TOD:
In honor of the completion of your new book, BK, would you tell us all what prompted your foray into fiction and perhaps compare your fiction-writing experience with your other talents?
Back in the 80s on one of my many NY sojourns I was in the Mysterious Bookshop and saw that my pal Dick Lochte had written a mystery called Sleeping Dog. I never even knew he was working on such a thing (he'd been a theater critic for LA Magazine, and occasional script writer, and did occasional stuff for the Book Review section of the LA Times). I bought it and read it (a great book) and I was really impressed. Now, I'd been thinking about writing some sort of novel - I wasn't sure what at that point, but I knew it would be a mystery or, as I was thinking then, something about me as a kid (maybe a mystery, too, with the fictional me having to solve a crime).
But, I was too chicken to do it (new territory and all - very scary). I'd think about it every year, but in the end, nope. After reading Dick's book I thought, holy moley on rye, this guy who'd never done it before, did it, and it's really good.
I then thought about it every year, once a year, until the beginning of the year 2001. That was the year I said, "You know, you've never been chicken about anything in your whole life, so either do it or never think about it again. The next day, I began to think about a story about my childhood growing up in LA. Three months later, after writing down many anecdotes I wanted to talk about, I dove in and began writing. I gave the first chapter (which became the prologue) to my friend Margaret, and she LOVED it, and encouraged me to keep going. And I did. That book took a little over nine months to write (2001 being a year of great turmoil), but, in the end, I did it - a lot of the thanks go to Margaret, who was so positive and wonderful about the book.
I learned several things about how best to use my time when writing, all of which have served me well on the subsequent books.
