Mark,
Thank you for your kind words. Anyone who compares me to Jack
O'Connell is a friend!
The series is adumbrated in the first volume, which begins as
fairly standard fare, then circles in ever closer to a kind
of autobiography. I knew that pattern, that tendency or
structure, would continue through the later books. As I wrote
MOTH, I knew where I'd end the series -- but I had a few
other novels in the series to write first.
I didn't begin it as a series, actually: I wrote THE
LONG-LEGGED FLY, then found there was so much more I wanted
to know, about Lew, about Don, about LaVerne, that I wrote
another. Then I wrote BLACK HORNET and realized I needed to
counterpoint that with its mirror image in BLUEBOTTLE (which
deals with white supremacy movements just as HORNET deals
with Black Power in the 60s). BLUEBOTTLE actually began as a
story commissioned by the BBC and soon let me know it wanted
to grow uo to be a novel; I wrote another story for the
BBC.
I agree that EYE OF THE CRICKET and GHOST OF A FLEA are the
high marks. I cannot write better than I did in those two
novels, nor will I ever.
I want to thank Bill Denton and all of you for having me as a
guest this month. It's been great fun.
Jim
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