Not so hard to find: Baker turns to literary heroes, music and life to craft ‘A Good Man’

By Diana Nollen

Filmmakers are knocking on Larry Baker's door again.

His third novel, “A Good Man,” is barely off the presses and already Blue Heron International Pictures is in preproduction for a documentary film involving Baker, 62, of Iowa City. He will write the screenplay and help direct “A Good Man: Fact and Fiction.” Emmy-winning actor and Grinnell College graduate Peter Coyote has signed on to narrate.

Most of the action in the novel takes place in St. Augustine, Fla., where Baker lived for three years, so most of the filming will take place in Florida.

Baker says the film is not really about him. Instead, it will look at the process of writing, publishing and selling a book. Brad Gooch of New York City, author of “Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor” (Little, Brown, 2009), has agreed to discuss his book in the film, since Baker draws on O'Connor themes and characters in “A Good Man.”

Baker's first novel, “The Flamingo Rising,” also caught filmmakers' attention, and was turned into a Hallmark Hall of Fame television movie aired in 2001.

Pretty heady stuff for the two-time former Iowa City Council member who has no formal training as a writer, but does have a Ph.D. in English and teaches history part-time at Kirkwood Community College.

He says reading is fundamental to writing. That's the advice he gives students.

“You have to learn how to read. That will teach you how to write,” he says by phone from his home office. “You absorb style, you absorb technique by reading and enjoying it. That's how I learned to write.”

He especially favors University of Iowa Writers' Workshop alum Flannery O'Connor and 19th century American writers: “Dickinson for poetry, Crane, the later works of Fitzgerald.”

He pays tribute to his favorite authors in subtle and not-so-subtle ways in “A Good Man.” Subtle: Character Nora James has a cat named Pitty-Sing, which also is the name of a cat in O'Connor's book, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” Not so subtle: his book title. References to all of his favorite authors are scattered throughout the book, as well.

His first draft took about 11 months to complete, and was finished Jan. 30, 2008. With revisions, the final version was ready for print July 15, and was published through Ice Cube Books in North Liberty.

Baker is a disciplined craftsman. He spends about four hours a day, Monday through Friday, writing at the computer in his home office.

“It's the only time I know I've got the house to myself,” he says with a laugh.

His approach to writing has evolved since penning his first novel, published in 1997.

“My writing process has changed because you're more self-conscious about what you did wrong in the other books,” he says. “With the first novel, I just wrote it down. It came out of nowhere.

“This book, in particular, was fun and difficult to write, because it's a book about stories, so I'm using other people's stories in my work. The main character was created by two other artists: Harry Chapin and Flannery O'Connor,” he says. “I took a character from each of them and morphed them into a single character who is still the same character they created.”

Harry springs from O'Connor's tale, “The River,” and also from the broke-down, alcoholic morning DJ in Chapin's song, “W.O.L.D.”

“I think both of those people would say, ‘That's my person,' and at the same time, that's mine, too. It goes back to the theme of a story-within-a-story,” says Baker, who took care to secure permission and acknowledge the stories and photos borrowed from others.

A complex tale of hard living, regrets and redemption, some of the characters are based on people Baker has known, some are drawn from “The Flamingo Rising” and some are facets of his own personality. And the dog Bobby Lee is named for one of his dogs. “I threw that in there to make my children happy,” he says.

His family gets other nods, as well, including a thank-you to his wife, Ginger Russell. Their daughter, Jennifer, 23, took the author photo and their son, Ben, 24, is the little boy strolling the beach, holding his dad's hand, on the book cover.

A perfect photo for a book about memories, walks along the beach, family relationships and the call of the ocean.