There is no writer's block in a newsroom. There's only unemployment block.

and in the meantime don't jump to conclusions.

The greatest sin for a writer is to be boring.

A bonus, being a writer, is that the true-life source material is fabulously bizarre. There's so much corruption, violence and free-floating depravity that the well never runs dry, whether you're a novelist, a journalist, or both.

I won't be making any friends in the corporate suites.

It'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.

Mickey Cray had been out of work ever since a dead iguana fell from a palm tree and hit him on the head.