You can do the best research and be making the strongest intellectual argument, but if readers don't get past the third paragraph you've wasted your energy and valuable ink.
Carl HiaasenFrom my experience, politicians are much more uncomfortable being made fun of than they are being preached at and screeched at - you know, and the soapbox routine. They're much more uneasy knowing they're a target of ridicule.
Carl HiaasenThere's so much hate that we direct externally that we forget we have our own psychos. But that's the role of the satirist - you have to examine your own country and say, look!
Carl HiaasenIt's actually not very hard to re-set between the adult novels and the ones for younger readers. The narrative voices are very similar, the smartass attitude, the environmental battles. Kids love books that are irreverent and challenge authority, when authority is arbitrary, greedy or foolish. They also love it when you make fun of grownups, and I've spent my whole life as a writer doing that.
Carl Hiaasen