Dennis Lehane to speak in Cedar Rapids Friday

Dennis Lehane says he is never short on ideas.

“Getting ideas is not the problem, ever,” he says. “When people come up to me and say I have a great idea for you, I say, ‘No, you've got a great idea for you. I don't want your idea. I don't need your idea. I don't even want to hear it … no offense.'”

“I have no clue where my ideas come from,” he adds. “I stare at a ceiling. I walk my dogs. I am in the shower, I have a dream. I probably have 50 ideas a year and most of them are crap. But you don't know it until you walk down that path.”

Lehane has walked down the path many times, and several of his ideas - 10 to be exact - have turned out to be wildly successful crime novels.

Lehane will speak at a free event Friday at the Hotel at Kirkwood, as the final author in the Out Loud! series presented by the Metro Libraries Network.

Lehane says he is looking forward to the event.

“Writers live in a vacuum and write in a vacuum so we are pitching to an imaginary reader and we are hoping we get it right,” he says. “We don't know if we get it right or not. I have no idea how many people read my books. But then you get out there at something like this and all of the sudden there is a face and someone says, ‘I really love your work,' or ‘I really love your work except for ‘Shutter Island'.'”

Fear of putting yourself out there as a writer is the biggest obstacle to publication, Lehane says.

“I think at the end of the day the final step of becoming a writer that very few people discuss is fear management. I know so many people who have written 85 percent of a novel and they stop. But you aren't going to understand where you screwed up until you get mired down in the middle.”

Lehane is finishing his next book, another - although not a sequel - in the historical realm featuring the characters of his most recent book, “Live By Night,” released October 2012. “Live By Night” has garnered several awards, including Best Novel of 2013 by the Edgar Awards, and it is about to go into production as a movie under the direction of Ben Affleck. It will be Lehane's fourth novel made into a motion picture - preceded by “Mystic River,” “Gone, Baby Gone,” and “Shutter Island.”

And while many people consider his writing cinematic, Lehane says he never has a movie in mind when writing.

“A book is a book. It's not a movie. It's not a template for a movie. It's not a screenplay. It's a book,” he says. “I have a clear, absolute 100 percent bifurcation about a book and a movie and they never cross paths when I am writing.”

Lehane does say he's been pleased with the big screen adaptation of his novels.

“I control exactly one thing and that's who I sell it to and I'm an extremely tough sell,” he says. “There are very few people on my shortlist that I'll even talk to. I don't sell to studios. I don't give control away in that regard. I give control away to certain people whose work I respect and work I am aware of. That has worked out well as a playbook for me.”

He doesn't ask to be consulted once filming starts, but he does get asked for his opinion.

“I go in with zero expectations. My theory is once I've made the leap to trust you as an artist, my job is to stay out of the way. But what happens, for whatever reason, is that I get consulted on a regular basis. But I always say at the end of the day you are the director. I will yield to your vision. It's not my book on the screen. It's your interpretation.”

While his latest book, “Live By Night,” uses Cuba as a backdrop, growing up in Boston has been a huge influence on his work, Lehane says. “Normally I am completely inspired by the city I come from,” he says. “I find it very rich and fertile dramatic territory so I don't usually have a need to stray much.”

His talk could touch on any of these topics. “I get a feel for what the audience wants just before I go on stage,” he says. “I have a lot of bullets in my holster so I can mix and match.”

Lehane says people who meet him are surprised to find that he is funny and “those people who know me are surprised that I can be so dark.”

Readers, it seems, appreciate his dark side.

If you go

What: Out Loud! Author Series Event

When: 7 p.m. Friday

Where: The Hotel at Kirkwood Center, 7725 Kirkwood Blvd. SW, Cedar Rapids

C

ost: Free, but preregister at http://bit.ly/OutLoud