Inside the Writing Life: Novelist Dan Brown ’82 on how his new children’s book took shape

Moulton House. We didn’t have a TV, so I read a lot of children’s books. I loved Dr. Seuss, Richard Scarry, Maurice Sendak, all of them. And I would listen to my parents’ record collection, which was all classical music. My mom was a professional pianist and organist. Music and children’s books really became a big part of my childhood.

What’s your earliest memory of music?

My mom playing piano, and me lying under the piano listening. She also played at Sunday morning services at Christ Church in Exeter, and when I was a little kid I’d sit on the piano or organ bench and turn pages for her. That’s a lot of pressure for a little kid. If you turn too early or turn too late, it’s a big disaster. You learn to read rhythms very quickly.

So that’s where your musicality came from. What about the poetry?

My dad’s a very good poet and a mathematician. He taught at Exeter for a long time. He would always write poems at Christmas for our treasure hunts. He’d write little poems that point you to another room and you’d fnd your next poem and you’d go all over the house on these treasure hunts. Poetry for me as a kid was fun. It was less fun when I got to Exeter and I had to read The Odyssey.

When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

I wrote a book called The Girafe, The Pig and The Pants on Fire, which I dictated to my mom when I was 5 years old. I told her what to write, she wrote it down. I drew pictures for every page, and we bound it in cardboard. I still have it. So, apparently as of 5 years old, I was telling stories. In college, I majored in creative writing and music composition, so one of those was likely going to happen.

Is writing novels and composing music a similar process?

They’re very similar. You can’t write a novel or a piece of music without understanding structure above all. You really need to know how to arrange pieces, whether they’re melodies or plot points, in order to create something that has fow. You have got to understand dynamics. You can’t write a piece that’s all loud. You have no moments to catch your breath. And you can’t write a book that’s all car chasing where nobody ever gets to exhale for a second. Thematic material has to rise and fall in both of them at the right rate. At least for me, they inform each other.

What is your writing day like?

I am up pretty much by 3:30 a.m. every day. I’m an early riser. I only sleep about fve-and-a-half hours and I don’t set an alarm. I fall asleep within 30 seconds when I hit the bed. I don’t move and then I wake up and write. I will put in at least four hours, sometimes eight if it’s going well. By noon, I’ve put in an eight-hour day. Then I work out, talk to publishers, talk to agents, whatever it is I’m doing that day. They’re long days.

It’s like you’re almost still asleep when you start writing.

I move quickly from the sleep state to writing. When you wake up, you’re often coming out of a REM sleep, which is where you dream and where your mind creates something out of nothing. You’re in that frame of mind. I fnd if I try to sit down and write late in the day, it’s a struggle. I’m much more creative in the morning, much more focused.

There’s a tradition of moralistic messages in fairy tales and each of your poems has a moral too.

Some of these morals are derived from things I learned growing up on campus. Not initially as a student, but as someone there on campus as a young person. I just felt like, “We think diferent things. We can talk about our ideas. Some people do that. Some people do this. We’re all respectful of each other.” That’s the world I grew up in. If you look at a poem like “Happy Frogs,” the moral is basically, “Hey, we’re all diferent shapes and sizes and colors, but if we all work together, we can make beautiful music.” That’s just a way to tell kids that tolerance is important.

What was the creative process like for this project?

The creative process was very diferent because it was so collaborative. I’m not used to collaborating at all. I was working with an illustrator, three producers, a bunch of sound engineers, 80 musicians. There were a lot of moving pieces.

What did you enjoy most about that new process?

The recording of the music. I’m very familiar with what it feels like to sit alone and write. But living in Croatia for several weeks while we recorded this was amazing. I think I went three times to fnish the whole album. My brother Greg ’93 — he’s a professional musician — came over for one of the sessions along with his son, my nephew Grifn ’20. We had three Exonians in the recording booth. It was really fun.

Can you tell me about the book’s dedication page?

