A Newfoundlander, through blood and heart
Screenwriter and author Perry Chafe answers reporters’ 20 questions
Ask Perry Chafe for his greatest fear and he’s quick to say it’s his creativity drying up; that he’ll suddenly wake up one morning with no more ideas.
The chances of that happening seem slim to none.
Chafe is a TV writer, producer, showrunner, author and songwriter. In the past 13 years, he has been co-creator and head writer for all six seasons of “Republic of Doyle;” executive producer and writer for Netflix/discovery’s “Frontier” starring Jason Momoa and “Caught,” a CBC series based on Lisa Moore’s novel, and has co-written songs with his JUNO Award-winning partner, Maureen Ennis of The Ennis Sisters. Chafe just stepped into the writing room for his third season as writer and an executive producer for “Son of a Critch.”
All that, and Chafe’s debut novel, “Closer By Sea,” was released through Simon and Schuster Canada May 23.
He doesn’t even experience writer’s block.
“I don’t, really, because I try to write three or four or five pages a day of anything. Sometimes it’s terrible, but you learn from it and move on to something else,” he says.
Chafe grew up around the wharf in Petty Harbour with aspirations of
becoming a fisherman before considering a teaching degree. He ended up earning a degree in history and working with the provincial museum before managing The Rooms.
As co-founder of Take the Shot Productions, Chafe says he jumped from the museums to a career in TV overnight with “Republic of Doyle,” a hit private investigator comedydrama series starring Allan Hawco and set in St. John’s, which premiered on CBC in early 2010.
“Allan and I wrote some stuff in the early 2000s, just throwing around some ideas, but ‘Republic of Doyle’ was my first experience in that world,” Chafe says. “It was quite a learning curve. After I got the hang of it, I really took to it because I felt I had a connection. Growing up, I’m sure for all of us, television was huge; it’s what we did. I watched shows like ‘The Rockford Files’ and ‘WKRP’ and ‘Magnum P.I.’ and ‘Columbo,’ so for ‘Republic of Doyle,’ I was able to study those again. I studied creative writing a little bit with anything I could get my hands on, and just sort of took it from there. I learned the process through a trial by fire.”
Chafe says he had been thinking of writing a comingof-age novel for a while and wanted to set it at a pivotal time in Newfoundland and Labrador history: 1991, the year before the cod moratorium put 30,000 people out of work and ended the longtime way of life Chafe had grown up around. He hoped to tell a story of loss and healing and journeying through uncertainty, bringing a tension through his characters that readers from this province would find familiar, and that would fascinate those from away.
Set on a small, isolated island off the coast of Newfoundland, “Closer by Sea” follows 12-year-old Pierce as he struggles to come to terms with the loss of his father, whose body was never recovered from the sea. While he despises the ocean, Pierce works to keep himself close to it in an effort to stay connected with his dad. When Anna, a girl who has made an impression on him, suddenly goes missing, Pierce is determined to find her, leading a group of friends to look for her.
Readers have compared the book to Stephen King’s “The Body” — the basis for the 1986 film “Stand by Me” — and are praising Chafe’s ability to weave the harsh truths of growing up in a struggling town with grief, love, friendship, teenage angst and insecurities, and mystery, set on a highly descriptive and uniquely Newfoundland backdrop.
“Just a lovely novel,” wrote one reader online. “Perry Chafe has a multitude of experience writing for TV but my goodness, I hope he continues to write fiction, I will eagerly read anything he does (in) the future.”
Chafe has already been thinking of a second novel but it won’t be a sequel to “Closer by Sea.”
“I’d like to move maybe more toward the mystery and suspense world with adult characters for the next one,” he says. He’s also interested in horror as a genre and would love to do a project based on Newfoundland and Labrador folklore, saying, “We’re ripe here for some kind of incredible series” along those lines.
Chafe says he can see “Closer by Sea” coming to life on screen, perhaps as a limited series, acknowledging it would take significant work to give the setting – including deserted islands and icebergs — the focus it deserves and to represent the struggles of the time accurately.
If anyone can do it, it’s Chafe, if he takes his own advice.
“I think if you have a passion for something, you really should go for it. I was 39 when I got ‘Republic of Doyle’ and I wrote my first book at 54. It’s never too late. If you have a creative drive, you should really try to follow through, for your own sake and your own enjoyment.”