Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and I think that experience had a great influence on my writing. The area that I grew up in, a largely Italian American neighborhood, was, shall we say, filled with colorful characters. It was the cast of characters from any crime story. I also had an early interest in politics. So to me the gangsters-- and the political figures-- that I write about are very real people, I can hear their dialog, their speech patterns, and see what they look like and see what they do. Intrigue, political or criminal (is there a difference?) are very real to me.
When did you first start writing?
It seems that I've always been writing. I recently came across a file box with some old writing, so old that it was done on a typewriter, if any of you can remember what they were. It was a Smith Corona portable that I used, and I remember buying it when I was about 14 or 15 with the money that I made from delivering dentures to dentists.
In the box I found the start of a political novel, and several essays and short stories from over a span of twenty years or more. I know that I started writing stories at least in middle school, though I don't seem to have any of those around. They probably went away with my baseball cards.
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