The Impossible Dream

What brought you into writing, and what keeps you there?

I don’t rightly remember when or how I got it into my head that I wanted to be a writer, but I can tell you a little about my journey to becoming and remaining one.

For me, it began when I was seven or eight. I wrote a whale of story about a baseball team that saved…well…they saved a whale. Yes, you read that right. The 1967 World Series Champion St. Louis Cardinals all pulled together to save a whale that was sick for some reason. (I don’t remember why.) They organized an airlift of the beast, I believe, in order to dump it back into the ocean where it belonged. I even drew pictures. If my memory serves, they suspended the poor animal from an airplane in a huge net. You know, the way whales are always transported. Kind of like this:

All ended well, of course, thanks to Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Curt Flood, Roger Maris, et al. But before you ask to see it, forget it. Lucky for me it got lost somewhere in the mists of the past, some sixty years ago.

So that was my start. I didn’t know I wanted to be a writer, though. That wasn’t until I was twelve. That’s when I wrote my first novel, a spectacularly bad World War I adventure. I’m fond of describing it as “110 perfectly fine sheets of paper ruined.” That book, however, was not lost (I have a copy), but it will remain locked away until 100 years after my death, when my heirs will retrieve it and—according to my wishes—use its pages to line the bottom of a birdcage.

I wrote a second novel in college, and a big World War II historical in grad school. At that point, alas, I’d run out of world wars, so it was time to move on and write something else. And then, like so many dreams, mine—the one of being a published writer—fell by the wayside and lay dormant for many years, due in no small measure to the fact my books were plagued by lazy turns of phrase, poor spelling, and a stubborn insistence on rehabilitating the reputation of the much-maligned passive voice. (The preceding sentence goes a long way to explain why my dream of being a writer took so long to come true.)

Yes, I let other things get in the way of my dream. I quit grad school and moved to New York City where I found a job in a photo news agency. Fascinating work that I truly enjoyed, but I was young and impetuous and left it in a fit of pique after a disagreement with the company’s owner.

 

Next I landed an amazing job at New York University, where I worked in the Italian Department. I began writing again in my spare time, especially during the summers when work was slow. I managed to produce two novels and find an agent to represent me. I was sure I was on my way to realizing my dream. She couldn’t find any takers, however, and she didn’t like the third book I wrote. Ultimately, it was a bad fit with that agent, and we parted brass rags. Still, I thought, now I can get back on the horse, write what I want, and find a new rep. But I hadn’t counted on life getting in the way again.

 

Wouldn’t you know it, I got promoted to director of NYU’s prestigious Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò. It was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up: helping to build a new, world-class cultural center in the heart of Greenwich Village. Writers, artists, musicians, academics, and me. Wow. I loved it. But it put an end to any hopes of writing more books. There simply was no time.

 

Here’s picture of me in another lifetime, chatting with il mattatore, the great Vittorio Gassman, who made a memorable appearance at the Casa circa 1995. He was a true star and a legend.

The Italian job was great—I even had cocktails with Umberto Eco one Friday afternoon at the Casa—but I was eventually lured away to Los Angeles, where I’d been offered a killer job in the subtitling business. That was a blast. The best job I ever had. At first, I assumed it would only be a couple of years in LA, but it turned into eighteen. Before I’d realized it, I was fifty and had frittered away a half-century waiting for the right time to become a writer to come to me. I decided I had to act quickly or let go of that hope for good.

 

I wrote a new book in my spare time and began searching for an agent. I got lucky and found one after only thirty-nine queries. Surely literary stardom, patches on my elbows, and the realization of my dream lay just ahead. 

 

But that didn’t happen. The book never sold.

