When Bruce Robert Coffin entered college, his dream was to be a writer. Unfortunately, a less than encouraging creative writing teacher squelched that dream, for a time. Instead, following in the footsteps of a relative, Coffin veered on a completely different career path. He became an officer with the Portland Police Department, eventually becoming a detective sergeant supervising homicides and violent crime. During his time with Portland PD, Coffin put his writing aspirations on the shelf.
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| Retired detective Bruce Robert Coffin, who lives in Windham, has written his ninth book called "Crimson Thaw" and says he loves the process of writing and developing a great story. SUBMITTED PHOTO |
His latest book, “Crimson Tide,” came out earlier this month. He is working on a second book in his Detective Justice Mysteries series, scheduled to come out early next year and a third is already planned which is set to be published later in 2026.
He’s thrilled with his second career, Coffin said, and loves the writing process.
“The most fun of this is actually sitting down and playing inside your imagination. There should be no other motivation,” he said. “I mean none of us is guaranteed successful publication, but if you enjoy the actual active writing, making things up, entertaining yourself and escaping from the real world, which is what readers do as well, writing might be right for you.”
Although it took him a while to realize his dream of becoming a writer, Coffin isn’t bitter.
“It’s certainly not what I imagined as a teenager that it would take this long but I think it’s worked out well because it’s about having a life, experiencing things in life,” he said. “The more that you have, I think the better you can be.”
Coffin says he feels fortunate to be having writing success now.
“In a lot of ways, I’m lucky that I waited until I was 52 to actually do this because I don’t know how I would have approached it as much as a young person,” he said. “I feel like this came at exactly the right time for me.”
He says his past experiences inform his books as Coffin writes police procedurals.
“You can write about procedure,” he said, “but I think without the experience having done it it’s harder to write the emotions that are associated with it.”
There is a lot of himself in his first series, Coffin said. The Detective Byron Mysteries are about a Portland police detective, just like he was.
In addition, he said, “I think all my characters probably contain elements of me. … I think it’s impossible to write believable characters if you’re not revealing a little bit of yourself once in a while when you’re writing them. think that was one of the things to learn that it was okay to risk exposing your inner thoughts by putting them into the character that’s not you.”
Coffin said he reads a lot and has several authors he especially admires that provide inspiration.
One of his earliest favorites was another Maine author, Stephen King. He said reading King’s novels taught him a lot about how to tell a story.
As to his writing process, Coffin says he writes every day and always has a plan in mind for the plot of his books and that prevents writer’s block. When he does get stuck, he says he gets up and does something else, and he usually finds answers then.
Coffin credits a lot of his success to his literary agent Paula Munier and his wife of 40 years, Karen.
“I couldn’t have done this without her,” Coffin said of Karen. He calls her his muse and his “right hand” who he bounces ideas off and travels with him to speaking engagements. “She handles pretty much everything other than the writing.”
Despite putting his writing career on hold for decades, Coffin considers himself lucky to have his chance now. “I love this,” he said. “I plan to do this until I can’t do it anymore.” <
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