Martins Press [Pelecanoss original American publisher] eventually published that book, was there any editorial contribution?
Very little. I think it’s encouraging to would-be writers when they hear that someone can sit down, draw on their experience and knock out something as good as A Firing Offense. That’s why I like talking about it. You do need, for lack of a better expression, a God-given talent. But then you’ve got to do the work. You can’t just dream about it. And then you’ve got to keep working, because the only way you get better is to keep writing. I always want to write a book better than the one I’ve just written. A case in point is the next book, Nick’s Trip, more complex, more ambitious… Yeah. And then you wrote Shoedog, which you refer to as your ‘pulp’ novel… Yes. That was what I was consciously trying to do. But I would say that your books, generally speaking, are in the pulp tradition of say, Harry Whittington, Charles Williams, David Goodis and so on. Is that too glib? No, I don’t think so. I don’t have a problem with that at all. So how does Shoedog differ from the rest? I don’t think
