Ron Currie is a little surprised at how much he enjoys working with other writers.

It probably helps that the project they’re all working on is the Netflix adaptation of his Waterville-set novel, “The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne.” He also happens to be executive producer, head writer and co-creator. Still, after writing novels for some 20 years, Currie wasn’t sure what to expect from Hollywood and the chaos often associated with the writers’ room.

“If you had told me 10 years ago that I would enjoy collaborating as much as I do, when I was still just a lone-wolf novelist, I would have said you were crazy,” said Currie, 51, of Portland. “But there’s a real joy to it, to collaborating with other smart word nerds who are in it for story and nothing else.”

SUMMER IN LOS ANGELES

Currie’s book came out in March 2025 and he had a deal with Netflix soon after. He and the other writers started working on the series in Los Angeles in early June, and Currie expects to be there until at least September. Right now the series hasn’t been officially approved, or “greenlit” by Netflix, so there’s no announcement yet of casting or when it might debut.

The fact that Currie and other writers are in place in Los Angeles, set to work for months on scripts and ideas, is promising. The novel is set in Waterville and focuses on a female Franco-American crime boss, who controls the flow of illegal drugs in the area. She’s feared and beloved in her community and fiercely proud and protective of it.

Currie also has a prequel to the Babs Dionne story coming out July 7 called “We Will See You Bleed.” That book is set before the first book, around the time of a paper mill strike in the 1980s, and includes some of the economic pain that event brought to workers in the area. In the book, readers start to see why and how Babs becomes who she will be later on. Currie plans to take some time from writing the Netflix series to promote his new book with readings and other events.

Currie is working on the Netflix series with Josh Mohr and Jennifer Cacicio. Mohr and Currie have been screenwriting partners in the past, working on projects for AMC Studios, Amblin Television and ITV America. Cacicio was a creator and writer of the Paramount crime drama “Happy Face” and has written for several other series, including “Sexy Beast” and “Shooter.” Cacicio said she was struck by how real Currie’s characters felt, and how compelling his story was.

“I grew up in New England and had a grandmother who was somewhat Babs-adjacent, so I felt immediately at home in the world Ron created,” Cacicio said in an email. “It struck me as simultaneously original yet familiar.”

Though the writing of the series is in the very early stages, Currie says there’s been some talk of using some of the story from “We Will See You Bleed.” He’s also working on a third book in the Babs Dionne series, but now that he’s writing the TV show, he’s not sure when that will be finished. So far he feels like shifting between scripts and novels has helped him as a writer.

 ” I think I write prose in a way that’s much more reader-friendly than I ever did before,” ” said Currie. “And I think my literary sensibilities definitely inform the kind of TV that I write.”

ROOTS IN WATERVILLE

“We Will See You Bleed” opens in 1984 in Waterville, where a strike at a local paper mill (based on one in Jay) is causing economic pain and turmoil, with neighbors fighting neighbors. Babs is a local union head and watches as many of the strikers seem to be broken and dispirited, including the men. She and other women are instead furious and decide to take back their Franco community, Little Canada, by any means necessary.

Currie grew up in Waterville among the city’s Franco-American community and had long wanted to write something based there. He found the character, Babs Dionne, partly in his memories of his own grandmother, who was not a crime boss.

But she was, Currie says, “a fascinating mix of toughness and love” and had a “sort of fierce-borderline-vicious love that was unique in my experience.” So that contrast became the basis for Babs Dionne, who is both loved and feared for what she does and how she does it.

In the first novel, drug sales are down and a higher-up drug boss sends an enforcer to Babs’ territory to investigate. Around the same time, Dionne’s youngest daughter is found dead, and Babs reacts with the violent fury she’s known for.

Currie grew up in Waterville, where his father was a firefighter and paramedic, and his mother worked several jobs, including at the Hathaway shirt factory, as a waitress and a school lunch server. He said his childhood spanned Waterville’s transition from a mill town to a “dying mill town,” well before its recent comeback fueled by arts and cultural institutions.

His interest in writing began young, after reading Maine horror and suspense master Stephen King, and the science fiction of authors like Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. He said writing became a compulsion, something he couldn’t not do.

Currie’s first book, “God is Dead” (2007), about God’s descent to Earth and subsequent death, won the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award. His 2010 novel “Everything Matters!” won the Alex Award from the American Library Association. His 2017 novel “The One-Eyed Man,” deals with the then-new phenomenon of calling things “fake news.” He’s also taught creative writing at USM’s Stonecoast MFA program. 

For now, Currie is focused on the Netflix series. Even though he knows authors often get TV or film development deals that ultimately lead nowhere, he’s feeling optimistic about his. The fact that he’s already working on it with other writers helps.

“Nothing is done until they roll cameras, but it feels to me now liked I’d be surprised if we don’t make the show,” said Currie, from his Los Angeles office.