Harlan Coben on writer’s block, working with Reese Witherspoon and his new series, Lazarus
It’s not very often you get to interview one of your favourite authors. Harlan Coben is a writer than needs no introduction, unless you’ve not been into a bookstore or had a Netflix subscription over the past decade. He’s the mind behind books (and their on-screen adaptations) such as Missing You and Fool Me Once, and now he’s written an original series for Amazon Prime, Lazarus.
Ahead of the release of his six-part series, I sat down with the American author in London to chat all things writing, grief and oh, you know, that new book he wrote with Reese Witherspoon. It just gets more iconic, honestly.
With so many novels - 35 and counting - under his belt, the author has been able to craft tense stories of suspense, thrills and twists that have us on the edge of our seat. Each series has a distinctive story, but a similar captivating appealing that leaves us hooked, shocked and unable to not binge the entire series one sitting. But where does Coben get his inspiration from?
“Fiction writing is always asking what if,” he said, “In this case, I was looking at a psychiatrist’s office across the street after I finished playing tennis, and I had taken my father-in-law there one time for severe depression, and I was thinking about all the misery that room would hold.
“Think about it in a psychiatrist’s office, day after day, week after week, year after year, where does that misery go? Does it maybe see deep into the walls? What happens when the psychiatrist dies and that misery starts to come out again. That was the what if that started Lazarus.”
The series follows Sam Claflin as Dr. Lazarus, who has to come to terms with the death of his father, and his new-found psychic ability to be able to speak to the dead, specifically those who have been murdered including his late dad (played beautifully by Bill Nighy).
So begins, the ultimate murder mystery where Lazarus only has the word of his victims - who think they’re speaking to their psychiatrist (his dad) - from their confidential sessions before their death. Talk about a head-scratcher. But at its heart, this isn’t a supernatural whodunnit or a thriller, but something far more personal for Coben.
“Lazarus is a father-son story,” he continues, “I lost my father at a young age, and I loved him dearly. And I always, the same way I think most of us, when we lose somebody, think, ‘What if they were alive one more time? What if I could speak to them one more time?’
“So that was one of the driving factors of trying to create this story, where Sam Claflin loses his father, played wonderfully by Bill Nighy, and he has the chance to see him again and what that would be like.”
Across the six hours (which I won’t spoil here), Lazarus debates whether or not it’s a blessing or a curse to see your loved ones again, after they’ve passed. Is it haunting and chilling or is it something wonderful that we desperately crave?
“Where I end up never matters,” he replies, when I ask him where he landed with the conundrum by the end of writing the show, “I always like to raise the questions and let the story tell itself and let people decide. I never like easy answers. I hate black and white. I like the greys, and I hope the story is working in the greys.”
This isn’t the only project that Coben has been working on either, he’s also collaborated with all-round icon and champion of books, Reese Witherspoon. The duo have teamed up together to write a thriller, Gone Before Goodbye, Witherspoon’s first adult novel and Coben’s first collaborative one. But what was that process like?
“It was so much fun,” he laughs, “Reese came to me with an idea, and I was a little skeptical just because I’m happy to collaborate on TV or movies, I’m not so happy to collaborate on novels.
“But Reese pitched me the idea and I’m like, ‘Oh, dang, that’s pretty good.’ And so Reese and I became obsessed and worked on Gone Before Goodbye, it comes out very soon.” Reader, it is out now.
Of course, as a writer myself I couldn’t not ask Coben about his writing process and advice for new or aspiring authors. Though, he wouldn’t give advice to his younger self, as all of his mistakes have been important career lessons.
“I would never give myself any advice because all the mistakes that I made - and I made a lot of them - are leading me here talking to you,” he says, “So I don’t want to, you know… Sometimes the mistakes can actually end up being good. A lot of things that went wrong early in my career have ended being good. So don’t worry so much about that.
“The biggest key to writing is to just write. Get off the internet, stop doing research, stop talking to people about it, stop going to coffee shop and discussing it. Sit your butt in a chair and write.
“Writers have to write. You can always fix a bad page. You can’t fix no pages. So get it down and then fix it.”
One of the biggest plagues of writers is procrastination - the lure of a quick scroll, tackling that pile of laundry or watching paint dry rather than actually getting the words down. But this also goes hand in hand with writer’s block.
For me, this manifests as sitting down, looking at the page and nothing coming out. I have a plan, I have notes, I’ve done research, but it’s like a mental wall presents itself and I simply cannot break through - well, not for a while anyway. Does this ever go away?
“I have discovered writer’s block is part of the process,” Coben continues, “but I don’t use it as an excuse not to write. So I will then torture myself and torment myself and I’m filled with self-hatred and doubt saying, ‘Get out, get back to it. You know you can do it.’
“I don’t turn a TV on. I don’t start scrolling. I make myself sit there and look at the screen until my eyes start to bleed or I start to write. I don’t let myself ever off the hook. There’s always a voice in my head that’s saying, ‘You should be writing’.”
And on that note, I’m putting my phone down and getting back to it.
Lazarus is available to stream now on Prime Video. If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe for more!