Mark Rubinstein's 'The Storytellers' is an amazing collection of author interviews

Sep. 17—It's not surprising thriller writer Mark Rubinstein never runs out of ideas. After flunking out of the University of Michigan twice, he enlisted and by chance ended in medical corps tending to paratroopers. Intrigued and fulfilled by those experiences, he revisited undergrad school after the service, went to medical school, became a physician and later a still-practicing psychiatrist.

There's no shortage of potential ideas from that resume. Indeed, Rubintein's publications include the "Mad Dog" crime trilogy featuring surgeon Roddy Dolan, nonfiction efforts like "Bedlam's Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope," and regular journalistic contributions to outlets like the Huffington Post.

In particular, though, his latest nonfiction, "The Storytellers," also fuels serious inspiration and insight into the craft of penning thrillers. "The Storytellers" consists of interviews Rubinstein conducted with 43 crime novelists over a five-year period for a Huffington Post series called "Writer to Writer."

They include Lee Child, Sue Grafton, Don Winslow, Michael Connelly, Lisa Gardner, Patricia Cornwell, Ian Rankin, Harlan Coben, Sara Paretsky, Greg Iles, Karin Slaughter and ... well, it's almost a slight to not list all the writers because each is decidedly A-list in both critical esteem and sales.

Rubinstein discusses and signs "The Storytellers" Tuesday as the latest guest on our "Read of The Day" book club series held in partnership with Bank Square Books in Mystic. The event is a live, masks-required event at the bookstore.

Quite a collection

Interestingly, Rubinstein had amassed a substantial supply of material before the idea of a book occurred to him.

"At one point, I looked on my computer and realized I had over 300 author interviews," says Rubinstein, whose cheery, friendly tone comes as a surprise after seeing the stern and even ominous "author image" supplied by his publishing company. "Obviously, not all the writers I'd interviewed were suspense authors, and some of them, like Harlan Coben and Patricia Cornwell, I interview three or four or even five times. So some of the chapters in the book are a melding of multiple conversations.

"Anyway, I finally realized this could be a good book. I put it together before letting my agent know. When it was ready, I told him about it at dinner, and he said, 'Give it to me.' Two months went by, and I didn't hear anything, and I figured, 'OK, maybe not' — and then I got a call saying we had an offer."

Most any fan of the crime, thriller and suspense genres will be captivated by "The Storytellers." Rubinstein is a gifted interviewer — as much a fan as he is a fellow writer — and manages to not only cover anticipated territory about the creative process and the publishing business but also allows the authors to express their own personalities and individual anecdotes or details integral to their careers.

Certain recurring motifs seem to delight Rubinstein, possibly because they apply to his own book-writing process.

"Procrastination is a big issue with me," Rubinstein says. "If anything, these interviews confirmed that I'm not alone. Scott Turow told me that the refrigerator is literally as far away as you can get from his writing desk. But he continually finds himself sticking his head in the refrigerator, looking for something to eat. Anything to keep from working. I definitely know what he's talking about."

By far, most of the writers in the book are very pleasant and helpful, Rubinstein says. "Most are genuinely happy to be interviewed and show a willingness to help each other out; there's no sense of competition." He alludes to Cornwell and Finder volunteering to provide blurbs for his own books and says many of the interviews ended up with dinners and ultimately to friendly, ongoing relationships.

Common traits

Another common trait about the writers he spoke with is that there's an ongoing sense of creative anxiety. "It never gets any easier," Rubinstein says. "The author might have 30 books in print, in 30 languages across the globe, but once one is finished, they wonder, 'Will I ever have another worthy idea?' I think it's a sense of anxiety that's very common to the creative."

If that observation seems reasonable given Rubinstein's additional status as a psychiatrist, he acknowledges that training comes in handy. "As a shrink, for example, I really appreciated talking to with Grafton. She's passed now, and very much missed, but she told me, 'When I write, I write out of shadow.' In her artful way, she wrote about the process and her grasp of what it means to be creative and make up worlds."

Lisa Gardner wrote her first novel when she wa 17; it was published when she was 20. When Rubinstein asked how she had the self-awareness to accomplish that, she told him, "I didn't know any better!"

Rubinstein is asked if, in a similar context, whether in the course of an interview, he has inferred personality traits that set off any alarm bells.

"That a great question," he laughs. He describes his interviews with filmmaker/playwright/novelist David Mamet. "(Mamet) is a tough guy, a bit oppositional, and he didn't want to answer all my questions. He said, 'You're a psychiatrist, right?'

"And one author, who is also not in the book and shall not be named, struck me as a deep-seated narcissist who wasn't very likeable or personable. On the whole, though, I had great experiences across the board."

Rubinstein had so much quality material for "The Storytellers" that he couldn't use it all. No worries, though. There will be a revised edition and possibly more than one. "My agent told me, 'This is never going to be a bestseller, but it will be steady seller for a long time because it's a great resource for readers and writers."