people who didn’t show up!” he said.

After this, he gained national fame with his work “The Firm.”

Grisham said he pulls inspiration for his work from his career and from things around him, such as newspapers.

“The material is endless, and I just steal,” he said.

Averaging about one novel a year, Grisham said he first makes detailed outlines and then fleshes them out. But he said he is always anxious to work on his next project.

“I have a hard time writing slow,” he said, before the lecture. “There’s just so many books I want to write.”

Reichs is a forensic anthropologist who splits her time between North Carolina and Montreal, just as her main character Temperance Brennan does. The UNC-Charlotte professor’s life inspired the hit TV series “Bones.”

While working on the case of a serial killer in Canada, Reichs discovered the killer had divided a body into many parts, showing a knowledge of anatomy.

This made her wonder what type of person the killer was, and that led to her first book “Déjá Dead.”

“I take the core idea from a case and spin it off into the ‘what if,’” she said of her process.

The idea for her second book stemmed from a case involving cult-motivated killings.

And in every book, Reichs said she tries to cover different kinds of science, not just different stories.

Even studying bugs can produce interesting stories, as different insects in dead bodies relate to different facts about the deceased.

“Maggots really are cool little things from the viewpoint of anthropologists!” she said.


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