My mom passed away about four years ago. This book really, it’s about being young at heart. It’s about morality and ethics. It’s about music. It’s about a lot of things that were important to her. I wish she could’ve seen it. If you look at the dedication page, you’ll see that there’s a staf of music that runs through it very faintly. The frst three notes, it’s a C, a G and a B. Those are my mom’s initials. E

Alumni are encouraged to advise the Bulletin editor (bulletin@exeter.edu) of their own publications, recordings, films, etc., in any field, and those of their classmates, for inclusion in future Exonians in Review columns. Please send a review copy of your published work to the editor to be considered for an extended profile or review in future issues. Works can be sent to: Phillips Exeter Academy, The Exeter Bulletin, 20 Main Street, Exeter, NH 03833.

ALUMNI

1955—Victor Wallis. Socialist Practice: Histories and Theories. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) 1958—Joseph “Jay” Kadane. Principles of Uncertainty, Second Edition. (Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2020) 1958—William “Bill” Weber, edited with Cormac Newark. The Oxford Handbook of the Operatic Canon. (Oxford University Press, 2020) 1959—Jan Schreiber. Bay Leaves: A Chapbook. (Kelsay Books, 2019) 1962—Douglas J. Penick. The Age of Waiting. (Arrowsmith Press, 2020) 1962—Kidder Smith. Li Bo Unkempt. (Punctum Books, 2020) 1963—Gove Efinger, with Gary L. Mullen. An Elementary Transition to Abstract Mathematics. (CRC Press, 2020)

1963—Carter

Wiseman. Louis Kahn: A Life in Architecture. (University of Virginia Press, 2020)

1963—Pete

Beaman. Letters from Duc Phong District. (Self-published, 2020) 1974—James “Jim” Steyer, editor. Which Side of History? How Technology Is Reshaping Democracy and Our Lives. (Chronicle Prism, 2020) 1976—Martha Newman. Cistercian Stories for Nuns and Monks: The Sacramental Imagination of Engelhard of Langheim. (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020) 1977—Susan Cole Ross. Sliding Home: Two Teachers Head for the Mountains to Educate Our Kids for a Year. (Piscataqua Press, 2020) 1990—Mark Elbroch. The Cougar Conundrum: Sharing the World with a Successful Predator. (Island Press, 2020) 1991—Sony Devabhaktuni, editor with John Lin. As Found Houses: Experiments from Self-Builders in Rural China. (Applied Research & Design, 2021) 1993—Nick Psaris. Fun Q: A Functional Introduction to Machine Learning in Q. (Vector Sigma, 2020)

1995—Eric Michael

Bovim. Around the Sun. (Epigraph Publishing, 2020) 1997—Marissa King. Social Chemistry: Decoding the Patterns of Human Connection. (Dutton, 2020) 1999—Brian d’Entremont. Hello, Normal. Where Have You Been? (Selfpublished, 2020)

BEYOND BOOKS

1958—Jack D. Marietta. “Crime and Justice in Anglo-America.” Published in The Cambridge World History of Violence: Volume III. (Cambridge University Press, 2020) 1970—Mitch Wolfe, actor, producer. The Executive, comedic film. (Amazon Prime, 2020) 1974—Paul Outlaw, theater artist and vocalist. BigBlackOctoberSurprise, virtual theater show. (Outlawplay.com, 2020) 1976—Debby Montgomery Johnson, host. “Stand Up & Speak Up,” podcast. (thewomanbehindthesmile.com/show, 2020) 1984—Greg Kostraba, pianist. Music for Flute, Cello & Piano by Women Composers, album. (Kickshaw Records, 2020) 1993—Julio DeSanctis, writer and producer. Alive, horror film. Premiered at the Bangor (Maine) Drive-In in September 2020 before general release on streaming platforms. 1995—Marlo Hunter, director. American Reject, comedic film. Screened at multiple film festivals in 2020. — director of the nine-episode podcast musical, “Little Did I Know,” which was released in the spring. 1996—Eirene Donohue, writer.

