Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Larry Brill. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Larry thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?
I spent the first half of my adult life as a TV news anchor. Nearly 30 years in four different markets. Somewhere in the late ’90s, as was our habit on Friday night that coincided with a payday, the crew where I worked in Austin went out for drinks after the 10 pm newscast. In a comfortably dark and quiet corner of a local bar, five or six of us, cameramen, producers, technicians, and talent, began sharing some of the odd experiences of our various newsrooms past. It became a game of Can You Top This?
One cameraman would say, “At my last station, we had a weather guy so dumb that he…(fill in the blank).”
The newscast director would jump in with, “That’s nothing. I once worked with an idiot reporter who actually…(fill in the blank)”.
On and on we would go around the table, and frequently somebody would stop and say, “I’ve got so many stories, I ought to write a book about them someday.” Or “Yeah. When I get time, I’m going to write a book someday.”
Well, I did.
The result was my first successful novel, “Live at Five”. It uses many of the experiences I and my friends survived in small TV news markets, putting them into the story of KDOA—a small news operation halfway between Fresno and Hell. Bakersfield, California.
Larry, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I suppose the best place to start is to confess I was once considered the WORST writer in America. It was 1994 and I won the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. It is the renowned, satirical competition to intentionally write the worst opening sentence to an imaginary novel named for Sir Bulwer-Lytton who penned the immortal words, “It was a dark and stormy night…” I think I was born a storyteller. I dabbled in fiction growing up, writing stories that were a total rip-off of the Hardy Boys books, or Esther Forbes’ “Johnny Tremain.” That storytelling addiction led me to journalism as editor of the high school newspaper and a degree at San Jose State University. While my first love was fiction, my college professor convinced me I was perfectly suited for TV news reporting. He also mentioned it was a career that would actually pay the bills after college. Nowadays the difference between TV news and fiction doesn’t seem so large.
After a long, award-winning, run as a reporter and nightly news anchor, I was burned out as the 2020 decade started and began to get serious about writing humorous fiction, starting with my experiences in broadcasting. I like to think I have my own, personal genre and I call it Literary Snark. I have published four novels now, two contemporary and two historical novels. All of them written from the heart as funny, feel-good fiction.
When I wrote my third novel “Déjà vu All Over Again”, I saw it as a coming-of-age story for folks obsessed with their younger days. My good friend Scott Semegran, an award-winning novelist himself, told me that no, the lead characters were romantically attached in a way that clearly made it a romance novel. No bodice ripping required.
Ha! I disagreed. So to settle the matter I submitted it in the romance category of the Independent Book Publishers’ Ben Franklin Awards. Sure enough, it earned the gold medal for Romance.
After writing my first novel “Live at Five”, a satirical skewering of my days in TV news, I was reading a book about the birth and development of news reporting in colonial America when I came across a reference to fellows in old England known as “Patterers.” They would set up on street corners of London and recite the news of the day in order to sell the audience books, stationary, and other items. I realized that was my life, in an entirely different century. So I wrote “The Patterer”, the story of how Leeds Merriweather creates the business of news performance as a means to make money from advertisers.
Summing up my approach to writing, I like to quote Oscar Wilde, who said “Life is too important to be taken seriously.”
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
True story: Not too many months before I won the Ben Franklin Award for Best Romance Novel from the Independent Book Publishers Association, I went into my local bank to make a deposit and I knew the teller, Pam, from years of banking there.
I mentioned that I hadn’t seen her around for several months and I hoped she and her husband had been off traveling and having fun. She replied that no, actually she had been hospitalized and then stuck at home recovering from thyroid surgery.
Then she went to the back and came out with a copy of my novel “Déjà vu All Over Again.” She asked me to autograph it.
She said, “While I was recovering I had nothing better to do so I bought your book.” Cringe. She went on to say that the story got her laughing. She laughed and laughed and that novel (and subsequently my three others) helped her get through her convalescence.
Making a difference with just one book makes it all worthwhile.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
We seem to be in a very turbulent period in our country’s history. It is also a bit scary and downright depressing at times. So I want to help people escape, if only for a while, and smile while they are doing it.
Contact Info:
- Website: larrybrill.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/larrybrill
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larrybrill
- Twitter: @larbrill
- Youtube: Austin Liti Limits
- Other: [email protected] www.blacktiebooks.com