Q: Did you always want to be a writer?
A: I liked writing. In 4th grade we had to summarize the chapters in our history books. One or two pages. I dramatized it like a short story and turned in nine pages. The teacher gave me an "A" and told me to never do that again. In 6th grade, I wrote one-page stories and sold them on the playground for a penny. I was called into the principal's office and told I couldn't do that.
Q: So, you always wanted to be a writer.
A: No. I wanted to animate monsters, like Ray Harryhausen. There was only one hitch in that plan. I didn't have the talent. It's always something, isn't it? But I wanted to be involved in making movies somehow, and I'd learned how to type, so I started to write movie scripts. Unfortunately, the scripts I saw were shooting scripts. Every shot is broken down. The script that's used to sell the movie doesn't do that. I wished I would have known. It would have made writing those scripts a lot easier and more fun.
Q: What was your first job as a writer?
A: In high school, Dennis Muren, Dave Allen and myself made a feature-length film called Equinox. It was shot in 16mm with no sound. We spent two and a half years on the thing. Dennis sold it to Jack H. Harris, the producer of The Blob, while I was in the service. I was given $250.00 for my trouble. Jack made a bundle on it. A very kind producer named Alex Gordon got me my next job. He gave my name to producer Joe Solomon who'd made quite a bit of money with a film called Hells Angels on Wheels. I spent two weeks on The Losers II, in a small room with Joe looking over my shoulder as I typed. I made $2000 for that. The movie never got made.
Q: You also wrote some movie history books.
A: That's right. One of the first ones was a book about American International Pictures called Fast and Furious. At the time, I knew that no one else was going to document the history of the company, so I did. It was a great way to meet the people who made the movies. An excuse. My favorite book was You Won't Believe Your Eyes, about the sci-fi, horror and fantasy films of the 1950s. The book I did on Robert Lippert may have been the best book in that it provided a fairly accurate picture of the motion picture business while he was in operation. He was an interesting guy. I'm surprised that more people aren't interested in him.
Q: All of your books seem to be about the films of the Fifties.
A: Yeah. They're the films I grew up with. When you're a kid, you don't watch movies. You live them. As anyone what their favorite film is and chances are it will be something from their childhood.
Q: Why novels?
A: They're more fun than screenplays. Screenplays are too restrictive. More to the point, the filmmakers are free to do whatever they want with a script. I never felt that any of the movies based on my scripts were what I had in mind. Somebody once asked Dashell Hammett how he felt about the movies destroying his work. "They haven't done anything of the kind," the author replied. "The books are still on my shelf, just the way I wrote them."
Q: So far, you've written two private eye novels.
A: Mike Lawson was a character I cooked up while I was in the service. He was much different then. A complete buffoon. He's still got problems but nothing that his 19-year-old sidekick won't help him work out. I was going to get rid of her after the second novel, Drop Dead Twice, but I realized I wouldn't want to continue without her. She's my favorite character and she's more animated than ever in the one I'm working on now, The Cheap Smell of Murder. My goal is to make each one as entertaining as the one before it. We'll see.