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BIO

Why did you write A Safe Place? What did you hope the book would accomplish? Was it difficult because it is so personal?

I wrote A Safe Place for one reason -- I was a married man in my mid-30s with children of my own and thought it time to make peace with my father. I felt writing a book would do that. It didn't. What it did was make me realize that despite all his horrors and faults, my father was the person most responsible for shaping my life. He was a bad man who happened to be a good father to me. He was an abusive husband who made me strive to be a good one. He was functionally illiterate, but by forcing me to read to him every day -- newspapers, sports magazines, and the occasional book -- fed my love for and appreciation of writing. By the end of the writing of that book, I wished he were still alive. It was a very difficult book to write. It was a first book and with that you travel down roads you've never seen before, always unsure of the next step. It was a book about my parents and, at a certain point, it hits that you are exposing a closed life to an outside world. It was a book written out of pain and anger. I'd probably write it in a much different way if I wrote it today.

How did your family respond to the book?

My mother's side was sad about it but understood it was something I needed to do. My father's side was angry about it and they've remained angry. Which I guess means I did my job.

Could you talk a bit about your career in journalism? How were you attracted to it? What aspects of journalism appeal to you?

I wanted to be a newspaperman. The term journalist wasn't used back when I was a kid as it is today. When I started (summer of 1976) as a copy boy at The New York Daily News, the newspaper business was still for people from middle-class backgrounds, especially on the tabloids. Now, it's become a haven for trust fund babies or guys with legacies. I wanted to be a newspaperman because of Pete Hamill. I had just finished high school and was working full-time at Manufactures Hanover Trust Bank when I started reading his columns in The New York Post. One day, he wrote a column about former Vice-President Spiro Agnew copping a plea and avoiding prison. His first line was: ÒOpen all the prison doors, there is no justice in America.Ó He combined a street anger and reality with a powerful writing style, graceful sense of timing and pace. And I was hooked. The week I started as a copy boy, Hamill joined the News as a columnist along with Jimmy Breslin. Both were a big help in the early stages of my career. The best part of the newspaper game was writing the story, keeping it tight, making the lead strong, the kicker stronger and doing it all under a ticking clock. The next day, there it was in print. The day after, there it was lining the bottom of a birdcage.

Which do you find more challenging to write: non-fiction or fiction?

Non-fiction is hardest for me, which is why I don't do much of it -- other than the two or three articles a year for The National Geographic Traveler. The challenge for me is in fiction, either novel or script. I love writing dialogue and creating characters and making them sound and feel real. It's a daily struggle, but worth the fight.

So much of your work comes from your experience growing up in Hell's Kitchen; do you feel you are writing books for the people who grew up with you? How do the people you grew up with feel about your books?

One of the many lessons Pete Hamill taught me is to know your audience. I love the people I write for and they've been kind enough to support my work for a lot of years. They are working class. They buy their books at the Price Club. They watch a lot of TV and maybe a movie or two a month, usually a rental. They work hard, try to pay their bills on time and hope they can lay down a better foundation for their kids. That's my crowd. It's not literary, but they like a good story well told. And if you tell them it's about life on the streets, it BETTER be on the money. I would never trade them in or betray their trust in my work. Most of the friends I grew up with are dead, victims of guns or drugs. The ones who are still alive are very happy with how things have turned out for me.

Could you talk a little about your experience with films and television? What aspects of scriptwriting appeal to you? Are you satisfied with the film version of Sleepers?

I'm one of those lucky writers with only positive experiences in Hollywood. All my books have sold to the movies -- one got made and three others are in active development. I've been able to pick and choose the script work I want (the books allow me that luxury). I've worked for some terrific producers, have written features and TV pilots, worked on a series that ran 4 years and now, this season, started work as a writer/producer for Law & Order. Screenwriting appeals to me in almost the same way newspaper writing once did -- you have to tell your story in a confined environment, everything must be visual and the tale must be driven by dialogue. You cannot waste words or space. People have to be able to SEE the story as they read it. And once your script is done and goes into pre-production, an army of people show up to do everything from lighting your characters to saying the words you've written. It is an amazing process. Books are very solitary. Scripts are like working in the middle of a crowded room. And I believe one form feeds the other and makes you a better writer at both ends. I thought Sleepers was as true an adaptation of a work as any writer can ever hope to see.

Revenge in a society that does not provide justice is a very important theme in your work, but also trust, bonding, and friendship. The intense way these two things work in your first novel, Apaches, and the over-the-top violence made me think of the work as being almost like an opera. Could you talk a little about writing that novel? Why were you drawn to maimed cops as the main characters? Would you consider a sequel, since at least half the main characters survived?

Apaches grew out of the four years I spent working as the Managing Editor for the CBS series Top Cops (1990-1994). We did 175 stories that made it to air, all featuring real cops with actors re-enacting their stories. Among those 175 were a number of cops who'd been wounded in the line of duty. I was struck by (a) how young the cops were and (b) how much they missed the action of the job. I'm friendly with many cops. Most are wounded and retired, and even though many have even more exciting careers, they miss the rush of the job. I thought a group of fictional cops like that would be fun to hang out with. I would consider a sequel, especially since the adaptation of the novel is set to be filmed next year after 7 long years in development. I killed some of the characters, so I could replace them with a fresh group of disabled cops. If it fits into the book schedule and I can hook my way onto a story I like, I would for sure spend some more time with the Apaches.

What was the last good movie you saw?

Pirates of the Caribbean and Seabiscuit.

From: belles lettres - A Literary Review, published by the Center for the Humanities Washington University in St. Louis. Sept./Oct. 2003, Vol. IV No. 1.

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