The fallout from slavery is ongoing. I am not sure the issue of race in America will ever be completely solved.

Pain could be killed. Sadness could not, but the drugs did shut its mouth for a time.

New York City in life was much like New York City in death. It was still hard to get a cab, for example.

In other words, fiction is payback for those who have wronged you.

I get invited to do panels with other Brooklyn writers to discuss what it's like to be a writer in Brooklyn. I expect it's like writing in Manhattan, but there aren't as many tourists walking very slowly in front of you when you step out for coffee.

I'm not really up on what's new. I'm still listening to Run DMC twenty-five years later. In the same way that the baby-boomers in America were forcing '60s music and Motown down our throats, now people of my generation are forcing Tears For Fears and old Hip Hop upon others.

I'm trying to keep it fresh for me. I'm just trying to not bore myself. And if I can do a detective novel, and if I can do a horror novel, then why do it again? To keep the work challenging I have to keep moving.