I am a writer. I could not afford to take 15 months off from my writing career to play detective.

I'm getting a wider circle of fans now. More women, more middle class people.

I want to have enough data, so I won't write myself into thin air, so that I can extrapolate and give you this secret human infrastructure. The only way I sate my own curiosity is to create this from scratch. There must be commanding love stories. There must be great moral cost.

I love thinking about American history, thinking about LA history. I love brooding on crime.

I drank, I used drugs, I broke into houses, sniffed women's undergarments. I ate Benzedrex inhalers, jacked off for 18 hours at a pop, lived with my dad in a shitpad.

I don't know anybody in the underworld. I make this stuff up. I don't know any criminals.

I think the great unspoken theme in noir fiction is male self-pity. It pervades noir movies.