The Suffolk Times

Updated: 9/3/2009 - 4:04 AM

Trading comedy for a dark side
Former funny woman pens a novel that confronts suicide and alcoholism
BY JULIE LANE |STAFF WRITER 6 comments below

Randee Daddona photo
Long-time comedian Teri Coyne has turned to serious novel writing, but it's not without its own light moments, the author said.

Some readers would call "The Last Bridge" a dark novel and be surprised that it emanated from the mind of Greenporter Teri Coyne, who for years made her living as a comedian. She calls it truth.

"The world is dark and bad things happen to people," Ms. Coyne said, and often they don't tell their stories, assuming no one wants to hear their truths and feeling somehow they're to blame for what happened to them.

Alex, her main character, isn't very likable at the outset, the 48-year-old author said. She visits the abuse she suffered as a child on others, but as readers come to understand the forces that shaped Alex, their opinions of her change, Ms. Coyne said.

Ten years in the writing, "The Last Bridge" started out as a short story about a woman returning to her Ohio home after a 10-year absence and after her mother's suicide. She finds a note that reads simply, "He isn't who you think he is."

The author didn't know where that opening would take her.

"I sort of wrote to find out who is this person," Ms. Coyne said. "You feel like you're channeling something you're not in control of," she said of the writing process.

'I was trying to answer the question: Are we a product of our experiences or of our choices?' author Teri Coyne

She said the book is not autobiographical. But Ms. Coyne noted that she did grow up with an alcoholic father. In learning the impact of his addiction on her life, she came to understand the experiences that led him down the path he took, she said.

"I was trying to answer the question: Are we a product of our experiences or of our choices?" She has come down firmly on the side of the latter, deciding that how people deal with their life experiences is what ultimately shapes them.

While she describes the writing process as "solitary and very personal," it's something she has always loved. At 18, she came to New York University from her home in Pittsburgh to study acting. She found her comedic voice when she was given a choice between writing a term paper for a course on comic performing or putting together a five-minute stand-up routine.

"It was exhilarating," she said. But it's not easy.

"I had really good moments, but it was really rough," she said. "It's extremely competitive and it's still not the easiest business for women." She walked away for about two years, then returned to the comedy circuit.

"Stand-up was in my blood," she said.

But all the time she was working the clubs, she had other jobs -- mostly in computer technology -- because she wasn't wedded to being a starving performer.

Now that writing is her main passion, she is exploring the idea of giving up her Queens apartment to live full time in Greenport. She discovered the village on a visit to the East End prior to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and said, "Oh, my God, this is beautiful." She purchased her home the day after the attacks.

She's already working on a second "lighter" novel about the relationship between an older woman and a younger man who meet in Bali. Her love for travel leads her to think she'll be Bali-bound to add the realism of the scene to the novel.

"I won't be setting another book in Ohio," she joked. "Only exotic places."

jlane@timesreview.com

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