March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

TV’s Margo Cobb puts her thoughts on paper> From a busy retirement, she finds time for a novel

You expect Margo Cobb, the former TV executive, to be a whirlwind. A spitfire. An energetic woman who decorously falls just this side of rambunctious.

After all, it wasn’t that long ago — 1978, to be exact — that Cobb was one of only six women in the country who held the high-ranking position of general manager at a TV station. Cobb’s was WLBZ-TV in Bangor, where a 41-year career led her from copywriter to sales assistant to sales manager to assistant manager to general manager and to vice president of the National Association of Broadcasters.

You also expect Margo Cobb, who retired in 1993, to be a smidge unruly when it comes to setting up an interview about her first published novel, “The Granite Man,” which arrived in bookstores last month.

So you just take it as it comes: No, you can’t go to her Bangor house because there are workers there and it’s too busy for any privacy, she says. She passes on the invitation to meet for coffee. She refuses to have her picture taken. When you ask about the accomplishments, she chortles and says, “You’ve got to be kidding! I’m getting a headache talking to you!”

This is Margo Cobb, the writer, who is boisterously protected by Margo Cobb, the near-legendary GM with the bouffy blond hair.

“I wonder why you want to review a rather light, escape mystery,” she queries in a phone conversation. “It’s not the great American novel. There’s not a heavy message.”

Maybe not. But it’s not like local readers won’t want to know about this new side of her notably multifarious personality.

“When I retired three years ago, I decided that one of the things I wanted to do was write my novels,” says Cobb, who has written four books, published just the one, and is busy penning a fifth.

“I enjoy doing that type of writing. It’s not taxing on my brain. I got the first three chapters done and the people take over. I don’t have any idea where the damn thing is going. It’s fun to do,” she says.

It’s also fun to read — like a grown-up Nancy Drew mystery set just down the road a piece.

Indeed, “The Granite Man” takes place in the fictional Maine town of Sabine (pronounced SAY-bine) Harbor, a conglomeration of towns between Frankfort and Rockland.

“I’ve changed some landmarks,” she says, “but you and I both know the places.”

The main character is Garnet Gantry, a news director at the local radio station. Her broadcast about a New York company reopening an abandoned granite quarry (previously owned by her family) sets off a chain of shake-ups in the town, revives questions about an unexplained death in 1930, and inspires a love story between the red-headed Garnet and the mysterious, blue-eyed Devon Drake, a young mining engineer from away.

Other plot thickeners include Snake (a lap-dog reporter), Lloyd Rossiter (a politically savvy mayor), Ben (town drunk), Martha Boken (widow of a railroad magnate), Bubba Moody (woodsy recluse), Aurora and Anthony Starbird (wealthy eccentrics), Connie (madcap lawyer) and Dog (an Airedale).

“You keep thinking of who this reminds you of and where this place is,” says Judy Horan, the current general manager at WLBZ and an admirer of Cobb’s.

“I get really caught up in the characters because of that. You can really tell she’s in love with the business, but it never gets in the way of the story. I’m enjoying reading it. Margo would probably appreciate that I’m finding it hard to find the time to read it, though,” Horan says.

The book grew out of Cobb’s interest in genealogy, a topic she used to write about regularly for a now-defunct Maine magazine.

“You know as well as I do that there’s at least one book in every family tree,” says Cobb.

When she wrote the book, she wasn’t thinking about her own family, Cobb assures. She was thinking about typical folks in small Maine towns and the high-dollar industries that have underscored local politics in such places. She researched the granite industry, but the characters are a composite of people she has known or observed since her girlhood in Brewer.

Whodunits have also fascinated Cobb since those early years.

“I read anything and everything all the time,” says Cobb in a snappily bright tone. “You name it. Everything from Nancy Drew to Judy Bolton and the Hardy Boys. I’ve read Dorothy Sayers, and I like Elmore Leonard, who doesn’t write the way I do, of course, but that’s his problem.”

The audience she had in mind was strictly female — women like herself, she says, who would “pick it up in an airport and read it on a plane.” But she’s getting feedback from male readers, who say they think “The Granite Man” has a manly appeal, too.

George Gonyar, retired general manager at WABI-TV, was Cobb’s toughest local competitor in the TV biz. Classmates at the University of Maine in the 1950s, Gonyar and Cobb climbed the career ladder neck and neck. When Cobb’s book came out, Gonyar called her and chided that he’d never speak to her again for keeping him up all night reading.

“I read it quite rapidly,” says Gonyar, a regular reader of best sellers by Tom Clancy and John Grisham. “I couldn’t put it down. You have to be prejudiced when you know the writer, but she kept me in suspense. And there was just enough of the romance and not too much.”

(In an aside, Cobb says: “I’m at an age when I get to the kissy-face stuff in books and I turn the pages until I get back to the plot.” Her age, she glibly reveals, is “just as young as ever.”)

While Cobb is smitten with the new brand of celebrity, she has had to put aside daily morning writing to do what she calls “the commotion bit” of publishing a book with a small press. There’s not much promotional activity coming out of the Rivercross Publishing office in New York City. In fact, her editor there turned down an interview for this story.

And no one really wants to talk about the typographical errors that speckle the book. When it is suggested that most readers won’t even notice the editing errors, Cobb sighs.

“Yes they will,” she wagers. “They’ll say she may be able to write a little, but she sure can’t spell. But it’s not my fault.”

The next book Cobb wants to publish is “Sparrow Point,” which will bring back Sabine Harbor and some of its residents. As with “The Granite Man,” she has a simple goal in mind.

“For a few hours, I want to take readers to an intriguing setting and let them spend time with eccentric but great people,” says Cobb. “It’s just for fun.”

And then she pleasantly signs off. Busy as ever. On to the next story.

Margo Cobb will read from “The Granite Man” 7 p.m. tonight at BookMarc’s Bookstore and Cafe, 78 Harlow St. in Bangor.


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