PORTLAND, Maine — When the pandemic first hit and people went into lockdown, they typically had one of two reactions: they were adrift, floundering in a strange new world and unable to get much of anything done, or they became more productive than ever before.
John Connolly, the best-selling writer who divides his time between Maine and his native Ireland, fell into the latter camp.
"I never had so much time without distraction,” he said as we discussed "The Furies," the latest novel in his series about a private detective, Charlie Parker, who works mostly in Maine.
"I ended up writing ‘The Furies' [and] finishing another novel — writing a script for a film of 'The Book of Lost Things,' starting the sequel to that novel, and then I wrote a history of genre fiction," Connolly said. "I suddenly had all this time that I didn’t have before."
At this point, I interrupted Connolly and told him bluntly he was putting the rest of us to shame.
"Yeah, what did you do, Caldwell, during lockdown?" he asked with mock indignation. “Did you learn how to cook? Did you make muffins?"
It wasn’t all work. One of the good things that came out of the pandemic for Connolly was the realization he didn’t have to spend as many days traveling to promote his books, that he could spend more time with the kids — more time with the dogs.
"We were all cloistered together,” he recalled with a smile, “and I kind of went, 'You know, I actually quite like these people.'"