 

So I wrote another one, which, when all hope of ever succeeding at this writing thing seemed to be slipping away, my agent sold it. The joy was overwhelming. After forty years of hoping and wishing and starting and stopping, wasting precious time and deferring my dream for tomorrow, I’d done it. My Ellie Stone novel made me a published writer. A second book followed, and a third one, sold to the same publisher. Then four more. While I didn’t make any best-seller lists or have hit movies made of my books, I did achieve some critical success. Twenty-one award nominations, including two for the Edgar and five each for the Anthony and Lefty, plus an Agatha and Sue Grafton Memorial nomination for good measure. But I wasn’t always a bridesmaid. I also won two Macavities, an Anthony, and a Barry award along the way. These tokens of recognition soothed the sting of forty years of waiting.

So what keeps me writing today? I’d say it’s the same thing that inspired me all those years while I was chasing success: an impossible dream. To tell stories and tinker with language. And, yes, I’m still dreaming. I advise all aspiring writers to do the same. Keep dreaming and never give up. As I’ve written before in this space, you can only succeed for the first time after your very last failure. Write on.

 

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THE PRANK…enigmatic and unnerving. The pace never flags for a second. This is some masterly plotting. I loved it.”

—Liz Nugent, author of Strange Sally Diamond

 

THE PRANK. A picture clipped from Playboy magazine, a missing Swiss Army Knife, and a prank gone terribly wrong conspire to make Christmas 1968 a deadly holiday to remember.

 

“The Holdovers meets The Bad Seed,” THE PRANK features a charming but volatile thirteen-year-old named Jimmy Steuben. He befriends his seventh-grade English teacher, Patti Finch, just days after her boyfriend is killed in an electrocution accident while hanging Christmas lights on his roof. Patti desperately needs respite from her grief, and a chance encounter with Jimmy provides just that. Ignoring the dangers of a potential scandal, the mismatched pair begins spending time together over Christmas break. Patti finds solace in Jimmy’s company; Jimmy discovers desire and infatuation. But what Patti doesn’t know is that it was Jimmy who caused the tragic accident that killed her lover.

From two-time Edgar Award finalist, Anthony, Barry, and Macavity award-winner James W. Ziskin, THE PRANK releases July 2026.

PLACEHOLDER—NOT THE OFFICIAL COVER

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From Green Eggs to Dark Alleys

What brought me into writing, and what keeps me there?

By Dietrich

Like a lot of us, it started with picture books. From there, I caught on to reading, growing up with the wonderful stories of Dr. Suess and E.B. White. My coming-of-age years brought new books that pulled me in even deeper: The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Outsiders. Then came the great crime writers who inspired me to write: Elmore Leonard, George V. Higgins, James Crumley and Charles Willeford. There was something electric in those pages, and I remember thinking, “Someday, I want to do that.”

When someday finally arrived, I didn’t jump straight into novels. I started with short stories—testing the waters, experimenting with different genres, voices and styles. When the first short was published, I was on Cloud Nine. It felt like I had cracked open a door. So I kept writing, building confidence and finding my way. The shift to crime fiction felt natural enough. I loved the tension and pace, the flawed characters making bad choices, and all those moral gray areas. 

My first novel, Ride the Lightning, came out in 2014, and I was on that cloud again. And the love of telling stories has stayed with me ever since, and it keeps me pulling me back to the blank page.

Every story begins with a spark—an image, a “what if,” or a bit of history that won’t let go. From there, it’s a matter of chasing that spark through the research, false starts, revisions and the slow build until everything finally clicks. 

Since that first crime novel, I’ve found real satisfaction in digging into different eras—like the Dust Bowl for Call Down the Thunder, or life in the Midwest during the bygone days of Dirty Little War. I enjoy putting my own twist on true stories in books like Under an Outlaw Moon and Crooked, exploring the raw power of nature in House of Blazes, and capturing the raw energy of the punk music scene in Zero Avenue. There’s something special about creating characters and selecting the right historical details that bring each world alive as the story unfolds. When it all comes together, it’s the best feeling.

The love of reading has never faded. Over the years, I’ve added many more authors and genres to the mix: James Lee Burke, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, Harper Lee, and countless others.

But what keeps me coming back most of all is hearing from someone that a book of mine stayed with them, took them by surprise, made them laugh, or kept them up late turning pages. That’s the best fuel any writer could ask for.