The Melbourne author who quit writing, then signed a six-figure deal with Paramount

This dad spent ten years living in St Kilda, trying to make it as a full-time author. But just as he was about to give up on writing as a career, something surprising happened that would see him land a six-figure book and film deal with Paramount.

Crime writer Adrian McKinty had quit writing when a US literary agent told him to write one last story that went on to be a smash. Picture: David Geraghty

Adrian McKinty wants to make one thing clear. He loves St Kilda and always will.

The writer born in Northern Ireland’s Carrickfergus now lives in New York and is riding a wave of acclaim for his novel The Chain.

But for 10 years from 2008, St Kilda was home and even now, 18 months after he left to return to the US, the place tugs at him.

“Really, it broke my heart to leave,” McKinty admits.

What’s remarkable about his undiluted affection for St Kilda is that it was there he hit a professional low, reaching a point where he questioned what he was doing with his life and whether it was fair on his family to continue writing.

The author of the Dead trilogy featuring the Irish antihero Michael Forsythe, the Sean Duffy series set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles of the 1980s, and several stand-alone novels was immensely popular with critics and his core of fans.

But that hadn’t brought him an income that took the financial pressure off his wife, academic and author Leah Garrett.

And despair edged closer when the family’s rental house was sold from underneath them and the family — McKinty, Garrett and their two daughters — had to move out quickly.

That’s when he decided to quit writing.

Most of us spend our lives trying to work out what we’re good at — and often failing — but McKinty knew he could write well yet there seemed no way to transform that talent into a reliable living.

And that’s why the author with Ned Kelly, Spinetingler and Hugo literary awards came to be driving an Uber — “I was dreadful, just dreadful” — and bartending.

“My decision was to get my teaching certification in Australia,” he says.

The Chain by Adrian McKinty.

“When we moved to Oz, I’d decided to write full time and not do anything else, whereas in America, Leah was a teacher, I was a teacher and the writing was a bonus.

“It was unlucky that my career started to stall just after I’d decided to write full-time and I had no fallback income. My plan was to spend a year doing odd jobs and get my certification and then teach for a year or two and then maybe I’d get back into writing.”

But while McKinty thought he was done, others refused to accept it. Garrett wanted him to keep writing and she wasn’t alone.

“I wrote a blog post saying that I was giving up writing full time, then I got a call from another author, Don Winslow,” McKinty explains.

“He wanted to know if I was serious. I told him I’d tried my best and it hadn’t worked. He asked if he could give some of my books to his friend and agent, Shane Salerno. I said, ‘Sure’. Two weeks later, Shane called me at midnight. He’d read my books and declared I was a big talent. I told him it was too late and hung up on him. He called back. I hung up on him again. He called again.

“He asked, ‘If you had to write an American story, what would it be?’

“As it happened, I’d had a sketch of an American story in my notebook. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my daughters and that brought me back to this idea. An ordinary woman’s child is kidnapped by a criminal organisation and to get her daughter back, she has to pay a ransom and kidnap someone’s else child to replace hers on ‘the chain’. And the next person has to kidnap someone else and so on. Forever, like a chain letter.”

Salerno told him to write it but McKinty’s mind was made up. No way.
Salerno said: “What if I wired $10,000 into your account tonight? Would that tide you over?”

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McKinty said he was going to bed. Salerno told him to forget about bed and write the first chapter.

“I found myself at my laptop writing the first two chapters of The Chain. I sent them to him and I got a call at 4am. He said, ‘These are great, Adrian, but you really should try to get some sleep. You have a book to write’.

“I woke seven hours later wondering if it had been a dream. But then our bank called to say that $10,000 had been deposited into our account and I knew that I was going to have to write this bloody book for this crazy American agent.”

McKinty is naturally cautious, even pessimistic, so the speed with which The Chain took off surprised him.

“I had no bloody clue until the Frankfurt Book Fair. Shane was enthusiastic, of course, but no one else had read it. It wasn’t until they told me that they had sold the book to 30-plus countries that I thought, ‘Crikey, I might have something here’.”

Something indeed. Salerno negotiated a six-figure book deal and a film deal with Paramount; The Chain entered the New York Times bestseller list, and it was one of four books listed by Jimmy Fallon for his Tonight Show’s Summer Reads book club.

THE CHAIN(HACHETTE, RRP $32.99) IS OUT NOW

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