Pro-File: Loren D. Estleman

"Nobody does it better." Elmore Leonard

The Left-Handed Dollar is Loren Estleman's twentieth Amos Walker novel--and the thirtieth anniversary of the series!

Pro-File LorenD. Estleman

Tell us about your current novel or project?

1. Another Amos Walker, INFERNAL ANGELS, is scheduled for July 2011: It’s about Homeland Security’s increasing threat to our liberties, and will most likely fatten my FBI file. In 2012 Forge will publish a huge dream project, THE CONFESSIONS OF AL CAPONE. It came in at 796 pp. manuscript and takes place in Miami in 1944 and Chicago during Prohibition. If Capone ever entertained writing his autobiography, I like to think it would bear a close resemblance to this.

Can you give us a sense of what you're working on now?

2. I’m fooling around with another project I’ve tinkered with off and on for years. One advantage of being months ahead on all your deadlines is you get to flirt with some bizarre stuff.

What is the greatest pleasure of a writing career?

3. Doing what you most like to do and getting paid for it. It beats working.

The greatest displeasure?

4. Meeting people who find out what I do, then say they’re not much for reading, mot even realizing they’re insulting you to your face.

Advice to the publishing world?

5. Print far more copies tan you can ever expect to sell. It’s the only way to galvanize the sales team.

Rules for the road?

6. Learn another skill in case the writing doesn’t work out. I got this from my college journalism professor. I took him to mean I should get a job with a newspaper so I’d always have it for a backup.

Advice for new writers?

7. Don’t write about Detroit.

Worst writiing advice you ever got?

8. Let us, your publishers, deal with Hollywood.

Writers you'd like to see in print again?

9. Fletcher Flora and Jack Ritchie.

Thank you very much, Loren.