Donald E. Westlake

The many magazines, ranging from pulp to slick, that used to serve as both farm teams for writers and lures to readers, with hundreds of short stories every month, don't exist. Most of the doors for new people have been sealed.

Nothing about it interested me. Or about anything else, except making up stories. If literacy weren't so nearly universal, God knows what I'd be. A drain on the State, I shouldn't wonder.

I love Hammett, never liked Chandler - I'm one of the few.

A guy named Peter Rabe wrote a batch of books for Gold Medal in the '50s, and he was absolutely the single largest influence on writing style. I was completely in love with the way the man wrote.

When Stark isn't off sulking somewhere, or whatever he's doing when he won't return my calls, I alternate between the two. That usually works well, though occasionally an idea for the wrong guy drifts through my mind.

If you think of movie studio executives, say, as society, then I root for the independent producers.

I loved it, but social reality impeded. Now I wander in here at 9 in the morning or so, and come back for a while in the afternoon. I am a very lenient boss.

Sorry; I have no space left for advice. Just do it.

All of the changes in publishing since 1960 are significant. There are far fewer publishers.

I make a note, set it aside, and hope it makes sense when the time comes to look at it again.

I also wanted Parker to operate in the Internet age without losing being Parker. He's always operated in the world without really being with the world, and cyberspace means that the rest of us are more and more living the same way.

A friend of mine, now retired, was then a major exec at a major bank, and one of her jobs, the last four years, was the farewell interview.