10 quick questions for walter mosley | members only access

WHAT’S ON YOUR READING LIST RIGHT NOW? I’ve been getting back into [Herman] Melville, _Bartleby, the Scrivener_ [_Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street_]. I was teaching at

Sundance just recently in the screenwriters lab, and one of the fellows had written a script that was very much like [Melville character] Billy Budd. I think that’s what brought me back to

Melville. There are science fiction writers I love: Roger Zelazny, who I think is just wonderful. Michael Moorcock, Brian Aldiss. I have a science fiction book coming out in the middle of

the year from Grove Atlantic called _Touched_. A lot of modern science fiction, I’m just not interested in. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s not bad writing, and I understand what it’s

doing. It doesn’t strike me as some of the older science fiction does. In Mosley's newest novel, an investigator becomes entangled in a dangerous case when he's asked to find out

whether or not a white nationalist is being framed for murder. Mulholland Book AS A CRIME NOVELIST, DO YOU READ ANY OTHER CRIME NOVELISTS? I stopped reading crime novels as a rule quite a

while ago. ... The thing is, [with] a real well-crafted mystery, you don’t know where you’re going, and it gets deep, deep, deep into you. I remember this one time, I was writing this [book

about private investigator character Easy Rawlins], and when I finished reading it, I said to myself:_ You know, this looks familiar_ _… _and I realized I had taken somebody else’s plot. I

really stopped after that. … It’s funny because mysterious things are insidious that way. YOU’RE IN THE WRITERS’ ROOM FOR FX’S SHOW _SNOWFALL._ WHAT'S MORE FUN, WRITING A BOOK OR

WORKING IN A WRITERS’ ROOM? Oh my God. Writing a book is so much more fun than writing for the screen. The kind word to use about writing for the screen is that it’s “collaborative,” but

it’s not like you’re collaborating with Herman Melville and Roger Zelazny, Octavia Butler. What you’re doing is collaborating with producers saying, “The audience won’t like this, or I don’t

understand that.” It really is challenging, and I don’t mind doing it — it pays well — but when I write a novel, that’s just me writing. And if an editor has something to say, I listen, and

maybe I do something about it, and maybe not. ARE YOU WORKING ON ANY OF YOUR BOOKS/CHARACTERS FOR THE SMALL SCREEN? Lots of them. I have a book called _Parishioner _that I’m trying to do a

series about. I’m trying to do Easy Rawlins with Apple. I’m also trying to do a Western for Apple. ... There’s a movie — you can say I cowrote it because I wrote the first draft, the

director changed it somewhat, so we cowrote it — based on my book _The Man in My Basement _that we’re supposed to be shooting in the middle of next year.