A Sugar and Spice Holiday, film. (Lifetime Television, 2020) 1996—Jasmine Dreame Wagner, director, composer. Five Elizabeths, short art film. Premiered at the New

York State International Film Festival in 2020. — “Landscape with Whirlpools” and

“Spring Sun,” poems. (Interim, Vol. 37, Issue 1, 2020) 1998—Tim Gallagher. “The Practice of Touch,” essay. (The Sun magazine, Issue 540, December 2020) 2001—Emma Wynn. Help Me to Fall, chapbook of poetry. (Moonstone Arts Center, 2020)

FACULTY

Diana Davis ’03, editor. Illustrating Mathematics. (American Mathematical Society, 2020) Erica Ploufe Lazure. “The Sacred Family,” essay. (The Ekphrastic Review, September 2020) — “Terraria,” fiction. (Tiny Seed Journal, September 2020) — Sugar Mountain, flash-fiction chapbook. (Ad-Hoc Press, 2020) — “The Shit Branch,” fiction. (Tahoma Literary Review, fall/winter 2020) — “Highway Dogs and their Owners,” fiction. (Wrong Way Go Back, vol. 19, fall 2020) Matt W. Miller. “Where One Starts From” and “Conditional,” poems. (Gulf Coast

Literary Journal, vol. 33, no. 1, winter/spring 2021) — “Then I Let the Alpine Play,” “Misprision,” and “Tankas While Standing Near,” all 2020 Pushcart Prize-nominated poems. (The Green Mountains Review, vol. 31, spring 2020) — “again,” poem. (Rise Up Review, summer 2020) Willie Perdomo. “Bembé-Faced” and “Arroz con Son y Clave,” poems. (African American

Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song, Library of America, 2020) Sue Repko. “Pandemic Thoughts, Racing,” essay. (The Keeping Room, September 2020)

On Call with the NBA

MEET DR. LEROY SIMS ’97, THE PHYSICIAN WHO HELPED PRO BASKETBALL BEAT BACK THE CORONAVIRUS

By Patrick Garrity

The 2020 NBA season ended with a predictable outcome but in circumstances impossible to imagine on the day it began. LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers won the championship, as many anticipated. That it happened in an empty arena in the shadow of Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom was the surreal part.

Even more unlikely? A man who never scored a point was the MVP.

Not for his game — Dr. Leroy Sims ’97 hasn’t played organized basketball since his days as a Big Red power forward. But his contribution to saving the NBA’s season as the league’s medical director was unquestionably outstanding.

From June to October, Sims and his team constructed a quarantine “bubble” at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex outside Orlando, Florida, that allowed 22 teams to resume play. As the coronavirus raged across the country, Sims and the NBA pulled of a minor miracle: Not a single player, coach or staf member tested positive for COVID-19 after completing quarantine and entering the bubble.

“I am really, really proud of the work we did,” Sims says. “People got tired, but … we stuck to our guns, we were strict. We made the rules, and we didn’t make any exceptions.”

The rules — spelled out in an exhaustive, 113-page document of health and safety protocols — covered every aspect of life in the bubble, from screening (more than 150,000 tests were conducted in all) to on-court behavior (high-fves, fst bumps and hugs were strongly discouraged) to the players’ downtime (no doubles teams in pingpong; no headsets in the video-game room). The most important rule: No one could enter the bubble without completing a quarantine period. One player who accidently breached the perimeter to pick up a food delivery curbside was forced to quarantine for 10 days.

“There were times when Dr. Sims had to be the bad guy,” Sims says.

It may be one of the few times the afable Sims has played the heavy in a life that began on Chicago’s West Side and took a transformational turn at age 15 when he spent fve weeks attending Exeter Summer.

That summer was an eye-opening experience for Sims, rich with discoveries of people and cultures beyond those he experienced in Chicago. “I roomed with a [student] from Taiwan, and he was waking up at 2, 3 in the morning,” Sims explains. His roommate went on to say that he had jet lag, to which Sims responded, “‘What is jet lag, and how do you get rid of it?!’ That was my world view at the time. I’d never even fown on a plane [before fying to Boston for Exeter’s summer program].”

Sims says his discoveries that summer — an instructor introduced him to jazz pioneer John Coltrane and changed his consumption of music thereon — left him feeling vulnerable about all that he didn’t know: “I felt like I wanted something bigger. I wanted something more.”

Dr. Leroy Sims ’97 arrives at the NBA’s “bubble” in Orlando.

UP FOR ANYTHING

A year later, he was a frst-year upper living in Ewald. Sims inhaled Exeter. “I threw myself in,” he says. Sports, clubs, drama — there was little he wouldn’t try. Aside from being a member of what is now known as the Afro-Latinx Exonian Society, “I was on the Discipline Committee. I was a student listener. I was a proctor. I went to various non-Christian meetings. I was a DJ for WPEA. [At one point] I was the secretary of the