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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.”
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