The table was elegantly set with floral plates and festive napkins but, at 9 o’clock on a Monday morning, Harlan Coben served a sloppy joe exactly as it was meant to be: on a bed of wax paper, accompanied by pickle spears and potato chips.
Before we get into Coben’s 38 thrillers (many of them No. 1 best sellers) and numerous television shows (13 on Netflix alone), it must be said that the sandwich we split at his house in Ridgewood, N.J., was not the stuff of school cafeterias (ground beef meets hamburger bun). This was a New Jersey sloppy joe: a triple-decker tower of rye stuffed with turkey, roast beef, Swiss cheese, coleslaw and Russian dressing, the official sandwich of Essex County — at least according to me and Coben, both proud natives.
Therefore it was the perfect delicacy to tuck into while discussing Coben’s memoir, “Plot Twist,” which comes out from Grand Central on Sept. 8. Unlike his other projects, featuring high stress situations and climactic showdowns, this one — subtitled “Life, Craft, and the Messy First Draft” — is steeped in nostalgia (not the icky kind) and unexpected writing advice.
“I was always one of those authors who said, half joking, ‘It’s all fiction,’” Coben, 64, said, taking a healthy chomp of sandwich. “What do I know about people disappearing and being killed? And then I realized, so much of what’s in the books comes directly from my childhood or things that actually happened to me.”
Aside from his height (6’4”) and his grandfather’s mob ties — Louis “Pops” Kronberg was president of a liquor union deep in “Sopranos” territory — the most notable thing about Coben’s life is its normalcy.
He lives on a leafy suburban street. He’s married to his college sweetheart, Anne, a pediatrician. They have four children, now grown, and two Havanese dogs, Winslow and Laszlo, who stormed the back door in a tumble of Ewokian charm. Coben, a Mr. Clean look-alike (minus the earring), has the affability of a dad with a whistle around his neck. As the kids would say, he gives coach.
And that’s exactly who he is in “Plot Twist”: an encouraging, slightly bossy guy nudging you to tell your own story by sharing his.
Our conversation has been edited for length, clarity and Garden State boosterism. (Bruce came up, as did the Shore and the Livingston Mall.) Before I left his house, Coben handed me an extra sandwich for the road.
Tell me how you landed on a memoir/writing advice hybrid for “Plot Twist.”
I did a master class for BBC Maestro and, over five days of taping, I learned about my process and about myself. So I thought it would be fun to write.
I always said I’d never write a memoir, but I also said I would never collaborate on a novel with anybody and then I collaborated with Reese Witherspoon. Maybe saying never is a good challenge to myself.
Anyway, I’d written two books last year and I just couldn’t turn around and do another; it was too much with TV. So I said to my publisher, Maybe I’ll do a writer’s guide, kind of like my class, and then it ended up turning into a memoir. It’s half and half, but the writing guide stuff relates to real life.
The other thing was, I’d really like to see people create more. I hope this is a motivational tool for anyone who wants to put more art in their world. Long answer.
What were the parts of your childhood that you found yourself returning to the most as you wrote?
It’s always my parents, their deaths and how that formed me. Tragedy is a hell of a teacher, unfortunately. Even though my books are thrillers, I think they reflect that.
In this Norman Rockwell suburb where you grew up, there was an undercurrent of danger — the mafia boss with the crematory in his yard, the missile control center near an elementary school. Had you realized that?
Yes and no. How different is Livingston from other places? Everybody’s got weird stuff in their life. My way of dealing with it, which I didn’t realize until I was older, was to make up stories. My TV shows take place all over the world but, with very few exceptions, my books take place here.
Why do you think that is?
One, it’s what I know. Two, it’s what fascinates me. I think New Jersey — especially Essex, Bergen and Monmouth counties — is really the battleground of the American dream. We’re between two major cities, New York and Philadelphia. We’re densely populated yet spread out. We have a little bit of a chip on our shoulders. This is where my parents, and probably your parents [yes], came for two cars, a barbecue and a basketball court. But we’re in a bubble and it’s fragile, so that’s the milieu I like to play with. The more placid a pond is, the more one pebble can cause ripples.
What piece of writing advice are you eager to turn on its head?
I think the biggest mistake is to divide things up into character, plot and setting. When you aim to satisfy one, it’s a zero sum game. If I have more character, it means my plot’s going to suck. If I have more plot, my character’s going to suck. The thing I’m trying to teach here is, it’s holistic.
The second thing is, it’s not always magic and it shouldn’t be. Every book I’m like, it’s not working. I suck. I used to be good, I’ll never finish this one in time. My wife’s heard it a million times.
How do you pull yourself out of that phase?
Get myself in the chair and write. It’s not romantic. It’s not sexy. I let myself have no other avenue.
You have strong feelings about writerly distractions. Discuss.
The only thing that counts is writing. Outlining isn’t writing. Research isn’t writing. Creating characters isn’t writing. Writing groups are great if they’re making you produce pages, but their critique of your work may be utter nonsense. Just get it down. Turn off the part of your brain that’s telling you it sucks. You have two choices when you hear that voice: You can let it paralyze you or you can let it fuel you.
How have readers responded to “Plot Twist” so far?
My kids were the first ones to read it and their reactions — I’m going to well up here — were just amazing. I was surprised at how genuinely moved and shocked, in a good way, they all were. I think they saw sides of me that they didn’t know existed. Recently when I posted about the book, my older daughter wrote something like, ‘I love this. It’s his best.’ And normally if I put a picture of myself on Instagram, the two comments would be, ‘Ew’ and ‘Can you not.’ So if no one else reads it, this was a total success for me.
What was the lowest point of your career?
I had such wonderful naïveté. I didn’t realize what a pimple on the ass of publishing I really was when I started, how small time I was, because there wasn’t any way of knowing that. Even to this day when people say, How many books did you sell in the first week? I have no idea. I don’t want to know. I never tried to keep score.
Do you ever regret not leaving New Jersey?
No. I’m not a guy who looks back too often. I’m happy where I am now.
The Garden State Parkway has service areas named for Judy Blume, Jon Bon Jovi, Connie Chung and James Gandolfini. Why not Harlan Coben?
It would be a tremendous honor, but I like to think I’m too young.
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