From the Writing Catacombs:

Currently on stands: my interview with Isabel Allende in Writer's Digest's October issue. Also in that issue, my profile of Gail Konop Baker, about her debut memoir, Cancer is a Bitch: or I'd Rather Be Having a Midlife Crisis--is mentioned. A great read!

Also, my interview with author (and a writer for HBO's series The Wire), George Pelecanos, is live at Writer's Digest online. Click here to read it.

Here's a tasty quote from his interview:

What was it like to write for TV, so different from writing novels?

"It’s collaborative; you really have to work with a team of writers because each episode feeds into the next and borrows from the past. Before each season we get together—sometimes we’d go away for a week—and we’d decide what the season was going to be about, and the characters and their arcs. Then we’d come back and start beating out each episode. We wanted four episodes written before production started. That entails a scene by scene blueprint of each episode—very intense work in a room, putting cards up on a board in order, [with] different colors for each character. By the time you’re done you have 35–40 cards that represent scenes, in order for that particular show. That takes several days for each episode. Then you farm them out to the writers.

"When I became a producer and story editor, I was there every day, full time. When you work on a TV show it is literally 12–16 hours a day for 7 months. It’s a huge commitment. Producers are in charge of everything. Again, it was pretty nice for me to learn a new craft—it’s another job in my arsenal. If I ever fall down the stairs and hit my head and can’t write, I can always do that."