My friend Gary Reilly’s dedication to writing fiction left a positive spin on the word ‘obsession.’
How many writers do you know who finished 20 novels?
Gary loved stories.
Yes, sure, who doesn’t?
We are surrounded by stories before we learn to talk. We encounter stories in many forms every day—movies in theaters, movies on television, television shows, novels, short stories, on and on. The movie theater lines say it all: we love getting lost.
I had been writing fiction for nearly twenty years when I met Gary. I thought I liked stories, but I wasn’t in Gary’s league. His passion for stories was a gentle, warm intensity. He loved them in every form and at every level. He was open to being sucked into a B-movie or a pulp paperback, you name it.
When we’d meet at Europa Café in Denver, time stopped. Gary put the brakes on that evil force, made it go away. Gary’s world was uncomplicated. He wanted to talk about the movie he’d seen last night, the book or books he had just read, the movies I had seen recently, the books I had read. He stretched the entertainment value out of every book or movie—they lived with him for a long time.
He was a master at recounting plots, describing key moments in a late-night action flick or recalling a line of dialog. It may sound like he was non-discerning but that’s not the case (he loved Proust and Dickens, to name two classics). There were stories he didn’t think worked very well, but in general he was one of the more forgiving consumers of stories I’ve ever met.
Gary wrote in all genres—and wrote well: mystery-suspense, fantasy, science fiction, literary fiction, war novels (Gary was a military policeman in Vietnam). He also wrote 11 very funny novels about a Denver cab driver named Murph (Gary was a Denver cab driver for many years).
It’s been more than two years since Gary Reilly passed away and on May 28, 2013 the third of his many novels is being published. The first, “The Asphalt Warrior,” was a Denver Post best-seller. The second, “Ticket to Hollywood,” was also a Denver Post best-seller and is a finalist for the 2013 Colorado Book Awards. With the new book, “The Heart of Darkness Club,” the first three “Murph” novels are out. There is a long way to go, including eight more “Murphs” and the rest of the gold mine.
Gary liked to hold stories up to the light, study their infrastructure and think about what propelled them forward or gave them substance. He wrote a treatise on novel structure and, of course, he wrote and wrote until he got each story just right.
Ironically, Gary’s fictional hero Murph, the cab driver, contemplates the pros and cons of work. On the whole, he’d prefer not to. Murph often muses: why would anyone want to do anything? Murph reduces life to a simple motivation—once you produce enough income to pay for rent and food, what’s the point of doing anything more than that? (Murph’s adventures, however, are all about the heart he shows as a member of society; the stories hinge on his willingness to help others.) Murph, too, however is a frustrated novelist who just keeps stacking up the unpublished works.
When people hear about Gary and his alter-ego Murph, they often ask, “was Gary a frustrated writer?”
It’s a hard question to answer. Gary kept his frustrations—disappointments, if any—to himself. He was endlessly kind and generous. I would say Gary was a frustrated about not finding a publisher during his lifetime, but in no way was he a frustrated writer.
He knew his books were good.
He was sincerely, happily obsessed.
BIOGary Reilly was a writer.Simply stated, that was the essence of the man.
Born in Arkansas City, Kansas he spent his early years in Kansas and Colorado in a large Irish-Catholic family–seven brothers and sisters. The family moved to Denver where Gary attended parochial high school, graduating in 1967.
He served two years in the army, including a tour in Vietnam as a military policeman.
After discharge, Gary majored in English at Colorado State University and continued studies at the Denver campus of the University of Colorado.
All along, his overarching ambition was to write fiction. And he did, prodigiously. His first published short story, The Biography Man, was included in the Pushcart Prize Award anthology in 1979.
Later he turned to novels, several based on his army experiences. While he wrote both serious and genre fiction, his greatest invention was the character, Murph, a likable, bohemian Denver cab driver. Starting with The Asphalt Warrior, Gary cranked out eleven Murph novels.
His dedication to writing did not include self promotion. Instead of seeking agents and publishers, he focussed on his craft, writing and rewriting, polishing to perfection. He wrote well over twenty novels before he thought he was ready make his work public.
Unfortunately, he passed away in March, 2011, before he could realize that dream.
Friends and family remember Gary as a fun-loving, generous soul who always had time for other writers, helping them shape their work, getting it ready for print.
Now, through Running Meter Press and Big Earth Publishing in Boulder, Colorado, Gary Reilly’s fiction is finally coming to bookstores in Colorado and across the nation.
That world consists mostly of fares and doormen and fellow hacks from the Rocky Mountain Taxicab Company. He lives alone in his crow’s nest apartment, fries a hamburger for every meal, does his dish, then channel surfs for reruns of Gilligan’s Island.
He’s a radical minimalist.
Murph has two main goals in life. First, to earn no more from driving his cab than it takes to keep his bohemian lifestyle afloat. Second, never and under any circumstance get involved in the lives of his fares. He’s not very good with the first issue and spectacularly bad with the second.
There are ten adventures total in The Asphalt Warrior Series. The Heart of Darkness Club is third in the series.
Come prowl the mean streets of Denver with Murph and ponder the meaning of the world and all sorts of deep questions, such as:
“Why would anyone want to DO anything?”
