BY DEIRDRE PARKER SMITH
SALISBURY POST

For Bob Inman fans, there’s a double dose of good news.

First, he’s coming to Rowan Public Library Thursday for the annual Friends of the Library author event.

Then, this fall, his new musical, written with Mike Craver (“Oil City Symphony”), will make its world premiere on the Piedmont Players stage.

Inman, former news anchor at WBTV Channel 3 in Charlotte, has made a name for himself as a novelist and screenwriter. He’ll talk about his work and what influences his writing at Thursday’s event, which will also feature essay contest winners.

And he’ll do it all in his comfortable, friendly manner. The guy next door sitting on your deck on a summer afternoon telling stories.

His new book, “Captain Saturday,” will come out in January from Little, Brown.

“The main character is a TV weatherman,” Inman says from his Boone home. No, he says, it’s no one you know, but “I’m naturally drawing on my experience on TV. ... I had great fun with him.”

Inman said he got the idea years ago, sitting in heavy traffic on I-85 on his way to give a speech. “I began wondering what would happen to me if I lost this thing I’m known best for; who would I be?”

His new character has to figure out who he is and re-engineer his life. The weatherman will have to look at basic things, and find out what’s important.

That seems to be a theme in his writing.

Well, yes, he says. “I put a character in a certain situation and find out how they act. I learn from all the characters how they react to stress and challenge. I had a lot of fun with him.” Parts of the book are humorous, but it’s also a serious look at “how we figure out who we really are.”

Inman calls himself a work in progress. What he’s learned is that relationships are the most important thing in life. And if you have good relationships, it gives you a better appreciation for yourself, he says.

Being a grandfather for the first time has changed Inman, too. “You can’t understand it until you’re there. I love it. I’m looking forward to being here when she grows up. ... I look forward to getting older,” he says.

He just finished writing a screenplay for his last novel, “Dairy Queen Days” and is working with a Hollywood producer who loves the story and thinks he can find a place for it. Inman also wrote the screenplay for his novel “Home Fires Burning.”

That first TV movie of a book he’d written was a good experience, and now, with more markets for TV movies, he sees screenplays he’s written all over the place, on the Odyssey network, Lifetime. Screenwriting is what allowed Inman to leave the TV news business and start writing novels.

“I was lucky to get into screenwriting at just the right time. They pay you whether they produce it or not.”

He calls his new book a real departure. It’s not set in a small Southern town. It has to be in a TV market where the weatherman can be a local celebrity, so Inman chose Raleigh.

“I’ve spent enough time in Raleigh to be dangerous. I was just too close to Charlotte. I’m intrigued by Raleigh, all the people moving in,” so much going on there with the Research Triangle, state government.

He is always getting ready to write the next book and has been doing some thinking. He has a female character in mind. “I’m thinking about how things change and have changed for women in America.” He has two daughters, and “the way their lives have taken shape is so different from ours.”

Paulette, his wife, has a second career. She was a stay-at-home mom and is now a world businesswoman. In Wilcox Emporium in Boone, she has three of her businesses: Made in Carolina, with products made in the state; a selection of imported arts and crafts from Russia; and a variety of the popular Vera Bradley designs and accessories.

“It’s a real role reversal,” Inman says. “She found something she liked and could do well and has done well with it. It’s very satisfying to her.”

His most popular book has been “Old Dogs and Children,” inspired by his grandmother. “Toward the end, I thought ‘I ought not be able to do this.’ ” But it must have worked. He gets all kinds of mail from book clubs that have read it. He figures he must have brought Brite Birdsong off successfully. “I thought, ‘I was raised by women, I can do this.’ ”

In what time he has to read, he’s just finished “A Man in Full,” by Tom Wolfe. “I saved it till I finished this book.” He read Mignon Ballard’s new book to write a blurb for it and was “just blown away by” Lynne Hinton’s new book. “I just absolutely loved it.”

Hinton, whose previous book is “Friendship Cake,” is pastor of First Congregational United Church Christ in Asheboro.

The night before his Salisbury visit, he’ll appear with authors Tim McLaurin, Tony Earley and John Dunning in Charleston, S.C., at a book and author event.

He loves to get out and meet readers. “You know, you spend years in a closet writing the thing and stagger out into the sunshine and say ‘Will somebody please read this?’ ”