George Pelecanos
I had met many wounded veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center when I was researching my 2009 novel 'The Turnaround,' and I continue to be very interested in how returning servicemen and women deal with their new lives back home and how they're treated by America.Collection: Medical
My senior year at College Park, University of Maryland, I took an elective class in crime fiction taught by Charles C. Mish. He turned me on in a big way to reading and books. I was lucky to have a teacher who changed the course of my life.Collection: Teacher
I can't relax. I don't have any hobbies.
Sometimes there's a reason for the hype.
'Random Rules' kicks off 'American Water,' and from its opening line - 'In 1984 I was hospitalized for approaching perfection' - you know you're in for something strange and special.
Richmond Fontaine bandleader Willy Vlautin writes songs akin to finely composed short stories set in the diners, bars, casinos, and old hotels of Reno and its environs.
I like fiction set in the South, and I'm a fan of literary westerns.
Can't get my head around sci-fi or fantasy. I'm not putting those genres down; it's just that I'm not built for them.
I collect and read as many books about music and film as I do fiction.
I read 'The Washington Post' every day from a very young age. Reading the newspaper taught me how to organize my thoughts on the page. Meaning, it taught me how to write.
If I had my druthers, I wouldn't have anyone's words in my script but my own, but if you want complete autonomy, just stick to novels.
I want to be read. When you write a TV show like 'The Wire,' you've got three to four million readers watching your work. Even Grisham doesn't sell that many books.
At 11 years old, in 1968, my job was to deliver food on foot, so I spent my day walking around the city. I had an active imagination, jacked up by movies. I passed the time making up stories and serializing them.
My dad used to call me 'the dreamer.' He was right.
After college, I spent a decade working the kinds of jobs that I write about - bartender, shoe salesman, kitchen man - while voraciously reading novels.
'The Turnaround' isn't even really a crime novel. But you need conflict to make a novel, any kind of novel, and I don't know any other way to do it than crime.
Sometimes I think 'The Wire' said it all, and I might as well not write any more crime novels.
There are a lot of bars and shoe stores in my early books.
The cliche is that Washington is a transient town of people who blow in and out every four years with the new administrations. But the reality is that people have lived in Washington for generations, and their lives are worth examining, I think.
I do miss the Chocolate City of my youth.
I really feel like people who want to change things need to go out and change it themselves and not look to politicians to do that.
My goal is to get a real film industry started in Washington. An actual one, not where features come to town and shoot second unit for a few days. I would love to get something started here. Hire local crews. People could work year-round and raise their families here.
A lot of guys are walking around with a lot simmering beneath the surface, and sometimes it explodes.
My books are not for everybody.
I was heavily into John D. MacDonald.
I never took a writing class.
I owned a '70 Camaro for many years, which I loved.
There is nothing like the rumble of a dual-piped American car with something under the hood.
For many years, I did ride-alongs with patrol cops, which is any citizen's right.
I shoot occasionally, but I'm no gun expert.
I used to sit in my pickup truck at 7 o'clock in the morning outside my office and listen to the Replacements or something full blast, thinking, 'What am I doing here?'
There's nothing funny about violence. Death is a real thing.
I didn't want to write the same book over and over.
I even dream about writing. I'm talking seeing words across the page, whole paragraphs.
It would probably surprise people how prevalent reading is in institutions - and the degree to which some states discourage reading by instituting draconian rules and laws that try to limit and outright roadblock books in prisons.
I don't judge anyone of any stripe by what they read. Reading is always good for you. It's a positive act.
Incarcerated individuals want what most people want in a novel: good, honest writing and a story well told.
There's a room in my house where my stereo, records, CDs, and books are housed. I spend a lot of time in that room, sitting in my chair beside the fireplace, reading and listening to music. Sometimes I just stand before the shelves and look at my books, because every single one of them means something to me.
'The Big Sky' is an American classic.
My goal is to get better with each book, and I feel like I am.
I never went to school for writing, never took a writing class, but when you're in a room with David Simon and Ed Burns and Dennis Lehane and Richard Price, and they're going over something you've written, you learn what works and what doesn't.
When I was 19, my dad got sick, and I quit college to take over his business, a coffee shop on 19th Street, below Dupont Circle in D.C. I had been working there since I was 11 years old, so it was not a stretch to think that I could do it, but my record as a teenager, in many respects, was less than stellar.
I'm always working on my next novel, even when I'm not.
I make a good spaghetti sauce and can mix a nice drink.
Every young man's best purchase is his first car, which spells freedom. My first one was a '70 Camaro, springtime gold-over-saddle, a 307 with Hi-jackers and chrome reverse mags.
I was really rudderless at one point my life. And once I started reading books, then I got the idea that maybe I could become a writer. I had a goal. And every day when I got up, there was a reason.
My father was a Marine who fought in the Pacific in WW II. He was a very tough guy, but after the war, he lived his life in a quiet and reserved manner because he had nothing to prove. I know now that he internalized his war experience.
I've just been very interested in the living side of Washington, rather than the federal side, since I was a kid.
I am on my bike daily, and most of the locations, warehouses and specific residences from 'The Cut' were found while I was riding.
'The Deuce' came about when David Simon and I were put in contact with a guy who, along with his twin brother, owned a couple bars in Times Square.