‘This has been a lifetime dream of mine’
Newspaper carrier overcomes dyslexia to write novel
Ed Calkins, 63, has worked nights all his adult life. His career in newspaper distribution began when he was a boy with a bicycle. He is celebrating his retirement this weekend in a special way.
“Sunday is my last day,” Calkins said.
Saturday night, he plans to celebrate publication of a 401page novel he wrote. He will welcome guests and chat online with visitors during a virtual book release party.
For the last several years, Calkins has worked out of a distribution center in Tinley Park. While most people sleep, he stuffs newspapers into plastic bags. Then he loads hundreds of bags into a vehicle.
“I’ve been in newspapers all my life,” he said. “As a driver, it’s been 43 years.”
He has regular routes covering
Justice and Willow Springs, where he lives. He fills in covering other routes in Palos Hills, Palos Heights, Hickory Hills, Bridgeview and throughout the south suburbs, he said.
“I’m in several ZIP codes at the moment,” Calkins said. “I’m not so much a carrier as a down routes driver. I do the routes we can’t fill.”
His maternal grandfather was a distribution manager for the Southtown Economist, a predecessor of this newspaper. This publication traces its roots to 1906. Radio, television and other media gradually eroded the influence of newspapers.
“Way back when, there were distributors that had contracts for papers. They would buy them and distribute them,” Calkins said. “They were called news agencies. When newspaper boys delivered papers on bicycles, my dad had an agency.”
Paperboys once were an iconic part of American life, back when most newspapers had evening editions. Singer/songwriter Don McLean immortalized paperboys in his 1971 hit, “American Pie, Pt. 1.”
But February made me shiver With every paper I’d deliver About 15 years ago, Calkins said, he was delivering a Joliet newspaper and got to know Denise Baran-Unland, another carrier who handled several routes with other members of her family. Baran-Unland also is an author who wrote a trilogy of novels about vampires collectively known as the Bryony series.
Calkins said their friendship inspired Baran-Unland to create a character named Ed Calkins, who appears in her novels as a sort of comic relief amid a dark realm.
“Somebody told her they would like to see the back story of my character,” Calkins said. “She replied, ‘The only way that’s going to happen is if he writes it himself.’ I took up that challenge.”
The result is, “Ruthless,” a 140,000-word novel available for sale in paperback through Amazon. Calkins will host a virtual book release party via teleconference at 7 p.m. Saturday. People may register for the event at www.bryonyseries.com /registerforcalkinsday.
Calkins overcame dyslexia to write the book, he said.
“This has been a lifetime dream of mine,” he said. “I’ve tried to write novels many times. I never finished. I never felt it was worth reading.”
That is, until now. Calkins said he’s happy with how “Ruthless” turned out.
Calkins said his writing process involved dictating a story passage and recording it on his phone. He
would then transcribe the recording and use a computer’s spell check to figure out words he was unsure about.
His wife, Nancy, was featured in a front-page Daily Southtown story in 2014 when she retired after teaching art for 40 years at Brodnicki School in Justice. She created the book cover and 26 other illustrations for the novel.
About 15 years ago, she said, her husband was about two-thirds of the way through writing a book. There was only one copy of the working draft.
“He never backed it up and the computer went down and he lost everything,” she said.
Calkins said he worked on the book every day for about 18 months. Perseverance was key, he said.
“I think the primary thing is to make sure the butt hits the chair,” he said. “Your inspiration might not show up, but you have to show up and still be satisfied even if you’re not able to produce anything you’re going to use. You just have to come back the next day and basically keep at it.”
Calkins said “Ruthless” is about his vampire character, also named Ed Calkins.
“I get killed on my route,” he said. “There’s an auxiliary police officer who is pretty sure she knows who did it because she remembers pointing the gun and pulling the trigger, but what she doesn’t remember is why.”
As one would expect in a story about vampires, there are supernatural elements to the story. In “Ruthless,” the dying newspaper carrier turns into a vampire and has seven seconds to create a son before he bleeds to death. The story involves mirrors, time travel, the imagination and questions about existence, Calkins said.
A promo for Saturday’s book release event said Calkins will discuss collaborations, how to fictionalize a real person and astrophysics.
“It’s interesting when you think about how do you be a fictional character and a real person at the same time,” he said. “In the book I get to deal with beings who aren’t so sure they exist. They think they might be a figment of somebody else’s imagination.”
That sounds reminiscent of the 2006 film, “Stranger Than Fiction,” in which an IRS auditor played by Will Ferrell turns out to be a character in a novel being written by an author played by Emma Thompson.
Nancy Calkins said her husband drew from reallife experience to create a fantasy world inhabited by vampires and time travelers.
“A lot of the stories were related to people that came in and out of his life through newspapers, the other drivers,” she said. “He would come home and talk about other newspaper carriers. He was very proud of the people he worked with and what they did.”
Calkins is getting ready for his big weekend. Saturday he celebrates his book’s release and Sunday he retires. Retirement should leave him with more time to ponder existence, reality and other big concepts.
“There’s a notion, ‘I think therefore I am.’ Really, it’s just begging a question,” he said. “It’s a comprehensive, elaborate, elegant theory, really. It fits all the apparent evidence. We all seem to have that assumption.”