Though Manhasset native Erin Duffy majored in English at Georgetown University, a summer internship with Merrill Lynch landed her a job with the wealth management firm when she graduated in 2000 – one she admitted was unfulfilling but doesn’t entirely regret today.
That’s because Duffy used many of the experiences from her eight years there as the foundation of her first novel, “Bond Girl,” whose success helped her form a second career as a writer that brought her back to her hometown last week.
Duffy on Thursday read selections from her second book, “On the Rocks” (out April 22 through William Morrow, a subsidiary of HarperCollins Publishers), to a collection of friends and neighbors at the Strathmore Vanderbilt Country Club in an event hosted by the Friends of the Manhasset Public Library.
“It’s always nice to be able to come home and do something fun like this. It had a great turnout and that really means a lot,” the 1996 Manhasset High School graduate said in an interview with Blank Slate Media on Friday. “I mean, when would you ever think you’d be at a book signing in your hometown?”
Soon after she arrived on Wall Street, Duffy said she realized she did not find the cutthroat, fast-paced environment at Merrill Lynch to be as exciting as it seemed to her peers.
So when the firm went bankrupt in 2008, and Duffy found herself out of a job, she decided to chase a dream she once abandoned in Georgetown’s writing labs.
“It turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me,” said Duffy, who now lives in New York City. “I wasn’t interested in starting over in finance and had all this free time, so I figured I’d take a stab at writing.”
Duffy began writing almost every day, often for up to six hours at a time. When she wasn’t seated behind a keyboard, she read books on how to write books.
Slowly but surely, “Bond Girl” – about a young woman who navigates the so-called “boys club” antics of a fictional Wall Street firm – came to fruition.
“Everyone was so negative on the industry at that point and I didn’t think it was necessarily fair. It was the perfect first book for me to write,” she said. “There was a very small group of people responsible for all that, and the rank-and-file got lumped in. I wanted to show that there was some good that came from it.”
Duffy blindly sent her manuscript to several publishing houses, and within weeks the book attracted the attention of four agencies.
An industry contact Duffy made put her in touch with New York Times’ bestselling women’s fiction author Adriana Trigiani, who then passed “Bond Girl” on to William Morris.
“HarperCollins was one of the three or four who were really interested in it and I thought they were the best fit for me and my personality,” Duffy said. “I love it there, I think they’re great and I have nothing but positive things to say about my relationship with them.”
“Bond Girl” was released in January 2012. Duffy said the book’s film rights have also been optioned.
HarperCollins also picked up a contractual option on Duffy’s second book, which Duffy said presented a unique challenge for her – she had to write it.
“They paid for the [second book] in advance, so I had expectations and people who expected something from me,” she said. “Now, all of a sudden, there was some pressure, which was a lot harder to deal with than I thought it’d be. Writing was a career now, not a hobby.”
It took Duffy seven months to finish “On the Rocks,” which follows a woman who re-enters the dating world after she’s abruptly dumped by her longtime fiancé.
Not wanting to rewrite “Bond Girl,” Duffy said she forced herself to write something new each day and often threw out full pages if she didn’t like the finished copy.
“I tried to do something different so it wouldn’t be exact,” she said. “There was some room for a sequel, but the publisher didn’t want a sequel and neither did I. We wanted to see if I could write something different and not have a niche.”
Duffy said she has had to “retrain myself a little bit” to craft entirely new stories from those she has had published.
But she recently finished her third novel, she said. It took her four months to complete.
“Writing never really seemed like something I thought I could do when I was younger. It’s not like Stephen King lived down the street or anything,” she said. “But [Thursday] was a special night and meant a lot. Hopefully there will be more.”
