Fame & Fortune: James Lee Burke Wealth of life experiences brings author big payoff
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Burke: I had a funny publishing career. I wrote all the time while I taught. I was one of those guys who remind me of an old Jewish expression: "You should be rich twice and go broke three times." I published three novels in the early part of my career and they did well critically but they were what is called "midlist books," and that's not good, it really works against you. My next book, "The Lost Get-Back Boogie," I couldn't sell. It was rejected by 111 editors over a nine-year period. That was the bad time; there were 13 years in the middle of my career when I could not sell anything in hardback. I don't know how many books and short stories I wrote, but I had to relearn that old lesson to work a day at a time and not worry about it, it's fate. You send it out and let your higher power be the judge of it.

Bankrate: I guess the punch line was that it went on to be nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

Burke: That's right. You know that book today is translated all over the world and has been republished numerous times. I cut it by 80 pages from the original.

Bankrate: When did you know that you would be able to support yourself as a writer?

Burke: I knew that with the auction for "Black Cherry Blues." That was the first major commercial success I had. I'd written two books in the Dave Robicheaux series, but they were midlist books, we couldn't live off what they earned, but the third one we said let's put it up for auction. I was amazed: six companies bid on it and the auction was very big. That was it, I knew it. In the same year, the Guggenheim Foundation gave me a fellowship. I had applied for 15 years and they came through, which gave me a year off to write the next book, "Morning for Flamingos." That allowed me to quit teaching. We had children in college and it allowed me to quit teaching and buy a modest home in Montana and we were off and running.

Bankrate: That freed you up for book tours as well.

Burke: Yes. Let me tell you, touring is the hardest thing one will ever do. I developed vertigo really bad about 12 years back. I have violent attacks, I hit the deck. It's triggered by stress and causes dilation of the blood vessels in the brain and really puts you out of action. My hand was seizing up when I was signing books. It came back two years ago and I said -- that's it. It's your body telling you.

Bankrate: Is there anything you would do differently, looking back?

Burke: Not really. I wrote with more light as I grew older, but maybe that's just the process that an author goes through. I always tried to remember Hemingway's words:  "A writer must have the probity of a priest of God. A writer is honest or dishonest in the same way that a woman is chaste or unchaste. Once a writer has done a piece of dishonest writing, he is never again the same, and once writing has become his greatest love as well as his greatest vice, only death can separate him from it, and the country he will write about will always be the country that is in his heart." Can you imagine a statement like that? It says everything at one time.