... character reigns preeminent in determining potential.

But with nonfiction, the task is very straightforward: Do the research, tell the story

We just sat there and watched the plane pass the island, and it never came back," he said. "I could see it on the radar. It makes you feel terrible. Life was cheap in war.

Books on horse racing subjects have never done well, and I am told that publishers had come to think of them as the literary version of box office poison

The biggest problem has been exhaustion. I've spent about 6 of the last 14 years completely bedridden.

I had been writing professionally since 1988

His conviction that everything happened for a reason, and would come to good, gave him laughing equanimity even in hard times.